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Just One Thing |
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Simple Practices for Resilience and Happiness from |
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DR. RICK HANSON |
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It's not too late to sign up for the Global Compassion Coalition's FREE Intergenerational Healing Summit, and still catch days 3-5. (Plus, you have the option to purchase lifetime access to the whole summit).
Across generations, patterns of pain, disconnection, and unhealed trauma can be unknowingly passed down. This summit is your invitation to break the cycle — and create a more connected, compassionate legacy for yourself and those who follow. |
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What's carrying you? |
THE PRACTICE: |
Lived By Love. |
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— Why? — |
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Feeling both the world and myself these days, one phrase keeps calling: lived by love.
Explicitly, this means coming from love in a broad sense, from compassion, good intentions, self-control, warmth, finding what’s to like, caring, connecting, and kindness.
Implicitly, and more fundamentally, this practice means a relaxed opening into the love – in a very very broad sense – that is the actual nature of everything. Moment by moment, the world and the mind reliably carry you along. This isn’t airy-fairy, it’s real. Our physical selves are woven in the tapestry of materiality, whose particles and energies never fail. The supplies – the light and air, the furniture and flowers – that are present this instant are here, available, whatever the future may hold. So too is the caring and goodwill that others have for you, the momentum of your own accomplishments, and the healthy workings of your body. Meanwhile, your mind goes on being, while dependably weaving this thought, this sound, this moment of consciousness.
It’s hard to sustain a felt knowing of the nature of everything. The brain evolved to keep our ancestors afraid to keep them alive. But if you look, and look again, you can see directly that right now, and in every now you’re alive, you’re cradled by the world and the mind like a child carried to bed by her mother. This cradling is a kind of love, and when you trust it enough to soften and fall back into it, there’s an untangling of the knots of fear and separation. Then comes both an undoing of the craving that drives suffering and harm, and a freeing and fueling love living through you and as you out into the world.
Imagine a single day in which you were often – not continuously, not perfectly – lived by love. When I try this myself, the events of the day don’t change much – but my experience of them, and their effects, improve dramatically. Consider this as a practice for a day, a week – or the year altogether.
More widely, imagine a world in which many people, enough people – known and unknown, the low and the mighty – were lived by love. As our world teeters on the edge of a sword – and could tip either into realistic prosperity, justice, and peace, or into growing resource wars, despotism, or fundamentalism – it seems to me that it’s not just possible for a critical mass of human hearts to be lived by love. It’s necessary.
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— How? — |
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The essence of this practice is yielding to all that lives you. This is a paradigm shift from the typical top-down, subtly contracted, moving-out-from-a-unified-center-of-view-and-action way of operating . . . to a relaxed receptive abiding, feeling supported by the ocean of causes creating each momentary wave of awareness. Then on this basis, there is an encouragement of love in all its forms to flow through you. The suggestions that follow are different ways to do this, and you can also find your own.
Soften and open in the heart. Notice that you are alright right now: listen to your body telling your brain that you are basically OK. Feel the fullness that is already here, all the perceptions and thoughts and feelings pop-pop-popping in this moment of consciousness. Feel the buoying currents of nature and life, waves of gifts from over 3 billion years of evolution on our blue and green pebble. Look around and see objects, including your own hands and body, and consider the unfailing generosity of the material realm, blossoming for over 12 billion years from a seed of light.
Be aware of the warmth and goodwill from others toward you. Sense your connecting to others, and how you are supported by a net of relationships. They don’t have to be perfect. Some people do care about you. You are almost certainly loved.
Feel carried by consciousness, the effortless knowing of perception and thought. When stress, worry, pressure, or pain appear in the mind, see that the fabric of this suffering – the underlying operating of the mind – is itself fine, is always already fine.
Again and again, making this little but profound shift, this giving over to the carrying cradling of mind and matter, you can afford to let your own love flow freely. Bring this down to earth: if you lived from love in your first encounter with another person today, how would you be, what would you do, how would you speak? What would a week, a year, be like in which you lived by love? How about trying this? Who knows, if enough people share in this practice, the world could become a much better place.
Let love’s currents glide you home.
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Know someone who could be lived by love? |
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NEW ON THE BEING WELL PODCAST |
Psychoanalysis: Therapy’s Controversial Origins
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Dr. Rick and Forrest explore the ideas, context, and legacy of psychoanalysis, the often-controversial origin point for modern therapy. They discuss psychoanalysis’ early history and key concepts like the unconscious mind, repression, inner conflict, and transference. Alongside those major contributions, they wrestle with what hasn’t aged so well: the reductionism, murky ethics, and entanglements with colonialism and the Victorian worldview. This episode is both a tribute to and a critique of psychoanalysis as a rich, flawed, and deeply influential starting point for modern therapy.
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NEW FROM THE WEDNESDAY MEDITATIONS + TALKS |
Compassion, Kindness, Joy, and Equanimity
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Last week I offered a live meditation on Deep Calm, followed by a talk on Compassion, Kindness, Joy, and Equanimity, and I hope you'll check it out.
If you haven't yet, sign up to join me every week for this free, live offering.
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| Check It Out |
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MORE GOOD STUFF |
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SCIENCE NEWS (VIEW ARCHIVE HERE)
Scientists discovered a treasure trove of half-a-billion-year-old fossils in the Grand Canyon, revealing detailed remains of ancient soft-bodied animals like tiny shrimp-like crustaceans, molluscs, and spiky worms, offering new insights into early animal evolution during the Cambrian explosion in a rich ecosystem once a shallow equatorial sea.
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FOR PARENTS
it is important to be able to say what needs to be said to your partner or to your kids or to other people. But it’s always also helpful to be able to let go of painful feelings, thoughts, stress, or tension entirely within your own mind. Plus, you can adapt these skills for your children, from the age of preschoolers onward, which will be very, very helpful to them. Here’s a summary of practical methods for letting go.
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REWIRING YOUR BRAIN MEGA-SUMMIT
I’m very pleased to be among the presenters for the 2025 Rewiring Your Brain Mega-Summit, from August 19- 26, 2025. This powerful event offers a science-based path to restore balance in the brain, release stored trauma, and integrate proven practices for lasting healing, resilience, and personal growth. Register for FREE.
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JUST ONE MINUTE
If you'd like to start making small changes that add up to big results... but don't have a lot of time, I invite you to check out my Just One Minute program. Every week for over a year, you'll get a practice that takes just a minute or two to do.
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HAVE YOU READ IT YET? |
Hardwiring Happiness |
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Beat the brain’s negativity bias with the power of positive neuroplasticity for lasting contentment, calm, and confidence. This New York Times bestseller is available in Hardcover, Paperback eBook, and Audiobook, wherever books are sold.
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| Get Your Copy |
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WORDS OF WISDOM |
"As our world teeters on the edge of a sword – and could tip either into realistic prosperity, justice, and peace, or into growing resource wars, despotism, or fundamentalism – it seems to me that it’s not just possible for a critical mass of human hearts to be lived by love. It’s necessary."
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— RICK HANSON, PHD |
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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.
Just one thing that could change your life.
(© Rick Hanson, 2024) |
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