From Intellectual Knowing to Felt Knowledge with Rick Hanson
In this episode, we dive deep into an incredible conversation with returning guest Dr. Rick Hanson to explore neuroplasticity, the science of changing your brain, and how to supercharge your ability to learn anything.
Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His books have been published in 29 languages and include Mother Nurture, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, and most recently Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness. He is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he's lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard, and been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and many more media outlets.
All of our experiences are natural processes. There is no categorical distinction between the experiences of a human and the sensory experiences of a spider, a cat, or any animal or sentient being.
How can we use our minds to change our brains?
“Self-directed neuroplasticity” and “positive neuroplasticity”
Mindfulness practice changes the physical structure of your brain
Your mind is shaped by your environment
Your mind shapes your reaction to things, even more than the events themselves.
How do we disengage from negative experiences & rumination?
Slow down and experience positive and beneficial experiences. Help your states become traits. Turn passing experience into lasting physical change.
Neuroplasticity is the core way that learning works in your brain. You can harness it to improve your life.
2/3 of who you are is learned or acquired over your life span. "You have the power to affect who you are becoming." It’s the superpower of superpowers.
How do we go from ephemeral learning, watching a TED talk, and then having no impact or change in our life?
How are we helping ourselves internalize the lessons of our experience?
Focus on what’s personally relevant and meaningful, focus on what’s new about the experience, the more you bring it into your body the more it will sink it.
We have the ability, every day, to use the power of positivity
We consume too much "Intellectual cotton candy” - it’s important to be thoughtful of
“Quick 3 breaths practice”
How does the “hardware” of neuroplasticity work? We have an “enchanted loom” inside our brains “continuously weaving the tapestry of consciousness”
The hardware of your brain is designed to be changed by the activity of the brain itself.
“Hebb's Law” = Neurons that fire together, wire together.
New connections form as a result of repeated thoughts
More blood flows through well used neural and synaptic connections.
You can literally see the thickening of brain passageways via MRIs resulting from your thoughts.
Your thoughts and your actions can change the genetic expression of your genes in a way that can reduce your stress response and improve your happiness
Our experiences matter in the moment, but they matter even more for shaping WHO YOU ARE BECOMING.
Science is extremely clear that your thoughts change the physical structure of your brain and ultimately WHO YOU Are.
Happy people are successful people.
When you experience something useful in the flow of everyday life, slow down and receive it, 5-10 seconds can make a huge difference in internalized
This applies to THOUGHTS and SENSATIONS, EXPERIENCES, EMOTIONS, and FEELINGS too!
It’s not just for internalizing ideas, it's also incredibly powerful for internalizing feelings and experiences
2 Step Process of Neural Change
(1) We experience something
(2) It changes the brain.
If you’re having an experience and you want to experience more of it.. here’s what to do.
"The 8 Factors of Self Directed Neuroplasticity"
How to REGISTER beneficial experiences so they have a lasting impact on your brain.
Enriching.. help an experience become BIGGER and MORE LASTING
Duration - extend the duration of the experience. Keep the neurons firing together for longer. Don’t chase the next experience, really sit with it.
Intensity - dial up the intensity of the experience to fire more neurons and get it to sink in better. Turn up the volume inside yourself to make the experience feel BIG and intense.
Multi-modality - have more aspects of the experience in play, feeling, thinking, sensing, sensations, physical experience, actions, etc
Thoughts, perceptions (including physical sensations), emotions, desires, actions
Novelty - the brain is a novelty detector. Make an experience more fresh or novel, explore different and new parts of the experience, look at it freshly, the sense of newness will increase its internalization
Personal Relevance / Salience - this is not about episodic memory or specific memories, this is for implicit memory, the felt sense or experience, not specific memories. Make things personally relevant to YOU.
Increasing their relevance to you personally makes it stick in your brain
Absorbing.. sensitive the machinery of the brain so it’s more receptive to and influenced by experience. Help yourself become more sensitive and receptive to the inner dialogue.
Intention - intend to be changed a little by the experience. Be willing and open to change for the better.
Sense of receiving the experience - consciously receive the experience, ask yourself where in your mind, body, or experience the feeling needs to be received.
Focus on what is rewarding - what is enjoyable, meaningful, or both. Focus on what feels good about the experience it increases dopamine and neurochemicals which increase long term storage and consolidation.
3 Step Process
(1) Have a beneficial experience you want to cultivate further
(2) Then shift into enriching… protect the experience, add fire to it, keep it burning brightly
(3) Then absorb.. receive the warmth of the fire.
You can’t control whether the tide is rising or falling.. you can’t control many things.. but you can control your own experience and your reactions.
The Importance of Self Reliance
Competent
Autonomous
The foundation of personal intimacy with others is autonomy.
Being self-directed and being capable.. are the fundamental building blocks of being healthier, happier, and more productive.
We become competent through learning... social competence, emotional competence, spiritual competence, etc. Getting good at learning is the most important thing you can do.
Two useful questions to improve your life.
When you look at the challenges of your life - either external or internal - what, if it where more present in your mind, your being, your heart - what would REALLY help?
This helps you identify the inner strengths that you need
What does it mean to have a wonderful human life? Here we are today.. what kind of life do you want to have.. what do you want it to feel like to be you? What should your life feel like? What do you want to feel inside?
Once you discover this, you can gradually grow it over time.
Find the experiences and feelings you want - and focus on using these methods to internalize.
Whatever it is that you want to be more like, study the people who have made that thing their life's work and gotten good at it.
The process of growth - both general and specific - this is how learning works. "In the beginning, nothing came… in the middle, nothing stayed.. in the end, nothing left."
"Trying to light a fire with wet wood."
Homework: “The 5-minute challenge” that will transform your day.
Slow down: As you go through your day slow down when you’re having a good experience, 5 seconds here, 20 seconds there, etc.
Have a focus for self-development: What are you working on developing within yourself right now? This is your North Star. Have one thing you’re deliberately trying to grow and improve in your life.
Marinate in deep green: Safety, satisfaction, connection. Soak in an experience of your body calming down. When you feel rested, safe, and content.. hang out there as long as you can.
Thank you so much for listening!
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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research
General
Rick’s Podcast, Being Well with Dr. Rick Hanson
Media
Psychology Today - Rick Hanson Profile
Article Directory on Mental Help, HuffPost, Greater Good Magazine
Forbes - “Three Mindfulness Practices For Leading In Disruption” by Henna Inam
[Courses] Mindfulness Exercises - Rick Hanson’s Mindfulness Meditations
DharmaSeed - Rick Hanson's Dharma Talks
[Podcast] The Feel Good Effect - 119: The Secret to Becoming More Resilient with Dr. Rick Hanson
[Podcast] The Accidental Creative - Dr. Rick Hanson on Hardwiring Happiness
[Podcast] Revolution Health Radio - How to “Hardwire Happiness,” with Dr. Rick Hanson
The Jordan Harbinger Show - 192: Rick Hanson | The Science of Hardwiring Happiness and Resilience
[Podcast] Marie Forleo - HOW TO BUILD UNSHAKEABLE INNER STRENGTH USING YOUR BRAIN
Videos
Rick’s YouTube Channel
InsightTimer - Being on Your Own Side by Rick Hanson
Inspire Nation - How to Hardwire Your Brain for Happiness! | Rick Hanson | "Buddha's Brain" | Positive Psychology
Optimize - Optimize Interview: Buddha’s Brain with Rick Hanson
Matt D’Avella - The Reason Most People are Unhappy
TEDxTalks - Hardwiring happiness: Dr. Rick Hanson at TEDxMarin 2013
Talks At Google - Rick Hanson: "Resilient" | Talks at Google
Greater Good Science Center - Rick Hanson: Understanding Neuroplasticity
Books
Amazon Author Page - Rick Hanson
Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness by Rick Hanson
Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness by Rick Hanson , Forrest Hanson
Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence by Rick Hanson
Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom by Rick Hanson , Daniel J. Siegel
Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time by Rick Hanson
Mother Nurture: A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships by Rick Hanson, Jan Hanson, and Ricki Pollycove
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, bringing the world's top experts right to you. Introducing your hosts, Matt Bodnar and Austin Fabel.
[00:00:19] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over 100 countries. In this episode, we dive deep into an incredible conversation with returning guest, Dr. Rick Hanson, to explore neuroplasticity, the science of changing your brain and how to supercharge your ability to learn anything.
Are you a fan of the show have you been enjoying our interviews with the world's top experts? If so, you need to head to successpodcast.com and sign up for our email list. You will receive a time of exclusive subscriber content as well as our free course we put a ton of time into called How to Create Time For What Matters Most in Your Life. You'll get that and so much more value and content on a weekly basis directly from our team. Sign up now at successpodcast.com. Or if you're on the move, text 44222 to SMARTER. That's S-M-A-R-T-E-R on your phone to subscribe on the go.
In our previous episode, we discussed the hidden science behind navigating life’s toughest transitions with our previous guest, Bruce Feiler.
Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, senior fellow of UC Berkley’s Greater Good Science Center and New York Times bestselling author. His books have been published in 29 languages and include Mother Nurture, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddhist Brain, Just One Thing, and most recently, Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness. He’s the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, Harvard and been featured on media outlets across the world.
[00:02:12] MB: Rick, welcome back to the Science of Success.
[00:02:15] RH: Matt, I’m glad to be here. Greetings to you in Tennessee. I’m here in Northern California.
[00:02:19] MB: Well, I’m so excited to have you back on the show. Our first conversation at this point, it was three or four years ago, maybe even longer than that. And you’ve been working on a lot of interesting stuff. One of the things that really spans your entire catalogue of work that I think is so interesting is that you do a tremendous job of connecting ancient wisdom with modern science in a way that’s really practical and applicable in our lives. And so that to me, I just wanted to commend you for such a great approach to improving the human experience and human understanding.
[00:02:53] RH: Matt, thank you. Honestly. Praise coming from you, and I appreciate it.
[00:02:58] MB: Awesome. We’re going to jump right in to some deeper issues. Let’s start with a question of what is the source of our thoughts, our emotions, our feelings, and even to some degree, our sense of self?
[00:03:13] RH: That’s a really deep question. I think the answer inside the frame of science is to ground all of our experiences and keeping it simple. The sounds we’re hearing. The birds outside my window right, sensations in our body, pulling up the knowledge of our home phone number, our cell number. All of those experiences are natural processes. There’s no categorical distinction down between the experiences of a human and the experiences of a gorilla, a cat, a lizard, a goldfish, or maybe even a little spider, which is really just remarkable to reflect upon it. The nervous system has been evolving for 600 million years helping creatures including us today survive and even thrive in really challenging conditions.
If you ground mind and life, then that leads you into a very practical investigation, which the perennial wisdom around the world has pursued. People describe these fellows or people as of all genders and beyond gender as the Olympic athletes of mental training. That’s pretty remarkable, right? But also it brings you into a very practical consideration of modern science that says, “How can we use our mind to change our brain for the better? Thus, changing our mind for the better as well.” And that’s my own personal focus.
[00:04:36] MB: So let’s dig into that a little bit. Tell me about that concept, because to me that’s something that is the promise of that and the potential of that is so powerful.
[00:04:44] RH: Yeah, it is. If you think of it, Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA coined the term “self-directed neuroplasticity”. I work a lot in what could be called positive neuroplasticity using deliberate mental activities to plausibly change your brain, which then in turn shifts your mood, lifts your motivation, helps you perform at a higher level, and it also helps you be more content and happy along the way.
One of the remarkable findings is that something like mindfulness practice, for example, changes your brain in ways that are increasingly measurable with things like MRIs and EEGs. It’s also true of course that the brain can be changed for the worse. It has a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for good ones.
So both traumatic experiences as well as the daily grind that wears people down gradually alters neural structure and function for the worse. So for me the take away is deal with the bad, turn to the good, take in the good. That summarizes a lot of useful practice.
[00:05:49] MB: That’s something that you’re hinting at another idea that I think is really important, which is this notion of controlling the inputs in your life, controlling your environment. And if you don’t take ownership of even the smallest things, as you said, a lot of negative experiences overtime can change the structure of your brain in a negative way too. And so tell me about how we can start to consciously and mindfully craft whether it’s our thoughts, our experiences, our actions, etc., to reshape our brains via neuroplasticity and to be happier and healthier and more productive.
[00:06:24] RH: Oh, that’s really great. I’m a really practical guy. I’m a psychologist. I’m a parent to two young adults. I’ve been married a long time. I had a mortgage for a long time. I’ve been in business as well. So I’m the real-world. And also I care about what’s happening in society, including in this time of trouble and opportunity that we’re in the middle of right now in America and around the world.
Of course, always, we should do what we can to help the world around us be better. Including improve our relationships with other people, seek out people that are more copasetic with us and so forth. And also do what we can with our physical bodies. But meanwhile, we have our minds, and our minds are with us wherever we go. And our minds shape our reaction at things actually, usually, more than our circumstances do.
Yes, try to improve your circumstances and relationships and settings. But meanwhile, wow! Your mind is like the shock absorber. It’s like the furnace. It’s like the climate, the atmosphere that you take with you wherever you go. Appreciating the importance of lifting the triple bottom line and doing what we can in the world around us. Meanwhile, wherever you go, there you go.
So one of the things that people can really do is to think about disengaging from negative experiences, not to look at the world through a rose-colored glasses, but to stop reinforcing the negative by ruminating about it. Just that alone leaves people’s mental health and they’re functioning dramatically. Disengage from ruminating.
Second, when you’re having a beneficial experience of any kind, a simple one, you’re relaxing a little as you exhale. You’re enjoying the intellectual conversation with someone like Matt Bodnar. You’re appreciating the fact that your coffee tastes good. You get little thing done. Your cat crawls in your lap. Whatever it might be, slow down to help your brain catch up to that experiencing the fact. Slow down to, in the famous saying, keep the neurons firing together so they wire as well.
And the problem is most of us leave in a state of discontent. We’re always chasing the next shiny object rather than savoring and marinating in and internalizing the current beneficial experience so that it actually changes our brain. We live in states, but we don’t help our states become traits. And that fundamental power to turn passing experiences into lasting physical change in your brain is fantastic. But most people don’t use it very much.
[00:09:04] MB: And so correct me if I’m describing this in the right way, but the idea is to – When you’re experiencing some kind of positive emotional experience. It could be anything as small as a sip of coffee up to a child’s birthday, something like that. We need to take the time to be mindful and try to savor that moment, savor that experience of positive feeling, because when you do, you’re slowly firing and binding the neurons in your brain at a physical level to increase your happiness and really truly build those neurons and that myelin together in a way that is going to have a permanent change on your brain structure.
[00:09:42] RH: Exactly right, and very well said. And I want to stress a key point here. What we’re talking about is the fundamental process of learning. And if you think about all the things that we could describe as inner strengths, grit, gratitude, compassion, emotional intelligence, secure attachment, executive functions, knowhow, people smarts, self-compassion, all of it. Those your inner strengths of various kinds. And research shows that on the whole, on average, about two-thirds of who we are is something that's acquired over the lifespan distinct from that one-third or so that's innate and baked into our DNA.
So we have the power to affect who we are becoming. If you think about it, that power to affect who we are becoming is the strength of strengths. It’s the superpower of superpower, because learning is the strength that grows the rest of them. So that's fundamentally what we’re talking about. And you can think about how much money is wasted in business settings, in training people where it doesn't sink in. Or you can think about the frustration for individuals who are seeking some kind of self-improvement. Some form of maybe healing from the past or growing of something inside for the future. And when they’re reading the book or listening to the talk, the TED Talk, they feel great. They feel inspired. They felt motivated. But an hour later, it's as if it never happened. That's really frustrating.
And so to me, it's extremely useful to broaden the notion here into learning altogether and to realize that, for example, there you are – I've done sales, for example. I use that as an illustration. There you are in a sales situation and maybe you walk away from it and you realize, “Ha! Next time I really want to help myself do something different. I want to have a different attitude inside my mind. I want to approach it a little differently, a different perspective. Maybe I want to remember to avoid talking in certain ways or I want to remember to start talking in other ways. I want to really help that land.” And you could use a similar example in your personal relationship. Like I will often walk away from an interaction with my wife thinking to myself, “Right, bro. There's a better way next time.” I want to help it land. I want to help it sink in so that next time it really is different for me.
So then the question becomes how are we helping ourselves really internalize the lesson broadly from that experience? In fact, yes, the longer we stay with an experience, the more it's going to tend to internalize. There are other factors as well that are factors of learning that you can mobilize yourself and become, therefore, more autonomous and also more competent at the learning process broadly defined altogether.
So the more you focus on what's rewarding about the experience, the more it's going to tend to alterations in neural structure and function. The more you recognize what’s personally relevant or meaningful about the experience, the more you’re going to learn from it. The more that you focus on what's novel, or fresh, or meaningful about the experience. The more it's going to tend to internalize. The more active you are, the more you bring it in your body, the more you kind of help this new attitude or way of thinking about things, let’s say, or feeling, be a shift in your posture, your facial expression your body language, the more it’s going to sink in. It’s not magic. It’s just that we don't use it. And yet we have this ability again and again and again many times a day to use the power of positive neural plasticity and take charge of who we are becoming.
[00:13:14] MB: You said so many things that I want to explore. But this idea that you can apply this principle of neural plasticity to just beyond –
[00:13:22] RH: Anything.
[00:13:22] MB: Yeah. It's such a really unique take on the whole idea of neural plasticity, and we've all experienced that essentially ephemeral learning experience where we watch a TED Talk, we read a book, we do something. And then an hour later, a day later, or a month later, you’ve forgotten the entire thing.
[00:13:37] RH: It’s like cotton candy. We’re trying to live on cotton candy. And you can kind of live, but you're not going to internalize many nutrients that way.
[00:13:44] MB: That's perfect. And so you're saying that the antidote to this intellectual cotton candy is to really sit with the content, internalize it physically. Try to feel it. Try to focus on what's new. As you said, you went through a list of about 10 different ways that you can really start to be more present to whatever you want to learn and whatever you want to really burn into the physical structure of your brain essentially.
[00:14:09] RH: Exactly right. I'm really glad you got it, because it's really easy to dismiss what we’re talking about or trivialize it as, “Oh, yeah. Savor the sunrise.” Yeah, definitely, savor the sunrise. Enjoy every sandwich, blah-blah. But what about those moments where you just feel your own gritty fortitude? Your toughness? I've done a lot of wilderness things, a lot of rock climbing, and I’ve been in business environments where you just got to dig deep and gut it out. And what does it feel like to gut it out? And then the next time you got to gut it out, you’re going to be more able to gut it out if you've grown that grit inside, for example. Or other times you realize, “You know, damn it. I messed up. I don't want to do that again,” whatever. Maybe you yelled at somebody or you just kind of lost it or you got too drunk, something. And you just say to yourself, “No, I don't want to do that again.” You want to help it sink in, or a lot. You just have sort of a mood that’s settled. A mood of appreciation, or gratitude, or thankfulness for living, or a sense of feeling cared about by other people, let's say, appreciated by them. And based on that, you want to really, really help it sink in. So it becomes more and more of who you are.
Matt, if you want, I'll tell you eight factors of self-directed neural plasticity. I'll just go through them. I ranted there, but I'll list them quickly. Also, if you like, I'll teach you this little three breaths practice that I'm doing lately with people that is amazingly powerful and grounded in brain science.
[00:15:39] MB: I want to do both of those things. Before we do that, just really briefly, I'd love to dig into the science around neuroplasticity a little bit if that makes sense just to ground the importance of how science-based this is and what's actually happening in your brain when you learn anything and how you’ve re-conceptualized it in a way to really make your learning and your positive emotional experiences much more meaningful.
[00:16:05] RH: Fantastic. So quick summary of the hardware, inside the 3 pounds of tofu-like tissue, inside the coconut as it were, inside your brain, are about 85 billion neurons plus another 100 billion or so support cells. The neurons are mainly where the information processing hardware of your body lives. And those neurons are connected with each other, on average, in several thousand places called synapses. These little junctions between neurons giving you, in effect, several hundred trillion little microprocessors inside your head right now. And to use the phrase from the neuroscientist, Charles Sherrington, it’s as if we have an enchanted loom inside ourselves continually weaving the tapestry of consciousness. Neurons fire continuously. They typically fire 5 to 50 times a second. They’re really busy. Large coalitions of millions of neurons fire together synchronously many times a second. The world of the brain is very small, very fast and very complicated. Those little synaptic junctions between neurons are so tiny that you could put several thousand of them side-by-side in the width of a single human hair.
So that's the hardware, and it's designed to be changed by the information flowing through it, including that portion of the information flowing through the nervous system that is the basis for our conscious experiences of hearing, seeing, coping, dreaming, remembering and so forth. So, there are many ways in which that process of neural plastic change occurs physically, which is kind of remarkable to appreciate. And I'll just name some of the major ones.
First, in the saying from the Canadian psychologist, Donald Hebb, who worked in the 1940s and 1950s, neurons that fire together, wire together. So if they’re firing together, they literally start to wire together. New connections form. Second, existing connections become more or less sensitive as a neural physical basis of learning. Third, more blood starts to flow or through capillaries that reach out like little tiny fingerlike tubes in the regions of the brain that are busy. It's a little bit like working a muscle again and again. You literally build tissue there in ways that are measurable now in MRIs as thickening of the cortical layers of the brain.
Fourth, there can be changes in the expression of genes inside the nuclei of neurons. For example, people who routinely practice relaxation training of one kind or another have improved regulation of genes in the brain that calm down the stress response, which makes people more resilient as a result. And fifth major way in which neural plastic change occurs is that different parts of the brain can improve their coordination with each other. It's as if the brain builds long superhighways between major centers major cities in the brain so they can coordinate better together.
The takeaway here is that our experiences matter in the moment for how they feel, but they also matter a lot for who we are becoming. And for me, what the major-league takeaway is, is, number one, when you're having negative, painful experiences, you can't fight with them, which just makes them stronger. But you can step back from them mindfully. And as soon as you step back from them, when you're being with these experiences, let’s say, of stress, or anger, or frustration, or sadness, or hurt, you're not reinforcing them anymore. And in fact, you're starting to associate those negative experiences with the spaciousness of calm awareness. That's great.
Second, meanwhile, look for every opportunity to grow psychological strengths of various kinds, resources inside yourself, including the fundamental psychological strength of global happiness and well-being. That's a major factor of resilience to just be happier. And it's also a major factor of career success. Long-term happy people or successful people. Yes, there are exceptions. But over the marathon of a career, a person's sense of underlying contentment and fulfillment and well-being is a major indicator of career success.
And then the last brief comment here is that when you are experiencing something useful, just enough flow of everyday life, why not slow down? Why not receive it into yourself, literally, for a breath? Half a breath? 5, 10 seconds can make an enormous difference. But as they say in Tibet, if you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves. Breath by breath, minute by minute, we can really grow the good inside our brain and therefore inside our life.
[00:20:53] RH: Such incredible description of the process and how everything works. To try and boil this down in the simplest possible terms, essentially, the science is extremely clear that you’re –
[00:21:05] RH: Very clear.
[00:21:04] MB: Thoughts can change the physical structure of your brain. And ultimately your thoughts, in a very real sense, change who you are.
[00:21:13] RH: Yup. And if I could just emphasize, I know you’re using the word. You’re so bright, Matt. It’s really just a pleasure to hang out with you. Truly. I'm a wise speech. I’m a write speech guy, just the facts. Anyway – Yeah, and to broaden – You mean it broadly, but I want to really emphasize it by thoughts. We're including cognitions. I think Matt is really smart. That's a thought. Okay.
[00:21:36] MB: Keep working on that one. Really internalize that one.
[00:21:39] RH: Yeah. You keep working at it. You keep taking it in. But then you’re giving me the big smile, because we’re seeing each other here. And I'm feeling, not just thinking. I'm feeling good. There's an emotion between us. We don't know each other super well, but there's a nice kind of human camaraderie. It's not more than what it is, but it’s not less than what it is. I'm feeling it. I’m feeling it in my body. My arms are waving. I'm moving. All of that is part of the music of experience.
So, yeah, they’re the lyrics. Let's call it that, of experience, the thought track, the cognitive track. And meanwhile, there are images, there are emotions, there are sensations, there are attitudes, there are behaviors, there are intentions and desire, the totality of all that is an opportunity for internalization.
Yes, it's useful to internalize ideas. I internalize the ideas in my mid-20s, that growing up I'd been a nerd, but not a wimp. That was a very useful idea. But especially, what was useful from that idea was the feeling of relief and the release of a kind of sense of inadequacy or shame that I was some kind of wimpy guy, which I wasn't. I was shy. I was nerdy. So I’ll get out. I was very young for grade. I skipped a grade and have a late birthday. But I was nobody's wimp, right? Anyway, we start with the idea, but then what you really want to do as much as you can is help the idea become lived experience. It’s like moving from the menu to the meal.
[00:23:04] MB: That's an incredible point, and really, really insightful. It's not just thoughts. It's not just concepts. It's feelings, experiences, emotions, sensations, everything.
[00:23:14] RH: You got it. Exactly right.
[BREAK]
[00:23:20] MB: Getting your business off the ground is hard. Take it from us. We’ve been there. Sit Down Startup is a new weekly podcast from Zendesk. Find out why customer experience is at the heart of success. Zendesk for startups, chats with Zendesk leaders, founders and CEOs in a coffee shop style conversation about starting up when the world is upside down. Catch weekly episodes on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[00:23:51] MB: So you want to hear these eight separate ways you can change your brain for the better that's just while you're experiencing –
[00:23:55] MB: That’s right. Let’s dig in.
[00:23:57] RH: Yup, and I'll just do it kind of fast. Basically, if you think about it – So there's the two-step process of positive change or negative change. First, we experience something. And then second, it changes the brain. Okay. So I want to talk about how we can start with whatever we’re experiencing and then use it to change the brain for the better. All right. So let's suppose you're having an experience of some kind that you think, “Oh, this one is a keeper.” Or, “I want to become more this way. I want to help myself become more this way.” So you start with some sense of what you want to become more like, or stabilize inside yourself. Okay, great.
The process of internalization, that second step, has two aspects. They kind of overlap experientially, but they’re meaningfully distinct. First aspect is called – I call it enriching where we help the experience be big and lasting. The second step, I call absorbing. We sensitize the memory-making machinery of the brain so it's more receptive to and more changeable by the experience we’re having at the time. So now we’ll go through it.
Five factors of enriching, three of absorbing. So these are eight separate ways that you can change your brain for the better. You don't have to use all 8 at the same time. There are a couple that probably come out for you as go-tos. But I’ll just go through them. Number one, duration. Extend the duration of the experience. Keep the neurons firing together longer for a breath, or two, or three, or more, stay with it. Rather than chasing the next experience or letting other people rain on your parade and distract you from what's beneficial here and now that you're trying to take into yourself.
Second major factor, intensity. The more intensely those neurons are firing, the more it's going to sink in. So if you have a sense of, let's say, worth through feeling connected with another person, they like you, they’re friendly toward you, there’s respect coming your way. Kind of turn up the volume on that experience inside yourself as best you can so it feels big and intense inside your mind. Intensity.
Third major factor, I just call it multimodality. What I mean by that is have more aspects of the experience in play. Like we were saying, not just the thought track, but add this sensation track. Add the emotion track. Add the desire track. Add the action track. Those are five major aspects of our experiences, thoughts, perceptions, including sensations, emotions, desires and actions. Okay? So that’s the third factor of enriching the experience. Whole body experience.
Fourth factor, novelty. The brain is a novelty detector. So the more that we help ourselves look out at the world through beginner's mind, Zen mind, beginner's mind. You may have heard that phrase. Don't know mind, through the eyes of a child. Exploring different aspects of an experience that we want to internalize. Helping it be fresh or novel. We’re just coming back to something that might seem kind of same old same old, like gratitude, or a sense of accomplishment when getting a test done. Try to look at it in a fresh way. Your sense of the novelty of it, the newness of it will increase its internalization.
And then the fifth factor of enriching is personal relevance, salience. We remember. And here I want to emphasize, I'm not really talking so much about what’s called episodic memory or explicit memory for particular events. Like that time you looked out at the sunset, holding the hands of someone you loved, let's say. That's great. But what I'm really talking about is the vast bulk of who we are. In fact, we are memory broadly defined. What we acquire in terms of who we become, which is called implicit memory. The felt sense, the lived residues of experiences. For example, the feelings you had when you are standing there looking at that sunset holding the hand of someone you love, right?
Why is something relevant to us? That’s the fifth factor. Why is it personally meaningful? Like me, I’m telling my story briefly. I grew up shy, dorky, etc. So later in life I deliberately really started looking for and taking in genuine experiences of feeling respected and included, because that was in short supply when I was a kid. And so those experiences were and are personally relevant to me. And by recognizing their relevance, their salience, that increases the registration in physical changes in the brain.
So those are five factors of enriching, right? And by the way, on my website, rickhanson.net, these points are freely offered in a whole variety of ways and people can learn a lot more including the underlying science of all this. And then in terms of absorbing, in effect, we help the inner recorder become more sensitized to, more receptive to. The song that’s playing in the inner iPod that we've really enriched.
So, three factors of absorbing. First, intention. Intend to be changed a little by the experience. Be brave enough to be changed a little for the better. It’s kind of like saying to yourself, “My boss rarely praises anybody. He said something nice to me today. This one's a keeper. I really want to let this sucker sink in.” Or you realize with another person, “Wow! I recognize a whole new way to be skillful with certain kinds of people.” Maybe with people who’ve had a really different life history than I've had? Maybe whose skin is a really different color? Wow! I want to really register this. I want to help myself shift in the way I am in this particular area. So I'm going to intend it, right? Intention.
Next factor of absorbing. I'm on to number seven in my list of eight total, right? Fear not. I’ll be done in a second. Is to sense that you're receiving the experience into yourself. This is kind of intuitive and subtle, but it’s the feeling of like a warmth spreading inside your body. You kind of feel like a sponge the experience is going into. You can even get a sense of receiving the experience into places inside that have been longing for it. Maybe they didn't get enough of it while growing up, or in your last job, or in your last relationship, or places inside that are hurting, that are wounded, that the experience is a soothing balm for. Maybe places inside that have felt rejected, or dismissed, or devalued, put down by others and they’re off to the side, but still they’re hurting.
And so the experience that you're having today, let's say, of being included with a group of friends who dig you, and you have fun together. Maybe it's on Zoom these days, or who knows, or with social distancing. But it’s a good experience. It can feel like a soothing balm that's being received into these hurting places inside, sometimes very young places inside. That's the second of three aspects of absorbing, sensing that you're receiving it into yourself.
And then last, really cool and useful, focus on what is rewarding about it. What is either enjoyable, or meaningful, or both. If we highlight the reward value of our experiences, that increases the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, especially in the hippocampus, one of the key parts of the brain that's very much the frontend of who we are becoming. It's a major center of learning and memory in the broadest sense, the hippocampus is.
So as we focus on what feels good about and experience we’re having, what’s meaningful about it as well, that increases dopamine and norepinephrine activity in the hippocampus, which flags the experience that the time is a keeper for protection during consolidation into long-term storage. That’s it.
That way I had put it really simply, it's a little bit like a fire. So, step one, have a beneficial experience, either because you notice when you're already having or you skillfully create one for yourself. Now you've ignited the fire or notice that you have a fire. There is fire, right? Then you shift into enriching. You protect the fire. You don't let somebody put it out. You add logs to it. You keep it burning brightly for a long period of time. You enrich the fire. And then in absorbing, “Ahh!” you receive the warmth of the fire into yourself again and again and again.
[00:32:26] MB: What an amazing treasure trove of insights. I mean, this is one of the things that personally I've struggled with for a long time is navigating the gulf between something that you know intellectually and something that you know as felt experience. This to me is the perfect roadmap to truly take experiences and actually internalize them into your mind, into your body, into the physical structure of your brain, literally. It's such a fascinating concept as a whole. But this is a really, really practical guidebook, and it's so, so insightful.
[00:33:02] RH: I'm really glad you appreciate that, Matt. For me, it relates to self-reliance, autonomy and competence. These fundamental old-school values, right? I mean, I’m a therapist. I live in California. I’m a meditator. I've encountered a fair amount of woo-woo stuff. And, hey, if you dig that stuff, that's cool, whatever. But wow! What we’re talking about is basically the fundamental process of becoming a super learner, of steepening your growth curve. If you think about it from a business standpoint, what's your return on investment, right? You're having experiences. That’s your investment. In effect, what's your interest rate? What's the return on investment? What’s your ROI on the experiences you're actually having in terms of their lasting beneficial impact and being able to grow as much as you can interaction-by-interaction with other people, breath-by-breath, day after day, gives you a feeling of confidence. It gives you the feeling that you are the captain of your own ship. You can't control whether the tide is rising or falling. You can’t. You can't control. Whether there's a big storm offshore that’s moving in. You can't always control what the other people onboard are doing. But boy, you sure can control your own hand on the tiller. And now you direct your personal ship through your life. And that gives you a feeling of inner peace. You know you're doing what you can. You're taking responsibility for using the power that you do have, while at the same time being at peace about so many other things because they’re just out of your hands.
[00:34:44] MB: What were those values you shared a minute ago? You just touched on kind of this notion of self-reliance, but share those with me again. I thought that was really interesting.
[00:34:51] RH: Yeah. To be truly self-reliant in a world around us, we need to be competent and we need to be autonomous. We need to be capable in all variety of ways whatever our situation might be. And we need to be able to direct ourselves. We’re related with others, but the foundation of intimacy with others is personal autonomy, because if you don't have a sense of being grounded and your own person, you can't afford to really, really open up to other people, because you’ll get swallowed up by them, or overwhelmed by them, or manipulated and controlled by them.
So if you think about it, whether it's in business or in good old-fashioned culture, being self-directed and becoming capable, becoming increasingly skillful, and therefore becoming increasingly self-reliant is a very fundamental old-fashioned value. We could say it's an American value, but it’s actually a universal value worldwide to become more self-reliant, which involves and requires autonomy and competence.
Well, to be competent, to be skillful, to be capable in a whole variety of ways, including interpersonal intelligence, interpersonal competence, as well as intrapersonal competence, being competent, being skillful with your own thoughts and feelings. Being able to acquire those competencies is a matter of learning, right? Other than was baked into your DNA at the moment of conception. And I’ll spare you the visual on that, right?
Anyway, we become competent through learning very broadly, including social competence, emotional competence, spiritual competence, whatever you actually care about. Becoming more competent as a partner, as a parent, as a business owner, as a friend. So we become competent through learning. Therefore, getting good at learning is the most important competency of all, and it’s the foundation of everything else.
[00:36:55] MB: I couldn't agree more. And in many ways, this show itself, the whole project, started out of that same idea, that learning is the meta-skill.
[00:37:04] RH: Yes. Exactly right.
[00:37:05] MB: Things you can do.
[00:37:07] RH: If I could say one more thing too. If you just sort of ask people two useful questions for people. One way of us asking it is when you look at the challenges in your life outside you, business challenges, relationship challenges, how to get through a plague. That's clearly going to be present here in America for all kinds of reasons, probably another year or so. Certainly, the consequences of it will be with us for a while. If you look at challenges inside yourself, maybe your prone to self-criticism that’s destructive, or you’ve got some addictive desires, or you fill awkward at public speaking. You're kind of nervous about sticking your head above the weeds. Because when you were young, you got cut off when you did. Whatever it might be., given your challenges, what if it were more present in your mind, in your being, in your heart, in you. What if you were more present inside you would really help?
That takes you to identifying the psychological resources. The inner strengths, let's call them. They would really help these days. Let’s say if you’re shy and it's hard for you to stick your neck out or gets in the way of working with other people. You could help yourself build up more, let's say, confidence, in a variety. Including, for example, feeling more cared about by other people and really internalizing the feeling of being cared about by other people, or also internalizing, let's say, greater courage. Greater capacity to tolerate fear without shutting down and maintaining a cool head even when you're scared and keeping on going. Something I learned slowly but surely as a rock climber, for example. So these are examples of working backwards from a challenge to identifying the psychological resources, the inner strength that would be really good to grow these days. That's a really useful way to think about this.
And then, every day, gives you opportunities to have an experience of that inner strength you're trying to grow, or a related factor. And then when you’re having a sense of it at all, when that song is playing at all on the inner iPod, slow down. Turn on the recorder and use one of those eight factors or a combination of them to register that beneficial experience as a lasting change in your brain. That's one thing.
The other thing is to really ask ourselves what we want to feel in this life. It’s a long and twisty road. It’s sort of amazing gift to have a human life. Here we are, the result of 3-1/2 billion years of biological evolution on this planet. 300,000 years is anatomically modern humans. Where I sit on another 2 million years of tool manufacturing commented ancestors. Wow! Here we are today. What kind of life do you want to have? We can ask ourselves, right? What do you want to feel? What do you want the mood of what it's like to be you to be in terms of inner peace, contentment, self-worth, fulfillment, satisfaction, joie de vivre, hope, optimism, some fundamental sense of understanding and peacefulness regarding deep existential questions of what's the personal meaning of your life? Coming to terms with inevitable death, death of others, loss, da-da. What do you want to feel inside? And therefore, how can you gradually grow that over time? And it's the same process of learning.
If you want to feel more peaceful, have more experiences of peacefulness that you internalize. If you want to feel more confident, more content. Have more experiences of confidence and contentment that you internalize again and again and again.
[00:40:56] MB: I almost don't even know what to say. It's such a great insight. I mean, you’re fundamentally hitting at some of the most, if not the most important questions of our lives. And it's amazing how easy it is to go through life without ever stopping to ask some of these questions. And yet until you ask them, you can't start being reliant on yourself. You can't start having a self-directed path and journey to living and experiencing the life moment-to-moment basis that you want to be experiencing.
[00:41:34] RH: You nailed it there. Totally true. One of the things, whether it's in business or sports – I recently watched the documentary about Michael Jordan, for example.
[00:41:43] MB: Oh, that’s on my list.
[00:41:44] RH: Yeah. You totally want to see it. Is really wild. It’s so interesting. It’s so many levels, including a kind of a case study and how not to run an organization. You'll see for yourself. Anyway, whatever it is that we want to be more like, study the people who’ve made that their life's work, who’ve gotten really good at it, right? And so one of the things that I've tried to do in my book, Neurodharma, which has a kind of odd title, but it's not a religious book. It's actually a deeply, practical, scientifically-based book and how to cultivate seven qualities inside ourselves that we find in enlightened beings, which are about as far as you can go in human development.
So one of those beings I’m going to quote here is Milarepa. He was a Tibetan sage. He lived probably about a thousand years ago. He was one of the early Buddhist teachers in Tibet as Buddhism kind of moved north out of India starting 2000 or so years ago. And he was describing his own life. And he did so in three sentences that I think summarize the general process of growth. And you can apply it to any particular thing you're trying to develop in yourself, or you can apply it to your life altogether. And this is someone who arguably was enlightened himself. I mean, a real adept who, by the way, was not calling upon supernatural or higher powers, but who through his own effort, his own practice was able to develop. So he said, “In the beginning, nothing came.” Describing his life. “In the beginning, nothing came. In the middle, nothing stayed. And in the end, nothing left.” That's the processor of growth.
In the beginning, we try to experience things. Let's say more confidence about sticking our neck out. And we know we auto experience it. We know we want to feel it, but we don't fill it. You know what I mean? Okay. Or for example, we want to want to exercise, but we don't really want to exercise.
[00:43:45] MB: Yup. Exactly.
[00:43:47] RH: Yeah, I can relate to that one. But now I actually have gotten better about that. I tell myself actually I want to exercise, and then exercise. But anyway, so it just doesn't come. It’s like trying to light a fire with wet wood going back to my metaphor of the fire.
In the middle, you can experience it. Maybe when you're watching the TED Talk, or reading the book, or listening to the podcast, or talking to your therapist, or hanging out with your friend. In the moment, you experience it. But it doesn't stay, right? It's a state, but it’s not yet a trait. But then in the end, whether it's any particular thing you're trying to help to establish inside yourself and make it a habit, a new, in effect, habit of your heart. By the end, nothing leaves. It's there. You’re cooked. You’re baked. It’s present in you forever. That's the fundamental process, isn’t it? In the beginning, nothing comes. In the middle, nothing stays. In the end, nothing leaves. And that's incredibly hopeful. But, still, we’ve got to do the work ourselves.
[00:44:46] MB: So for somebody who's been listening this conversation and they want to start to do the work, they want to take one step, one action item to put into practice something that we’ve talked about today, what would be one piece of homework that you would give them to begin that journey?
[00:45:01] RH: I would give people what I call the five-minute challenge, and it actually probably takes less than five minutes. And it'll totally change your day, five minutes, I guarantee you. It will change your day. And if you do it a few days in a row, you will start to feel the difference.
First, as you go through your day, slow down for good experiences. Just slow down half a dozen times a day. Five seconds here, 20 seconds there. You make that cup of coffee. Slow down to actually taste it. You’re hanging out with your friend Matt or someone. Matt smiles, slow down. Hang out. Why not? Not a big deal.
And one thing about it too is that it's totally private. Nobody needs to know that inside yourself you’re like, “Ah! This feels good. This feels right. I'm taking it in.” Outside you look like you’re at business, you're in a meeting. They have no idea what you're doing inside your own mind, okay? Slow down a handful of times every day. Make it part of your mission. You could even keep a little count just to make sure you do it at least a few times a day. That takes about a minute a day.
Second, know one thing in particular that you're developing inside yourself these days. One attitude, one point of view, one shift of mood, faster, letting go of being irritated, less anger, more patience, whatever, one thing. What's one thing that you're really zeroed-in on developing in yourself? And therefore, it gives you kind of a compass bearing. It becomes your North Star every day. It's the prize you keep your eyes on, whatever it might be. It's okay to have two or three. But for sure, have one thing you're deliberately trying to grow these days by, in the two-step process, having experiences of it or some factor of it. That than you slow down to receive into yourself to gradually become increasingly that way. That's the second thing. That will take another maybe a minute a day.
And then, for sure, every day, for a minute or more, do what I call marinating in deep green. What I mean by that is the green zone of our natural resting state as animals. As animals, our natural biological resting state when we experience a sufficiency of needs met in the moment and enoughness of fundamental needs met in the moment. And we have three fundamental biological needs for safety, satisfaction and connection, broadly defined. Satisfaction, whether it's just eating food, or feeling accomplished, or grateful, or glad and connected, ranging from sex all the way to subtleties of a sense of camaraderie with other people. Three basic needs, safety, satisfaction connection.
Slow down, and probably you could do it meditatively. You could do it while you're walking the dog. You could do it while you’re just hanging out with a cup of tea, or the last couple minutes before your head hits the pillow. Slow down to let your body calm down. Come into a sense of peacefulness and calm. Slow down and come into a sense of gratitude and contentment in the moment. It’s okay to want more, but on the basis of contentment already. And slow down to feel cared about and caring. Loved and loving, connected. Slow down, whatever is authentic.
And then when you're kind of rested in that basic sense of well-being characterized with a general blend of peacefulness, contentment and love, however you experience it. Hang out there for a minute, or two, or three in a row. That will reset the stress chemistry in your body. It will start to teach you what your home base is. This is our natural home base. But so many of us experience a kind of chronic and or homelessness of mild to moderate chronic stress that in which we’re just not in touch with our natural resting state. We don't feel our needs are met enough in the moment even if objectively, biologically, they basically are. We don't feel it. Okay?
So those three, right there. You wander through your day, half a dozen times or so, take in the good. Second, know one strength in particular, one muscle, one mental muscle broadly that you’re trying to grow these days. Zero-in on that. Let that be the prize. Keep your eyes on that personal prize. And third, come home for a minute or two or three at least every day. Come home to your deep nature and rest in deep green, peace, contentment and love.
[00:49:28] MB: And Rick, where can people find you, your work, your latest book, etc., online?
[00:49:33] RH: Oh, thank you. Best places my website, rickhanson.net But I'm pretty present on social media of various kinds, Instagram, Facebook. I’m out there. But I think if people just Google my names, they’re going to find me. And one thing I could add if I could here, Matt, is that, in addition, tons of freely offered resources of all kinds. I really do have some great online programs that are inexpensive. We also have scholarships for people in genuine financial need. And these are well-structured, well-organize programs that range from just one minute, like literally things that are about a minute and a half long that you can do to change yourself, to other kinds of programs that, for example, are more developed, and you can take part time with them. But I would just suggest people to check those out.
[00:50:21] MB: Well, Rick, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been an incredible conversation. So many insights about learning about growth, about how the brain and the neurochemistry of the brain really functions, and how we can harness it all to live lives of happiness and productivity. I mean, our first conversation was incredible. This was even better. I really appreciate you coming back on the show, rick. Thank you so much for a fantastic interview.
[00:50:47] RH: Oh, it’s a pleasure. And thank you, Matt. You may not realize it. I just want to thank you for your service broadly. What you're doing is serving people and helping them. So tip of the hat to you for sure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
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