Warm Golden Salve
"To gradually replace negative implicit memories with positive ones, just make the positive aspects of your experience prominent and relatively intense in the foreground of your awareness while simultaneously placing the negative material in the background. Imagine that the positive contents of your awareness are sinking down into old wounds, soothing chafed and bruised places like a warm golden salve, filling up hollows, slowly replacing negative feelings and beliefs with positive ones."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Taking in the Good
"Every time you take in the good, you build a little bit of neural structure. Doing this a few times a day — for months and even years — will gradually change your brain, and how you feel and act, in far-reaching ways.
"It's good to take in the good. It builds up positive emotions, with many benefits for your physical and mental health. It's a great resource for children, especially spirited or anxious ones. And it aids spiritual practice by supporting motivation, conviction, and wholeheartedness."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Connect with People Who Support You
"Identify friends and family who care about you, and try to spend more time with them. When you're apart, visualize being with them and take in the good feelings. Companionship, even if only imagined, activates the brain's attachment and social group circuitry. Physical and emotional closeness to caregivers and other members of the band was a necessity for survival during our evolutionary history. Consequently, activating a felt sense of closeness will probably help you feel safer."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Keep Going!
"Being with whatever arises, working with the tendencies of mind to transform them, and taking refuge in the ground of being are the essential practices of the path of awakening. In many ways, these practices correspond, respectively, to mindfulness, virtue, and wisdom.
"On the path of awakening, keep going! Lots of little moments of practice will gradually and truly increase your contentment, kindness, and insight."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
A Gradual Strengthening
"When you set out on the path of awakening, you begin wherever you are. Then — with time, effort, and skillful means — virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom gradually strengthen and you feel happier and more loving. Some traditions describe this process as an uncovering of the true nature that was always present; others frame it as a transformation of your mind and body. Of course, these two aspects of the path of awakening support each other."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Equanimity
"Equanimity means not reacting to your reactions, whatever they are.
"Equanimity creates a buffer around the feeling tones of experiences so that you do not react to them with craving. Equanimity is like a circuit breaker that blocks the normal sequence in the mind that moves from feeling tone to craving to clinging to suffering."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Empathy
"In spiritual practice, empathy sees how we are all related to each other. It is mindful and curious, with a 'don't know' quality that prevents you from getting stuck in your own views. Empathy is virtue in action, the restraint of reactive patterns in order to stay present with another person. It embodies non-harming, since a lack of empathy is often upsetting to others, and also opens the door to hurting them unwittingly. Empathy contains an inherent generosity: you give the willingness to be moved by another person."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Cultivating Compassion
"Compassion is supported by recalling the feeling of being with someone who loves you, evoking heartfelt emotions such as gratitude, being empathic, opening to the suffering of other beings, and wishing them well. Bring compassion to five kinds of people: benefactors, friends, neutral people, difficult people, and yourself."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Extend the Circle of "Us"
"Extend the circle of 'us' to include as much of the world as you possibly can. Be mindful of automatic categorizations into 'us' and 'them' and look for ways that 'them' is actually 'us'; notice whenever you feel threatened, and consider whether there are actually any threats; consciously warm your heart toward others; practice loving-kindness for the whole world."
— Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Each One Says Yes
"Imagine that life is whispering yes. Yes to all beings, and yes to you. Everything you've said yes to is saying yes to you. Even the things you've said no to are saying yes to you!
"Each breath, each heartbeat, each surge across a synapse: each one says yes. Yes, all yes, all saying yes.
"Yes."
— Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
Faith Supports You
"Without faith in the world and in yourself, life feels shaky and scary. Faith grounds you in what's reliable and supportive; it's the antidote to doubt and fear. It strengthens you and supports you in weathering hard times. It helps you stay on your chosen paths, with confidence they will lead to good places. Faith fuels the hope and optimism that encourage the actions that lead to the results that confirm your faith, in a lovely positive cycle. Faith lifts your eyes to the far horizons, toward what's sacred, even Divine."
— Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
A Deeply Rooted Tree
"Tell yourself that you are strong. That you can endure, persist, cope, and prevail. That you are strong enough to hold your experience in awareness without being overwhelmed. That the winds of life can blow, and blow hard, but you are a deeply rooted tree, and winds just make you even stronger.
"And when they are done blowing, there you still stand. Offering shade and shelter, flowers and fruit. Strong and lasting."
— Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
Take Resolve as Your Guide
"Resolute means you are wholly committed and unwavering. Bring to mind an experience of absolute determination, such as a time you protected a loved one. You may feel a firming in the chest, a sense of every bit of you pulling for the same thing. Explore this feeling as it might apply to a particular part of your life. Imagine yourself staying resolute here as you face temptations — saying no, for example, to the donuts offered in a meeting — and take in the ways this would feel good to you. Get in touch with your resolve each morning, surrender to it, and let it guide you through the day."
— Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
The Courage to Love
"To love is to have courage, whose root meaning comes from the word 'heart.' I've been in a lot of hairy situations in the mountains, yet I was a lot more scared just before I told my first real girlfriend that I loved her. It takes courage to give love that may not be returned, to love while knowing you'll inevitably be separated one day from everything you love, to go all in with love and hold nothing back.
"Sometimes I ask myself, Am I brave enough to love? Each day gives me, and gives you, many chances to love.
"If you choose just one thing from this book of practices, let it be love."
— Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
Peace Already Present
"Notice any sense of peace already present in your body or mind. Awareness itself is peaceful, as is the rhythm of breathing, the effortless appearance of sights, and the reassuring stability of a chair or table. Also create peacefulness by bringing to mind anything that helps you feel calm, undisturbed, or tranquil. Perhaps an image of a baby sleeping, the sound of waves on a warm beach, the felt remembrance of a time you were completely at peace, or a sense of the untroubled vastness of the universe. You could also activate a sense of peace by drawing on one or more of the key experiences above, such as relaxation or feeling all right right now."
— Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
Open to Enthusiasm
"Open to enthusiasm, explore what it feels like, and keep it going. Help it become intense, and feel it in your body. Enjoy it. See how you can care about a goal without getting driven or upset about it. Explore the sense that you can work hard for something while also being at peace that you've done all you could whatever the outcome may be. Embody your enthusiasm by revealing it to others, letting your face light up, or moving and speaking more quickly.
"Intend and sense that enthusiasm is soaking into you, that you are naturally becoming more enthusiastic as a person. Really register the feeling of the sweet spot, that combination of being energized toward a goal without stressing about the results. Take in the sense of being enthusiastically engaged in the present without clutching at a future result. Let yourself become both contented and lively."
— Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
Compensate for the Negativity Bias
"While the negativity bias is good for survival in harsh conditions, it's lousy for quality of life, fulfilling relationships, personal growth, and long-term health. It makes us overlearn from bad experiences and under-learn from good ones.
"The best way to compensate for the negativity bias is to regularly take in the good."
— Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence
