reading

—Bob Stahl, Ph.D., coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook; Living with Your Heart Wide Open; Calming the Rush of Panic; A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook for Anxiety; and MBSR Everyday

“Rooted in brain science and positive psychology, this book is a treasure trove of best practices for maintaining sustainable, undentable joy. It is precisely what we have come to expect from Rick Hanson: a book that is practical, empirical, readable, and deeply wise.”

—Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., editor in chief, The Journal of Positive Psychology; author of The Little Book of Gratitude and Gratitude Works!

“Rick Hanson weaves together theory and direct experience, sharing honest examples from his own life and simple, practical exercises that prompt the reader into liberating explorations of their own.”

“Written with dignity and grace, this book offers a wealth of insights and practical skills for staying strong in the face of adversity. It is a guide to living with integrity, illustrated with disarmingly candid personal observations and supported by scientific research.”

—Christopher Germer, Ph.D., lecturer, Harvard Medical School; author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion

“In the chaos of uncertainty and adversity, one calm person in the room can make all the difference, and Rick Hanson shows us how to be that person. Resilient offers highly accessible methods to overcome the brain’s negativity bias and find our way to buoyancy rather than burn out. This book is an immeasurable resource and gift for well-being.”

—Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Rick Hanson is a perfect guide for these times. In Resilient, he is both wise and scientific, practical and expansive. He names the often unconscious tilt toward negativity that so many of us have and a way to rewire our brains—and therefore, our entire orientation to being alive. His words are so reassuring, so useful, so easy to implement even when we think it and we are hopeless. If we are to make it through these challenging times, it will be by being resilient—and have Resilient by our sides.”

—Geneen Roth, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Women Food and God and This Messy Magnificent Life

“With humor, warmth, honesty, and a gift for making complicated ideas come alive, Dr. Hanson weaves together insights from neurobiology, modern psychology, and ancient wisdom traditions to provide easy-to-use tools to care for both our heads and our hearts. This is an essential resource not only to survive but to grow during difficult times.”

—Ronald D. Siegel, Psy.D., assistant professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School; author of The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems

INTRODUCTION

I started out in the human potential movement in the 1970s and am now a clinical psychologist, with a deep interest in neuroscience and mindfulness training along the way. This book summarizes what I’ve learned about helping people heal from the past, cope with the present, and build a better future.

There’s a fundamental idea in psychology and medicine that the path your life takes depends on just three causes: how you manage your challenges, protect your vulnerabilities, and increase your resources. These causes are located in three places: your world, your body, and your mind. When you combine the causes and the places, there are nine ways to make your life better.

All of these are important, but growing resources in the mind has a unique power. It offers the greatest opportunity, since you usually have more influence over your mind than over your body or world. It also offers the greatest impact, since you take your mind with you wherever you go. You can’t always count on the world, other people, or even your own body. But you can count on durable inner strengths hardwired into your nervous system—and this book is about growing them.

Mental resources like determination, self-worth, and kindness are what make us resilient: able to cope with adversity and push through challenges in the pursuit of opportunities. While resilience helps us recover from loss and trauma, it offers much more than that. True resilience fosters well-being, an underlying sense of happiness, love, and peace. Remarkably, as you internalize experiences of well-being, that builds inner strengths which in turn make you more resilient. Well-being and resilience promote each other in an upward spiral.

The key is knowing how to turn passing experiences into lasting inner resources built into your brain. This is positive neuroplasticity, and I’ll show you how to use it to grow resilient well-being.

CHANGING THE BRAIN

Changing your mind for the better means changing your brain for the better. The brain is continually remodeling itself as you learn from your experiences. When you repeatedly stimulate a “circuit” in your brain, you strengthen it. You learn to be calmer or more compassionate the same way you learn anything else: through repeated practice.

We develop mental resources in two stages. First, we need to experience what we want to grow, such as feeling grateful, loved, or confident. Second—critically important—we must convert that passing experience into a lasting change in the nervous system. Otherwise there is no healing, no growth, no learning. Simply having useful, enjoyable experiences is not enough. This is the central weakness in much positive psychology, human resources training, coaching, and psychotherapy. Most of the beneficial experiences that people have are wasted on their brains. But with just a little effort, you can help them leave enduring traces behind, and I’ll show you many effective ways to do this—most of them in the flow of everyday life.

It might sound complicated, but it’s actually simple and intuitive. The brain operates so so—with neurons routinely firing five to fifty times a second—that you can grow resilience and well-being many times a day, taking a minute or less each time. It’s not a quick fix. You must work the brain the same way you would work a muscle to change it for good: lots of little efforts add up over time. You can trust the results because you’ll have earned them.

WALKING THE PATH

It’s a cliché but still true: life is a journey. Down that long road, we need supplies and tools, and I’ve put the best ones I know in these pages. We’ll explore how to grow and use these inner strengths to meet your own needs. And then you’ll have even more to offer for the needs of other people.

We all have needs. If they’re not met, it’s natural to feel stressed, worried, frustrated, and hurt, and to experience less well-being. As you become more resilient, you’re more able to meet your needs in the face of life’s challenges, and greater well-being is the result.

Every human being has three basic needs—safety, satisfaction, and connection—that are grounded in our ancient evolutionary history. While our circumstances have changed enormously over the last two hundred thousand years, our brains have remained largely the same. The neural machinery that enabled our ancestors to satisfy their need for safety by finding shelter, for satisfaction by getting food, and for connection by bonding with others is alive in our brains today.

We meet our needs in four major ways: by recognizing what’s true, resourcing ourselves, regulating thoughts, feelings, and actions, and relating skillfully to others and the wider world. When we apply these four ways to meet our needs to the three needs we all have, that suggests twelve primary inner strengths, which are the chapters of this book:

You can develop these psychological resources in a step-by-step way, like walking a path. It begins with compassion—initially for yourself, since recognizing your own deep needs and feeling moved to do something about them is the necessary first step. The path concludes with generosity, because growing the good inside yourself gives you more and more to offer to others.

As you grow these strengths and become more resilient, you will feel less anxiety and irritation, less disappointment and frustration, and less loneliness, hurt, and resentment. And when the waves of life come at you, you’ll meet them with more peace, contentment, and love in the core of your being.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

We’ll be exploring the practical how of experiencing, growing, and using key mental resources for resilient well-being. You’ll see useful ideas about the brain, experiential practices, tools for building specific strengths, suggestions for everyday life, and personal examples. Different things work for different people, and I want to give you a lot of options. Find what’s best for you.

You can use this book in a variety of ways. You could explore a new chapter each month for a year of personal growth. Or pick a need that’s particularly important to you, such as safety, and focus on the chapters related to it. The twelve strengths support each other like the nodes of a network that are connected together. Some strengths will seem especially relevant to you, and it is fine to jump around and find what speaks to you the most. Chapter 2, “Mindfulness,” and Chapter 3, “Learning,” cover foundational principles and techniques that underpin the rest of the material. When you come to an experiential practice, you can read it slowly while you do it, or you could read it aloud and record it and then listen to the recording as a kind of guided meditation for yourself.

This book is not psychotherapy or a treatment for any condition. Nonetheless, I’ve tried to get to the heart of the matter, and that can stir things up. Be kind to yourself, especially when engaging the experiential practices. Always adapt my approach to your own needs.

Useful information can be found in many places, including in science, clinical psychology, and the contemplative traditions. Because we’re covering a lot of ground, I’ve simplified the neurological explanations, and not listed specific therapies and trainings or attempted to summarize the large body of academic literature about resilience, well-being, and related topics. Please see the additional resources section in the back of the book for further exploration, as well as the slide sets, research papers, and other freely offered material at www.RickHanson.net. In terms of contemplative practice, the tradition I know best is Buddhism, and I’ll offer some ideas and methods from it. This book is based on my online experiential program, the Foundations of Well-Being (www.thefoundationsofwellbeing.com), but does not follow its structure exactly.

For simplicity, the authorial voice here is the “I” of Rick Hanson. Still, Forrest’s thoughts and words are on every page. He’s contributed tremendous clarity and insight to this material, and it’s been an honor and a delight to write this book with my son. Truly, this is a joint effort. Together, we’ve tried to offer a useful, get-right-to-it, heartfelt book.

CHAPTER 1

COMPASSION

One of the most important experiences of my life happened when I was six years old. My family lived in Illinois, on the edge of cornfields. I remember standing outside early one evening, looking down at the rainwater in the ruts left by tractors, and then looking back at our house. I felt wistful and sad about the anger inside it. There were lights twinkling in the distant hills, the homes of other, perhaps happier families.

As an adult today, I can see that my parents were loving, decent people dealing with their own stresses, and that my childhood was fortunate in many ways. My dad had a tough job and my mom had her hands full with my sister and me. I don’t remember what happened in our home that night. It could have been an ordinary argument. But as if it were yesterday, I remember feeling a caring toward myself. I felt bad, those feelings mattered, and I wanted to help myself feel better. Many years later, I learned that this was compassion—the recognition of pain with the desire to relieve it—which can be given to oneself much as it can be given to others.

I clearly recall knowing that it would be up to me to get through the time ahead, and to find those lights and those people and that greater happiness. I loved my parents and wasn’t against anyone. But I was for myself. I was determined—as a child can be, and an adult as well—to have as good a life as I could.

My own path of well-being began with compassion, as it does for most people. Compassion for yourself is fundamental, since if you don’t care how you feel and want to do something about it, it’s hard to make an effort to become happier and more resilient. Compassion is both soft and muscular. For example, studies show that when people feel compassion, motor planning areas in the brain begin preparing for action.

Compassion is a psychological resource, an inner strength. In this chapter, we’ll explore how to grow compassion and use it for yourself, and in later chapters, we’ll see how to bring compassion to others.

BE FOR YOURSELF

When we treat others with respect and caring, the best in them usually comes out. Much the same would happen if we could treat ourselves the same way.

Yet most of us are a better friend to others than we are to ourselves. We care about their pain, see positive qualities in them, and treat them fairly and kindly. But what kind of friend are you to yourself? Many people are tough on themselves, critical, second-guessing and self-doubting, tearing down rather than building up.

Imagine treating yourself like you would a friend. You’d be encouraging, warm, and sympathetic, and you’d help yourself heal and grow. Think about what a typical day would be like if you were on your own side. What would it feel like to appreciate your good intentions and good heart, and be less self-critical?

Why It’s Good to Be Good to Yourself

It helps to understand the reasons it’s both fair and important to be on your own side. Otherwise, beliefs like these can take over: “It’s selfish to think about what you want.” “You don’t deserve love.” “Deep down you’re bad.” “You’ll fail if you dream bigger dreams.”

First, there’s the general principle that we should treat people with decency and compassion. Well, “people” includes the person who wears your name tag. The Golden Rule is a two-way street: we should do unto ourselves as we do unto others.

Second, the more influence we have over someone, the more responsibility we have to treat them well. For example, surgeons have great power over their patients, so they have a great duty to be careful when they operate on them. Who’s the one person you can affect the most? It’s yourself, both you in this moment and your future self: the person you will be in the next minute, week, or year. If you think of yourself as someone to whom you have a duty of care and kindness, what might change in how you talk to yourself, and in how you go about your day?

Third, being good to yourself is good for others. When people increase their own well-being, they usually become more patient, cooperative, and caring in their relationships. Think about how it would benefit others if you felt less stressed, worried, or irritated, and more peaceful, contented, and loving.

You can take practical steps to help yourself really believe that it’s good to treat yourself with respect and compassion. You could write down simple statements—such as “I am on my own side” or “I’m taking a stand for myself” or “I matter, too”—and read them aloud to yourself or put them somewhere you’ll see each day. You could imagine telling someone why you are going to take better care of your own needs. Or imagine a friend, a mentor, or even your fairy godmother telling you to be on your own side—and let them talk you into it!

The Feeling of Caring for Yourself

When I left home for UCLA in 1969, I was hyper-rational and stuck in my head. This was a way to avoid feeling sad, hurt, and worried, but then I didn’t feel much of anything at all. I had to get in touch with myself in order to heal and grow. California in the 1970s was at the center of the human potential movement, and I dove in even though it seemed kind of freaky. (Primal screaming! Encounter groups! Bare your soul on demand!) I gradually learned to tune into my emotions and body sensations in general. In particular, I started paying attention to what it felt like to get on my own side, and to have warmth and support toward myself instead of coldness and criticism. It felt good to do this, so I kept doing it. Each time I focused on these positive experiences was like working a muscle and strengthening it, again and again. With repetition, kindness and encouragement for myself gradually sank in and became a natural way of being.

Many years later as a psychologist, I learned how my intuitive efforts had worked. Focusing on and staying with any experience of a psychological resource—such as the sense of being for yourself—is a powerful way to reinforce it in your brain. Then you take that inner strength with you wherever you go.

In the chapters on Mindfulness and Learning, I’ll explain in detail how to turn your thoughts and feelings into lasting strengths inside: the basis of true resilience. The essence is simple: first, experience what you want to develop in yourself—such as compassion or gratitude—and second, focus on it and keep it going to increase its consolidation in your nervous system.

This is the fundamental process of positive brain change. To get a sense of it, try the practice in the box. It takes only a minute or two, or you can slow it down for a deeper effect. Like anything I suggest, adapt it to your own needs. Additionally, in the flow of everyday life, notice when you have an attitude or feeling of caring for yourself, and then stay with the experience for a few extra moments, feeling it in your body, sinking into it as it sinks into you.

BEING FOR YOURSELF

Bring to mind a time when you were on somebody’s side: perhaps a child you were protecting, a friend you were encouraging, or an aging parent with health issues. Recall what this felt like in your body—in the set of your shoulders, in the expression on your face. Recall some of your thoughts and feelings—perhaps caring, determination, even a fierce intensity.

Then, knowing what it’s like to be on someone’s side, apply this attitude to yourself. Get a sense of being an ally to yourself—someone who will look out for you, help you, protect you. Recognize that you have rights and needs that matter.

It’s normal if other reactions come up, such as feeling unworthy. Just notice and disengage from them, and then come back to the sense of wishing yourself well. Focus on this experience, and stay with it for a couple breaths or longer.

Bring to mind times when you were really on your own side. Perhaps you were encouraging yourself during a tough period at work or speaking up to someone who hurt you. Get a sense of what that was like, emotionally and in your body. Remember some of the thoughts you had, such as “It’s only fair for others to help, too.” Stay with this experience and let it fill your mind.

Know what it’s like to be committed to your own well-being. Let the feelings, thoughts, and intentions of being a true friend to yourself sink in, becoming a part of you.

BRING COMPASSION TO YOUR PAIN

Compassion is a warmhearted sensitivity to suffering—from subtle mental or physical discomfort to agonizing pain—along with the desire to help if you can. Giving compassion lowers stress and calms your body. Receiving compassion makes you stronger: more able to take a breath, find your footing, and keep on going.

You get the benefits of both giving and receiving compassion when you offer it to yourself. Much as you can see the burdens and stresses of others, you can recognize these same things in yourself. Much as you can feel moved by their suffering, you can be touched by your own. You can bring the same support to yourself that you’d provide for someone else. And if there’s not much compassion for you coming from others, it’s more important than ever to give it to yourself.

This is not whining or wallowing in misery. Compassion for yourself is where you start when things are tough, not where you stop. Research by Kristin Neff and others has shown that self-compassion makes a person more resilient, more able to bounce back. It lowers self-criticism and builds up self-worth, helping you to be more ambitious and successful, not complacent and lazy. In compassion for your own pain is a sense of common humanity: we all suffer, we all face disease and death, we all lose others we love. Everyone is fragile. As Leonard Cohen sang: “There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” Everyone is cracked. Everyone needs compassion.

Challenges to Self-Compassion

Yet self-compassion is challenging for many of us. One reason has to do with how our nervous system works. The brain is designed to be changed by our experiences, particularly negative ones, and especially those that occurred in childhood. It’s normal to internalize the ways that your parents and others have treated you—which might have included ignoring, belittling, or punishing your softer feelings and longings—and then treat yourself in the same way.

For example, I had conscientious and loving parents, and I’m very grateful to them. That said, while growing up, I experienced frequent criticism and not much compassion, and I took these attitudes into myself. I’ve always been moved by the pain of others. But my own pain? I pushed it away, and then wondered why it kept growing.

Learning Compassion

I had to learn how to bring compassion to my own suffering. We learn many things in life, including how to ride a bicycle, apologize to a friend, or talk ourselves down from being upset. What does it take for learning to happen?

The key to growing any psychological resource, including compassion, is to have repeated experiences of it that get turned into lasting changes in neural structure or function. It’s like recording a song on an old-fashioned tape recorder: as the song plays—as you experience the resource—you can help it leave a physical trace behind in your nervous system.

When you’re already experiencing something enjoyable or useful—perhaps the satisfaction in finishing a report at work or the comfort in plopping onto the sofa at the end of a long day—simply notice it. You can also deliberately create an experience of something you want to develop, such as the feeling of being on your own side. Once you’re having the experience, feel it as fully as possible and take a little time—a breath or two or ten—to stay with it. The more often you do this, the more you will tend to hardwire psychological resources into yourself.

To develop more self-compassion, take a few minutes to try the practice in the box. As you build up compassion for yourself, you’ll be more able to tap into it whenever you want.

COMPASSION FOR YOURSELF

Bring to mind times you have felt cared about by people, pets, or spiritual beings, in your life today or in your past. Any kind of caring for you counts, such as times you were included, seen, appreciated, liked, or loved. Relax and open yourself to feeling cared about. If you get distracted, just come back to feeling cared about. Stay with these feelings and sense them sinking in, like water into a sponge.

Then think about one or more people you have compassion for—perhaps a child in pain, a friend going through a divorce, or refugees on the other side of the world. Get a sense of their burdens, worries, and suffering. Feel a warmheartedness, a sympathetic concern. You could put a hand on your heart and have thoughts such as, “May your pain ease … may you find work … may you get through this illness.” Give yourself over to compassion, letting it fill you and flow through you.

Knowing what compassion feels like, apply it to yourself. Recognize any ways you feel stressed, tired, ill, mistreated, or unhappy. Then bring compassion to yourself as you would to a friend who felt like you do. Know that everyone suffers and that you are not alone in your pain. Perhaps place a hand on your heart or your cheek. Depending on what has happened, you could think, “May I not suffer … may these hurt feelings pass … may I not worry so much … may I heal from this illness.” Imagine compassion like a gentle warm rain coming down into you, touching and soothing the weary, hurting, longing places inside.

FIND ACCEPTANCE

One time a friend and I climbed the East Buttress to the top of Mount Whitney. The route back to our tent went down a snow-filled gulley. It was October, the snow had turned to ice, and we had to move carefully and slowly. It was getting dark and we couldn’t see where we were going. Rather than risk a deadly fall, we decided to sit on a small ledge all night, wrapped in a space blanket with our feet in our daypacks, shivering in freezing temperatures.

I didn’t like being there but had to face the reality of our situation. Denying it or fighting it could have killed us. High on that mountain, taking care of myself had to include recognizing and accepting whatever was true about the world around me. Acceptance can sit alongside other reactions. For example, a person can be out-raged by an injustice and accept that it’s a reality. Acceptance doesn’t mean complacency or giving up. We can accept something while at the same time trying to make it better.

I also needed to accept what was happening inside me. I was tired and cold and worried. That’s how I felt. Trying to push these feelings away would have added stress to an already stressful situation and made me feel worse. Sometimes it is skillful to nudge thoughts and feelings in a healthier, happier direction. But that only works if we accept our reactions in the first place. Otherwise, our nudging has little traction, and we’re just putting a false face on how we really feel. If we don’t accept what’s true about ourselves, we won’t see it clearly, and if we don’t see it clearly, we’ll be less able to deal with it.

The whole self is like a big house, and not accepting all of who you are is like closing up some of its rooms: “Uh-oh, can’t look vulnerable, better shut that door.” “Asking for love made me look like a fool, never again with that, lock it up.” “I make mistakes when I get excited, so that’s it with passion, throw away the key.” What would it be like to open all the doors inside yourself? You can still keep an eye on what lies inside the various rooms, and decide what you act upon or show to the world. Accepting what’s inside yourself gives you more influence over it, not less. Try the practice in the box to deepen your sense of this.

SELF−ACCEPTANCE

Look around and find something that exists—and accept it. Know what it feels like to accept something.

Think about a friend, and different aspects of this person. Explore what it’s like to accept these aspects of your friend. See if you can feel an easing, opening, and calming as a result.

Be aware of your experience. Try to accept whatever you are experiencing without adding anything to it. Can you accept the sensations of breathing as they are? If judgments come up, can you accept these, too? Try saying little things to yourself like “I accept this thought” or “I accept this pain” or “I accept that I feel grateful—or sad.” If there is resistance to something, can you accept that resistance? If certain parts of your experience are challenging, recall the sense of being on your own side and the feeling of self-compassion. Be aware of acceptance as an experience itself, an attitude or orientation toward things that sees without turning away, that receives without resisting. Let acceptance spread inside you.

Be aware of different parts of yourself, ones you like and ones you don’t. You could name some to yourself: “There is a part that enjoys sweets … a part that is lonely … a part that is critical … a part that feels young … a part that wants love.” Then explore accepting the fact of these parts, beginning with the easier ones. If certain things are hard to accept, that’s normal and all right, and you can come back to them later if you want. You could say to yourself things like “I accept the part of me that loves my children … I accept the part of me that leaves dishes in the sink … I accept the part of me that was bullied in school … I accept the part of me that is resentful.” Acceptance could feel like a softening inside, an opening to and including of various parts of yourself. You might put your arms around yourself, embracing all of you. Sink into self-acceptance as it sinks into you.

ENJOY LIFE

If a drug company could patent enjoyment, there would be ads for it every night on TV. Enjoyable experiences—such as petting a cat, drinking water when you’re thirsty, or smiling at a friend—lower stress hormones, strengthen the immune system, and help you settle back down if you’ve gotten frustrated or worried.

As enjoyment increases, so does the activity of key neurochemicals, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and natural opioids. Deep in the brain, circuits in the basal ganglia use rising dopamine to prioritize and pursue actions that feel rewarding. If you’d like to be more motivated about certain things—such as exercising, eating healthy foods, or pushing through a tough project at work—focusing on what’s enjoyable about them will naturally draw you into doing them. Norepinephrine helps you stay alert and engaged. In a boring afternoon meeting, finding something, anything, to enjoy about it will keep you awake and make you more effective. Natural opioids, including endorphins, calm your body if you’re stressed and reduce physical and emotional pain.

Together, dopamine and norepinephrine flag experiences as “keepers,” heightening their consolidation as lasting resources inside your brain. Let’s say you’d like to be more patient at home or work. To grow this inner strength, look for opportunities to experience some patience. Then focus on whatever is enjoyable about it, such as how good it feels to stay calm and relaxed. An experience of patience or any other psychological resource is a state of mind, and enjoying it helps turn it into a positive trait embedded in your brain.

Enjoying life is a powerful way to care for yourself. Think about some of the things you enjoy. For me, they include smelling coffee, talking with my kids, and seeing a blade of grass push up through a crack in a sidewalk. What’s on your own list? Not so much the million-dollar moments, but the small real opportunities for enjoyment present in even the toughest life: perhaps feeling friendly with someone, relaxing when you exhale, or drifting to sleep at the end of a long hard day. And no matter what is happening outside you, you can always find something to enjoy inside your own mind: maybe a private joke, an imagined experience, or recognizing your own warm heart.

These small ways to enjoy the life that you have contain a big lesson. It’s usually the little things adding up over time that make the largest difference. There is a saying in Tibet: “If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

What’s the most important minute in life? I think it’s the next one. There is nothing we can do about the past, and we have limited influence over the hours and days to come. But the next minute—minute after minute after minute—is always full of possibility. Are there opportunities to be on your own side, bring caring to your pain, accept yourself, and enjoy what you can? Is there something you could heal, something you could learn?

Minute by minute, step by step, strength after strength, you can always grow more of the good inside yourself. For your own sake, and the sake of others as well.

KEY POINTS

CHAPTER 2

MINDFULNESS

Being mindful means staying present in this moment as it is, moment after moment, rather than daydreaming, ruminating, or being distracted. The sustained present-moment awareness of mindfulness is easy—for maybe a breath or two in a row. The key is to stay mindful—which, as much research has shown, lowers stress, protects health, and lifts mood.

It’s pretty easy to be mindful while sitting on a cushion, a cup of warm tea in hand. It’s harder to stay mindful when things are stressful or emotionally demanding, such as while having an argument with someone you love. Mindfulness can feel most out of reach just when you need it the most.

To build the strength of mindfulness, we’ll start with practical ways to develop stable and steady attention, and to center yourself so that you’re not distracted or hijacked by stressful or upsetting experiences. Next, we’ll explore the three major ways to relate to and guide your own mind, and the role of mindfulness in each of these. Then we’ll see how to use mindfulness to take care of the basic needs we all have: to be safe, satisfied, and connected. In the final section, we’ll explore the two different ways the brain deals with challenging conditions, and how mindfulness can help you respond to them with an underlying sense of peace, contentment, and love instead of reacting to them from a place of fear, frustration, and hurt.

STEADY THE MIND

Your nervous system is designed to be changed by your experiences—the technical term for this is experience-dependent neuroplasticity—and your experiences depend on what you’re paying attention to. There’s an old saying: “You become what you eat.” That’s true for the body, but you—the person you are—gradually become what your attention rests upon. Can you keep your attention on the many things that are useful and enjoyable in your day, drawing them into yourself? Or do you get preoccupied with worries, self-criticism, and resentments, making these a part of yourself?

In order to convert passing experiences into lasting inner strengths, we have to be able to focus attention on an experience long enough for it to start being consolidated into the nervous system. Unfortunately, most of us have skittery attention, with a mind that is darting and wandering this way and that. There are a variety of reasons. We live in a revved-up, media-bombarding, multitasking, stimulation-chasing culture. Personal stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma can make it harder to focus. And some people are just more naturally distractible than others are.

How Mindfulness Works

Mindfulness is the key to regulating your attention so that you get the most out of beneficial experiences while limiting the impact of stressful, harmful ones. It enables you to recognize where your attention has gone. The root of the word for mindfulness in Pali, the language of early Buddhism, refers to memory. With mindfulness, you are recollected rather than forgetful, collected and gathered together rather than scattered apart.

You can be mindful of what is in a narrow field of attention, such as getting a thread through the eye of a needle, or a very broad one, such as observing the whole ongoing stream of consciousness. And you can apply mindful awareness to both your inner and outer world, such as hurt feelings inside when somebody lets you down or a truck driving next to your car in the rain.

Other things could be happening alongside mindfulness, such as compassion for your hurt feelings or caution about a truck getting too close on a busy highway, but mindfulness itself does not try to change your experience or behavior. It is receptive and accepting, not judging or directing. Mindfulness holds your reactions in a spacious awareness that is itself never disturbed by whatever passes through it. With mindfulness, you can step back from your reactions and observe them from a more peaceful and centered place. You can accept them for what they are while at the same time not being identified with them. Of course, this does not mean that the only way to be mindful is to passively witness your experiences rolling by. You can be mindful while also talking with others, making choices, and accomplishing one thing after another.

Strengthening Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a kind of mental muscle, and you can strengthen it by making it a regular part of daily life. Over time, developing a continuity of mindfulness will give you a quality of sustained presence that is grounded and unwavering.

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

PRAISE FOR RESILIENT

INTRODUCTION