Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated?
Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences but slowly from the good ones.
You can change this.
Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace. Dr. Hanson's four steps build strengths into your brain-- balancing its ancient negativity bias--making contentment and a powerful sense of resilience the new normal. In mere minutes each day, we can transform our brains into refuges and power centers of calm and happiness.

Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Gandhi, and the Buddha all had brains built essentially like anyone else's, yet they were able to harness their thoughts and shape their patterns of thinking in ways that changed history. With new breakthroughs in modern neuroscience and the wisdom of thousands of years of contemplative practice, it is possible for us to shape our own thoughts in a similar way for greater happiness, love, compassion, and wisdom. Buddha's Brain joins the forces of modern neuroscience with ancient contemplative teachings to show readers how they can work toward greater emotional well-being, healthier relationships, more effective actions, and deepened religious and spiritual understanding. This book will explain how the core elements of both psychological well-being and religious or spiritual life-virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom-are based in the core functions of the brain: regulating, learning, and valuing. Readers will also learn practical ways to apply this information, as the book offers many exercises they can do to tap the unused potential of the brain and rewire it over time for greater peace and well-being.

'A nourishing, useful, and timely book' - Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk To Someone Relationships are a cornerstone of happiness and key to living a full life. But relationships are not given, they are made. In his breakout new book, New York Times bestselling author Rick Hanson offers the fundamental tools and skills to foster happy, lasting and fulfilling relationships in all areas of life. Making Great Relationships offers 50 simple practices that we can all easily add in to our everyday life. Bringing together ground-breaking research, Hanson reveals that relationships are not fixed entities but instead each of us has the power to make our relationships every single day with our thoughts and words. This empowering book is an essential guide to making your relationships great.

A quick-relief guide for calming anxiety and stress right now-during the COVID-19 pandemic If you're feeling unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety right now, please know that you aren't alone. In these extreme and uncertain times, it's natural to be in a constant state of mental and physical strain. Whether you're dealing with job loss, a sick loved one, or just feeling the weight of the world during your 2 a.m. doomscroll-you need quick tools you can use right now, whenever and wherever you are, to lower stress and soothe anxiety. This emergency kit has you covered. Written by a dream team of mental health experts and grounded in evidence-based therapy, The Anxiety First Aid Kit offers powerful tools for triaging stress and anxiety in the moments when you need it most. You'll find easy and doable ways to help you press pause on panic, and find your calm spot right away. You'll discover in-the-moment interventions to help you relax before your anxiety and stress go into overdrive. And finally, you'll learn how to make healthy and workable lifestyle changes to improve your mental health and increase resilience, so you can effectively deal with stressful situations in the future-no matter what life throws at you. Between pandemic-related economic fears, the frustrations of social distancing, indoor confinement, work and household double duties (now including homeschooling!), and the looming threat of serious illness, is it any wonder you're feeling completely stressed out and anxious? If you need immediate relief, The Anxiety First Aid Kit has everything you need to manage stress and anxiety-right now.

You've heard the expression, "It's the" little" things that count." It's more than a simple platitude. Research has shown that integrating little daily practices into your life can actually change the way your brain works.

This guide offers simple things you can do routinely, mainly inside your mind, that will support and increase your sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight, and inner peace. For example, they include: taking in the good, protecting your brain, feeling safer, relaxing anxiety about imperfection, not knowing, enjoying your hands, taking refuge, and filling the hole in your heart. At first glance, you may be tempted to underestimate the power of these seemingly simple practices. But they will gradually change your brain through what's called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

Moment to moment, whatever you're aware of--sounds, sensations, thoughts, or your most heartfelt longings--is based on underlying neural activities. This book offers simple brain training practices you can do every day to protect against stress, lift your mood, and find greater emotional resilience.

Just one practice each day can help you to: Be good to yourself Enjoy life as it is Build on your strengths Be more effective at home and work Make peace with your emotions

With over fifty daily practices you can use anytime, anywhere, "Just One Thing"is a groundbreaking combination of mindfulness meditation and neuroscience that can help you deepen your sense of well-being and unconditional happiness.

Your key to lasting happiness, self-love and inner peace 'A master of his craft' - Prof Mark Williams, bestselling author of Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world Rick Hanson, author of the New York Times bestselling Hardwiring Happiness, is known for his trademark blend of neuroscience, positive psychology and contemplative practices. In Resilient, he explains how to build the very foundations of well-being by harnessing the power of positive experiences to build an unshakeable core. Dr. Hanson poses that anyone can build up resilience, the key to a positive mindset, unshakeable sense of self and the ability to get back up again and withstand anything life throws your way. He has distilled 40 years of clinical work and teaching into 12 practical, highly effective tools to help you build your resilience. Working with these tools allows you to enter a positive feedback cycle, which creates a sense of well-being, which in turn establishes resilience, and ultimately powers itself to strengthen you. Developed from his incredibly popular online course called The Foundations of Well-Being, here is the groundwork you need to meet any challenge in life head on and to live with an open heart.

'A book to savour, to practise, and take to heart' Professor Mark Williams 'As clear and inspired as it gets' Ruby Wax Four steps to counterbalance your brain's negativity bias and learn to hardwire happiness in only a few minutes each day. Recent scientific breakthroughs have revealed that what we think and feel changes the brain. Dr Rick Hanson's Hardwiring Happiness is the first book to show how to transform the simple positive experiences of daily life into neural structures that promote lasting health, contentment, love and inner peace. To keep our ancestors alive, our brain evolved a 'negativity bias', which lets positive experiences flow through it like water through a sieve. Yet positive experiences are the building blocks needed for health, happiness and fulfilling relationships. Drawing on neuroscience and the contemplative traditions, Hardwiring Happiness shows how to overcome that negativity bias and get those good experiences into the brain where it can use them, providing the tools we need to heal old wounds, develop our inner resources and, ultimately, transform our lives.

'Accessible and gentle, there is deep wisdom here from which all may benefit' Professor Mark Williams, bestselling author of Mindfulness 'Astonishing' Ruby Wax Explore the new neuroscience of awakening and develop lasting inner peace in a changing world In Neurodharma, leading psychologist Rick Hanson explores the heights of human potential - and how to become as wise and strong, happy and loving, as any person can ever be. Combining new science and ancient wisdom, he shows how to develop unshakeable presence of mind, deep contentment, liberating insight and a courageous heart. With practical suggestions, guided meditations and warm encouragement, he offers an inspiring vision of who we can be - and an effective path for embodying this wonderful possibility. 'A brilliant and unprecedented offering' Deepak Chopra 'Rick Hanson has a rare ability to inspire us to our fullest potential while giving us practical, actionable tools for our everyday lives' Marie Forleo, author of Everything is Figureoutable