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Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, by Rick Hanson
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Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated?
Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences but slowly from the good ones.
You can change this.
Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace. Dr. Hanson’s four steps build strengths into your brain— balancing its ancient negativity bias—making contentment and a powerful sense of resilience the new normal. In mere minutes each day, we can transform our brains into refuges and power centers of calm and happiness.
- Sales Rank: #13885 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Harmony
- Published on: 2013-10-08
- Released on: 2013-10-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.52" h x 1.11" w x 6.36" l, 1.25 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Q&A with Rick Hanson
Q. What does it mean to “hardwire happiness,” and why is it important?
A. Whether we are happy or sad, loving or angry, or wise or foolish depends on what’s inside the brain. Bringing good things into your brain is the key to well-being and effectiveness, psychological healing, creativity, and spiritual practice.
So, how do you get good things—such as resilience, self-worth, or love—into your brain? These inner strengths are grown mainly from positive experiences. Unfortunately, to help our ancestors survive, the brain evolved a negativity bias that makes it less adept at learning from positive experiences but efficient at learning from negative ones. In effect, it’s like Velcro for the bad but Teflon for the good.
This built-in negativity bias makes us extra stressed, worried, irritated, and blue. Plus it creates a kind of bottleneck in the brain that makes it hard to gain any lasting value from our experiences, which is disheartening and the central weakness in personal development, mindfulness training, and psychotherapy.
To solve this problem, I developed the four HEAL steps of taking in the good: Have a positive experience; Enrich it; Absorb it; and if you like, Link it to negative thoughts and feelings to soothe and eventually replace them.
Q. Is it really possible to overcome this Stone Age negativity bias? How much time does it take?
A. Your brain is constantly changing its structure based on what you think and feel; scientists call this “experience-dependent neuroplasticity.” When you take in the good, you take charge of this structure-building process.
Hardwiring happiness is not mere positive thinking, which is usually wasted on the brain. It’s about transforming fleeting experiences into lasting improvements in your neural net worth. It usually takes less than half a minute. Any single time you do this won’t change your life. But half a dozen times a day, day after day, you really can gradually change your brain from the inside out.
Q. What could I get out of doing this?
A. Besides building up specific inner strengths such as determination or feeling cared about, taking in the good has additional, general benefits. It’s a way to be active rather than passive—a hammer rather than a nail—at a time when people feel pushed and prodded by events and their reactions to them, a way to build oneself up when the world is wearing you down. When you take in the good, you treat yourself like you matter, which is especially important if you haven’t mattered enough to others. And over time, you could sensitize your brain to positive experiences, so it becomes more efficient at learning from them: making it like Velcro for good.
This is the good that lasts. Many little moments add up to big results over time.
Q. Some researchers believe that there is a happiness set point; do you agree?
A. This was the idea that people tend to return to their baseline after a big positive or negative experience—which was used sometimes to argue that there is no point in trying to become happier since we’ll just sink back into our old ways.
More recent research has shown that many people do gradually lift their happiness set point over time. But we have to earn this happiness. We have to do the work . . . which, in terms of taking in the good, is pretty enjoyable!
Q. Is taking in the good just another way to chase after positive experiences?
A. By incorporating these positive experiences into your brain—by building up the sense of being already happy, loved, and peaceful—you won’t have to seek out those feelings outside yourself. Your well-being will become increasingly unconditional, less dependent on external conditions like a partner being nice or having a good day at work. Experiencing that your deep needs are basically met, there’s no basis for the craving and clinging that lead to suffering and harm for yourself and others.
This practice (both the most pleasurable and the most powerful way to defeat the negativity bias and to build up inner strengths) brings you home—home to a comfortable intimacy with your own experience, to a confident openness to life, and to a sense of competence, even mastery, with your own mind.
Review
"Rick Hanson is a master of his craft, showing us a wise path for daily living in this book. Based in the latest findings of neuroscience, this book reveals that if we understand the brain a little, we can take care of our lives a lot, and make a real difference to our well-being. Here is a book to savor, to practice, and to take to heart."
-- Mark Williams, Ph.D., Professor, University of Oxford, author of Mindfulness
"The cultivation of happiness is one of the most important skills anyone can ever learn. Luckily, it’s not hard when we know the way to water and nourish these wholesome seeds, which are already there in our consciousness. This book offers simple, accessible, practical steps for touching the peace and joy that are every person’s birthright."
--Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Being Peace and Understanding Our Mind
"In this remarkable book, one of the world's leading authorities on mind training shows how to cultivate the helpful and good within us. In a beautifully written and accessible way, Rick Hanson offers us an inspiring gift of wise insights and compassionate and uplifting practices that will be of enormous benefit to all who read this book. A book of hope and joyfulness."
--Paul Gilbert, Ph.D., O.B.E., Professor, University of Derby, author of The Compassionate Mind
"Rick Hanson's new book works practical magic: it teaches you how, in a few seconds, to rewire your brain for greater happiness, peace, and well-being. This is truly a book I wish every human being could read - it's that important. I hope we'll soon be saying to each other, in meetings, over coffee, in crowded subway cars: “Take in the good?”
--Jennifer Louden, author of The Woman's Comfort Book
"I have learned more about positive psychology from Rick Hanson than from any other scientist. Read this book, take in the good, and change your brain so that you can become the person you were destined to be."
--Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., Professor, University of California at Davis, Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Positive Psychology, author of Gratitude Works! and Thanks!
Hardwiring Happiness provides the reader with a user friendly toolkit to expand feelings of happiness and to functionally erase the profound consequences of negative memories and experiences.
Stephen Porges, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina, author of The Polyvagal Theory
Learning to take in the good is like fully and mindfully breathing in life: it allows us to access our inner strengths, creativity, vitality and love. In his brilliant new book, Rick Hanson gives us the fascinating science behind attending to positive experiences, and offers powerful and doable ways to awaken the deep and lasting wellbeing we yearn for.
Tara Brach, Ph.D., author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
"Hardwiring Happiness teaches us the life-affirming skills of inverting our evolutionary bias to hold on to the negative in our lives and instead soak in and savor the positive. What better gift can we give our selves or our loved ones than an effective strategy to increase joy through brain-based steps that are both accessible and pleasurable? Bravo"
--Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., Clinical Professor, UCLA School of Medicine, author of Mindsight, The Mindful Brain, and Brainstorm
"Truly helpful and wise, this book nourishes your practical goodness and feeds the vitality of your human spirit. Following these practices will transform your life."
--Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., author of A Path With Heart
"Dr. Hanson has laid out an amazingly clear, easy, and practical pathway to happiness."
--Kristin Neff, Ph.D., Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin, author of Self-Compassion
"Rick Hanson is brilliant at making complex scientific information about the brain simple. For anyone wanting to decode the black box of the brain and take advantage of its potential, this is the book to read."
--Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., co-author with Helen LaKelly Hunt of Making Marriage Simple
"I happened to be reading Hardwiring Happiness while my mother was dying in hospice. Following the instructions in the book, there was a healing that transformed my experience of my mother's dying. This was the right book for the right moment, and I am deeply grateful for it."
--Gordon Peerman, D. Min., Episcopal priest and psychotherapist, author of Blessed Relief
"With current neuroscience to back him up, Rick Hanson has given us an incredible gift. The practices within this book don’t take much time at all, yet have the potential to yield true and lasting change."
--Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness
"Dr. Hanson offers a remarkably simple, yet transformative, approach to cultivating happiness. He provides clear instructions for bringing these insights into challenging areas such as parenting, procrastination, healing trauma, and transforming relationships. This book is a gift, one you will want to read over and over and share with your friends."
--Christopher Germer, Ph.D., Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School, author, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, co-editor, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy
"Seamlessly weaving together insights from modern neuroscience, positive psychology, evolutionary biology, and years of clinical practice, Dr. Hanson provides a wealth of practical tools anyone can use to feel less anxious, frustrated, and distressed in everyday life. With humor, warmth, and humility, this book combines new research and ancient wisdom to give us easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions to live richer, happier, and more loving lives."
--Ronald D. Siegel, Psy.D., Assistant Clinical Professor, Harvard Medical School, and author, The Mindfulness Solution
"Rather than offering simplistic positive thinking, Dr. Hanson's synthesis of the new science of the brain is realistic and practical. Stop needless suffering, take in the good with his HEAL formula, calm down and green your brain, and flip the switch. We all need Hardwiring Happiness as a wise, daily practice."
--Sara Gottfried, M.D., author of The Hormone Cure
"Dr. Hanson shows us, in compelling prose sprinkled with humor, how we can learn to “re-wire” our brain, so that we can respond to the world in a receptive mode, one resting in peace, contentment, and love. I can’t imagine a better prescription for our troubled world!"
--Robert D. Truog, MD, Professor of Medical Ethics, Anesthesiology, and Pediatrics and Director of Clinical Ethics, Harvard Medical School
"Always on the cutting edge, Rick Hanson is brilliant at making the neuroscience of happiness accessible, engaging, and practical. If you're looking for greater happiness, more fulfilling relationships, or greater peace of mind, this book is a treasure."
--Marci Shimoff, author of Happy for No Reason and Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul
"In a lively and lovely voice, Rick Hanson offers an inspiring, easily accessible guidebook to living happily."
--Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D., author of Happiness Is An Inside Job
"Why should you read this over any other happiness or mindfulness book? Because the prose, stories, and concrete strategies are beautiful, lucid, and most importantly, they work. I cannot remember the last time a book brought me peace of mind as quickly and effectively."
--Todd B. Kashdan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, George Mason University, author of Curious?
"Carefully explaining both the neurobiology and practice of happiness Dr. Hanson writes simply enough that anyone can use this book as a primary resource to bring more joy and less stress into their lives."
--Frederic Luskin, Ph.D., Director of Stanford Forgiveness Projects, author of Forgive for Good
"Just as a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, a life filled with joy and contentment is created "a dozen seconds at a time," as Rick Hanson shows us in this game-changing book. Hardwiring Happiness is an essential guide to finding peace and joy in our busy modern world--happiness that is not dependent on external or material conditions, but that is an essential part of who we are, no matter where we are or what we have. I can't stop thinking about the implications of this book."
--Christine Carter, Ph.D., former Director of the Greater Good Science Center, University of California, Berkeley, author of Raising Happiness
"Dr. Hanson provides an exceptionally clear and compelling explanation as to why we tend to focus on what's wrong far more than what's right. If you want to shape your own brain for the better and make feeling good a reflex, get this book and absorb its wisdom!"
--Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D., author of Mindfulness and Hypnosis and Depression is Contagious
"This deeply intelligent, beautifully written book weaves current neuroscience together with ancient and contemporary wisdom, and then translates these brilliantly into deceptively simple yet highly effective practices that really make a big difference – I know because I’ve done them."
--Anat Baniel, author of Move Into Life and Kids Beyond Limits
"Hardwiring Happiness demonstrates powerfully how a series of small steps brings about big changes."
--Phillip Moffitt, author of Emotional Chaos to Clarity and Dancing with Life
"The author weaves together the rigor of science, the beauty of art, the wisdom of reflection, and decades of clinical experience to offer us one of the most exceptional books on how to cultivate greater happiness and well being in our lives."
--Shauna L. Shapiro, Ph.D., professor, Santa Clara University, co-author of The Art and Science of Mindfulness
"In Hardwiring Happiness, Dr. Rick Hanson has given us an instruction manual for creating new brain patterns. This ability, once mastered, can change your life. And he does it all with a gentle humor and kindness that shines throughout the book."
--Bill O'Hanlon, Diplomate of the American Psychotherapy Association, author of The Change Your Life Book and Do One Thing Different
"This book is a gem. I recommend keeping it on your bedside table and making it the first thing you read each day".
--Cassandra Vieten, Ph.D., President, Institute of Noetic Sciences, coauthor of Living Deeply
"Dr. Hanson clearly and elegantly teaches practices and perspectives that change our lives by changing our brains. If you want a primer for true happiness, this is it."
--Andrew Dreitcer, PhD, Associate Professor, Claremont Lincoln University, coauthor of Beyond the Ordinary
"In this book, the insights of neuroscience become clear, practical, and profoundly transformative. Rick Hanson is the one expert in this realm that I've come to trust completely, and following his guidance is “taking in the good” indeed."
--Raphael Cushnir, author of The One Thing Holding You Back
"Hardwiring Happiness is a masterful wow, guiding readers to skillfully take charge of rewiring their brains. The benefits will be immediate, the well-being long-lasting, and the process life-changing."
--Linda Graham, MFT, author of Bouncing Back
"With the compassion and gentleness of a good friend and the rigor and precision of an engineer, Rick Hanson gives you the key takeaways from neuroscience that will enable you rewire your brain for a more joyful life.
--Terry Patten, author of Integral Life Practice
"I can’t help but fall in love with this book, it is so powerful in its elegant simplicity. Hardwiring Happiness opens us up to the small choices that are all around us to live a happy, fulfilled and resilient life.
--Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D., author of The Now Effect and A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook
"Unique in the growing field of neuroscience, Rick Hanson not only explains how the brain works, he gives us the tools to fix it. This book is a toolbox for transformation.
--Wes Nisker, author of Buddha's Nature
"Rick Hanson takes the technical and complicated and makes it simple, even ordinary. In Hardwiring Happiness, he has created an accessible, practical, and user-friendly guide that will help readers enhance their sense of well-being while also interrupting their habitual patterns of suffering.
--Karen Kissel Wegela, Ph.D., Professor, Naropa University, author of Contemplative Psychotherapy Essentials (coming from W.W. Norton in 2014)
"In this beautifully written book, Dr. Hanson walks us through the principles and practices that lead to transformation. He has an uncanny capacity to find the gems in dry, complex scientific research and combine them with his wisdom, wit, knowledge, and compassion. In Hardwiring Happiness, this results in profound, life changing lessons for us all."
--Daniel Ellenberg, Ph.D., co-author of Lovers For Life
"A fascinating exploration of the new science of happiness and how we can learn to shape our own brains."
--Roman Krznaric, Ph.D., author of The Wonderbox
"Hardwiring Happiness is a clear, easy-to-understand, fun and profound roadmap to genuine happiness. If you do the practices, they can change your life. Take in all the good this terrific book has to offer."
--James Baraz, author of Awakening Joy
An awesome set of instructions for upgrading the mental operating system!
Vincent Horn, founder of Buddhist Geeks
This book not only explains how to develop essential qualities of peace, satisfaction and connection - but also a sense of hopefulness that we can radically affect our reality and our well being.
Mark Coleman, author of Awake in the Wild
Hardwiring Happiness is fantastic--offering us an evolutionary perspective on our brain's built-in negativity bias, and then giving us practical tools for dealing with it. Brilliant.
Brian Johnson, CEO of en*theos
Here's what I love about Rick Hanson's book: it's practical, it's based on science, and it's full of wisdom. Best of all, it actually works.
Geneen Roth, author of Women Food and God and Lost and Found
About the Author
Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, a Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and a New York Times best-selling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture, and are available in 26 languages. He edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has numerous audio programs. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and he offers the free Just One Thing newsletter with over 100,000 subscribers, plus the online Foundations of Well-Being program in positive neuroplasticity that anyone with financial need can do for free.
Most helpful customer reviews
162 of 172 people found the following review helpful.
The premier practical manual for having a calmer, happier, just plain better brain
By Dr Ali Binazir
Ever wonder why we live in the most affluent society in the history of the world, and yet so many people are still unhappy? Dr Rick Hanson explains this baffling fact in "Hardwiring Happiness" and offers us some potent remedies for the negativity bias of the human brain.
In simple terms, being a little jumpy and fearful had survival value for our ancestors for millions of years. So now, even though no predators roam the range and we're not likely to be bludgeoned by a neighboring tribe, we're the descendants of those nervous souls and our brains still have "Velcro for negativity and Teflon for positivity." Which means that many of us are pointlessly jumpy and stressed.
So how do you switch this around so more of the positive sticks and more of the negative slides off? How do we take our brains from reactivity (stressful!) to responsivity (much better)?
Here Dr Hanson's book excels and may be the most practical manual of its genre. His central premise is that good stuff is happening all the time - e.g. you're breathing, heart's beating, sun's shining. All you have to do is take in more of the good. To help us take in the good, he's devised a 4-step protocol with the acronym HEAL:
1) Have a positive experience.
2) Enrich it.
3) Absorb it. Let it really sink in!
Now you practice this HEAL protocol on a regular basis, which can take less than a minute. The more you do this, the more you're training your brain to stay in the happy, responsive "green zone" all the time, even in stressful conditions.
If that were all I got out of the book, it would already be far more than my money's worth. And you, eagle-eyed reader, may have noticed that I haven't yet mentioned the 4th letter of the HEAL acronym:
4) Link positive and negative material.
This step allows you to overwrite and/or *erase* negative experiences with positive ones ("pulling weeds with flowers", in Hanson's poetic terms). This is an extraordinary feat of mental jiu-jitsu: to heal the mind using the mind. What's even more extraordinary is that anyone can do it. I've used it in my own practice, both for myself and patients, and it works nicely. Dr Hanson's simple, step-by-step protocol to pull the weeds from your own mental garden is easy to use and quite effective.
Some of the other things that I appreciate about this book:
-- The organization is clear and coherent - first the Why, then the How - making the material easy to absorb.
-- Dr Hanson is a trained neuropsychologist with 30 years of practice. This means that what he's teaching you works on real people like you and me.
-- Not only does Hanson have thorough command of the science, but he's also a master of explaining complexity in terms everyone can understand and implement.
-- Real-life anecdotes from patients illustrate some of the techniques. I'll always remember the one about writing positive experiences on strips of colored paper and turning those into a chain that grows every day.
-- The book has an actual recipe for getting yourself to practice the piano more. I'm hoping it's translatable to other tasks productive if not wholly pleasant.
-- A big bonus towards the end called the "21 Jewels": "a collection of practices for growing key strengths inside yourself," oriented around the three basic needs of safety, satisfaction and connection. Hanson leads you through a HEAL-based meditation for each one. Top 5: refuge, peace, enthusiasm, love, and feeling like a good person.
Ultimately, this is a manual for healing yourself and your family. Using the procedures laid out in this book, you can solve problems that may have seemed insurmountable for years: mediocre mood, poor relations, stress, guilt, self-criticism. If it saves you even half of a session with a shrink, it's worth the twenty bucks you plunk down for it.
I met Dr Hanson at one his talks here in the Bay Area, and find him to be a competent and compassionate healer and teacher. If you wish to turn up the color of joy in your life for the long term, you would do well to read his book.
-- Ali Binazir MD, Happiness Engineer and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon for 157 weeks
137 of 148 people found the following review helpful.
Well Done, but Veers a Bit From the Scientific Based Buddha's Brain
By Peter Harris
Hardwiring Happiness provides insight on how we can better understand the human brain to ultimately improve our overall well being. Hanson distills the art of achieving lasting happiness in his deceptively simple four-step plan (HEAL). This book is an uplifting guide to self-improvement that focuses on positive thinking as a way to break away from our prehistoric tendency toward a negative bias. Hanson's prose makes the technical subject of contemplative practices highly accessible, and the exercises are fast, fun, and results oriented.
Hardwiring Happiness explains a valuable perspective on the elusive nature of happiness; however, at times Hanson (whose book Buddha's Brain I enjoyed) takes on a tone that is a bit on the magical/new agey side. As one who meditates and reads things like Extraordinary Zen Masters, I don't mind this, but I wanted to give readers a heads up about it and ideally I would have also liked to see more research cited throughout the book. In other words, a valuable book, but it may not be for everyone.
80 of 86 people found the following review helpful.
I feel happier already :)
By K. Wilkins
Hardwiring Happiness is all about focusing on the little things. It is not, however, just another one of those books telling you "live in the moment" which are so popular these days. Instead, it focuses on events and feelings that you can pay attention to in order to build up the inner strength you need to face specific challenges. By focusing on positive experiences, you help yourself remember positive feelings more strongly, despite our brain naturally remembering negative experiences better.
At times this book reads like a piece of fluff. It's rooted a lot in the author's own experience and clearly had the illustrative stories I think are so important in self-help books. It was less clear that the author was going to offer actionable advice or back his claims up with science. Initially, a lot of the advice sounded kind of new-agey and silly to me. Fortunately, the author includes explicit directions for performing exercises that will help you feel better about specific challenges. Even better, for me, they worked! For instance, I sometimes feel stressed about running late, so the other day when I was early, I took a moment to savor being on top of things. When I woke up the next morning feeling like I should be somewhere already, I was able to remember the feeling of being on top of things and relax. It might sound silly, but I really think I'm already feeling happier as a result of this and several other little practices from the book.
In terms of scientific backing, I think the author used a paraphrase of "research has shown" maybe twice in the whole book. He is well credentialed and does eventually get into some of the interesting theories of evolution of the brain underlying his ideas. He also occasionally mentioned other credible sources that influenced his theories. However, I was only really convinced that his work was backed by research when I reached his bibliography. This could easily have been a five star review for me had the author integrated this research into his text. As is, I'd love to give this to friends to read since I've found it so helpful, but I don't think I can. I'd have too hard of a time getting people to look past the insubstantial sounding bits when the text doesn't make it clear how much research is backing it up. That said, I'd love to talk one of you into reading it and actually trying the exercises, because I think this is a book worth sharing.
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