Meditations for Happiness: Rewire Your Brain for Lasting Contentment and Peace

by Rick Hanson

Happiness is far more than a positive feeling that comes and goes. Science is now proving that happiness is a skill that you can develop.

Course objectives:

List some enduring benefits of happiness.
• Describe the negativity bias of the brain.
• Summarize how our brains can make us happy and also create suffering.
• Practice guided exercises for tapping your innate capacity to nurture and encourage yourself.
• Utilize meditation to shape your brain over time to experience more joy and be more at ease in everyday life.
• Apply techniques that re-wire the neural pathways in the brain to experience deeper and more lasting happiness.
Bridging neuropsychology with the great contemplative traditions, Meditations for Happiness brings you a series of practices that allow you to literally rewire the neural pathways in your brain to experience deeper and more lasting contentment.

On part one, Dr. Hanson discusses the nature of happiness, its role in our evolution, how our brains both make us happy and create suffering, and how we can use and shape our brains over time to experience more joy and ease in everyday life. He then guides you step-by-step through more than a dozen meditations and exercises including:

A Happiness Trip—explore the many shades of positive emotions that relate to your happiness
• Gratitude—an antidote to threatening thoughts and feelings
• Taking Refuge in What's Reliable—root your happiness in the safe harbors of things you can truly count on
• Coming Home to Happiness—a relaxing session to ease your body-mind back to its natural state of calm and contentment
"Emotions come and go, but true happiness endures," teaches Dr. Hanson. With Meditations for Happiness, he helps you build a foundation of skills for realizing the happiness you desire.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Meditation, Self Help

Audio CD

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. His seven books have been published in 33 languages and include Making Great Relationships, Neurodharma, Resilient, Hardwiring Happiness, Just One Thing, Buddha’s Brain, and Mother Nurture – with over a million copies in English alone. He's the founder of the Global Compassion Coalition and the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, as well as the co-host of the Being Well podcast – which has been downloaded 23 million times. His free newsletters have 260,000 subscribers, and his online programs have scholarships available for those with financial needs. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard. An expert on positive neuroplasticity, his work has been featured on CBS, NPR, the BBC, and other major media. He began meditating in 1974 and has taught in meditation centers worldwide. He and his wife live in northern California and have two adult children. He loves the wilderness and taking a break from emails.

Reviews

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting a bit more science and a bit more guided it was a look at some of the science and a bunch of activities to do in calming meditative times to realize how happiness is there even on dark days and how we don’t always need to be exuberantly happy to be happy. Some sadness or stress can still be happy. It was good and short. The author took breaks as if you were filling in the activities along with him. That made me think the duck was broken, but it’s just how it is. It was good, calming,and provided some good techniques and hopes for yoga and meditative practices to continue to do.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was fine a quick listen with lots of meditations but I found I actually feel happy in my life so some of what he discussed just didn’t feel relevant but I understand that were I in a different time I might have found this more useful.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok, Enjoyed the introduction. Meditations were not what I was looking for but can appreciate why others would find helpful. I found the narration tempo inconsistent (perhaps a download issue with Libby?)

[Josée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guided meditations interspersed with discussion about how our brains work. I liked the reading and found it very helpful.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great meditation guide. Listening to this audio book brought me a lot of peace.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful tips

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

builds confidence in fruits of own efforts-Buddha, not deserve to be happy, as despair decoy, 5 to 1 good experience to bad, objective view self critique do better, resist reality creates frustration, humbly healthy or over-bearing-DW, live as who you are, take refuge in reliable-Buddha in truth, list good things in life take inventory, how to be more virtuous completely honest, goes around comes around harms self.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of guided meditations. Among the have dozen meditations is one on self-compassin that was life-changing for me. Mediations are each about 15 minutes. They include:

Happiness and Gratitude
Self-compassion
Meeting Your Inner Protector
Taking Refuge in What is Reliable
Letting Go
The Big Space of Awareness

and some helpful ten minute talks and exercises.