To meet the challenges of life with love and happiness along the way, we need psychological resources such as resilience, gratitude, and compassion. Developing these inner strengths requires turning experiences of them into durable changes of neural structure or function.

Unfortunately, most such experiences pass through the brain like water through a sieve, while painful or stressful experiences leave lasting traces due to the brain’s evolved negativity bias – which makes it like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones. For many people, this flattens the results of formal interventions such as psychotherapy, coaching, human resources training, and mindfulness programs, as well as informal efforts at self-help.

In general, the helping professions have used a Growth 1.0 model in which people are treated like passive vessels into which information and experiences are poured in the hopes that something will stick. For some it does – yet many report mild or fleeting gains at most.

In this fast-paced, sometimes experiential, and very practical presentation, we’ll explore evidence-based methods in a Growth 2.0 model in which people are active agents in the neuroplastic “internalization” of their experiences of inner strengths. Then in both daily life and structured interventions, they have a wonderful power to grow more of the good inside themselves – including to benefit other beings.