Rick Hanson Quotes & Sayings

Your brain is the most important organ in your body, and what happens in it determines what you think and feel, say and do. Many studies show that your experiences are continually changing your brain one way or another. This book is about getting good at changing your brain for the better. — Rick Hanson

I once heard a Native American teaching story in which an elder, a grandmother, was asked what she had done to become so happy, so wise, so loved and respected.

She replied: "It's because I know that there are two wolves in my heart, a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. And I know that everything depends on which one I feed each day. — Rick Hanson

In your body, the gradually accumulating burden of reactive experiences is called allostatic load, which increases inflammation, weakens your immune system, and wears on your cardiovascular system. In your brain, allostatic load causes neurons to atrophy in the prefrontal cortex, the center of top-down executive control; in the hippocampus, the center of learning and memory; and in other regions. It impairs myelination, the insulating of neural fibers to speed along their signals, which can weaken the connectivity between different regions of your brain, so they don't work together as well as they should. — Rick Hanson

You can give so much in this life, and that offers you many opportunities to release the self. For example, you can give time, helpfulness, donations, restraint, patience, noncontention, and forgiveness. Any path of service - including raising a family, caring for others, and many kinds of work - incorporates generosity. Envy - and its close cousin, jealousy - is a major impediment to generosity. So notice the suffering in envy, how it is an affliction upon you. Envy actually activates some of the same neural networks involved with physical pain (Takahashi et al. 2009). In a compassionate and kind way, remind yourself that you will be all right even if other people have fame, money, or a great partner - and you don't. To free yourself from the clutches of envy, send compassion and loving-kindness to people you envy. — Rick Hanson

Your perspective on the facts - the context in which you place them and the meaning you give them - really shapes your experience of them. In particular, finding positive meaning in negative events, which is called reframing, is helpful for coping and recovery. This is not to suggest that a tough experience is any less painful, or that it is all right for people to mistreat you. My point is that even a horrible event or situation may have some opportunities in it for a positive experience. — Rick Hanson

to help our ancestors survive, the brain evolved a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones. — Rick Hanson

To become happier, wiser, and more loving, sometimes you have to swim against ancient currents within your nervous system. — Rick Hanson

Deep down in the emotional memory centers of your brain, imagined experiences build neural structures through mechanisms similar to those that actual, lived experiences use. — Rick Hanson

It's a general moral principle that the more power you have over someone, the greater your duty to use that power benevolently. Well, who is the one person in the world you have the greatest power over? It's your future self. You hold that life in your hands, and what it will be depends on how you care for it. — Rick Hanson

There are three fundamental phases to psychological and spiritual growth: being with difficult material (e.g., old wounds, anger); releasing it; and replacing it with something more beneficial. — Rick Hanson

well-being becomes increasingly unconditional, — Rick Hanson

you can decide to get eggs from the refrigerator without craving them - and without getting upset if there are none left. — Rick Hanson

By taking just a few extra seconds to stay with a positive experience - even the comfort in a single breath - you'll help turn a passing mental state into lasting neural structure. Over time, you can fill up your inner storehouse with the strengths you need, such as feeling at ease rather than irritable, loved rather than mistreated, and resourced rather than running on empty. — Rick Hanson

Nurturing your own development isn't selfish. It's actually a great gift to other people. — Rick Hanson

I highly recommend the approach Marshall Rosenberg details in Nonviolent Communication (2nd Edition 2008), which has essentially three parts: When X happens [described factually, not judgmentally], I feel Y [especially the deeper, softer emotions], because I need Z [fundamental needs and wants]. — Rick Hanson

Suffering has clear causes in your brain and body, so if you change its causes, you'll suffer a lot less. And you can change those causes. — Rick Hanson

The mind (and brain) takes its shape from what it rests upon, and you're letting it mold itself around the positive experience that you are taking in. — Rick Hanson

Most fears are exaggerated. As you go through life, your brain acquires expectations based on your experiences, particularly negative ones. When situations occur that are even remotely similar, your brain automatically applies its expectations to them; if it expects pain or loss, or even just the threat of these, it pulses fear signals. But because of the negativity bias, many expectations of pain or loss are overstated or completely unfounded. — Rick Hanson

More than ever, the human world needs to find ways to build love, understanding, and peace, individually and on a global scale. — Rick Hanson

The tragedy and opportunity of this moment in history are exactly the same: the natural and technical resources needed to pull us back from the brink already exist. The issue is not a lack of resources. It is a lack of will and restraint, of attention to what's truly happening, and of enlightened self-interest[.] — Rick Hanson

Everything changes. That's the universal nature of outer reality and inner experience. Therefore, there's no end to disturbed equilibria as long as you live. — Rick Hanson

All sentient beings developed through natural selection in such a way that pleasant sensations serve as their guide, and especially the pleasure derived from sociability and from loving our families. - Charles Darwin — Rick Hanson

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