Dr. Rick Hanson Sign Up Information

Start by riding out the storm. When big things happen at any scale – in your child's schoolyard or in a refugee camp on the other side of the world – it is completely natural and normal to be shocked and disturbed by them.

As best you can, stay with the raw experience, the body sensations, the deep feelings, the stirred-up fears and anger and perhaps paralysis. Whatever it is, it is your experience; some may be upset about a big event while others may be glad about it; I am definitely not trying to talk you out of your experience. Be mindful of whatever is passing through the big open space of awareness, observing it without being flooded by it. Painful and counter-intuitive as it may be, this is the foundation of releasing really hard experiences and replacing them gradually and authentically with thoughts and feelings that are helpful, wholesome, wise, and even happy.

Do things that help you come back to center and find your footing. Personally, I prioritize exercise, sleep, and meditation; I try to feel the truth of being basically alright right now, in this moment, moment after moment (alongside and deeper than pain or sorrow); I do the dishes and make the bed. Walk the dog, call a friend, eat something, look at trees and sky, get a cup of tea and stare into space. Take good care of your body.

Guard and guide your attention. It's one thing to find facts and form the best plans you can. It's another thing to get distracted or upset by news or other people that do not add any useful value.

Take heart in the good that is real. Outside you, there is the kindness in others, the beauty of a single leaf, the stars that still shine no matter what hides them. Right now, as you read, all over the world children are laughing in delight, families are sitting down to a meal, babies are being born, and loving arms are holding people who are dying. Inside you, there is your compassion, sincere efforts, sweet memories, capabilities – and much more. Take heart with others, sharing worries, support, and friendship.

Do the things you can. The more that events are turbulent, alarming, and beyond your influence, the more important it is to grow stability, safety, and agency inside you and around you.

Have courage. At all human scales, strong forces have always tried to confuse and frighten others. Whatever outward action is necessary, you can preserve an inner freedom, never cowed or bowed in your core.

Last, I've found it really helps to have perspective. Without minimizing one bit of whatever is awful, it is also true that humans like you and me have been walking this earth for 300,000 years. I see the trees, the land, the ocean – all of it here before me and lasting long after me. Empires rise and fall. Sometimes the center does not hold – in a body, marriage, or nation – and still. And still people love each other, go out of their way for a stranger, and marvel at a rainbow. Nothing, nothing at all can change this. We keep putting one foot in front of the other one, lifting each other up along the way.

We start with our own side of the street. We may get heated, persuasive, even over the top, but there’s no lying. If we get some facts wrong, we admit it – at least eventually. We don’t punish people for trying to find the truth. We don’t speak in bad faith, counter-attack, or get provocative to muddy the waters. If we say something is bad for others to do, we don’t do it ourselves. This doesn’t mean walking on eggshells or being a saint. It’s just calling ourselves to the basic standards we’d want in any school classroom.

But then what do we do with those who won’t do the same?

See What You See
Tell the truth to yourself about what is happening. It can be shocking to realize that someone doesn’t feel the need to be honest or fair with you – especially people who seem so charming. Watch over time and see whether they are genuinely narcissistic or sociopathic (and not just preoccupied internally or socially clueless). Do they regard you and others as only a means to their ends, not as beings who matter in their own right?

Ordinary exaggerations, sales pitches, rants, snark, and arguments are one thing, but repeated lying is another. The attacks on truth-telling and fair play are the fundamental issue. Recognizing this and naming it to yourself is freeing and healing. You may be unable to change anything out in the world, but at least inside your mind you can stand on solid ground.

Find Allies
We need allies, people who also see what we see. Consider whom you could draw upon to recognize what is happening and perhaps help you with it. For example, in various situations, I have reached out to friends, family members, colleagues, mentors, lawyers, and state regulatory agencies.

And of course, others need us to be allies with them as well.

Speak out
Lying and cheating are a kind of "freeloading" in which one person takes advantage of others. Throughout most of the time we’ve walked this earth, people have lived in small groups or villages in which they could band together to shame and punish freeloaders. "Shame" and "punish" are strong words. But without them, there would have been no consequences for freeloading, and our human and hominid ancestors would not have been able to evolve our magnificent capacities for cooperation, generosity, and justice.

Sometimes it is not safe to call out a freeloader (such as a bully, con artist, casual liar, or sexual predator). Then you protect yourself and others as best you can.

But if you can do it, shine a bright light on violations of truth-telling and fair play. Ideally with allies who do the same. Liars and cheaters are usually very good at distracting others with wild and dramatic counter-claims. So we need to stay focused on simple questions and not be bamboozled by side issues: "Are you trustworthy? Why should anyone ever listen to you again?"

Include the Political Level
I’m a psychologist and focus mainly on the level of individuals. Still, many of the forces that hurt us personally come from the political level. Each of us has the right to speak up about this (much as you have the right to stop reading here if you want).

In their small groups, our ancestors came together to shame and punish powerful freeloaders that no individual dared take on alone. It wasn’t perfect and didn’t always work, but the alternative was worse.

Honest and honorable people often have intense disagreements about how to run a village or a nation. But we can find common ground in these basic principles: no lying and no cheating – and may the best team win. This is what we need to come together about. The central political issue of our time is not between the left and the right. It is between those who will tell the truth and play fair – and those who will not.

Do What You Can
We can avoid the pitfalls of righteousness while asking political candidates if they are actually committed to being honest and fair – and confronting them and their followers about this bedrock issue when they are not. Lying is a firing offense in any business and dishonorable in our armed forces – and should be the same in any elected office. We can flag liars on Twitter while staying out of stupid arguments. We can support journalists, scientists, and lawyers who get to the truth of things.

And with our voices, money, and votes, we can keep a bright light focus on the foundation of any democracy: having elections that are free and fair and inclusive. In the rankings of democracies in 2018 by the Economist, the US ranked 25th in the world, behind most other advanced nations. If people have to lie and cheat to get into and then hold onto high office, they may have legal authority but they will never have moral legitimacy.

Anyone, high or low, who lies and cheats – and anyone who supports such people – would lose all standing in a schoolyard, church or temple, marketplace, or village commons. We need exactly the same to happen in our own public square. Because we all live in this square, and what happens there has very personal consequences for each one of us.

Assert yourself for the things that matter to you. If you are sticking up for yourself and getting your needs met, you won't be as likely to get reactive with others.

Appreciate that the caveman/woman brain inside the head of the person you're talking with is automatically primed to fear you, no matter how respectful or loving you've been. So do little things to prevent needless fears, like starting an interaction by expressing whatever warmth, joining, and positive intentions are authentic for you. Be self-disclosing, straightforward, unguarded. Come with an open hand, weaponless.

As you can, stay calm in your body. Get revved up, and that signals others that something bad could be coming.

Slow down. Fast talk, rapid instructions or questions, and quick movements can rattle or overwhelm others. Sudden events in our ancient past were often the beginning of a potentially lethal attack.

Be careful with anger. Any whiff of anger makes others feel threatened. For example, a crowded and noisy restaurant will suddenly get quiet if an angry voice is heard, since anger within a band of primates or early humans was a major threat signal.

Consider your words and tone. For example, sometimes you'll need to name possible consequences – but watch out, since it's easy for others to hear a threat, veiled or explicit, and then quietly go to war with you in their mind.

Give the other person breathing room, space to talk freely, a chance to preserve his or her pride and dignity.

Be trustworthy yourself, so that others do not fear that you will let them down.

Be at peace. Know that you have done what you can to help prevent or reduce fears in others. Observe and take in the benefits to you – such as others who feel safer around you give you less cause to fear them.

Start with someone that's easy to feel love around. Relax a bit. Take a breath or two and come home to yourself. Sense into the area of your chest and heart. Be aware of what compassion and kindness feel like; perhaps call up the sense of a time when you felt very loving. Ask yourself, Can I feel loving now? Open to a natural warm-heartedness. Choose to love.

Take a dozen seconds to open to feeling as loving as you can in your body. Take in this experience, let it sink into you. This will strengthen the neural trace of the experience – a kind of emotional memory – and make it easier to call up the next time. Also register the sense of deliberateness, of choosing to love.

Then try these methods with someone you feel more neutral about, such as a stranger on the street. Eventually try this approach with someone who is difficult for you.

It could help to be more aware of the other person's stresses, worries, and longings. Without staring, look closely at him or her for ten seconds or so. Can you let your heart be moved by this face?

Get a sense of the different external and internal forces pushing and pulling the other person this way and that – perhaps leading him or her to do things that hurt you or others. Let your eyes relax and get a sense of the bigger picture. Disentangle from the parts, and open into the whole.

Let love be there alongside whatever else is present in your relationship with the other person. There is love . . . and there is also seeing what is true about the other person, yourself, and circumstances affecting both of you. There is love . . . and there is also taking care of your own needs in the relationship.

Love first. The rest will follow.

This week look at faces – at work, walking down the street, in the mall, across the dinner table. Notice the weariness, the bracing against life, the wariness, irritability, and tension. Sense the suffering behind the words. Feel in your body what it would be like for you to have the life of the other person.

Be careful not to be overwhelmed. Take this in small doses, even a few seconds at a time. If it helps, recall some of the happy truths of life, or the sense of being with people who love you. Know that there are ten thousand causes upstream of each person leading to this present moment: so much complexity, so hard to blame a single factor.

And then open up again to the suffering around you. To a child who feels like an afterthought, a worker who fears a layoff, a couple caught up in anger. Don’t glide over faces on the evening news, see the suffering in the eyes looking back at you.

Watch and listen to those closest to you. What’s hurting over there? Face it, even if you have to admit that you are one of its causes. If appropriate, ask some questions, and talk about the answers.

How does it feel to open to suffering? You could find that it brings you closer to others, and that there is more kindness coming back your way. You could feel more grounded in the truth of things, particularly in how it is for the people around you.

Take heart. Opening to suffering is one of the bravest things a person can do.

In a busy life, each day gives you dozens of opportunities to leave the Red zone and move toward Green. Each time you do this, you gradually strengthen the neural substrates of Green, one synapse at a time.

In order to cope with urgent needs, the body can switch from Green to Red in a heartbeat. Then it takes a while to return to Green since stress hormones need time to metabolize out of your system. Even in Yellow and Orange, the effects and thus the costs of stress activation are present.

So as soon as you notice the needle of your stress-o-meter moving into Yellow and beyond, take action.

In your mind, intend to settle back down. Exhale slowly, twice as long as the inhalation: this helps light up the parasympathetic nervous system. Think of something, anything, that makes you feel safer, more fed and fulfilled, or more appreciated and cared about: focus on these good feelings, stay with them, sense them sinking in. Relax tension in your body as best you can. As you calm a bit, find your priority in whatever situation is stressing you and zero in on the key specific do-able action(s) that is/are needed. Take refuge in knowing that you can only do what you can, that you can only encourage the causes of good things but can’t control the results themselves.

In the world, try to slow down and step back. Speak carefully. Buy yourself some time. Drink some water, get some food, go to the bathroom. Before acting, raise your level of functioning (i.e., move from Red toward Green), the center from which effective action flows. Try not to act from fear, anger, frustration, shame, or a bruised ego. Don’t add logs to the fire.

These approaches are not a panacea. They don’t always work. It’s like training a wild mustang to become a saddle horse: over and over again, you bring gentleness and firmness, you rein in fear and fire and encourage peaceful ease.

You woo nature and help yourself come home to Green.

SO much could be written – and has – about cherishing our world, and protecting and nurturing it, yet I must be brief here, with just three suggestions.

This week with different people, get a sense of the person behind the eyes. It's not a staring contest; it can actually help to look away so you're not distracted by surface details. (While I'm using the word "see," of course you are also hearing the person behind the words, sensing the person embedded in the body sitting across from you.)

Take a moment to relax and set aside your case about the other person, and open to the being down in there somewhere, maybe rattled and defensive and acting in ways that are problematic, but really just yearning for happiness and some way to move forward in life.

You could also sense your own innermost being, and then imagine that core, that sense of being alive, the recipient of experiences, the one for whom life is hard sometimes, inside the other person.

Let that recognition of the person over there show in your face, in your own eyes. Be brave and let them see you seeing them.

Notice how this recognition changes the course of an interaction – perhaps softening it, making it more authentic, leading to a good resolution more gently and quickly.

As an advanced practice, you could even raise the subject with someone, of the degree to which you feel seen (or not) as persons by each other. That kind of conversation can transform a relationship.

Last, enjoy being a person yourself, the channel through which your life streams – with some of the richest streaming being the other persons all around you.

Compassion is natural; you don't have to force it; just open to the difficulty, the struggle, the stress, the impact of events, the sorrow and strain in the other person; open your heart, let yourself be moved, and let compassion flow through you.

Feel what compassion's like in your body – in your chest, throat, and face. Sense the way it softens your thoughts, gentles your reactions. Know it so you can find your way back again.

Moments of compassion come in the flow of life – maybe a friend tells you about a loss, or you can see the hurt behind someone's angry face, or a hungry child looks out at you from the pages of a newspaper.

Also, you can deliberately call in compassion a minute (or more), perhaps each day; here are a few suggestions:

• Relax and tune into your body.
• Remember the feeling of being with someone who cares about you.
• Bring to mind someone it is easy to feel compassion for.
• Perhaps put your compassion into words, softly heard in the back of your mind, such as: "May you not suffer . . . may this hard time pass . . . may things be alright for you."
• Expand your circle of compassion to include others; consider a benefactor (someone who has been kind to you), friend, neutral person, difficult person (a challenge, certainly), and yourself (sometimes the hardest person of all).
• Going further, extend compassion to all the beings in your family . . . neighborhood . . . city . . . state . . . country . . . world. All beings, known or unknown, liked or disliked. Humans, animals, plants, even microbes. Beings great or small, in the air, on the ground, under water. Including all, omitting none.

Going through your day, open to compassion from time to time for people you don't know: someone in a deli, a stranger on a bus, crowds moving down the sidewalk.

Let compassion settle into the background of your mind and body. As what you come from, woven into your gaze, words, and actions.

Omitting none.

You can be friendly with intimates and strangers, co-workers and in-laws, babies and bosses – even those you know only in the abstract, like people on the other side of the world. Of course, it is not always appropriate to be friendly with someone, such as to an adversary, or to someone who would misunderstand you. But opportunities for greater friendliness are probably all around you this week.

To warm up your brain's circuits of friendliness, you could try one or more of these:

• Recall being with someone who cares about you.
• Remember when someone was friendly to you.
• Bring to mind a time when you were friendly to someone.
• Get a sense of the posture, movements, gestures, and facial expressions of a person you know who is naturally friendly.
• Relax your body into a feeling of friendliness: leaning forward a little, rather than back; softening and opening your chest, face, and eyes; breathing goodwill in and out.

Then look for everyday opportunities to be friendly. Often you'll just give a smile, handshake, or nod – and that's plenty. Maybe it's offering a few minutes to talk. Or a morning hug, or goodnight kiss. Or an extra touch of warmth in an email.

Stretch yourself, but stay within the range of whatever is authentic. Remember that friendliness is not agreement or approval; it does not mean you have given up on whatever your stances may be in the relationship. Friendliness does not equal friendship; in truth, most relationships are with friendly acquaintances.

Consider your family and friends. What about being more friendly with your lover or mate? Having worked with couples for many years, it's painful to see how often basic friendliness is a casualty in a long-term relationship. Or being more friendly toward parents, siblings – or your own children? Again, it's startling how easily friendliness can be crowded out of our most important relationships by busyness, little irritations and hurts, or weariness from working too hard. But bits of friendliness, sprinkled here and there, can be absolutely transformational in a relationship. Try it and see!

Also consider being friendlier toward people you might normally ignore or treat with distance, even coolness. Such as wait staff in restaurants, someone shuttling you to the airport, or – breaking the big taboo – strangers in an elevator.

Last and not least, there is friendliness toward animals ("great and small, seen and unseen, omitting none") . . . plants . . . your body . . . and yourself. Even friendliness toward inanimate objects: greeting the door before you open it, the ground about to meet your feet; not slamming the drawer in, but instead wishing it well; welcoming the cup rising to your lips.

See what happens. Take in the rewards, like one small log after another, fueling that warm glowing fire on the hearth in your heart.