Bad Sticks. Good Slips. (And How to Change That)
Why your brain overlooks your best moments—and how to help them stay
You know the moment:
Someone says, “You handled that beautifully.”
And almost reflexively, you wave it off.
“Oh, it was nothing.”
It was not nothing.
But watch what happens next.
The praise floats toward you…
hovers for a second…
Then drifts away, like a balloon you felt embarrassed to hold.
We do this all the time.
A friend texts: Proud of you.
You smile for half a second.
Then—back to email.
You finish a hard workout.
Tiny flicker of satisfaction.
Then—laundry.
You finally solve the problem that’s been draining you for days.
Relief rises.
Then—onto the next thing.
Meanwhile, your brain is astonishingly efficient at learning from what stings. One sharp comment can echo for years. An awkward moment from a decade ago can reappear at 2 a.m. in cinematic detail.
But positive moments?
They tend to pass through like polite houseguests who don’t want to overstay.
And here’s the part your brain didn’t tell you: it doesn’t have to stay that way.
The Science of Helping the Good Stick
Psychologists have long documented what’s sometimes called the negativity bias: we tend to internalize unpleasant experiences more readily than pleasant ones.
Bad sticks. Good slips.
So a research team led by Rick Hanson asked a deceptively simple question:
What if we could get better at learning from the good?
They developed a framework—HEAL—to organize what they call mental engagement factors: small, deliberate ways of engaging a beneficial moment so it’s more likely to sink in.
In their study, participants trained in the HEAL framework through a Taking in the Good course showed increases in cognitive resources (e.g., well-being skills like savoring, self-compassion, and emotion regulation), positive emotions, and overall happiness—and decreases in negative emotions. Importantly, many of these gains persisted two months after the course ended.
The implication is powerful: We may be able to increase what we carry forward from good moments by changing how we meet them—how long we stay, how fully we register, how deeply we let them land.
Not by adding hours of practice.
By changing seconds.
Seconds.
Micropractice #32: Taking In the Good
Below is the HEAL framework, developed by psychologist Rick Hanson—a practical blueprint for helping the good stick.
H | Have a beneficial experience.
Notice something enjoyable or useful. It might already be happening. Or you can gently evoke it—like with a micropractice.
A hand over your heart.
A glance out the window.
A moment of playfulness.
E | Enrich it.
Negative experiences tend to register quickly, while positive ones often need to be held in awareness—sometimes for 5, 10, or 20 seconds—to embed in emotional memory. That’s what this step is for: prolonging, intensifying, and exploring the experience using five kinds of engagement tools:
Duration
Stay with the good moment a beat longer than usual.
Sustaining attention can deepen learning and support transfer into longer-term memory.Intensity
Gently turn up the signal. Not forcing joy—just bringing the experience a little closer.
Increased intensity is associated with neurochemical activity associated with learning and memory formation.Novelty
Find one new detail in a familiar good:
Oh. That’s what relief feels like in my chest today.
The same morning coffee.
But today you notice the warmth spreading through your hands.
The same “thank you.”
But today you feel how your shoulders soften when you receive it.
Novelty doesn’t require a new experience.
Just a fresh glance.
When something feels even slightly new, the hippocampus—your brain’s head librarian—stamps it for cataloging, helping coordinate with broader cortical networks to determine what ultimately gets shelved into long-term memory.
In other words, what feels new is more likely to be flagged as something to remember.Salience
Name why this matters to you:
Showing up.
Safety.
Connection.When an experience feels personally relevant—tied to your needs, values, or goals—it carries more neural weight. The brain is more likely to prioritize and consolidate what feels meaningful.
Not just pleasant.
Significant.Multi-modality
Get curious about what’s unfolding across channels:
Body: Where do you feel it—chest, belly, face, shoulders?
Mind: What thoughts or images arise (even a single phrase)?
Emotion: What’s the emotional “temperature” (relief, warmth, pride, tenderness, calm)?
Desire: Why does this matter to you? What does it give you—or move you toward? Notice the motivational pull inside it.
Action: Add a simple gesture to help it land—hand on your heart, releasing your jaw, closing or softening your eyes.
A | Absorb it.
If enriching is about pouring more liquid onto the sponge, absorbing is about increasing the sponge’s capacity to take it in.
Enriching deepens the experience.
Absorbing lets it soak through.
Try these:
Intend: “Let this sink in.” The mind more readily stores what we consciously mean to remember.
Sense: Notice where the goodness lives in the body. Let yourself feel it for a moment.
Highlight: What’s the satisfying part? Reward reinforces remembering.
L | Link (optional).
Gently hold a positive experience in the foreground while a related difficulty rests in the background.
Not to overwhelm yourself.
Not to force positivity.
But to let the new experience add a little color to the old one—shifting the palette of how negative memories are reconsolidated.
When you do this, you’re not denying the past. You’re allowing it to be updated—when the conditions are right. Memory isn’t a museum display sealed behind glass. It’s more like a working canvas. Each time you revisit it, the brain can briefly reopen the file. If something new is present—surprise, an emotion, fresh information—the underlying patterns may soften, strengthen, or reorganize before settling again.
Not every revisit changes the painting. The main outlines of well-learned memories often remain. But tone, texture, emphasis—those can shift.
A warm conversation layered onto an old story of rejection.
A moment of competence brushing against a memory of failure.
A breath that held steady where it once collapsed.
Over time, the colors you carry forward can begin to look different—not because you erased what was, but because you allowed new light to reach it.
This step is optional—for good reason. If it feels like too much, skip it.
The first three are already powerful.
How to Make 30-Seconds Last
HEAL can help micropractices stick for a simple reason: By more deeply taking in the good, you’re supporting the brain’s consolidation process. You’re increasing the likelihood that the neural patterns active in that moment get encoded and stabilized over time.
In other words: The practice lights the spark. HEAL can help it catch. Not by forcing anything. Just by giving the good a fair shot at sticking around.
So try HEA(L) once today.
The next time you notice that subtle shift after a micropractice—a steadier breath, a softer edge, a flicker of warmth—don’t rush past it.
Let it land.
Let it become a little more yours.
The life you remember tomorrow
is shaped by what you let stay today.
Send this to someone who needs to hear: “It was not nothing.”
Apply generously to your hippocampus,
Eli Susman, PhD
Founder, The Micro Memo
Micropractice.com
P.S. If you want to go deeper into this approach, Rick Hanson’s Hardwiring Happiness offers a beautifully scaffolded, science-grounded guide to the practice of taking in the good.
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Classic brain!
Thank you, this is so very helpful.