Month Eleven

MONTH ELEVEN

An interview with Rick Hanson

Mindfulness for developing greater resilience and happiness

Welcome to MONTH ELEVEN

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”  ~ Nelson Mandela

Mindfulness is a vehicle for greater resilience.

Resilience is our ability to bounce back when things don’t go as planned. It’s a quality that we all have, but some of us can draw on it more easily than others. Resilience is important because it allows us to deal with difficult situations, and it helps us to grow by discovering that we have the inner resources to face the inevitable challenges that come with being human.

Here are a few questions to reflect upon this month in relation to your own resilience.

Are you able to keep a positive attitude during challenging situations?

Are you able to ask for support and help when facing challenging situations?

When you are in the midst of a difficult situation are you able to be your best friend and sooth yourself?

Think about a time that you faced a significant challenge yet managed to get through it, take a moment to absorb that feeling of resilience and acknowledge your own inner strength and capacity.

As humans we have little control over the external circumstances that happen in our life, however, we have an unlimited capacity to learn inner tools to build our resilience and once we build these inner tools they support us for life. So it’s a worthy investment!

Try out Rick’s H.E.A..L practice below to internalise the good that happens in your day and build greater inner resources for deeper resilience.

HEAL Yourself

Activation

  1. Have a beneficial experience: Notice it or create it. Installation
  2. Enrich it: Stay with it, feeling it fully.
  3. Absorb it: Receive it into yourself.
  4. Link it [optional]: Use it to soothe and replace painful, harmful psychological material.

Use the Facebook group to share your biggest takeaways from this interview. Practice “taking in the good” and turning passing states into enduring traits.  You can also share mindful moments from your daily life to anchor you to more presence and gratitude.

In this video you’ll learn:

  • How mindfulness supports greater resilience
  • Practices to build greater resilience
  • How to turn passing pleasant states into enduring traits for greater resilience
  • How to transform your brain to overcome the negativity bias and experience more joy

About Rick Hanson

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist and New York Times best-selling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing and Mother Nurture. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and on the Advisory Board of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley, he’s been an invited speaker at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centres worldwide.

Dr. Elise Bialylew

Our upcoming LIVE CALL

Join our live guided online meditation with Dr. Elise Bialylew, along with an interactive Q&A session.

Join the session on Zoom here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81381381693

BOOK OF THE MONTH

Who are you? The journey beyond yourself.

This month, as part of the Mind Life Project book club you’re invited to read April’s book The Untethered Soul, by Dr. Michael Singer.

Who are you? When you start to explore this question, you find out how elusive it really is. Are you a physical body? A collection of experiences and memories? A partner to relationships? Each time you consider aspects of yourself, you realize that there is much more to you than any of these can define.

In this book, spiritual teacher Michael Singer explores the question of who we are and arrives at the conclusion that our identity is to be found in our consciousness, the fact of our ability to observe ourselves and the world around us. By tapping into traditions of meditation and mindfulness, Singer shows how the development of consciousness can enable us all to dwell in the present moment and let go of painful thoughts and memories that keep us from achieving happiness and self-realization. Divided into five parts, the book offers a frank and friendly discussion of consciousness and how we can develop it.

Throughout, the book maintains a light and engaging tone, free from heavy dogma and prescriptive religious references. The easy exercises that figure in each chapter help readers experience the ideas that Singer presents.

Download the bookclub reflection guide here where you can record your biggest takeaways.

As you take notes feel free to share them in the Facebook group as a way of integrating your learning and having discussions with others in the group. Remember to use the hashtag #bookclub.

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