The HEAL Method
Turn passing good moments into lasting mood by absorbing them on purpose
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 80%
Rick Hansen's acronym gives gratitude a mechanism. Have a positive experience — first you must be having one. Enrich it by sitting with it rather than letting it slide past. Absorb it, which Williamson describes as imagining the feeling sinking down and becoming part of you, spending thirty seconds to a minute letting the emotion go below the neck instead of merely noticing it cognitively. The optional Link step pairs the good experience with a bad one and oscillates between them to bring down the volume of the bad. The insight is that most people register pleasant things only in retrospect and therefore never actually arrive at having had them.
Origin
Rick Hansen, author of Hardwiring Happiness, as relayed by Chris Williamson to Alex Hormozi on Modern Wisdom.
Core principles
- 01Good experiences wash by unless you deliberately hold them
- 02Noticing cognitively is not the same as absorbing emotionally
- 03The brain wires in what it dwells on
- 04You can down-regulate a bad experience by pairing it with a good one
- 05Small good moments compound if they are actually registered
How to run it
- 1
Have a positive experience
Catch that something good is happening in the present — a conversation you're enjoying, a good training session, a nice coffee. You cannot enrich what you never noticed.
Pro tip The threats register automatically; the pleasant things need to be actively caught.
- 2
Enrich it
Stay with the good experience a beat longer instead of letting it wash by. Deliberately dwell on it rather than moving straight to the next thing.
Pro tip This is where most people fail — they let it pass and only label it 'good' in hindsight.
- 3
Absorb it below the neck
Imagine the feeling sinking down and becoming part of you. Spend thirty seconds to a minute letting the emotion fill you out physically rather than acknowledging it only in the head.
Pro tip 'Below the neck' is the tell — if it stays a cognitive note, it didn't wire in.
- 4
Link (optional)
Pair the positive experience with a negative one and oscillate between the two, using the good to bring down the volume of the bad.
Pro tip Reserve the Link step for when you're actively trying to soften a specific bad memory.
Watch out Skip Link if you just want to bank a good moment — it can drag the bad one back into focus.
In the wild
Mid-conversation, Williamson models the method live: there's nothing else he'd rather be doing right now than having this conversation. Rather than let it wash by and only later think 'that was good at the time,' he enriches and absorbs it — noticing that people will watch this and it'll make them happy, and letting that land below the neck for a beat.
→ A grand but easily-missed good moment gets registered and banked instead of evaporating.
A good training session where half the gym was under construction and dust got on your shoes. The negativity bias fixates on the dust. HEAL redirects: notice it was a genuinely good session, sit with it, and let that be what you carry out of the gym.
→ The session is recorded as a win rather than as an annoyance about dust.
Common mistakes
Noticing without absorbing
Labeling an experience 'good' cognitively does nothing. Without the absorb step where it goes below the neck, the moment still washes by and never wires in.
Only registering it in retrospect
If you wait until later to think 'wasn't that lovely,' you never actually arrived at having the good experience while it was happening.
Is it for you?
Best for
People who intellectually know they should be grateful but never seem to feel it in the moment.
Not ideal for
Acute crisis moments where there is genuinely nothing positive present to absorb.
From the transcript
“he has this wonderful acronym of heal. Have a positive experience. Enrich it.”
“allowing it to go below the neck would be a good way to put it.”
From the episode
41 Harsh Truths Nobody Wants To Admit - Alex Hormozi - #952
Alex Hormozi