From the Blog
Writings on Well-Being Dr. Rick Hanson
Beware of Anger
Anger can alert you to threats, but also harm your health and relationships. In small and passing quantities, anger can be like medicine, but in large and lasting quantities it poisons the mind and relationships.
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Leave the Red Zone
In a busy life, each day gives you dozens of opportunities to leave the Red zone and move toward Green. Each time you do this, you gradually strengthen the neural substrates of Green, one synapse at a time.
Being Well Podcast: The Freeze-Shame Loop, Therapy Speak, and “Everyone Has ADHD”: February Mailbag
Dr. Rick and Forrest answer listener questions about the freeze state, ADHD, and power imbalances in relationships.
Talk + Meditation: A Novel Way to Explore the Eightfold Path
How impermanence, mindfulness, and the Eightfold Path help transform suffering into wisdom and compassionate action.
Transform Ill Will
Goodwill and ill will are about intention: the will is for good or ill. Ill will creates negative, vicious cycles. But that means that good will can create positive cycles. Plus good will cultivates wholesome qualities in you.
Being Well Podcast: Codependency and Healthy Dependency with Nedra Glover Tawwab
Therapist and bestselling author Nedra Glover Tawwab joins Forrest to discuss the unintended consequences of the boundaries movement.
Talk + Meditation: Accepting Your Vulnerabilities – Including from Early Childhood
Learn how accepting vulnerability can help you lower defenses, heal old wounds, and discover a deeper sense of peace and inner strength.
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.
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?