happiness and neuroplasticity: simple strategies for

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring

Your Brain

A Webinar Session withRuth Buczynski, PhDand Rick Hanson, PhD

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Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain 2

The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicinewww.nicabm.com

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Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

Contents

(Click on the section title to jump to the page)

Three Operating Systems of the Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Inner Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Zones of the Brain: Red Light - Green Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Steps to Keep People in the Green Zone: HEAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Why Novelty is Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

What to Do When Experiences Are Negative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Moving from the Negative to the Positive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Linking the Negative to the Positive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

TalkBack Segment with Ron Siegel, PsyD and Kelly McGonigal, PhD . . . . . . . . 23

What Stood Out Most . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

How the Evolution of the Brain Impacts Us . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Using HEAL in Our Everyday Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Cultivating Positive States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Understanding the Brain’s Negativity Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

About the Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30



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Dr. Buczynski: Hello everyone and welcome. I am Dr. Ruth Buczynski, a licensed psychologist in the State of Connecticut and the President of the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine – and I am so glad that you are here tonight.

We are going to talk about happiness – hardwiring happiness in the brain.

This is a critically important topic; your brain has a lot to do with how happy you are.

I couldn’t have a more expert person than my partner tonight, who is Rick Hanson. He is a licensed psychologist in California and author of several books, most recently Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence – and that hit the bestseller list last fall.

In addition to that, you probably already know him from Buddha’s Brain.

Rick, thanks for being here – it is good to talk to you again and to hear your continued thoughts as they are evolving over the years.

I want to jump right in and to start out, I guess I would like to focus on the brain and how awfully complex it is – it has to be because there are so many organs and systems in our bodies to manage.

Three Operating Systems of the Brain

You have segmented the brain into three operating systems that might help some people understand a piece of it that they hadn’t before. Can we start there?

Dr. Hanson: Oh, sure, and you are right. The brain is in many ways considered the most complex object known to science altogether – even more complicated than American healthcare!

So, to the bottom line: when you have something that big and messy and complicated, it is useful to simplify it in some way, recognizing that we are missing out on some of the details, but it gives us a kind of roadmap.

If you think about it, the brain has evolved over six hundred million years of evolution of the nervous system, and it has done so like building a house from the bottom up, in three stages: the brain stem, the subcortical region that includes the hippocampus, and then the third, which is the cortex sitting on top.

Essentially, in terms of evolution, we have the reptilian, early mammalian and then primate human stages of evolution.

Happiness and Neuroplasticity: Simple Strategies for Rewiring Your Brain

with Ruth Buczynski, PhD and Rick Hanson, PhD

“The brain has evolved like building a house from the bottom up, in three stages: the brain stem, the subcortical region, and the cortex.”

“Inside each of us there is a little lizard, mouse, and monkey.”



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To really simplify this, it is as if inside each one of us there is a little lizard, a little mouse, and a little monkey. As the brain evolved, so did its capacity to meet the three fundamental needs of any animal . . .

Dr. Buczynski: Before we jump into that, we have a wide range of people on the webinar tonight, and I’d like to talk about the brain stem. It manages the autonomic nervous system – heartbeat, digestion – things that we don’t think about, that just happen on their own when we are in a healthy state. Can you give us just a little snippet of what each of the three does?

Dr. Hanson: Sure – that would be great, and people can think of the brain as it is in themselves; it is kind of fun to realize that the organ that we are talking about is actively trying to figure out the organ that we are talking about!

So, we have the brain stem – it is the most ancient part of the brain. We share features of it with very, very simple creatures such as little crabs or lizards. The brain stem, as you said, manages the ongoing survival/maintenance of the body – its core functions include heartbeat, breathing and other vital organs.

Also, little nodes in the brain stem produce major neurotransmitter systems such as dopamine, the neurotransmitter that attracts rewards.

Other nodes produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps us stay calm and even-keeled.

Other nodes generate norepinephrine, which alerts us and orients us to important things. Other networks inside the brain stem help wake us up and maintain our alertness – this is an important region here for consciousness itself.

Then sitting on top of the brain stem, we have the subcortical region. Sometimes people call that the limbic system. The generally defined modern usage usually speaks of it as the subcortical region.

This area includes the hypothalamus, which regulates core drives such as thirst or feeling cold and wanting to put on a sweater; the thalamus which is involved with sensory processing – is like a big switchboard; the basal ganglia, which regulates emotion and activity, is also very involved in reward and motivation – for good or for bad.

Then we have, of course, our good old friends: the hippocampus puts things in perspective and helps form new memories, and the alarm bell of the brain, the amygdala, is oriented around negative information, generally speaking.

The Inner Lizard, Mouse, and Monkey

Dr. Buczynski: Why are you giving them animal names, like the “monkey brain?” You started with the “lizard brain,” and I think if people understand this, it might make it easier for them. This is a good way to help us remember. . .

Dr. Hanson: The brain stem is associated with the evolution of very primitive creatures – worms, insects, fruit flies and all the rest of that, as well as turtles, frogs and lizards – reptiles.

“The brain stem manages the ongoing survival/maintenance of the body.”

“The subcortical region includes the hypothalamus, the thalamus, the basal ganglia, the hippocampus, and the amygdala.”



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Reptiles also have basal ganglia so reptiles get a little bit of that subcortical region. But what is mostly associated with the subcortex is mammalian evolution, as you were commenting here.

That is why I think the brain stem is like having a little lizard living inside us. A little mouse inside us is handy for the mammalian evolution of the subcortical, which has seen the development of emotion and also very powerful social experiences in terms of caring for young and often bonding with mates.

So that is the second floor of the “house of the brain,” if you will, the mammalian house floor – the subcortical floor.

Then on top of that, we have the cortex, which in humans has roughly tripled in volume over the last three million years of evolution.

It has really developed in primates, and especially in modern humans, the cortex, as people generally know, does things like complex reasoning, both verbally and visually – visual/spatial reasoning and nonverbal reasoning.

The cortex is the seat of judgment, the executive systems of the brain, and is set roughly behind the forehead and helps us regulate our attention, our feelings and our desires.

The whole brain works together, and that part of the brain is, as I said, most associated with primate, and especially human evolution – thus, as a useful simplification of the human brain, we have the inner lizard, mouse and monkey.

I don’t know about you, Ruth, but I definitely experience each one of these little critters inside of me!

That is a preview to this framework that I use in my own personal life. It is very relevant to people raising children and thinking about themselves in general as well as, certainly, for people working with others in a helping profession.

So, long story short, any animal – whether it is a fruit fly or a human being – needs to be safe and avoid harm, needs to be satisfied and therefore approach rewards, and needs to, in one way or another, connect with others of its kind.

In other words, we need to attach to others. Obviously, the ways in which a fruit fly attaches to others are very different from the way someone does who is prepping for a night at the prom – right?

That said, we have these deep needs.

So, that gives us these three needs: safety, satisfaction and connection, managed by overarching systems in the brain that avoid harm, approach rewards and attach to others.

“The cortex is the seat of judgment and helps us regulate our attention, feelings, and desires.”

“The human cortex has roughly tripled in volume over the last three million years of evolution.”

“As a useful simplification of the human brain, we have the inner lizard, mouse and monkey.”

“Safety, satisfaction, and connection are managed by overarching brain systems that avoid harm, approach rewards, and attach to others.”



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This is a very useful framework I have developed, and I’ve drawn upon familiar approaches that talk about the avoiding and approaching tendencies or the preventing or promoting capacities of the brain.

I have added to that, based on Polyvagal Theory, as well as work by people like Paul Gilbert and others, who emphasize our social nature as humans.

To me, it is overly reductionistic to try to deconstruct our incredibly social nature to merely avoiding pain or approaching pleasure.

So that framework, then, is a way to think about us as people and start zeroing in on the key resources that will help us most.

Dr. Buczynski: Let’s just summarize to make sure everybody has got it – I know several people are taking notes as they listen: avoiding harm, meeting needs or motivation, approaching rewards, and attaching to others.

Zones of the Brain: Red Light – Green Light

Dr. Buczynski: Now, you also have an interesting way of putting together a red light/green light – let’s talk about that a little bit.

Dr. Hanson: Sure. Again, this is a framework – it is a way of thinking about, and ultimately, to bring it down to earth: what are the key experiences that are going to matter most for people?

Or, to put it a little differently, what are the key inner strengths, very broadly defined, including positive emotion and happiness – what are the inner strengths we want to grow inside? This framework gives us a map for that.

To summarize it quickly, as animals evolved, including human beings today, the brain developed, essentially, two ways of meeting our three core needs for safety, satisfaction and connection, as overarching umbrella terms.

On the one hand, when there is a basic felt sense of those needs being met in one’s core – a basic sense of safety, satisfaction, and connection – the brain defaults to its resting state, an equilibrium state. This is a sustainable, homeostatic condition in which the brain directs the body to repair, refuel, and recover from bursts of stress.

In terms of avoiding, approaching and attaching, in three broad terms, the mind is colored with a sense of peace, contentment and love – peace in terms of the safety system, contentment in terms of the satisfaction system, and love in terms of the connection system.

“What are the key experiences that are going to matter most for people?”

“When there is a basic sense of safety, satisfaction, and connection – the brain defaults to the responsive mode – the green zone.”

“It is overly reductionistic to deconstruct our incredibly social nature to merely avoiding pain or approaching pleasure.”



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That is the good news. I call that the responsive mode of the brain, a term that I and others have used – and I think of it as the green zone.

On the other hand, Mother Nature has endowed us with another setting in the brain – the “Whoa” setting – which is where we experience in our core that one or more of our fundamental needs of safety, satisfaction, and connection is not met.

Then the brain fires up into its fight/flight stress response mode, or it goes into an intense freeze mode – into the other mobilization – and that is the red zone.

In the red zone, which is not meant to be sustainable at all – it is a brief burst – the body burns resources faster than it takes them in. Bodily systems are really disturbed; there is a fundamental sense of deficit and disturbance, and long-term building projects like strengthening the immune system are put on hold.

In terms of avoiding, approaching and attaching, the mind is colored with a sense of fear, frustration and heartache.

Mother Nature’s plan is for animals to spend most of their time in the responsive mode. It is sustainable, and it is the evolutionary strategy for passing on genes that pass on genes.

It feels good to be relatively peaceful, contented, loved, and loving – it is good for us to be in the green zone.

On the other hand, red zone experiences are normal – fine – but as Robert Sapolsky talks about in his great book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, most red-zone spikes of stress in the wild end quickly – one way or another, right?

Then the animals go back to long periods of green-zone recovery – refueling, renewing, and repairing.

That becomes a problem with modern life. Most of us, at least, in the developed world, are happy, with some unfortunate exceptions. We are not spending our days running and screaming in terror from charging lions – we don’t have severe spikes of red-zone stress.

But on the other hand, we are exposed to mild to moderate chronic stress, with very little time for recovery – which is a complete violation of the evolutionary model.

My work has gotten very interested in how to get out of red-zone spikes of stress rapidly, and in particular, how to repeatedly internalize responsive-mode experiences – green-zone experiences – and to build up the neural substrates of the responsive mode so that increasingly, we can meet life’s challenges while staying in the green zone.

Dr. Buczynski: Yes, because when we are in the green zone, we are much more likely to be building health, like the immune system killing bacteria, relieving pain – whatever our bodies do naturally to heal. That happens when we are in the green zone, and not so much when we are in the red zone.

“In the red zone, the body burns resources faster than it takes them in.”

“It is good for us to be in the green zone.”

“In modern life, we are exposed to mild to moderate chronic stress, with very little time for recovery...”



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Dr. Hanson: You said it right: the red zone tears us down; the green zone builds us up.

There is the technical term – allostatic load – the idea that repeated red-zone experiences gradually accumulate a burden on physical health as well as mental health, and certainly just everyday well-being.

Again, to bring it down to earth, we all know basically what it feels like to be mildly peaceful, contented, loved, and loving – it is a basic state of global well-being.

We all know what it feels like to be fearful, frustrated or to have that ache in our heart.

We are tough critters; we can handle brief, occasional bursts of red-zone stress, but it should not become a way of life. But unfortunately, mild to moderate red-zone stress – let’s call it the pink zone –is really not good for us.

Dr. Buczynski: Now you’ve started to sound like Homeland Security in the United States.

Dr. Hanson: Sorry about that!

Dr. Buczynski: So, back to reactive mode – certainly the red zone or reactive mode – doesn’t sound like anything we would want to be in.

But I know from the practice that I had for years and years and all the patients that I saw, and you see patients, and people on this webinar tonight are in all walks of life professionally, and we’d probably say that staying out of the red zone is challenging.

You can’t just say, “Okay, I’m not going to do that anymore. It doesn’t feel good – I won’t do it.”

Steps to Keep People in the Green Zone: HEAL

You have some steps for helping people to rewire their brain so that they can take in more positive experiences. Let’s talk about those.

Dr. Hanson: First, a little bit of a foundation. Let’s think about the idea of inner strengths broadly defined, which includes character virtues like generosity, modesty, patience and others.

Inner strengths also include the classic psychological value terms such as secure attachment, or the executive functions of self-regulation, distress tolerance, resilience and others.

Certainly, inner strengths include mindfulness, compassion, and loving-kindness.

“Staying out of the red zone is challenging.”

“The red zone tears us down; the green zone builds us up.”

“We are tough critters; we can handle brief, occasional bursts of red-zone stress, but it should not become a way of life.”

“Positive emotions and positive mood confer all kinds of benefits for both physical and mental health.”



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Character strengths include positive emotions because positive emotions and positive mood confer all kinds of benefits for both physical and mental health.

I call those inner strengths happiness, and that’s really broadly defined – that is what I mean in the title of my book: Hardwiring Happiness.

We all want inner strengths. We want to cultivate inner strengths in ourselves, we want to cultivate them in our children or patients or students, but how do we do that?

Inner strengths are traits: they are stable qualities in a person. As stable qualities, they are built out of brain structure.

Then the question really becomes – whether it is in therapy or everyday life – how do you grow traits, positive traits, in neural structure?

That is where the neural psychology of learning shows us that this is a two-stage process. Quickly here, it moves from activation to installation.

In other words, we need to have a positive, useful mental state – typically an experience of the inner strength itself or some factor of it.

If you want to develop mindfulness, you want to have more moments in which you are mindful.

If you want to develop gratitude as an orientation to life in general, you have more moments in which you are grateful.

So now we have that activated mental state, but we need to install it as a lasting neural state: activation and installation.

Once we have that neural trait growing inside us as an inner strength, it fosters states of it, which then give us new opportunities to install it as a positive trait.

By the way – as we will talk about more, I suspect – this process of from state to trait to state to state, works positively and negatively.

In other words, negative states rapidly become negative neural traits, which then foster more negative mental states.

The brain is in fact biased toward that process of negative learning and relatively poor at and weak at the process of positive learning – even though positive states are the primary source of positive traits.

So that is what I have gotten very focused on, because most positive states are just wasted on the brain.

“If you want to develop mindfulness, you want to have more moments in which you are mindful.”

“The neural psychology of learning shows us a two-stage process.”

“How do you grow positive traits in neural structure?”

“We want to cultivate inner strengths.”

“We have that activated mental state, but we need to install it as a lasting neural state: activation and installation.”



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They are momentarily pleasant, but if they don’t transfer those short-term memory buffers to long-term storage, there is no lasting value.

That is the “dirty little secret” in psychotherapy and many other paths of growth and healing that I am sure we will talk about.

To deal with that, what I have done is to draw upon what people intuitively tend to do from time to time, but I have tried to develop it in a very thorough way and I summarize it as the HEAL process; I use the acronym HEAL – this is what you have asked me to speak to here.

This acronym covers the activation and installation process. Then, as I hope we will talk about, you can use it for those specific inner strengths or qualities of mind and heart that you want to cultivate in yourself or in other people because those are the strengths that are really going to do the most good.

The H in HEAL stands for Have. You have the positive experience in the first place – either because you noticed one you are already having or because you actually create one.

Now, you have it going. It is activated. But if you don’t install it, it is going to be wasted on your brain.

Then you go to E, Enrich: you can enrich the experience. Borrowing or turning to the famous saying in neuroscience that “Neurons that fire together wire together” – you want to get a lot of neurons firing together so that they start wiring together.

There are five well-known factors in the neuropsychology of learning that promote installation – that promote emotional psychological change as well as other kinds of learning.

These are the five factors (and you can do one or more of them).

Duration – the longer you stay with the experience, the more it will sink in.

Intensity – the more intense you have the experience, maybe it is an emotion, maybe it is a body state, maybe it is an inclination of commitment, maybe it is an insight into your own psychology – but whatever

it is, the more intense it is, the more there will be the formation of neural structure.

Multimodality is the third factor. The more that you bring experiences down into your body and have them be emotionally rich, maybe even enact the experience, like sitting up a little straighter to support an experience of determination or inner strength – the more neural structure they will build.

“Five factors in the neuropsychology of learning promote installation.”

“HEAL is the activation and installation process.”

“The more that you bring experiences into your body, the more neural structure they will build.”

“The brain is biased toward negative learning even though positive states are the primary source of positive traits.”



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Novelty is the fourth factor – the brain is a big novelty detector. A lot of research shows that when we relate to things that are new, that heightens learning.

Personal Relevance is the last factor – “Why does this matter to me? Why is it salient for me?”

Those are the factors of Enriching. You can do one or more of them and build up any one of them.

The third aspect, or step, of the HEAL process is A for Absorb. This is where we prime memory systems – we sensitize them to really turbo-charge the installation process, by intending and sensing that the experience is going into us.

Maybe we visualize it sinking in, like water into a sponge. With children, we will talk about putting a jewel in the treasure chest of the heart. This is just a kind of giving oneself over to the experience – letting it land inside. Those are aspects of absorbing.

Have, Enrich, and Absorb are the three fundamental steps of taking in the good, of installing a positive experience as a lasting neural trait.

It is a little bit like a fire: in the first step, Have, you light the fire and you get the positive experience going.

In the second step, Enrich, you keep that fire burning and you add fuel to make it burn more brightly.

In the third step, Absorb, you warm yourself by the fire – you really let it sink in.

The last step in the process is L for Link, and it is the optional one. It holds simultaneously in awareness some positive experience with some negative material – painful thoughts or feelings or memories that this positive material is a natural antidote for.

Through holding it in the mind, since neurons that fire together wire together, the positive material will gradually associate with the negative material, soothing, easing, and eventually even replacing it.

To finish here – probably it all sounds a bit complicated – but it really boils down to four words: have it – enjoy it and especially enjoy because that is when the installation occurs.

Or to summarize it – have more episodes over the course of a day – thirty seconds/ten seconds at a time, and inside the individual episodes where you are taking in the good, you want more depth of engagement so it really sinks in.

It is reasonable for people to look for those opportunities in everyday life, a handful of times a day – half a dozen times a day.

“The brain is a big novelty detector.”

“The third aspect of HEAL is Absorb.”

“Have, Enrich, and Absorb are the three fundamental steps of taking in the good and installing a positive experience as a lasting neural trait.”

“Link holds simultaneously in awareness positive and negative experience.”

“Have it - enjoy it and especially enjoy because that is when the installation occurs.”



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Inside each episode in which you are taking in the good, it means a dozen seconds or more – not a huge deal.

By doing this repeatedly, you will help your brain turn these activated, useful mental states into something of lasting value woven into your brain and thus into your life.

Dr. Buczynski: So, I want to save Linking a little bit, put that aside for now because it is more complex and we are going to go through that in

a little more detail. But could you give us an example of the first part of this?

Dr. Hanson: Yes. Let’s suppose that you are just moving through your day and you have a nice moment with another person – maybe a connection with your partner or with your pet – many positive experiences are very often related to animal companions, seriously.

Perhaps it is something quite powerful – maybe your boss praises you or your child runs up to you and goes, “Oh, I love you, Mommy.”

So, you are having that experience. The question is, what do you do with it?

Actually, I should probably back up.

First of all, did you notice that something good happened in the first place? We often don’t.

Second, if you notice what is good – someone was nice to you, someone complimented you, there was warmth coming toward you – do you feel anything as a result?

Third, even if you notice what was nice – you actually feel something as a result – do you stay with it for those dozen seconds or more that really will help it move from those short-term memory buffers into long-term emotional storage and implicit memory?

Let’s suppose, then, that you do. Let’s suppose that when your friend at work is clearly warm toward you, you realize, “Oh, you like me.”

It doesn’t need to be a million-dollar moment; most positive experiences are quite mild. On the zero-to-ten intensity scale, they are the ones and twos of everyday life – but it is real for you.

When you have the positive experience, you let it land. You let yourself have it – which has an implicit benefit, by the way, in terms of taking in the good. You are being kind to yourself – you are treating yourself like you matter.

The benefits of repeatedly taking in the good fall into three categories.

One is that we are growing specific resources inside.

Second, implicitly, we are getting better control over our attention and we are treating ourselves like we matter and we are being active – we are being present in our own life.

“Most positive experiences are quite mild, and when you have them, let them land.”

“You will help your brain turn activated, useful mental states into lasting value.”

“The benefits of repeatedly taking in the good fall into three categories.”



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Third, research is beginning to indicate that through repeatedly taking in the good, much as the brain can become increasingly sensitized to the bad and can become faster and more efficient at turning bad experiences into bad neural structure – I am using the word “bad” obviously quite loosely here – it looks like we can gradually sensitize the brain to become more and more efficient at converting positive mental states into lasting neural traits, which is the third type of benefit of taking in the good.

So there you are: you are being with the positive experience and you are letting yourself have it.

Interestingly, it is quite hard for people to simply sustain an enjoyable experience for a dozen seconds.

What happens, both clinically and in everyday life, when people start doing this practice is they often bump into various blocks – and it is startling to realize how unwilling the mind is to give the gift to oneself of a positive experience.

People often feel they don’t deserve to feel good or they shouldn’t try to feel good; their job is to make others feel good – even though, truly, as you gradually fill your own cup, you have more inside yourself to offer to others.

So, that would be a simple example of the first three steps.

We are going to talk about the Link step later. I will give you a little different example: for people who are busy – both of us included – doing a lot of emails and a lot of activities in the day, do we experience accomplishment?

When we send out an important email or we finish an interview or a conversation, do we let it land: “Okay – job done.” Is there relief? Do we get some little sense of success? “All right – I didn’t suck too badly at that. Good!” We need to let that sink in.

So far, I have spoken about the attaching to others system – the connection system in terms of feeling cared about. I just spoke there, for example, about the approaching reward system, a sense of accomplishment.

A third type of experience that would be good to take in would be related to the safety system – our need to avoid harm.

For example, a person could be aware of the sense of relaxing as they exhale: as the parasympathetic wing of the nervous system activates to manage exhaling, which is what it does, it also helps us relax. A person could register this nice sense of relaxing while exhaling.

Or a person could register the sense of inner strength, “One way I keep myself safe is I am a determined, serious person who is willful and strong inside.” We could let a sense of inner strength sink in as well.

“We can gradually sensitize the brain to become more efficient at converting positive mental states into lasting neural traits.”

“It is quite hard for people to simply sustain an enjoyable experience for a dozen seconds.”

“It is startling to realize how unwilling the mind is to give the gift to oneself of a positive experience.”



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Why Novelty Is Important

Dr. Buczynski: As you were talking, I was curious about novelty – why is novelty so important?

Dr. Hanson: It goes back to the inner monkey, mouse, and lizard: as those critters are moving through their environments, things that were familiar, they did not need to learn from – they already understood them: “Oh, this is where I live/That’s a familiar sound. I don’t need to pay attention to it.”

The brain is constantly allocating its resources – where should we allocate them?

The brain is a very metabolically expensive organ, and even though it is just two to three percent of body weight, it uses twenty to twenty-five percent of the oxygen and glucose in our blood.

As animals evolved, anything that was new signaled either a threat or an opportunity.

If it was a threat, they really needed to pay attention to it. If it was an opportunity that was new, they needed to pursue it.

For example, in the hippocampus, this part of the brain is centrally involved in learning and memory – and not just things like the multiplication tables but learning where the good water is, or learning how to get together with another primate in your band

when you are not an alpha but you are a beta and you have to be a more skillful person.

Betas pass on as many genes as alphas and, on average, betas are smarter, which gives former betas like me some comfort!

Dr. Buczynski: What do you mean exactly? This is interesting and I imagine it would give comfort to a lot of people…

Dr. Hanson: Thinking back to high school, junior high, and all the rest of that, in primate bands there are alphas that are at the top of the dominance hierarchy and then you have the betas that are not.

Research on primates generally shows that betas do pass on as many genes as alphas – I will spare you the graphic details – and to do that, they need to be more clever, including socially clever.

So, betas in primate bands will tend to band together against an alpha or they will form coalitions or be like a grooming partner with females, or females will do that with males – get together with them and then lay a foundation of relatedness.

Now, thinking back to my own position as a beta in junior high school and high school, it gives me some comfort to think that betas can still have fun and tend to be a little bit smarter as a result.

So, long story short, in the hippocampus, just to summarize, when we encounter something that is novel, little tiny nodes, maybe a couple of cubic millimeters in size or even smaller, inside this part of the brain

“The brain uses twenty to twenty-five percent of the oxygen and glucose in our blood.”

“As animals evolved, anything that was new signaled either a threat or an opportunity.”

“In primate bands, there are alphas that are at the top of the dominance hierarchy and then you have the betas that are not.”



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will increase their activity, and they will direct other parts of the brain to become more active in forming new structure.

Novelty promotes neuroplasticity – the capacity of the brain to be changed by its experiences – and we have heightened learning for what is novel.

To bring it down to earth, if a person is having a fairly familiar positive experience like, “Oh, that coffee tastes good,” or they are touching

someone they care about – maybe their intimate partner, or they are experiencing a little gratitude, or maybe they are doing some meditative practice and it is getting more peaceful – it is easy to take those experiences for granted.

But if instead, we see them, as the poet put it, “Through the eyes of a child;” or to use the Zen idea of beginner’s mind, then we bring that beginner’s mind to what it feels like to relax while breathing or to feel grateful for the blessings in our life.

If we bring that beginner’s mind and therefore a sense of novelty and freshness to the experience, it will build more neural structure.

What to Do When Experiences Are Negative

Dr. Buczynski: Now, not all experiences are positive. Let’s focus a little bit about what we should do when we have negative experiences.

Dr. Hanson: Yes – negative experiences obviously are an essential part of life – I think of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, which are utterly psychological.

The first truth is, “There is suffering.” To my way of thinking about it, Ruth, I use a framework that has helped me tremendously, personally and professionally, to think about the three ways to engage the mind. In effect, there are three ways to practice – to engage the mind.

The first way is to simply be with what is there, witness it, feel the feelings, experience the experience, maybe investigate it, maybe feel down to where it’s softer and younger; certainly try to hold it in a big space of spacious awareness.

We are not trying to change it directly. It might shift as a result of being witnessed rather than identified with, but we are not deliberately trying to change it in the moment.

The second way to engage the mind is to deliberately try to release what is negative – in other words, try to help tension drain out of the body, for example, or to argue against negative, foolish thoughts, or release unwholesome desires like getting buzzed every night . . . That is the second way to engage the mind.

“Novelty promotes neuroplasticity and we have heightened learning for what is novel.”

“Negative experiences are an essential part of life.”

“If we bring beginner’s mind, and therefore a sense of novelty and freshness to the experience, it will build more neural structure.”

“There are three ways to practice

– to engage the mind.”



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The third way to engage the mind is to cultivate the positive – to “grow flowers,” as it were.

If you think of the mind as a garden, we can witness it, pull weeds, or plant flowers – or, in six words, we can let be – let go – let in.

That gives us a natural framework, and an appropriate one, for how to deal with negative experiences.

In the first place, we want to witness them – we can just be with them.

We try to hold them in spacious awareness; maybe we try to bring to bear other factors that help us feel our negative feelings, like self-compassion or mindfulness or a sense of inner allies with us.

At some point, it feels right – like the “Goldilocks point” – not too tall, not too short, not too hot, not too cold – the just right place – when it feels like it is time to move on, “I am not suppressing the emotion but it is time to help it move on out of Dodge.”

Then we move on to the releasing phase – reducing the negative in various ways – draining tension out of the body, venting, turning it over to God, or whatever it is – we let it go as best we can.

In the third phase, when it feels right, we try to replace what we have released with some positive alternative.

The cycle that I have gone through might take half a minute with some familiar negative material like maybe just a momentary irritation or something that didn’t go well, or maybe something from the past that is well understood – “Oh that was my critical stepfather; that’s my little inner critic yammering away. I know what you sound like, dude – I’m not going to listen to you anymore.”

From all that, we can move on fairly quickly.

On the other hand, sometimes it takes a year or more, like grief over a serious loss, to move out of the being with way of relating to the negative, to then shifting into helping it release, and then eventually replacing it with something positive.

All three ways to engage the mind are important.

The first one is primary: if we don’t really do it fully, if we don’t be with our experience fully, then if we try to shift into getting rid of the bad and getting in with the good, it won’t work – it doesn’t have traction. We need to go back to really feeling it.

On the other hand, sometimes people can get lost in just being with their mind. In my view, that orientation to the mind of pure witnessing

“When it feels right, we try to replace what we have rehearsed with some positive alternative.”

“If you think of a mind as a garden, we can let be - let go - let in.”

“Sometimes it takes a year or more to move out of the being with way of relating to the negative, to then shifting into helping it release, and then eventually replacing it with something positive.”

“Wise effort reduces what is negative and takes in what is positive.”



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has gotten overvalued in some quarters in psychotherapy and now dual approaches and even some spiritual approaches.

It is fundamentally important, but even as big a fan of mindfulness as the Buddha, he also emphasized wise effort, which reduces what is negative and takes in what is positive.

My own work is really focused these days on the third way to engage the mind, including building up resources inside to be able to be with our experience.

We need all three of these – if you don’t grow flowers in the garden of your mind, the weeds will come back.

Moving from the Negative to the Positive

Dr. Buczynski: Let’s go through that process with an example.

Dr. Hanson: Sure. Let’s suppose that something happens and you notice that you feel hurt. Maybe you are in a situation with somebody at work or at home – it could be a teenager, your partner, a co-worker or boss.

Somebody says something that is dismissive and devaluing of you. It’s unjust. You’ve been wronged. Let’s say that is really true.

You are upset about it. The first way to engage the mind is to be aware that you are getting upset. You would try to slow it down inside; you would try to unpack what is happening – maybe sense into your body, “What am I feeling? What’s younger – what’s standing out from my childhood” and hypothetically, it could be “my critical stepfather” . . . You would be with the upset.

Then, when it feels right – maybe after, in this case, a minute or two or three – you would start shifting into, “Okay, phew! It’s time to settle down – time to come out of the red zone.”

In other words, if we are upset, the same machinery that evolved to help our ancestors to get away from charging lions is activated today when we are stuck in traffic or when someone says something that is hurtful.

By definition, we are in the red zone when we are upset. But now we want to come out of that red zone as rapidly as is appropriate and authentically possible.

Maybe after a minute or two or three of feeling hurt, we start saying, “Okay, phew!” We take some big breaths; we calm the body; maybe we wash our face; we run water over our hands – these are soothing and calming.

Maybe we stand up against the inner critic in our mind – that voice of our critical stepfather; we push against it, and we reduce the self-criticism that is happening.

“The same machinery that evolved to help our ancestors get away from charging lions is activated today when we are stuck in traffic or when someone says something hurtful.”

“If you don’t grow flowers in the garden of your mind, the weeds will come back.”



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Maybe we let the feelings flow; we just visualize that they are flowing out of our body. We are in the second way to engage the mind – we are letting go. That is good practice.

If you think about it, the majority of methods in mental health are about the second way to engage the mind: releasing the negative.

Then, when it feels right – again, after maybe a minute or two or three – we start relating to the mind in the third way, which is to grow the positive.

This is particularly matched to what happened here in my example, which is an issue of the attaching system: someone in a relationship has said something hurtful and devaluing to us.

So, the supplies – the resource experiences or inner strengths – that really work for this issue would also come from the attaching system. They will be related to our need for connection.

In other words, if someone says something hurtful, if you call up a feeling of being safe, that’s nice – but it doesn’t address being hurt or attacked in a relationship.

If you were to call up some sense of gratitude that makes you feel satisfied in terms of that second core need, that’s nice – but feeling grateful is not going to address the fact that you have been injured by someone who has unjustly criticized you or put you down or left you out.

You need experiences that are targeted – and my book has lots of examples for targeting.

You are looking for the experiences that are specifically targeted and will really help you.

In this example, you might deliberately talk about the upset with a friend, which will give you naturally a sense of being cared about by your friend here, which will answer to the experience of being put down by

that adversary over there.

You could also bring to mind memories, including the felt sense in the body that is general, of being cared about – your family cares about you and your partner cares about you.

You might even bring to mind other experiences with this person who has put you down in which they were nice to you and respected you. Maybe you just got in the middle of their bad day and they

didn’t even realize that they had hurt you. This is the third way to engage the mind – you are resourcing yourself.

Then, if you really, really want to – we are going to get into this – you can use that Linking step by bringing to mind this sense of feeling cared about by the friend at work or memories of others who have been loving and caring toward you, or maybe other experiences of feeling worthy and valuable.

That would be your positive experience. You might deliberately get a sense of that positive material of feeling cared about, being very prominent in awareness in the foreground, but also having a dim sense of this lingering hurt and upset in relationship to this other person who put you down in the background.

“You need experiences that are targeted.”

“The majority of methods in mental health are about releasing the negative.”

“The positive will go down into those deeper layers and soothe and even replace the negative.”



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If you are just simply aware of both of those at the same time, then you might even get a sense, if you want to really go for it, of the positive experience of being cared about really going into that negative material, maybe even reaching down to younger layers of that negative material – where, as a child, you felt put down and hurt by this hypothetical critical stepfather.

The positive will go down into those deeper layers and eventually soothe and even replace that negative material.

Linking the Negative to the Positive

Dr. Buczynski: Now, you are talking about Linking. I want to make sure people understand this. Let’s lay it out for them again. Let’s walk through yet another example, in a different kind of scenario.

Dr. Hanson: Yes, and this time, let’s use the safety system.

Let’s suppose something has happened that makes a person feel anxious, or let’s suppose, more generally, that a person is just tense about being anxious – maybe because they were born that way or because they have had life experiences that, understandably, have traumatized them or have unsettled them, even if it is not official PTSD – posttraumatic stress disorder.

Let’s say the person is anxious – I will make up an example here in which they are in a work situation and they are involved in a project and something has happened in which they are now worried about that project being successful.

Obviously, in addition to doing what they can out there in the world to make that project be successful – I don’t mean to, obviously, give up on intervening in the world because we are working with our mind, and they all work together.

In fact, there is a lot of research that shows that taking positive action as best you can is very good for people’s mental health – but in addition to that, now you are anxious. There is a threat, and your avoiding harm system in your brain is blinking red: “Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.”

Maybe your other two systems are green – you feel like there is enough in your life in terms of satisfaction. Maybe you also feel related to other people who like and love you – the attaching system is staying green. That’s fine, but the safety system is blinking red.

What do you do? Let’s go through it.

The first two ways to engage the mind I have described: you would be with it, negative and bad; you would also try to release your anxiety about the prospect of your project at work not being successful.

Now, you are getting ready to take in the good using the HEAL process for this upset that is still there inside you.

What you would look for, then, are experiences that are in the safety system and also relate to avoiding harm.

“Taking positive action as best you can is very good for people’s mental health.”



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These would be experiences or inner strengths inside that help us deal with threats, such as feeling relaxed in the body or noticing that you are all right in a fundamental, primal way right now.

You may not have been all right in the past; you may not be all right in the future – but you recognize that your body is telling you that, in this moment, you are actually all right.

Right now is a profoundly powerful and accessible way to feel safer and less anxious in the moment.

Or, you recognize protections, the things around you – and I will go through that example in a second – and also your sense of feeling strong.

What you might do in reference to this sense of worry about your project is focus on relaxing your body a bit.

To relax your body, you do some long exhalations – do whatever works for you to relax. You might imagine fluffy white clouds. If you can sneak away, you could go to the restroom and wash your face . . .

You could bring to mind a sense of other resources in your life: “Okay, even if this project fails, I have other resources in my life. I am not going to lose my job. People still love me. I’m working my way reasonably toward retirement. It’s not a catastrophic threat.”

Obviously, you don’t want to make things up – the approach I am describing is not “looking on the bright side” with the power of positive thinking, which is mostly just wasted on the brain.

I am talking about realism – seeing the whole mosaic of reality, not just getting hijacked by the brain’s evolved negativity bias that tends to make us focus on the negative.

In terms of key experiences, to go back into the example, I might call up a sense of protections, or I might call up a sense of inner strength, that says, “I can handle this. Even if my project goes down the drain, I am a strong person; I’ve been successful in the past – I will be successful in the future. I can really feel this.”

Those would be some of the kinds of positive experiences you could call up in the Have step – you are having them.

Once you have them, it is very straightforward. You Enrich the experience in a very natural and intuitive way by feeling it for the dozen or two dozen seconds it takes to heighten the installation and neural structure.

You Absorb the sense of relaxing or a sense that you are all right, right now, or a sense of protection or a sense of being strong.

Then, in terms of the Linking step, let’s just focus on the sense of being strong. You would have a very prominent felt sense of being strong. You are centered in that determination – this is not some kind of macho chest-thumping, but it is resolve – a sense of endurance.

That is a very important aspect of strength and many people – if I may say, women in particular – may underestimate how strong they are because it is not, as I said, this macho kind of strength – it is enduring. It is important, to respect yourself for being able to endure.

“What you might do in reference to this sense of worry about your project is focus on relaxing your body.”



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Now, you are resting in this positive experience of strength. On the side of your awareness – off to the side of the “stage of awareness” – you would have this anxiety about your project or work not being successful.

You gradually get a sense of being strong, even with anxiety there. You might even get a sense of that strength connecting with or even talking to – some people will imagine a little conversation with their adult grounded in a positive state and activated positive trait.

They will imagine that adult talking to or petting or cuddling or holding younger layers of their psyche that are involved in that negative material – maybe an underlying feeling deep down inside while growing up where they were feeling weak or overpowered.

The current positive experience of being strong would gradually ease the old feeling of being weak.

Again, I am walking you through with a lot of detail – in actual practice, people do this on the fly in a very natural way. When they do it, the key, though, is to actually do it.

If we don’t go through the process, negative states, like being worried about a project at work or anything else, are very quickly going to convert to negative neural traits.

It is the brain’s tendency to over-learn from negative experiences. That is what helped our ancestors to survive.

But on the other hand, if you give yourself this opportunity a handful of times every day or even more to register positive experience, you can heal yourself over time.

Increasingly, then, when threats occur, you don’t go into the red zone.

When losses occur, you don’t go into the red zone – in terms of the satisfaction system.

When rejections or separations occur – in terms of our social needs managed by the attaching to other system – you don’t go into the red zone.

You are still engaged with life. You are not sitting in a cave in Tibet or just eating bonbons on the beach – often you are dealing with tough things, but you are doing so on the basis of having grown resources inside yourself.

Dr. Buczynski: Thank you. This has been great – lots of new ideas since the last time we talked.

“The current positive experience of being strong would gradually ease the old feeling of being weak.”

“You gradually get a sense of being strong, even with anxiety there.”

“If we don’t go through the process, negative states are very quickly going to convert to negative neural traits.”

“If you give yourself this opportunity to register positive experience, you can heal yourself over time.”

“Often you are dealing with tough things, but you are doing so on the basis of having grown resources inside yourself.”



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To everyone, Rick, as I mentioned before, is the author most recently of Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm and Confidence. He is also the author of Buddha’s Brain and Just One Thing.

Rick, thank you so much – this is so exciting. There are so many good ideas here, and I really appreciate you giving us your time to walk us through all of them. Thank you.

Dr. Hanson: Oh, it’s a pleasure. As a neuropsychologist, I find it really exciting to see the applications of the new brain science and their wonderful opportunities – and your Brain Series is wonderful – making this information available to people to improve their lives.

Dr. Buczynski: Thanks.



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TalkBack Segment with Ron Siegel, PsyD and Kelly McGonigal, PhD

Dr. Buczynski: Well, it is always fun to talk with Rick Hanson and I am eager to begin to hear what the two of you think of that. We are going to start our Talkback Session now, and this is the time when we reflect on what has been said and chew on it and see what else we can learn from it and clarify some of the ideas.

In this series, this whole series, I have been joined by two of my colleagues, two experts: Dr. Kelly McGonigal and Dr. Ron Siegel.

Kelly is an award-winning health psychology instructor at Stanford University and she is also at Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. She is also the author of The Willpower Instinct, which just came out in paperback.

Ron is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and he is the author of several books including The Mindfulness Solution.

So, guys, I’m looking forward to jumping into this with you. Thanks for being here. And let’s start, as we always do, where we just look at what stood out to you most in this session? And, Kelly, why don’t we start with you?

What Stood Out Most

Dr. McGonigal: You know, the thing that stands out to me the most was the recognition that positive emotions are a resource rather than necessarily an end in itself.

Rick talked about positive emotions as building character and being character strengths – and I think we so often think about, “Well, I just want to be happy because it’s better to be happy than not happy, and I’m just going to pursue happiness.”

And there is some interesting psychology research that believing you need to be happy and pursuing happiness for that reason actually makes people less happy.

This is a very different way of thinking about happiness: that we need to cultivate positive emotions like gratitude and love and awe because they make us better versions of ourselves; they give us strength and then they become something that we draw on during times of suffering.

And this is very consistent with our research at the Center for Compassion – that it is not enough to be willing to make contact with suffering, whether you are helping someone else or dealing with your own suffering; it is so important to be able to have a reserve of positive states that can be brought into the experience of suffering.

And the way that Rick describes this process – and now we are beginning to give people tools for thinking about how to actually do that. I am very impressed and very inspired by that.

“Believing you need to be happy makes people less happy.”

“Positive emotions are a resource rather than an end.”

“It is important to have a reserve of positive states that can be brought into the experience of suffering.”



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Dr. Buczynski: How about you, Ron – what stood out to you?

Dr. Siegel: Well, I am also inspired by Rick’s emphasis on cultivating positive emotions and really outlining exactly why and how that is of use to us in terms of enhancing both our emotional and cognitive capacities.

I am also delighted each time I hear Rick, to hear how he is getting – each time comes up with another way to take a complex concept and make it really graspable and really understandable.

And the ones that stood out here for me were certainly the idea – the lizard, mouse and monkey inside of us – you know, even as people talk about the reptilian and mammalian brain and stuff, but to think of it as the lizard, the mouse and the monkey helps us to visualize it in a way that I think makes it very experience-near for us.

Certainly the notion of HEAL – that he has worked out an acronym for how to create and how to particularly take the time to absorb and integrate positive emotional experiences, I think is a really wonderful contribution.

And, finally, seeing that there are basically these three systems – you know, the system of longing for safety, for satisfaction, for connection – and that there are emotions that correspond to those: the sense that when we have safety, we have a sense of peace; when we have satisfaction, we have a sense of contentment; and that when we have connection, we feel love in some way – and how these are different from and opposite from the moments of fear, frustration and heartbreak.

Just thinking in terms of having these three sets of needs I think can help us that when we are in a state, either a positive state, to notice what’s going on and to be able to appreciate it; or if we are in a negative, if we are in a painful state, to see exactly which of these needs isn’t getting met, and to understand that.

And, again, I think that helps us to take it not so personally, but to be able to accept the experience better.

Finally, just a couple of little points that just struck me as delightful and very true: that Mother Nature wants us to be frightened. I think is a very nice way of putting what I think all of us experience a great deal if we introspect, which is, “My – fear plays an enormous role in human experience” and that this is very adaptive, to be afraid, because then we are likely to both grasp opportunities when they come our way and avoid misfortunes.

And related to this, the notion that we do have this sensitivity to novelty and this tendency to zone out and not notice that which is familiar. And we all experience this in terms of habituation and in terms of the phenomena – Rick didn’t talk about at this time – but the notion of the hedonic treadmill: that so many of the things that we pursue, to try to feel a sense of well-being or happiness, we wind up getting addicted to.

“When we have safety, we have a sense of peace; when we have satisfaction, we have a sense of contentment; and when we have connection, we feel love.”

“We have this sensitivity to novelty and this tendency to zone out and not notice that which is familiar.”

“To think of [the brain] as the lizard, the mouse, and the monkey helps us visualize it in a way that makes it experience-near for us.”



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We need more and more of them just to feel the same sense of well-being.

We see that with money, we see that with fame, we see that with popularity – all sorts of things like this – and that that might be tied to this very, very basic notion that the organism evolved to seek out novelty because it represented either opportunity or threat.

I thought that was a very interesting and useful point.

How the Evolution of the Brain Impacts Us

Dr. Buczynski: Kelly, Rick talked in the beginning of the webinar about the evolution of the brain.

Many of us are in leadership roles where we might be thinking about the person that we are working with and their brain, or we might even want to be teaching them about their brain.

How would this concept about the evolution of the brain – how would that be relevant or helpful?

Dr. McGonigal: I think one of the most interesting and important things that Rick talked about was how evolution operates in the brain – that it doesn’t basically take an “old brain” and completely overhaul and give you a “new and improved brain,” but that evolution is more like getting upgrades that will increase the flexibility and diversity of human responses.

But, you know, evolution doesn’t get rid of what he would refer to as the “lizard brain” and the other aspects of the brain that seem more primitive.

And that is really important for people to understand – that there is no way to fundamentally remove some of the experiences we have that feel maybe irrational or emotional – things like stress or anxiety, things like social conflict.

These are things that are part of what it means to be human, and evolution has given us also diversity and flexibility about which systems are dominant and our choice of responses.

And that gives us a lot of, I think, common humanity and self-compassion.

And even to be able to recognize which system might be dominant – what mode you might be operating from, and to recognize that as a

fundamental human need, that evolution has maintained because it is important to our well-being.

And I think this just goes a long way in helping people not feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them because they have these experiences that we sometimes devalue or are looking to escape or evolve away from.

“One of the most interesting and important things Rick talked about was how evolution operates in the brain.”

“Evolution has given us diversity and flexibility.”

“This goes a long way in helping people not feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them.”



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Using HEAL in Our Everyday Lives

Dr. Buczynski: Thanks. Ron, how can we take Rick’s idea of HEAL – he went into H-E-A-L – and apply that to our everyday lives?

Dr. Siegel: I think it is enormously applicable. Just to review it, the H in HEAL is Have, which is really simply to notice when some kind of positive emotional experience is occurring.

The E is to Enrich, which is to, in essence, think about it a little bit, to allow ourselves to appreciate it, to see, for example, if somebody is kind to us, to see other ways they may have been kind to us, or to

resonate with other moments of kindness in our lives – to Absorb it, to spend the time to hang out with it for a while, to deliberately savor the experience.

And then finally – and he said this one is optional – is to Link it; that when we are having this more positive emotional experience, to also bring to mind something which has been troubling to us and perhaps notice that that troubling event exists against the backdrop of this positive experience.

So it is very nice to have a systematic set of steps that we can follow to really absorb and incorporate these positive emotional experiences.

And what strikes me is how this contrasts with many traditional psychotherapeutic approaches, because many traditional psychotherapeutic approaches actually turn their attention deliberately, mostly toward

what is painful, with the idea that things that have been painful are due to past traumas, large or small, and that it is necessary, in order to integrate these often pushed-away experiences, to open to them and turn our attention to them.

And there is certainly a great deal of merit to that in healing as well.

But what often I think has been neglected in psychotherapeutic traditions is this other idea – that we might actually savor the positive.

And we see that I think somewhat more in religious traditions: I think of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen master who is fond of saying, “I want you to remember the last time that you had a really bad toothache. Remember what that was like.” He said, “I have wonderful news for you today: no toothache!”

And that is really what Rick is encouraging us to do, is to appreciate all of the toothaches that aren’t here at this moment.

And the way he suggests that we even take the fact that we are, as far as we know, not terribly sick right now – I know, Kelly, you have a bit of a cold, but nonetheless, to appreciate how powerful that is.

And, frankly, for me, you know, it runs so strongly against a sort of ethnic tradition that I come from – I come from a New York Jewish ethnic tradition where the standard line is, “You think you’ve got tsores”

“This systematic set of steps contrasts with many traditional psychotherapeutic approaches.”

“Rick is encouraging us to appreciate all of the toothaches that aren’t here at this moment.”

“What I think has been neglected in psychotherapeutic traditions is this idea that we savor the positive.”

“It is a very useful antidote to start thinking in terms of the HEAL process.”



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– and tsores means grief, bad luck, difficult things happening – and the entire culture tends to circulate around this.

And it is a very – for me I find it a very useful antidote, to start thinking in terms of the HEAL process and say, “Yes, yes, that pain and suffering is there. We are not going to sugarcoat it; we are not going to deny it. This isn’t just, you know, ‘I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don’t feel so bad.”

But nonetheless, we can cultivate these positive states of mind.

Cultivating Positive States

Dr. Buczynski: Kelly, we are going to focus a little bit on Rick – he talked about the red light/the green light and so forth.

How can we help people, when they are entering a red-light zone or red-light situation, how can we help people deal with that more effectively?

Dr. McGonigal: I think first of all, even just to talk about them as opportunities to cultivate positive states.

You know, so often we are motivated to escape the red-light state as soon as we are in it, if we have any awareness of it, and we may turn to behaviors that are actually quite counterproductive.

And one of the things that Rick talked about that I think is incredibly insightful and important is that when you are in a red-light state, it is often because a need is unmet and something happened that triggered the felt sense of that need being unmet – whether a lack of safety or a lack of getting your basic needs met for rewards or mastery or flow, or a sense of disconnection or social conflict.

And he says that the antidote that will be balancing, the positive state that will be balancing and relieve that suffering, is connected to the need that is unmet – that it is not enough to turn for any positive experience, but to actually embrace the unmet need and look for strategies that allow you to connect the essence of that need, even while you are experiencing pain around the fact that it is unmet or that it has

been triggered in you.

And that is so important.

And one of the things, examples that he gives is that if you are feeling lonely or disconnected or rejected, that practicing loving has the same effect as the experience of being loved, and that when you are experiencing that need being unmet, you don’t necessarily need to go out and find people

to prove that they love you, but to choose an attitude of love or be able to commit an act of love will meet the need in the same way biologically and psychologically.

And I think this is a true act of self-compassion he is talking about here – how when we are suffering from a sense of not having these basic needs met, it is a tremendous act of courage as well as self-compassion to say, “I’m going to honor this need rather than deny it or reject it or try to meet it in an unhealthy way, and I’m going to actually really dive into what it would mean to meet this need in a way that is possible in this moment,” or see how it’s already met – as Rick talks about.

“When you are in a red-light state, it is often because a need is unmet.”

“Loving has the same effect as the experience of being loved.”



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Understanding the Brain’s Negativity Bias

Dr. Buczynski: Thanks. Ron – Rick talked about the brain being biased toward negative learning and kind of weak in positive learning.

What is one thing we can do to build up our resistance toward negative learning?

Dr. Siegel: I think the most powerful thing we can do is to simply become aware of the negativity bias.

Rick didn’t talk about it in great length in this particular interview but he has famously said that the mind is like Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good ones – the bad ones stick and the good ones slip away.

And this makes perfect sense, evolutionarily, because it would be a real disaster for us in terms of passing on our DNA if we were to mistake a lion for a beige rock – but mistaking a beige rock for a lion we can do time and again and still survive.

Simply noticing that this is the case is very, very helpful – you know, that we are all, like Mark Twain famously said near the end of his life when he said, “I’m an old man now. I’ve lived a long and difficult life filled with so many misfortunes – most of which never happened.”

You know, when I read that, I thought, “Oh, yes, well it sounds like he’s been living in my mind” – this is how it works.

So simply seeing this phenomena, simply seeing that the mind is going from default to expecting the worst; the mind is going to default toward remembering the bad things, the trauma, and tending to forget about the good ones, unless we consciously encode them in the way that Rick is suggesting that we do – simply keeping this in

mind I think is our greatest asset because then we don’t believe in the cognitions as much.

Then, when the fearful thought comes up that, “It’s going to be a disaster,” or, “Once again I’m going to be hurt” and all of that, we can have another voice that says, “Oh, yes – there’s that old tape. Yes, there I am being Mark Twain again; there I am playing out my evolutionary fate to avoid getting eaten by a lion.”

I think the other thing that is very, very helpful is – and this relates to what Kelly was talking about, about identifying, “What is the need system that is being activated here?” is that when we do find ourselves involved in this kind of negativity, to think, “What exactly is it that I am fearing or trying to ward off here? Is it that I am desperately trying to preserve my rank in the primate troop? Is it that I am desperately trying to make sure that I don’t experience some bodily discomfort? Is it that I’m afraid of some fantasy I have of what death is like? What is it that I am so afraid of here?”

“All of these things that we fear are tolerable if we see them for what they are.”

“Seeing that the mind is going from default to expecting the worst is our greatest asset because we don’t believe in the cognitions as much.”

“The most powerful thing we can do is to simply become aware of the negativity bias.”



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And I think that often, if we do that with some care and some detail, we notice that, you know, we are afraid of experiencing an unpleasant cognition, an unpleasant affect, an unpleasant body sensation – and that all of these things that we fear are actually tolerable if we see them for what they are rather than get caught up in their symbolic meanings and their narrative.

So I think that also helps us to not get so stuck in the negative.

Dr. Buczynski: That kind of connects to the idea that Kelly started with – the whole idea of avoiding: we avoid things/experiences that aren’t comfortable.

I am afraid we are out of time.

So next week, we will be talking again and we will be having a webinar with Dr. Daniel Goleman – and next week we will be focusing on focus. Focus is important in the brain, and it is something that a lot of us have challenges with. And so we will talk about four strategies that you can use to help your brain stay focused, and three kinds of attention that can be particularly good for leadership. And we will also talk about the myths and the hazards of multitasking. So that will be next week.

So, everyone, for now, let’s see you on the Comment Board – and then join us again next week when we gather with Dr. Daniel Goleman. And the two of you, Kelly and Ron, thanks for being here tonight. I will see you next week as well. Bye-bye now.



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About The Speaker: Rick Hanson, PhD is a neuropsychologist and author of Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence. 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.

Dr. Hanson’s work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report, and his articles have appeared in Tricycle Magazine, Insight Journal, and Inquiring Mind.

Find out more about this and related programs at: www.nicabm.com

Featured Books by Speaker: Rick Hanson, PhD

Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm,

and Confidence

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http://www.nicabm.com

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http://www.nicabm.com/?loc=deccon09a/presenters/&menu=presenters&bot=1&top=30&speaker=Bill_O%27Hanlon,_LMFT



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About the TalkBack Speakers:

Since 1989, Ruth has combined her commitment to mind/body medicine with a savvy business model. As president of The National Institute for the Clinical Application for Behavioral Medicine, she’s been a leader in bringing innovative training and professional development programs to thousands of health and mental health care practitioners throughout the world.

Ruth has successfully sponsored distance-learning programs, teleseminars, and annual conferences for over 20 years. Now she’s expanded into the “cloud,” where she’s developed intelligent and thoughtfully researched webinars that continue to grow exponentially.

Ronald D. Siegel, PsyD is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychol-ogy at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 20 years. He is a long time student of mindfulness meditation and serves on the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.

Dr. Siegel teaches nationally about mindfulness and psychotherapy and mind/body treatment, while maintaining a private clinical prac-tice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He is co-editor of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and co-author of Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain.

Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist and lecturer at Stanford University, and a leading expert in the new field of “science-help.” She is passionate about translating cutting-edge research from psychology, neuroscience, and medicine into practical strategies for health, happiness, and personal success.

Her most recent book, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It, explores the latest research on motivation, temptation, and procrastination, as well as what it takes to transform habits, persevere at challenges, and make a successful change.

http://www.nicabm.com/?loc=deccon09a/presenters/&menu=presenters&bot=1&top=30&speaker=Bill_O%27Hanlon,_LMFT

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