55 Quotes by Rick Hanson

I think the sweet spot in life is to pursue your dreams and take care of others with your whole heart while not getting fixated on or stressed out about the results. In this place, you live with purpose and passion but without losing your balance and falling into a sense of pressure, strain, or depletion. This sweet spot is very valuable, so take it in whenever you experience it.

Only we humans worry about the future, regret the past, and blame ourselves for the present.

Every time you take in the good, you build a little bit of neural structure. Doing this a few times a day – for months and even years – will gradually change your brain, and how you feel and act, in far-reaching ways.

It’s easy to be kind when others treat you well. The challenge is to preserve your loving-kindness when they treat you badly – to preserve goodwill in the face of ill will.

Stay with the positive experience for five to ten seconds or longer. Open to the feelings in it and try to sense it in your body; let it fill your mind. Enjoy it. Gently encourage the experience to be more intense. Find something fresh or novel about it. Recognize how it’s personally relevant, how it could nourish or help you, or make a difference in your life.

Love and hate: they live and tumble together in every heart, like wolf cubs tussling in a cave. There is no killing the wolf of hate; the aversion in such an attempt would actually create what you’re trying to destroy. But you can watch that wolf carefully, keep it tethered, and limit its alarm, righteousness, grievances, resentments, contempt, and prejudice. Meanwhile, keep nourishing and encouraging the wolf of love.

It helps to remember that kindness is its own reward, that consequences often come to others without you needing to bring justice to them yourself, and that you can be assertive without falling into ill will.

Equanimity is neither apathy nor indifference: you are warmly engaged with the world but not troubled by it. Through its nonreactivity, it creates a great space for compassion, loving-kindness, and joy at the good fortune of others.

See the collateral damage – the suffering – that results when you cling to your desires and opinions or take things personally. Over the long haul, most of what we argue about with others really doesn’t matter that much.