Speaker 1: You know. As I put it, we've got a brain
Speaker 1: that's like velcrow for the bad, bitep long for the good.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest this week is Rick Hansen, PhD, neuropsychologist and
Speaker 1: author of Hardwiring Happiness, The New Brain Science of Contentment,
Speaker 1: Calm and Confidence. His other books include Buddha's Brain and
Speaker 1: Just One Thing. Rick is the founder of the well
Speaker 1: Spring Institute of Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and an affiliate
Speaker 1: of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. He
Speaker 1: has been an invited speaker at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard
Speaker 1: and teaches meditation worldwide. And before we start the interview,
Speaker 1: a lot of you might have noticed that Eric has
Speaker 1: been doing some one on one coaching, which we've mentioned
Speaker 1: on various episodes. And up next, real quick, I just
Speaker 1: wanted you to hear one of Eric's coaching clients, Anthony
Speaker 1: described what was going on in his life that prompted
Speaker 1: him to sign up for the one you feed coaching program.
Speaker 1: Some of you might be able to identify with him
Speaker 1: as you listen to this story. Here's Anthony, followed by
Speaker 1: the interview. Basically, I've been listening to the podcast for
Speaker 1: a while and I had a bunch of goals set
Speaker 1: for myself that I wanted to accomplish, but it was
Speaker 1: just sort of falling short, I guess, in in general.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to get a little bit of encouragement
Speaker 1: and accountability from an outside source. You know, maybe wouldn't
Speaker 1: be so easy on me. If you're interested in learning
Speaker 1: more about this program, send an email to Eric at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net. Here's the interview. Hi, Rick,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Eric. It's a pleasure to be here, truly.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm happy to have you on your combination of
Speaker 1: a couple of things. I'm really interested in. One, you're
Speaker 1: an actual neuroscientist and be You've also got a lot
Speaker 1: of experience in teachings in Buddhism. So I find the
Speaker 1: two of those to be very um compelling together. So
Speaker 1: I'm excited to get to talk through some of that, right.
Speaker 1: I think of the intersection of that is neuro dharma. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll ever be a household word, but
Speaker 1: it does kind of sum up what we might be
Speaker 1: talking about here exactly. So our show is called The
Speaker 1: One You Feed, and it's based on the parable of
Speaker 1: Two Wolves, where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Yeah. Um, well, if I've
Speaker 1: I've heard that story in in different formulations, including the
Speaker 1: one that you offered there, and and it touches me
Speaker 1: deeply every time. Um. I literally sometimes in talks, I'll
Speaker 1: tell that story and I get the shivers every time
Speaker 1: I tell it, because to me, it speaks to two
Speaker 1: real important things. One, the presence of the wolf of
Speaker 1: hate or the wolf of bad or the bad wolf
Speaker 1: as you put it. You know that capacity or inclination,
Speaker 1: and almost everyone certainly me for as you say, hate, violence, aggression, jealousy, envy,
Speaker 1: ill will, etcetera. And um. The second thing, though, really
Speaker 1: more to our point, is that everything depends on who
Speaker 1: you feed, what you feed, and especially what you feed
Speaker 1: each day. And that gets to something that I think
Speaker 1: is extremely hopeful, that we truly can cultivate wholesome qualities
Speaker 1: of mind and heart based on our daily efforts, and
Speaker 1: no matter what's happened in the past, and no matter
Speaker 1: how tough our circumstances are, no one can stop us
Speaker 1: from feeding the good wolf inside our own mind and
Speaker 1: in attention to that being very hopeful, it also takes responsibility.
Speaker 1: It's on us because no one but us really can
Speaker 1: actively feed that good wolf every day, and then that's
Speaker 1: our job to do. Um And as a neuroscience guy
Speaker 1: or a very practical neuroscience guy, I produced a little research.
Speaker 1: I consume a lot of research, and I especially apply it.
Speaker 1: And in that context, it's amazing to appreciate how much
Speaker 1: your brain is continually changing. Right, We're always feeding one
Speaker 1: wolf for another inside our brain, because our brain is
Speaker 1: designed to be changed by our experiences. But what we
Speaker 1: pay attention to and how we relate to what we're
Speaker 1: paying attention to, so to me, the kind of bottom
Speaker 1: line takeaway, using the fancy phrase these days experience dependent neuroplasticity,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that your brain is continually taking its
Speaker 1: shape in a very real, concrete material sounds from whatever
Speaker 1: you rest your mind upon routinely, particularly given the bias
Speaker 1: of the brain towards taking its shape from negative experiences,
Speaker 1: the negativity bias of the brain. That's why I think
Speaker 1: it's so important to do what you can to rest
Speaker 1: your mind and therefore change your brain by rest in
Speaker 1: your mind upon the authentically real, beneficial experiences of everyday
Speaker 1: life that are usually enjoyable, little moments of feeling connected
Speaker 1: or grateful or peaceful or mindful or happy, or accomplished,
Speaker 1: or loving and caring towards other people, And through repeatedly
Speaker 1: resting your mind on those things, you will gradually wire
Speaker 1: those strengths into your brain, thus fundamentally feeding a good wolf.
Speaker 1: I've got a bunch of questions for you based on
Speaker 1: what you just said there, and I'm going to start
Speaker 1: with one that I've been pondering out loud a couple
Speaker 1: of times lately. And you talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the negativity bias. You talk about how and we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show a lot. We're kind of wired
Speaker 1: that way, right. It's it's better to be safe than sorry,
Speaker 1: so to speak. As far as what you pay attention
Speaker 1: to from a survival basis, is there any sense of
Speaker 1: does anybody know or is there any way to think
Speaker 1: about when do our brains start to actually catch up
Speaker 1: evolution genarily? Now, I know it's been an enormously large
Speaker 1: amount of time, um, but we've seen in things like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, studies with people breeding foxes and trying to
Speaker 1: turn them closer to dogs that in a relatively short
Speaker 1: time period they were able to make pretty substantial changes there,
Speaker 1: our brain is ever going to catch up. Well, let's see. First,
Speaker 1: you're talking about biological evolution, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: breeding foxes into um, let's say wolves or something like that.
Speaker 1: And you know, biological evolutions pretty slow. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: resets on the clock of the generations, maybe you get
Speaker 1: four or five generations per century. Uh. So I think that, uh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a long time before we no longer
Speaker 1: have this hardwired negativity bias in the brain. You know,
Speaker 1: as I put it, we've got a brain that's like
Speaker 1: velcrow for the bad, bit teflon for the good, because
Speaker 1: that's what kept our ancestors alive to live to see
Speaker 1: the sunrise, you know, and pass on jenes that passed
Speaker 1: on genes. So I think in terms of pure biological evolution,
Speaker 1: it'll be quite a while before, if ever, we somehow,
Speaker 1: as it were, breed that bias out of the brain
Speaker 1: got the three bees there, you know, a little alliteration.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, we have cultural evolution, and we have opportunities
Speaker 1: for psychological evolution. Um the real question is not, um,
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of wolves do you have in
Speaker 1: your inner kennel? The real question is is you put
Speaker 1: it from the very beginning here? What do you cultivate
Speaker 1: and what do you restraint? And even if we do
Speaker 1: have a hardwired tendency to over learn from our bad
Speaker 1: experiences and under learned from our good experiences, which is unfortunate,
Speaker 1: because learning from our good experiences are beneficial experiences, which
Speaker 1: are usually enjoyable, is the primary way to hardwire those
Speaker 1: psychological mental resources into ourselves for coping with difficulties and
Speaker 1: feeling happier and also having more to offer other people.
Speaker 1: Even though all of that is true, we still have
Speaker 1: opportunities many times a day using mindful attention to tilt
Speaker 1: toward beneficial experiences and make sure that we in particular
Speaker 1: install them, that we don't just have them, because merely
Speaker 1: having beneficial experiences is momentarily pleasant, but it but it
Speaker 1: produces no lasting value because those beneficial experiences are not installed,
Speaker 1: They're not encoded in some way as a lasting change
Speaker 1: of neural structure or function. But if we do the
Speaker 1: dozen seconds or so of really savoring, really kind of
Speaker 1: marinating in our ordinary authentic beneficial experiences a handful of
Speaker 1: times every day. In effect, given that we have a
Speaker 1: brain that's tilted towards survival but against quality of life,
Speaker 1: when we tilt towards beneficial experiences and in particular really
Speaker 1: take a dozen or so seconds to in turn realize them,
Speaker 1: to take them in. If we do that tilt, then
Speaker 1: we just level the playing field. But if we do that,
Speaker 1: and we can all do that, even though we've got
Speaker 1: a stone edge brain, if we do that, over the
Speaker 1: course of the day, we learn a lot more from
Speaker 1: that day. We grow, We develop through this installation of
Speaker 1: beneficial experience as we hardwire happiness and as well as
Speaker 1: other inner strengths into ourselves. And then if you add
Speaker 1: that up over time, a handful of times a day,
Speaker 1: day after day after day the years of our lives,
Speaker 1: it makes an extraordinary difference for people over the lifespan.
Speaker 1: And you call this process taking in the good. And UM,
Speaker 1: I'd like to get a little bit further into how
Speaker 1: to do that, but let's start off by UM, you know,
Speaker 1: the people who listen to the show know that I
Speaker 1: am a notoriously skeptical of positive thinking, which I know
Speaker 1: this isn't so, but help me understand the difference between
Speaker 1: taking in the good, which you're saying is resting your
Speaker 1: brain on the good things that do happen, versus sort
Speaker 1: of delusional positive thinking. Yeah. Absolutely, Um, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in positive thinking like you. I believe in realistic thinking.
Speaker 1: So I want to see the whole mosaic of reality.
Speaker 1: And you know, given our common interest, let's say in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: it's I think no accident that it's said in Buddhism
Speaker 1: that the fundamental, deep root of suffering and evil is
Speaker 1: ignorance or delusion, not really recognizing what's actually true. So
Speaker 1: the fundamental framework for me here is to really recognize
Speaker 1: what's actually true. And as part of that recognition, it's
Speaker 1: true that we have a brain that is negatively biased,
Speaker 1: especially in terms of how we learn from our experiences.
Speaker 1: And second, it's also true that in terms of the
Speaker 1: mosaic a reality, there's a lot of crap out there.
Speaker 1: You know, every life has difficult, hard, painful things, and
Speaker 1: many lives are saturated in difficult, hard, painful things. So
Speaker 1: it's precisely out of that very clear eyed, noble take
Speaker 1: on both the negativity bias of the brain and the
Speaker 1: reality of the challenges that we will all face in
Speaker 1: this life. Based on that, uh, to me, it's really
Speaker 1: important to recognize in that mosaic of reality in your
Speaker 1: life the good facts as well as the bad facts.
Speaker 1: And we have a brain is biased as a kind
Speaker 1: of well intended universal learning learning disability to overlook the
Speaker 1: good facts, generally speaking, while we continually scan for the
Speaker 1: bad wounds. And then if you do recognize a so
Speaker 1: called good fact, you know, you finished the dishes, you
Speaker 1: finally got the kids in bed, the thing you worried
Speaker 1: about did not happen. Someone has smiled at you. You
Speaker 1: see a flower blooming. You're still alive today. You recognize
Speaker 1: something inside yourself like grit or resilience or toughness, or
Speaker 1: some kind of character virtue like patience or generosity, whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. You see the good fact, and you
Speaker 1: let yourself feel something as a result. Because most people,
Speaker 1: number one, don't see all the good facts or even
Speaker 1: a fraction of the many good facts in daily life,
Speaker 1: including in a tough, hard life. And then second, whatever
Speaker 1: they tend to see, they usually don't really feel it
Speaker 1: very much. And then if they even see it and
Speaker 1: feel it, they usually don't help their brain internalize it
Speaker 1: encoded by resting attention on the beneficial experience that they're
Speaker 1: having for more than a few seconds in a row.
Speaker 1: But if they don't stay with it for more than
Speaker 1: a few seconds in a row, that experience minimally, if
Speaker 1: at all, encodes from short term memory buffers to long
Speaker 1: term storage. The fundamental process of conceptual learning. But more
Speaker 1: to our purposes here, the process of feeding the wolf
Speaker 1: inside wolf the wolf back inside. That would care about
Speaker 1: feeding um resilience and determination, is feeding gratitude and happiness, contentment,
Speaker 1: feeding a sense of um uh, you know, relaxation inside,
Speaker 1: a sense of closeness with other people, a commitment to sobriety,
Speaker 1: commitment to exercise, what have you. If that's what we
Speaker 1: care to feed inside. That's a two stage process of
Speaker 1: learning that moves from short term memory buffers to long
Speaker 1: term storage, from state to trade, from activation to installation.
Speaker 1: And what I'm talking about is recognizing the ordinary good
Speaker 1: facts of daily life that are real that you tend
Speaker 1: to overlook. And then on the basis of that recognition
Speaker 1: or on the basis of any beneficial experience you're already having,
Speaker 1: like a sense of completion, when you get a tough
Speaker 1: email out the door, or a sense of fun or
Speaker 1: fellowship with friends, or a sense of spiritual development of
Speaker 1: any kind. When you're having those beneficial experiences at least
Speaker 1: a few times a day, don't waste them. Don't let
Speaker 1: them pass through your brain like water through a sieve. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: with negative experiences getting caught every time routinely, and instead
Speaker 1: of that, actually take charge of the structure building processes
Speaker 1: of your own brain from the inside out. The essence
Speaker 1: really of a tough minded self reliance at least a
Speaker 1: handful of times every day, you know, staying with those
Speaker 1: beneficial experiences to really register them, so you gradually internalize
Speaker 1: them um increasingly as resources you could draw upon when
Speaker 1: the going gets tough, and also draw upon just for
Speaker 1: ordinary happiness. You call this process taking in the good,
Speaker 1: and you have an acronym for it or for the steps,
Speaker 1: which is heal um. Have a good experience, um, enrich
Speaker 1: it and then absorb it. And then the last is
Speaker 1: to length the positive and negative material. I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about steps two and three. So
Speaker 1: have a good experience. I think you talked in the
Speaker 1: book a lot about a big part of that is
Speaker 1: actually be aware of and paying attention to things that
Speaker 1: are positive and and I agree with your point, there
Speaker 1: are there are good things in nearly every life. UM,
Speaker 1: I am not good at those next two steps about
Speaker 1: enriching and absorbing. An example I would give is like
Speaker 1: I will do gratitude, UM, but it it tends to
Speaker 1: be more of a mental exercise sometimes, which is not
Speaker 1: I still think it's better than not having the mental exercise.
Speaker 1: But how do I take a UM, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: says something nice to me during the day. How do
Speaker 1: I enrich and absorb that? What are Because I've played
Speaker 1: with that since I've been reading your book, and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing benefits from the whole process. But I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm not getting those steps two and three very well.
Speaker 1: Well thanks for saying all that, Eric, You've made me
Speaker 1: think about using your metaphor of the wolf you feed,
Speaker 1: I mean when you have it. So let's kind of
Speaker 1: make it real. Let's suppose that, UM, maybe in your
Speaker 1: family you have a nice sense of connection or closeness
Speaker 1: with a child, or let's say that just in an
Speaker 1: ordinary day, it's been a stressful, rushing about day. Finally
Speaker 1: you get a chance to sort of relax maybe take
Speaker 1: a shower, or maybe a work out a little bit,
Speaker 1: maybe just sit and watch some TV with your family
Speaker 1: or by yourself, whatever's it. Relaxing. Okay, you're having some
Speaker 1: kind of a beneficial experience. So to use the metaphor
Speaker 1: of the wolf, you're holding a food, you know, against
Speaker 1: the wolf's mouth, and maybe even the wolf is tasting it.
Speaker 1: The wolf is now chewing on this experience of closeness
Speaker 1: with family members or relaxation or accomplishment. But then the
Speaker 1: question becomes, if you really want to feed that wolf,
Speaker 1: the wolf has to swallow the food the wolf, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has to actually take it in and then metabolize
Speaker 1: it from the inside out. And to a larger point,
Speaker 1: you know, Um, we continually learn things, and we continually
Speaker 1: often go about teaching people things, but how often do
Speaker 1: we learn how to learn? Or how often do we
Speaker 1: teach how to learn? And in the words, we say,
Speaker 1: it all depends on the wolf you feed. How do
Speaker 1: you get that wolf to swallow and metabolize whatever it
Speaker 1: is we're feeding him? Or let's say, so that's what
Speaker 1: we're getting in here in the second and third steps
Speaker 1: exactly right. So the neuropsychology of learning. UM has been
Speaker 1: widely studied in terms of more conceptual material. Unfortunately, it's
Speaker 1: not been very studied in terms of emotional, motivational, attitudinal, social, somatic,
Speaker 1: even spiritual kinds of learnings that we really care about. Right,
Speaker 1: So what I've done is applied to those sorts of learnings,
Speaker 1: very standard findings that come mainly from the realm of
Speaker 1: cognitive psychology, but are really well established and they make
Speaker 1: common sense. Basically, it says that, look, if you want
Speaker 1: to steep in the learning curve, including from an experience
Speaker 1: let's say of gratitude, there are five well known factors
Speaker 1: that will steep in your learning curve from that experience
Speaker 1: over the course of five, ten, or twenty seconds one duration.
Speaker 1: You know, as you know, there's a saying in neuroscience
Speaker 1: UM neurons have fired together, wired together. So the longer
Speaker 1: those neurons are firing, the more they're going to be
Speaker 1: wiring five ten, twenty seconds in a row second intensity.
Speaker 1: The more intensely you experience let's say, gratitude, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: you really feel it, are you really think about it, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I am so grateful, you know for
Speaker 1: that particular thing, the more intensely those neurons are firing,
Speaker 1: the more intensely they're going to be wearing. A third factor,
Speaker 1: I sum it up with the word multimodality. All I
Speaker 1: mean by that is the richer the experience, the better.
Speaker 1: There's a place for internalizing thoughts represented my language were
Speaker 1: more sort of visual or imagery based, like a sense
Speaker 1: of perspective or a framework for how we look at things.
Speaker 1: All right, So there's a place for internalizing the thought
Speaker 1: of gratitude, like wow, I'm very fortunate that my parents,
Speaker 1: you know, made efforts to bring me up in this
Speaker 1: world are all. I'm grateful for living in a time
Speaker 1: in which you and I can communicate with each other
Speaker 1: through a technology like Skype. That's great, but it's just
Speaker 1: a thought. It doesn't have that much impact. The more
Speaker 1: that we allow the experience to be um sensed in
Speaker 1: the body, and the more that we have it has
Speaker 1: an emotional component, And even the more that we link
Speaker 1: a sense of desire to the experience, the more modalities
Speaker 1: in other words, of experience that we're engaging, the richer
Speaker 1: than neural traits. As you know, any fourth grade school
Speaker 1: teacher knows, and then really fast the fifth and the
Speaker 1: fourth and fifth factors of enriching our novelty. The more
Speaker 1: that we can relate to our experiences kind of through
Speaker 1: the eyes of a child. As you know, there's probably
Speaker 1: as you probably know, there's a saying 'sen mind beginner's mind.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, the more we're gonna you know, encode the experience.
Speaker 1: And then last, the more we have a sense of salience,
Speaker 1: personal relevance. Why should I care? You know, why would
Speaker 1: it matter to me? Let's say, to deepen the experience
Speaker 1: of gratitude. That's those and you don't need to do
Speaker 1: all of those. Where it mostly shows up for people
Speaker 1: is around duration, intensity, and feeling it in the body.
Speaker 1: The more the better. Okay. Then what also can steep
Speaker 1: in the learning curve from different from episodes of learning opportunities?
Speaker 1: And when I say learning, I don't mean memorizing the
Speaker 1: multiplication table. I mean internalizing a growing sense of grit
Speaker 1: or resilience, or loving kindness or compassion for others. That
Speaker 1: kind of learning. You know, if you sense and intend
Speaker 1: that this experience is really sinking into you, in other words,
Speaker 1: you're absorbing it, that's the A step in the H
Speaker 1: G A L. He'll acronym you're absorbing it. As you said,
Speaker 1: the more you sense and intend that the experience is
Speaker 1: going into you like water coming into a sponge or
Speaker 1: um kind of giving yourself over to the experience or
Speaker 1: warmth spreading out into your body. The more that you
Speaker 1: do that, the more that you will be um priming
Speaker 1: and sensitizing memory making systems. So that's the essence really,
Speaker 1: if you think of it, the fundamental neuropsychology of learning.
Speaker 1: I didn't invent it. I've only tried to kind of
Speaker 1: summarize and apply this really well established understanding about learning,
Speaker 1: and to do so in a context in which I
Speaker 1: think people in psychology, human resources, training, character, development of children,
Speaker 1: self help, you know, practical wisdom coaching, mindfluence training, etceteracetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: me included, have overvalued the activation phase of learning, the
Speaker 1: initial step around having some kind of beneficial experience. That's important.
Speaker 1: You know, the brain is not like an iPod. It's
Speaker 1: like an old school cassette recorder. You record the song
Speaker 1: by playing it. We need to have the experience in
Speaker 1: the first place. That's activation, all right, But most people
Speaker 1: be included, certainly in the past, in the general territory
Speaker 1: of psychology or self help or human development. UM have
Speaker 1: not paid enough attention to the installation phase of learning,
Speaker 1: the two second and third steps that you've properly highlighted here.
Speaker 1: And because we haven't paid enough attention to the installation
Speaker 1: phase of learning, we've lost many, many opportunities to turn
Speaker 1: passing beneficial states into lasting beneficial traits. And that's why
Speaker 1: if a person wants to really steep in their learning
Speaker 1: curve as they grow through daily life, don't just notice
Speaker 1: the beneficial experiences you're already having, or look for natural
Speaker 1: opportunities to deliberately create them. Don't just do that that's good,
Speaker 1: that's just the beginning. Take the time a dozen or
Speaker 1: those seconds at a time to enjoy the experience, stay
Speaker 1: with it so you don't waste it on your own brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that is so true, that idea
Speaker 1: that particularly in our culture today. I think we learn
Speaker 1: so much, we consume so much information, and so little
Speaker 1: of it translates into anything that sticks with it or
Speaker 1: is actually becomes part of our life. Uh, something that
Speaker 1: we do. I often say, it's not what you know,
Speaker 1: it's what you do. UM Or I think I'm I doubt,
Speaker 1: I'm the first person that said then, but and I
Speaker 1: agree with what you're saying. So let's think about this
Speaker 1: installing process. So I have a good experience and I'm
Speaker 1: looking for duration and intensity, and what I find happens
Speaker 1: is that similar to like what I'm trying to be mindful,
Speaker 1: like meditating, I feel the good experience. I think, okay,
Speaker 1: I should should feel more of this good experience, or
Speaker 1: I should dive deeper into it than my mind wanders,
Speaker 1: or my mind goes into what you know, it's it
Speaker 1: stays and is it? Is it just a matter of
Speaker 1: continuing to try it and getting better at it like
Speaker 1: anything else. Yeah, I think that the short version is
Speaker 1: that we all know how to take into good If
Speaker 1: I was to really summarize all the neuropsychological complexity here,
Speaker 1: it would be in four words, have it, enjoy it.
Speaker 1: In other words, have the beneficial experience, usually because you're
Speaker 1: already having it in the words, you're already are you know,
Speaker 1: feeling close with your partner, or you're already relaxing, or
Speaker 1: you're already um for only determined and capable you know
Speaker 1: to face the challenge, or you're already having a sense
Speaker 1: of accomplishment or completion around some tax task. It's already happening, right.
Speaker 1: And another key point here is that these experiences and
Speaker 1: also opportunities for experience are typically mild. These are not
Speaker 1: million dollar moments. Most of them, you know, on the
Speaker 1: zero ten intensity scale. They're the ones and twos of
Speaker 1: everyday life. But when you're having them draw upon the
Speaker 1: natural um inclination of the mind to lean towards what's enjoyable,
Speaker 1: I will say, you're just what you're saying, um For.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things is that when people start
Speaker 1: getting interested in this practice of actually internalizing, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: half a dozen times a day or so, if not more,
Speaker 1: the ordinary beneficial experiences of their day, they start discovering
Speaker 1: amazing things. One they're not having experiences they're completely in
Speaker 1: their head. That was me, you know, throughout most of
Speaker 1: my childhood into young adulthood. I was numb from the
Speaker 1: neck down. And or they are having fleeting beneficial experiences
Speaker 1: that have more of an emotional and embodied quality and
Speaker 1: therefore have more of the raw material for truly producing,
Speaker 1: you know, for truly feeding those those the good wolves,
Speaker 1: you know that that we want to develop. I noticed
Speaker 1: that the good wolf is not about memorizing the multiplication
Speaker 1: table or you know, locating the I don't know what
Speaker 1: the capital of the wolf of wolves. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: these are about character. Terrible jokes, right, these are experiential
Speaker 1: character qualities. Anyway. My point is that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: what people often bump into as well, is they feel
Speaker 1: a kind of I don't know what shame or fear
Speaker 1: or inhibition about just staying with a beneficial experien areas
Speaker 1: for ten seconds in a row, you know. And what happens, though,
Speaker 1: is you start this pride. You initially start, like a
Speaker 1: lot of things, with deliberate top down attention and intention.
Speaker 1: You know, you say to yourself, Okay, I'll listen to Rick.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try this. No one needs to know I'm
Speaker 1: doing it half a dozen times a day. When I'm
Speaker 1: having this nice feeling, I'm going to give an extra
Speaker 1: dozen or two dozen seconds to really sense that it's
Speaker 1: sinking in, to sink into it and let it sink
Speaker 1: into me. All right. Uh. In the beginning, it takes
Speaker 1: a little deliberate attention, But what starts to happen is
Speaker 1: your body knows. Your body naturally knows how to stabilize
Speaker 1: in and rest in a beneficial experience, and so you,
Speaker 1: you know, you start shifting from a kind of white knuckle,
Speaker 1: top down effort into more of a kind of intimacy
Speaker 1: with your own body, a kind of inside out receptivity
Speaker 1: where you just it's like and down next to a
Speaker 1: warm fire. I think we all know how to come
Speaker 1: in from the cold and sit down next to a
Speaker 1: warm fire and just kind of receive it and be
Speaker 1: humble enough to open to it and let it come
Speaker 1: into ourselves. You have a part in the book where
Speaker 1: you you say, I'm just going to read it because
Speaker 1: I think it said so well. And we talked about
Speaker 1: this stuff on the show a lot. You say when
Speaker 1: something difficult or uncomfortable happens, when a storm comes to
Speaker 1: your garden. The three ways to engage your mind give
Speaker 1: you a very useful step by step sequence. First, be
Speaker 1: with your experience, observe it and accept it for what
Speaker 1: it is, even if it's painful. Second, when it feels right,
Speaker 1: which could be a matter of seconds with a familiar
Speaker 1: worried mind, or months or years with the loss of
Speaker 1: a loved one, begin letting go of whatever is negative. Third, again,
Speaker 1: when it feels right, if you've after you've released some
Speaker 1: or all of what was a negative, replace it with
Speaker 1: something positive. You got it. That was a tricky paragraph
Speaker 1: to write. It's in, as you know, chapter one because
Speaker 1: it creates a framework and it speaks to I think.
Speaker 1: What I just think of is the three great ways
Speaker 1: to engage the mind to practice, the first being just
Speaker 1: be with what's there. The second reduce what's negative. Third,
Speaker 1: grow what's positive. And if you use the metaphor of
Speaker 1: a garden, it means first witnessing a garden, second pulling weeds,
Speaker 1: and third planning flowers. So I'm focusing here with you
Speaker 1: mainly on planting flowers, but it's in the larger context,
Speaker 1: and I would point out that to be able to
Speaker 1: simply be with them owned even in a radical meditative
Speaker 1: sense of choiceless awareness, bear witnessing. To be able to
Speaker 1: sustain that choiceless awareness, you need to grow a lot
Speaker 1: of flowers in your mind through training so that you
Speaker 1: can stabilize that kind of receptive, spacious awareness. And then
Speaker 1: also if you reduce the negative, if you, let's say,
Speaker 1: let go of some belief that you're worthless or you'll
Speaker 1: never find love, if you cannot fit into your old
Speaker 1: pair of jeans if you let that thought go, or
Speaker 1: maybe you release some negative desire like wanting to get
Speaker 1: hammered every night or what have you. Um, it's not
Speaker 1: enough to just pull the weed. You need to replace
Speaker 1: it with a flower otherwise, as any gardener knows, the
Speaker 1: weeds come back, right. So yeah, that's why I think
Speaker 1: that one of the most powerful um personal growth practices
Speaker 1: I know, and I've been exposed to a lot of them,
Speaker 1: both in the spiritual traditions as well as in Western psychology,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful practices I know is to
Speaker 1: use positive experiences that are the natural antidote to the
Speaker 1: old pain or old deficits you carry around inside yourself,
Speaker 1: and UM, by having an experience today, that's the natural
Speaker 1: antidote to that old pain. Using myself as an example,
Speaker 1: if I were to feel truly cared about today and
Speaker 1: especially included in a group, because that's a lot of
Speaker 1: where my pain was as a very young, shy um
Speaker 1: isolated kid growing through school, to feel today that I'm
Speaker 1: included and wanted in a group m is a very
Speaker 1: powerful antidote experience for me that addresses directly those early
Speaker 1: experiences I had in the words, those old experiences of rejection, shame,
Speaker 1: feelings of inadequacy, and so forth. And so if I
Speaker 1: then use the linking step um of holding both of
Speaker 1: those in awareness at once, in effect act, I'm using
Speaker 1: wheat apartment, I'm using flowers to pull weeds. I'm using
Speaker 1: the here and now current experience that's authentic and legitimate,
Speaker 1: in my example, feeling wanted and included in let Santa group,
Speaker 1: I'm using that here and now experience today to gradually ease, sooth,
Speaker 1: bring wisdom to, and potentially replace those old feelings of pain.
Speaker 1: And you know, any single time you do this usually
Speaker 1: will not be a million dollar moment. You won't change
Speaker 1: your life. But the gradual accumulation again, just like you know,
Speaker 1: feeding of the wolves, the gradual accumulation of food and
Speaker 1: the gradual accumulation of which wolf we choose to feed
Speaker 1: makes an enormous difference. You know, Bye bye bye Sinaps
Speaker 1: by sent apps over the course of a person's life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a part in the book where you were explaining,
Speaker 1: you were talking about exactly that you're when you were younger,
Speaker 1: feeling not connected and um and you said something that
Speaker 1: really struck me, And you said you spent a lot
Speaker 1: of years thinking that if you piled up enough achievements
Speaker 1: that would fix it. And and and I think it's obvious
Speaker 1: on one level, like, no, that doesn't work. But the
Speaker 1: way you put it became really clear to me why
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. Right, that's not even the problem. The
Speaker 1: problem you're you're using the wrong tool for the job
Speaker 1: in that case, not that piling up achievements are doing
Speaker 1: positive things. Achieving can't help you feel better in other
Speaker 1: areas of your life, but it's not going to fix
Speaker 1: it that right, Um, You're exactly right, and thinking of
Speaker 1: a way into this um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: motivated me to write the book, which is far mass
Speaker 1: a general audience UM hard borrowing happiness. But but also
Speaker 1: I was motivated as someone who has a deep interest
Speaker 1: and that enormously psychological theory of human suffering and happiness
Speaker 1: that was created by the Buddha years ago. Those summary
Speaker 1: being the four Noble truths. The idea, as you know,
Speaker 1: there suffering suffering as a cause, the cause being craving.
Speaker 1: That's the second truth, the third being there can be
Speaker 1: an end to that cause and thus an end to
Speaker 1: that craving UM. And then there's the fourth noble truth
Speaker 1: of what's the path leading to the end of craving
Speaker 1: in therefore suffering? Well, I work backwards, you know, in
Speaker 1: terms of reverse engineering, and I try to operationalize what
Speaker 1: in the world is going on in the brain of
Speaker 1: a Buddha or you know, a sage or a saint
Speaker 1: or any one of us when we're in a really
Speaker 1: good place, what's going on? And that had led me
Speaker 1: to developing a framework that um, you know, is very
Speaker 1: rested end frameworks that other people have developed that are
Speaker 1: very solid connected to the three stage evolution of the
Speaker 1: brain from its reptilian brain stamp through its mammalian subcortex
Speaker 1: with stuff in it like the magdala and hippocampus, and
Speaker 1: then the primate and especially human cortex that sits on
Speaker 1: top of that. And that three stage evolution of the
Speaker 1: brain gives us a framework, a kind of roadmap for
Speaker 1: identifying what are those experiences that will help us the
Speaker 1: most when internalized again and again and again, I say,
Speaker 1: ten thousand times, ten seconds at a time gradually reset
Speaker 1: our personal brain so that we move increasingly from states
Speaker 1: of underlying sometimes often subtle background senses of deficit or
Speaker 1: disturbance that are the underlying causes of the craving that
Speaker 1: causes suffering and harm in the second noble truth, and
Speaker 1: we gradually, over time, through repeated internalization of UH certain
Speaker 1: kinds of experiences UH, move out of that underlying sense
Speaker 1: of deficit not enoughness, to a sense of fullness. And
Speaker 1: we move out of that underlying sounds of disturbance increasingly
Speaker 1: to a sense of balance. And those three stages of
Speaker 1: the brain's evolution give us the roadmap in terms of
Speaker 1: what I think of as our three basic needs for safety, satisfaction,
Speaker 1: and connection, which are very linked to that reptilian and
Speaker 1: Melian and primate human layering as it were of the brain.
Speaker 1: So long story short, if you realize as I did,
Speaker 1: that my real needs were having to do with connection,
Speaker 1: not with satisfaction or with safety, then it means that
Speaker 1: to address your real need you need to take medicine
Speaker 1: as it were, or vitamins that address your need. And
Speaker 1: so in my own case, even though my issues were
Speaker 1: very much in terms of connection and feeling rejected, excluded
Speaker 1: and whatnot, I tried to pile up experiences in which
Speaker 1: I felt tough and manly and defended to you know,
Speaker 1: take care of safety. Well, maybe that's good to a point,
Speaker 1: but it did not address my need for connection. It
Speaker 1: was as if I had scurvy in terms of my
Speaker 1: needs for connection. I needed vitamin C. So I'd go
Speaker 1: out and I would take all kinds of iron, as
Speaker 1: if I had anemia in terms of safety needs. But
Speaker 1: it didn't help me. And also, as you said, I
Speaker 1: tried to pile up a lot of accomplishments, gets lots
Speaker 1: and lots of satisfaction, have a lot of fun, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy my life in a lot of ways. Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a place for that too, But that was like
Speaker 1: taking B vitamins for my scurvy. It didn't work. It
Speaker 1: was only when I started really really looking for what
Speaker 1: would help that things changed for me. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense. I wanted to ask you. You've you've
Speaker 1: written several books. You are a researcher, You're always reading
Speaker 1: other people's research. I'm curious what ideas are you being
Speaker 1: introduced to now or pursuing or reading about that have
Speaker 1: you really excited? Wow, that's a great interesting question. You know.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a couple. One is the idea that
Speaker 1: and these are linked ideas that um at a macro scale,
Speaker 1: the human in species today actually planet wide, has the
Speaker 1: know how and the resources for the very first time
Speaker 1: in human history. Maybe roughly this has been the case
Speaker 1: for twenty forty ors so years, but basically for the
Speaker 1: very first time in our entire duration on this planet
Speaker 1: as a species hundred fifty thousand years or so, let
Speaker 1: alone our ancestors going back another two million plus years,
Speaker 1: two ancestors that first began making stone tools. During the
Speaker 1: entire time, there were not the object of conditions that
Speaker 1: would enable us truly to take care of the safety,
Speaker 1: satisfaction and connection needs, you know, the inner lizard, mouse,
Speaker 1: and monkey inside us, all of every human being on
Speaker 1: the planet. And yet now we actually have the resources
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. We as a species,
Speaker 1: like the will. We're not making sure, for example, that
Speaker 1: a billion people don't go to sleep hungry every night,
Speaker 1: which is the case worldwide. We have not made sure
Speaker 1: in the richest country on the planet, America, that we
Speaker 1: don't have one in five children nationwide living below the
Speaker 1: poverty line. So obviously we have to bring will to bear,
Speaker 1: and it's not just enough even to have the physical
Speaker 1: resources available for people we have to help people really
Speaker 1: register the felt sense of core needs, safety, satisfaction and
Speaker 1: connection being met. Otherwise, we have lots and lots of
Speaker 1: people who, even though they have plenty of safety, they
Speaker 1: still feel afraid. Even though they have you know, plenty
Speaker 1: of resources, money in the bank, food and refridge, consumer
Speaker 1: goods hanging in their closet, they still feel an emptiness
Speaker 1: inside they're trying to fill with various pleasures. And even
Speaker 1: though they're you know, really well connected to other people
Speaker 1: and they're not actually being threatened, they still are very
Speaker 1: attached to us versus them, tribalisms, various kinds. But the
Speaker 1: net of it all is that new science is showing
Speaker 1: you really do have the wherewithal to make a fundamental
Speaker 1: change in the course of human history, so that we
Speaker 1: have the actual material conditions that would enable every brain
Speaker 1: on the planet to actually rest in what I call
Speaker 1: the green zone, which is a kind of quick and
Speaker 1: dirty approximation to the third noble truth in Buddhism mind
Speaker 1: in which there's not much basis if at all, if
Speaker 1: any at all for craving. That's one thing that gives
Speaker 1: me jazz. Well, I think that is a great place
Speaker 1: to end this has been really enjoyable. Rick, I thank
Speaker 1: you for taking the time. I know you're getting ready
Speaker 1: to go on some extensive travels, so thanks for freeing
Speaker 1: up some time. Eric. It was truly a privilege to
Speaker 1: be here. I mean, what you're doing is a big service,
Speaker 1: and um I look at the quality of your other
Speaker 1: guests and I'm very honored to be in their company. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I appreciate it. Take care, take
Speaker 1: care of you to m you can learn more about
Speaker 1: Rick Hanson and this podcast that one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash Rick. Also, if you're interested in the one
Speaker 1: on one program, don't forget to send an email to
Speaker 1: Eric at one you Feed dot Net. Thanks bye,