Rick Hanson Quotes

In a way, empathy is a kind of mindfulness meditation focused on someone else’s inner world.

Richard and I both believe that something transcendental is involved with the mind, consciousness, and the path of awakening — call it God, Spirit, Buddha-nature, the Ground, or by no name at all. Whatever it is, by definition it’s beyond the physical universe. Since it cannot be proven one way or another, it is important — and consistent with the spirit of science — to respect it as a possibility.

you can do small things inside your mind that will lead to big changes in your brain and your experience of living.

As you become a happier person, the left frontal region of your brain becomes more active (Davidson 2004). What flows through your mind sculpts your brain. Thus, you can use your mind to change your brain for the better — which will benefit your whole being, and every other person whose life you touch.

Imagine that your mind is a garden. You can tend to it in three ways: observe it, pull weeds, and plant flowers. Observing it is fundamental, and sometimes that’s all you can do. Perhaps something terrible has happened and you can only ride out the storm. But being with the mind is not enough; we must work with it as well. The mind is grounded in the brain, which is a physical system that doesn’t change for the better on its own. Weeds don’t get pulled and flowers don’t get planted simply by watching the garden.

You are settling into simply being in the present, letting go of the past and not fearing or planning the future. Nothing to fix, no other place to go, no one you have to be. Rest and relax as a whole body breathing.

In your own mind, what do you usually think about at the end of the day? The fifty things that went right, or the one that went wrong? Such as the driver who cut you off in traffic, or the one thing on your To Do list that didn’t get done . . . In effect, the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones. That shades implicit memory — your underlying feelings, expectations, beliefs, inclinations, and mood — in an increasingly negative direction. Which is not fair, since most of the facts in your life are probably positive or at least neutral. Besides the injustice of it, the growing pile of negative experiences in implicit memory naturally makes a person more anxious, irritable, and blue — plus it gets harder to be patient and giving toward others. But you don’t have to accept this bias! By tilting toward the good — toward that which brings more happiness and benefit to oneself and others — you merely level the playing field. Then, instead of positive experiences washing through you like water through a sieve, they’ll collect in implicit memory deep down in your brain.

the importance of developing grit in the first place for the challenges you know about and the ones waiting around the corner to surprise you.

Simply having useful, enjoyable experiences is not enough.

In terms of building neural structure, what matters is not the event or circumstance or condition itself but your experience of it. Knowing without feeling is like a menu without a meal.

Linking is a powerful method. The brain learns through association, and when two things are held in awareness at the same time, they affect each other. The key is to make sure that what’s beneficial stays more prominent than what’s painful or harmful. Then the positive will purify the negative, rather than the negative contaminating the positive.

Anger is also an effective way to hide hurt and vulnerability, assert status or dominance, push away fear, and compensate for feeling small or weak. In relationships, arguing or bickering can serve the purpose of keeping others at a comfortable distance. A saying describes anger as a poisoned barb with a honeyed tip.

Even minor experiences can build up like a pile of unlit matches.

Third, you can increase the positive — whatever is enjoyable or beneficial — by creating, growing, or preserving it. You could breathe more quickly to lift your energy, remember times with friends that make you feel happy, have realistic and useful thoughts about a situation at work, or motivate yourself by imagining how good it will feel to eat healthy foods.

Enjoying the taste of toasted raisin bread or the humor in a cartoon may not seem like much, but simple pleasures like these ease emotional upsets, lift your mood, and enrich your life. They also provide health benefits, by releasing endorphins and natural opioids that shift you out of stressful, draining reactive states and into happier responsive ones. As a bonus, some pleasures — such as dancing, sex, your team winning a game of pick-up basketball, or laughing with friends — come with energizing feelings of vitality or passion that enhance long-term health. Opportunities for pleasure are all around you, especially if you include things like the rainbow glitter of the tiny grains of sand in a sidewalk, the sound of water falling into a tub, the sense of connection in talking with a friend, or the reassurance that comes from the stove working when you need to make dinner.