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Meditation + Talk: Right Effort . . . about Right Effort!

  • January 23, 2025
  • Estimated read time 5 min read
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In this Wednesday Night Meditation, Rick Hanson offered a meditation and talk called Right Effort . . . about Right Effort!

The post Meditation + Talk: Right Effort . . . about Right Effort! first appeared on Dr. Rick Hanson.

The post Meditation + Talk: Right Effort . . . about Right Effort! appeared first on Dr. Rick Hanson.

Each year I use an issue of the Just One Thing newsletter to offer Twelve Good Things that I think are really wonderful and worth your attention.

May you and those you love and the whole wide world be truly well, truly happy, and truly at peace.

— ONE —
Global Compassion Coalition
The Global Compassion Coalition is working to build a better world, with compassion and justice at its heart. Please join me and over a hundred thousand others — it’s free, and growing by several thousand a week — to connect inner and outer, the personal and the political, so that people and the planet are truly thriving. Together, we can be big enough to be strong enough to make the world we long for!
Our key partner is the Charter for Compassion, an international force for good, including its work to promote compassionate cities, prosocial schools and businesses, and a global network of millions of people who have affirmed the Charter itself.
— TWO —
Greater Good Science Center
The Greater Good Science Center remains my go-to for research-based stories, tips, and tools for a happier, more meaningful life and a more compassionate society. I especially like their Science of Happiness Podcast and their annual list of favorite books.
— THREE —
The Foundations of Well-Being 2.0

Tired of just surviving the challenges life keeps throwing your way? Start changing and thriving with my Foundations of Well-Being 2.0 — a step-by-step journey in 2024 where you’ll be building up new inner strengths each week for big, lasting changes. If you sign up by this Friday, you can save 50%.

— FOUR —
Get to Net Zero Yourself

For all our efforts, humanity is producing more greenhouse gasses than ever. Sure, we should pressure companies and countries to change. But they keep blocking emissions reductions and making money as fast as they can while the planet burns up.
Meanwhile, as much as we try to have a greener lifestyle, we each have an unavoidable carbon footprint—16 metric tons of CO2 a year for the average American.
Individually, you and I can’t change Exxon Mobil or Saudia Arabia. But for less than half a dollar a day, we can each compensate for our personal carbon footprint through legitimate “offsets,” like donating to plant trees, protect wetlands from the developer’s bulldozer, or deliver water filtration kits so people don’t have to burn wood to boil water so it’s safe to drink.
With others, I’m helping to build a global movement of eventually hundreds of millions of individuals who make a moral commitment to being Net Zero themselves. At scale, this could impact 5-10% of annual greenhouse gasses, year after year after year. This might seem unrealistic, but it’s a lot more realistic than hoping that the fossil fuel industry and its political allies will act against their own profit interests.
It’s easy to feel helpless, and just tune out and give up. They want you to do that. But you have the power to compensate for your unavoidable carbon footprint. This is individual moral action, not companies gaming the carbon markets with wildly inflated offsets. And together, we can become a mighty political force on the world stage, saying: “I’ve Done My Part – Now Do Yours!”

— FIVE —
Rick’s Recommended Books of 2023
For a deep dive into inner practice, I heartily recommend anything by Stephen Snyder and Henry Shukman; also see China Root and Realizing Genjokoan.
For fiction, my tastes are, er, eclectic. I thoroughly enjoyed Lessons in Chemistry but had mixed reactions to The Covenant of Water (which my wife really loved). Witch King is a fun fantasy by Martha Wells (also check out her Murderbot series). I also liked When These Mountains Burn, Runner (and the other two books in the Sam Dryden series), and The Drifter (and the others in the Peter Ash series).
For haunting gorgeous writing, see Sleepless Nights and The Collected Stories of Grace Paley. Last, I just finished Whalefall, which is gonna stay with me for a long time.
And for the littles be sure to check out Good Morning, I Love You, Violet!
— SIX —
Worthy Nonprofits
BRITE Initiative remains an organization near and dear to my heart. Their school in Haiti for kindergarten through 8th grade serves children who would not otherwise get a decent education. They have about 120 students who still need support for this school year, and you might like to join me in sponsoring one of them.
Buddhist Global Relief is also close to my heart. Over 90% of what’s donated to them goes directly to feeding people, operating schools — including for girls who would otherwise suffer a terrible fate — and demonstrating the power of boundless lovingkindness.
And I’ve recently learned about Mwanzo in rural Kenya, and the extraordinary work of its founder, Loyce Ong’udi. Their slogan is “hope has a home here”—profoundly true in a setting in which hundreds of people will turn out to celebrate the graduation of children from kindergarten.