Simple practices for resilient happiness from Rick Hanson, PhD
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We all have ways of connecting with others that are shaped by our past experiences—especially those from childhood. These patterns can show up in our adult relationships as feelings of insecurity, anxiety, or even avoidance.
By recognizing and working through these attachment issues, we can make significant changes in our lives and relationships. That's what I'll be helping folks do in my upcoming workshop on Healing Insecure Attachment. I hope you'll
join me and if you register by Friday you can save 20%.
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What doesn't change?
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The Practice:
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Find Stillness.
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Why?
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Things keep changing. The clock ticks, the day unfolds, trees grow, leaves turn brown, hair turns gray, children grow up and leave home, attention skitters from this to that, the cookie is delicious but then it’s all gone, you’re mad about something for a while and then get over it, consciousness streams on and on and on.
Many changes are certainly good. Most people are glad to put middle school behind them. I’m still happy about shifting thirty years ago from single to married. Painkillers, flush toilets, and the internet seem like pretty good ideas. It’s lovely to watch grass waving in the wind or a river passing. Fundamentally, if there were no change, nothing could happen, reality would be frozen forever. I once asked my friend Tom what he thought God was and he said “possibility.”
On the other hand, many changes are uncomfortable, even awful. The body gets creaky and worse. We lose those we love and eventually lose life itself. Families drift apart, companies fail, dictators tighten their grip, nations go to war. The planet warms at human hands, as each day we pour nearly a billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Countless species go extinct. As William Yeats wrote: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
And change itself is often – maybe innately – stressful. When you are really open to the fact always in front of our noses that each moment of now decays and disappears in the instant it arises – it can feel rather alarming. Life and time sweep us along. As soon as something pleasant occurs in the mind’s flow, we reach for it, but whoosh it passes away right through our fingers leaving disappointment behind. Inherently, anything that changes is not a reliable basis for enduring contentment and fulfillment.
Yet it is also true that some things remain always the same. In their stillness, you can find a refuge, an island in the stream of changes, a place to stand for perspective and wisdom about events and your reactions to them, a respite from the race, quiet amidst the noise. Perhaps even find a sense of something transcendental, outside the frame of passing phenomena.
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How?
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Stillness, a sense of the unchanging, is all around, and at different levels. Look for it, explore its effects on you, and let it sink in.
For example, it’s not the ultimate stillness, but there is that lovely feeling when the house is quiet and you’re sitting in peace, the dishes are done and the kids are fine (or the equivalent), and you can really let down and let go. In your character, you have enduring strengths and virtues and values; situations change, but your good intentions persist. In relationships, love abides – even for people who drive you crazy!
More subtly, there is the moment at the very top of a tossed ball’s trajectory when it’s neither rising nor falling, the pause before the first stroke of the brush, that space between exhalation and inhalation, the silence in which sounds occur, or the discernible gap between thoughts when your mind is quiet.
In your mind, there is always an underlying calm and well-being that contains emotional reactions, like a riverbed that is still even as the flood rushes over it (if you’re not aware of this, truly, with practice you can find and stabilize a sense of it). There is also the unchanging field of awareness, itself never altered by the thoughts passing through it.
More abstractly, 2+2=4 forever; the area of a circle will always be pi times the radius squared; etc. The fact that something has occurred will never change. The people who have loved you will always have loved you; they will always have found you lovable. Whatever is fundamentally true – including, ironically, the truth of impermanence – has an unchanging stillness at its heart. Things change, but the nature of things – emergent, interdependent, transient – does not.
Moving toward ultimate matters, and where language fails, you may have a sense of something unchangingly transcendental, divine. Or, perhaps related, an intuition of that which is unconditioned always just prior to the emergence of conditioned phenomena.
Wherever you find it, enjoy the stillness and let it feed you. It’s a relief from the noise and bustle, a source of clarity and peace. Give yourself the space, the permission, to be still – at least in your mind – amidst those who are busy. To use a traditional saying:
May that which is still
be that in which your mind delights.
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NEW ON THE BEING WELL PODCAST
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How to Deal with Other People’s Defenses
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Forrest and Dr. Rick tackle the tricky topic of how to deal with other people’s psychological defenses. It’s often easier to see other people’s defenses than to see our own, which can make them particularly frustrating to deal with. In this episode, Rick and Forrest explore the psychological and communication skills that will allow you to have more successful conversations.
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Watch/Listen to the Episode
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More Good Stuff
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WEDNESDAY MEDITATION
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Watch last week's meditation and talk on Practicing with Unprecedented Sources of Anxiety, and if you haven't yet, join me every week for this free, live offering.
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Ever wondered how much a cloud weighs? Or if it's possible to get too much sugar from eating fresh fruit? And do animals experience time the same as humans do? Check out these 101 interesting science facts to learn the answers to these questions and much more.
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FOR PARENTS
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Parents often have very different values about how to raise children. The water gets muddied further with issues about power and who gets to be “right.” And there isn’t the cultural consensus that existed in times past when we raised our children in more homogeneous communities in which most people saw the world in pretty much the same way.
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POSITIVE NEUROPLASTICITY
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PositiveNeuroplasticity.com provides resources and real-life accounts for using positive brain change in your everyday life. Classes and one-on-one counselling are also available to deepen your learning.
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Making Great Relationships
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Get 50 simple practices for solving conflicts, building connection, and fostering love in my latest book.
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"While individual waves come and go, the ocean is always ocean. While the contents of the universe are changing, the universe as universe is not."
Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
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JUST ONE THING (JOT) is the free newsletter that suggests a simple practice each week for more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind. A small thing repeated routinely adds up over time to produce big results.
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Just one thing that could change your life.
(© Rick Hanson, 2024)
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