Feeling Strong

Life is tough. Get the strength you need for tough times in this guided meditation with Rick Hanson, as he walks you through visualizing moments when you were strong emotionally, physically, or mentally, so you can hardwire those experiences into your brain, making them lasting traits to draw upon.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Rick Hansen with the practice of feeling strong in the Foundations of Well-being program related to the theme of grit in the pillar of vitality.

So let's kind of explore what it feels like to have various aspects of grit inside yourself.

And I'll use a kind of general term here,

Feeling strong.

So to begin with,

If you can't,

Bring to mind a time when you felt strong.

It could be a time when you were maybe lifting a weight or doing something physical like being outdoors,

Moving with a sense of vigor.

It could have been a time when you were really strong on behalf of another person.

You stuck up for them or you came through in a tough situation.

You know,

You helped a friend move just kind of out of the blue.

Maybe even though it took most of the day and you were tired at the end of it,

But you stayed with it.

Or maybe it was a time when you really stood up for yourself.

You were determined,

Serious,

Resolute,

Assertive,

Let's say with other people.

Whatever it is,

See if you can start calling to mind times that you felt strong because you were strong in one aspect or another,

Including simply enduring,

Simply lasting,

Simply surviving or getting through difficult situations as an important aspect of strength.

So you're calling up,

You're activating,

You're creating and having various experiences of strength,

Various aspects of the experience of strength.

Maybe feeling it in your body,

What it feels like to a sense of strength,

Seriousness,

Endurance,

Being aware of what's enjoyable about feeling strong,

What feels good about it.

Maybe a sense of relief or healthy pride or just a kind of animal vitality.

What's it feel like in your face to feel determined to mean business?

Not in any kind of violent or over the top way,

But gravity,

Dignity,

Strength.

What's it feel like in your eyes?

What's the look in your eyes when you're determined,

When you're enduring,

When things matter to you?

What's the look in your eyes,

The feeling in your face when you're resolute,

You're intent,

Maybe a kind of steeliness?

It's interesting to explore the edge where you are strong without tipping into anger.

Getting to this experience of strength,

Knowing different aspects of it,

Feeling it in your body.

Even if you're getting older,

Even if there's pain or illness or disability or incapacity,

Even if you've only lost a step or two in the race of life,

Still you can feel the strength in enduring,

In ongoingness,

In the capacities that remain.

You can find the happiness,

If there is even subtle happiness,

In the recognition of the strengths and the strength that remains.

Also be aware of any subtle fears about your strength or doubts about it,

Or maybe a suppressing of it,

Kind of a fear that if you were to really expand and be bigger to include the strength that is truly native to you,

That is truly in you and in your mind,

If you were to do that,

That it would create trouble with others.

You know,

The nail that stands out gets pushed down.

See if you can let go of those fears or acknowledge them,

Bow to them,

And then move on from them to again claim and reclaim the experience of strength that's authentic and true for you,

Recognizing the ways in which it's alright to be strong.

You can use it for a good purpose.

You can find settings and relationships in which you are free to use your strengths,

To be big,

To stand up,

To stand out,

And it's okay to find that strength,

To be that strong in these various good situations.

You can have confidence in this,

And in so doing,

Claim and let in the feeling again and again of your own strength.

The sense of strength spreading in you,

Your mind coming back to it if it wanders,

Giving yourself over to your strength,

Absorbing it,

Strength spreading inside you like a warmth,

Maybe like a,

Maybe you visualize it as a kind of current or waves spreading inside you,

Sifting down into you,

Feeling stronger and stronger.

And if you want,

You can use the linking step of the HEAL process that I've taught in the Learning Pillar of Well-being to get a sense of your strength connecting with places inside that have felt not so strong,

Maybe unable or weak.

So you're prominently aware of feeling strong,

While off to the sides of awareness could be feelings of weakness or defeat or incapacity or being outnumbered,

And simultaneously you're mainly resting in a felt sense of your strength.

You could have a strength,

A sense of strength moving into those places that have felt weak or overwhelmed and not suppressing them or denying those feelings,

Often old feelings,

But being alongside them,

Gradually moving into them,

Easing those negative,

Quote unquote,

Feelings of weakness with the,

Quote unquote,

Positive experience of strength.

Having a sense of replacing places of weakness or feelings of weakness or doubts about your strength,

Replacing those with a deepening,

Increasingly centered sense of strength.

Okay,

And then letting go of any sense of weakness,

Letting that go,

Resting only in the positive,

In that positive sense of strength.

Good.

And then as we start to move to an end here,

You can also imagine engaging your life from this experience of strength.

In other words,

Keep re-centering in and re-generating,

Refueling this experience of strength in its various aspects,

Including endurance or determination.

As you imagine situations in your life these days where you need to protect yourself,

You need to create safety,

Maybe establishing boundaries with others or taking care of things in your environment,

Your finances perhaps,

Your physical environment where you live or dealing with things inside yourself,

Perhaps your health,

Where you can draw upon strength to increase safety,

Broadly defined,

As well as the safety of others.

So I'll be quiet for a few moments here.

As you imagine living from or being carried along by or bringing your strength into these challenging situations in ways that would be useful and helpful,

And you can even imagine successful coming from the strength that is inside you.

In a certain kind of sense,

You are linking this experience of strength with situations in your mind or the relationships or actions that you're going to be taking so that when you actually get into them,

You will carry along with you a growing feeling of your own strength.

All right.

We're finishing up here now.

It's really fine to keep feeling that strength,

Even the very simple strength in breathing or the strength in your heart beating,

All those forms of strength that we tend to overlook because they move into the background.

They're just part of the wallpaper of life,

But they're still an aspect of strength.

Even the strength in awareness,

Awareness itself,

Strong enough to hold,

To represent anything at all without in any way,

Shape or form being damaged by what it holds.

All those strengths natural to you,

In you,

From which you can come.

Okay.

And then I'd like to close here,

Both this practice and this theme of grit of the Pillar of Vitality and the Foundations of Well-being program,

One of my favorite quotations from,

Of course,

Winnie the Pooh.

And this is Christopher Robin talking to his bear companion,

Winnie the Pooh.

And Christopher says to Winnie the Pooh,

You're braver than you believe.

You're stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.

You're braver than you believe and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.

A.

A.

Mill.

A wonderful way,

I think,

To sum up the grit theme of the Pillar of Vitality.

Reviews

Excellent.

This is helping during a very overwhelming time for me. Thank you 🙏🏼

Loved the idea of strength

Always amazing with empowering delivery
Thsnk you , Rick

A grounding practice. I feel like I’ve tapped into my inner strength. Reignited the belief in my strength and capabilities.

Steeling myself to find out election results and found this excellent meditation/talk. Thank you so much. excellent!

This meditation is a significant practice to develop inner strength. I am reading Dr. Hanson's book Resilient and this meditation helps me tremendously.

Thank you. Perfectly timed for me.

Great way of tapping into our innate inner strength. Thank you 🙏

Strength as a positive energy in us. On the edge with aggression but not - wow. Thanks. Will come back often.

Thank you Rick for sharing your wisdom and tools . It helps me to strengthen my hope, as I am recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome

This was the perfect message and meditation at the perfect time. I consider myself strong and yet laxed rains in many situations that don’t serve me.

😊🙌🏻 this was the perfect, simple, easy to digest and incorporate message for me to hear right now!

Today was already going to be amazing, now it’s going to be off the charts!

Cheers,
Steve

good exploration - relighting places I allowed to get dark.

Excellent
Training and encouragement in gaining Strength in one's self.

Plan to return again and again to this gen.

👍👍

Enjoyed that, thank you.

Perfect extra support for the commute to a tough interaction :)

Liked the sense of strength connected to the weaker part. Useful. Thanks.

Great way to start the day. Many thanks!

A joy. Am pumped up.