Speaker 1 · 0:03Welcome back. I'm Sean Fargo. Today we're joined by Dr. Rick Hansen, one of my favorite mindfulness teachers of all time. Rick is going to be talking about the cultivation of some inner resources for opening to happiness and joy and opening into that portal of being. Just have a lot of gratitude for you, Rick, for joining us again. He's researched and written extensively on the neuroscience of happiness and well-being. He has some best-selling books: Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, Hardwiring Happiness, Resilient, and my favorite book, NeuroDharma, which is kind of a newer book. He has an online program and course on NeuroDharma. It's an online program that I recommend. But Rick, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 · 1:10You know, there's a point of view that certain extremely vulnerable, maybe temperamentally vulnerable, like a premature infant who was then catastrophically mistreated for years. There's some views that in some cases the adult that that infant will become is kind of permanently damaged in some ways. And I tend to reject that view anyway. I don't think there's necessarily strong evidence for it. Second, I never want to bet against the human heart or spirit. And third, deep underneath it all, whatever the injuries were, we have the first track of the card of awakening, our underlying true nature, which is indestructible. It's unshakable. It's indestructible. It's who we really are underneath all conditioned phenomena. So now the question is: what's the work to do every day? What's the work to do every day? And I'll just tell you these questions that I keep coming back to as a therapist or myself or kind of a dad. What's the challenge? So right there, we have the challenge on the table, very early primal experiences of neglect, mistreatment, maybe abuse, dregulation, invasive, uncontrolled pain. Just okay. And then today, what's the challenge, especially as it's experienced? So we can intervene out on the world in the physical body or in the mind. It's important to intervene in the world for sure, to do what we can, let's say, going forward, so that the youngest among us are not abused or mistreated or neglected or hungry or stuck in a war zone. So we can intervene out there. I'm shrink. And you know, I can I look internally, but it's not to disregard the external. But if we're focusing on mental factors that help with challenges, it's helpful to bring it inside and go, okay, how does the challenge show up in our actual experiences, in what we feel or do or want, or in ways that we're inhibited, ways that we're bottled up, or have a hard time really trusting others and deep in our bones because we were so let down at such an important time when we were young? What's the challenge? Second, here's the money question. What if it were more present in the mind would help? Do you have an intuition of what would be the key resources? Kind of succinctly here, one, two, or three. That would be your answer to the second question. What if it were more present in your mind these days would really help and be good to develop as a trait? What would help? Greater self-compassion, perhaps, greater self-soothing, perhaps, greater sense of an unshakable core of goodness inside, maybe greater sense of others who are loyal, who will come through for oneself. You know, that might help. Maybe more positive mood in general is a wonderful inner strength. Positive mood. Happiness is a massive positive factor for longevity, long-term health, resilience, functioning, capacity to deal with stress, and many other good things. Okay, what would help? What's the medicine? And diagnosis drives treatment. What's the diagnosis? What's the challenge? Second, what would help? That's incredibly useful. And most people can't answer that second question at first. They don't know. I didn't know. I was a clueless therapist for years. I was practicing unconditional positive regard, and I hopefully wasn't being a jerk. Those are nonspecific, beneficial things. But otherwise, I had no map. What are we doing here? So it's a really key question. What are we trying to develop? Now, maybe what we're trying to develop is the capacity in a person to not be caught up in trying to develop things. Maybe we're trying to help people. I'm working on this one myself, to kind of relax what they call in Zen gaining mind or turning yourself into a project. And a lot of the teachings in the culture about mindfulness in the last several decades have been a wonderful corrective here that have moved us more towards self-acceptance and it's okay to be an ordinary person. We all have an ordinary mind deep down anyway. You know, so what are we trying to develop? So, second question. And then the third question naturally follows How can I have, or how can I help this person I'm working with or helping or teaching in my mindfulness class, let's say, how can I help them have experiences of what would help? Maybe somebody comes in, you're helping them, you're coaching them, or you're teaching them, and they say, Wow, I'm just a naturally temperamentally spirited, distractable person. Or maybe I've had life experiences that were traumatizing. You bet I'm constantly vigilant and scanning. You betcha I am. I'm like a cat on a hot tin roof for a darn good reason. What would help? Them to be more stable in their moment-to-moment presence of mind. What would help? And then how could they have experiences of something like recognizing that we can still be alert to what is actually happening in the present while allowing ourselves to calm and stabilize in our own depths, in our own core? Oh, you can do both. You can both protect yourself and settle into a more peaceful presence of mind. Oh, that would really help if that knowing and that experience were more stable in a person. So let's then help them have that as an experience. And then fourth, focus on internalization, installation of that. That's such a good roadmap. And anytime, if you're just kind of rolling along with yourself or others and it's going great, great, fine. But if it gets a little sticky, you feel like you're trying to, you know, drive your Ferrari through mud and it's not working, these are great questions. This really gets at what's the key resource that would really help? It's a huge question. What would help? And it's so hopeful because no matter how bad the past has been or what the present is like as it appears, because then it is what it is, as it appears, going forward, we can grow these key resources. And if you think of it structurally or categorically, key resources tend to address wounds or lac. Wounds being the presence of the bad, lacks being the absence of the good. And for many people, the absence of the good was even more consequential than the presence of the bad. Very often, what's the case is that so many important things were missing. And they were. It was a thin soup. They were missing. They were missing. And we have a natural need for key social supplies of touch, healthy touch, soothing, calming, co-regulation. You know a lot's been developed there. So if it's missing, we end up with a kind of hole in the heart of what was missing. And then as adults, we can look for bit by bit what will gradually fill that hole in our heart. That's so hopeful. A spoonful at a time. Even if, like me, you feel like the hole in your heart is like one of these construction sites that take up a city block for a new skyscraper. Every day you go by the fence, you know, you throw a few bricks in, good bricks, whatever that might be. What would be reparative or what was missing then that you could get now? I metaphorically describe it as if we have scurvy. We're missing something. So we need vitamin C. And if you have scurvy, vitamin B or iron or vitamin A or any of the other 20 supplements I take every day, I seem to, they're nice, but that's not the medicine. That's not the specific nutrient that addresses that particular deficit or lack based on the history. So what would actually fill that hole in the heart, or what would actually address the particular need around which there's a wound or someone is having difficulty with? And so that goes to, you may know, the structure I use from biology and medicine of our three needs essentially is safety, satisfaction, and connection, which gives us a kind of model or roadmap for identifying key resources to address key needs. And it also speaks to a big topic that we might get into. If you have any interest in the Buddha's drive theory of suffering, you know, in other words, that craving is a primary driver of suffering, and a primary driver of craving is a deficit or disturbance in the meeting of an important need. We crave because we don't feel our needs are met sufficiently in the present. So as we develop inner resources to meet our needs, we're able to meet them, and so we're less driven to crave. And second, as we repeatedly internalize authentic experiences of needs met enough in the moment, safe enough in the moment in various ways, such as calming or noticing that you're basically all right right now in the present. Or with regard to satisfaction, opening to gratitude, or experiencing that you've arrived. You don't need to keep seeking, or in the present, building up a sense of contentment, or building up a sense of love flowing in and flowing out. As we internalize those experiences again and again, we build up this core inside that feels already enough, already whole, already complete, already content in the present. So there's nothing missing and nothing wrong, and no actual biological basis for craving. There may still be a habit of craving based on our history and our culture, but in the moment, there's actually no basis for it as we recognize that needs are met enough in the moment. We may still dream big dreams, we may still pursue things, we may still protect ourselves and others, we may still speak truth to power, but we don't do it on the basis of something missing, something wrong. We do it on the basis of fullness and balance in the core of our being. This opens into a big topic, this whole notion of key resources and the internalization of them. I'll just nominate maybe a couple resources. One would be the feeling of really being on your own side. Often an indicator of a good answer to the second question is the person starts going, could we both long for and often push away the inner resources that would be most valuable for all kinds of reasons, including we fear that that'll lead to punishment or abandonment, you know, or history. But being on your own side in an internal kind of way that has this, for me, it's a combination of nurturance and encouragement and strength. So that would be something to really kind of explore. What's the feeling of being on your own side? One way into that is what's it feel like to be on the side of others, to be for them, to be a good ally, to be loyal, loyalty. It's hard to internalize loyalty to yourself when others are not sufficiently loyal to you. So, you know, being on your own side, what's that actually feel like? And if you're on your own side, there's a kindness in it. And as the big reactions arise, you're trying to help yourself with them. I suspect that you're on the side of others, you know, you're helpful with others. What's that feel like with yourself? It's very important. And I think, by the way, in terms of teaching mindfulness to other people, focusing on this aspect of being on your own side, being a friend of yourself, being for yourself, not against others before yourself is actually really important because as people become more mindful, they open the trapdoor to the basement and all kinds of stuff arises. And, you know, it's not necessarily easy to deal with it. And also to be on their own side in the acquisition of a skill. Like I have an aging body who knew. So I've got to do stuff like, you know, hey, Rick, you gotta go treadmill. Hey, Rick, you gotta lift the weight. Hey, Rick, you gotta go see the PT, the physical therapist. And to do that, which I don't kind of want to do naturally, helps to be on my own side. Come on, Rick. As my friends would say to me when I was rock climbing, stop whining and start climbing in a good way, in a kind way to ourselves. So you would look for ways to have experiences of that. That's the third question. And then fourth, slow it down for a breath or longer, feel it in your body, and be more this way with yourself. And then I think there's another one that really can make people cringe, which is to know in our bones that we're a good person, to feel really deep down that we're a beautiful, sweet, lovable, good person. You know, like we would wish that for every child if we have a child, that they would really feel like a good person. It's one thing to have self-esteem, which is conceptual. It's really a different thing to feel that with a kind of a profound relief that you actually are a good person. That there would be this kind of confidence. What's sweet about this is that, you know, unlike having to lift weights when my arms are tired, this is happy. A, feel that sense of being on your own side, that's good. And B, really registering in a way that can feel very penetrating and intimate and even very young inside. Wow, they're assholes, not me. They tried to trick me. They tried to make me believe things. Now they did it out of their causes and conditions, their histories, all the rest of that. And no, it was bullshit. I was cool, I was good, I was healthy, I was normal. You could even just do a little bit of a reparative thing where you imagine that little infant you once were, and just imagining what you would say to the 10-year-old as you today, from a place of wisdom inside yourself and large-heartedness inside yourself. You know, and then can you flip it around? This is a kind of linking. And can you feel that the 10-year-old infant in you actually, way down deep in the strata of your psyche, is receiving that experience, that blessing from the adult you. That's kind of a sophisticated move in your inner psychology, but the internalization of social supplies, the feeling cared about, that's challenging for many people. It's challenging for different reasons. One reason is that feeling cared about, if at all, can activate longings to be cared about, which then are associated with expectations of disappointment, betrayal, pain from your personal history. So much as a person wants to feel cared about, they understandably, often unconsciously, will push away experiences of it or swerve away from experiences of it, because in their history, experiences of being cared about end badly. Or they saw it end badly for other people, or they imagined that it could end badly for themselves. So it's understandable that they push it away. There are other people who were cared about in relationships and that caring became a form of betrayal or abuse. Maybe the caring they received came at them like a Trojan horse that got them to open their gates, their defenses, which then led to being plundered, mistreated, exploited, harmed, controlled, exhausted, and so forth. So people have different reasons to, or they're in their life today. You know, they could be just in a hostile environment, have a lot of not caring coming at them. And so two things here. First, as a general principle, when we work with people, including helping people develop factors of mindfulness, we often realize, oh, it would really help this person that is in my mindfulness class. I'll just make something up here. It would help this person to be more able to be mindful of their interior. Because we can be mindful, important point, both to what's happening around us as well as what's happening internally. It would help a person who's struggling to be more open to their, let's say, painful feelings or the parts of themselves that they've pushed away if they had a stronger sense of feeling cared about by others. Because that could then build up inner protectors, inner allies that would enable them to be more able to tolerate their distress and to stay present while these painful experiences are appearing and passing through awareness. But then the person, understandably, let's say, has a hard time actually growing that inner psychological strength of feeling cared about. So then you step back from what if we're more present would really help? And then you go, huh, what if it were more present would help that person develop the thing that, if it were more present, would really help? That's a very natural sequence. And those of you who are active therapists probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Sometimes you even have to go a step further. You know, what would help you to develop the thing that would then in turn help you to get what you really, really need and long for inside. Sometimes you have to work your way back, do some backfilling and infrastructure, and then come out again to what you're really trying to develop. So let's say in this person, they have a lot of yes buts, you know, maybe. Yes, but nobody really likes me. Yes, but I can't trust anybody. Yes, but yeah, I had a friendship and then they betrayed me. Yeah, I love that guy, but he cheated on me. Yes, but if you can't trust your mother, how can you trust anybody? Yes, but understandable. That's a good reason. Okay. So it might help that person to be a little more self-aware and have some insight into what's the function that the yes but is serving? How is it helping to prevent dreaded experiences, such as feeling betrayed, exploited, lied to yet again? So that kind of insight can be helpful. This is therapy 101, but it's helpful. A second thing that might really help is to deepen the conviction that factually there are people in their life today who do care about them. It might be in very simple ways, such as people who are fellow fans. What if people care about the whales or social justice or climate change? So you can feel, okay, I'm part of a group of people. That's a very fundamental form of being cared about that goes to our primal history as hunter-gatherer bands. Very important. Or maybe there's just a kind of goofy jokey chat with where you get your coffee. You know what I mean? That's a form of cared about. Or your pet, your dog. Somebody cares about you. Maybe you have a friend who's just friendly. They annoy you, they're weird, they're always late to a get together, they borrow your clothes, they never return them. But still, you know they like you. You can feel it. You know they like you. Or maybe there's a history in which you're cared about. Or simply you're in a team at work and there's some respect for you. There's some appreciation. There's a valuing of you, you can feel that. So developing clarity about the fact of being cared about can help a person increasingly trust that they can let the knowledge of that fact become a feeling of being cared about. A lot of people can recognize the facts around them, but they don't let themselves have a feeling. They're not psychotic, they're not demented. They can recognize facts even if they're resistant to it. So that's why you work on insight sometimes to get past the yes buts. But as they deepen conviction in what's factually true, conviction in what fact is factually true is an underrated psychological resource. Doubt is one of the five major hindrances in the Buddhist psychology. And sometimes it's said that it's the worst of them all because anything can be doubted. Yes, but, yes, but what about? But will it always be that case? And so developing conviction, another, as Sean knows, factor sometimes defined as or translated as faith, but it's an informed, realistic faith. It's closer to conviction, realistic conviction about what's true. I have conviction that my wife loves me. I know it's true. I have conviction that this is an awesome pencil. And I've been using this kind of pencil since I worked for a year in an engineering consulting firm when I was 27. I love my pencil. Conviction, you know? I have conviction that Sean is one heck of a great dude. The awesome person. I know that's true. Like the Oprah question, what do you know in your bones is true? What's one thing you know for sure? That's so important to develop conviction, especially in a world that's full of bamboozlers, liars, and bullshitters, and active, pernicious disinformation campaigns, all kinds of pixie dust thrown in our eyes, conviction. That you see what you see, including that there are people who care about you. So if a person has this primary pilot light of being on their own side, they want to help themselves, believe what's useful. When I did the firewalk with Tony Robbins, I walked into the first part of that seminar and I was like, this is this is hocus pocus. I'm never going to walk on those hot goals. Are you insane? And then there was a tipping point where Tony was putting people in a trance and he was getting them all into it and cultivating that state of being that was ready to do the firewalk. And I made that tipping point. And at that point, I was like, yes, convince me. I want to be convinced, right? It's that tipping point. You get on your own side. You want to help yourself, believe, or at least get to that tipping point where 51% or 52% of you, at least, if not more, believe the good truth. I think that this territory, by the way, of helping people open to the really important inner resource of feeling cared about is a struggle for many people. And it's very important to pay attention to. I've written about it in my books and stuff. And feeling cared about in ways is important. And it's been helpful for me to identify these five major categories of feeling cared about and to look for facts of being cared about in each one of them and working up from very, very simple things. Feeling included, feeling seen, feeling appreciated, liked, and loved. And then the last thing I'll just say is that even if there are limitations, real ones, in the receiving of caring from the world, maybe a person is routinely uh discriminated against or mistreated structurally, or they're in a hostile environment, or they just have to put up with a certain amount of crap for the sake of maintaining their health insurance or keeping the peace with their nightmare of an ex husband or something. There are limits there in what we can receive. We don't have total control also over the receiving of caring. But boy oh boy oh boy, we can sure transmit caring. We can sure choose to open our heart, to find an open heart, and to resource ourselves so that we dare to open our hearts, to develop the intermediate resource so that we can then develop the primary resource we're really going after and value. We can open our hearts, we can be compassionate, we can see the being behind the eyes in that other person. We can see the good intentions that underlie their bad actions. We can, as it says in the Buddha Dharma, give no person cause to fear you. Now you might give them cause to know that there will be a consequence if they keep messing with you in that way or mistreating your kid or et cetera, breaking their agreements with you, not doing their homework, no dessert until you do your homework. We'll feed you, but no dessert until you do your homework, right? But that's really different from being needlessly intimidating or threatening, especially given that we're a species of scared monkeys and so vulnerable to fear. If you think about, you know, the short list of really important resources to develop inside, feeling cared about is huge. So developing the capacity to feel cared about is really, really, really important.
Speaker 1 · 25:48Rick, thank you so much for being here. I highly recommend Rickhanson.net, the Being Well Podcast. If you haven't checked out his podcast with Forrest Hansen, his son, I highly, highly, highly recommend it. It's really well done. And it's not really Rick and his son, so much as it is two esteemed teachers who both have a lot to offer. Rick has a Wednesday night sitting group that are meeting online these days that's free. You can join his Wednesday night sitting group where they meditate together and Rick talks about various topics. A wonderful way to be a part of a mindful community. I highly recommend the book Neurodharma. You have a lot of wonderful courses available as well. Thank you very much for being here today.
