Aired: 12/29/13

My guest this week is RICK HANSON, neuropsychologist, and author of the best-seller BUDDHA'S BRAIN. We're going to talk about his latest book, HARDWIRING HAPPINESS, where he brings together mindfulness and neuroscience and offers pro-active practices to actually shift the brain's neural structure - the hardwiring - toward calm, contentment, and confidence.

This time of year can be challenging for people. Holidays bring us in contact with family, which for many carries a charge. We're all asked to be more social than usual. We need a story to tell. And it feels natural to take stock and self assess at the end and beginning of a calendar year. We can be hard on ourselves.

Rick Hanson and I are going to talk about how you can use new lessons science is learning about the brain to overcome it's -- so far evolutionarily successful -- negativity bias - the brain's tendency to hardwire negative and threatening experiences more easily, more quickly than positive ones. It's important that you avoid predators. And the ones who didn't had fewer children.