READ: SEE THE GOOD IN OTHERS
November 25, 2011 by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Filed under •-Feature, Family & Relationships, Insights, Personal Growth, Purpose, Reflection, Relationships, Vision
What do you notice in people?
The Practice:
See the good in others.
Why?
Many interactions these days have a kind of bumper-car quality to them. At work, at home, on the telephone, via email: we sort of bounce off of each other while we exchange information, smile or frown, and move on. How often do we actually take the extra few seconds to get a sense of what’s inside other people – especially their good qualities?
In fact, because of what scientists call the brain’s “negativity bias” (you could see my talk at Google for more on this), we’re most likely to notice the bad qualities in others rather than the good ones: the things that worry or annoy us, or make us critical.
Unfortunately, if you feel surrounded by lots of bad or at best neutral qualities in others, and only a sprinkling of dimly-sensed good ones, then you naturally feel less supported, less safe, and less inclined to be generous or pursue your dreams. Plus, in a circular way, when another person gets the feeling that you don’t really see much that’s good in him or her, that person is less likely to take the time to see much that’s good in you.
Seeing the good in others is thus a simple but very powerful way to feel happier and more confident, and become more loving and more productive in the world.
How?
- Slow down – Step out of the bumper car and spend a few moments being curious about the good qualities in the other person. You are not looking through rose-colored glasses: instead, you are opening your eyes, taking off the smog-colored glasses of the negativity bias, and seeing what the facts really are.
- See positive intentions – Recently I was at the dentist’s, and her assistant told me a long story about her electric company. My mouth was full of cotton wads, and I didn’t feel interested. But then I started noticing her underlying aims: to put me at ease, fill the time until she could pull the cotton out, and connect with each other as people. Maybe she could have pursued those aims in better ways. But the aims themselves were positive – which is true of all fundamental wants even if the methods used to fulfill them have problems. For example, a toddler throwing mashed potatoes wants fun, a teenager dripping attitude wants higher status, and a mate who avoids housework wants leisure. Try to see the good intentions in the people around you. In particular, sense the longing to be happy in the heart of every person.
- See abilities – Going through school, I was very young and therefore routinely picked last for teams in PE: not good for a guy’s self-esteem. Then, my first year at UCLA, I gave intramural touch football a try. We had a great quarterback who was too small for college football. After one practice, he told me in passing, “You’re good and I’m going to throw to you.” I was floored. But this was the beginning of me realizing that I was actually quite a good athlete. His recognition also made me play better which helped our team. Thirty-five years later I can still remember his comment. He had no idea of its impact, yet it was a major boost to my sense of worth. In the same way, unseen ripples spread far and wide when we see abilities in others – especially if we acknowledge them openly.
- See positive character traits – Unless you’re surrounded by deadbeats and sociopaths, everyone you know must have many virtues, such as determination, generosity, kindness, patience, energy, grit, honesty, fairness, or compassion. Take a moment to observe virtues in others. You could make a list of virtues in key people in your life – even in people who are challenging for you!
Last and not least: recognize that the good you see in others is also in you. You couldn’t see that good if you did not have an inkling of what it was. You, too, have positive intentions, real abilities, and virtues of mind and heart. Those qualities are a fact, as much a fact as the chair you’re sitting on. Take a moment to let that fact sink in. You don’t need a halo to be a truly good person. You are a truly good person.
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Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (in 21 languages) – and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he’s taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report and he has several audio programs. His blog – Just One Thing – has nearly 30,000 subscribers and suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you can subscribe to Just One Thing here.
READ: KNOW YOU’RE A GOOD PERSON
November 2, 2011 by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Filed under •-Feature, Buddhism, Family & Relationships, Health & Well-being, Personal Growth, Reflection, Relationships, Vision
Who are you, deep down?
The Practice:
Know you’re a good person.
Why?
For many of us, perhaps the hardest thing of all is to believe that “I am a good person.” We can climb mountains, work hard, acquire many skills, act ethically – but truly feel that one is good deep down? Nah!
We end up not feeling like a good person in a number of ways. For example, I once knew a little girl who’d been displaced by her baby brother and fended off and scolded by her mother who was worn down and busy caring for an infant. This girl was angry at her brother and parents, plus lost and disheartened and feeling cast out and unloved. She’d been watching cartoons in which the soldiers of an evil queen attacked innocent villagers, and one day she said sadly, “Mommy, I feel like a bad soldier.”
Later in life – whether in school or adulthood – shamings, moral indictments, religious chastising, and other criticisms come in many shapes and sizes. Feeling morally compromised – the essence of not believing you’re a good person – is fed by related though different experiences of worthlessness, inadequacy, and unlovableness: as my ranch-born father would say, “feeling like you’re the runt of the litter.”
I’ve also known people – including myself – who have done bad things, or said them or thought them. Things like hitting an animal, risking the lives of their children while driving buzzed, being mean to a vulnerable person, stealing from a store, feeling contemptuous, or cheating on a partner. These don’t need to be felony offenses to make one feel guilty or ashamed.
In effect, to simplify, it’s as if the psyche has three parts to it: one part says, “you’re not good”; another part says, “you’re good”; and a third part – the one we identify with – listens. The problem is that the critical, dismissive, shaming voice is usually much louder than the protecting, encouraging, valuing one.
Sure, there is a place for healthy remorse. But shining through our lapses of integrity, no matter how great, is an underlying and pervading goodness. Yes it may be obscured; I am not letting myself or others – from panhandlers to CEOs and Presidents – off the moral hook. But deep down, all intentions are positive, even if they are expressed problematic ways. When we are not disturbed by pain or loss or fear, the human brain defaults to a basic equilibrium of calm, contentment, and caring. And in ways that feel mysterious, even numinous, you can sense profound benevolence at your core.
Really, the truth, the fact, is that you are a good person. (Me, too.)
When you feel deep down like a bad soldier – or simply not like a good person – you’re more likely to act this way, to be casually snippy, self-indulgent, selfish, or hurtful. On the other hand, when you feel your own natural goodness, you are more likely to act in good ways. Knowing your own goodness, you’re more able to recognize it in others. Seeing the good in yourself and others, you’re more likely to do what you can to build the good in the world we share together.
How?
I’ve learned five good ways to feel like a good person – and there are probably more!
- Take in the good of feeling cared about – When you have a chance to feel seen, listened to, appreciated, liked, valued, or loved: take a dozen seconds or more to savor this experience, letting it fill your mind and body, sinking into it as it sinks into you.
- Recognize goodness in your acts of thought word and deed- These include positive intentions, putting the brakes on anger, restraining addictive impulses, extending compassion and helpfulness to others, grit and determination, lovingness, courage, generosity, patience, and a willingness to see and even name the truth whatever it is.You are recognizing facts; create sanctuary in your mind for this recognition, holding at bay other voices, other forces, that would invade and plunder this sanctuary for their own agenda (such as the internalization of people you’ve known who made themselves feel big by making you feel small).
- Sense the goodness at the core of your being – This is a fundamental honesty and benevolence. It’s there inside everyone, no matter how obscured. It can feel intimate, impersonal, perhaps sacred. A force, a current, a wellspring in your heart.
- See the goodness in others – Recognizing their goodness will help you feel your own. Observe everyday small acts of fairness, kindness, and honorable effort in others. Sense the deeper layers behind the eyes, the inner longings to be decent and loving, to contribute, to help rather than harm.
- Give over to goodness – Increasingly let “the better angels of your nature” be the animating force of your life. In tricky situations or relationships, ask yourself, “Being a good person, what’s appropriate here?” As you act from this goodness, let the knowing that you are a good person sink in ever more deeply.
Enjoy this beautiful goodness, so real and so true.
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Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (in 21 languages) – and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he’s taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers in Europe, North America, and Australia. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report and he has several audio programs with Sounds True. His blog – Just One Thing – has over 27,000 subscribers and suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you cansubscribe to Just One Thing here.
WATCH: Rick Hanson – How to Take in the Good
October 8, 2011 by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Filed under •-Feature, Arts & Entertainment, Videos
In this video, Rick Hanson explains how we can boost our positive emotions and positive experiences. This video was taken at the Greater Good Science Center in UC Berkeley as part of the Science of a Meaningful Life Series.
Rick Hanson is a neuropsychologist and has written and taught extensively about the essential inner skills of personal well-being, psychological growth, and contemplative practice as well as about relationships, family life, and raising children.
RECEIVE GENEROSITY – JUST ONE THING
September 16, 2011 by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Filed under •-Feature, Health & Well-being, Personal Growth, Reflection
Do you accept the gift?
The Practice
Receive generosity.
Why?
Life gives to each one of us in so many ways
For starters, there’s the bounty of the senses – including chocolate chip cookies, jasmine, sunsets, wind singing through pine trees, and just getting your back scratched.
What does life give you?
Consider the kindness of friends and family, made more tangible during a holiday season, but of course continuing throughout the year.
Or the giving of the people whose hard work is bound up in a single cup of coffee. Or all those people in days past who figured out how to make a stone ax – or a fire, edible grain, loom, vaccine, or computer. Or wrote plays and novels, made art or music. Developed mathematics and science, paths of psychological growth, and profound spiritual practices. A few people whose names you know, and tens of thousands – millions, really – whom you will never know: each day their contributions feed, clothe, transport, entertain, inspire, and heal us.
Consider the giving of the natural world, the sound of rain, sweep of sky and stars, and majesty of mountains. How does nature feed you?
How about your DNA? The moment of your conception presented you with the build-out instructions for becoming a human being, the hard-won fruits of 3.5 billion years of evolution.
You don’t earn these things. You can’t. They are just given.
The best you can do is to receive them. That helps fill your own cup, which is good for both you and others. It keeps the circle of giving going; when someone deflects or resists one of your own gifts, how inclined are you to give again? It draws you into deep sense of connection with life.
And if nothing else, it’s simply polite!
How?
Start with something a friend has recently given to you, such as a smile, an encouraging word, or simply some attention. Then open to feeling given to. Notice any reluctance here, such as thoughts of unworthiness, or a background fear of dependence, or the idea that if you receive then you will owe the other person something. Try to open past that reluctance to accepting what’s offered, to taking it in – and enjoy the pleasures of this. Let it sink in that receiving generosity is good.
Next pick something from nature. For example, open to the giving folded into an ordinary apple, including the cleverness and persistence it took, across hundreds of generations, to gradually breed something delicious from its sour and bitter wild precursors. See if you can taste their work in its rich sweetness. Open even more broadly to the nurturing benevolence in the whole web of life.
Then try something unliving, perhaps something with no apparent value, like a bit of sand. Yet in that single grain are echoes of the Big Bang – the gift that there is something at all rather than nothing. Who knows what deeper, perhaps transcendental gifts underlie the blazing bubbling emergence of our universe?
Take a breath, and enjoy receiving trillions of atoms of oxygen – most of them the gifts of an exploding star.
Consider some of the intangibles flowing toward you from others, including good will, fondness, respect, and love. See if you can drink deeply from the stream coming from one person; as you recognize something positive being offered to you, try to experience it in a felt way in your body and emotions. Then see if you can do the same with other people. If you can, include your parents and other family members, friends, and key acquaintances.
Try to stretch yourself further. Recall a recent interaction that was a mixed bag for you, some good in it but also some bad. Focus on whatever was accurate or useful in what the other person communicated, and try to receive that as a valuable offering. Open your mind to the good that is implicit or down deep in the other person, even if you don’t like the way it has come out.
Keep listening, touching, tasting, smelling, and looking for other overflowing generosity coming your way.
So many gifts.
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. A summa cum laudegraduate of UCLA, he teaches at universities and meditation centers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His work has been featured on the BBC and in Consumer Reports Health, U.S. News and World Report, and other major magazines.
Rick’s most recent book is Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom and is being published in ten additional languages. An authority on self-directed neuroplasticity, he edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has a weekly e-newsletter, Just One Thing. His articles have appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind.
He enjoys rock-climbing and taking a break from emails. He and his wife have two children. For more information, please see his full profile at www.RickHanson.net. You can find him on the social web athttp://www.facebook.com/BuddhasBrain and http://www.YouTube.com/BuddhasBrain
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize – Just One Thing
September 3, 2011 by Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Filed under •-Feature, Family & Relationships, Health & Well-being, Personal Growth, Purpose, Reflection, Relationships, Spiritual Guidance, Youth - Personal Growth
What’s the most important thing?
The Practice
Keep your eyes on the prize.
Why?
Have you heard this saying?
The most important thing is to remember the most important thing.
What are the most important things to you? In your life as a whole? During a particular interaction with someone? Right this minute?
The most important things often get pushed to the sidelines. Urgent crowds out important. Modern life is full of distracting clamor, from text messages and emails to window displays in the mall. Other people tug at you with their priorities – which may not be your own. And it can feel scary to admit what really matters to you, tell others, and go after it for real: the fearful voices whisper in the back of the mind: What if you fail?
But if you don’t make a sanctuary for what is important, it will get overrun by the bermuda grass of B and C priorities.
How?
Know your purpose in life. Write it down in one word, phrase, or sentence. Really. The first time someone suggested I do this, I thought they were a little nuts. But then I opened up to a kind of knowing of what matters most to me, and wrote it down. It’s OK if it changes, or if you don’t get the words just right at first. You can revise it later. Put it in positive terms and in the present tense; for example, “I am loving” is better than “I will stop getting so angry with people.” Say it out loud and see how it feels. Find words you connect with.
Keep your purpose close to your heart; it may feel sacred. If you speak of it, do so with self-respect, not self-doubt. And then every day, as soon as you remember, recommit to your life’s purpose: rename it to yourself and give yourself over to it again.
Clarify your priorities. Identify the key aims of your life these days in a word or phrase, such as: Health. Friendship. Finances. Learning new things. Career. Marriage. Spirituality. Having fun. Parenting. Creative expression. Exploring life. Service. Maybe break up one aim into two or three; for example, “finances” could become “breaking even,” “saving for retirement,” and “becoming affluent, even wealthy.”
Then do a little exercise as an experiment: rank these aims in order of importance, with no ties allowed. If you could attain only one aim, which would it be? That’s your highest priority. Then take that one off the list, look at the aims that are left, and ask the question again: If I could attain only one of these remaining aims, which one would it be? Then repeat the process until you’re finished. Remember your purpose in life. As you go along, you may want to revise the wording of the aims, or divide one aim into two or three. When you’re done, write a clean list of aims in priority order; if it feels right, keep it where you can see it each day, maybe your eyes alone. Routinely reflect on your true priorities; feel their weight; let your top priorities draw you in their direction.
Put the big rocks in the bucket first. Look at the priorities you just created, and then ask yourself: Am I giving my time, attention, and energy in proportion to these priorities? And sit with the answer for awhile. Don’t feel you need to change your life right away. There are usually some conflicts between your priorities and your actions. Live with that tension; don’t push it away. Keep letting your true priorities speak to you. What do they say?
It’s normal to be committed to big chunks of time doing things that are necessary but not high priorities per se, such as commuting or doing housework. Consider how you could weave one or more top priorities into these relatively low priority periods. For example, listen to an inspiring talk while you’re on the bus, or pay mindful attention to the breath while doing dishes.
Also see what realistic changes you can gradually make in your time, in the people you see, in what you give your attention, in how you spend your money. Build your priorities into your daily schedule and monthly budget. For example, start your day with a time of reflection, meditation, uplifting reading, yoga, art, or exercise. Or when you pay the bills, write the first check to your own savings account, even if it’s only for a single dollar.
Stay focused on your priorities in important interactions. Lots of interactions kind of bounce around, and that’s OK. But sometimes there’s an important stake on the table, like identifying a key deliverable at work, or saying what you really feel to your partner, or pinning down a homework plan for your child. In these cases, it’s common for the conversation to go off on tangents, get hijacked emotionally, or fall into a kitchen sink full of related issues – but then the main point doesn’t get resolved. Instead, keep reminding yourself of the result you’d like out of the interaction. It doesn’t have to be the whole magilla: sometimes it’s best to focus on something concrete and manageable that’s attainable. Don’t take the “bait” of inflammatory or distracting statements by others; keep coming back to the main point; you can deal with those other issues later – if ever. Obviously, be open to discovering that there is something even more important to talk about than what you first thought. But always be clear what your priorities are, even if they change.
Take care of yourself. This is definitely an important thing – perhaps the most fundamental of all. As they say on an airplane, “Put your own oxygen mask on first.” Or as the Buddha put it a long time ago: “If one going down into a river, swollen and swiftly flowing, is carried away by the current – how can one help others across?”
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This post is from my free newsletter, Just One Thing, which offers a simple practice each week to bring you more happiness, love, and wisdom. Over time, just one thing can add up to big results! You can subscribe if you like; I’ll never share your email address, and you can unsubscribe any time.
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Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA, he teaches at universities and meditation centers in Europe, Australia, and North America. His work has been featured on the BBC and in Consumer Reports Health, U.S. News and World Report, and other major magazines.
Rick’s most recent book is Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom and is being published in ten additional languages. An authority on self-directed neuroplasticity, he edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has a weekly e-newsletter, Just One Thing. His articles have appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind.
He enjoys rock-climbing and taking a break from emails. He and his wife have two children. For more information, please see his full profile at www.RickHanson.net. You can find him on the social web at http://www.facebook.com/BuddhasBrain and http://www.YouTube.com/BuddhasBrain
