Hardwiring Happiness: The Practical Science of Reshaping Your Brain—and Your Life

intense, prolonged, or repeated mental/neural activity—especially if it is conscious—will leave an enduring imprint in neural structure,

what you pay attention to—what you rest your mind on—is the primary shaper of your brain.

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

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

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

the cortisol in your brain overstimulates, weakens, and eventually kills cells in your hippocampus, gradually shrinking it.

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.

to help our ancestors survive, the brain evolved a negativity bias that makes it like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones.

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