Practical Wisdom with Dr. Rick Hanson
Aug 12, 2026 · 30 min · 10 segments
Impatience can be a surprisingly powerful source of stress, frustration, and conflict—especially when we’re waiting for something to change, dealing with difficult people, caring for someone we love…
Rick HansonHost
We explored that a couple of sessions ago, and I highlighted the one that the Buddha really highlighted, which is to delight in non-proliferation, which is to say to delight in a relatively calm, quiet, and content state of being.
It just means to value it, and the, the deep root of the word that's translated typically as delight is to settle into, to value as one might settle into a place of refuge, like a shady oasis on a hot day.
Then I went to, in a p-previous talk, I think last week, one way to encourage that sense of delight, which is to feel like you're enough.
And that speaks to the ways in which, as I joked, not joked, that perhaps the greatest minds of our generation are teaching us to be discontent with our efforts, with our clothes, our money, our friendships, our activities, our jobs, our bodies, ourselves, our lives, to be discontent with them, to feel like they're not enough.
And I use the example that can show up really personally in which one can be in a relationship, in an example that was given to me, in which you're caring maybe for an aging parent or a friend who's complaining that you're not doing enough.
And deep down inside, you know you're definitely doing as much as anyone reasonably can and more than your siblings are, [chuckles] for example.
And then what do you do about that? And, you know, if you grew up the way I grew up for complex reasons to feel like, you know, you're, you have to be incredible to be enough, uh, on every day, oy, that's a lot.
And so how can we over time increasingly feel like we're enough? So I explored that with, with the people in the last week.
We explored that a couple of sessions ago, and I highlighted the one that the Buddha really highlighted, which is to delight in non-proliferation, which is to say to delight in a relatively calm, quiet, and content state of being.
It just means to value it, and the, the deep root of the word that's translated typically as delight is to settle into, to value as one might settle into a place of refuge, like a shady oasis on a hot day.
Then I went to, in a p-previous talk, I think last week, one way to encourage that sense of delight, which is to feel like you're enough.
And that speaks to the ways in which, as I joked, not joked, that perhaps the greatest minds of our generation are teaching us to be discontent with our efforts, with our clothes, our money, our friendships, our activities, our jobs, our bodies, ourselves, our lives, to be discontent with them, to feel like they're not enough.
And I use the example that can show up really personally in which one can be in a relationship, in an example that was given to me, in which you're caring maybe for an aging parent or a friend who's complaining that you're not doing enough.
And deep down inside, you know you're definitely doing as much as anyone reasonably can and more than your siblings are, [chuckles] for example.
And then what do you do about that? And, you know, if you grew up the way I grew up for complex reasons to feel like, you know, you're, you have to be incredible to be enough, uh, on every day, oy, that's a lot.
And so how can we over time increasingly feel like we're enough? So I explored that with, with the people in the last week.
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