#968 - Dr Rick Hanson - The Psychology of Obsession, Rumination & Letting Go

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist, speaker, and an author. How often do you find yourself stuck replaying a situation you wish you could just forget? No matter how much you want to move on, your mind keeps circling back. So what are the practical strategies to break free from rumination, quiet the mental noise, and finally reclaim control of your thoughts? Expect to learn how you can develop more self-compassion, why its so hard for people to let go of obsessive thinking and why we tend to ruminate a lot, how to move on from a breakup, insult, slight or a regret, how to “let go” of of emotionally charged memories, Dr Hanson’s favourite techniques to interrupt repetitive thought spirals, how people can consciously reframe the narrative after rejection, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: https://chriswilliamson.live See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get 10% off Echo’s Hydrogen Flask at https://echowater.com/modernwisdom Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) Why Is Change so Hard? (17:24) Is Rumination a Beneficial Process? (33:30) Why we Fear a Lack of Control (43:19) Reflecting on the Power of Poetry (45:27) Why do Emotionally-Charged Memories Often Resurface? (53:09) The Importance of Everyday Successes (01:04:47) Being Earnest is Better Than False Projection (01:27:10) Where Does Courage Come From? (01:33:08) Find Out More About Rick Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In Buddhism, there's this view, in early Buddhism especially, that life is,
0:06.2	nah, very unsatisfactory because everything keeps ending.
0:11.1	Well, wait a second.
0:12.2	First of all, if you're not attached to what's happening, the fact that it's endlessly
0:15.9	changing is not itself a problem.
0:18.4	And meanwhile, there's the endless arising.
0:22.6	And so there's some physics about that. Why is there time at all? And one of the leading theories comes from this professor
0:28.5	Mueller, M-U-L-L-E-R at UC Berkeley, that the Big Bang universe is a four-dimensional space-time universe.
0:37.4	Space is expanding.
0:38.7	There's evidence for that.
0:40.3	And we don't notice it because it's so big.
0:42.7	We're continually being stretched just a tiny, tiny wee bit.
0:46.6	But time is the other dimension of the expanding bubble of the Big Bang universe.
0:51.5	So maybe the next moment is simply what's occurring as the temporal expansion of the universe
0:59.0	proceeds.
0:59.6	So we are always in creation at the leading edge of now in the temporal expansion of the Big Bang
1:07.1	universe.
1:08.3	Whoa!
1:09.3	And so things are ending because there's the endless expanding into
1:14.2	the next moment. And isn't that the coolest way to kind of relate to? What up? It's so funny that
1:21.1	you decided to start your soliloquy with that because I wanted to talk about change. I wanted to
1:27.2	talk about letting go today. And
	...

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