Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time

You've heard the expression, “It’s the little things that count.” It's more than a simple platitude. Research has shown that integrating little daily practices into your life can actually change the way your brain works.

This guide offers simple things you can do routinely, mainly inside your mind, that will support and increase your sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight, and inner peace. For example, they include: taking in the good, protecting your brain, feeling safer, relaxing anxiety about imperfection, not knowing, enjoying your hands, taking refuge, and filling the hole in your heart.  At first glance, you may be tempted to underestimate the power of these seemingly simple practices. But they will gradually change your brain through what’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity.

Moment to moment, whatever you're aware of—sounds, sensations, thoughts, or your most heartfelt longings—is based on underlying neural activities. This book offers simple brain training practices you can do every day to protect against stress, lift your mood, and find greater emotional resilience.

Just one practice each day can help you to:

• Be good to yourself
• Enjoy life as it is
• Build on your strengths
• Be more effective at home and work
• Make peace with your emotions

With over fifty daily practices you can use anytime, anywhere, Just One Thingis a groundbreaking combination of mindfulness meditation and neuroscience that can help you deepen your sense of well-being and unconditional happiness.

Rick Hanson, PhD, is a psychologist and author of Buddha’s Brain, which has been published in twenty languages. He is founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and an Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been invited to lecture at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and teaches in meditation centers worldwide. He lives with his family in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. For many resources freely offered, visit www.rickhanson.net.