Taking in the Good: Rick Hanson on Overcoming the Negativity Bias
About the teacher
Rick Hanson PhD
Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author of Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Resilient, and other books on positive neuroplasticity and contemplative practice. His work focuses on how people can grow inner strengths such as calm, contentment, compassion, and confidence through repeated, embodied learning.
Learn more →Both are true
Rick Hanson begins below the surface of the ocean.
“You look up and it’s busy. It’s stormy. It’s frothy. Down here, though, there’s a stillness underneath it all. Both are true. It’s not a spiritual bypass to recognize the available and accessible oneness, vastness, stillness as the ground of all.”
The practice is to find what is steady without pretending that the storm has disappeared. Rick calls this working at the “tender edge” of what feels challenging but manageable.
Find your footing, your good heart, and what you want to grow
Rick’s first move is to find your footing.
“Take a big breath, make a plan, stabilize. A long exhalation engages the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, the rest and digest branch, and slows the heart rate. Two or three of those in a row, that’s going to settle you down.”
Then he asks you to find the good intentions that are already present.
“Locate your own good heart. Find your good heart, your innate goodness, your good intentions.”
“Whatever the beneficial results are, slow down. Help those neurons to keep firing together so they wire together that new way of being into your body somatically.”
Sometimes finding your footing is one full breath or the weight of the body in the chair. Rick includes a reminder that is easy to skip:
“Reassurance is really underrated because we’re a bunch of scared monkeys.”
You do not need a flawless record before you can recognise the good heart. You only need to notice the intentions that are here now.
The brain is Velcro for the bad
“The brain is like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones.”
Rick describes learning in two stages. First, something beneficial is happening now. Then that passing state gradually becomes a lasting trait.
“We tend to zoom on to the next state before it has time to register in the body as a trait.”
His instructions are simple:
- Stay with the experience for a breath or longer.
- Feel it in the body.
- Notice what is enjoyable, meaningful, or rewarding about it.
The experience does not have to be dramatic. Relief after sending an email counts. So does the warmth of a mug, a dog leaning against your leg, or the feeling of having handled one difficult moment well.
“If you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”
Practice
Rick’s five-minute challenge
- Take in the good six times today. Let an ordinary beneficial experience land for at least one breath.
- Choose one quality you need. Rick suggests treating it like a daily vitamin. You might choose confidence, calm, worth, or connection.
- Spend two or three minutes at home base. Return to one sense of peacefulness, contentment, or love.
Rick estimates that the whole practice takes about five minutes spread across the day.
Let be, let go, let in
Some people rush past good experiences because they are busy. Others feel undeserving, suspicious of calm, or anxious when they are no longer anxious. Turning inward can also feel unsafe.
Rick does not treat any of these responses as a failure. He offers three ways of working with the mind:
“Let be, let go, let in.”
He compares it to tending a garden. You witness what is already there. You pull weeds when that is useful. You plant flowers too.
“Talk about a mess. It’s a freaking zoo in here. We all have an inner lizard, mouse, and monkey in terms of neurological evolution over time.”
Most people are dealing with their own version of that zoo.
“For one person who’s a narcissistic jerk, there are 99 people who are walking around in pseudo-armor that’s three sizes too small.”
Taking in the good is the flower-planting part. It gives the nervous system repeated evidence of safety, satisfaction, and connection while life continues to include difficulty.
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