Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence

Rick Hanson, PhD

Oct 2013 · Sold by Harmony

About this ebook

With New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Hanson's four steps, you can counterbalance your brain's negativity bias and learn to hardwire happiness in only a few minutes each day. 

Why is it easier to ruminate over hurt feelings than it is to bask in the warmth of being appreciated? Because your brain evolved to learn quickly from bad experiences and slowly from good ones, but you can change this.
 
Life isn’t easy, and having a brain wired to take in the bad and ignore the good makes us worried, irritated, and stressed, instead of confident, secure, and happy. But each day is filled with opportunities to build inner strengths and Dr. Rick Hanson, an acclaimed clinical psychologist, shows what you can do to override the brain’s default pessimism.
 
Hardwiring Happiness lays out a simple method that uses the hidden power of everyday experiences to build new neural structures full of happiness, love, confidence, and peace. You’ll learn to see through the lies your brain tells you. Dr. Hanson’s four steps build strengths into your brain to make contentment and a powerful sense of resilience the new normal. In just minutes a day, you can transform your brain into a refuge and power center of calm and happiness.

Ratings and reviews

Firstly, it startd pretty well, lots of neuroscience and psychology facts explained in a pretty easy to understand way. Then it gives what it promises: a strategy to start readapting our reactions to everything around us; it teaches us how to turn a negative stimulus in a positive one. It is awesome the way it emphasizes that all of us descend from human beings, that strived to survive their whole lives, always being stressed by different threats. But then, the last third of the book is way too repetitive.

A mediocre book that details a method for constructing a positive mind and brain through conscious effort. It could have been a better book without the redundancy.

Explains a simplified, easy to understand model of the brain and then focuses on how to improve self talk and mood through use of conditioning one's brain to perceive and experience what is good in life more fully. It has significantly improved my happiness.

About the author

Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist, senior fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times bestselling author. His books have been published in twenty-nine languages and include Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture, with 900,000 copies in English alone. His free weekly newsletter has 150,000 subscribers and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial need. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard and taught in meditation centers worldwide. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, NPR, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and is the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He loves wilderness and taking a break from emails.