Just one thing : developing a Buddha brain one simple practice at a time

41. Be Generous

Giving—to others, to the world, to oneself—is deep in our nature as human beings.

When our mammalian ancestors first appeared, about two hundred million years ago, their capacities for bonding, emotion, and generosity were extraordinary evolutionary breakthroughs. Unlike reptiles and fish, mammals and birds care for their young, pair bond (sometimes for life), and usually form complex social groups organized around various kinds of cooperation. This takes more smarts than, say, a fish laying a swarm of eggs and swimming away—so in proportion to body weight, mammals and birds have bigger brains than reptiles and fish do.

When primates came along about sixty million years ago, there was another jump in brain size based on the “reproductive advantages” (love that phrase) of social abilities. The primate species that are the most relational—that have the most complex communications, grooming, alpha/beta hierarchies, and so on—have the largest cortex (in proportion to weight).

Then early hominids emerged, starting to make stone tools about 2.5 million years ago. Since then, the brain has tripled in size, and much of this new cortex is devoted to interpersonal skills such as language, empathy, attachment to family and friends, romance, cooperative planning, and altruism. As the brain enlarged, a longer childhood was required to allow for its growth after birth and to make good use of its wonderful new capabilities. This necessitated more help from fathers to keep children and their mothers alive during the uniquely long juvenile phase of a human life, and more help from “the village it takes to raise a child.” The bonding and nurturing of primate mothers—in a word, their giving—gradually evolved into romantic love, fathers caring for their young, friendship, and the larger web of affiliations that join humans together. Additionally, our ancestors bred mainly within their own band; bands that were better at the give-and-take of relationships and teamwork out-competed other bands for scarce resources, so the genes that built more socially intelligent brains proliferated into the human genome. In sum, giving, broadly defined, both enabled and drove the evolution of the brain over millions of years.

Consequently, we swim in a sea of generosity—of many daily acts of consideration, reciprocity, benevolence, compassion, kindness, helpfulness, warmth, appreciation, respect, patience, forbearance, and contribution—but like those proverbial fish, often don’t realize we’re wet. Because of the brain’s negativity bias, moments of not-giving—one’s own resentments and selfishness, and the withholding and unkindness of others—pop out with blazing headlines. Plus modern economies can make it seem like giving and getting is largely about making money—but that part of life is just a tiny fraction of the original and still vast “generosity economy,” with its circular flows of freely given, unmonetized goods and services.

When you express your giving nature, it feels good for you, benefits others, prompts them to be good to you in turn, and adds one more lovely thread to the great tapestry of human generosity.

How

Take care of yourself. Don’t give in ways that harm you or others (e.g., offering a blind eye to someone’s alcoholism). Keep refueling yourself; it’s easier to give when your own cup runneth over—or at least you’re not running on empty.

Prime the pump of generosity. Be aware of things you are grateful for or glad about. Bring to mind a sense of already being full, so that you’ll not feel deprived or emptied out if you give a little more.

Notice that giving is natural for you. You don’t need to be a saint to be a giving person. Generosity comes in many forms, including heart, time, self-control, service, food, and money. From this perspective, consider how much you already give each day. Open to feeling good about yourself as a giver.

Give your full attention. Stay present with others minute after minute, staying with their topic or agenda. You may not like what they say, but you could still offer a receptive ear. (Especially important with a child or mate.) Then, when it’s your turn, the other person will likely feel better about you taking the microphone.

Offer nonreactivity. Much of the time, interactions, relationships, and life altogether would go better if we did not add our comments, advice, or emotional reactions to a situation. Not-doing is sometimes the best gift.

Be helpful. For example, volunteer for a school, give money to a good cause, or increase your own housework or child care if your partner is doing more than you.

Do your own practice. One of your best contributions to others is to raise your own level of well-being and functioning. Whatever your practice is or could grow to be, do it with a whole heart, as a daily offering to whatever you hold sacred, to your family and friends, and to the widening world.

PART FIVE:

BE AT PEACE

42. Notice You’re All Right Right Now

To keep our ancestors alive, the brain evolved an ongoing internal trickle of unease. This little whisper of worry keeps you scanning your inner and outer worlds for signs of trouble.

This background of unsettledness and watchfulness is so automatic that you can forget it’s there. So see if you can tune in to a tension, guarding, or bracing in your body. Or a vigilance about your environment or other people. Or a block against completely relaxing, letting down, letting go. Try to walk through an office or store that you know is safe without a molecule of wariness: it’s really hard. Or try to sit at home for five minutes straight while feeling undefended, soft in your body, utterly comfortable in the moment as it is, at peace: this is impossible for most people.

The brain’s default setting of apprehensiveness is a great way to keep a monkey looking over its shoulder for something about to pounce. But it’s a crummy way to live. It wears down well-being, feeds anxiety and depression, and makes people play small in life.

And it’s based on a lie.

In effect, that uneasiness in the background is continually whispering in your mental “ear”: You’re not safe, you’re surrounded by threats, you can never afford to lower your guard.

But take a close look at this moment, right now. Probably, you are basically all right: no one is attacking you, you are not drowning, no bombs are falling, there is no crisis. It’s not perfect, but you’re okay.

By “right now,” I mean this moment. When we go into the future, we worry and plan. When we go into the past, we resent and regret. Threads of fear are woven into the mental tapestries of past and future. Look again at the thin slice of time that is the present. In this moment: Are you basically okay? Is breathing okay? Is the heart beating? Is the mind working? The answers are almost certainly yes.

In daily life, it’s possible to access this fundamental sense of all-rightness even while getting things done. You’re not ignoring real threats or issues, or pretending that everything is perfect. It’s not. But in the middle of everything, you can usually see that you’re actually all right right now.

How?

Several times a day, notice that you’re basically all right.

You may want more money or love, or simply ketchup for your French fries. Or want less pain, heartache, or rush hour traffic. All very reasonable. But meanwhile, underneath all the to-ing and fro-ing, you are okay. Underneath your desires and activities is an aliveness and an awareness that is doing fine this second.

There you are fixing dinner; notice that “I’m all right right now,” and perhaps say that softly in your mind. Or you’re driving: I’m all right right now. Or you’re talking with someone: I’m all right right now. Or doing e-mails or putting a child to bed: I’m all right right now.

Notice that, while feeling all right right now, you can still get things done and deal with problems. The fear that bad things will happen if you let yourself feel okay is unfounded; let this sink in. You do not need to fear feeling all right!

Sometimes you’re really not all right. Maybe something terrible has happened, or your body is very disturbed, or your mind is very upset. Do what you can at these times to ride out the storm. But as soon as possible, notice that the core of your being is okay, like the quiet place fifty feet underwater, beneath a hurricane howling above the sea.

Noticing that you’re actually all right right now is not laying a positive attitude over your life like a pretty veil. Instead, you are knowing a simple but profound fact: In this moment I am all right. You are sensing the truth in your body, deeper than fear, that it is breathing and living and okay. You are recognizing that your mind is functioning fine no matter how nutty and not-fine the contents swirling through it are.

Settling into this basic sense of okayness is a powerful way to build well-being and resources in your brain and being. You’re taking a stand for the truth—and against the lies murmured by Mother Nature.

43. Honor Your Temperament

As hominids and early humans evolved over several million years while living in small bands, they developed a range of temperaments, with cautious, focused “turtles” at one end and adventurous, impulsive “jackrabbits” at the other end, with “tweeners” in the middle. Those bands that had a mixture of turtles, tweeners, and jackrabbits could adapt to changing conditions and outcompete bands that had just one type of temperament—the way a basketball team with nimble guards plus big forwards would beat teams with only guards or only forwards.

For similar reasons, we also evolved diversity in other aspects of temperament, including:

Sociability—Some people are really extroverted, some are really introverted, and many are in the middle. In a general sense, with lots of exceptions in the details, extroverts are fed by social contact and drained by isolation; introverts are the opposite.

Emotional inclinations—The ancient Greek model of the four personality types—sanguine (cheerful), choleric (prone to irritation), melancholic (tends to sadness), and phlegmatic (hard to move emotionally)—has at least a grain of truth to it.

Temperamental characteristics are innate, hard-wired into your DNA and thus your brain. Of course, they’re just some of the tiles that make up the mosaic you are. Plus they’re only tendencies whose expression is shaped by other parts of you (e.g., intelligence, warmheartedness), life experiences, and conscious intention. For example, I’m introverted but also love deep conversations (a typical therapist); so after a day of being with people, I get refueled by some time alone: reading, going for a run, and the like. Similarly, a person with a bit of a blue streak (i.e., melancholic) can internalize a soothing, encouraging sense of being cared about by others. Temperament is not destiny.

Different temperaments are a good fit with certain environments (e.g., situations, tasks, people) and not such a good fit with other ones. For instance, a sensitive infant would do well with an easygoing parent who is well-supported by his or her parner, but not so well with a single parent who is worn out and irritable; a jackrabbity first-grader will usually flourish in an experiential learning setting that’s like a big pasture with firm fences, but will likely get many little corrections—which are stressful and dispiriting—in a classroom that’s tightly controlled with lots of fine-motor table work; in a couple, things will go better if they find ways to give an introvert (like me) enough “cave” time and an extrovert (like my wife) enough connection, but worse if they don’t.

When the fit between your temperament and an environment is not good, it’s hard to function at your best—whether it was in school as a kid, or in an intimate relationship or at work today. Additionally, it’s natural to feel at some level that there must be something wrong/weak/dumb/missing about you—which gets reinforced by any messages from the environment that, yep, the problem is with you, not it.

For example, a high degree of jackrabbititis now has its very own diagnosis—attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—even though being jackrabbity has been wonderfully adaptive throughout most of the time humans and our hominid ancestors have lived on this planet. Further, people who are naturally wistful get told to cheer up and stop being mopey, introverts get told to go out and meet people, and turtles get told to stop being such sissies and jump into the deep end of the pool. This repeated sense that there’s something not-right, not-optimal about oneself gradually sinks in and wears on a person’s confidence, mood, and sense of worth.

But really, there’s nothing wrong at all! We should each honor our temperament: accept it, see the things that are great about it, look for situations and relationships that play to its strengths, and take care of it when it’s challenged (e.g., help a turtlish child get ready for anxiety-provoking transitions). In other words, work with nature, not against it.

How

Get a clear sense of your temperament. For example, compared to others of your age and gender, are you relatively:

Distractible, impulsive, and stimulation-seeking? Or highly focused, judicious, and cautious?

Interested in lots of social contact? Or in just a few good friends and considerable alone time?

Cheerful, melancholic, easily irritated, or placid?

(It’s fine to be in the middle of the range for these characteristics; then that would be what your temperament is.)

Think back on your childhood: did your temperament and your environments collide with each other significantly, leading either to criticism of you or simply a frustration inside that you couldn’t be more successful academically or socially? As you consider this question, be kind to yourself. Remember that in childhood, it’s the job of parents and teachers—who have many more options than kids do—to adapt environments as much as is possible and reasonable to the temperament of the child. Then consider the fit between you as an adult and your environments.

What are the strengths of your temperament? For example, people who are quick to anger are often quick to see injustice; children who are anxious are usually very conscientious; introverts have rich inner lives. What inclinations in your nature have been longing for more expression? Then consider the sorts of environments—such as occupations, romantic partners, settings, or schedules—that would support and draw on the strengths of your temperament. What could you do that’s appropriate and skillful to nudge your current environments to play more to your strengths—or to get yourself into more suitable environments?

What are the needs or vulnerabilities in your temperament? For example, a spirited person needs a good deal of stimulation or life starts feeling like a thin soup; an extrovert needs a job with lots of interaction; a melancholic person is susceptible to feeling let down. Consider how you could address your needs and protect your vulnerabilities. For instance, if you’re somewhat anxious by nature (I’d put myself in that boat), it’s especially important to do what you can to create structure, predictability, and trust in your home and work.

Throughout these reflections, know that any issues have probably not been located in you or in your environments, but in the fit between you and them. Regarding yourself, have compassion for any stress or pain you may have experienced; appreciate the endurance and strength you’ve had in the times when you were the proverbial square peg in a round hole; challenge the expectations and other beliefs you’ve developed in collisions with your environments, such as a sense of inadequacy. Regarding your environments, consider them more as impersonal forces that may have been not good for you in some ways—while probably being suitable for at least some people—than as something inherently wrong or bad; consider if any forgiveness would be helpful to you here.

Last, appreciate the fact that no one has a perfect temperament. We’re all pretty funky variations on the basic human model. Being able to see the humor in your temperament softens its edges and eases your interactions. For example, once as I was doing therapy, I squared my pad of paper to the edges of a small table. With a smile, my client teased me by reaching over to nudge the pad so it was now askew. We both laughed at my OCD-ish tendencies, which I’d disclosed in talking about her own. And then I squared the pad again because it bugged me so much!

44. Love Your Inner Child

As long as you’ve lived, your experiences have sifted down in your psyche, forming layers like the bands of colored rock in the Grand Canyon. The most fundamental layers were laid down in your childhood, when your brain was most impressionable.

Because of experience-dependent neuroplasticity, the things you felt, wanted, or believed as a child have been woven into your nervous system. For example, crying as an infant until someone came, joy at beginning to walk, fun with friends, feeling bad about yourself when scolded about schoolwork, power struggles with parents, wanting your body to be bigger/smaller/different in high school, wondering if anyone will like the real you, the bittersweet excitement of leaving home—whatever your own childhood was, experiences like these have sunk in to you and travel with you every day wherever you go.

Taken as a whole, these residues make up your inner child—which is not a silly cliché, but actually a large-scale system embedded in your brain that continually and powerfully influences your mood, sense of worth, expectations, and reactions. This child inside is at the core of who you are.

If you are embarrassed, ashamed, critical, controlling, squelching, pushy, or angry about this child, that will affect how you feel and how you act. Therefore, accepting the child parts within you, guiding them gently, and soaking your inner kid in cherishing nurturance will heal and feed the deepest layers of your psyche.

This inner child stuff can get conceptual, superficial, or merely sentimental. Instead, bring it down to the bone. Most childhoods are rocky, one way or another. As a kid, you probably felt hurt, were disappointed, felt like a loser, wanted recognition and love you didn’t get, shelved some big dreams, and made decisions about yourself and life with the “logic” of a child. This is real. It had real effects. And you have a real chance today to be the strong, wise, and loving friend, coach, and yes, parent that you’ve always longed for.

How

Open to feeling cared about by someone. Next, move to feeling caring toward a friend, family member, or pet. Marinate in this sense of interest, support, and nurturance; let it fill your heart and mind. Then, staying grounded in the experience of caring, shift the target of this caring to yourself, especially yourself as a child.

Now, reflect back on your childhood as a whole, starting with your earliest memories. Stay with your experience of it, not the story line about it. What did it feel like to be a young child? To be in grade school? In high school? What were your happiest times? And most upsetting? What went well for you in your childhood—and badly? When did you feel really understood and supported—and not? What in you flourished in childhood—and what got bruised or wounded? What sort of kid were you—especially deep down? When did the best parts of you come out? What’s become of them?

As much as you can, try to hold a sense of caring toward yourself while you engage these questions. Stay with your actual experience as a child, not critiquing it or justifying it, and definitely not shaming yourself for it. The vulnerable child inside everyone usually expects rejection, so it’s afraid to show its teary, sniffly, snotty, whiny, needy, frightened, or angry face. Please don’t push this child away. It wants to show itself but is afraid to. Make it safe for it to show itself to you.

Look for ways to bring the child inside you out to play. For example, my friend Leslie told me about moving to Wyoming and wandering in its extraordinary wilderness like a big kid, not trying to accomplish anything, feeling free and delighted. Take different routes to work; pick up (or return to) gardening, crafts, art, music, or a sport; quit being so darned serious and significant (this one’s for me, too); goof off; play with your own kids; make messes; ask your inner child what he or she really wants to do. Don’t be so constrained by routines and presumed limitations; remember what it felt like to be a kid on the first day of summer vacation; in the same way, the whole rest of your life stretches out before you: have fun with it!

Accept that you will never have a better childhood. Yes, assert yourself skillfully to get appropriate caring in your relationships. But also know the hard truth that it’s on you, no one else, to be the main advocate, cheerleader, protector, and nurturer of the child inside—and the adult that kid has become. Keep both of them close to your heart.

45. Don’t Throw Darts

Some physical and mental pain is inevitable. I remember being six and slipping on an icy sidewalk in Illinois and landing hard on my tailbone: ouch! Much later, in my fifties, when my mother passed away, there was a different kind of pain. To survive physically, you need a body that tells you it hurts when it’s ill or injured. To flourish psychologically and in your relationships, you need a mind that sends different signals of distress—such as loneliness, anger, or fear—if you’re rejected, mistreated, or threatened.

To use a metaphor from the Buddha, the unavoidable pains of life are its “first darts.” But then we add insult to injury with our reactions to these darts. For example, you could react to a headache with anxiety that it might mean a brain tumor, or to being rejected in love with harsh self-criticism.

Further, it’s common to have upsetting reactions when nothing bad has actually happened. For instance, you’re flying in an airplane and everything’s fine, but you’re worried about it crashing. Or you go out on a date and it’s fun, but then he/she doesn’t call for a day and you feel let down.

Most absurdly, sometimes we react negatively to positive events. Perhaps someone complimented you, and you had feelings of unworthiness; or you’ve been offered an opportunity at work, and you obsess about whether you can handle it; or someone makes a bid for a deeper friendship, and you worry about being disappointing.

All these reactions are “second darts”—the ones we throw ourselves. They include overreacting to little things, holding grudges, justifying yourself, drowning in guilt after you’ve learned the lesson, dwelling on things long past, losing perspective, worrying about stuff you can’t control, and mentally rehashing conversations.

Second darts vastly outnumber first darts. There you are, on the dartboard of life, bleeding mainly from self-inflicted wounds.

There are enough darts in life without adding your own!

How

Accept the inevitability of first darts. They hurt, but pain is the price of living. Try not to get offended by pain—as if it’s an affront—or embarrassed about it, as if it’s a personal failing.

When pain does come, hold it in a large space of awareness. In a traditional metaphor, imagine pouring a big spoon of salt into a cup of water and then drinking it: yuck. Next, imagine stirring that spoonful into a big bowl of clean water and drinking a cup: not so bad now. It’s the same amount of salt—the same amount of physical or emotional pain—but now held and diluted in a larger context. Be aware of awareness: it’s like the sky—pain passes through it like storm clouds, never tainting or harming awareness itself. See if you can let the pain be without reacting to it; this is a key aspect of an unconditional inner peace.

Observe second darts. They’re often easier to see when others toss these darts at themselves—and then consider how you throw them at yourself. Gradually bring your recognition of second darts into the present moment, so you can see the inclination to throw them arise—and then catch them if possible before you stab yourself one more time.

A second dart will often trigger a cascade of mental reactions, like one boulder rolling down a mountainside setting off others in a chain reaction. To stop the landslide, start by relaxing your body as best you can. This will activate the calming, soothing parasympathetic wing of your nervous system and put the brakes on the fight-or-flight sympathetic wing.

Next, try to see more aspects of the situation that’s troubled you, and more of your life these days altogether—especially the parts that are going fine. Because of the negativity bias, the brain narrows down and fixates on what’s wrong, so you have to nudge it to widen its view to what’s right. The bird’s-eye, big picture view also deactivates the midline neural networks that do second-dart ruminating, and stimulates circuits on the side of your brain that can let things be as they are without reacting to them.

Don’t put more logs on the fire. Don’t look for more reasons to worry, criticize yourself, or feel mistreated. Don’t get mad at yourself for getting mad at yourself!

When you throw second darts, you are the person you hurt most. The suffering—mild to severe—in second darts is truly unnecessary. As the saying goes, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.

46. Relax Anxiety about Imperfection

“Imperfections” are all around, and they include: messes, dirty clothes, weeds, snarled traffic, rain during a picnic, wine stains on carpet; injury, illness, disability, pain; problems, issues, obstructions, losses—including with others; objects that are chipped, frayed, broken; mistakes, errors; confusion, lack of clarity; war, famine, poverty, oppression, injustice.

In a nutshell, an imperfection—as I mean it here—is a departure from a reasonable ideal or standard (e.g., dog poop on your shoe is not ideal, nor is the hunger that afflicts one in six people worldwide). These departures-from-ideal have costs, and it’s reasonable to do what you can about them.

But we usually don’t leave it at that: we get anxious—uneasy, nervous, troubled, stressed—about imperfection itself, rather than recognizing it as a normal, unavoidable, and widespread aspect of life. Instead of dealing with conditions as they are—weeds, injuries, conflicts with others—and just handling them, we get caught up in worrying about what they mean, grumbling, feeling deflated, becoming opinionated and judgmental, blaming ourselves and others, and feeling woe-is-me and yet again disappointed/mistreated/wronged.

These reactions to imperfection are major second darts (as described in the previous chapter). They make you feel a lot worse than you need to, create issues with others, and make it harder to take skillful action.

Here’s the alternative: let the broken cup be a broken cup without adding judgment, resistance, blaming, or worry to it.

How

Make appropriate efforts to improve things, but realize the impossibility of perfecting anything; even the most sophisticated technology cannot produce a perfectly flat table. You just can’t perfect your personality, thoughts, or behavior; trying to do so is like trying to polish Jell-O. Nor can you perfect others or the world. Open to this fact: you cannot perfectly protect your loved ones, or eliminate all of your own health risks, or prevent people from doing stupid things. At first this opening could feel poignant or sad, but then you’ll likely feel a breath of fresh air, a freedom, and a surge of energy to do the things you can now that you’re not undermined by the hopelessness of making anything perfect.

We need standards and ideals—from the strike zone in baseball to the aspirations in the world’s sacred teachings—but we also need to hold these lightly. Otherwise, they’ll take on a life of their own in your mind, like petty tyrants barking orders: “You must do this, it’s bad to do that.” Watch out for righteousness, for self-important moralizing insistence on your own view of how you, others, and the world should operate. Know if you have tendencies toward perfectionism; I do, and I’ve got to be careful about them or I become a difficult person to live with or work for, as well as unhappy inside.

Further, many things transcend fixed standards. For example, could there ever be such a thing as a perfect rose or a perfect child? In these cases, anxiety about imperfection is absurd—which applies to trying to perfect your body, career, relationships, family, business, or spiritual practice. Nurture these, help them blossom, but give up on perfecting them.

Most fundamentally, all conditions, no matter how imperfect, are perfectly what they are: the bed is perfectly unmade, the milk is perfectly spilt. I don’t mean morally or pragmatically “perfect”—as if it would be just perfect to tear a shirt or start a war—but that all conditions are utterly, thoroughly themselves. In this sense, whatever is the case—from dirty diapers and everyday hassles to cancer and plane crashes—is the result in this instant of the perfect unfolding of the entire universe. Try to see that unfolding as a vast, objective process in which our personal wishes are as consequential for it as a patch of foam is for the Pacific Ocean. In this light, perfection and imperfection vanish as meaningful distinctions. There are only things in their own right, in and of themselves, without our labels of good or bad, beautiful or ugly, perfect or not. Then there is no anxiety about imperfection; there is only simplicity, directness, engagement—and peace.

47. Respond, Don’t React

To simplify the explanation of a complex journey, your brain evolved in three stages:

Reptile, fish—Brainstem, focused on avoiding harm

Mammal, bird—Limbic system, focused on approaching rewards

Human—Cortex, focused on attaching to “us”

Whether a person is a psychopathic criminal or a saint, these three systems—avoiding, approaching, attaching—are always at work. The key is whether they’re at work in a good way—one that promotes happiness and benefit for yourself and others—or a bad one that leads to suffering and harm.

What’s happening in your brain when these systems are functioning in a good way—when you’re feeling fine, or even “in the zone,” self-actualizing, or spiritually blossoming? The answer is important, because then you can deliberately stimulate and thus gradually strengthen the neural networks that underpin these good states of mind.

When you are not rattled by life—in other words, when you’re feeling safe, fulfilled, and loved—your brain’s avoiding system is calm (in a word), the approaching system is contented, and the attaching system is caring. This is the responsive mode of the brain, which delights, soothes, and refuels you. It’s your home base, the resting state of your brain, which is real good news.

Now here’s the bad news: we also evolved hair-trigger mechanisms that activate the fight-or-flight reactive mode of the brain and drive us from home when we’re stressed, whether from the snarl of a leopard a million years ago or a frown across a dinner table today. When you feel even subtly threatened, the avoiding system shifts gears into hatred (to use a strong, traditional word that encompasses the full range of fear and anger); when you’re at all frustrated or dissatisfied, the approaching system tips into greed (ranging from longing to intense obsession or addiction); and when you feel even mildly rejected or devalued, the attaching system moves into heartache (from soft hurt to awful feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, or loneliness).

The reactive mode was a great way to keep our ancestors alive in the wild, and it’s useful today in urgent situations. But it’s lousy for long-term health and happiness. Each time your brain lights up its reactive mode—each time you feel pressured, worried, irritated, disappointed, let down, left out, or blue—this triggers the same stress machinery that evolved to escape charging lions or lethal aggression from other primates or humans.

Most reactive mode activations—pushing you off home base—are mild to moderate. But they’re frequent and relentless in the lives of most people, leading to a kind of inner homelessness that can become the new normal. Besides feeling crummy, this is bad for your physical health, since chronic stress leads to a weakened immune system, disturbed digestion, dysregulated hormones, and increased risk of heart attack or stroke. Stress wears on your mental health as well, bringing: pessimism, blue mood, and depression; heightened anxiety and irritability; “learned helplessness”; hunkering down, playing it safe, dreaming smaller dreams; clutching tighter to “us” and fearing and even exploiting or attacking “them.”

So—let’s come home.

How

This book is full of practices for calm, contentment, and caring—and there are lots of other good methods in Buddha’s Brain and in the writings and teachings of many people. So I’m not going to focus here on any particular way to activate the responsive mode of your brain. The key point is to make it a priority to feel good, to look for everyday opportunities for peacefulness, happiness, and love, and to take all the little moments you can to marinate in well-being.

Because here’s more good news: Each time you rest in your brain’s responsive mode, it gets easier to come home to it again. That’s because “neurons that fire together, wire together”: stimulating the neural substrates of calm, contentment, and caring strengthens them. This also makes it harder to be driven from home; it’s like lengthening the keel of your mental sailboat so that no matter how hard the winds of life blow, you stay upright, not capsized, and keep on heading toward the lighthouse of your dreams.

What’s wonderful about this is that the ends of the journey of life—being peaceful, happy, and loved/loving—become the means of getting there. In effect—in a traditional phrase—you are taking the fruit as the path. Instead of having to scratch and claw your way up the mountain top, you come home to the meadow that is the natural state of your brain—nourishing, expanding, and beautifying it every minute you spend there. For as they say in Tibet, “if you take care of the minutes, the years will take care of themselves.”

48. Don’t Take It Personally

Here’s an updated parable from the ancient Taoist teacher Chuang-Tzu: Imagine that you are floating in a canoe on a slow-moving river, having a Sunday picnic with a friend. Suddenly there is a loud thump on the side of the canoe, and it rolls over. You come up sputtering, and what do you see? Somebody has snuck up on your canoe, flipped it over for a joke, and is laughing at you. How do you feel?

Okay. Now imagine the exact same situation again: the picnic in a canoe, loud thump, dumped into the river, coming up sputtering, and what do you see? A large submerged log has drifted downstream and bumped into your canoe. This time, how do you feel?

The facts are the same in each case: cold and wet, picnic ruined. But when you think you’ve been targeted personally, you probably feel worse. The thing is, most of what bumps into us in life—including emotional reactions from others, traffic jams, illness, or mistreatment at work—is like an impersonal log put in motion by ten thousand causes upstream.

Say a friend is surprisingly critical toward you. It hurts, for sure, and you’ll want to address the situation, from talking about it with the friend to disengaging from the relationship.

But also consider what may have caused that person to bump into you, such as misinterpretations of your actions; health problems, pain, worries or anger about things unrelated to you; temperament, personality, childhood experiences; the effects of culture, economy, or world events; and causes back upstream in time, like how his or her parents were raised.

Recognize the humbling yet wonderful truth: most of the time, we are bit players in other people’s dramas.

When you look at things this way, you naturally get calmer, put situations in context, and don’t get so caught up in me-myself-and-I. Then you feel better, plus more clearheaded about what to do.

How

To begin with, have compassion for yourself. Getting smacked by a log is a drag. Also take appropriate action. Keep an eye out for logs heading your way, try to reduce their impact, and repair your “boat”—relationship, health, finances, career—as best you can. And maybe think about finding a new river!

Additionally:

Notice when you start to take something personally. Be mindful of what that feels like—and also what it feels like to relax the sense of being personally targeted.

Be careful about making assumptions about the intentions of others. Maybe they didn’t do it “on purpose.” Or maybe there was one not-so-good purpose aimed at you that was mixed up with a dozen other purposes.

Reflect on some of the ten thousand causes upstream. Ask yourself: What else could be in play here? What’s going on inside the other person’s mind and life? What’s the bigger picture?

Beware getting caught up in your “case” about other people, driven by an inner prosecutor that keeps pounding on all the ways they’re wrong, spoke badly, acted unfairly, picked on you, really really harmed you, made you suffer, etc., etc. It’s good to see others clearly, and there’s a place for moral judgment—but case-making is a kind of obsessing that makes you feel worse and more likely to overreact and create an even bigger problem.

Try to have compassion for the other people. They’re probably not all that happy, either. Your compassion for them will not weaken you or let them off the moral hook; actually, it will make you feel better.

If you like, explore relaxing the sense of self—of I and me and mine—in general. For example, notice the difference between “there are sounds” and “I am hearing,” or between “there are thoughts” and “I am thinking.” Observe how the sense of self ebbs and flows, typically increasing when there are problems to solve and decreasing as you experience calm and well-being. This fluidity of “me” in the mind correlates with dynamic and fleeting activations in the brain; self-related thoughts are constructed all over the brain, tumbling and jostling with other thoughts, unrelated to self, in the neural substrates of the stream of consciousness (Gilliham and Farah 2005; Legrand and Ruby 2009). Appreciate that “I” is more of a process than an ability: a “selfing.” Enjoy the ease and openness that emerge as the sense of self recedes.

And—really soak up the sense of strength and peacefulness that comes from taking life less personally.

49. Feel Safer

Consider these two mistakes:

You think there’s a tiger in the bushes, but actually there isn’t one.

You think there’s no tiger in the bushes, but actually one is about to pounce.

Most of us make the first mistake much more often than the second one, for several reasons:

Evolution has given us an anxious brain. In order to survive and pass on genes, it’s better to make the first mistake a thousand times rather than make the second mistake even once; the cost of the first mistake is fear for no reason, but the cost of the second mistake could be death.

This general tendency in the human brain is exacerbated by temperament—some people are naturally more anxious than others—and by life experiences (e.g., growing up in a dangerous neighborhood, experiencing trauma).

Saturated with media, news about murders, disasters, economic turmoil, and horrible things happening to other people sifts into your mind—even though your own local situation is probably much less dangerous.

In ways that have been repeated throughout history, political groups try to gain or hold onto power by exaggerating apparent threats.

In effect, most of us have a kind of paper tiger paranoia.

Certainly, it’s important to recognize the real tigers in life, which come in many shapes and sizes: perhaps an impending layoff at work, a cough that won’t go away, a teenager growing pot in the attic, a friend or coworker who keeps letting you down, or the health risks of smoking cigarettes. Try to notice any tendencies to overlook or minimize tigers, and do what you can about the ones that are real.

Meanwhile, try to recognize the ways that you—like most people—routinely overestimate threats while underestimating the resources inside you and around you. In effect, most of us feel much less safe than we actually are. The unfortunate results include unpleasant feelings of worry and anxiety; not hunkering down and reaching as high and wide as one might; stress-related illnesses; less capacity to be patient or generous with others; and a greater tendency to be snappish or angry (the engine of most aggression is fear). It’s not good to feel like it’s always Threat Level Orange!

Instead, feel as safe as you reasonably can.

How?

Some people get understandably nervous about feeling safer—since that’s when you lower your guard, and things can really smack you. If this applies to you, adapt the suggestions here to your own needs, go at your own pace, and perhaps talk with a friend or counselor.

Further, there is no perfect safety in this life. Each of us will face disease, old age, and death, as well as lesser but still painful experiences. And many of us must deal with unsafe conditions in the community, workplace, or home.

This said, consider in your heart of hearts whether you deserve to feel safer: whether you are more braced against life, more guarded, more cautious, more anxious, more frozen, more appeasing, more rigid, or more prickly than you truly need to be.

If the answer is yes, here are some ways to help yourself feel safer, so that a growing internal sense of calm and confidence will increasingly match the true reality of the people and settings around you:

Bring to mind the sense of being with someone who cares about you.

Recall a time you felt strong.

Recognize that you are in a protected setting.

Mentally list some of the resources inside and around you that you could draw on to deal with what life throws you.

Take a few breaths with l-o-n-g exhalations, and relax.

All the while, keep helping yourself feel more sheltered, more supported, more capable, and safer. And less vigilant, tense, or fearful.

Become more aware of what it’s like to feel safer, and let those good feelings sink in, so you can remember them in your body and find your way back to them in the future.

You can practice with the methods above in general ways, such as in the morning plus several times a day if you tend to be fearful. Also try them in specific, unsettling situations, like before speaking up in a meeting, driving in traffic, getting on an airplane, or working through a sticky issue with your partner. Being on your own side, help yourself feel at least a little safer, and maybe a lot. Then see what happens. And take it in, again and again, if in fact, as they usually do, things turn out all right.

And there is really no tiger in the bushes after all.

50. Fill the Hole in Your Heart

As we grow up and then move through adulthood, we all have normal needs for safety, fulfillment, and love. For example, children need to feel secure, adolescents need a growing sense of autonomy, and young adults need to feel attractive and worthy of romantic love. When these needs are met by various “supplies”—such as the caring of a parent, the trust of a teacher, the love of a mate—the positive experiences that result then sink in to implicit memory to become resources for well-being, self-regulation, resilience, self-worth, and skillful action. This is how healthy psychological development is supposed to work.

But it doesn’t always go this way, does it? In the lives of most people (me included)—even without any kind of significant mistreatment, trauma, or abuse—the incoming stream of supplies has sometimes been a thin soup: perhaps your parents were busy caring for a sick sibling or preoccupied with their own needs and conflicts, or you moved a lot as a kid and had a hard time connecting with peers, or high school was more than the usual social nightmare, or potential lovers were uninterested, or jobs have been frustrating and dispiriting, or . . . in other words, a typical life.

The shortages in a thin soup leave lacks, deficits, in key internal resources. For example, I was a year or two younger than my classmates, which led to a shortage of inclusion and valuing from them, which in turn led to a lack of confidence and sense of worth in groups that persisted into adulthood. The absence of good things naturally has consequences.

And so does the presence of bad ones. When blows land—when there is loss, mistreatment, rejection, abandonment, misfortune, or trauma—they leave wounds. Sometimes these heal fully, usually due to a rich soup of supplies. But often they don’t, leaving pockets of unresolved emotional pain like pus beneath a scab, while also affecting a person’s functioning like a lifelong limp from a broken ankle that never fully mended.

A lack or a wound will leave “a hole in your heart”—which gets even deeper when the two exacerbate each other. For example, I vividly recall the time a popular girl in high school really put me down; it was a minor blow in its own right, but my years of social isolation had left me with no shields or shock absorbers to buffer its impact, which was to make me feel awful about myself for a long time afterward.

So what can you do about your own lacks and wounds? You’ve got them; we all do. Life alone can be healing: time passes, you put more distance each year between yourself and the train wreck of your early childhood, seventh grade, first great love, last job, last marriage, or whatever, and you move on to a better place. But this essentially passive process of being carried by life is often not enough for a real healing: it’s too slow, or it doesn’t reach down deep enough, or key ingredients are missing.

Then you need to actively fill the hole in your heart.

How

It’s fundamentally simple: you take in good experiences (chapter 2) that are specifically aimed at your own lacks and wounds. It’s like being a sailor with scurvy: you need vitamin C—not vitamin E—for what ails you. For example, I felt both protected and independent as a child, so experiences of safety and autonomy as an adult—while valuable in their own right—did not address my issue: I needed the particular healing balm of experiences of inclusion and respect in groups.

Consequently, it’s important to know what your own vitamin C is (and sometimes a person needs more than one kind). Perhaps you already know, but if not, here are some questions to help you find out: When your lacks or wounds developed, what would have made all the difference in the world? What do you long for today? What conditions help you feel truly happy—and bring out the best in you? What sort of experiences feed and soothe a deep hunger inside?

More specifically, here’s a summary of some healing experiences—”vitamins”—targeted for particular lacks and wounds, organized in terms of the three motivational systems in your brain:

Once you have some clarity about the psychological vitamins you need, the rest is straightforward:

Look for these vitamins in your life; also do what you can to create or increase them. For example, I keep my eyes open for opportunities to feel liked and appreciated in groups, plus I prod myself to join groups to create those opportunities.

The vitamin you need is an experience, not an event. The point of situations in which you are protected, successful, or appreciated is to feel safe, fulfilled, and worthy. This is hopeful, because it gives you many ways to evoke key experiences. For example, if feeling that you matter to others is what will fill the hole in your heart, you could: look for signs that others wish you well, whether it’s the smile of someone making you a sandwich in a deli, the encouragement of a coworker, or a lover’s hug; think about the many people in your life today or in your past who like and appreciate you; ask your partner to be affectionate (and be open to hearing what would help him or her to do this); try to develop more relationships with people who are by nature warm and supportive.

Be willing to get a slice of the pie if the alternative is no pie at all. For instance, if you finish a tough project at work, focus on the sense of accomplishment for everything you got done rather than on a few loose ends; if a friend is warm and loyal, open to feeling cared about even if what you really want is romantic love.

Then, using the second and third steps of taking in the good (chapter 2), really savor the positive experience for ten or more seconds in a row while sensing that it is sinking down into you, giving you what you’ve always needed.

Have confidence that every time you do this, you’ll be wiring resources into your brain. When I started this practice myself, in my early twenties, the hole in my heart looked like the construction site for a skyscraper. But I just kept tossing a few bricks—a few experiences of feeling included—into that hole every day. One brick alone will make little difference, but brick after brick, day after day, year after year, you really can fill even a very big hole in your heart!

51. Let Go

I’ve done a lot of rock climbing, so I know firsthand the importance sometimes of not letting go! This applies to other things as well: keeping hold of a child’s hand while crossing the street, staying true to your ethics in a tricky situation, or sustaining attention to your breath while meditating.

On the other hand, think of all the stuff—both physical and nonphysical—we cling to that creates problems for us and others: clutter in the home, “shoulds,” rigid opinions, resentments, regrets, status, guilt, resistance to the facts on the ground, needing to be one-up with others, the past, people who are gone, bad habits, hopeless guests, unrewarding relationships, and so on.

Letting go can mean several things: releasing pain; dropping thoughts, words, and deeds that cause suffering and harm; yielding rather than breaking; surrendering to the way it is, like it or not; allowing each moment to pass away without trying to hold on to it; accepting the permanently impermanent nature of existence; and relaxing the sense of self and opening out into the wider world.

Living in this way is relaxing, decreases hassles and conflicts, reduces stress, improves mood and well-being, and grounds you in reality as it is. And it’s a key element, if you like, of spiritual practice. To quote Ajahn Chah, a major Buddhist teacher who lived in Thailand:

If you let go a little, you will have a little happiness.

If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of happiness.

If you let go completely, you will be completely happy.

How

Appreciate the wisdom of letting go, and notice any resistance to it: perhaps it seems weak to you, foolish, or against the culture of your gender or personal background. For example, I remember talking with my friend John years ago about a woman he’d been pursuing who’d made it clear she wasn’t interested, and he felt frustrated and hurt. I said maybe he should surrender and move on—to which John replied fiercely, “I don’t do surrender.” It took him a while to get past his belief that surrender—acceptance, letting go—meant you were wimping out. (All ended happily with us getting drunk together and him throwing up on my shoe—which I then had to surrender to!) It takes strength to let go, and fortitude, character, and insight. When you let go, you’re like a supple and resilient willow tree that bends before the storm, still here in the morning—rather than a stiff oak that ends up broken and toppled over.

Be aware of the letting go that happens naturally all day long such as, releasing objects from your hands, hanging up the phone, pushing send on an e-mail, moving from one thought or feeling to another in your mind, saying bye to a friend, shifting plans, using the bathroom, changing a TV channel, or emptying the trash. Notice that letting go is all right, that you keep on going, that it’s necessary and beneficial. Become more comfortable with letting go.

Consciously let go of tension in your body. Exhale long and slowly, activating the relaxing parasympathetic nervous system. Let go of holding in your belly, shoulders, jaws, and eyes.

Clear out possessions you don’t use or need. Let in how great it feels to finally have some room in your closet, drawers, or garage.

Pick a dumb idea you’ve held on to way too long—one for me would be that I have to do things perfectly or there’ll be a disaster. Practice dropping this idea and replacing it with better ones (like for me: “Nobody is perfect and that’s okay”).

Pick a grievance, grudge, or resentment—and resolve to move on. This does not necessarily mean letting other people off the moral hook, just that you are letting yourself off the hot plate of staying upset about whatever happened. If feelings such as hurt still come up about the issue, be aware of them, be kind to yourself about them, and then gently encourage them out the door.

Letting go of painful emotions is a big subject, with lots of resources for you in books such as Focusing, by Eugene Gendlin, or What We May Be, by Piero Ferrucci. Here’s a summary of methods I like: relax your body; imagine that the feelings are flowing out of you like water; vent in a letter you’ll never send, or out loud someplace appropriate; get things off your chest with a good friend; take in positive feelings to soothe and gradually replace the painful ones.

In general, let things be pleasant without grasping after them; let things be unpleasant without resisting them; let things be neutral without prodding them to get pleasant. Letting go undoes the craving and clinging that lead to suffering and harm.

Let go of who you used to be. Let yourself learn, grow, and therefore change.

Let go of each moment as it disappears beneath your feet. It’s gone as soon as you’re aware of it, like a snowflake melting as soon as you see its shape. You can afford to abide as letting go because of the miracle—which no scientist fully understands—that the next moment continually emerges as the previous one vanishes, all within the infinitely tiny duration of Now.

52. Love

We all want to receive love. But maybe it comes in a form you don’t want—perhaps someone offers romantic love but that’s not what you’re looking for—or it doesn’t come at all. Then there is heartache and helplessness; you can’t make others love you if they won’t.

Definitely, do what you can to get the love you need. But the practice here is about expressing love, distinct from receiving it. When you focus on the love you give rather than the love you get, then you’re at cause rather than at effect; you’re the cue ball, not the eight ball—which supports your sense of efficacy and confidence, as well as your mood. And it’s enlightened self-interest: the best way to get love is to give it; even if it’s still not returned, your love will likely improve the relationship, and help calm any troubled waters.

Sometimes people worry that being loving will make them vulnerable or drained. But actually, you can see in your own experience that love itself doesn’t do this: it protects and nurtures you when you give it. While you’re loving, don’t you feel uplifted and stronger?

That’s because love is deep in human nature, literally woven into our DNA. As our ancestors evolved, the seeds of love in primates and hominids—such as mother-child attachment, pair bonding, communication skills, and teamwork—aided survival, so the genes that promoted these characteristics were passed on. A positive cycle developed: As “the village it takes to raise a child” evolved and grew stronger, the period of vulnerable childhood could become longer, so the brain evolved to become larger in order to make use of that longer childhood—and thereby developed more capacities for love. The brain has roughly tripled in size since hominids began making stone tools about 2.5 million years ago, and much of this new neural real estate is devoted to love and related capabilities.

We need to give love to be healthy and whole. If you bottle up your love, you bottle up your whole being. Love is like water: it needs to flow; otherwise, it backs up on itself and gets stagnant and smelly. Look at the faces of some people who are very loving: they’re beautiful, aren’t they? Being loving heals old wounds inside and opens untapped reservoirs of energy and talent. It’s also a profound path of awakening, playing a central role in all of the world’s major religious traditions.

The world needs your love. Those you live with and work with need it, plus your family and friends, people near and far, and this whole battered planet. Never underestimate the ripples spreading out from just one loving word, thought, or deed!

How

Love is as natural as breathing, yet like the breath, it can get constricted. Sometimes you may need to release it, strengthen it, and help it flow more freely with methods like these:

Bring to mind the sense of being with people who care about you, and then open to feeling cared about. Let this feeling fill you, warming your heart, softening your face. Sink into this experience. It’s okay if opposite thoughts arise (e.g., rejection); observe them for a moment, and then return to feeling cared about—which will warm up the neural circuits of being loving yourself.

Sense into the area around your heart, and think of things that evoke heartfelt feelings, such as gratitude, compassion, or kindness. To bring harmony to the tiny changes in the interval between heartbeats, breathe so that your inhalations and exhalations are about the same length, since inhaling speeds up the heart rate and exhaling slows it down. The heart has more than a metaphorical link to love; the cardiovascular and nervous systems lace together in your body like lovers’ fingers, and practices like these will nurture wholehearted well-being in you and greater warmth for others.

Strengthen these loving feelings with soft thoughts toward others, such as I wish you well. May you not be in pain. May you be at peace. May you live with ease. If you feel upset with someone, you can include these reactions in your awareness while also extending loving thoughts like I’m angry with you and won’t let you hurt me again—and I still hope you find true happiness, and I still wish you well.

There is a notion that being intentional about love makes it false or at least second-rate. But actually, loving at will is doubly loving: the love you find is authentic, and the effort to call it forth is deeply caring.

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.