All ‘Health’ Posts

Pet The Lizard

Down deep, do you feel at ease?
The Practice:
Pet the lizard.
Why?

I’ve always liked lizards.

Growing up in the outskirts of Los Angeles, I played in the foothills near our home. Sometimes I’d catch a lizard and stroke its belly, so it would relax in my hands, seeming to feel at ease.

In my early 20’s, I found a lizard one chilly morning in the mountains. It was torpid and still in the cold and let me pick it up. Concerned that it might be freezing to death, I placed it on the shoulder of my turtleneck, where it clung and occasionally moved about for the rest of the day. There was a kind of wordless communication between us, in which the lizard seemed to feel I wouldn’t hurt it, and I felt it wouldn’t scratch or bite me. After a few hours, I hardly knew it was there, and sometime in the afternoon it left without me realizing it.

Now, years later, as I’ve learned more about how the brain evolved, my odd affinity for lizards has started making sense to me. To simplify a complex journey beginning about 600 million years ago, your brain has developed in three basic stages: Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 6th, 2012 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in appreciation, biological evolution, brain, Buddha’s Brain, change, Consciousness, fear, meditation, mindfulness, Neuroplasticity, personal growth, psychological factors, self help, self love, thoughts and feelings

Empty the Cup

Are you full to the brim?
The Practice:
Empty the cup.
Why?

Once upon a time, a scholar came to visit a saint. After the scholar had been orating and propounding for a while, the saint proposed some tea. She slowly filled the scholar’s cup: gradually the tea rose to the very brim and began spilling over onto the table, yet she kept pouring and pouring. The scholar burst out: “Stop! You can’t add anything to something that’s already full!” The saint set down the teapot and replied, “Exactly.”

Whether it’s the blankness of a canvas to an artist, the silence between the notes in music, bare dirt for a new garden, the not-knowing openness of a scientist exploring new hypotheses, an unused shelf in a closet or cupboard, or some open time in your schedule, you need space to act effectively, dance with your partners, and have room around your emotional reactions.

Yet most of us, me included, tend to stuff as much as possible into whatever room is available – room in closets, schedules, budgets, relationships, and even the mind itself. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on January 1st, 2012 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in Buddha’s Brain, Consciousness, happiness, mindfulness, neuroscience, own your life, personal growth, psychological factors, Rick Hanson, scarce resources, self help, wisdom, work

Give Over to Good

What is living you?
The Practice:
Give over to good.
Why?

In every moment, you and I and everyone and everything else – from quantum foam to fleeting thoughts, intimate relationships, rainforest ecosystems, and the stars themselves – are each a kind of standing wave, like the ever-changing though persistent pattern of water rising above a boulder in a river.

We are the result of multiple causes flowing through us. As Buckminster Fuller famously said, “I seem to be a verb.”

This fact is amazing, but it’s corroborated by both modern physics and deep ecology. We can get silly-cosmic about it (done this myself – not only as a college sophomore!), but the implications are very down to earth.

As unique standing waves, you and I are constructed each moment by the currents – the forces and factors, both internal and external – flowing through us. We have no choice about being lived by these currents, continually given over to them.

But we can choose to give ourselves over to the good ones. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on December 23rd, 2011 in General, Health, Relationships, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in appreciation, brain, Buddha’s Brain, Consciousness, god spirit, gratitude, happiness, meditation, mindfulness, neuroscience, personal growth, Relationships, Rick Hanson, self help, thoughts and feelings

End Self-Sabotage and Get Everything You Want

Why is it that we are motivated to change, and we work hard at it, and yet we do not succeed at attaining our goals? It’s because we sabotage ourselves. We sabotage our best efforts. We procrastinate. We resist. We don’t follow direction. We don’t follow through. We allow ourselves to be distracted and derailed.

We sabotage ourselves in a variety of ways, such that we perpetually withhold from ourselves all the goodies the universe has to offer, blaming it all the while on bad luck or it being someone else’s fault, rather than acknowledging that we are the Prime Movers of our destiny, that we are responsible for the lack and limitations in our lives, and nobody else.

On a conscious level we want to win, but on a deep, unconscious level, we are filled with guilt, shame, self-condemnation, and self-loathing, such that, rather than believing that we are worthy of winning and deserving of abundance and success, we believe that we are sinners deserving of punishment, suffering and failure. All of this is below our conscious awareness.

Our subconscious mind, intent on manifesting what we believe about ourselves at a deeply-embedded, unconscious level, believes our own harsh judgments about ourselves, and punishes us for our “sins.” It does this by sabotaging our conscious efforts.

It generates resistance and roadblocks. It attracts inferior elements. It encourages miscommunication, chaos, and confusion. The end result is an external world that reflects our internal self-concept. The end result is our not getting what we want.

The only way to reverse this process, in order to generate success and prosperity, is to put an end to our guilt, shame and self-loathing by forgiving and loving ourselves. The only way to do this is to first forgive and love others. This is what Forgive To Win!’s Forgiveness Diet has been designed to accomplish.

The Forgiveness Diet is a structured program that trains our mind to engage in behaviors that will benefit us in the long run. More specifically, the Forgiveness Diet is a daily regimen of thoughts, actions and exercises devoted to extending unconditional forgiveness, acceptance, and love. It is a daily regimen of estimable acts of kindness and service to others.

When we have mastered the Forgiveness Diet, our subconscious mind will believe we are good enough and worthy of reward, at which point it will stop sabotaging our efforts and start constructing the synchronistic attraction of synergistic people and circumstances that will favor our prosperity and success in all realms.

The Forgiveness Diet is the ultimate prosperity principle!

The reason why many of us have difficulty believing this is true is because we’ve been trained to believe that nice guys finish last, that no good deed goes unpunished, and that love, kindness and forgiveness are for chumps and suckers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. These are self-destructive messages generated by our subconscious mind to support its self-sabotaging agenda to derail us from healing ourselves and attracting abundance into our lives.

Although it is obvious that many people who are loathsome, selfish, unloving and hurtful towards others have succeeded and prospered, for most of us who mean no harm to others, emulating people like that will not deliver us what we want.

If we repair ourselves by extending unconditional forgiveness, acceptance and love to everyone, under all circumstances, without exceptions, we can replace our self-loathing with self-loving, thereby putting an end to our self-sabotage, such that our subconscious mind works with us rather than against us to attract and manifest everything we’ve ever wanted.

The best part about the Forgiveness Diet is that we don’t need to understand it for it to work. We don’t even need to believe it. Additionally, we don’t need to gain any deep insights about ourselves in order to get results.

We just need to do it. We just need to implement a few basic behaviors and practices on a consistent basis until they become habits.

But don’t take my word for it. Take the Forgive To Win! 90-Day Challenge. Rather than rejecting the Forgiveness Diet as magical or wishful thinking without giving it a try, follow it rigorously for 90 days and find out for yourself what it has to offer.

Make the decision to put aside your skepticism, negativity, cynicism and doubt for 90 days in order to work the program as vigorously and as honestly as you possibly can.

What have you got to lose? What’s 90 days in the bigger scheme of things? What’s 90 days in the expanse and duration of your life? It’s nothing. So what if you spend 90 days being generous, esteeming others, and forgiving them their trespasses? What’s the downside? There really isn’t any.

If you decide after 90 days that the experience was not transformative and was a complete waste of time, which I guarantee won’t be the case, you will have the rest of your life to be angry, vengeful, withholding, thoughtless, selfish and self-centered, and to see where that gets you.

But if I’m right in encouraging you to devote a mere 90 days of your life to the Forgiveness Diet, you will greatly appreciate the experience you put yourself through, you will see fewer roadblocks and potholes appearing in your life, you will be happier, more productive, and more successful, and you will gladly continue to engage in the Forgiveness Diet program.

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If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Walter E Jacobson, MD on October 17th, 2011 in Career, Diet and Fitness, Health, Relationships, Spirituality | No comments Read related posts in forgiveness, happiness, self-esteem, self-sabotage, success

The Power of Negative Thinking

Negative thinking is our enemy. It dampens our enthusiasm and motivation. It contributes to indecision, inertia, procrastination and outright derailment of our goal-directed actions. It defeats us. It beats us. It creates the “bad luck” that we will later bemoan.

We are our own worst enemy when we indulge our negative thinking and tell ourselves, “It’s not going to work out… I’m unlucky… Something will go wrong… Such and such will happen and I’m just going to be more miserable, so why bother?”

There are an endless number of negative messages in all shapes and sizes that discourage us from being proactive and going forth into the world. And now is as good a time as any to stop playing this losing hand, to stop giving these negative messages any power.

A major problem in this regard is that, for the most part, we’re so used to our negative thinking that we aren’t even aware when we’re doing it. Consequently, we need to listen closely to the content of our thoughts. We need to hear our words as we speak them, with our negativity detector finely tuned.

When we recognize the negative thoughts and words, we need to stop them and counter them with alternative messages that are positive and optimistic, based on truth, not fear.

To be sure: just because things haven’t worked out in the past doesn’t mean they never will. Just because we have been rejected and disappointed in the past, doesn’t mean that this is our eternal fate that we must resign ourselves to. Just because we’ve been plagued with failure and perceived bad luck doesn’t mean that this is the way it always will or must be.

We are masters of our fate, whether we allow our fear or our optimism to propel us forward.

On an unconscious level, our negativity is a defense mechanism, a protective device such that if something bad should happen, we won’t be blindsided and devastated by it. By anticipating failure, we think we are softening the blow of failure should it occur.

Unfortunately, this is not a good plan. The negativity of anticipated bad luck and failure actually helps to create them because it contributes to us not putting our best foot forward. It blocks the flow of positive energy and directs the Law of Attraction to attract negative consequences rather than positive outcomes. It reinforces our fear and insecurity, and it diminishes our confidence and faith in ourselves and our objectives.

In this regard, negative thinking is actually a form of self-abuse. Certainly, it is important to be aware of the things that can go wrong so that we can have a strategy to address them and push forward, should they occur. But to beat ourselves into submission with our negative fear thoughts such that we don’t take risks and we don’t go the distance in order to protect ourselves from disappointment, shame and humiliation is simply self-punishment.

Letting fear and negativity derail us will never bring rainbows and sunshine into our lives. Rather than anticipating failure, we should anticipate success, while at the same time telling ourselves that should failure occur, we will be emotionally capable of dealing with it, that we will pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and continue on our path toward our goals because that is the only way we will get where we want to go.

It’s best that we remind ourselves that there is less shame in failure and defeat than in never trying at all, that many great hearts and minds have risen from the ashes of multiple failures and defeat to reap the rewards of great success and prosperity.

Bottom line: we must be vigilant over our thoughts, stop the negativity and be positive and enthusiastic regardless of adversity and seemingly overwhelming odds against us, and push forward with one true thought always in the forefront of our consciousness. Win, lose or draw, it’s much better to play the game than watch from the sidelines.

By Walter E Jacobson, MD
http://forgivetowin.com
info@walterjacobsonmd.com

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Walter E Jacobson, MD on August 14th, 2011 in Career, Health, Relationships, Spirituality | No comments Read related posts in Psychology, self help

You Can Feel Safer

Feeling safer is a tricky subject, with complications that can be both personal and political.

(This topic and others are explored in depth in my interview with New Dimensions.)

Yes, there are real threats out there, but evolution and other factors have left a lot of us walking around in a kind of paranoid trance. I’ve been there myself, and the results include feeling less peaceful and hopeful, and more worried and cranky, than is right.

So I hope you find this post helpful.

Is There Really a Tiger in Those Bushes?

Consider these two mistakes:

1. You think there’s a tiger in the bushes, but actually there isn’t one.

2. You think no tiger is in the bushes, but actually one is about to pounce.

Most of us make the first error much more often than the second one, because:

· Evolution has given us a paranoid brain. In order to survive and pass on genes, it’s better to make the first mistake a hundred times rather than make the second mistake even once; the cost of the first mistake is fear for no reason, but the cost of the second mistake is death. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on June 16th, 2011 in General, Health, Personal Stories, Relationships | No comments Read related posts in anxieties, Buddha’s Brain, bushes, cough, disasters, economic turmoil, enemies, family members, first error, first mistake, genes, hundred times, layoff, murders, peers, political groups, real tigers, Rick Hanson, shapes and sizes, tiger, trance, tricky subject

21 Ways to Turn Ill Will to Good Will

My recent posts have highlighted two very powerful, yet opposing forces in the human heart: in a traditional metaphor, we each have a wolf of love and a wolf of hate inside us, and it all depends on which one we feed every day.

On the one hand, as the most social and loving species on the planet, we have the wonderful ability and inclination to connect with others, be empathic, cooperate, care, and love. On the other hand, we also have the capacity and inclination to be fearfully aggressive toward any individual or group we regard as “them.” (In my book – Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love and Wisdom – I develop this idea further, including how to stimulate and strengthen the neural circuits of self-control, empathy, and compassion.)

To tame the wolf of hate, it’s important to get a handle on “ill will” – irritated, resentful, and angry feelings and intentions toward others. While it may seem justified in the moment, ill will harms you probably more than it harms others. In another metaphor, having ill will toward others is like throwing hot coals with bare hands: both people get burned.

Avoiding ill will does not mean passivity, allowing yourself or others to be exploited, staying silent in the face of injustice, etc. Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on June 9th, 2011 in General, Global/Social Change, Health, New Directions, Relationships, Uncategorized | No comments Read related posts in angry feelings, Buddha’s Brain, dalai lama, effective action, gandhi, hot coals, human heart, inclination, martin luther king, neural circuits, opposing forces, passivity, peaceful heart, plenty of room, preconditions, priming, Rick Hanson, self-control, speaking truth to power, traditional metaphor, vicious cycles

How Did Humans Become Empathic?

Empathy is unusual in the animal kingdom. So empathy must have had some major survival benefits for it to have evolved. What might those benefits have been?

Empathy seems to have evolved in three major steps.

First, among vertebrates, birds and mammals developed ways of rearing their young, plus forms of pair bonding – sometimes for life. This is very different from the pattern among fish and reptile species, most of which make their way in life alone. Pair bonding and rearing of young organisms increased their survival and was consequently selected for, driving the development of new mental capacities.

As neuroscientists put it, the “computational requirements” of tuning into the signals of newborn little creatures, and of operating as a couple – a sparrow couple, a mountain lion couple, that is – helped drive the enlargement of the brain over millions of years. As we all know, when you are in a relationship with someone – and especially if you are raising a family together – there’s a lot you have to take into account, negotiate, arrange, anticipate, etc. No wonder brains got bigger.

It may be a source of satisfaction to some that monogamous species typically have the largest brains in proportion to bodyweight! Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on June 2nd, 2011 in General, Health, Relationships | No comments Read related posts in animal kingdom, baboon, bodyweight, brain size, Buddha’s Brain, computational requirements, early human ancestors, evolution of the brain, group size, harsh conditions, hominid, little creatures, mental capacities, monogamous species, mountain lion, primate species, reptile species, Rick Hanson, scarce resources, social group, survival benefits, vertebrates

The Wolf of Hate

I heard a story once about a Native American elder who was asked how she had become so wise, so happy, and so respected. She answered: “In my heart, there are two wolves: a wolf of love and a wolf of hate. It all depends on which one I feed each day.”

This story always gives me a little shiver. It’s both humbling and hopeful. First, the wolf of love is very popular, but who among us does not also harbor a wolf of hate? We can hear its snarling both far away in distant wars and close to home in our own anger and aggression, even toward people we love. Second, the story suggests that we each have the ability—grounded in daily actions—to encourage and strengthen empathy, compassion, and kindness while also restraining and reducing ill will, disdain, and aggression.

In my previous post, I explored some of the basis, in the brain, of romance and love. In this one, let’s consider the dark side of bonding: how attachment to “us” both fuels and has been nurtured by fearful aggression toward “them.” Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on May 26th, 2011 in Health, Relationships, Spirituality | 1 comment Read related posts in anger and aggression, biological evolution, buddha, Buddha’s Brain, compassion and kindness, disdain, droughts, EMPATHY, harsh conditions, human aggression, ill will, neuroscience, predators, Rick Hanson, scarce resources, shiver, starvation, ups, ups and downs, vital steps, wolves, workplaces

The Evolution of Love

How did we evolve the most loving brain on the planet?

Humans are the most sociable species on earth – for better and for worse.

On the one hand, we have the greatest capacities for empathy, communication, friendship, romance, complex social structures, and altruism. On the other, we have the greatest capacities for shaming, emotional cruelty, sadism, envy, jealousy, discrimination and other forms of dehumanization, and wholesale slaughter of our fellow humans.

In other words, to paraphrase a Native American teaching, a wolf of love and a wolf of hate live in the heart of every person.

Many factors shape each of these two wolves, including biological evolution, culture, economics, and personal history. Here, I’d like to comment on key elements of the neural substrate of bonding and love; Read more »

Posted by Dr. Rick Hanson on May 19th, 2011 in Family, General, Health, Relationships | 1 comment Read related posts in altruism, biological evolution, Buddha’s Brain, child attachment, emotional cruelty, extended family, family groups, fellow humans, friendship romance, hominids, human genome, LOVE, neural substrate, neuroscience, parents and children, personal history, psychological factors, Rick Hanson, scarce resources, social structures, vulnerable child