Michael Gayner explores equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy—and how to return to these qualities when difficult emotions take over.
Rick Hanson
Author / Psychologist
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Biography
Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His eight books have been published in 33 languages and include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Resilient, Neurodharma, Just One Thing, Making Great Relationships, A Happy, Healthy Mom, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast – which has been downloaded over 30 million times. He offers free newsletters, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.
Articles
Find the Good News
We need to recognize genuinely bad news so we can protect ourselves and others. The root cause of suffering and harm is ignorance, illusion, not seeing things as they actually are. See the facts and live in the light, we feel freer, at ease, unthreatened, confident, overflowing, loved, and loving.
Talk + Meditation: How to Keep an Open Heart in a Difficult World
Explore four qualities that can help you meet yourself, other people, and even difficult experiences with greater wisdom and care .
Expanding Compassion for Our Times
Compassion can expand beyond empathy for those who are like us.
Choose To Love
Choose to love. Love is more about us being loving than about other people being lovable. In fact, choosing to love is twice loving: it’s a loving act to call up the intention to love, plus there is the love that follows.
Talk + Meditation: How to Use Anxiety – and Not Be Used by It!
Anxiety can be useful — until it isn’t. Learn how to listen to what worry is telling you, then let go of what you don’t need.
Try a Softer Tone
There are three elements of tone: 1) Explicit content 2) Emotional subtext 3) Implicit statement about the nature of the relationship.
Talk + Meditation: 5 Ways to Take Things Less Personally
Life is going to bump into us. People will disappoint us, criticize us, misunderstand us, drop the ball, or sometimes genuinely treat us badly. The question is how to deal […]
Feel Cared About
Feeling cared about buffers against stress, increases positive emotions, promotes resilience, and increases caring for others. Learn how to feel cared about to gradually fill any holes in your heart.
Being Well Podcast: People Pleasing vs. Fawning: Why We Do It and How to Change
Dr. Rick and Forrest talk about what separates people-pleasing from the fawn response, and why those differences affect what actually helps.
Talk + Meditation: Why It’s So Hard to Set – and Keep – Healthy Boundaries
Healthy boundaries can bring more freedom, peace, and connection to our relationships.
Know You’re a Good Person
Is it hard to believe you are a good person? Try to take in the good of feeling cared about; recognize goodness in your acts of thought, word, and deed. Enjoy this beautiful goodness, so real and so true.