Last updated February, 2017. note: we link to our free guide to mindfulness and meditation at the bottom of the page (no email or registration required). Earlier this week we posted the following cartoon on social media: Our comment on it was: "Funny cartoon, but this is exactly what your mind does ALL the time. We are more aware of it at night - in bed - because our attention doesn't have a lot to be distracted by. So, it tends to get caught up in mind-made activity (thoughts, emotions, stories, et cetera). Regardless, if you learn to meditate, you can strengthen your awareness of mental drama, and prevent your attention from being hijacked by it (day or night)." To elaborate, thoughts and emotions constantly arise and cease. At times, they appear to fit with the situation at hand. Quite often, however, they don't ("Why am I thinking about something that happened 15 years ago?"). If you put focused attention on mind-made activity, you'll find it's both entertaining and frightening. It's like watching a movie that doesn't always make a lot of sense. Because of this, people tend to ask "What thoughts do I pay attention to, and what thoughts do I move my attention away from?" In the past, I would answer with "The fact that you are asking this question points to your mind trying to make something simple into something complicated. Only you know which thoughts are relevant in any given moment, and it shouldn't be hard to determine." But, people kept asking the question. That led me to re-evaluate my answer and come up with something better (well, hopefully!): Is it helpful to what I'm doing right here and now?When you are trying to determine if thoughts are skillful (useful), simply ask "Is it helpful to what I'm doing right here and now?"
For instance, if there are thoughts about your personal budget while you're working on a project for your job, it's not helpful to the present moment. If you're reviewing your finances, however, it is helpful to the present moment. If you're having dinner with your significant other and there are thoughts about items you need to discuss with your boss, it's not helpful to the present moment. If you're brainstorming ideas and topics to cover in an upcoming meeting with your boss, however, it is helpful to the present moment. What you will find is many (perhaps most) thoughts aren't helpful to the present moment, regardless of what you are currently doing. They are just dwellings and ruminations that create struggles such as stress, fear, depression, anxiety, regret, worry... Your mind drags you into the past with thoughts about what you did (or didn't) do, or how you should have done things differently. It projects you into the future to worry about something that might happen (most likely it won't happen, though). Or, it creates an alternate reality (fantasy) for you to get lost in. The point is, your mind always wants to be somewhere else. "Is it helpful to what I'm doing right here and now?" quickly cuts through the mental drama. One note of caution - it's easy to let this question turn into analyzing thought, which is counter-productive to mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness and meditation teach you to notice what's happening in your mind without getting caught up in it. Analyzing, on the other hand, is actively engaging with thought. This ends up creating more thought and, from there, it's easy to getting buried in a landslide of mind-made activity (thoughts about thoughts about thoughts...). In summary, when you become aware of thought:
Simple, but - like most things in life - it requires practice and consistent effort. The results are worth it, though. What are you trying to "cope" with?
Coping doesn't work - addressing the root cause does. We'll show you how. Thanks for visiting - 2023 marks our 20th anniversary! This site is ad-free and supported by sales of our online courses. If you get value from what we write, click the link at the bottom of the page and read Day 1 of "Your inner narrative" to see if it's right for you...no email required. > Once a week we highlight quotes that will (hopefully) resonate with you. We may or may not add our own commentary. Most likely, we will. This week, Chelsea - our Chief Mindfulness Officer - provides commentary on this often-repeated quote from Mark Twain: Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. I love Mark Twain, but given the opportunity I would rephrase this quote to say: “Courage is acceptance and management of fear, not the absence of fear.”Why "accept and manage" instead of "resist and master"? When you resist something, you’re essentially telling it “No” by either suppressing, throwing up a barrier, or trying to change it in some way. You are denying or fighting it. In other words, resistance is an effort in control. Trying to resist or control an emotion like fear will not only cause you immense amounts of frustration and disappointment, but will actually magnify its effect: instead of banishing it and finding your "courage," you end up indulging it and allowing it to gain a stronger foothold in your mind. In short, you give it fuel to persist. There’s also the fact that fear is, by definition, caused by resistance itself. For example, imagine you’re about to give an important speech to a large audience. You suddenly have the thought that they will judge you, think you’re terrible, or not care about what you have to say. You might feel the beginnings of fear - but, if you accept those thoughts and move your attention away from them (i.e, don't indulge or get caught up in them), fear won't propagate and pull you into that familiar "pit of despair." However, if you resist the thoughts of possible rejection, they will multiply and become even more intrusive. There's even a name for this psychological process - ironic process theory. Resisting only feeds your fear and amplifies its effect on you. Give it enough attention and power, and it can become debilitating and paralyzing. Fear is not voluntary - if it were, it wouldn’t exist! And, it isn’t something to be resisted, overcome, ignored, or mastered. It’s simply an automatic physical response that can be triggered any time you sense danger, whether it’s real or illusory, mental or physical. As such, there’s no need to judge yourself for experiencing it. No one is completely devoid of fear, even the most courageous among us (as Twain alludes to in the original quote). But, those who find their courage don’t do so through resistance and mastery - they simply learn to accept and manage their fear skillfully. Meditation and mindfulness will help you do just that. Through the awareness it strengthens, you learn to ground yourself in the present moment instead of letting your thoughts and emotions send you careening into the land of "what ifs." <>
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life. "Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern. Read Day 1 here (no email required). And, if you're looking for our free guide, you can find it here. Thanks for visiting - 2023 marks our 20th anniversary! This site is ad-free and supported by sales of our online courses. If you get value from what we write, click the link at the bottom of the page and read Day 1 of "Your inner narrative" to see if it's right for you...no email required. <> Earlier this week, we wrote about how people don't like to be uncomfortable. As such, they're always searching for ways to escape it. Some readers made astute observations about things we tend to be uncomfortable about, including meditating. Many people approach the practice with the belief that it will be relaxing. While relaxation can be a side-effect, it's not the goal - and, when someone gets a glimpse of how compulsive their mind is, it can be anything but relaxing! If you've gone through life without putting focused attention on your mind and the thoughts, emotions, urges, and inner narrative all of us have, it can be an uncomfortable experience. So much so, many will choose to stop meditating and return to being "lost in thought" (or, as we like to say, living on autopilot). Others abandon the practice because they are bored - that voice in their head is telling them they need to be doing something else, or that they're wasting their time sitting. Ironically, boredom is something you can observe during your practice - you can see it for what it is: the mind's propensity to want something different than what actually exists. The mind is never happy with the present moment, and it likes to feel in control. The thoughts and emotions that accompany boredom reveal this, and you can watch them as they come and go. More important, you can choose to move your attention away from them rather than getting caught up in them. What are we teaching our children? Beyond meditating, readers pointed out how we reinforce the drive to avoid discomfort in our children. Nothing is more representative of this than the philosophy that "everyone is a winner," and there are no losers when it comes to events they participate in. Everyone gets an award, everyone gets a trophy! What are we really teaching them, though? We are teaching them that discomfort in bad. Reality is, everyone can't win the game or the sporting event. Everyone can't be the smartest person in the class. Everyone doesn't always get what they want. You aren't always going to come out on top, and that's perfectly fine. What's not fine is teaching our kids to avoid discomfort. Or shielding them from the fact that life has ups and downs. A more healthy approach is introducing them to the concept of equanimity, and showing them how to apply it to the situations in their life (which, of course, means we must first learn to apply it to the situations in our lives!). Another healthy approach is teaching them that happiness isn't something they find "out there," by constantly chasing what brings them pleasure and running away from what brings them pain. If they don't learn this, they will be trapped on the wheel we referenced in the previous post. <>
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life. "Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern. Read Day 1 here (no email required). note: we link to our free guide to mindfulness and meditation at the bottom of the page (no email required).
Once a week we highlight quotes that will (hopefully) resonate with you. We may or may not add our own commentary. Most likely, we will. This week's theme: Thích Nhất Hạnh! We start with this: "For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them." We don't see things as they are, we see things as our minds present them. We view reality through the mental filters of labels, preconceived notions, and the "baggage" imparted on us by family, society, and the culture and institutions we associate with. To see reality as it is, we need to shed these filters. Next, this: "If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!" Many people view "present moment awareness" as an empty platitude: it's a short quote over a pretty photo that gets shared on social networks. It's not. If you don't realize this fundamental truth, you'll reach the end of your journey to find that you spent most of your life viewing "now" as a stepping stone to tomorrow and the elusive promise of something better. Next, this: "Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future." This quote also alludes to present moment awareness, but it really touches on our need to always be doing something and always be getting somewhere. In July, we wrote the following in regard to a popular quote from Alan Watts: "We tend to believe that 'more, harder, and faster' are the answers to life's problems. But you can't solve the problems created by thinking with more thinking." That musing is one of our most popular, and much of what we wrote is applicable here. Finally, this: "We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness." Again, we will defer to a previous daily musing for commentary on this quote: Interdependence and compassion. What are you trying to "cope" with?
Coping doesn't work - addressing the root cause does. We'll show you how. Alternate title: "Stop trying to avoid pain by constantly seeking pleasure."We spend our lives chasing "these things" and running away from "those things." Generally speaking, we are trying to increase pleasure (happiness, joy) and decrease pain (suffering, anguish). Chasing pleasure and running away from pain is like being caught on a wheel, constantly spinning around in circles. It applies to all aspects of our experience - from what we would label mundane to major life events. For example:
As we spin around on this wheel, it affects everything we do: jobs we take or leave, relationships we start or end, purchases we make, cravings we acquiesce to...and on and on. What keeps us stuck is the desire to avoid discomfort. We don't like to be uncomfortable - as a result, we tend to see our current reality as something that needs to be fixed. My job is hard and I don't like my boss, so I'll find a new one. The new job is good for a while, but I start to feel unappreciated, have issues with my coworkers, and decide to leave. The next job isn't anything like what was represented in the interview...you get the picture. It's the same with "unhealthy" habits - I have a craving and I feel uncomfortable, so I eat that junk food or smoke that cigarette or take that drink. It satisfies me in the short term, then the craving comes back so I eat more junk food, smoke more cigarettes, take more drinks. It even applies to some medical conditions (physical and mental) that, while uncomfortable, don't necessarily require pharmaceutical intervention. But it's easier to take a pill than to experience less than optimal feelings, which means you need to continuously take pills to keep them at bay. We spend much of our lives trying to escape discomfort, which means we don't really settle into the present moment and live. This isn't to say there aren't situations you need to change - sometimes the right thing to do is end a relationship, take a new job, move to another city, or go on medication. If, however, you do these things because you are chasing the perfect situation - one where you'll never experience discomfort - you'll spend your life on an endless quest searching for something that doesn't exist. Instead, accept that it's ok to be uncomfortable. Be mindful of your thoughts and emotions, and don't get caught in a story about "the grass being greener on the other side of the fence." Those thoughts and emotions will always be there, and they'll keep you trapped on the aforementioned wheel. Unless you cultivate awareness of them. Through awareness, you realize you don't have to believe what your mind tells you. You don't have to succumb to conditioned behavior that drives you to try and avoid pain by constantly seeking pleasure. You can move your attention to the present moment, settle in, realize the transitory nature of experience, and treat everything that comes and goes with equanimity. note - read part 2 of this post. <>
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life. "Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern. Read Day 1 here (no email required). Thanks for visiting - 2023 marks our 20th anniversary! This site is ad-free and supported by sales of our online courses. If you get value from what we write, click the link at the bottom of the page and read Day 1 of "Your inner narrative" to see if it's right for you...no email required. > The question: "I live in a house with four other people. I'm able to go into a room by myself and they aren't inappropriately loud, but I can still hear them when I'm trying to meditate and it's really distracting and interferes with my practice. Do you recommend earplugs or headphones?" I've addressed this question before on the tad blog (index here) and in other discussions, but it comes up often and is worth revisiting. No, I don't recommend earplugs or headphones. Meditating isn't about blocking things out. It isn't about suppressing or trying to change your experience in any way. To the contrary, it's about learning to be with your current situation as it is. This is what meditating teaches us, if you receive proper instruction. To further elaborate - noise isn't a problem. The problem is our minds label experience as pleasant or unpleasant, which leads us to habitually react with desire or aversion to everything that happens. We continually do this moment after moment: we try to "fix" our experience, and create this perfect world where we are surrounded by everything we like and protected from everything we don't like. The bigger problem is, we generally aren't aware of this process that our minds go through. We just get dragged along by it, and suffer the consequences (stress, feelings of anxiety and depression, extreme emotions, etc.). That's where meditation and mindfulness can help - they teach you to strengthen and apply awareness. As you get better at it, you are able to watch this process unfold. As you watch this process unfold, you can interrupt the habitual reactions that always find you trying to hold onto "this" and push away "that." Meditation and mindfulness also teach you to observe your compulsive mind without getting caught up in it. Instead, you can see everything come into being, exist, and cease. It turns out mental activity doesn't persist unless we give it the fuel to do so. How do we give it fuel to persist? We mindlessly indulge it. "Mindlessly indulging" is the normal state for most of us. We get lost in thoughts, emotions, urges, labels, and judgment. We turn it all into a story about something being done to us. Or, something we need to fix or overcome.
"Mindlessly indulging" creates an unending flow of mental activity. Thoughts and emotions lead to more thoughts and emotions which lead to more thoughts and emotions (and on and on and on). Before you know it, you're somewhere you don't want to be: trapped in conditioned behavior that dictates "who you are" and "what you do." But, there is another path. You can strengthen awareness, learn to notice this process, and move your attention away from it. In the case of your roommates making noise (or, any interruptions or distractions), you can use what's in your experience to actually further your practice. When you notice these things, simply return your attention to your anchor (usually your breath or mantra). You'll come to see reality is reality, and our attempts to control or resist it cause us to suffer more than the actual situations we are trying to control or resist. When you meditate, you discover first-hand this is true. So, learn to be okay with everything that arises in your experience. You don't need to change it - you need to change your relationship with it. This is how you realize the benefits of meditating during your "non-meditating time" (also known as bringing mindfulness to your daily life). ADDENDUM: PUBLIC SPEAKING, ANYONE? A good example is talking to a group or audience, because most of us have done it at one time or another (and, most of us don't enjoy doing it...or have apprehension about doing it!). If someone who doesn't practice meditation and mindfulness is nervous about giving a presentation and scared (or, worried) about "screwing up," they are likely to get caught up in those thoughts, emotions, and stories, and follow them down a path that culminates in their fear becoming reality (i.e., the mental drama influences behavior and actions, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy). Through a consistent meditation practice, however, they can learn to notice these thoughts, emotions, and stories, and be okay with them ("accept them," if you will). Instead of getting caught up in them, they move their attention back to the present moment and the task at hand. The mental drama can arise and pass, but they are no longer held hostage by it - they are no longer mindlessly indulging it and giving it fuel to persist. This makes it likely they will perform better in their presentation. Or, if they have a slight stumble, they will recover and not get dragged down into a "pit of despair" by their mental activity about it - which, of course, would ultimately affect the rest of their presentation. <>
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life. "Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern. Read Day 1 here (no email required). note: we link to our free guide to mindfulness and meditation at the bottom of the page (no email required).
Once a week we highlight quotes that will (hopefully) resonate with you. We may or may not add our own commentary. Most likely, we will. This week's theme: awareness! We will start with William James: "The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." This is a great quote, provided the definition of choose doesn't mean "try and force yourself to think one thought over another." Instead, be aware of everything that arises - don't try to control it. As you cultivate awareness of thoughts (and all mental activity), you can choose where to focus your attention. And, you can choose not to follow thoughts down a path that culminates in conditioned behavior. Next, from Jack Kornfield: "At first you will think of practice as a limited part of your life. In time you will realize that everything you do is part of your practice." This quote highlights the difference between viewing mindfulness and meditation as a chore vs. a way of being. Most people initially view meditating as another item on their "todo list" - do the laundry, wash the dishes, go for a run, meditate. These people have a hard time developing a consistent practice. If, however, you learn to understand your mind - how compulsive it is, the non-stop activity it produces, how it's the foundation for everything in your life - you shift your view. You see the importance of cultivating awareness so you can notice your thoughts, emotions, urges, and that "inner narrative" without getting caught up in it. "Noticing without getting caught up in" is a skill you develop through a consistent practice, and you transfer that skill to your daily life when you aren't meditating (this is mindfulness). The more mindful you become, the less affected you are by the struggles that affect most of us: > stress; > anxiety; > endless worry; > self-confidence issues; > a lack of focus; > and so on. At that point, mindfulness and meditation become a way of being. Finally, from Thích Nhất Hạnh: "Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed." In any given moment, we are in one of two states: (1) caught up in mental noise, or (2) not caught up in it. Awareness is the key to moving from the former to the latter state. You cultivate awareness through a consistent meditation practice, and by bringing mindfulness to your daily life. What are you trying to "cope" with?
Coping doesn't work - addressing the root cause does. We'll show you how. Last updated October, 2018. note: we link to our free guide to mindfulness and meditation at the bottom of the page (no email required). What if you had someone following you around all day, chattering non-stop in your ear about everything that happens (or has happened, or could happen)? When you are talking to others, this person is judging and commenting on the conversation. This person is telling you what you should say, or how you should react to what other people say. And, at times, this person is distracting you by talking about something completely unrelated to the conversation you are having. When you are at the store or the coffee shop, this person is yammering on about everyone and everything around you (usually labeling and criticizing). They offer a constant narrative on everything in your experience - people, places, things. And, if you are alone, they remind you of what you did (or didn't) do in the past. Or, they stress you out about things that may (or may not) happen in the future. If you're working or studying, they talk to you about stuff not related to work or school. They fill your head with things that pull you away from the task at hand, limiting your productivity and focus. If you're relaxing, they talk to you about work or school. They get you worried and anxious, which defeats the purpose of trying to relax in the first place! Answer this: What would you think about this person that followed you around all day long and did these things? Would you be annoyed? Angry? And, answer this: How long would you let it continue before you took steps to change the situation? Most of us wouldn't go long before saying "enough is enough!" Some of us wouldn't go more than a minute or two. Being at the mercy of someone so pervasive, so intrusive, and so compulsive - someone who never stopped talking - would have dire consequences on our overall health and well-being. The bad news is, this is our normal relationship with our minds. We all have this voice in our heads. It's so common and omnipresent, many of us don't realize it's there anymore. We just automatically listen to it, and let it influence (and, oftentimes, dictate) our decisions, actions, and state of being. We live life on autopilot, being pushed and pulled around by our minds. Being lost in this mental noise creates conditioned behavior that leads to the struggles we all face: from stress and anxiety to endless worry, low self-confidence, sleep problems...the list goes on and on. What can you do about it? Strengthen awareness of that voice in your head. And, stay aware of it as you go through your day, living your life. What is it saying while you are working? Talking to others? Watching television? Playing with your dog? Walking around the block? Cooking dinner? When you strengthen awareness, you cultivate mindfulness. When you apply that mindfulness, you develop the skill of not getting caught up in thoughts, emotions, urges, and stories. Instead, you learn to let it all be as it is, independent from you and your attention. This is the essence of mindfulness and meditation. A consistent practice - and, consistent application of the skills you develop in that practice - helps bring an end to much of your daily suffering. It's like telling that person following you around all day, chattering non-stop in your ear, to leave you alone. Stop dealing with the symptoms.Stress, anxiety, self-confidence issues, the inability to stop bad habits, problems with sleep and focus, and on and on and on.
These and the other things we struggle with every day are only symptoms. The good news is, they all share the same root cause. The bad news is, if you don't address that root cause, the symptoms will keep coming back no matter what you do. That's why we wrote "An owner's guide to the mind." For almost 20 years, people have been using it to address the root cause of their daily struggles. Click here to view the contents and learn more. |