Neurodharma

True happiness isn't something you find; it's something you cultivate by reshaping your mind and heart through mindful practice.

1. Seven Core Ways to Awaken True Happiness

To achieve lasting happiness and fulfillment, seven transformative practices serve as guiding steps: steadiness, lovingness, fullness, wholeness, nowness, allness, and timelessness. These steps aren't quick fixes but a profound journey of inner growth.

The author aligns this framework with diverse spiritual traditions, offering these universal steps as a pathway to enlightenment. Each practice encourages the reduction of negativity, the enhancement of positive emotions, and an alignment with the present moment. By integrating these into daily life, individuals can rise above suffering and find more peace.

For these transformations to occur, Hanson suggests three key approaches—"let be," "let go," and "let in." Accept your feelings as they come, release the pain that burdens you, and replace it with enriching emotions and skills. These practices create a foundation for emotional balance and the ability to flourish.

Examples

• Accepting grief after a loss to process emotions (let be).
• Releasing toxic relationships that affect your mental well-being (let go).
• Embracing gratitude after a kind gesture from someone (let in).

2. Meditating Rewires Your Brain for Better Emotional Support

Meditation isn't just a relaxation technique; it can physically and emotionally reshape your brain. Through mindfulness, you can tap into your nervous system's deep layers, enhancing happiness and your ability to navigate challenges.

Scientific research reveals the profound impact meditation has on the brain. For example, it helps people regulate the amygdala, a region responsible for fear and stress responses. Habitual meditators exhibit higher levels of gamma brain-wave activity, linked to learning and emotional resilience. Over time, these neurological changes reduce reactivity and boost mental strength.

By dedicating your focus and attention during meditation, you engage your brain in adopting steady and loving thoughts. Shaping your neural pathways in this way creates a calmer and more fulfilled mind, allowing you to handle life’s difficulties with greater ease.

Examples

• Tibetan monks use meditation to stay calm under stress while improving memory.
• Long-term meditators recover from painful experiences more quickly.
• Studies demonstrate decreased cortisol (stress hormone) levels after meditation practice.

3. Steadiness: Building a Focused and Resilient Mindset

Maintaining focus is increasingly difficult amid daily distractions, yet concentration is critical in steadying the mind, which is the first step toward enlightenment. Focus allows greater clarity and balance.

Hanson recounts his own meditation journey, where early challenges of focus slowly gave way to moments of calm and presence. Concentration helps to declutter the “monkey mind” created by constant thoughts, obligations, and competing priorities. Exercising your concentration is akin to strengthening a muscle—it requires practice but yields immense benefits over time.

To practice steadiness, begin by meditating on a specific neutral stimulus—like your breath—to gently anchor your awareness. Over time, distractions lessen, and the ability to focus on the present moment deepens, leading to inner peace.

Examples

• Focusing on the sensation of breath slows racing thoughts.
• Meditators report heightened awareness after daily practices of 10-20 minutes.
• Silent retreats emphasize concentration, with participants noting increased mental clarity.

4. The Warm Heart: Compassion for Yourself and Others

Compassion and kindness not only warm our hearts but also strengthen our connections with others. A warm heart fosters mutual love and reduces suffering for ourselves and those around us.

Hanson’s example of the Dalai Lama’s bodyguard—a person trained for violence but radiating calmness and love—illustrates how kindness can transform even the most demanding roles. Living with a warm heart means being intentional about spreading positive wishes and goodwill. It’s an active practice of seeing the humanity in ourselves and others.

A helpful exercise is compassion-based meditation, which involves extending warm wishes such as “May you be safe, healthy, happy, and at ease” to a variety of people, including yourself. By repeating these sentiments regularly, you foster love and joy within and around you.

Examples

• Healing your self-esteem by regularly wishing yourself happiness in meditation.
• Forgiving a difficult colleague to lighten emotional burdens.
• Expressing gratitude or lending a hand to a friend in distress.

5. Healing Old Wounds by Resting in Fullness

Lingering pain from past experiences can impede present happiness. Resting in the feeling of "fullness" creates an abundant mindset where healing becomes easier and more natural.

Hanson links fullness to overcoming feelings of emptiness tied to lifelong cravings, whether for validation, possessions, or fleeting pleasures. Instead, he encourages replacing these unsatisfying moments with positive emotions tied to rest and contentment. The HEAL technique—"Have, Enrich, Absorb, Link"—helps transform negative experiences into enriching ones.

By practicing mindfulness tied to positive experiences, like recalling love when facing rejection, individuals can let go of sorrow and build a deeper emotional reservoir for future challenges.

Examples

• Replacing childhood exclusion memories with past moments of feeling valued.
• Using mindfulness to absorb the joy of a shared laugh with loved ones.
• Reflecting on growth after struggles, rather than focusing solely on pain.

6. The Feeling of Wholeness Comes from Accepting Yourself

Feelings of incompleteness are often self-imposed, caused by overthinking, anxiety, or societal pressures. The path to wholeness begins by embracing ourselves entirely, including both accomplishments and imperfections.

Hanson connects wholeness with the lateral parts of the brain. These areas foster a holistic perspective, contrasting the default network's tendency to ruminate. Engaging these brain regions helps us see ourselves holistically, integrating all emotions and experiences as part of a greater whole.

Gestalt awareness practices can foster this unity. For instance, seeing emotional turbulence as fleeting clouds in the sky enables us to focus on a broader, centered view of life. It’s this perspective that allows us to live peacefully in the present.

Examples

• Daydreaming less and focusing on “the bigger picture” helps clarify life choices.
• Viewing the mind as clear skies limited the grip of worries.
• Whole-body meditations ground people during anxious moments.

7. Letting Go of “I” by Living in Allness and Non-Possessiveness

Our egos often drive our fears and insecurities. Hanson proposes that letting go of self-identification—terms like “me,” “mine,” and “I”—opens up possibilities for connectedness and harmony.

When we stop seeing ourselves in isolation, we remove layers of suffering caused by possessiveness, competition, and defensiveness. Buddhist teachings encourage seeing the self as fluid rather than fixed, like a river that flows rather than a stagnant pond.

This philosophy thrives in simple acts like experiencing nature. Watching the ocean or stars prompts us to contemplate the vastness of life beyond our immediate concerns, dissolving ego-driven thoughts.

Examples

• Viewing competitive coworkers as allies working toward larger company goals.
• Exploring expansive natural landscapes shifts awareness from individual to collective existence.
• Visualizing your “self” as an insubstantial, dynamic cloud during meditation.

8. Finding Peace by Embracing Impermanence

Impermanence is a law of life, yet many resist it, clinging to relationships, situations, or material possessions. Accepting impermanence is necessary to approach true happiness and freedom.

Hanson uses the metaphor of eddies—short-lived currents in water—to describe life’s fleeting patterns. By meditating on impermanence, you train the mind to embrace change rather than fear it. Seeing life’s constant flux can free you from grief or anxiety about scenarios you cannot control.

This practice strengthens resilience through the awareness that “this, too, shall pass.” Accepting the nature of change allows us to exist with ease and flow through life’s crests and troughs.

Examples

• Grieving less by understanding the cyclical nature of interactions and relationships.
• Embracing a new career path even after unexpected setbacks.
• Visualizing emotional turbulence as water ripples that eventually smooth out.

9. Steps to True Awakening Require Enjoying the Process

Hanson encourages readers to embrace the uphill journey to enlightenment, knowing that true happiness lies not only in the destination but also in appreciating the climb.

The metaphor of climbing a mountain captures this idea well. Life's “dusty plains” and unexpected roadblocks aren’t imperfections; they’re teachers that continually refine our awareness. Hanson emphasizes enjoying each trail marker, measuring growth less by milestones and more by who you become along the way.

Practicing mindfulness helps build this enduring perspective. Regular awareness and gratitude for small successes nourish long-term transformations.

Examples

• Journaling daily accomplishments, however minor, builds self-appreciation.
• Overcoming impatience by focusing on personal moments of growth.
• Feeling gratitude for the path itself during milestones like graduation or recovery.

Takeaways

1. Begin a daily mindfulness routine by dedicating even 10 focused minutes to meditation. This builds the foundation for steadiness and emotional awareness.
2. Practice letting go of possessiveness or ego-driven comparisons, especially during conflicts, by reflecting on greater shared humanity.
3. Accept and embrace life’s impermanence by recalling that every storm, no matter how intense, will eventually pass.