Rick Hanson Quotes

your fundamental nature is pure, conscious, peaceful, radiant, loving, and wise, and it is joined in mysterious ways with the ultimate underpinnings of reality, by whatever name we give That. Although your true nature may be hidden momentarily by stress and worry, anger and unfulfilled longings, it still continues to exist. Knowing this can be a great comfort.

Intensify it. Open to it and let it be big in your mind.

it’s the needs we push away that are often the most important to embrace. So try to be aware of needs, or aspects of needs, that have been unmet. Listen to the longings of your heart. As you go through your day, be mindful of your needs for: • Safety.

Mental resources like determination, self-worth, and kindness are what make us resilient: able to cope with adversity and push through challenges in the pursuit of opportunities. While resilience helps us recover from loss and trauma, it offers much more than that. True resilience fosters well-being, an underlying sense of happiness, love, and peace. Remarkably, as you internalize experiences of well-being, that builds inner strengths which in turn make you more resilient. Well-being and resilience promote each other in an upward spiral.

• To survive and pass on their genes, our ancestors needed to be especially aware of dangers, losses, and conflicts. Consequently, the brain evolved a negativity bias that looks for bad news, reacts intensely to it, and quickly stores the experience in neural structure. We can still be happy, but this bias creates an ongoing vulnerability to stress, anxiety, disappointment, and hurt.

in relationships, it typically takes about five positive interactions to overcome the effects of a single negative one (Gottman 1995).

It's impossible to change the past or the present: you can only accept all that as it is.

Taking in the good is not about putting a happy shiny face on everything, nor is it about turning away from the hard things in life. It's about nourishing well-being, contentment, and peace inside that are refuges you can always come from and return to.

Mammals, including us, become friendly, playful, curious, and creative when they feel safe, satisfied, and connected.

Simply having useful, enjoyable experiences is not enough.

Breathe in such a way that your inhalation and exhalation are the same duration; for example, count one, two, three, four in your mind while inhaling, and one, two, three, four while exhaling. At the same time, imagine or sense that you’re breathing in and out through the area of your heart. As you breathe evenly through your heart, call to mind a pleasant, heartfelt emotion such as gratitude, kindness, or love — perhaps by thinking about a happy time, being with your children, appreciation for the good things in your life, or a pet. You can also imagine this feeling moving through your heart as part of the breath. Try this for a minute or longer — you’ll probably be quite struck by the results.

Mindfulness helps you open up to the deeper layers of yourself.

[I]f you can be with the pleasant without chasing after it, with the unpleasant without resisting it, and with the neutral without ignoring it - [...] that is an incredible [...] freedom.

Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them — open up to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet: don’t just look at it — dig in!

Therefore, you can use your mind to change your brain to benefit your mind — and everyone else