Your Wise Brain

Practical insights into happiness, love, and wisdom from psychology, neuroscience, and Buddhism

Rick Hanson Ph.D.

Be Open to Relying on Others

We are hungry for love and need others. Let this truth in. Accepting your inherent dependence brings you into harmony with the way life is.

Understand the Wants of Others

It can be stressful when others want things from you. There’s a sweet spot from which you can respond with both compassion and ease.

How Good Is Goodwill for You?

Ill will creates negative, vicious cycles. But that means that goodwill can create positive cycles. Plus goodwill cultivates wholesome qualities in you.

Foster Compassion

Ill will creates negative, vicious cycles. But that means that compassion can create positive processes. Plus, understanding cultivates wholesome qualities in you.

Center Yourself to Be Calm

Return to the reliable rewards of feeling full. Savor pleasure, move, lift your eyes to the horizon, enjoy art, feel the core of your body, and come into the present moment.

Strive to Be One of the Helpers

We all know that the needs in this world are great. And so are the opportunities to make a big difference to the ones we touch.

How to Honor All

Look for good things in others. Know what the act and attitude of blessing feel like, and take in the experience to call upon it in the future.

Why Practice Meditation?

Contemplation is the quintessential training of attention. Getting better control of your attention is the foundation of changing your brain for the better.

Practice Living Love

Implicitly and fundamentally, the practice of living love means a relaxed opening into the love—in a very broad sense—that is the actual nature of everything.

What Is Your Strategy to Pursue Happiness?

While the truth of futility is that it is hopeless to crave, the truth of fullness is that craving is unnecessary.  

Breathing Twines Together Your Body and Mind

Inhale, oxygen surges into your brain and activates and accelerates the heartbeat. Exhale, you activate the soothing peaceful nervous system.

Reflect on Good When You First Wake Up

When waking up from sleep, try to be aware of your deep purpose, aspiration, or guiding light. Take a moment to get a feeling for each refuge and let it sink in.

Recognize Deep Wants

Deep down, most wants are positive. Grounding oneself in the whole truth means seeing the whole picture, including the good intentions that, sadly, produce bad behavior.

Look for Good Intentions

You have to actively look for good intentions. The practice of looking for good intentions may make you happier and give you a stronger sense of our common humanity.

How Do You Feel When Demands on Your Reality Are Met?

Consider a situation that bothers you, and find a deeper "should" that's related to an experience you "must" have or avoid. Face it by asking: "Is it really true?"

What is R.A.I.N.?

R.A.I.N. is an acronym, developed by Michelle McDonald, to summarize a powerful way to expand self-awareness.

Find Your Path

To choose reasonable goals, we must balance the world's influences and the heart's desires.

Seek Good News

The root cause of suffering and harm is ignorance, illusion, and not seeing things as they actually are. See the facts and live in the light.

Do Something Out of the Ordinary to Help You Refuel

Sometimes it helps to change the channel, shake things up, distract yourself, burn off steam, rest, or enjoy something. A respite or some sort of pleasure will help to refuel you.

Find Stillness in Your Heart and Mind

Give yourself the space, the permission, to be still in your mind. In stillness, you can find refuge and some quiet amidst the noise.

What Occupies Your Mind?

Self-critical thoughts, obsessions, defensive about your issues, or drinking too much. These things are relatively straightforward to deal with, even though difficult.

Pay Attention and Look for the Good Around You

We're wired to like some things, but our liking or disliking depends a lot on what we pay attention to and on our own perspective.

How a Sense of Peace Is Our Natural Home Base

The responsive and reactive modes of living are the foundation of human nature. We have no choice about the vital aims they serve. Our only choice is which mode we’re in.

Find Rest When You Are Weary

Our minds are hauled along in a culture without a speed limit. How can we free ourselves and rest our minds?

Why You Should Give More to Yourself

Giving to yourself comes in many forms, most of them in small moments in everyday life.

Find Joy at this Moment

The present moment is continually passing away, so relax and be open to this moment. Not planning, not worrying, not lost in thought.

Find What Is Sacred to You

What is sacred to you? Maybe you already know. Try to find a place or time that is peaceful and softly raise these questions to yourself.

Enjoy the Richness of this Moment

Be mindful of rushing—your own and others. See how other people assume deadlines that aren't actually real or feel pressured and intense about things that aren't that important.

The Importance of Finding What Guides You

What's the light that will guide you out of your own tangled woods — both the woods "out there" in the world and the ones "in here," in your own mind?

Don't Cling, Just Love

As you cling less, it becomes natural for one to lighten up, stay out of quarrels, have more compassion, and forgive. You'll feel more nourished by the richness inherent in the present.

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