How To Develop A Resilient Mind | Dr Rick Hanson

Chris Williamson 0:00 (wind blowing) Hello, friends. Before I introduce today's guest, I wanted to give a massive shout-out to everyone who shared and supported the episode from last week. We ended up in the top 100 on Apple Podcasts worldwide chart for three days, off the back of one episode, which is, uh, absolutely insane. We've also now crossed 3.6 million listen minutes (laughs) in under a year. So thank you very much. Please continue to share the episodes, tell a friend who you think would enjoy them, and rate the podcast if you would, wherever you are listening. It does massively help, and it makes me very happy. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Rick Hanson, who is a psychologist and New York Times bestselling author. Now, what's particularly interesting about Rick was that he has a very deep understanding of the esoteric meditation and wellness side of the brain and, and how life can be conducted, but also has a very strong academic background in science as well. So, he is a, a serious (laughs) contender for understanding how the brain works, and today we're talking about Resilient, his new book. It's a very novel topic that I've never actually thought of all that much, and relating it to how we experience everyday life and how it can improve our wellbeing was a, a big eye-opener, and I would be very interested to know if you agree. So, if you do or if you don't, drop me a message on Instagram, Twitter, wherever you find me, @chriswillex. For now, we're going to learn how to be resilient with Dr. Hanson. (upbeat music) Dr. Rick Hanson, how are you today?

Dr Rick Hanson 2:01 Chris, I'm very happy to be here. And by the way, please call me Rick, or I'll have to call you Mr. Williamson or something.

Chris Williamson 2:06 (laughs) That's fine. We'll stay informal today.

Dr Rick Hanson 2:10 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:10 So Rick, what are we going to learn about today? What are you teaching us about?

Dr Rick Hanson 2:14 Well, you've asked me here to really talk about resilience, which for me is a word that's kinda easy to dismiss, like a cliché we've heard it a million times. But, the essence for me is how do you grow? How? How do you grow an unshakable core of resilient happiness? That's the question. It's easy to be happy when everything's going your way, but in the core of your being, how do you build up an unconditional wellbeing that can deal with the challenges of life and still feel content and at peace inside? So that's what I hope we can talk about.

Chris Williamson 2:47 Wow, that would be... If I can come up with that by the end of this episode, I'll be an (laughs) incredibly happy man. Uh, so-

Dr Rick Hanson 2:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 2:53 ... many listeners will probably know you for Hardwiring Happiness. That was a, a New York Times bestseller, right? Um-

Dr Rick Hanson 2:59 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:59 Was there much overlap between that and the current book you're writing?

Dr Rick Hanson 3:03 That's a-

Chris Williamson 3:04 Or like the current book-

Dr Rick Hanson 3:04 ... great question.

Chris Williamson 3:04 ... you just released

Narrator 3:05 I should say.

Dr Rick Hanson 3:05 Yeah. That book, Hardwiring Happiness, y- kind of you get it from the title. It's the, it's about the fundamental how of growing qualities inside that you, that you care about, like grit, or gratitude, or happiness, or self-worth, love for others, skills of different kinds. In other words, how do we actually hardwire passing experiences that are mostly usually wasted on the brain, but instead, how do we capture them? How do we harvest them and wire them into our own bodies, so we become stronger and happier in general? So that's like the general method, how to fish, and then the book Resilient, it's gonna be a dumb metaphor here-

Chris Williamson 3:43 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 3:43 ... is about catching 12 fish. (laughs) You know?

Chris Williamson 3:45 Okay.

Dr Rick Hanson 3:46 One of the 12 fish of 12 strengths, that book's about 12 strengths, 12 factors that are based in the evolution of the brain as a kind of framework, but then we get into the practicality of it, 12 strengths inside that bring a resilient wellbeing in the face of life.

Chris Williamson 4:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 4:00 One of the 12 strengths is learning, so that's the how to fish in general, and then the other 11 are specific fish, like mindfulness, compassion, aspiration, courage, that the book teaches you how to catch, in effect, and w- weave into your own body and so that you have them with you wherever you go. So that's kind of a difference between the two books.

Chris Williamson 4:22 I get you. So is learning the foundation upon which all of the others are built?

Dr Rick Hanson 4:28 Yes, and isn't it true that that's the foundation of everything? You know, uh, I, I had this experience when I was a teenager that, when I look back on it, it was like a lot of things that happen when you're a teenager. You blow right by it, and you hardly realize that something has happened that's important for you, you know? But you look back at it later. I was about 15, and I realized that I was utterly unhappy. I was miserable. I was neurotic. I was seriously messed up. Um, I was a mess, and I was kind of in despair, in a way. Like, "What am I gonna do? My crummy family, my crummy school, I'm dead in the water. No one likes me." It wasn't, it wasn't horrible abusive, like some childhoods are, but it was pretty bad, pretty miserable. But the light bulb went off that I could always grow and heal and learn and develop from here, going forward. In other words, I could learn every single day how to be a little happier, how to talk to girls, how not to be such a dork, how to not get so bothered by my parents. You know, I could learn and grow every day, and that is the essence of self-reliance, where you take it on every day. "How can I learn? How can I grow? How can I be a little happier, a little stronger, a little wiser when I go to bed tonight?" And that got me really, really interested in that fundamental process of how do you actually develop yourself, 'cause then, that's the strength of strengths, right? Learning, broadly defined, not memorizing the multiplication table. I mean, like body learning, emotional learning, social learning, spiritual learning. That is the strength of strengths, 'cause it's the one that grows the rest of them. So if you get good at learning, duh, you know, then you can apply it to anything you wanna develop inside yourself or if you wanna help other people.

Chris Williamson 6:08 Yeah, I think certainly for me, the friends that I'm closest with and the people that I resonate with the most are others that have a passion for learning things.

Dr Rick Hanson 6:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:17 And that's, that's not restricted to academic learning or, uh, k- useless fact learning. (laughs) It's a-

Dr Rick Hanson 6:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:26 ...a virulent hunger for just wanting more, more knowledge or understanding-

Dr Rick Hanson 6:31 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:31 ...whether that be, uh, understanding ourselves and why we operate the way we do, or understanding-

Dr Rick Hanson 6:38 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:38 ...why there's debris from the bottom of the sea on the top of Mount Everest. Like, you know, you just, just wanting to know stuff. And I think I feel very fortunate that I'm one of the people that's wired in a way that I enjoy learning. Um-

Dr Rick Hanson 6:51 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:52 However, I definitely wish that my capacity for retention and recall was improved.

Dr Rick Hanson 6:59 Yeah. Now if I could though, a- as a guy, I am a f- I don't... Uh, well, I'll... I'm a total geek myself. I love learning of the kind that you're describing. And the kind I'm gonna focus on here is in a way a different kind of learning. It's more a becoming, in other words, becoming stronger, becoming happier, becoming more patient, uh, becoming, you know, more at peace in a deep and profound way, uh, becoming more skillful with other people, you know, d- developing habits, uh, um, having it be easier to exercise or not drink too much or, uh, not be so bothered by other people. That's the kind of learning I really wanna focus on here with you, the, you- you know, the development of kind of who we are, us including the background experience of living, uh, the development of traits inside us over time. Because to me, as a guy who's well-educated and I love learning in an ongoing kind of way, day-to-day, most of that kind of more intellectual learning is interesting, but it doesn't have a big effect on our day-to-day wellbeing or our footprint on the planet or our effect on other people. The development of who we are in terms of psychological traits, of happiness, or calm, or lovingness, or self-compassion, grit, things like that, that's what really affects us, um, every day. And so that, as- as a psychologist and as a psychotherapist, that's especially what interests me, also as a long-term mindfulness teacher and spiritual practitioner, that's what has also really interested me, you know, in my own path of awakening over this lifetime.

Chris Williamson 8:43 Wow. Yeah. So where do we begin? Where do we start? If we want to-

Dr Rick Hanson 8:48 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:48 ...we want to develop ourselves into a, a, a-

Dr Rick Hanson 8:52 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 8:52 ...better fish catcher-

Dr Rick Hanson 8:53 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:53 ...and we've got 11 fish and we wanna get 'em all, um-

Dr Rick Hanson 8:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 8:56 ...where, where are we starting?

Dr Rick Hanson 8:58 That's right. Uh, a useful framework for me is to think in, uh, think in terms of the three fundamental needs of any animal, which are related to the three stages of evolution and the three levels or stages in the brain. And those needs give us an overar- overarching, uh, organizing framework because if you think about it, we are resilient in the service of needs, and if we don't meet our needs, we can't sustain wellbeing. Needs are a kind of deep idea in biology and in psychology, and I think, uh, it's really useful actually to move them back into the front, uh, foreground of the conversation, what are our needs, and to be vulnerable enough and brave enough to accept the fact that you really do have needs. So needs, three needs, safety, satisfaction, connection, in broad umbrella terms. Most of what we need and want, and I'll blur the distinctions there, um, most of what we need and want falls into one of those three categories or some combination. S- we need to be safe. I- rule one in the wild is eat lunch today, don't be lunch today.

Chris Williamson 10:08 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 10:08 Live to see the sunrise, right?

Chris Williamson 10:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 10:10 Uh, and then, uh, well, we also need to be satisfied, whether it's, you know, a little worm that needs to get food or a complicated human that's, you know, seeking different goals and different kinds of pleasures and trying accomplish things and be successful in life. And we also need to be connected, again, whether it's a worm just having sex with another worm or very complicated humans dealing with politics and grievances and tribalism and attachment and s- social emotions like shame and inadequacy or feelings of self-worth. So that's the territory here. So we need to address our needs. That was... So the first thing I would just suggest to people is to look inside and ask yourself, given the challenges that you're facing out in the world and inside yourself, what are the key needs that are really addressed that are being tapped here? I- are you dealing with challenges to safety? Are you dealing with challenges to satisfaction, to goal attainment? Are you dealing with challenges in relationships? And then that takes you... It's really useful. That takes you diagnostically as a kind of roadmap into spotlighting the particular resources that would help you with your particular challenges. So let me be really concrete about it.

Chris Williamson 11:25 Cool.

Dr Rick Hanson 11:25 So, um, I'll do it kind of fast in a summary way. So you think about challenges to safety. They're indicated a lot by fear, or anger, or feeling immobilized, or you're outgunned, outnumbered, you're helpless. So if in yourself or other people those red lights are flashing on your inner dashboard, you know anxiety, so any kind of spectrum including subtle uneasiness, or irritability, anger, or a sense of khh being frozen, you know, you can't... you're, uh, you can't do anything, that indicates needs for safety. And it's important obviously to act out in the world. My focus is gonna be about, how do you act inside your own mind? How do you grow strengths inside yourself, the good inside yourself? So to deal with safety, it's really incredibly useful to know how to calm yourself down.... how good are you at calming down? How good are- what's your resting state of relaxation and ease inside yourself? How, how rapidly can you drop into tranquility at will? Those are key strengths that develop. Another key strength obviously is grit, determination. I have a lot of background in wilderness. I've done a lot of things where you really had to suck it up and dig deep to survive. That's a strength to deal with safety challenges. And then a third big one is to notice that actually most of the time, you're all right in the moment. Uh, we're designed through evolution, as you well know, to be paranoid, right? Always looking around the corner, what's about to bite us or eat us or leave us? And instead, the truth is, most of the time though, in the moment of now, we're actually okay. And as you develop that felt sense of being okay in the moment, you're more able to deal with challenges without having them invade the core of your being.

Chris Williamson 13:07 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 13:07 I've done a lot of things in rock climbing where it's really hazardous, but I'm not freaked out inside. So I'll stop right there. I've al- I've spoken to one of the three needs, but that gives you an illustration of what I think is really useful to do.

Chris Williamson 13:18 I totally get it. I, I, I really do. I recently did a podcast with Alex Hutchinson, who wrote a book called Endure. If you haven't s-

Dr Rick Hanson 13:25 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:25 ... read it yet, I would, I would highly advise getting that also.

Dr Rick Hanson 13:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:28 I'm very fascinated by that. What I like and what some of the listeners at home, um, may resonate with is you are breaking down a very overwhelming, nebulous, kind of ephemeral, global-

Dr Rick Hanson 13:43 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:43 ... sensation of s- discomfort which the sum is greater than the whole of the parts sometimes.

Dr Rick Hanson 13:52 Mm.

Chris Williamson 13:52 And by breaking this down into its component constituent parts-

Dr Rick Hanson 13:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 13:58 Y- s- you see them for what they are and nothing more, and you're also given a clearer path as to what you need to fix. So, I like the idea of identifying what emotions are coming up-

Dr Rick Hanson 14:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:10 ... and then attaching those to, "Okay, so if I am feeling X, then downstream from that, what is it?" Or upstream from that, should I say.

Dr Rick Hanson 14:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:20 "What is it that's causing that? What is it that I need to potentially spend a little bit more time looking at?"

Dr Rick Hanson 14:26 I'm very glad you clarified that, Chris, 'cause you're totally right. Um, I tend to make assumptions, 'cause I'm a therapist long time, you know, that, uh, in terms of self-awareness, but you're absolutely right. The foundation is self-awareness. You've gotta be aware of the fact that you're feeling uneasy or se- unsettled or anxious, or you feel threatened in some way. And if, 'cause if you don't recognize that, then you won't be able to deliberately identify, you know, the tools you need for it. It's kinda like if your car has a flat tire and you think you're gonna solve that problem by putting gas in the tank, that's not gonna be helpful.

Chris Williamson 15:03 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 15:03 You've got to identify, yeah, that it's a flat tire. I'll give you a little example. If people... And a lot of people have a background sense of anxiety. They're anxious. You know, we live in turbulent times. We're, you know, invaded by a lot of media. There are a lot of reasons that are externalized that people feel anxious. And also, different groups are being kind of shoved up against each other. Uh, that tends to stir things up.

Chris Williamson 15:26 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 15:26 And then in everyday life, people often have a nagging background sense of, "Am I good enough? Am I performing? Will I get everything done? What do I need to do about this?" Blah, blah. So, it's helpful to look inside and realize, you know, if you are at all nervous or, or edgy or uneasy, and, and that often will then lead people to move into anger, especially men, uh, because o- it's a way to manage anxiety to move into aggression and anger. But at root, it there's an anxiety. So here's the thing. If you practice gratitude, uh, will that make you less anxious? No. Gratitude addresses satisfaction. That's like putting gas in the tank, right? But if you've got a flat tire 'cause you feel threatened by something, you're, you gotta deal with, uh, or inside yourself you feel uneasy just in general, uh, gratitude is not gonna serve you. You need to build up those kind of resources that I talked about previously that are specifically addressed to managing needs for safety.

Chris Williamson 16:23 So, what's the anxiety respon- What would you recommend-

Dr Rick Hanson 16:26 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:26 ... to someone who's got this kind of pervasive-

Dr Rick Hanson 16:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:29 ... low-

Dr Rick Hanson 16:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:30 ... low level consistent anxiety-

Dr Rick Hanson 16:32 Yup.

Chris Williamson 16:32 ... or unease, general feeling of-

Dr Rick Hanson 16:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 16:34 ... a- a- of concern?

Dr Rick Hanson 16:35 Yeah, which is 40% of the population, for sure.

Chris Williamson 16:38 Is that the stat?

Dr Rick Hanson 16:40 I'm sure it is at least that. I'm being a little conservative 'cause we're speaking about a background sense of kinda uneasiness or a tendency to go there. Maybe it's not in your mind all the time, but you can go there pretty fast.

Chris Williamson 16:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 16:52 And, uh, and then you have 10% easily of the population that are pretty clinically anxious. Well, the three resources that I named a moment ago are really good internal strengths. And to repeat the point, which bears repeating, this does not mean not doing things to make the world safer, you know? Like put a stop sign in an intersection or have a, you know, a, a v- good criminal justice system or healthcare system. Uh, I'm in America and, uh, we're working on all these right now.

Chris Williamson 17:20 Uh, yeah. You got a l-

Dr Rick Hanson 17:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:21 You got a little way to go.

Dr Rick Hanson 17:22 Yeah, we got, we're a little behind the curve. Well, that, we'll just kinda-

Chris Williamson 17:25 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 17:25 ... set that aside for the moment. Um, so building up the felt sense and the visceral core of your body of calm strength, that's a really useful thing to look for h- uh, you know, f- a, a handful of opportunities every day to feel and then take the ten or so seconds, a breath or two or three, to begin the process of hardwiring that experience of the resource, the calm strength into your-

Chris Williamson 17:55 So can you give us-

Dr Rick Hanson 17:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 17:56 Could you give us an example of that?

Dr Rick Hanson 17:57 Yep. Okay. So, let's, if- whatever you wanna grow, in... The neuropsychology of growth has two necessary and sufficient steps.... first we must experience what we want to grow or some factor of it, so we must experience calm strength if we want to grow calm strength. We must experience skillfulness with another person if we want to learn how to be more skillful, especially with a certain kind of person. All right. We start with the experience. But then, second, necessarily, we must turn that passing pattern of mental neural activation. Think of it as a very rapidly changing, um, you know, swirling eddy in the stream of consciousness-

Chris Williamson 18:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 18:39 ... that lasts only a few seconds before it becomes something else. We must help that passing pattern of activation leave a lasting physical change behind. Otherwise, by definition, there's no learning.

Chris Williamson 18:51 Okay. So how do-

Dr Rick Hanson 18:52 It's that-

Chris Williamson 18:52 ... how do we do that? How do we embed it?

Dr Rick Hanson 18:54 How do you do it? Yeah. That's w- Hardwiring Happiness is all about that. There are a lot of, there's a lot of detail about it. The essence is summarized in this great saying from the work of the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, "Neurons that fire together, wire together." That's the two stages right there, firing and wiring. So if you want to help them wire together, three major keys. First, keep them firing. Stay with the experience for a breath or two or longer instead of what people routinely do, which is to skitter onto the next thing, especially in our kind of jack-rabbity ADD-ish culture.

Chris Williamson 19:27 Yep.

Dr Rick Hanson 19:27 Uh, where, and also where our attention is being continually, um, hijacked by other people and attentions are most fundamental property, so it's important to claim your property and rest your attention for a breath or two or longer on the experience you want to internalize 'cause that's how you make it stick to you physically in part.

Chris Williamson 19:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 19:47 One, stay with it. Don't waste it. Handful of times a day. Two, if you also want a turbocharge, uh, what's called, as you know, experience dependent neuroplasticity, where you're helping your brain be changed for the better in effect, which is an incredibly cool thing to realize you're doing. You are taking charge of who you are becoming. You are taking charge of the brain change process. So a second major way to do that is try to feel the experience in your body. In other words, move out of this merely conceptual, like an idea, oh, I'm a strong guy, you know? That's good. That's better than the alternative.

Chris Williamson 20:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 20:22 But much better to feel it in your body 'cause the more an experience is embodied, the more of a neural trace it's gonna tend to leave behind, especially with repetition.

Chris Williamson 20:32 Okay.

Dr Rick Hanson 20:33 So feel it in your body. And, um, third thing that's a great hack for your brain is to focus on what's rewarding about the experience, what's enjoyable about it or meaningful to you. Because when you highlight the reward value of an experience, that increases activity of dopamine and norepinephrine, two key neurotransmitter systems that then flag the experience you're having at the time for priority in storage, for protection in the long-term processes over days and even weeks of long-term consolidation into neural networks of this experience you're internalizing into yourself. Those three things are great. You don't need to do them all. Uh, the more, the better. It's accumulative, you know? But those three, stay with it, feel it in your body, feel what's rewarding about it, will tend to steepen your growth curve, uh, your learning curve in general as you move through your day.

Chris Williamson 21:29 So that is trying to reverse the our minds are Teflon for good thoughts and Velcro for bad thoughts.

Dr Rick Hanson 21:36 Oh, very good.

Chris Williamson 21:37 That's stepping in and you're, you're strapping some Velcro to some Teflon there a little bit, I suppose.

Dr Rick Hanson 21:45 Yeah. Let- let's speak to that. So you know my s- my schtick. Um, there, there are two reasons to- to do what I'm saying here. Number one, this is how to grow strengths and including happiness inside yourself. You have to turn states into traits. Passing experiences, neurons are firing, you have to help them wire into you. And this is profoundly important and people constantly skip the second step in their personal life or when they're helping coaching or therapizing, et cetera, other people. That's the fundamental process. That's worth doing in its own sake. If you want to help yourself grow and change for the better every day, this is how to do it. Second, doing this will compensate for what you're bringing up here, Chris, which is the brain's evolved negativity bias, which as I put it, makes the brain like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones. And obviously we need to register threats, and I say I don't believe in positive thinking. Nothing in what I'm saying is about looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. It actually, what I'm talking about here is old school. It's about self-reliance. It's about becoming stronger, tougher, wiser, smarter, braver, happier, more loving, uh, to deal with the crud of life and as well as just everyday opportunities. So there are two reasons to do this. One, to grow the good in general, and two, to compensate for the ways that Mother Nature wants to make us more anxious and irritable and uptight over time for broad purposes of survival, but most of the time, that negativity bias just creates a lot of excess suffering and, uh, unneeded conflicts with other people.

Chris Williamson 23:24 And within ourselves as well, I suppose.

Dr Rick Hanson 23:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 23:27 So w-

Dr Rick Hanson 23:27 That's right.

Chris Williamson 23:28 ... we've, we've talked about how we can reinforce positive learning.

Dr Rick Hanson 23:33 Correct.

Chris Williamson 23:34 How, how can we dampen the effect of negative learning?

Dr Rick Hanson 23:37 That's a great question. Well, and when I say positive, I want to be, again, really clear. It's not about, uh, just smell the roses. That's good, but when we say positive learning, we're talking about becoming grittier, becoming more patient, becoming more compassionate for other people, uh, you know, becoming, uh, more capable at work and-

Chris Williamson 23:56 So uh, as a, as a point there, uh, uh, I guess a flag in the ground that most of the listeners could use is, did that particular situation make me feel good? If so, sit with the situation, allow it to... Like, like how you would smell a nice glass of wine, right? Or how you'd savor a, you'd savor a good meal.... you'd sit, and you'd let it percolate, and you'd reflect-

Dr Rick Hanson 24:19 Yes.

Chris Williamson 24:19 ... on the experience briefly, for, like you say, the, the 10 seconds or so. That's how we identify, or that's one of the strategies, I'm gonna guess, that we can use to identify, "Should I be spending some time reflecting on this?"

Dr Rick Hanson 24:34 Um, I, I, that's totally true, and the reason I'm a little twitchy here is that I've just learned in talking about this that framing it in that way tends to take people fairly quickly into a kind of trivial or superficial take on this-

Chris Williamson 24:52 Got you.

Dr Rick Hanson 24:52 ... e- essentially equating it to-

Chris Williamson 24:53 So how can we, how can we frame it differently, then?

Dr Rick Hanson 24:55 Yeah. It's legit what you're saying. Why not? Obviously, savor that glass of wine or that moment, you know, with your partner, or you're just, you know, relaxing at the end of a workout. You know, why not? But what I'm getting at more generally is, what do you want to grow inside yourself these days? What are you trying to develop? Not just head learning, like knowing more things about, you know, the universe, but inside yourself. Are you trying to become, uh, more patient, more skillful, and so forth? So one example is, I've been married a long time. Something will happen with my wife. We're having an interaction, it's getting a little heated, I'm getting irritated, and I suddenly realize, "Hey, Rick, it'll go better (laughs) if you do X instead of Y." And that doesn't mean knuckling under my, to my wife or walking on eggshells. I just realized, "Oh, I could be more skillful in some way, in the future, and I gotta clean up the mess of this argument, but-"

Chris Williamson 25:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 25:51 "... in the future, I'm gonna, you know, be more skillful." There's a moment there to help that learning land inside yourself so that the next time your partner is doing their thing and maybe they're being a little irritating, uh, you're not gonna react the same way next time. You've actually learned how to be different. You've learned how to be more skillful. So that would be an example.

Chris Williamson 26:13 I totally-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:13 Or-

Chris Williamson 26:13 I totally get it. I think maybe if my, while I was, I was analogizing between, um-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:19 ... you savoring a nice glass of wine-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:21 ... and thinking, "This is nice," and-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 26:24 ... you feeling a sensation in your body after you have done something which you yourself value by the values you've given yourself and savoring it in that same manner.

Dr Rick Hanson 26:34 That's ex- that's right. But savoring-

Chris Williamson 26:36 That's-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:36 ... is a tricky-

Chris Williamson 26:37 That's-

Dr Rick Hanson 26:37 ... word because here's a, here's a, another... I'm glad we're getting into the weeds here. Sometimes what we have to register is not pleasant. It's not something we would savor. Like, for example, if you recognize how to be more skillful with somebody, you don't really savor that, if you think about it.

Chris Williamson 26:52 Agreed.

Dr Rick Hanson 26:53 Also, um, if you're, if you're... Like, I was a shy, dorky, nervous kid. Um-

Chris Williamson 27:00 We all were. We all were, Rick.

Dr Rick Hanson 27:01 I don't know about all of you guys. I was-

Chris Williamson 27:03 No, I'd have given-

Dr Rick Hanson 27:03 You know, maybe-

Chris Williamson 27:03 ... I'd have given anyone a run for their money as a shy, dorky kid.

Dr Rick Hanson 27:06 Oh, then good. Then you know what I'm gonna say here. So, but then in young adulthood, you know, I, I started doing stuff in wilderness, and I began having... I was very young going through school, so I didn't realize I was at all athletic, and I felt inadequate and not manly and whatnot. So then, starting in college and beyond, I did a lot of stuff in wilderness in which I would have many experiences of being strong, you know, even feral. Like, here on the planet or pulling over an overhang or, you know, making a fire in the rain and ... And I would just kinda try to help those experiences sink in, 'cause they compensated for those old feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness, and they were also a way to build up grit over time. So that, it, it's not so much that I was savoring them. It was I was really trying to help them land inside and shift myself along the way. That would be-

Chris Williamson 27:58 I understand.

Dr Rick Hanson 27:59 ... yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:59 That's a r-

Dr Rick Hanson 27:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:59 That's a m- that's a, a nice bit of clarification that we've got there for that. So-

Dr Rick Hanson 28:03 Yeah. H- one more-

Chris Williamson 28:04 We've, like I say, we, we-

Dr Rick Hanson 28:05 One more, one more. Remorse. Sometimes you just gotta register that you were a jerk (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 28:10 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 28:11 It's not a pleasant experience. You're not gonna savor healthy remorse, the winds of healthy remorse where you realize, like, I yelled at our daughter once when she was, like, two and I didn't think I was that loud, but I freaked her out, and I just felt so bad at the look on her face. I was just like, "Man, never do that again." Um, like, you know, that's something too we've got to let sink in, but it's not something we would, quote unquote, "savor."

Chris Williamson 28:36 Totally correct. Um, I did a podcast, I think the li- the listeners will probably know it better than me, number 14 or 15 with Corey Allen. And-

Dr Rick Hanson 28:44 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:44 ... he coined this term which I absolutely love and you may, you may like as well, which he referred to as the mindfulness gap, and it's that breath in between action and your interpretation of it, either from-

Dr Rick Hanson 28:57 Yes.

Chris Williamson 28:57 ... yourself or from someone else. And I, I, I often, I often think about that mindfulness gap. When you're talking there, you're in an argument with your wife or your-

Dr Rick Hanson 29:05 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:05 ... uh, uh, y- there's an emotion or a sensation that, or a thought that's arising inside of you, and before you allow it to fully burst up from the water as the fully formed bubble that it is, you just catch it and just think-

Dr Rick Hanson 29:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 29:17 ... "For one second, I'm just gonna use this mindfulness gap to work out actually what is this and what should I do with it."

Dr Rick Hanson 29:24 Y- uh, y- it's great, what you're saying here, 'cause you're naming a second key condition for what I'm really jazzed about, which is the general process of growth. How do you grow? 'Cause then when you know how to grow, broadly, you can apply it to anything you wanna grow, right? And you've named already two key conditions for that. One is self-awareness. You have to be aware. Like, if you're anxious about something or uneasy, you have to recognize that, uh, because then you realize what the challenge is inside that you need your inner resource for. The other thing you've named here is that space of mindfulness where there's a, there's like a place in which you can witness what's happening rather than be hijacked by it, and I, I think of those, by the way, as two fundamental, um, resources also to grow inside. I use the term inner resource or inner strength interchangeably. Mindfulness is a resource. It's a trait. People can develop trait mindfulness, and people can also develop the trait of greater self-awareness, you know, by exploring themselves over time. And then on the basis of those two traits, then you can really steepen your growth curve as you go through your day.

Chris Williamson 30:33 I- I- I- it's very interesting that, uh, although, o- obviously it makes sense because the science reflects real life, but it's interesting-

Dr Rick Hanson 30:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:41 ... that me as someone who ... and m- my friends and other experiences that we're drawing upon here-

Dr Rick Hanson 30:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 30:46 ... that aren't informed about the science-

Dr Rick Hanson 30:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:49 ... the approaches that we are finding which are beneficial and that help are reflected in the science. Obviously, that's a- a- it's, um, natural but it's-

Dr Rick Hanson 30:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:58 ... it's nice to hear that that's (laughs) that you're not, uh, you're not comp- as we would say, you're not stood in the wind with your dick out, which is-

Dr Rick Hanson 31:07 Right.

Chris Williamson 31:07 (laughs) ... the equivalent of just not knowing-

Dr Rick Hanson 31:09 Right. Oh, it makes- yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:09 ... not knowing what you're doing and missing, missing the mark. Um, so we, we mentioned about, um, uh, bad sensations, uh, uh, and, and-

Dr Rick Hanson 31:16 Oh yeah, thank you for that.

Chris Williamson 31:18 Let's get back onto that.

Dr Rick Hanson 31:19 Okay. 100%. So, um, first, w- well, I'll do it this way. For me, there's this fundamental, uh, three ways to work with your mind. Just about all the methods I've encountered as a therapist and a long time meditator, uh, fall into three categories. First, you just be with what's there. You feel the feelings, you let 'em flow, you explore them, you have to tolerate your own experience. You just be with what's there. Um, the second great way to practice with your mind is you're trying to reduce the negative. You know, you're trying to prevent it in the first place or decrease it or just release it entirely. And the third great way to practice with your mind is you're trying to grow the good. You're trying to create it, to protect it, to increase it. In effect, if your mind is like a garden, you can witness it pull weeds or plant flowers. Let be, let go, let in. And that framework, let be, let go, let in really is clarifying. So the first thing to do with the negative is to let it be. And I suppressed the negative a long time, which just made it worse 'cause the brain, the mind is not like a flushed toilet. It's more like a septic tank.

Chris Williamson 32:31 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 32:31 You know? That stuff

Narrator 32:32 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 32:32 ... moves around. So you have to be able to feel it, and that's where l- kinda like you're getting at earlier, these other, uh, resources inside of self-awareness and mindfulness actually ena- enable us to be with our own experience and not be overwhelmed by it. The thing is, um, that I've seen for a long time, I've been working with people for a really long time, and 50% of the battle is to be able to step back from your experience, not act it out, not react to it, and witness it in a space of awareness, to be with it. And that's half the battle right there. It's so important.

Chris Williamson 33:11 Wow.

Dr Rick Hanson 33:12 But then we need to let go. So then I would say this, these three ways to practice with your mind gives you a natural sequence that maps to what's happening in the brain as well. So first, we be with what's there. That helps it become immediately less upsetting 'cause we're kinda stepped back from it. We're witnessing the movie. We're not in the movie. And then we move into releasing where like you let tension flow out of your body, you, you know, you yell a little bit, not to freak anybody out, but you get it out of your system. Being real. Um, maybe there are ideas floating through your mind that you realize, "You know, I don't need to believe that crap." (laughs) You know? "I can let that go."

Chris Williamson 33:48 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 33:49 Or you realize, "I'm getting caught up in proving my point," you know? Or, "I'm getting attached to a certain goal and it's just not happening. I need to let it go. It's not gonna happen." All right. That's-

Chris Williamson 34:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 34:00 ... the second great way to practice with the negative. And then the third is to replace what you've released with some positive alternative. That's partly where this idea of matching the resources you're growing to the nature of the challenge and the, in terms of the need that was addressed is really useful. So if you're letting go, let's say, of negative that's more anxious and angry, you can replace it and focus on things like calm strength, feeling protected by others, relaxing your body. If what you released was more related to dissatisfaction like disappointment or frustration or a sense of your life being depressive or blah, you can then b- bring in in the third practice replacements that are things like gratitude, gladness, healthy pleasure, savoring that good glass of wine or that sunset, or accomplishment. That's a really important one to register again and again and again, successful goal attainment, including in small bits like each individual email as you go through your day.

Chris Williamson 34:59 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 35:00 Let that in. Yeah. Or then if what you released, I'll finish on this one, is related to connection, so maybe you released feeling hurt by other people or mistreated or resentful or you're getting caught up in kind of grievances and vengeance, speaking of politics these days, but anyway, and in- instead of, you know, so after you've released that, what do you replace it with? You replace it with self-worth or feeling cared about or connected with other people or you grow compassion or self-compassion or confidence that are specifically related to negative material related to connection. So all right. So those three give you a great roadmap for dealing with stuff in the moment, and if you want to, as a bonus, uh, you can do what I call linking in which you're aware of both positive and negative in your mind at the same time. You have to keep the negative small and off to the side, like old feelings of hurt or feelings of resentment, and then in the foreground of your awareness, you focus on the positive material, the beneficial material, um, that's kind of the matched antidote to that negative. So you would be, let's say, in my example, aware simultaneously of feeling kinda hurt, off to the side, like ignored, dismissed, disrespected, but in the foreground, you would be really aware of people who like you, your buds, your buddies, your comrades, um, you know, your friends, your allies who really care about you and love you. And since neurons that fire together wire together, when you're aware of two things at once, especially if you keep the positive bigger, it will gradually soothe and ease and even replace the negative material over time.

Chris Williamson 36:38 That's, uh, that's a very nice prescriptive framework for, for dealing with thoughts that arise. I'm currently reading, uh, Five Ways to Know Yourself by Shinzen Young.

Dr Rick Hanson 36:49 Oh, I know Shinzen. He's the real deal.

Chris Williamson 36:51 Shinzen is a, uh, he's, yeah, he's definitely the real deal. That's a great way to put it. Um-

Dr Rick Hanson 36:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:58 So I'm currently reading Five Ways to Know Yourself, and-

Dr Rick Hanson 37:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:01 ... uh, anyone who else, anyone else who's read Shinzen's work will know that he cites suffering as pain times resistance. Actually, it's-

Dr Rick Hanson 37:08 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 37:09 ... yeah, it's pain times resistance, but what you have to remember is that that is pain to the power of resistance because-

Dr Rick Hanson 37:15 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:15 ... it's not pain plus resistance. It's for each element of pain that you have is multiplied by how much you resist it. And what I, I like about the approach that you've come up with there about being with the thoughts and about-

Dr Rick Hanson 37:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:28 ... allowing them to sit in your mind and not resisting them is the-

Dr Rick Hanson 37:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:32 ... it, it restricts this down to its smallest possible number.

Dr Rick Hanson 37:35 That's exactly right. And there's a teaching in, Shinzen's Buddhist and he and I, I, I am as well, and, you know, he, he would certainly know this. Uh, the Buddha made this great distinction between the first dart and the second dart. You know, the first dart is, there's this Buddhist saying, you know, "Pain is necessary, suffering is optional." In other words, in life there are gonna be things that happen. Physical pain, social pain. But that's the primary experience. In and of itself it's not so bad if we don't fight it, just like you're saying. It's when we fight it that we add the second, third, fourth, fifth darts of our own reactions, and that's where the bulk of our suffering really comes from.

Chris Williamson 38:12 I think as well, and, uh, the listeners at home will probably know, know this sensation as well, is the, uh, the awful kind of ba- Bayesian updating gone wrong-

Dr Rick Hanson 38:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:24 ... uh, echo chamber that is you getting irritated by something-

Dr Rick Hanson 38:29 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:29 ... and then very quickly getting irritated by getting irritated. And-

Dr Rick Hanson 38:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:34 ... very soon you've forgotten what you got irritated by and your irritation at your irritation is just this self-sustaining kind of like u- um, unlimited energy machine that carries you through the next however long until something else comes and kind of sideswipes it out of the way.

Dr Rick Hanson 38:52 I know, and so much of that I call it being lost in the simulator.

Chris Williamson 38:56 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 38:56 You know? We have these-

Chris Williamson 38:58 Yeah, that's totally right.

Dr Rick Hanson 38:58 ... recent neuro-evolution in the midline and the cortex on top that is like a virtual world. We're sucked into these little mini movies and, as you know probably, a lot of research says the more you're sucked into the simulator, or you could call it the ruminator, where you're just sort of dis- disconnected from the present moment, lost in your own little mind movie. The more people tend to be lost in the simulator, the more saturated with negative emotion they tend to be.

Chris Williamson 39:25 Yeah. I love ruminator. I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to coin that.

Dr Rick Hanson 39:28 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 39:29 Um, so I, I think what, what might be nice, we've talked about a lot of the stuff is, um, it is quite prescriptive but still conceptual and application, a- a- actually getting after it and-

Dr Rick Hanson 39:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:41 ... having some tacit strategies for how people can potentially implement some of this stuff is, is gonna be key. So are-

Dr Rick Hanson 39:48 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 39:48 ... there some habits or routines or approaches which can be, uh, uh, uh, easily understood and easily applied that the listeners may be able to, to take away today?

Dr Rick Hanson 40:00 Sure. Oh, yeah. I mean, the one thing I would bang on is get interested in growing. In other words, get interested in the process of growth itself. It's weirdly difficult, Chris, for people to focus on the process of growing even though it's obviously logically everybody would go, "Oh, yeah, that's in- that's, that's the most important thing to get good at. Get good at growing, right? 'Cause then I can grow whatever else I wanna grow." Get good at growing. But a lot of people don't pay much attention to actually the process of helping learning land, uh, especially emotional learning, you know, body learning, you know. So that would be a, a real strong suggestion for people. It may seem abstract, but it's right in the middle of every day. You know, when you go to bed, are you any wiser, any stronger, any happier than when you woke up? So that would be a key suggestion. Then I would say a second thing if I could be kind of very concrete. Less than 10 minutes a day, if people did what I'm about to say, you would totally change their life, and I'll, and I'll put it out as a challenge and you tell me if I'm wrong. First, three things. First, as you go through your day, half a dozen times a day, a handful of times each day, slow down for a breath or two or three to take into yourself something beneficial that you're experiencing. Something that's useful, something that feels good, some coming home to a, a calmer, happier place inside. You know, a connection with a friend, you finish a task, you get the kids in bed finally, you look at the sunset, slow it down for a breath or two or three, right? Okay, that's a minute or two a day.

Chris Williamson 41:42 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 41:42 Second, pick one thing you're trying to grow in yourself these days that's of an inner strength that matters to you. Like, uh, one thing I'm trying to do myself is build up more and more the habit of complete patience in the moment, even at a pretty subtle level. So I'm working on that. I'm going after that, you know? And, uh, what else? What is it? You know, my wife's working on not being so anxious about stuff. Uh, uh, you know, different people are working on different things. What are you trying to develop in yourself? Know one thing that you're trying to grow each day and then look for, in the two stages of learning, opportunities to experience it, that second you take into yourself. Right? That will organize your day and give you hope because no matter how tough the world is, if you know what you're focused on developing in yourself, that kind of organizes what you're doing. And then the third thing I would suggest, um, which really goes to our animal nature and the ways in which deep down inside each one of us is a little lizard, mouse, and monkey (laughs) related to-

Chris Williamson 42:46 Hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 42:46 ... the brain stem, subcortex, and neocortex and the three stages of evolution. You know, for a few minutes every day, drop into what I call deep green.... the deep green zone, where your body and mind feel deeply peaceful, contented, and loved and loving, in terms of the three needs. And rest in that for two or three or five minutes in a row to really, um, uh, hardwire it into your body and then is actually, uh, what I just described there, that felt sense of safe enough, satisfied enough, and connected enough, marked by a feeling broadly of peace, contentment, and love. That home ba- that's our home base, biologically. Mother Nature's plan is for her little creatures to rest in the deep green most minutes of most days because that's how you conserve biological resources, stay out of trouble, (laughs) you know? And that's your best odd strategy for a long and happy life. Problem is, in modern life, most people are jostled out of that home base by low grade but chronic mild to moderate stress.

Chris Williamson 43:52 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 43:53 And so ... Yeah. So what I'm describing, three to five minutes a day, is a training where you're training the visceral core of your body, your heart rate, your lungs, your, your belly, your gut, the core of your being, to rest in this place of deep, strong wellbeing.

Chris Williamson 44:10 I get that.

Dr Rick Hanson 44:11 Deep green.

Chris Williamson 44:11 So, um-

Dr Rick Hanson 44:12 Yep. All right. 10 minutes a day, that's it.

Chris Williamson 44:14 That's about as-

Dr Rick Hanson 44:14 First day you do it, it'll feel different. Do it for three days in a row, you'll feel really different. 10 days in a row, change your life.

Chris Williamson 44:21 That's fantastic. For the listeners at home, if you listened to, I want to say Life Hacks 105, which was round about a month ago, Yusuf mentioned an app, which is called Remembered. Have you heard of this, Rick?

Dr Rick Hanson 44:36 No. But I like the idea.

Chris Williamson 44:37 So, uh, the little icon is a bit of string around someone's finger and the- it's essentially just a reminders app, which you could use on your phone, but this one's a little bit different in that you set daily repeated reminders or you can set them at periods throughout the day. And what Yusuf likes to use it for, which is, uh, relates nicely to the strategy that you've just mentioned there, is he has a very particular sound. It's got a library of just, like, chimes and stuff, but it doesn't sound-

Dr Rick Hanson 45:02 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:02 ... like a text message. It's a very specific kind of sound.

Dr Rick Hanson 45:06 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:06 And it's a sound that you will know and that you can relate to whatever it is that you're trying to do. So for instance, at the moment, Yusuf is trying to focus on, uh, deepening the breath, on breathing-

Dr Rick Hanson 45:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:17 ... into his dan tien, which is, uh, below-

Dr Rick Hanson 45:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:19 ... the navel. And what he's using it for is whenever it goes off, I think it may be three or four times a day, it's this weird little chime that n- anyone else in the room will think it's an email or it's a whatever, but he knows that it's focus on the breath. And using that app, it's free to download, um, and, you know, if you were to, uh, try and come up with a solution to remind yourself to do something a couple of times a day, that's a great option there. I've got a couple of questions that's been, kind of one of them's been burning since the beginning

Chris Williamson 45:49 and you've t- almost touched upon it there. Um, you mentioned that our, um, our zero point setting, our natural setting as animals is to be in this deep green where we feel safe-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:03 ... and content and connected. Um, I would wager that the vast majority, and this is kind of a sad comment, I guess, but the vast majority of the listeners-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:13 ... will think, "That sounds pretty alien to me. Like, that-"

Dr Rick Hanson 46:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:16 "... that, that status, uh, that living status doesn't sound like ... That sounds like what I aim to achieve, not-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:25 ... not what I own on a day-to-day basis."

Dr Rick Hanson 46:29 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 46:29 Um, so firstly, do you think it's possible to live a consistent life that is in that state? And then secondly-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:39 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:39 ... the question, the question I've had burning, it's been written at the very top of my notes since we've been talking, is-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:43 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:43 ... if you were, if you were to take humans from 5,000 years ago-

Dr Rick Hanson 46:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 46:48 ... how do you think their, um, feelings of satisfaction and daily happiness would compare with us now, and why do you think it might be different?

Dr Rick Hanson 46:56 Man, Chris, I just feel these topics and questions are right at the heart of the personal and the political. In other words, they're right at the heart of p- personal wellbeing and functioning and they're right at the heart of what our species is dealing with in the 21st century. So, um, I'll try not to blather on.

Chris Williamson 47:16 Oh, man.

Dr Rick Hanson 47:17 Shout me out if I do.

Chris Williamson 47:18 Blather, blather away, Rick. We're all, we're all enjoying it, man.

Dr Rick Hanson 47:20 Okay, okay. I'll

Narrator 47:20 ... cut this piece.

Dr Rick Hanson 47:21 So first off, uh, l- l- let's ... I'll, I'll make two points. One, if you wanna get good at something, study people who are really good at it, right? So, uh, I've done a lot of rock climbing and I'll watch people who are much better climbers than me and I'll imagine moving in my own body like them, and then when I go up on the cliff, I climb better. All right? Study people who are really good at things. In the same way, if we want to get good at happiness and functioning, so we wanna be able to operate at a high level while simultaneously feeling really good inside and being good in our relations with others. I think that people would like that. Well, study the people who've really developed that and really embody that, and generally they tend to be people who've done a lot of inner practice, you know? They're, uh, some of them are-

Chris Williamson 48:11 We're just talking about Shinzen here, aren't we? We're just, everyone needs to sit in a circle and Shinzen-

Dr Rick Hanson 48:15 Ah.

Chris Williamson 48:16 Shinzen can be in the middle and we can just all look at him.

Dr Rick Hanson 48:19 Well, sure. Or think about-

Chris Williamson 48:22 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 48:22 ... the lady ... Think about who taught your preschool when you were in kindergarten. Sometimes a lot of the people that are really far along in their practice, they're not famous-

Chris Williamson 48:30 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 48:30 ... and they're not even, quote unquote, "spiritual," but how do they do it? How do they do it? So you reverse engineer it. That's what I'm getting at.

Chris Williamson 48:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 48:37 How do you reverse engineer enlightenment, reverse engineer peak functioning or self-actualization, reverse engineer it, and, um, including in the body, uh, right? So if you look out at the world, there clearly are people who, in the face of enormous challenge, oppression, discrimination, racism, refugee camps, the worst of the worst, still in the core of their being you can just tell there's an inner peace, an inner calm, they, they hold onto their love, they don't get corroded by hate. It's possible. So the key point is, it's possible-... how do they do it? Right? Okay. Point one. Point two, there's this great, great quotation from Robert Sapolsky, the researcher on stress. You may know it. He says, "Most episodes of stress in the wild end quickly one way or another." In other words, most stress in the wild is brief. You know, an animal is attacked, it either escapes or it doesn't. It ends quickly one way or another. And the problem is that modern humans, we don't end our stress episodes quickly. So the natural resting state is to really be centered into this feeling of biological wellbeing in which there's enough food, you know, we're looking around, we're making sure no lions are attacking, but we're okay. We're rubbing up against the other zebras. Maybe we'll get lucky tonight.

Chris Williamson 50:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 50:08 We're okay. It's okay. And it's great to appreciate that that's our home base. That rather, there's a long debate, what is human nature? I think we have two natures, you know, green zone, red zone. The green zone is our deepest nature 'cause it's our resting state. The resting state of a dynamic system is what most characterizes it. Our resting state when needs feel sufficiently met is the body calms down and the mind defaults to a sense of peace, contentment, and love. That's a key point. And so through internalizing repeated experiences that are authentic of the felt sense of needs met sufficiently, we grow, we build out this green zone core inside ourselves, which then makes us more able in a positive cycle to meet our needs without getting sucked into upsetting stress. We're able to deal with the world from this unshakable core of resilient wellbeing. And that makes all the difference in the world. So for me, the key question just to summarize is how do we face the challenges of life without getting invaded and hijacked into the red zone of fear in terms of safety, um, frustration in terms of satisfaction, and hurt or resentment or vengeance in terms of connection issues? How do we do that? And I think the possibility is to move through each day deliberately as individuals growing these strengths inside so that more and more we are like these people who are models, exemplars, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, um-

Chris Williamson 51:48 Gin Dunne.

Dr Rick Hanson 51:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:49 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 51:50 Gin, let's say, uh, or your kindergarten teacher who was always patient no matter what assholes, you know, the parents were, let alone the kids. Um, you know, and that to me is the great opportunity that's realistic in this life and, um, to develop this increasingly unshakable core in which in your essence, you're fine no matter how much crap you're dealing with.

Chris Williamson 52:15 So what we've- one point there that leads us quite nicely onto that final question about, about humans that have been, that were around a long time ago is-

Dr Rick Hanson 52:23 Oh.

Chris Williamson 52:23 ... that you mentioned that, um, a system's natural state, what was it? A system's natural state is the one which it's most comfortable in?

Dr Rick Hanson 52:32 The resting... The, what... It's interesting to think about it. Imagine a mobile in a breeze moving lightly, right?

Chris Williamson 52:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 52:38 Uh, it's a dynamic system. Um, what most characterizes a dynamic system, it's not what it goes into when it's disturbed because that's just an out of bound state. It's its resting state that most characterizes a dynamic system. You could think also of a thermostat setting in your home in Celsius. Let's say you set it at 20 Celsius, that is the resting state around which the temperature varies by a degree or two. But, so you would not say, if you were to say, "What's the, you know, how would you characterize the temperature in your home?" You'd say, "Well, it's 20 degrees." You know, it's the resting state. The resting state of human beings is where we go, and also other animals, it's where we go when needs are met. And where we go when needs are met is a really good place. Uh, most people when they feel an enoughness of safety, satisfaction, and connection become nicer. (laughs) You know?

Chris Williamson 53:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 53:31 They become more generous, calmer, they're happier. They become more ambitious. They also look around for more things to fix in the world.

Chris Williamson 53:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 53:38 They don't just sit on, you know, their cushion and eat bon bons, chanting om. You know, they want to help. Um, it's when people are dr- as you said, drawn into what I call inner homelessness, where they're not in touch with their core, they're not in this resting state, they feel kind of desperate inside. They feel uneasy and frustrated and disconnected. That's when people, um, develop long-term health issues that are stress-based, but also that's when people are vulnerable to the classic manipulations of authoritarian leaders.

Chris Williamson 54:09 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 54:10 You know?

Chris Williamson 54:10 Totally. The, the, we have the answer. Um, so y- y- why is it in that case, if that's our natural state, if that's-

Dr Rick Hanson 54:16 Yep.

Chris Williamson 54:16 ... the way that a dynamic system is supposed to be-

Dr Rick Hanson 54:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 54:19 ... firstly, why is it that so few people feel that in the modern world?

Dr Rick Hanson 54:24 Yep.

Chris Williamson 54:24 And secondly, if we're talking to Rick Hanson's great, great, great to the power of 25 grandfather from 5,000 years ago, how do you think-

Dr Rick Hanson 54:35 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 54:35 ... what, what do you think his mindset's like?

Dr Rick Hanson 54:37 That's a great question. So, um, the, the key answer to that is they're basically, humans have two natures. So one, there's our resting state. I call it the green zone for simplicity. Um, but we also, and our animal cousins, the monkeys, the mice, and the lizards, also have a second nature, the red zone, which is fast response, stress response in which we fire up into fighting, fleeing, or freezing. We are very vulnerable to getting triggered into a burst of red zone stressful activity. Mother Nature's blueprint is that those episodes of red zone fight, flight, freeze, um-... uh, stress activity are supposed to end quickly, and then we're supposed to return to the green zone for a long period of recovery. And you can look out into nature and you can see that most of the time, that's the template out there in nature. All right? The problem is, in modern life conditions, since agriculture came in 10,000 or so years ago, um, we chronically are, uh, pushed into, uh, red zone situations including in modern life. You know, we're modern, we have refrigerators, we have pain medication and all the rest of that, and yet you're exactly right. I think most people, um, are jostled into low grade, uh, mild to moderate stress every day, which is not their home base, and which accumulates wear and tear on their body in terms of-

Chris Williamson 56:08 Why do you think that's, why do you think that's happening?

Dr Rick Hanson 56:09 Yep. It's-

Chris Williamson 56:09 What's causing this?

Dr Rick Hanson 56:12 I think the deep roots of that are in wealth inequality since agriculture came in. I think the constructed, the socially constructed sources of chronic mild to moderate stress are largely rooted in inequalities of wealth and power that emerged after agriculture enabled our ancestors 10,000 years ago to accumulate surpluses and then cities, and all the rest of that, the deep causes. Because if you think about it, um, the way that society operates today is a vast departure from the hunter-gatherer template. And I wanna be really clear, I like my modern conveniences. I like pain control. I like a cold beer.

Chris Williamson 56:57 Me too.

Dr Rick Hanson 56:57 I like, I like ESPN. You know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 56:59 Yep.

Dr Rick Hanson 56:59 Uh, you're in England, I'm here, or wherever you are. You know, we're communicating. I- I love that stuff.

Chris Williamson 57:04 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 57:04 But the problem is, we just look at it, in a hunter-gatherer band, that's the natural template for human politics and life. That's a band of 50 people, about 30 adults, most of whom you know your entire life. Now just think about that as the ways in which we evolved until barely just 10,000 years ago. For 300,000 years of our species, another two million years of tool manufacturing ancestors, close relatives, that's the template, a small band of 30 to 50 people interacting with other bands m- many of whom are dangerous because we're competing for scarce resources. So, we need to cooperate internally and be, uh, fearful and aggressive externally much of the time.

Chris Williamson 57:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 57:50 That's our template.

Chris Williamson 57:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 57:52 In those bands, bear with me briefly, there are three conditions enabled healthy politics. Common truth, you couldn't hide the facts. You saw ... You know when you live together with people day in and day out, you see the truth. You know who's lying, you know who's trustworthy, you know who's legit, you know where the money ... You know, you know who's eating more food and sneaking some food away from the group. You, you, you know who's screwing who. You know, you know what's going on in a hunter-gatherer band. But when you start having agriculture and big cities and Game of Thrones-

Chris Williamson 58:25 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 58:25 ... and even modern life, you can hide the truth. And in fact in modern times, we have people who attack truth-seeking and truth-protecting. But in hunter-gatherer bands, there's common truth. There's also common welfare. You know, there are minor inequalities of wealth and power in a hunter-gatherer band, but on the whole, you're kin, you are relatives, and also because you're a band, you really need each other. So, if you go down, that hurts me. On the other hand, if you prosper, that helps me. So, we have common welfare. We're- we're really tied together. Again, in a way that is not the case because since surpluses came in and inequalities of wealth and power that are big, rich people can get richer, it doesn't trickle down.

Chris Williamson 59:09 Yeah, uh-

Dr Rick Hanson 59:09 Poor people can have a f- can have a famine, it doesn't mean that it impacts the people behind the castle walls.

Chris Williamson 59:14 Totally right, yeah. The-

Dr Rick Hanson 59:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:16 ... quote from the Bible which is, "From those who have nothing, more will be taken. From those who have-"

Dr Rick Hanson 59:21 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:21 "... everything, more will be given." It's-

Dr Rick Hanson 59:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:23 (laughs) It's a very, very old concept. O- one part I-

Dr Rick Hanson 59:27 One last thing, you don't have common justice. The third condition in a hunter-gatherer band, common truth, common welfare, is common justice. You know the leaders, they're leaders, they have power, but eventually honestly, if our band had a leader who was a jerk, after a season or two, you and I and some other men would go whoop him.

Chris Williamson 59:45 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 59:45 (laughs) You know what I mean? Or we'd just say, "See you later, asshole. We're gonna form a new band."

Chris Williamson 59:49 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 59:49 Politics would change. But now you don't have common justice. You have rich man's law, poor man's law. So for me, to summarize a lot of this stuff, the challenge in the 21st century is how with seven billion plus interconnected people can we recreate the objective conditions for healthy human politics, healthy human governance, which is common truth, common welfare, and common justice? And if we can lay that foundation, which you see some societies, like the EU imperfectly, the UK imperfectly, um, you know, are moving in that direction. But you can also see that elites that are wealthy and want to protect their wealth and power, they attack these three conditions, common truth, common welfare, common justice because that's what enables them to continue living their sweet life to their own advantage, but to the disadvantage of the great majority of other humans.

Chris Williamson 1:00:42 Would that be ... So I- I agree with all of your points. However, the- the thing that sticks out in my mind is that I don't think that the people who are at the top of the tree are unbelievably happy either. So the inequality-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:00:55 That's the district too, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 1:00:56 Yeah. So i- it's not like I- I- I don't ... I'm- I'm sure that there's a lot of people who are very wealthy and very successful who feel even worse than the- the proletariat, like down (laughs) in the, down in the streets. So-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:01:08 I think you're right. And that gets to a really deep point which is we can't just fix the objective conditions, we need to internalize the feeling of needs met. Otherwise-... you're right. We're, I grew up in LA around Beverly Hills. The- the Tibetan metaphor is the hungry ghosts, you know, who have godlike powers and enormous appetites but they can't satisfy their appetites. And I agree, that does seem to be the case with a lot of people caught up in wealth and fame. They're not deeply contented and, um, to me the trick is to be able to do both, is to be reasonably, um, you know, have like a, t- to not live in grinding poverty, to have good medical care, to have enough food, you know. A- a billion humans go to bed hungry every night in this planet today. Uh, in America, in my country, a million children go through homelessness every year. You know, one in four- one in five children in America lives below the poverty line and has to face hunger, um, not infrequently. So yeah, we need to do those things, but on the other hand, if we don't have a transformation of the heart, if we don't internalize the felt sense of safe enough, satisfied enough, connected enough, then we're always hungry, then we're caught up in the Buddha's second noble truth of craving, and we're always chasing and trying to pile up our possessions and build up our empire. Frankly, look at Donald Trump, the epitome of a hungry ghost, someone who has everything and yet you could see it in his face, he's miserable inside and in his- and in his own search for a lasting happiness which he's never found, he's harming lots of other people.

Chris Williamson 1:02:49 We've got that hedonic treadmill again, haven't we? Which the listeners will have heard us mention before as you begin to- your body begins to renormalize to whatever increased state of nicer possessions it is that you get. You get the new car and then after a couple of weeks it's, "Oh, well there- there's another new one that I need now." Um, so final- final-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:03:07 Well, I- I want to speak to that though ...

Chris Williamson 1:03:09 Yep.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:03:09 ... because new research shows that people can actually change the setting on their hedonic treadmill.

Chris Williamson 1:03:13 Okay.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:03:13 In other words, and it's- and it goes to what I was getting at earlier about trait. People can build trait happiness and the external source, that's correct, of a spike of happiness like a new car, that tends to fade, but as you repeatedly internalize the feeling of the new car or much more modest things like the l- the little accomplishments you- you- you do every day, as you internalize the feeling of that, more and more you build up a very strong unconditional sense of contentment inside you. So then as you face whether to get the next car, you know, you think about it and maybe you do need a new car and you get a new car, but it's not based on an underlying lack or scarcity inside.

Chris Williamson 1:03:58 Mm.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:03:58 Which is the root of the word for want as you- as you know. Um, you know, uh, instead you meet the next pleasure feeling already contented and that really changes things.

Chris Williamson 1:04:09 It allows you to see it with a much, um, more unhindered viewpoint I suppose, as opposed to you can... Uh, it- this mindfulness gap again, isn't it? So final- final thing, we're gonna- we're gonna-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 ... um, interview, we're- you're gonna run a- a little experiment. You're gonna sit down, you're gonna put him on the couch, I know this isn't your, uh, your- your usual way ...

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:28 Yeah. Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:04:28 ... but you're gonna- you're gonna pop him on the couch and he's gonna be, let's say 10,000- 10,000 years ago just before agricultural revolution.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:34 All right. My great-grandfather.

Chris Williamson 1:04:35 Great-great-XXX grandfather.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:38 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 Uh, what do you think his mindset's like if we were to compare-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:41 That's correct.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 ... him to a modern con- modern human?

Dr Rick Hanson 1:04:43 Yeah. I think the best comparison are those j- j- you could call them Stone Age P- Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in the world today that are studied, you know, by anthropologists and others, and that's a pretty good guess. I think that, um, he or she, uh, was facing a lot of physical pain, right? In the wild, uh, we're- we're vulnerable to pain. Um, myself, uh, age 66, so I've had things in my body that probably would have killed me, you know, 10,000 years ago were it not for, uh, modern medicine.

Chris Williamson 1:05:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:05:17 So there's a certain amount of pain, food sources are not so reliable, maybe a certain amount of hunger. On the other hand, I think that in his mind, he would feel much more connected in community with his friends and family, there would be much more of a bone deep felt sense of belonging and being loved and- than a typical person probably experiences these days. Loneliness is epidemic and, um, it's interesting research, maybe you had had other people talk about it, l- loneliness, not ... Like I'm an introvert, I like solitude, uh-

Chris Williamson 1:05:52 Yeah, me too.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:05:52 ... but that's ... Yeah, that's not being lonely. Loneliness as a- as a unpleasant experience has roughly the equivalent health consequences to smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day. Like, isn't that crazy?

Chris Williamson 1:06:07 Wow.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:06:08 In terms of long-term impact, yeah, chronic d- uh, mortality, morbidity. Loneliness imposes health burdens. A lot of people are lonely. I don't think that great-grandfather would feel lonely in that way. I think also that great-grandfather would be spending less time in the ruminator, the simulator.

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 Yeah.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:06:24 There's a lot about (...) life that even though he has the same neural hardware that we have today, the same capacity to go in the simulator, when you're more, um, in the present moment in the nature of your life as a hunter-gatherer and you're also more in nature, neurologically, a little cool hack, w- the more you have a sense of things as a whole, including your whole body or the whole physical environment like in the rainforest or the Serengeti Plains, the more you're in nature, that activates networks on the sides of your brain which draw you into a sense of wholeness and lower activity in these midline neural networks that are the neural basis for going into the simulator, going into these mini movies. So I think- I think that grandfather would be more, you know, dropped into the present moment. Okay, those are my guesses. What are yours? What do you think?

Chris Williamson 1:07:19 ... I don't know. So I think that I, I, I definitely agree. Greater se- a better sense of belonging.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:07:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:25 Um, I, I certainly know myself that since, in the last 18 months to two years or so, since I've started to take more care with my sleep hygiene and-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:07:36 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 ... try and match... I'm a club promoter by trade, which means that my, um, sleeping patterns can sometimes get slammed, and-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:07:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:43 ... accounting for that has made a big, a big difference. Uh, being in nature certainly makes a huge difference for me, so I'd agree, I'd agree on all of those points. What's interesting is I was thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs as you were talking-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:07:56 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 ... about that there, and it almost-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:07:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:58 ... it almost sounds like the bottom rungs, the need for, um, warmth, and, and food, and, and so on and so forth, those ones are potentially being less well met.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:08:08 Mm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 But then the, the ones further up the pyramid are being better met.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:08:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:08:13 And oddly enough-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:08:14 That's interesting.

Chris Williamson 1:08:15 ... oddly enough that's been flipped now. I don't know whether you'd agree with that in, in one society.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:08:19 I think that's deeply insightful and really interesting. And, and you know what? It's really poignant. But for me, well, you know, in other words it's poignant that, that so many people that lead lives of quiet desperation, you know, to quote Thoreau, and yet the typical person, uh, just a lower middle class, working class person even in the world today lives better than the kings and queens of a couple hundred years ago.

Chris Williamson 1:08:44 (laughs)

Dr Rick Hanson 1:08:44 You know? So it's like what's our comparison point? But the opportunity going forward to me is to realize that we really have a f- the power, and it's about claiming the power that you have. It may sound abstract. For me it's extremely gritty, and down to earth, and scruffy, and determined, and self-reliant to claim the power you have to shape your brain every day, which really means shaping who you are becoming every day, and as part of that, to claim your power to not be manipulated by, you know, the forces in society that want to make us hungry ghosts 'cause that's what drives consumer culture and that's what makes people docile, uh, with authoritarian leaders and caught up in us-against-them rivalries. Instead, we have the power every day to look for authentic opportunities, to feel safe enough, satisfied enough, and connected enough, which is how to grow that strength inside of resilient happiness.

Chris Williamson 1:09:42 Rick, uh, I think that's a fantastic point to, to finish on. I get the impression that me and you could've spent an awful, an awful lot more time (laughs) uh, discussing this, but if the listeners want it enough and if they want-

Dr Rick Hanson 1:09:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:55 ... to drop me a message and let me know, I may be able to persuade you to come back on. But for now, we are going to have to call it a day there. Would you be able to tell everyone who's listening where they can find you online?

Dr Rick Hanson 1:10:06 Chris, it's been a pleasure. I could keep going myself. Simplest way to find me online is rickhanson.net. My name, Rick Hanson, H-A-N-S-O-N .net, and that's the easiest way to find my stuff. Tons of freely offered material there, uh, lots of short clips, videos, audios, guided practices, things you can do for free to change your brain for the better. I also have some neat online programs that are highly accessible, grounded in science. You can check 'em out. And if anybody has any kind of financial need issue, we love giving scholarships. We love making our stuff available for free. Um, so rickhanson.net, S-O-N.

Chris Williamson 1:10:43 Fantastic. Well, the link to, uh, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness will be in the show notes below, as will the link to your website. Rick, it, it's been a blast, man. Th- thank you so much for coming on. I, I think everyone's gonna have learned an awful lot today.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:11:00 I hope so, and I appreciate it, and I, I appreciate you, Chris, for the ways you're helping people. You're s- a real service to people what you're doing.

Chris Williamson 1:11:06 Thank you very much. I'll catch you next time.

Dr Rick Hanson 1:11:09 Okay, good.