From the Blog
Writings on Well-Being Dr. Rick Hanson
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.
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Being Well Podcast: How to Have a (Good) Life Crisis: Authenticity, Healthy Discontent, and the Anxiety of Choice
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore how to use a life crisis productively, drawing on developmental stage theories, existential philosophy, literature, personal experience, and Rick’s clinical work.
Talk + Meditation: How to Stay Present Longer
Learn how concentration deepens mindfulness, steadies the mind, and brings peace, clarity, and joy—even amid distractions and emotional turbulence.
Relax, You’ve Arrived
Part of this comes from our biological nature. To survive, animals – including us – have to be goal-directed, leaning into the future. This focus – can get confused and stressful.
Being Well Podcast: People Pleasing and the Fawn Response with Meg Josephson
Forrest and therapist Meg Josephson explore the fawn response, a survival strategy where safety is sought through people pleasing.
Talk + Meditation: Just Do the Right Thing
Caught between worry, effort, and letting go? Learn how to release what you can’t control, do the next right thing, and find peace in the middle.
Remember the Big Things
In every life, reminders arrive about what’s really important. While it’s good advice not to sweat the small stuff, we also need to nurture the large stuff.
Being Well Podcast: Anxious-Avoidant Relationships, Narcissism, and Insight to Action: Mailbag
Dr. Rick and Forrest open up the mailbag to answer questions about complex situations where good process really matters, including anxious-avoidant relationships.
Talk + Meditation: Getting Better At Pleasure! A Taxonomy of the Many Buddhist Joys
Discover the Buddha’s 5 kinds of happiness—from fleeting pleasures to lasting peace—and learn why some joys burn out while others bring freedom.
Make The Offering
Try considering your contributions as offerings, particularly the little things. Listen to your heart for offerings calling to be expressed. Maybe it’s the offering of never speaking out of anger, or really starting that novel, or determining to give love each day.
Being Well Podcast: Limerence: The Psychology of Romantic Obsession with Brandy Wyant
Forrest and therapist Brandy Wyant discuss limerence, an intense and often one-sided state of romantic obsession.
Talk + Meditation: How to Face Challenges without Suffering
Learn how to meet life’s challenges with strength and clarity—reducing stress, letting go of struggle, and finding peace even in hard times.
Meditate
Meditation is to the mind what aerobic exercise is to the body.
Being Well Podcast: Mingyur Rinpoche: A Meditation Master on Anxiety, Awareness, and Awakening
Dr. Rick and Forrest are joined by Mingyur Rinpoche, a renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher, to explore calming anxiety with awareness, relaxing unhealthy wanting, and finding a deeper sense of our innate goodness.
Talk + Meditation: The Power of One Connection
Sometimes one compassionate glance or word can change everything. Discover the power of connection with Lakiba Pittman.
Put No One Out of Your Heart
It may feel necessary to distance yourself from another person for a while or forever but you never have to put anyone out of your heart.
Being Well Podcast: 9 Lessons from the Great Minds of Psychoanalysis
Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the evolution of psychoanalysis after Freud, highlighting key ideas from figures like Adler, Klein, Winnicott, and Hillman.
Talk + Meditation: Why We Suffer—and How to Stop Adding to the Pain
Learn how to face life’s changes and challenges without adding extra suffering, using Buddhist wisdom and practical tools for inner peace.
Lower the Pressure
The pressure activates motivational circuits but has inherent collateral damage. Pressure activates ancient motivational circuits that were very effective in keeping our ancestors alive but even at best, there is an inherent collateral damage.
Being Well Podcast: Reclaiming Anger: Trauma, Repression, and Healthy Protest with Elizabeth Ferreira
Forrest and associate therapist Elizabeth Ferreira talk about healthy (and unhealthy) anger.
Talk + Meditation: How to Feel Lived by Love
Discover how to feel supported by life and “lived by love.” Shift from striving to receptivity, deepen trust, and bring compassion into every moment.
Lived By Love
Encourage love in all its forms to flow through you. Implicitly, and more fundamentally, this practice means a relaxed opening into the love – in a very very broad sense – that is the actual nature of everything.