From the Blog
Writings on Well-Being Dr. Rick Hanson
Love Freely
Love is in our nature, woven into our DNA. Love is a natural wellspring inside us all. It doesn’t need to be pushed or pumped. It needs to be released.
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Being Well Podcast: Reducing Reactivity, Fear, and Anger with Sharon Salzberg
Legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg joins Rick and Forrest to discuss how we can work skillfully with anger, fear, and reactivity without becoming doormats or numbing ourselves out through the lens of her new children’s book Kind Karl.
Talk + Meditation: Welcoming the “Messengers” of Aging, Illness, Death – and Awakening
Aging, illness, and death are unavoidable. Learn how equanimity and love help you meet them—and live well, meanwhile.
Grow Inner Strengths
Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life.
Being Well Podcast: Why We Misunderstand Each Other: Fixing vs. Feeling with Elizabeth Ferreira
Forrest and somatic therapist Elizabeth Ferreira explore a common source of relationship conflict: the mismatch between “fixing” (moving quickly into problem-solving) and “feeling” (wanting attunement and empathy before solutions).
Talk + Meditation: Using Mindfulness When You’re Triggered
In this talk, I discuss how mindfulness, focused attention, open awareness, and non-clinging help us manage reactivity, reduce rumination, and relate more wisely to ourselves and others.
See Good Intentions
By recognizing positive intentions we feel safer, supported, and happier. 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.
Being Well Podcast: Building the Habit of Excellence with Brad Stulberg
Top performance coach and author Brad Stulberg joins Forrest to reframe and reclaim excellence.
Talk + Meditation: Five Ways to Feel Less Anxious
Five powerful practices for meeting fear with mindfulness, compassion, action, and wisdom — and learning to live well, meanwhile.
Speak Wisely
Often it’s words and the accompanying tone that actually do the most damage. Your ability to speak wisely can prevent lasting emotional pain.
Being Well Podcast: The Attention Economy: How Self-Help Drifts Away from Science
Forrest and Dr. Rick explore how well-intentioned self-help advice can drift away from science under the incentives of the attention economy, where overclaiming, alarmist framing, and “this one simple trick” outperforms nuance.
Talk + Meditation: How to Trust Yourself
Learn how to rebuild self-trust, stop shrinking your life, and stay grounded when triggered. Also do a meditation on mindful breathing.
Being Well Podcast: How to Create a Year You’ll Love
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how we can put our key values into action in 2026.
Talk + Meditation: Good Intentions
When the world feels morally confusing—or you’re hard on yourself for not being perfect—this talk explores how to reconnect with your good intentions, clarify your values, and live from the deeper goodness already moving through you.
Find Your Own Way
In the body or the mind, there is no life without goals. Trying to “transcend” goals is itself a goal. The only question is: Are your goals good ones?
Being Well Podcast: Who You’ll Be This Year: Values, Goals, and a Different Kind of Resolution
Dr. Rick and Forrest make the case that most resolutions fail because they focus on the wrong things: outcomes and behaviors rather than key values.
See Deep Wants
When deeper wants are recognized one feels seen and less likely to be reactive. See deep wants is understanding what someone may want and giving them an alternative offering which may reduce negative emotion and increased cooperation.
Being Well Podcast: Against Nonchalance: Why Caring is Cool in 2026
Forrest and Dr. Rick close 2025 by making the case for healthy caring: choosing objects of care wisely, prioritizing process over outcome, and cultivating equanimity without slipping into nonchalance.
Make Good Bargains
Life is full of tradeoffs between benefits and costs. Sometimes the rewards of going for a run, getting fresh air, and improving health may be worth the cost of losing half an hour of work time while gaining a pair of achy legs.
Talk + Meditation: Finding a Way Forward through Grief
Grief is normal — but we can get stuck in it. Learn how to release rumination, hold loss in love, and give yourself permission to move forward.
Being Well Podcast: Resentment, Situationships, and Highly Sensitive People: December Mailbag
Dr. Rick and Forrest open up the mailbag to answer listener questions about resentment, highly sensitive people, situationships, and expanding the window of tolerance.
Being Well Podcast: The Therapy Wars: Science, Self-Help, and that IFS Article
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore one of the major topics in psychology today: how to understand evidence-based care, “that IFS article,” and the tension between mainstream and alternative approaches.