READ: MAKE THE OFFERING by Rick Hanson, M.D.

One of the strangest and most meaningful experiences of my life occurred when I going through Rolfing (ten brilliant sessions of deep-tissue bodywork) in my early 20′s. The fifth session works on the stomach area, and I was anticipating (= dreading) the release of buried sadness. Instead, there was a dam burst of love, which poured out of me during the session and afterward. I realized it was love, not sadness, that I had bottled up in childhood – and what I now needed to give and express.

READ: DON’T BEAT YOURSELF UP by Rick Hanson, Ph. D.

Most people know their less than wonderful qualities, such as too much ambition (or too little), a weakness for wine or cookies, something of a temper, or an annoying tendency to rattle on about pet interests. We usually know when we make mistakes, get the facts wrong, could be more skillful, or deserve to feel remorseful.

READ: KNOW YOU’RE A GOOD PERSON

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!

WATCH: Rick Hanson – How to Take in the Good

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.

Do What You Can

What can you actually affect? The Practice Why? In a groundbreaking series of studies in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Martin Seligman and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania showed that it was remarkably – and sadly – easy to produce “learned helplessness” in dogs, whose emotional circuitry in the brain is similar in many ways [...]

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