What If Happiness Is Just a Skill You Were Never Taught?

My phone buzzes. It's her again. A photo. The caption reads:

"Hey. Do you remember this? Best hike of my life. Air smelled like pine and wet earth the whole time. Miss this day."

Hi there,

You know that friend who sends you those Apple photo reminders? "This was one year ago today." She's that person. Except she doesn't just forward the notification.

She relives the full experience.

“Do you remember this? The tiny French bakery with the flakiest croissants? The espresso was so chocolatey. The way the sun filtered through that big oak tree and that warm breeze. I can still feel it."

She is, without question, one of the happiest and most grounded people I have ever known.

I used to think it was just her personality. Some people are wired happier, right?

But the more time I’ve spent with her, the more I wonder: what if her happiness isn’t a personality trait? What if it’s practice?

What if that thing she does is something any of us could do?

Turns out, neuroscience has a lot to say about this.

Your Brain Is Easy to Trick

Most of us remember our worst moments on a loop.

Be honest. How many times have you replayed the awkward thing you said, the argument that went sideways, the thing you “should have said” in that meeting?

Your body treats every single one of those replays like it's happening right now.

The science says when you vividly recall a memory with real sensory detail, your brain activates the same neural networks as when it actually happened.

It doesn't distinguish between the past and now. Either way, the same circuits light up. Either way, good or bad, you feel it.

The catch is that most of us only access our positive memories by accident. Something random triggers them and we get lucky.

My friend does the exact opposite. Instead of reliving bad experiences, she goes back to relive moments of safety, joy, and connection, intentionally, richly, and often. She's doing what the science calls intentional positive memory recall.

Turns out, she isn't accidentally happy. She works at it. And this isn't just "thinking happy thoughts,” it’s a targeted neurological intervention you can do yourself, right now, for free.

How to actually do it:

To start your day on the right foot, or even before a high-pressure meeting, performance review, difficult conversation, or first date, spend just 5-10 minutes actively revisiting a specific, detailed positive memory. The more sensory detail you can reconstruct, the more powerfully it works. Specificity is everything!

Wrong way: “I'll think about a nice vacation I had once.”

Right way: “I remember sitting on a soft, white, sugary sand beach back in 2025. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my shoulders. I can hear the weird little click of the umbrella in the wind. I smell coconut sunscreen. I can taste the salty air. I’m laughing at the close calls with the seagulls eyeing my sandwich.”

Your brain responds to detail because that’s how the original experience was encoded.

Athletes use this. It’s called memory-based visualization. They recall a specific moment they felt “in flow”, imagining the crowd noise, the timing, the bodily sensation of it and the recall primes their nervous system for optimum performance.

You can do the same.

The Memories You'll Draw On Tomorrow Are Being Made Today

The memories you'll be able to draw on in the future are being created right now. But the problem is that most people are physically present in good moments but mentally elsewhere either planning, scrolling, and half-distracted.

Most of us are terrible at encoding good moments because we’re only half there.

We’re at dinner with friends, but we’re checking messages under the table.

Or we’re on a “nice walk,” but mentally we’re writing tomorrow’s to-do list.

That reduces how richly the memory gets encoded. So when we try to go back to it later, it's a sensory blur. But you can deliberately improve this.

How to actually do it:

Anchor the good moments while they're happening. During any genuinely good moment, pause for just a second and think: I want to remember this. 

Notice what you see, what you hear, what you feel. Studies suggest this simple act of conscious attention improves how richly the memory is stored.

• At your kid's school play. Put the phone down for the first half. Make eye contact when they look for you. Notice the specific expression on their face. It'll be retrievable later

• At dinner with old friends. Pick one moment, maybe a shared laugh, and consciously anchor it. Just briefly think "I want to remember this."

• A hard day at work. Try a five-minute end-of-day habit: write down one specific positive moment from the day, no matter how difficult. Something specific: "My coworker said something that made me genuinely laugh at the copier. I laughed so hard I snorted."

READER POLL

One Last Thing…

My friend with the croissant reminders isn't accidentally happy. She's made it a habit to return to what was good and she keeps those memories alive longer by recalling them on repeat.

She's not just being nostalgic. She's busy carving out what I like to call "happy trails" or deep neural pathways that make her the effervescent, slightly annoying-in-the-best-way person she is.

And over time, those repeat rehearsals become her default state.

So if your brain has been on autopilot replaying the bad stuff, bracing, overthinking, try this for one week:

Start collecting the good moments while they're happening. I have a "happy notes" page on my iPhone (sandwiched somewhere between my grocery list and seventeen tabs I'll never close).

I add to it whenever something lands right. A conversation, a meal, a moment where the light was doing something gorgeous and completely unnecessary. Just enough detail to take me back.

Then every morning over coffee and every night brushing my teeth, I scroll through them. Two minutes. Twice a day. It is, without question, the best use of a phone that has otherwise been slowly ruining my attention span.

Because you're going to replay something anyway.

You might as well make it something good.

Happy trails to you,

Shakila

P.S. Before you close this email, open your notes app and write down one good moment from the last 48 hours. Just one. That's your first happy note. You've already started building your “good mood” memory bank!

P.P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.    

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