The brain is good at learning from bad experiences, but bad at learning from good ones. - Rick Hanson

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.

If you can break the link between feeling tones and craving — if you can be with the pleasant without chasing after it, with the unpleasant without resisting it, and with the neutral without ignoring it — then you have cut the chain of suffering, at least for a time.

If you’re having a stressful or upsetting experience, simple pleasures such as listening to music can move the needle of your internal stress-o-meter out of the red zone and back toward green.