If you don’t make use of this power yourself, other forces will shape your brain for you,

If you fail to get a carrot today, you’ll have another chance to get one tomorrow, but if you fail to avoid a stick today—whap!—no more carrots forever.

This is a problem because the hippocampus helps you put things in perspective while also calming down your amygdala and telling your hypothalamus to quit calling for stress hormones.29

the brain takes its shape from what the mind rests upon.

positive experiences use standard-issue memory systems, in which new information must be held in short-term buffers long enough for it to transfer to long-term storage. “Long enough” depends on the experience and the person, but loosely speaking it’s at least a few seconds, and the longer the better.

Whatever we repeatedly sense and feel and want and think is slowly but surely sculpting neural structure.

Inner strengths are the supplies you’ve got in your pack as you make your way down the twisting and often hard road of life. They include a positive mood, common sense, integrity, inner peace, determination, and a warm heart.

each person has the power to change his or her brain for the better—what Jeffrey Schwartz has called self-directed neuroplasticity.

mindfulness meditators have increased gray matter—which means a thicker cortex—in three key regions: prefrontal areas behind the forehead that control attention; the insula, which we use for tuning into ourselves and others; and the hippocampus.