55 Quotes by Rick Hanson

One way to focus and express kind intentions is through these traditional wishes, which you can think, write down, or even sing: May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease.

Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them – open up to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet: don’t just look at it – dig in!

In the simulator, upsetting events from the past play again and again, which unfortunately strengthens the neural associations between an event and its painful feelings.

Positive experiences can also be used to soothe, balance, and even replace negative ones. When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other. That’s one reason why talking about hard things with someone who’s supportive can be so healing: painful feelings and memories get infused with the comfort, encouragement, and closeness you experience with the other person.

Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life.

Richard and I both believe that something transcendental is involved with the mind, consciousness, and the path of awakening – call it God, Spirit, Buddha-nature, the Ground, or by no name at all. Whatever it is, by definition it’s beyond the physical universe. Since it cannot be proven one way or another, it is important – and consistent with the spirit of science – to respect it as a possibility.

Negative experiences create vicious cycles by making you pessimistic, overreactive, and inclined to go negative yourself. Avoiding.

Think about the many ways that others will benefit from you being more good-humored, warm-hearted, and savvy. Nurturing your own development isn’t selfish. It’s actually a great gift to other people.

It’s a remarkable fact that the people who have gone the very deepest into the mind – the sages and saints of every religious tradition – all say essentially the same thing: your fundamental nature is pure, conscious, peaceful, radiant, loving, and wise, and it is joined in mysterious ways with the ultimate underpinnings of reality, by whatever name we give That.