RACHEL: So hi, everybody.
Thanks so much for coming.
I am here in Mountain View, and
we've got a full packed room.
Our room is a little tight,
but thanks for being here.
And on the livestream,
I know there's many
of you joining us from
around everywhere at Google.
And just thrilled
that you're here.
So thanks so much.
Today we are hosting Dr.
Rick Hanson, who is here.
He is a local in the
Bay Area, and he's
going to be talking about his
new book, "Resilient," which
has a lot of really good
data, where he blends
in his expertise in
neuroscience, mindfulness,
positive psychology, his
clinical psychologist
background.
And like [? Van ?]
said, speaks to what
we can create for ourselves
if we are conscious to what
we want to create.
So I'm just really
excited to learn more.
And I also want to thank you,
Rick, on behalf of Google
for being here.
And I also have learned
through the [? depos ?] program
and the work in
emotional intelligence
that I do that if we change
our mind, we change our lives,
we change our brain.
And that is the mantra
that my mentor Judith
Wright has taught
me, and that is what
Rick is here to tell us today.
I'm just thrilled to hear more,
and it's all about savoring,
right, Rick?
We're going to be savoring.
So as you are here
for the hour, this
is our practical
application of the hour is
to savor what you learn today.
How are you going to apply it?
Just know that you're in
the here and now with Rick
and all of us, and we can change
our lives, change our minds,
change your brain.
It's really, really cool.
With that, I'll hand
it over to you, Rick.
Thanks.
RICK HANSON: Thank
you very much.
That was a really
enthusiastic introduction.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
That's great.
It's an honor for me to be here.
I am a complete fan and
actually very grateful
for Google's place in the world
and to have a full house here
of really, really smart people
interested in this material
just really touches me.
What I want to explore with
you fundamentally is the how
of changing the
brain for the better.
And that general
purpose how can then
be applied to any
particular thing
we want to develop,
any particular form
of skillfulness, any
beneficial state of being,
any useful attitude.
Happiness altogether
is something
that we can to develop as well.
And to make a point
at the beginning
that I'll make
again in the middle,
it's really striking
for someone like me,
who's been in the growth
business, the growth game
for pushing 50 years now almost.
I started young in the
human potential movement,
and along the way, became
a mindfulness teacher,
a clinical psychologist,
a neuropsychologist.
It's really interesting to
me that for those of us that
are in the business of
growth, and by growth,
I mean the term quite
broadly to include
learning of skillfulness,
social skillfulness, healing,
personal development,
that for those of us who
are in this territory,
we still lack
a general theory of growth.
We have a general
theory of attachment,
we have a general theory
of how people, for example,
might develop particular
things, such as self-compassion.
But there's actually
no general theory
of growth, which in
a funny kind of way
would be the most
useful thing to have,
because then it could be
applied to any particular thing
to develop.
And so what I'd like to
do in a fairly brisk way,
moving right along here is
to explore this material
with you, particularly
with an emphasis
on pragmatic, immediately
applicable tools.
And I know the slides will
be available to you later.
There's also a lot of
supportive material about this
on my website, including
our kind of greatest hits
collection of scientific
papers in the public domain
and other resources there, too.
You can learn more
about it there as well.
So here, I'm going to try to
move straight into a fairly
direct summary of how to engage
volitional, psychological
mental factors
inside your own mind
that increases the
registration of experiences
that you're having,
and thereby increases
their conversion into
lasting physical changes
of neural structure
and function,
which is the fundamental
process of any kind of lasting
change for the better.
So that's what I'm going to
be exploring with you here.
OK?
So here we go.
They said the way to do this
is to zip along, and then
at about--
when there are about
15 minutes left,
slow down for questions
and discussion.
I'm also going to do a little
bit of experiential practice,
utterly voluntary along the way.
And as Rachel said in the
beginning, the opportunity
inside our own minds, in a sense
is to do experiments there,
to treat it as a kind of
laboratory in which we
see the results from what's
called the first person
perspective of subjectivity,
while at the same time
being able to draw plausible
conclusions from a third person
perspective about actually what
might be happening physically
inside our own brain.
So that's my intro.
Let's get to it.
So I want to talk
with you to begin
with about the notion
of inner resources,
psychological strengths
of various kinds.
If we are to have any
kind of lasting well-being
in a changing world, we need
to be resilient, not just
for surviving the
worst day of our life,
but thriving every
day of our life.
Or to use a traditional
saying, through resilience,
we're able to walk evenly
over uneven ground.
I think of resilience a
lot like having a deep keel
in your personal sailboat.
Having capsized a sailboat when
I was learning how to sail,
I've really come to appreciate
the value of a deep keel.
Resilience is our deep keel.
It enables us to
recover fairly rapidly,
and in particular, over the
course of a day, or at work,
or in a relationship,
we can keep
on going with that
deep keel in the water.
So to have any kind of lasting
happiness, well-being broadly,
we need to be resilient.
All right, what do we
need to be resilient?
Where does resilience come from?
Fundamentally, resilience
comes from internal resources,
and the development and
use of internal resources
is in a larger frame
that's commonly
used in health care
and psychology that
says that the
course of a person's
life over a day, a week,
or the entire lifetime
is, in effect, an equation
with three variables.
It's the result
of the combination
of three factors,
the challenges that
wear upon a person, the
vulnerabilities they penetrate
through, like
chinks in a person's
armor, and the
resources the person
draws upon to deal
with those challenges
and to shore up vulnerabilities.
It's a nice and very
useful and simple model.
All three are opportunities
to make things better.
I tend to focus on resources,
because it's forward
looking and tends to
be positive and also
because challenges and
vulnerabilities can often
be intractable.
And yet, we're surrounded
by opportunities one way
or another to grow resources.
OK, so where are
challenges, vulnerabilities,
and resources located?
Out in the world, in the
body, and in the mind.
This gives us-- my inner geek--
a three by three matrix,
if you think about it,
obviously, nine cells,
challenges, vulnerabilities,
resources, world, body,
mind, bing, bing, bing.
The ninth cell, resources in the
mind, is full of opportunity,
because we can intervene
there directly,
and we take the fruits
with us wherever we go.
So that's what I'm
going to focus on here
in this larger frame.
I'm not against helping things
be better in those other eight
ways, if you will,
but I'm going to focus
on resources in the mind.
Resources in the mind
include familiar things
like mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a fundamental
mental or psychological
resource.
Other resources include
classic character virtues,
like modesty or thrift.
I was a Boy Scout in a
very rebellious troop.
We caused a lot of trouble.
I remember four things, I think.
A Boy Scout is thrifty, brave,
clean, and reverent, something
like that.
I didn't remember
the rest of them.
Those are virtues.
Skills are inner resources,
know how, both technical
know how applied on the job, as
well as inter-personal know how
and intrapersonal
know how, knowing
how to manage one's own
reactions and to manage
the thoughts, the flow of
one's thoughts and feelings.
That's procedural learning.
That's learning how to.
Other inner resources include
positive emotions, love,
moral commitments,
good intentions.
Those are inner resources, too.
So the question then becomes,
how do we develop them?
The harder a person's life
is, the more important
it is to develop
inner resources.
It's easy to think about
this sort of material
as cherries on the frosting
of the cake of life.
Oh yeah, when everything's fine,
I'm going to savor the moment.
Well, the worse things are--
think about it-- and the more
that a person is on their own.
The calvary is not coming.
Many people experience
life this way these days.
The more important it is as the
foundation of self-reliance,
a kind of old school scruffy
determination to do what we can
in any moment to grow
as much as possible
from here, because
there's nothing
we can do about the
past, the more important
it is to have inner resources.
So that's a key
context here that I'm
speaking about this material
not as some sort of add
on for people who
are very privileged.
OK.
Researchers generally
have focused
on identifying and using
psychological resources,
such as workplace mindfulness.
Really good.
It's good to identify it.
It's good to apply it.
But what about acquiring
it in the first place?
That's actually
been really lacking
in most of the research
on inner resources,
including recent
research on things
like character strengths.
So how do we develop them?
What's the possibility here?
Well, if you look at research
on the nature nurture question,
the ballpark is
that at least half,
if not even up to
about two-thirds
of the variation in
human attributes,
psychological attributes, is
not due to heritable factors.
In other words, roughly
a third to a half
of the variation on average has
to do with heritable factors,
kind of woven early into DNA.
The other opportunity,
though, is
what we can acquire over time.
That is really,
really good news.
It also takes us to a
fundamental responsibility.
No one can stop us from growing
resources inside ourselves,
from learning and growing
over the course of the day.
No one can stop us
from trying to do
that inside the inner
sanctuary of our own mind.
But no one can do it for
us as well, which to me,
gives a kind of credibility
to the results of those forms
of inner practice.
So if we are to grow inner
resources in the mind, that
fundamentally means
changing the brain,
because inside the natural
frame, whatever mysteries may
lay outside the natural frame,
inside the natural frame, which
is certainly where I'm
going to be speaking today,
and where I generally
operate, any kind
of lasting change of mind
must involve a lasting change
of body in particular
in the nervous system
and its headquarters, the brain.
So how do we do it?
How do we get those green
balls into the brain?
This takes us to
self-directed neuroplasticity,
a term coined by Jeffrey
Schwartz at UCLA 15,
20 years ago.
To put things in context,
neuroscience is a baby science.
So much has been just discovered
in the last year or two,
let alone and definitely
the last decade or two.
So new things have
been seen all the time,
and it's really an
exciting, to me, territory.
So an overview of
current research.
What is very well known is
that mental practices A,
produce mental results, C,
presumably via the black box,
B, of the brain.
That's the first point.
There's much research
that mental efforts
produce psychological results.
Can.
There's also a tremendous
amount of research
that's invasive and
ethically questioned mark
on non-human animals that
various stimuli, presumably
with experiential
correlates, lead
to lasting changes
in their brains.
And through very
invasive research
of the granularity of
what's been discovered
is really quite extraordinary.
So there's here, too,
a lot of evidence
that the experience of any
kind of a complex animal
can lead to lasting physical
changes in the nervous system.
This is the basis of
what's called experience
dependent neuroplasticity.
There is some research on
humans that their experiences,
including meditative practice,
mindfulness practice can
change their brains over time.
There's a little research
on, to me, the stuff
that's really, really
useful to know about,
which is how can people relate
to the experiences they're
having, how can they relate to
the emotions they're having,
the sensations in
their body, the ideas
that they're having,
the intentions, the
wants that they're experiencing.
How can they relate
to those experiences
to maximize the gain from them,
to maximize the lasting impact?
There's a little bit
of research about that,
which is scattered
here and there
and which I've tried
to pull together,
but I want to be modest
and appropriate about what
is and is not known
with regard to that.
And last, there's one study,
my study actually, disclosure,
on the systematic training
and the mental factors,
volitional mental
factors, that plausibly
can steepen people's
growth curves
as they grow through life.
This study is in process.
I'm running up the
results with collaborators
from the University
of California.
It's not yet peer reviewed.
All disclaimers said happily.
We've gotten really
good results.
It would be so
embarrassing if we hadn't.
But anyway, that's the
status of the research.
In this context, then,
I want to talk with you
about what's plausible.
And then we can start
engaging the laboratory
immediately inside ourselves
to see what real results are.
So in this context of some,
you know, modesty the learning
process, the change
process fundamentally
happens in two stages, two
necessary and sufficient
stages.
We begin in almost all
cases with an experience.
There is some
learning that occurs
through unconscious
processes, but the great bulk
of human development, healing,
transformation, even awakening
begins with an experience
of one kind or another.
There are different terms that
are used for the experience.
I like experience, because
it's kind of direct.
It makes it clear.
Neurologically, we could
talk about encoding.
We could use the general term
I use for activation in terms
of a phase, or an old
fashioned word, state,
some kind of state of
being, state of mind,
state of attitude, state of
intention, state of sensation,
some kind of state.
That's the necessary first
step, but it's not sufficient.
There must be the
second stage of learning
for any kind of lasting value.
And you're probably
starting to see the critique
that I'm mounting here of
most efforts, including my own
to help people have some kind
of lasting value, some kind
of lasting benefit
from something.
We must engage the
second stage of learning.
Call it what you will.
I call it the
installation stage.
I have a cybernetic kind of
view of things in many ways.
To me, it makes sense,
activation, installation.
In neurological terms, we
would speak of consolidation,
or kind of in simple language,
the movement from state
to trade.
This is a fundamental
two stage process.
The second stage is
necessary and it's
one we routinely forget.
This two stage process
is summarized in kind
of increasingly
well known saying
from the work of the Canadian
psychologist Donald Hebb,
"Neurons that fire
together wire together."
I've actually had some
grad students turn that
into a rap video for me.
It's pretty cool.
But I don't sing myself.
People pay me not to sing.
But here's this fundamental
process, fire together,
wire together.
It's actually more
complicated than that.
I won't go through every
little bit on this slide.
You can look at it
later if you like.
It's a summary of the major
mechanisms of experience
dependent neuroplasticity.
The many ways in which
the nervous system
is designed to be transformed,
in effect, by the information
flowing through it, that as
immaterial information does,
it is represented
by some material
substrate, the flows
of information that
are the basis for experiences
moving to the nervous system
enlist underlying neural
processes to represent them
and repeated patterns of
underlying neural processing
leave lasting traces behind,
leave lasting changes behind.
And the fundamental
notion of experience
dependent neuroplasticity
is not breaking news.
It's been presumed
for a long time
that any kind of
learning, broadly
defined, learning to
walk, instead of crawling,
learning how to be more patient
while raising teenagers--
I had to work on
that one myself--
any kind of real
learning must involve
a physical change, presumably
primarily in the brain.
That's not a new idea.
The real news in neuroplasticity
is the extraordinary degree
to which these
changes can proceed
and the breadth and depth
of the remodeling process
of the nervous
system, especially
the cerebral cortex
that can occur,
as we develop and change,
for better or worse in life.
So the essence of the process
I just went through that moves
from state to trade,
and you can apply it
to many ordinary experiences,
think about the acquisition
of greater trait mindfulness.
Begins with the
experiences of mindfulness,
which then, in some way,
incidentally or deliberately,
leave lasting traces
behind in the body,
especially in the
nervous system.
We become more compassionate,
more resilient, more grateful,
more skillful with other people,
more skillful with ourselves
by having experiences
of these things, which
then are internalized,
installed in some way,
leading to lasting
changes behind.
But here's a key
point, a key critique.
Knowing does not
equal experiencing,
and experiencing does
not equal learning.
Think about the large percentage
of useful experiences we have,
useful moments, where we're
happy about something,
or we understand something, or
we feel committed to something,
or we kind of move into a really
nice state of being or kind
of in a zone, and then
whoosh, it's gone.
We can't find our
way back to it again.
For me, as a longtime
clinical psychologist,
longtime therapist, and
teacher and other roles,
including in
business consulting,
it's humbling to appreciate
how many hard won moments
that people were having, useful
thoughts, good intentions,
ways of feeling at ease
released in some way,
et cetera, et cetera, how
large a fraction of them
washed through the brain
like water through a sieve
without leaving any
lasting value behind.
And if anybody, like
myself, is involved
in helping others change for
the better, as a manager,
as a parent, as an
educator, as a coach,
as someone engaged
in the larger world,
it's really, to me,
right at the bullseye
of what we should
focus on, which
is how to increase
the conversion
rate from states to traits.
How do we help
useful moments really
land in the heart of
ourselves and other people,
so they take root there and
really, really, really sink in?
So that's what I want to
focus on with you now,
the plausible, practical
neuropsychology of actually
how to do this.
How do we actually steepen
the conversion rate from state
to trait?
Without doing that, we
tend to flatten the gains
from programs.
We also, in particular,
if you think
of the distribution of results
in various trainings including
formal mindfulness trainings,
usually about a third
to half the people in them don't
get much out of them, drop out,
they don't practice,
or they get gains.
They say well, that was amazing,
but then 10 days later, they're
as neurotic as ever.
I can speak from some
personal experience
there about myself there.
So if we don't pay attention
to this installation
phase of learning,
we're going to lose
all kinds of opportunities.
To put it in a
certain way, I think
about four schematic
lives, you know,
think of anything
you want to develop,
mental resource on that side.
Happiness, calm,
self-confidence, self-worth,
no longer being haunted
by childhood experiences,
greater habit of skillfulness
with other people.
What do we want to develop?
Well, imagine one life
that just goes downhill.
That's the decline.
There this person at
the end of that period,
a day, a year, a life, is less
happy, less wise, less capable
than they were than
when they started.
Then we have the second
life schematically, flat,
no decline, but no gain
in terms of the outcome
values on the
y-axis that we care
about, the mental
resources axis.
What about, then, the person
who has a linear growth?
This person is getting
stronger, getting happier,
getting more loving, getting
calmer, let's say, over time.
That's great.
And then we have
the person who's
learning how to learn along
the way, a person whose
growth curve takes an
exponential course.
And to me, where the takeaway is
is to really stare hard at that
and go, wow, in things
that I care about
or things that, frankly, you
know, my friends and family
or therapist tell me I
really ought to care about,
what's my trend?
Is it an upward trend?
What's the delta?
How steep is that curve?
And can I start moving
into exponential growth.
What can we do to steepen
our growth curves?
I think of this process
in a kind of old school
way, as we're growing
strengths inside,
to me, learning,
very broadly defined,
especially emotional
learning, not so much book
learning or
intellectual learning,
but social learning,
intrapersonal learning,
motivational learning, learning
how to motivate yourself,
learning how to lean into what's
good for yourself and others.
This kind of learning,
broadly defined,
I think of as the
strength of strengths,
because it's the strength
that grows the rest of them.
So this point is really
sharpened, the general point
about the importance of focusing
on acquisition and development
and what aids acquisition
that's under internal control
that we can do ourselves.
This point is really
sharpened when
you face what scientists call
the brain's evolved negativity
bias.
A simple way of
putting it, I put
it is that we've got a
brain, that's basically
by design, like Velcro,
for bad experiences,
but like Teflon for good ones.
We all have experiences of--
what?
Well, we all have
a sense of this.
You know, you go
through a day, 10 things
happen in a relationship with
someone at work or at home.
Nine of them are good, one
of them is bad, you know,
unpleasant, harmful.
What's the one you brood about
as you're falling asleep,
right?
Or I think about
performance reviews.
You know, 19, like 10
points of feedback,
you know, nine are really good,
one is room for improvement.
What's the one
you just brood on?
You just think about,
room for improvement,
you know, for the rest
of the week, right?
That's the negativity bias.
So by design, if
you think about it,
our ancestors needed to
get carrots and avoid
sticks, carrots like food,
sticks like predators.
Both are important.
But there's a key difference.
If you fail to get
that carrot today,
back in the Serengeti
plains, you'll
have a chance of one
tomorrow probably.
If you fail to avoid that
predator or that aggression
inside your band or between
bands, potentially no more
carrots forever.
Sticks are more
consequential, typically,
in terms of raw
survival, and the passing
on of genes that pass
on genes, the engine
of biological evolution.
Sticks have more
urgency and impact.
So by design, we've
got a brain that
does five things
automatically, routinely,
and you can watch your mind,
therefore your brain doing it.
Scan for bad news.
Overfocus upon it.
Overreact to it.
Fast track it in the memory,
especially emotional memory,
implicit memory.
And then along the way, through
the activity of the stress
hormone cortisol,
gradually become sensitized
to stressful, irritating,
frustrating, annoying
experiences, so we're just
a little more reactive
to them the day after that,
which then, as you can see,
creates a vicious cycle.
And in the process of
all this, as our brains
change in this way
by design, we tend
to create negative
cycles with others
that then continue to change
our brain in that way.
That's the fundamental
negativity bias.
It's a kind of universal,
well-intended learning
disability, as a result of
having a brain optimized
for peak performance in
Stone Age conditions.
We learn very rapidly
from experiences
of disappointment or
frustration or self-doubt
or self-criticism.
We learn really quickly.
Once burned, twice
shy, never forget.
Those red balls go
right into the brain.
They're fast tracked in.
But because of the
focus on the red
balls draws us away from
sustaining attention
to the green balls, which are
not prioritized for storage.
So they need extra help
so that they actually
can lead to lasting changes of
neural structure and function.
And I'm going to talk
about how to do that now.
All right, so the
negativity bias,
a lot of implications there.
Daniel Kahneman,
the psychologist,
won a Nobel Prize in
economics for his work
on loss aversion, the ways that
people are typically much more
motivated by not
losing something
rather than by gaining the
equivalent amount or reward.
There's been a lot of research
on the negativity bias.
By the way, my slides
have, I think, seven slides
worth of references and
small print at the back,
including a couple
of great papers
that are literature reviews
on the negativity bias.
It's really interesting to think
of the consequences of that,
including in her own life.
All right, Velcro, Teflon.
OK.
So how do we do it?
I want to talk
about the how now.
How do we get lasting gains
from passing experiences?
How can we increase the
conversion rate, in effect,
of beneficial states?
Now, I use the word
beneficial pragmatically
as that which is
useful or that which
promotes happiness and welfare
for ourselves and others.
How can we increase
the conversion rate
from beneficial states
to beneficial traits?
Here's where I use a
framework that I've
developed called the HEAL
framework that summarizes
the plausible, internal factors
we can mobilize to increase
over a time scale typically
of a dozen or less seconds,
that we can plausibly
engage these mental factors
to increase the conversion rate
of experiences we're having
into some kind of lasting
change of neural structure
and function.
This framework is
pragmatic and eclectic.
I've just pulled a
lot of stuff together.
You'll recognize things that
skillful teachers are already
doing, or you're already doing
yourself inside your own mind,
as I talk through this.
And then we'll do a little
experiential practice,
explore the implications,
and then I'll shut up,
and we'll discuss it.
All right?
OK.
So this is the fundamental
neuropsychology of learning.
We begin with an
experience, have some kind
of beneficial experience.
And then we move into
the installation phase,
which has two subjectively and
objectively distinct aspects.
I call them enriching
and absorbing.
In actual practice, they
sort of mush together,
but they're actually distinct.
Enriching, subjectively,
is like having
a large, sustained,
powerful, intense experience.
It's enriched.
Absorbing, subjectively,
it's like receiving it
into yourself,
giving over to it,
feeling like literally it's
sinking in, like almost
a warmth spreading inside.
The distinction there.
Objectively, enriching
an experience presumably
means a very large sustained,
spread, and intense pattern
of neural activation.
Absorbing is about turning
up the sensitivity, the gain,
as it were in the internal
memory making machinery
of the brain.
To use a bit of a
metaphor, enriching
is like getting a really
rich, green liquid
sitting on top of a
sponge, so now it's
really dense and vivid and
bright green and concentrated,
and then absorbing is
like picking a sponge
or helping a sponge
become especially
receptive to the
experiences landing in it.
In practice, as I said, these
two sort of mush together,
but I'm being opportunistic
here and looking
for anything that can help the
registration of an experience.
So enriching, we help
the experience be big.
There are five fundamental
factors of enriching.
I have a lot of slides,
and oh in the back,
I have supplementary
slides to get into this.
I'll just name these
five factors right now.
The longer we
experience something,
the more it tends to get
encoded and consolidated.
So duration, over
the course, let's
say of a breath or two or
longer, second, the intensity.
That's another
factor of enriching.
The more intensely
we feel something,
the more it's going to
tend to be internalized.
Third is what I
call multimodality.
It's a funny word
for the more aspects
of the experience we're
aware of, the more
impact it's going to have.
So I think of experiences
as having essentially five
aspects.
The more of these that
we engage the better.
There's the thought
track, which includes
imagery, the perception track,
particularly body sensations,
the emotion track of experience,
like a song has five tracks
to it, kind of.
So there's the emotion track.
Then there's the desire
track-- very important--
the intentions, the wants,
the values, the purposes,
the plans, the
longings in the heart.
And then there's
the action track,
the sense of embodied
behavioral action,
including facial expressions
and subtleties of posture.
The more of these that are
engaged, as any kindergarten
teacher knows, the more impact
experiences are going to have.
So that's the third
factor of enriching.
And the other two are novelty.
The brain is a novelty detector.
With the news, it's always
looking for something new.
So if we engage our
experiences with what's
called beginner's mind, they're
more likely to have an impact.
If we bring a
freshness, a child mind,
a sense of not
knowing to experience,
it's going to tend
to have more impact.
And then last,
personal relevance.
Why would it matter
to me, for example,
to have an experience today of
feeling respected and included
by others, given my childhood
and my high school experiences
in which I felt like an odd
duck and I was cast out?
Why would it be
meaningful to me today
to really register that
my tricky conversations
with my partner go
better when I lean in
and sustain attention, rather
than space out and withdraw?
How can I help that
really land inside me?
Because it's
personally relevant.
OK, five factors of
enriching, then absorbing.
Let it sink in.
Essence of absorbing
is to intend
to receive the experience,
to sense it's coming in,
and to focus on its value.
Because as we focus on what's
rewarding about an experience,
what's enjoyable about it
or personally meaningful,
that increases activity of
dopamine and norepinephrine
in the brain, these fundamental
neurotransmitter systems.
And as their activity increase
in proportion to or in relation
to the sense of reward,
as that happens,
the experiences we're
having are flagged
as keepers for protection
and long term storage.
We're more likely
to retain or to be
changed for the better
by those experiences that
feel rewarding.
I think about so many times
I've been a therapist talking
with a client like who is
this sort of droning on,
and I'm droning on myself.
We're both bored.
Yeah, your mother, your mother,
my mother, my mother, mothers,
my father, my brother, my this.
Yeah.
Yeah, really.
There's no change that's
going to happen usually.
There needs to be more
of a sense of reward.
OK, that's the fundamental
process of change.
To use a metaphor of a fire,
we begin with the fire,
we have fire, usually because
it's already happening.
We're already having
the experience,
or we might
deliberately create it.
And then we protect the
fire by enriching it.
We add logs to it, so
it burns more brightly.
And then in absorb, we
take the warmth of the fire
into ourselves.
That's the fundamental process.
The optional fourth step in the
change process I call linking.
Again, I didn't invent
the elements in these.
I have invented this
framework, and its application,
and its grounding,
as I get to, in
evolutionary neuropsychology.
But in linking, as we have
familiar experiences with,
we're aware of two things at
once, positive and negative.
Mindful awareness,
spacious mindfulness
is a form of linking, if what
we're aware of is painful.
Because we're aware
of what's painful,
let's say, while
at the same time
being rested in an untroubled
spaciousness of awareness,
which is itself never tainted
or disturbed or damaged
by what it represents, by
what passes through it.
We've also had other natural
experiences of linking where
we're mad about something,
and we talk ourselves
off the ledge, or we're
rattled in some way,
and we reach down for some kind
of memory are very supportive
relationship or a previous time
when we handled that challenge
to kind of give
ourselves perspective
and to soothe ourselves and
to reorient and encourage
ourselves.
That's linking as well.
In really a quite
formal way, for example,
a person let's
say could be aware
of a beneficial experience in
the foreground of awareness
of being really seen and
wanted in a healthy way
and valued by another person,
while at the same time,
off to the side, having old
feelings of being dismissed
and left out and
overlooked and rejected.
And because neurons that
fire together wire together,
if a person sustains
the positive experience
and keeps it big,
while the negative
is off to the side of
awareness, then the positive
will tend to associate
with it and soothe and ease
and eventually even
replace it, sort
of like using flowers
to crowd out weeds
and then eventually uproot them.
Linking is optional,
because it's not
inherently necessary for
the change process to occur
and also because sometimes that
negative material can really
suck you right in.
Don't underestimate the
power, et cetera, et cetera.
It can really grab your away.
The key to linking is to
keep the positive bigger
so that it soothes and
eases the negative, rather
than the negative
contaminating the positive.
The essence is really simple.
Have it, enjoy it.
The two stage process.
Have the experience
and take it in.
I like the word savoring,
which Rachel used.
But I tend to use
words beyond savoring,
because many of the experiences
we're trying to internalize,
much of what we're trying
to grow inside ourselves
isn't really
relevant to savoring.
For example, we
have a clear idea.
I had a really powerful
idea in my mid-twenties
that growing up I'd been
a nerd, but not a wimp.
That was a very useful
idea for me to register.
It wasn't that I would savor
it, but wow, do I really
want to help that one sink in.
Other examples are
where we're more
skillful with another person.
We don't really savor the
sense of skillfulness.
We just want to really help it
land, kind of as a one trial
learner, as they
say in behaviorism.
So the next time it happens,
we move into that way
of being just naturally.
That said, I like
the word savoring,
but it's not applicable
to everything.
But the fundamental process
is one of internalization.
So you want to try
something experiential?
That'll be good.
Try to practice what
I'm preaching here.
So let's just try
it really fast.
We're going to do a
little, mini experiment.
And then I'll move to
a wrap with two kind
of overarching perspectives.
So most of the time that we
have the beneficial experience,
it's already occurring.
We just need to notice it.
Think of all those
moments where we
have a sense of
accomplishment, getting
one thing done after another,
or a sense of friendliness
or camaraderie with others
or some kind of insight
into how to be in the future.
We have the experience.
We see the flower.
We have a moment of ah,
that looks nice out there.
But then we just
move on from it.
We don't harvest
the value of it.
So most of the time, we're
just noticing experiences
that are already there.
That said, there's
completely a place for self
activating states of mind.
That's central to
coping, to functioning,
and central to spiritual
practice of well,
at the other end of the
spectrum, if you will,
if that's of interest to you.
So to begin with, we'll just--
then I'll move it through,
and I'll say less.
Notice that as you exhale,
you are naturally relaxing.
The parasympathetic
nervous system
handles exhaling, naturally
slowing the heart and relaxing.
And then as you foreground
into awareness, this experience
that's already happening in
the background of relaxing
while exhaling, you don't
need to change your breathing.
Your breathing might naturally
change as your focus here.
Then you can sink
in increasingly,
enriching and absorbing
this sense of relaxation.
So be quiet for 30 seconds.
Just do a little
internal experiment.
You might have a sense
of encouraging relaxation
to establish itself more in
you as a kind of resting state.
One bit at a time,
one synapse at a time,
growing trait relaxation.
OK.
That was the first experiment.
Second one, gratitude, gladness.
Here's where we're going
to create an experience.
If you like, bring to mind
one or more things you feel
glad about or grateful for.
And help yourself
move from thoughts
of things you are
grateful for or glad about
to an increasingly embodied,
emotionally saturated
experience of gratitude.
And then as you settle
into a sense of gratitude,
kind of marinate in it.
Let yourself really feel it.
Maybe bring a little
smile to your face.
So I'll be quiet
here, too, as you
take in the good of gratitude.
If your mind wanders,
that's completely natural.
Just bring it back.
In effect, in meditative
language, for half a minute,
you'd be taking gratitude
as your object of attention.
And as your mind rests
upon any particular thing,
that tends to be internalized.
OK, finishing up here.
As with any practice,
we're doing two things.
We're trying to do
something inside our minds,
and we're observing the
results inside the laboratory.
And if it's difficult to
activate an experience at will,
such as gratitude,
that's a bit of a flag
to look for opportunities
to build up that trait.
And also, if there's any
difficulty sustaining attention
to a positive experience or
difficulty really receiving it
into yourself, that's a little
bit of a flag to yourself
for further investigation.
And then the last
one, warm heartedness,
perhaps compassion,
perhaps kindness,
bringing to mind one or more
beings you care about, have
warm feelings for,
could be friends,
could be a pet, an
animal companion,
could be a group of
people you care about.
And then as you do
this, help yourself
move from the idea
of this to feelings
of warmth, caring, even love.
Here too, I'll be quiet
for half a minute.
It's a real interesting
process to observe your mind
and see what is it like to
help something establish itself
more inside yourself.
What's the process
of helping kindness
to establish itself more in
you or compassion for others?
What's that like?
It's a really interesting
and useful inquiry.
OK, so finishing up
the little experiment.
I'm on the homestretch now.
I want to sort of step back
a bit and take a wider view
and then open it
up for discussion.
So there are, I think,
four distinct kinds
of benefits for taking
in the good, which
is my informal general
term for the deliberate
internalization of
beneficial experiences,
which is the technical
definition of what we've been
exploring here, or what could
be called mindful cultivation,
or others, you know, I use the
term positive neuroplasticity.
First, we grow specific
resources inside.
That's good, both in general
and for particular purposes,
which I'll speak to in a moment.
Second, there are
implicit benefits
in this practice of
mindful cultivation.
For example, it's a
training in mindfulness,
and also, implicit
in it is a stance
of being for one's self,
treating one's self
as if one matters, which
is worthy in its own right,
and especially worthy if it's
a corrective to not feeling
like you've mattered enough
to others in the past.
Third, it's quite plausible
that in this process
of internalization of
beneficial experiences,
we are sensitizing the brain to
positive beneficial experience,
much as the brain can be
very readily sensitized
to negative experiences.
There is emerging research
that quite possibly,
it can become increasingly
sensitized to positive ones,
so it becomes more
efficient and effective
at converting those experiences
into a lasting change
of neural structure
and function.
And then last, as we grow
the good inside ourselves,
the world tends to look
a little different.
It sometimes can
treat us differently,
which gives us an opportunity to
grow more good inside ourselves
in a positive upward spiral,
or as Lao-Tzu, I think,
put it many, many
years ago, "If you
keep a green bough
in your heart,
a singing bird will come."
And now for a wider
perspective, I've
spoken here about
the general process
of self-directed
neuroplasticity,
self-directed brain change.
You can apply that
general process
to growing particular
resources inside yourself.
Resilience is used
to meet needs.
What are the needs that
resilience is relevant for,
and then how can we
identify and grow
resources and signs
that are matched
to the needs we might have?
If we run out of gas, a
spare tire won't help us.
It's not matched to the issue.
If we have a flat tire, now
that resource is matched to it.
So you might really
ask yourself,
I think one of the
most useful questions
from a long career in
clinical psychology, what,
if it were more present
in the mind of a person,
would really help?
Would help with this
workplace issue, would
help with some kind
of family problem,
would help just heal the
residues of the past,
or to feel happier all together?
What, if it were more present,
would really, really help?
I use, as a map for this, the
framework of the three needs
that have been identified
in a lot of research
as our fundamental needs
for safety, satisfaction,
and connection.
There are other needs models.
I don't think everything that's
important to people fits neatly
into this framework.
But this is a really
fundamental framework.
And we manage safety by
avoiding, in general,
avoiding harms,
manage satisfaction
by approaching rewards, and
connection attaching to others.
You see the general
framework here.
These three overarching
motivational and regulatory
systems, avoiding,
approaching, and attaching
are loosely, but significantly
related to the three stage
evolution of the human brain.
This is the so-called
triune brain model.
It's a little fuzzy
around the details,
but the essence is
pretty much there,
that as our ancestors
over 600 million years
evolved a nervous system,
rule one in the wild
is eat lunch today.
Don't be lunch today.
Live to see the sunrise.
That's the reptilian brain
stem, very, very highly
focused on safety needs.
Then we have the
mammalian sub cortex,
very, very focused
on satisfaction.
Mammals can sustain pursuit.
Reptiles generally can't.
Mammals can also hunt at night.
I'm very fond of our
scruffy mammalian rat-like,
squirrel-like ancestors evolving
about 200 million years ago
when dinosaurs ruled the earth,
but they were crafty and tough
and they survived
65 million years ago
when something big
smacked into the planet,
and the dinosaurs
became extinct.
And then on top of
all that, especially
as the brain has tripled in
volume in just the last couple
three million years, are
profound social capabilities
of primates and hominids
and humans for relationships
of various kinds.
So there's a loose relationship
between the management
of these needs and our
structure of our brain.
That's why I kind of
joke that routinely we
need to pet the lizard, feed
the mouse, and of course, hug
the monkey.
So OK.
There's a little chart here
of resources matched to needs.
You can go back and
take a look at it later.
It just illustrates
the broader point.
Routinely, as a person who
works with other people,
I see that number
one, people come
in with challenges this high,
but resources this high.
They need to scale up
resources to match the problem.
And second, they're
unclear, often,
about what resources
would actually help.
And so identifying
resources that
would actually help particular
needs is really, really useful.
And you can get into the detail
of that later if you like.
So finishing up in
roughly the next minute,
I want to point to
a wider implication.
At the individual
level, as people
develop psychological
resources, they
are more able to sustain
resilient well-being
in the face of the
challenges of life.
The point of all
this, for me, is not
how to withdraw from the world,
sit on a cushion, go to a cave,
bliss out, and bliss out.
That's fairly easy and
straightforward to do.
The issue for me really is
how to engage life fully,
how to dream big dreams, how
to swing for the fences, how
to speak truth to power, how
to enjoy the pleasures of life
on the basis of an unshakable
core of well-being, a feeling
already safe enough inside,
already satisfied enough
inside, and already connected
enough inside, in other words,
with a kind of unshakable
core deep down of peace,
contentment, and love.
That's the real challenge,
and therefore, to me,
that's the real opportunity.
So this process of developing
resources, as I've described,
is absolutely key to growing
that increasingly unshakable
core.
But it has wider implications,
because without getting
into any particulars
of politics,
throughout human history, we've
seen how vulnerable humans are
to manipulations due to fear,
greed, and us against them
grievances and conflicts.
We've just seen
profound vulnerabilities
throughout history,
and I think we've
seen great vulnerabilities in
the modern news cycle today.
As people develop
internal resources,
in addition to changing
the world for the better,
but develop resources inside
themselves increasingly,
they become less vulnerable
to these classic manipulations
of fear, greed,
and us against them
rivalries, which has a
lot of wider implications.
And I'm hopeful that the
process of internalization
and development
of inner resources
is a key part of helping
the world come to a softer
landing than the one it's
aiming toward by the end
of the century.
To finish on my last
slide, if you'll
indulge me a quotation from an
ancient text, the Dhammapada.
It's a saying that I think
about many times that
really summarizes
this process, I think,
and why it's so helpful
and why it also speaks
to personal responsibility.
"Think not lightly
of good saying,
'It will not come to me.'
Drop by drop is the
water pot filled.
Likewise, the wise
is one, gathering
it little by little
fills oneself with good."
So thank you very much
for this opportunity,
and I'm grateful to you for
what you do each day to help
this world be better.
Thank you.
RACHEL: Thank you.
All right.
We're going to open
up to questions.
Is there-- we have
a [INAUDIBLE]..
We're going to put that up.
But is there a question?
Actually, Ben, do
you want to do that?
[INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Hi, Rick.
Thank you so much
for being here.
I have to tell you that
I've been following you
for many years and truly,
truly, truly, this practice
has changed my life in many
positive ways, drop by drop.
My question to you,
and I've thought
about as I've read
your books, and I still
have like this internal
doubt within me
is, how do we
cultivate the positive
and take in the good,
while still allowing space
for the negative, the
shadow side and the emotions
that we maybe we
don't want to feel,
so that this process
maybe doesn't become
sort of a cover for that?
RICK HANSON: That's right.
That's great, and I'm glad for
you that it's been helpful.
I'm really glad.
Yeah, well, you're getting
on a really, really important
question.
And to be super clear, nothing
that I'm talking about here
is about looking
on the bright side
or fake it till you make it.
I want to see the whole reality
of life, the whole mosaic.
I don't believe in
positive thinking,
but I want to see
the whole mosaic
with a brain that's designed
to overfocus on that one
flashing red tile.
All right.
So if we fight our negative
feelings, they just grow.
If we are to be able to
tolerate them and remain mindful
of them, we must grow
resources, like perspective,
steadiness of mind,
self-soothing, self-compassion.
So resources we grow
inside ourselves
help us accept and be
with and bear our pain,
including the pain
that lands when we are
compassionate for other people.
So resources, growing
resources, in part,
is a means to an end
of being able to be
authentic and inclusive
about everything we feel.
One of my great journeys as
I landed in adulthood numb
from the neck down was to
wake down, not just wake
up, to include my own interior.
But to do that, I needed
to grow resources,
because otherwise
opening to my experience
was like opening a
trap door to hell.
[? So that part. ?]
The other thing is that what
happens as we grow resources
inside, in addition to be
able to bear our difficulties,
ourselves, we become
much more able to deal
with the negative
things out in the world.
We become more confident,
more courageous, spunky,
you know, feisty, keep going.
We're not going to be stopped,
because we have built up
strengths inside.
So to me, they really,
really work together.
And that's a key
question you're raising.
Absolutely key,
absolutely central.
Thank you.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: How does one go
about teaching kids early
how to combat negativity
bias, taking in the good,
that you talked about
in your research?
Could you help outline
three clearly defined
simple and effective
steps that one
can incorporate into their
parenting starting tomorrow?
RICK HANSON: I
wish more questions
came to me in this form,
clear, concise, direct.
It's really great.
Well, for one, I work
with a lot of kids.
I have a background there,
and my dissertation actually
was on 15-month-olds.
So I have a real interest
in early childhood, too.
So I think the
question is really apt.
So three practical suggestions.
One is up to the
age of around 14,
when kids no longer will
put up with their parents
putting them to bed, that
period just before sleep
is a wonderful opportunity for
a couple, three minutes to rest
attention on something wholesome
and beneficial for the child,
which could be as simple
as just feeling cozy
and cuddly with a caregiver
or happy about the dog that's
in the room, or talking
about some neat thing that
happened in the day.
And then for those few
minutes, just sort of marinate
in the experience.
I've known a number of
families in which they started
doing that with
their kids, and there
were fairly dramatic benefits.
Part of it's
implicit, obviously,
keep sustaining a parent's
attention, let's say.
But I think in particular,
there is some internalization.
That's one.
Two, in formal settings, like
school teachers, educators,
or mindfulness
coaches, there are so
many opportunities that
are natural moments
to slow it down and
help it sink in.
When kids come back from
recess or after a period
or before going home, use
those more formal opportunities
for internalization or
similar opportunities,
like at meals, in a
family where people just
take a moment with or without
any religious framework,
and just be grateful
for the food.
Just think of something.
Or just go around
the room, what's
one good thing that
happened today,
and it can be the same
good thing every day.
That's all right.
But what's one good thing
that happened today.
People do different things
at formal opportunities.
And then the last is with this
particular child or really
any child, ask that question,
what resources would really
help if they were more present
in the mind of the child,
and know what is it we're
trying to develop in this child,
not based on Mom or
Dad's infinite wisdom.
I speak from some experience
here, some kind of lecture
coming at the kid,
that they blow off.
But from the
child's perspective,
what would the
child be motivated
to develop more inside
themselves, especially
social emotional
resources, and then
if you know what
you're trying to grow,
which is where the
issue is in most cases,
people don't know what
they're trying to grow.
Know what you're trying to grow.
If you know what you're trying
to develop and encourage
and nourish and
protect in that child,
then look for opportunities
to have experiences of that,
which then are internalized.
OK, good.
RACHEL: I know we're at time.
RICK HANSON: Thank you.
Thank you.
RACHEL: Some of
you have to leave.
So I just want to give you
another round of applause,
and we can stay
for more questions.
[APPLAUSE]
