Hardwiring Happiness with Rick Hanson

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have some fun. Today we have an amazing, brilliant, talented guest, Rick Hanson. Rick is a neuropsychologist, meditation teacher, and also an author of the Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, and Hard Wiring Happiness. So welcome, Rick.

Great pleasure to be here, Alexandra.

I'm thrilled to be talking with you and I'm so excited because I love where you bring the science, like the evidence based science that you know, how we can optimize our lives. And I so appreciate all of your work. So I, I would love to start off with what is a neuropsychologist?

It's a jazz. It's a psychologist on steroids. Really what it just means is that you're someone who has a background as a therapist, typically, not necessarily, but typically who also is very interested in the brain and how the three pounds of tofu inside the coconut, moment to moment, is making the mind. And the more we know about what people have called the enchanted loom of the brain that's weaving the mind moment to moment, including our hopes and dreams and our pleasures, the more we know about how that black box is working, the more we can tune it for our own sake and the sake of other people. So that's what really interests me. Kind of like practical methods drawn from the intersection of brain science, psychology, and contemplative practice.

Wow. Amazing. I love that. It's fascinating. So fascinating. My brain does not work in that way.

Well, I'm gonna work on it. I'm gonna wire it. So it does. Honestly, it's kind of like a little knowledge goes a long way. And I think there's a certain amount of hype about the brain these days that's just hype, Right. It doesn't add value. But if you know a few things about how that black box work, it's like your car, you could drive your car. But if you know a few things, like probably need some oil, it'll work better. And it really is like that with the brain, right?

So can you tell us on pleasure? Because we're talking about pleasure and joy and happiness. What happens in the brain? Can you tell us just what happens in the brain when we are experiencing joy and pleasure and how can we have more joy and pleasure with the brain? Like.

So there's a lot to it. Pleasure, in effect, is a reward. And so from the standpoint of evolution, which is really the bottom line about the body. It's funny for me that all this intellectual firepower and fireworks has drawn me back into the body. It's really brought me home into the body and into our animal cousins and linkages between us and them. Like our cat sunning himself out in the sun on the patio. He's awash in pleasure. And the same systems actually in the brain that he's using for that pleasure are involved in us today, if we're sitting out by the beach, for example. So from a biological evolutionary standpoint, pleasure guides us toward that which is good for us. Now, obviously, there can be too much of a good thing. I've definitely had too much of a good thing upon occasion and woken up the next morning to regret it. Right. So too many glazed donuts, too many glasses of good wine with friends, whatever it might be, be a little careful about that. But generally speaking, pleasure guides us to what I call the green zone of the brain, which is Mother Nature's optimal place. And if it feels good, it usually is good for us. And if it feels bad, it usually is bad for us. With some exceptions, like the fatigue from exercise, that's actually good for us. But, you know, intense pain and certainly emotional pain, it's usually a warning sign to, you know, try to steer back into the green zone, out of the red zone.

Right. That's great. So what about why do we resist pleasure? Because it seems like we resist, like, feeling good.

Oh, yeah. That's really a great territory. Well, a couple of things. So just to go back kind of quickly, There are a few key pleasure systems in the brain. Maybe I'll just do that very directly. Dopamine is a chemical and neurotransmitter, dopamine. It tracks reward, but it doesn't tend to make us feel good. It, for example, lets us know when what we expected as a reward happened or when we're disappointed. So dopamine levels dropping. That helps us feel disappointed or frustrated or drained, Driven to go get that cookie. That's the dopamine role. But then there are these other things, the natural opioids like endorphins and other things in the brain, and of course, other neurochemicals like oxytocin that help us feel loving, cozy, emotional, heart pleasures. Those are very involved in the brain, and there are receptors for them all over the brain. And that's kind of the underlying process. By the way, if it's hard to experience pleasure, take a look at your physical health. Because one of the Things that happens when we're not physically healthy, even subtle drops of health, there are mood slumps. The leading symptom of. The most common symptom of a medical condition is depressed mood. Of all the symptoms, it's even ahead of physical pain, depressed mood. So when your mood drops, that's a warning for you. So if you can't experience much pleasure or you enjoy it for a moment, but then the blahs return fairly quickly, like within seconds, certainly within a minute or so, then that could be an indicator, there could be something funny. So why do we resist pleasure? Let me count the ways. You know, it depends on the person a lot. I think people can be socialized that pleasure is somehow taboo. There's been some very interesting work about how women tend to be socialized to resist many kinds of physical pleasure, as if they're kind of unladylike in some way. I think men have their version of that. Again, generalizing, of course, many exceptions, but stoicism and stoniness and a kind of warrior like resistance to pleasure. So I think there can be a lot of reasons. But I had a spiritual teacher a long time ago, he had a line, essentially said, only people of pleasure shall know the truth. In other words, that capacity in the middle way to open to pleasant experiences without clinging to them, that is a great path.

That's great. So you were saying checking into the body, so getting connected to the body. What are some ways that we can tap into our pleasure more?

That's great. Well, one is just pure mindfulness training. In other words, from a neuroplastic standpoint, you change brain structure intensely based on what you pay attention to. There's a famous saying in neuroscience. Neurons that fire together, wire together. They do so throughout the nervous system. In other words, repeated patterns of neural activity, which carries mental activity, thoughts and feelings, as well as unconscious information processing. Repeated patterns of neural activity build neural structure. Okay, but they do this especially for what we pay attention to. Attention is like a vacuum cleaner sucks it into her. If you're going to get the benefit of pleasure, you need to be able to stay with the experience. But because pleasure is rewarding, it's a very good way to train attention. For example, you may know this mindfulness based stress reduction. The course they'll have people put a single raisin in their mouth for five minutes or even 10 minutes, and just stay with the sensations of it for five minutes or 10 minutes straight. So whether it's the pleasure of a pretzel or the pleasure of making love, or the pleasure of beautiful music or emotional pleasures, like figuring out a problem, because I'm, of course, king of the dorks. One of my favorite things is like doing geometry proofs in high school. Oh, my God, that was so much fun. Figuring out why it all adds up. Or, you know, a crossword puzzle, whatever your deal is, or fantasy football, you know, doing a good draft. Those are different kinds of pleasure. When you have that experience, stay with it. Can you stay with the pleasure of exhaling for a Single exhalation? About 5 seconds long? Can you do that? So that's a good mental training. That's one way right off the top to train your attention to be able to be there. I think a second one is to open to the deeper layers of the body. In your brain, a part called the insula really is tuning into your gut feelings, and it's forming a map of what really is happening in your body right now. So if you're meditating or doing yoga or pilates, tuning into yourself or doing anything where you're really tuning into yourself, you're using that part of your brain, the insula. And studies show that if you repeatedly do that, you actually build up neural structure in that part of your brain. It's metaphorically like working a muscle. It gets bigger, bigger, bigger. If you just do it once, you don't get a lot of benefit. But if you do it repeatedly, little things add up over time. For better or worse, that muscle will get bigger. Second, really tuning into your body, especially your gut feelings, and then pushing through any resistance to tuning into the diaphragm or the belly or the floor of the pelvis, the whole bottom down there, there's a lot of action going on, as you well know. That's another really good thing, too. And as a bonus to wrap up here, if you build up your insula because you're tuning into yourself, that'll make you more empathic for the emotions of other people because the insula is involved in that. So you get a bonus benefit. You can tune into your partner and other people better if you repeatedly tune into your own body.

That is brilliant.

I love these little cool things.

That's so fascinating. So I'm curious on this attention, right? Because we live in a very interesting world where we can get very distracted. There's like, so many things, things happening and staying with the breath or staying engaged with a human being or in our body. How do we handle these distractions?

Yeah, I think. Well, part one, as Joseph Campbell said a long time ago, follow your bliss. In other words, the brain wants to follow pleasure because it's rewarding, it's pleasant. And I'm going to use the word pleasure kind of broadly as a stand in for any pleasant experience. Technically, there's in psychology what's called the hedonic tone. In Buddhism, it's called the feeling tone of pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. These three aspects of our experience, moment to moment. So here I'm talking broadly of the pleasant, including the intense pleasant. In very pleasurable experiences, well, it's easy to pay attention to what's pleasant, you know, if you just kind of stay with it. So I think that's a good way to train attention on the one hand. On the other hand, part of having pleasure is making room for it in your life. You know, so many of us, what's Thoreau's line, leading lives of quiet desperation, kind of grimly plodding along, numbing out to numb out the pain, kind of flat. Or when people have pleasures, they've gotten used to very intense pleasures. So it's hard to appreciate supper ones. You know, if you give young children candy, for example, you know, I know you had a child recently and congratulations and all that, you know, as you will see, you know, I think you have. I don't know if you have an old enough child yet. You know, you give a child candy after a while. Apples don't taste sweet. And if we in our lives today with access to very intense pleasures of various kinds, if you bombard the mind with intense sugar, that's a pleasure, or intense media or intense sound or intense activity, bustling about, man, you start, the brain habituates to that intense incoming stream of stimulation. And if it's, if the stream starts to drop a little bit because you're just sitting in the backyard relaxing with a cup of chamomile tea, looking out at the leaves on the tree, that feels boring and unstimulating. And you want to go do something different and turn on some TV or whatnot, because there's not enough stem, I think, disengaging from these intense stimulation streams, using them judiciously. I mean, I'm a fan of, of crank it up. On my 40th birthday, which was a while ago, I got the same card from two friends who lived 3,000 miles away. And it's a little boy in a bright red swim trunk. He's about 4 years old, with a hose on, obviously a hot day, pouring it at his face. And the caption says, turn it up. There's a place for turning it up, but be careful about It. Because the brain. The brain is designed to want what it likes. So the art. And I think this is where some of the contemplative trainings are useful. I think especially Buddhism. The Buddha was very. He was very strong on this point about, you know, liking what's pleasant and disliking what's unpleasant without tipping into wanting in the sense of drivenness or stressing or craving. That's the interesting way, especially for those of us living in the world who are both engaged in real personal practice while simultaneously living in the world and are involved in the pleasures of the world. This art of resting and liking without tipping into wanting and needing is really a high and important practice.

Yeah, that is definitely an art. Yeah, it's definitely a challenge.

Well, on that point, I'd say technically in the brain there are these little nodes deep down in the brain. Some nodes are involved in liking or disliking pleasant or unpleasant and related nodes are involved in wanting or wanting not. You know what I mean? And the trick is to strengthen the nodes around liking without tipping into drivenness. And paradoxically, one way to do that is to repeatedly take in pleasurable experiences so that you take in the good. And therefore by internalizing the felt sense 10,000 little times, 10 seconds at a time, right? Internalizing the felt sense, that's very pleasurable of your deep needs for safety, for satisfaction and for connection that these core needs that human animals have, that when those deep needs are met again and again and again, you don't feel so driven when you go through life, you enjoy the pleasures that you have when things are unpleasant. You don't go to war with them and freak out about it or have to get high or something or other to cover over that pain. You can just kind of ride it out because there's this deep, deep, deep, 10,000 times over internalized sense through pleasurable experiences, usually enjoyable experiences, that your core needs are being met. So that's a very powerful way, which is a great path and a pleasant one by its definition. That's a great way to help yourself. Among other benefits. Learn to like, without wanting and that.

Having equanimity, what is it? Equan. Equanimity.

Equanimous. Yeah. That word is hard.

Whatever that word is, I always say it wrong. I've heard it say so many times.

But that's chill. I like the word chill.

Just chill. That is great. Yeah, because it's very. And I know everyone listening is going to have that. You get that like buzz feeling when you're too in your head, and you're too craving and wanting, and it does not feel pleasurable.

No, that's right. You know, somebody said. I think the Buddha actually said that wisdom is a matter of choosing a greater happiness over a lesser one. It's easy to choose pleasure over pain. The trick is to choose the wholesome, wise pleasure over another pleasure. That's where the art is, and that's what you and I are talking about here. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So what do we do about our fears and our worries and our concerns? Because that seems like that is definitely an issue for so many people. There's just the fears and the doubts. They just kind of consume people and have them disengage from the present moment.

That's a huge question. You know, I went to grad school for six years in clinical psychology to begin as a beginning therapist to wrap my arms around that question. So way to go, Alexander. Well, I'll tell you a couple things that strike me about it, and I think there are three approaches, and they're. They're different. One approach is you just step back a little bit and you watch the worries or the anxiety or the buzziness in the mind. It's like getting out of the movie, stepping back 20 rows and looking at it up on the screen. Just that. Moving into what's called in therapy the observing ego. Or some people talk about the witness, maybe more in the contemplative traditions, just that alone makes you feel better. And actually, studies have shown that if you even just use a few words to just note what you're experiencing, like worry, irritation, exasperation, getting hot, feeling sad, whatever it is, just labeling it. You're not trying to change it yet. You're just labeling it. That alone calms down the amygdala, the alarm bell of the brain. It lowers distress to do this observing thing. And that's a profound practice, which, of course, we can develop in meditations, where we're just very peacefully observing the stream of consciousness without trying to change it at all. The second thing we can do with worries or stress, or we're upset about something, somebody said something to us, and we're still thinking about it a few hours later. I mean, part of that goes to. I bet we'll talk about the negativity bias of the brain, but for whatever reason, we're still bothered by something. Okay. The second great major kind of thing we can do is try to release the negative. And that's where practices come in of all kinds, like calming the body. That's really fundamental because if your body is calm, that's going to lower the upset a lot. You may still feel kind of blue, but you're not going to be so upset. If you can exhale, do a little stretching, put some water on your face. That's good. Another way is to feel pleasure, pleasure, physical pleasure, like eating something good or smelling something nice. Listening to something good is mother Nature's way to take us out of kind of red zone spikes of stress and bring us back over time to the green zone. Physical pleasure is great and also relational pleasure, connecting to other people, that also can help us release the negative. And then there are other ways as well, like arguing against your negative thoughts. I imagine sometimes that the voice in my head is like the press secretary for the North Korean government, yapping away, oh, everybody here loves to eat grass. Nobody's hungry. As soon as I recognize that voice, you know, I go, okay, I know you. That's my yammering self, critic. Or that's this part of me that is still shy in groups, going back long time ago to when I was a very shy kid growing up very young, going through school. That's the second way, releasing the negative. And then the third is to build more positives, build up more inner strengths. Take in the good of experiences of, let's say, feeling safe if you're anxious or feeling grateful if you're feeling disappointed or feeling valued or included, liked, even loved if you're feeling lonely or inadequate. By taking in these experiences, that will build up the strengths inside that can compensate for being upset. To sum up these three ways to work with anything, it's as if the mind is a garden in the first way. We just step back and we look at the garden. We observe it, we witness it, we don't try to change it. We accept it as it is. We may not prefer it, but we just observe it. Second step is we pull weeds. We try to get the weeds out of the garden, we reduce the negative. In the third step, we grow the positive. We grow flowers in the garden of Vermont. All are really, really important. A lot of my interests, and I think yours as well, is around growing the flowers because among other benefits, one, flowers are what we want anyway in life. Why not get to it? I know a lot of people obsess with their weeds and well, okay, weeds are weeds, but what about the flowers? And also over time, flowers crowd out weeds.

Yeah, I love that because there is the processing, I find. And I'd love to hear your thoughts because you have your stories about what it is and you process it. But going for the flowers, is that just like going for the good? And just sometimes I feel like people say that you're not connected to reality if you're only being grateful. How does that impact us? Going into the negative and ruminating and just processing over and over?

Yeah, right, exactly. Well, three things. Okay. So first of all, that's where this framework comes in a lot. I think you can let be, let go, let in. That's it. You can witness the garden, you can pull the weeds, you can plant the flowers. And all three are really important. So I think of planting flowers, growing the good gratitude. Practice building up inner strengths over time, using the power of pleasure. As you're doing this, fantastic. I'm so glad by the way you're doing this series. I think it's really important, actually, from a mental health standpoint.

I totally agree.

For all of our chasing of pleasure in American culture, there's kind of a taboo about being deeply pleasured in America, certainly maybe the west, broadly. So, first point, the building up to positive is in the framework of everything else. And there's a place for really feeling the feelings in the first way to engage the mind. There's a place for really releasing crying, letting it out, letting it go, venting, writing an angry letter that you're never going to send, tearing it into small pieces and then burning it. Whatever works for you that's skillful. There's a place for that. But I know a lot of people. Second point. Who either just witness their caca, you know, that's a technical term using psychology, caca. They're really good at witnessing it and naming it. You know, they have, like, vast knowledge about their neurosis. Think about Lydia Allen, whatever. And they're still jerks. That's one. Whether they're spiritual jerks or just ordinary jerks, they can observe it, but they're not changing. The brain doesn't change unless we make some efforts. You can't just witness it into changing. Second, if you hang out with the negative over and over again past the point, that's useful because neurons that fire together wire together. That's like just doing one more lap around a track can help. Digging the track a little deeper every time you go around it. And I think that pain is overrated. Just ruminating, ruminating, Ruminating is really, really bad for you. Third point, by taking in the good, by having enjoyable experiences like you're talking about and then really making sure you register them. You don't just have them, but that you help them turn into brain structure by basically just stay with it for 10, 20 seconds in a row, let it be intense and kind of get a sense that it's going into you. That's my material about hardwiring happiness, which I talk a lot more about than just that little summary. But that's a good summary. When you take in these positive experiences and build up inner strengths, that prepares you to deal with the negative. There's a lot of research that positive emotions, for example, build resilience. They make people tougher, they make people stronger. Negative experiences can build up inner strengths, but usually they don't at all. They're just pain with no gain or their pain with some gain. But there would be a better way to get that gain through positive experiences without all that pain. For example, we have this kind of myth that the only way to get strong, you know, that which doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Yeah, but there are a lot of other things, Nietzsche, that will make you stronger besides great pain. Yes, duh. Yes. And so, yeah, I think for all these people who kind of mumble and grumble, oh, you're pie in the sky. Pie in the sky. No, no. Focusing on the pleasant and really taking it in for me is based on a very hard headed, tough minded, realistic take on the challenges of life. And let's not forget too, your brain is really good at learning from bad experiences. A few bad experiences go a long way because of the negativity bias. It's like Velcro for the bad, but tough one for the the good. It turns those negative experiences into neural structure. Just like that. Once burned, twice shot. You don't need to go looking for negative experiences. You're already having some. You want some of mine? Do you feel like you don't have enough? No, we already have enough. Totally. The brain's bad at learning from positive experiences. That's why it's especially important to have them in the first place and then second, enjoy them so they really can sink into you and form structure inside, which is the basis of the inner strengths, et cetera, including general happiness and well being that we all need in life.

And I love that it's like 20 seconds too. It's not. You don't have to spend two hours doing it. It's like just spend 10, 20, 30 more seconds with the experience. That's something we all can do. We can start implementing today.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And again, part of what's underneath it, again, bringing it back to the body. It's very sensual. Now These experiences I'm talking about, and I think you are too, if you will. Let's say in Life There's a minus 10 to plus 10 scale from hell to heaven. And most of the positive experiences we're talking about on the plus end of that scale running from 0.1 to 10, they're like ones and twos. There you might even be a 0.7. They're fairly mild. But to really give yourself over to it, to let it really land in the body and also to use maybe a loaded term deliberately to be in effect feminine or yin, to really receive this experience, to let it land, to yield to it, to. To give over to what's positive inside yourself. To me, these are really, really important skills. Paradoxically, it's to be strong enough and clear enough and determined enough to really yield to the positive, enjoyable experience, to let it really worm its way down into every crevice of your being. I mean, that's pretty good stuff, right?

Yeah. Take it. So on the. I'm curious if there's anything with like evolution and our desire or the way our culture just rushes because I, I know for me personally, because I'm all about pleasure right now. So I'm like relaxing, but there's still like relaxing into that feminine, that yin. But then there's this part of me that's like, get it done fast, hurry. And I know I'm not alone because I see everyone else rushing around. So what's going on with that while.

You'Re talking my language? I mean, I actually wrote in this like tongue in cheek, but I wrote in my daytimer about 30 years ago, racing serenely, which I'm not sure is actually really possible. We do live in a very revved up culture altogether. And I think we also become habituated. We become used to a certain pace. The pace is stimulating. The faster you move, the more stuff you see per minute. So it's stimulating and we get hooked on that kind of stimulation. I think also there is a certain, I don't know what to call it, like a value in the culture that if you're not busy, you must not be successful or you must not be trying hard, or if you're working in a corporation or wherever and everybody else is working 60 hour weeks, no matter the impact on their family or their children, if everybody else is doing that, that kind of warrior culture, men and women alike, well, you feel there's a certain pressure to start giving up your evenings and your weekends, no matter what kind of costs there are, let's say for your home life or your general well being. So I think these are broad forces and a lot of my own interest. You know, I'm kind of a long standing, independent, autonomous kind of person, you know, and for me it's a. It's an issue of autonomy and freedom. If I'm caught up by, in my to do list and all the emails in my inbox, and if I'm caught up in this corporate culture or business culture, what have you, that's really driven and all the rest of that. If I'm at the effect of all these external pressures, I'm a puppet being played by the puppeteers of all kinds, including kind of diffuse ones in the culture or maybe local ones like my particular boss or how I relate to my to do list or my own compulsiveness about getting everything done on time. And so when I reframe it for myself, that these are ways of being unfree, not autonomous, being controlled by other people. Other people or forces are the boss of me. Hmm. I don't like that. And that motivates me toward a healthier path, you know, of balance and still getting stuff done and honoring deadlines and revving up if I have to for a few days or a week or even many months. I mean, I think when children come, for example, you know, mothers and hopefully fathers too, rev up, you know, they do it. But you can't run a marathon at the pace of a sprint. And life's a marathon. You have to find some kind of balance place in the middle. And for me, part of it is to renounce the rewards of the lesser happiness that you get from drivenness. And it is rewarding. You can get stuff done, you can do stuff short term, but it's like winning the battles but losing the war.

Yeah.

And so I'm much more interested in lose the battles to win the war.

Very inspiring. And as you're just talking, it's like, you know, I love this, that there's times to rev up and then there's times to relax and that we need to be brave and courageous almost in our culture to consciously create when we're going to engage in those. Because if we're only getting things done, we're not happy. If we're only in pleasure and we're never getting anything done and it's. We're just laying out in the sun all day, like that's not it either, you know, I love that. So you're.

That's right.

Permission to live fully.

Yeah, that's great.

Very cool. So what about. And I know you talk about this contentment as well. Share with us what is contentment? I'm very intrigued by this idea of contentment, like, of going for what you want and your desires and then also being content. Because sometimes when I want to go for my desires and I know working with people, you go for it and then you start noticing all the things that are not right.

Yeah.

So how do we go for it and stay content?

I think that's a profound question, honestly. And you know, in my book, just one thing, this collection of little practices, I put one in there. It's called a spirit aspire without attachment. And that really summarizes, I think, what you're talking about. How can we rev up in a healthy way? How can we get the sympathetic wing of the nervous system to be activated, to be enthusiastic? Right. When I think about the root of the. As you know, the root of the word for your organization in theos is the divine within, distinct from excitement, which is more externalized. So enthusiasm contrasted to excitement, the divine within and theos, Theos within. So how to do that, including how to activate the sympathetic nervous system while sustaining positive emotion and not tipping into that fight or flight response of the sympathetic nervous system. How to do that without it tipping into drivenness. When in fact, as soon as we rev up, all these circuits in the brain start coming online. They start getting primed to move us into that fight or flight drivenness kind of mode. We're not there yet. It's a yellow flag condition, but it's already leaning a little bit into that attachment craving driven, gotta, gotta mode. So if we are going to rev up, how do we stay in that revved up, aspirational place without too much? I think that's a high art, actually. I've given it some thought and I'm sure you have too. I'd like your own take at some point. But for myself, I think a couple things. One is to beware negative emotion, because as soon as you're starting to have irritation or exasperation or frustration, annoyance, whatever, that's a sign that you're moving out of the yellow zone into the red zone. And then you want to kind of dial back to where there's basically positive emotion. Again, not that we're against negative emotion. We're just using it as, in a sense, an indicator on the inner dashboard that you're running too hot. You know, you're like on a tachometer in a car. The needle's moving into the red zone. Just dial it back A little bit, sweetie. Like that. Okay, that's one, two. I think in terms of this, how do you aspire without getting too attached as you're moving along? Keep taking in the good. Keep letting yourself be fed by as you know, the cliche. Things become cliches because they're profoundly true. The journey, you know, it's the journey, not the destination. Make sure that the process, as much as you can have it, is intrinsically rewarding, including in small things like, you know, I'm geek that I am, if you will, but you know, having had also a lot of business background, I'm, I'm just aware of people in settings that, you know, you're in a meeting, whatever. I'll just look at the table and you know, while somebody's droning on a little bit, I'll look at the table and just notice how flat it is and how well made and it makes me happy to look at it. And then I think more generally about things that are well made and they're reassuring in that moment. Or maybe I'm feeling like I share kind of a look with somebody else in the meeting, like oh my God, this is boring. And there's that momentary sense of camaraderie. In other words, along the way or every time you get an email done. I'm starting to do this as a practice. Take 3 to 5 to 10 seconds to register accomplishment. One more thing, one more little success, one more little brick, you know, building a wall. It's a big wall, but one brick at a time builds walls, right?

Yeah.

So that's the second suggestion. And I think the last thing I would say is try to stay in touch with your heart, you know, like why are we doing all this craziness? Hopefully it's out of heart for ourselves like self compassion or we're building a business or writing a book or trying to get something done with somebody. Maybe we're in a difficult conversation, but at least we're on our own side. And additionally, as much as we can part for other people, try in touch with the larger purpose of what we're doing simply to support a family, put bread on the table, or to get stuff done that isn't monetized, it's very important to appreciate that if we could look at all the goods and services that are exchanged between people, especially services, the non monetized gross domestic product is 100 times greater than the multi trillion dollar. It's around 15 or 20 trillion a year at least these days in the US of the monetized economy. So don't devalue. Especially women, again, I think so statistically, who are more engaged than men are typically in the non monetized economy. That economy is incredibly important and it connects us to the heart and it connects us to service to other people. You know, it's hard to be upset when you're feeling loving.

Yeah, totally. And I love that you brought that up too because I think this is an important part of pleasure and happiness, that it's not all about us. Because I think a lot of times we can get into pleasure and it's all about my desires and it's all about me. And I know I can get there.

Me too.

And it's. And it's great. It's a great reminder to really extend that kindness and compassion. Can you just talk a little bit about the benefits of being generous and kind and compassionate to our, to our family, to our friends, to the community, to the world? I mean, again, I'm bringing it back to how it benefits us, but.

That was good. Good. Well, if you think about it as we evolved, right, exile was a death sentence back in the Serengeti. In other words, we're profoundly social animals and unfortunately much of modern life, especially in the west, really breaks up the fabric of human relationship that we evolved to have. You and I are looking at each other face to face here through the miracle of Skype, which is great. That's how we evolved to do it and even more so within a few feet of each other. Touch to touch. That's how we evolved. I'm cool with technology, I like technology. I'm not a Luddite and all the rest of that. On the other hand, I think a lot of people have relationships that are a mile wide but a quarter inch deep. Having grown up in LA around the movie business a little bit, when you have 20 best friends, you don't have any real friends, you know what I mean? So I think it's important to appreciate the importance. It's important to appreciate the importance of relationship. Now from a research standpoint, really succinctly, good golly, on average, in the whole pie chart of causes of global outcome for a person in terms of physical health and longevity, let alone fulfillment in life satisfaction, career success, lifetime earnings and all the rest of that, on average, one of the absolute largest slices of that pie of causes that produce that global result is the quality of a person's relationships. Quality of a person's relationships. Another major value, by the way, is determination. So those two factors, determination and the quality of your relationships have enormous effects in general. And then last thing I'll say is around self compassion. That point I made earlier about getting on your own side, it's not self pity, it's not wallowing when you're self compassionate. It's usually for only 10 or 20 or 30 seconds straight, if that. But you're being a friend to yourself. You are bringing to yourself the same quality of the wish that you not suffer combined with a feeling of sympathetic concern than you would for a friend who was in your circumstances. It's just that. But research has shown that self compassion is very powerful in terms of building up resilience, making us tougher, as well as building up a sense of self worth. And again, also, as research shows, when our own cup runneth over, we have more to offer other people. So it's good for the world as well.

Brilliant. I love that compassion. That's such a challenging one for so many of us to really like appreciate ourselves and have that compassion. And I love what you said earlier too on the acknowledging the things that you do do that you, you know, with the email and just like as you were just saying that, like taking in the good and appreciating ourselves like little things that we do because we, we can like. We're so hard on ourselves.

I know. It's funny, in psychology there's this old model that's been updated. It really boils down basically to the personality of three parts, kind of the core self, the inner critic and the inner nurturer, right? And for many people, the core self feels like this beleaguered kid that's kind of being pounded on by this huge inner critic, which is a collection of characters that are fault finding and shaming and saying you can't have any pleasure now, you haven't eaten your broccoli and you haven't gotten a Nobel Prize and you're not yet president, so get back to work. Bang, bang, bang. And then there's this inner nurturer. But that inner nurture is like this kind of small, weak character, like, oh, please don't hurt little Ricky or please don't hurt little Alexandra or whatever, you know, not good. So what we need to do is withdraw support for that inner critic, right? Stop feeding that inner critic. Because every time you criticize yourself, you are building up the neural substrates of that inner critic. And also, more importantly, grow the flowers, as it were, of the inner nurturers. I think of that as your caring committee and repeatedly internalizing your own self compassion, letting it sink in, but also Especially the support of other people in small ways. There's a deli near where I work, and I get my sandwich there routinely. And you know, the guys behind the counter, we know each other. We're not like the world's best friends, but there is a connection. We're bonding. We talk about the San Francisco Giants, go to the Giants, and a few other things. It's good, you know, I feel connected with these guys. Take it in when you have those opportunities and again and again and again, you'll build up your own inner nurturer, which is really important for long term mental health.

I love that. And I love too, that you bring that the more, because we know that the inner critic's not ideal, but I love it when you bring it. It's wiring our brain, the more attention that we give to it. That's crazy to me that we have the ability to wire and rewire our brain.

It's great.

I mean, it's remarkable. Okay, so tell us a little bit more about that rewiring and how we can actually change. Like we can change our brain, change our life. And like, there's. That's so hopeful and amazing.

Totally. Yeah. Well, minimally, we've known that people could learn and grow, right? Whether it's learning to walk instead of crawl, or what's two plus two, or how to kind of manage a tricky conversation with someone who's coming on to you and you're just not interested in whatever. I mean, we learn all kinds of things. If you're learning, that means your brain is changing by definition. Otherwise, what is it the brain has got to change? The real news, though, is the how of that change. It's just true. That's what my book Hardwiring Happiness is about. It's the how of brain change. Because if you think of it, life goes on and moment to moment, when we have an opportunity to learn this much or this much from the next minute of life, the gradual accumulation of the difference between this much and that much adds up over time to determine whether your learning curve is like that or like that as you go through life. They say in Tibet, if you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. For me, the takeaway is to learn how your brain learns. It learns in minutes. It learns in these short intervals, and it overlearns from negative experiences. So if you're having a negative experience, honor it. As long as it's lawful. Use that first way to engage the mark. You know, observe it, hold it in a big space of Awareness. Try not to take it so personally. The technical term is disidentify from it, step back from it, look at it. Try to have some qualities of self compassion for yourself while you're riding out the strength storm. As soon as you can start moving into the release phase where you're letting it go, you want to not be. Your brain is like a sponge for negative experiences. You don't want it to be any more stained by them than it needs to be. You want to move out of that as fast as you can and then move into the positive cycle where you replace what you released with something good. If you've pulled some weeds, you put some flowers in their place. And then more generally, which is also mother Nature's plan, you turn toward pleasure like you're teaching, toward what's enjoyable, including in societal or broad or interpersonal senses. And then you take in the good of those experiences to gradually build up inner strengths and flowers inside your mind. And that's how you can change your brain for the better, you know, one minute at a time across all the minutes of your life. And I just think that's a fantastic path. It's enjoyable, it's grounded in science, it's practical, it's not pie in the sky. It comes from a very hard headed recognition of the challenges in life and what we need to build up inside ourselves to meet those challenges. And it feels good. So it's really motivating.

That's so great. And I love that your book just one thing, like the little practices that we can do. This is transformative and we can sometimes think, oh, like what is. It's not that big of a deal this time. I'll just do it. But like every little moment, I love that. That every little thing that we do is impacting our brain.

Yeah. And you don't have to obsess about that either. You know, just half a dozen times a day if that. You know, little bits here and there. And as a bonus, there are two bonuses, Alexandra, that I just think are really neat. One is that one kind of bonus is that in addition to planting the flower that you want to grow, like more sense of strength or safety or calm instead of being anxious, or more sense of fulfillment or accomplishment instead of frustration or loss. Right. Or more of a sense of being included, cared about, loved, valued and so forth. Okay, so you're getting a value of those flowers, but you're also getting a bonus, which is you're being on your own side. You're treating yourself like you matter, which is really Important. If you haven't felt like you mattered enough to others, you're also being proactive rather than passive. That's really good too. When you take in the good and you're training attention because for that 10 or 20 seconds, you're keeping that spotlight, vacuum cleaner of attention on that one thing, you're staying with it, which will make your attention stronger. The other bonus benefit, or kind of bonus benefit is that new studies are beginning to suggest what I think is really true. They're backing this point up, which is that over time, by repeatedly taking in the good, you can sensitize your brain for the positive. In other words, the brain has a lot of mechanisms that make it increasingly reactive to the negative, which is another reason to get out of negative experiences as quickly as you can that are genuine, authentic and appropriate. Obviously, if you've lost a dear friend recently or something, you're going to grieve that for a while. That's totally appropriate, but no longer than it need be. Well, negative experiences do sensitize the brain to the negative. They make it more and more like Velcro for the negative. But repeatedly taking in the good can sensitize your brain to the positive. So it gets faster and faster and more and more efficient and more and more automatic and ongoing at converting momentary mental positive states to lasting beneficial neural traits. That's a super bonus benefit that makes your brain more and more like Velcro for the good and Teflon for the bad.

Fantastic. Amazing. So I love this stuff. So inspiring. So I have one question, one more question, then we'll wrap up.

Sure.

On parenting. And I know we can do all of this stuff with parenting, but as you were saying, the learning curve, I find that being a new parent, that is the biggest learning curve I've ever been on. And I know you're a parent and I know a lot of people watching this are parents. So do you have some, some tips for us on parenting?

Well, that's a major part of my life actually, personally, but also professionally. My first book was called Mother Nurture, about taking good care of women after kids come along. And also supporting the parenting partnership, which could be same sex couples, or more commonly, of course, heterosexual couples, in terms of both being strong teammates, you know, when a child comes along, as well as staying intimate friends. Because research does show that on average, the arrival of a child is the greatest challenge to a long term intimate partnership. So how to actually do that, That's a major topic, isn't it?

Yes, for sure.

I think maybe two points about the brain. One is that children are really designed to learn from their experiences. The brain is designed to learn from experiences throughout the lifespan. But especially when we're young, and especially, especially negative experiences when we're young, there's a place inevitably for some fussing, some crying, some pain. There is a place for that. But there's this kind of notion in the culture that yeah, kids suffer, who cares? I mean, for example, if you look at just the orthodox view in medicine and science about children in pain, for a long time it was assumed that baby boys did not have any pain receptors involved in circumcision. But we now know, ouch, that's a major event. And more broadly, emotional pain makes a difference as well. I think appreciating the impact of negative experiences on your children and not being unskillful about doing what you can, that's reasonable to protect your children from negative experiences. I think it's really important. I don't mean indulging kids, you know, I think that my theory of parenting boils down to big pastures, real fences, leave them alone. But when you got to exercise parental authority, you got to do it. You know, if you don't have enough power to control them, you don't have enough power to protect them. And deep down they know it. Even though they, you know, try to win. It's alarming to a child to have more power than his or her parent deep down. Because if I'm five years old and I can dominate you, how can you protect me? So, you know, all that, okay. But that said, I think as much as we can think about the experience, experiences our children are having, like just crying down the hall, think about that and its long term impact. Any single event is usually, unless it's devastatingly painful or incredibly positive, any single event is just going to be one of those minutes that adds up to make the years. But the gradual pile of minutes in the life of a child make a big difference over time. So that's my first, my second point as a parent is to really appreciate the impact on yourself of the slow accumulating grind of stress and depletion. I mean, I think there is a depleted mother syndrome that many women go through. Actually typically two to three years out, they're robust. Mother Nature wants you to have babies, it's all good. But if you, you start adding up vulnerabilities like older mothers or second or third child or some kind of previous vulnerability, let's say to depression or to an autoimmune illness or poor support, when they do have the child, you start adding up factors, you create the likelihood of moving through a true depleted mother syndrome. So be careful about that. And also, so really, really, really take good care of yourself as a mom, even though your biological inclination is who, me? The child needs this. And also pay attention to your relationship. There are a lot of great families that are organized around a single parent. I think there's no shame in being a single parent. A lot of kids grow up fantastically in those kind of frames. Typically a woman is head of household, although a million men are single parents in America. Fully engaged in parenting and doing a good job at it in most cases. But on the other hand, it takes a village to raise a child. And these days, when the village outside looks more like a ghost town much of the time, you really need that village of two engaged parents, ideally for that child. That's the ideal. Plus, of course, know we want to be fulfilled in our romantic, erotic, you know, intimate friendship aspects of life altogether. And I think it's important to really appreciate the needs of the other person in a deep way. And whether that those are needs for conversation and connection and joining, or whether those are needs for some kind of romance, some kind of feeling that we're just not trudging our way through the life, you know, as co mortgage holders, you know, co parents, co dog walkers. But we've actually got something going on in addition to that, you know, whatever your gender is, that's. Those are really important things. You know, to sum up here in the classic line, rust never sleeps. You know, the forces of disorder and decay are always working right on relationships. If you don't keep putting energy back in after kids come along, after a while that fabric of the relationship or even a marriage can start being pretty tattered, held together with only a few threads. And then something can come along, whatever, including temptation at the office, who knows? And then that fabric is torn.

Yeah, I love that too. Just the little bit like doing little bits that you've talked about so many times. I think it's so important. Brian and I just started a intimacy practice. Fifteen minutes a day, like just every day. Let's connect and just, you know, just do that every day. Because you do. I mean it's, it's full on being a parent. And I love that, that you just putting in the time and the little things so that you're strong, the foundation is strong and engaging in pleasure for moms that is like you were saying, we need to take care of ourselves. That pleasure is so important. I feel tired and crabby and irritable. And I'm not a great mom if I'm not feeling fed and nourished. So I love that.

Yeah, that's really, really, really true. And you know, I think a lot of guys in heterosexual relationships, when kids come along, they're of course, really, you know, let's say it's a good guy who's loyal, dedicated and all that. Classically, as a generalization, he goes more into the breadwinner mode and got to be the warrior. Bring home the bacon, slay the mastodon, all that. Then if he thinks about his wife and pleasure, his mind tends to go right to sex. Well, hello. There are a lot of many other pleasures that are really, really important to help your partner experience, ranging from the pleasure of just being able to sit down for 10 minutes while you make lunch in the morning or just patting her on the back. Non eroticized pleasure or the pleasure of holding her hand or telling her she did a great job today. I mean, those are very important kinds of pleasures. And among other benefits, they generally help her be more inclined toward more intense kinds of pleasure.

Yes. I think that what you said is brilliant because that's totally me. I used to be able to get more. Like before the baby, it was like, let's, let's do it. Now I'm like, it takes me a lot longer. Like I need more, you know, it's.

Mom said, you know, foreplay starts when he makes lunch in the morning and it continues while I have a bath, while he's reading a story. Totally, totally.

That's awesome. Very inspiring. Great wisdom. Well, so people can find you at Rick.

Oh, Rick Hanson. S o n.net rickanson.net and there's also, by the way, you can get information about my book Hardwiring Happiness. And also on my website, Rick Ansonson.net, i have a lot of freely offered resources. Slide sets from workshops I've taught, articles, talks, links to really cool science that's quite accessible and many other kinds of things. So that's@rickhansonsonson.net Fantastic.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your awesome wisdom. It was a pleasure talking with you and I appreciate your, I don't know what you said. Geek, dork, something, whatever. Geeks rock. So I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Alexandra. It's a great pleasure.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until, until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome day.