Tiny Buddha

Tag: Mindfulness

  • How Life Becomes More Beautiful When We Stop Anticipating the Worst

    How Life Becomes More Beautiful When We Stop Anticipating the Worst

    Happy Woman

    “Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.” ~Louis L’Amour

    These days I live in the city, but I spent my childhood in a rural English village. It was quaint and quiet and rather lovely—the sort of place you’re desperate to leave when you’re young and full of fire, but begin to hanker for when you get a little older.

    Back then, to get to the local school, I had to walk down a long, winding country lane, which had rolling fields on both sides. For half an hour each morning and the same coming home, I had beautiful scenery as far as the eye could see—streams, woodlands, horses frolicking in the fields.

    But I never really saw any of this.

    You see, this being the countryside, it was common for residents to walk their dogs down lanes such as this one. And this also being the eighties, before people began cleaning up after their dogs, there were quite a few areas on my journey where dogs had relieved themselves.

    Now, because of this you had to keep your eyes on the ground pretty much constantly—that’s if you didn’t want to be that kid who walked dog poop into school, (or worse into a friend’s parent’s house, which I did once, but that’s another, much less allegorical, story).

    So there I was each morning, eyes on the path, making sure I didn’t step on anything unpleasant, ignoring everything else. Closed off from all the beauty around me.

    I’m glad to say that one day I had an epiphany. I realized that by being so cautious, I was actually missing out on experiencing the amazing backdrop to my journey.

    On that day I realized that I wanted to walk to school present and mindful of the wonderful world around me.

    I wanted to look around more and experience life in all its glory, not just worry about whether I stepped in poop.

    So I did.

    And yes, perhaps on occasion my shoe may have met with something nasty, but it made that walk so much more enjoyable. I remember the feelings of oneness and freedom it instilled in me to this day.

    And really, that’s what being mindful and present is. It’s saying yes to life and noticing your surroundings. Fully.

    It’s saying yes, I might step in something unpleasant, I might get hurt, I might feel silly, I might expose my vulnerabilities, but at least I get to experience every remarkable nuance and opportunity life has to offer too.

    I’m also glad to say that this has been a lesson that I’ve carried through to my adult life.

    Sure, there have been many times in the past when I’ve stepped in something nasty; jobs haven’t worked out, relationships have ended, people close to me have gone away in various different ways.

    But throughout any downtime I’ve always tried to keep looking around me, to see the scenery, the bigger picture. Even if this is just catching myself in a negative tailspin, taking a deep breath, centring myself, and realizing that there’s lots to appreciate out there.

    So what if you step in something? So what if you expose the real you and then get hurt? It’s all part of the rich tapestry of life, and you’ll deal with it, because you’re living your life completely.

    Mindfully.

    In the present.

    It’s not about pretending there is no dog poop on the path; it’s accepting that it’s there and striving forward anyway; it’s being mindful of what’s happening but enjoying life regardless.

    So my advice today is to accept that you might “step in” something nasty, but do it anyway.

    Remain mindful and engaged in the moment rather than focusing on what might happen.

    Practice presence; give yourself to each experience fully.

    When you become present in your interactions, you’ll start to enjoy every encounter so much more. You become involved in your life, fully.

    You look around at the scenery and you really live.

    What’s great is that presence is like a muscle that you can train. The more you work on it, the more present and mindful you’ll be.

    So I’d urge you to spend a few minutes each day training your presence muscle.

    There’s a few ways you can do this, but one of the simplest is to count your breaths for a few minutes each day. Taking a deep breath once in a while helps in so many ways.

    All you need do is find a quiet place and slowly breathe in and out. And as you do, count the breaths. Ten in and ten out. It sounds simple but it takes a lot of focus at first to get to ten.

    If your mind wanders, start again at one. Try and do ten uninterrupted, focused breaths.

    I find this is also a great mini-meditation to use if I need to recalibrate and realign with myself, perhaps during an afternoon slump at work.

    And of course, I still find myself, on occasion, watching the path too much. We’re all guilty, I think, of focusing inward—concentrating so much on what might happen that we miss what is happening.

    I hope after reading this you might be able to catch yourself being too path-focused and try to live more fully in your current surroundings.

    Begin to enjoy the beautiful scenery around you, and know that you are there, in the moment, enjoying every aspect of life, no matter what.

    And if you stand on something nasty, know it’s only a small part of a much bigger picture that deserves to be experienced in all its splendor.

  • Stop Pushing Yourself So Hard: 8 Ways to De-Stress Your Mind and Body

    Stop Pushing Yourself So Hard: 8 Ways to De-Stress Your Mind and Body

    Peaceful Woman

    “Self-care is not selfish or self-indulgent. We cannot nurture others from a dry well. We need to take care of our own needs first, and then we can give from our surplus, our abundance.” ~Jennifer Louden

    I have always been really driven. I readily admit that I am an overachiever, and I have the capacity to burn the candle at both ends.

    Following my dreams and creating what I imagine is my destiny takes work, real work, so I can easily spend way too many hours a day striving to bring my visions into reality.

    I am hardwired to push myself naturally. I am quite certain it is a gene that I have inherited from my dad. I don’t seem to have an off switch, and that fuels me to fit as much as I possibly can into twenty-four hours.

    Two years ago my off switch was shut down for me without my consent.

    My world and my body were shaken and shattered into a million pieces in what seemed like a heartbeat.

    Back then, I lived in a beautiful two-story home. One morning, as I headed out for my morning run, I fell down my steep internal staircase. One minute I was standing on the top step, and then the next minute I was lying at the bottom.

    I suffered all sorts of injuries. Some of those injuries healed quickly, and some will stay with me for the rest of my life. But on the flip side, my fall from grace has reminded me to slow down, smell the roses, and practice self-care every single day.

    I often look back and ask myself, was my fall perhaps the Universe’s way of nudging me, or rather throwing me, into a place where I had no choice but to nurture and heal myself?

    Being forced to completely stop gave me the opportunity to re-evaluate my entire life. I had always taken care of myself, but when I look back, I recognize it was only on the surface. I had never stopped for long enough to prioritize wellness on every level.

    Though it can be challenging to find time to practice self-care, we all need to nurture ourselves—emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally.

    In retrospect, I’m grateful for my accident, as it taught me to really take care of myself. If you too are pushing yourself too hard—and rushing through life as a result—I highly recommend you (slowly) take the following steps.

    1. Take ownership.

    I learned that I must take personal responsibility for my wellness. We all need to do this.

    I don’t mean just taking a break when we are exhausted, rundown, or overwhelmed, or when we hit rock bottom—or in my case, the bottom of the staircase! We need to form and maintain healthy habits that enable us to thrive. No one else can do this for us.

    2. Commit.

    In order to maintain optimum good health on every level, I have had to accept that it requires a degree of commitment and discipline. It is often when we lose something so precious, like the ability to move or to walk unaided, that we really appreciate what so many take for granted.

    Do some trial and error to identify the self-care practices that help you function at your best—meditation, short walks, getting out in nature; anything that helps you recharge physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. Then schedule these activities into your day.

    It might help to start with five or ten-minute activities so it doesn’t feel too overwhelming. The important thing is that you do something each day, no matter how small.

    3. Practice mindfulness.

    Mindfulness forms the foundation of self-care, because we’re only able to identify our needs when we’re present in our bodies. I wasn’t mindful on the day of my accident, and that’s why I didn’t realize I needed to slow down.

    Mindfulness also nourishes our spirit by rooting us in the present moment. By practicing mindfulness, we become engaged with our surroundings.

    The best way I know how to practice mindfulness is through meditation. Meditation has given me a sense of calm, peace, and balance. It supports my emotional well-being and my overall health. What’s not to love about that?

    4. Take breaks for deep breathing.

    I now take regular mini breathing breaks throughout my day. Breathing is the connection between mind, body, and spirit. Taking a few deep breaths over the course of the day and deeply inhaling and exhaling energizes me.

    When I breathe in now, I fill myself with gratitude for my life.

    When I breathe out, I let go of all the unnecessary demands that I place on myself.

    Schedule a few times throughout your day when you can close your eyes and take a few deep, cleansing breaths. It’s a simple practice that you can do anywhere, at any time, yet it can profoundly affect your state of mind, creating peace, calm, and clarity.

    5. Nourish your spirit.

    We often think of self-care as diet and exercise, but it’s equally important to nurture our spirit. For me, this involves getting outside and enjoying nature—a leisurely walk at sunrise or sunset, a swim in the ocean, or even just stepping outside into the fresh air and stopping to acknowledge how truly miraculous the world is. It is the simplest of acts that now fill my spirit with light.

    6. Beware the “busy life.”

    We seem to wear busyness like a badge of honor nowadays. Often, being busy just creates the illusion of being successful, but how successful can we really be when we’re stressed, exhausted, physically and mentally depleted, and missing out on opportunities for joy in our daily life?

    We may have responsibilities and obligations, but we all have the power to scale back. It might not be easy, but it’s possible. I don’t know about you, but I refuse to use being too busy as an excuse for living a beautiful life.

    7. Keep it simple.

    It is often only when we finally slow down that we’re able to recognize all the chaos that can fill our world. Keeping life simple is now a priority.

    I have removed blockages, obstacles, and any hurdles that may trip me up and stop me from moving forward. I can see clearly now and I am open to accepting more love, laughter, joy, and happiness into my world.

    Recognize all the unnecessary hurdles you’ve placed on your own path. Where can you simplify or scale back? Where are you creating unnecessary stress or drama in your life? What would you need to let go of or do differently to create a simpler life, with more time for yourself?

    8. Recognize and eliminate energy drains.

    When you are exhausted from a challenging situation, and your energy is depleted, it is vital that you learn to manage and replenish your energy—mind, body, and spirit—so that you can recover quickly.

    While I was recovering from my injuries, I had time to evaluate who and what drained my energy. I have learned to manage my energy daily, like I would manage my finances. I no longer invest my time and energy into anything that does not give me a positive return.

    What drains your energy? What habits, activities, or relationships aren’t healthy for you? What, if eliminated, would provide a huge sense of relief?

    —

    I received a huge gift after the fall—the kind of gift that can only be received when you are ready and open to acknowledging that there is actually always a gift in even the most challenging of circumstances.

    My gift was a huge reminder that life is precious and should never be taken for granted.

    I am worthy of self-love and self-care every day. We all are. For every positive choice we make, we support our mind, body, and spirit. Self-care fuels us with the strength and energy we need to achieve all of our dreams.

    Peaceful woman image via Shutterstock

  • Clear Your Emotional Clutter and Open Up to Joy (Interview and Giveaway)

    Clear Your Emotional Clutter and Open Up to Joy (Interview and Giveaway)

    Woman Jumping

    UPDATE – The winners for this giveaway are:

    • C
    • Lori Pacheco

    When I was in my early twenties, I spent three months in a residential treatment center in a last-ditch effort to heal from depression and bulimia. Among many different treatment modalities, I participated in an experiential therapy that involved a ropes course and other adventure activities.

    One day, along with a dozen other frail women, I strapped a backpack full of tennis balls on my back and climbed to the top of a rock wall. It was hard enough to walk on some days; getting to the top with what felt like ten cats clinging to my back took everything I had in me.

    It was only when I completed the task, exhausted, that I understood the point of this draining exercise.

    Our therapist then instructed us, one by one, to open our backpacks and toss each ball down to the ground, naming each an emotion that had caused us pain.

    “This is my shame,” I yelled. “This is my anger. And this is my self-loathing.”

    This metaphorical emotional unloading, combined with the energetic release that often follows extreme exertion, brought me a lightness of being that I’d never before experienced.

    I had lived my life like the climb up that wall—weighed down by my emotions—and I had a glimpse of what it felt like to be free of them.

    Still, while the exercise was liberating, I didn’t know how to recreate that feeling of emotional freedom in my everyday life.

    Years later, I learned that mindfulness could provide the peace I desperately craved. I learned that I could fully embody the present moment, and see the people and things right in front of me without filtering them through my fickle emotions. I learned that I no longer had to live trapped inside a mind that constantly bombarded me with disempowering stories about my painful past.

    No one has to live that way. And the good news is, clearing that “emotional clutter” doesn’t require a daily trip up a rock wall.

    We can all overcome our toxic patterns and find freedom from the old pains and traumas that have weighed us down. Mindfulness is the key, and anyone, at any age, in any circumstances, can learn to practice it and reap the benefits.

    In his new book Clearing Emotional Clutter: Mindfulness Practices for Letting Go of What’s Blocking Your Fulfillment and Transformation, author Donald Altman combines modern neuroscience with ancient practices to show how habits and patterns can be modified with only a few minutes of attention daily.

    It’s a powerful book that can hep anyone release their emotional pain to find happiness, fulfillment, and peace.

    I wish I’d found this book, and these practices, years ago, as they truly are life-changing.

    I’m grateful that Donald took the time to answer some questions about his work and his book, and that he’s offered two free copies for Tiny Buddha readers.

    Clearing Emotional ClutterTHE GIVEAWAY

    To enter to win one of two free copies of Clearing Emotional Clutter:

    • Leave a comment below
    • For an extra entry, tweet: Enter the @tinybuddha giveaway to win a free copy of Clearing Emotional Clutter http://bit.ly/1SLXcyB

    *US winners will receive a physical book in the mail; winners outside the US will receive an eBook.

    THE INTERVIEW

     1. Tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to write this book.

    Mindfulness has helped me immensely in my life. I got on this path when I was going through a difficult life transition and found myself repeating an old, toxic pattern. It’s that idea that wherever you go, your problems always follow you. That is, unless you do something about it!

    Around that time I met a Burmese Buddhist monk—the Venerable U. Silananda—who had been teaching mindfulness in the U.S. since the 1970s. He possessed a palpable sense of compassion and availability that made me ask the question: How does someone become like that?

    When I had the opportunity to ordain with him as the head of the monastery, I jumped at it. Although I was in the monastery for a short period of time, it was an experience that changed my life direction because I was primed and ripe for the experience of looking inward.

    I wrote my first spiritual book while at the monastery, and continued to train with one of the monks afterward. I’m very grateful for the transformative experience the monks provided for me, which helped me nurture greater compassion and connect with my purpose. Now, my writing is focused on helping others find joy and fulfillment.

    Clearing Emotional Clutter is an important book for me because it integrates cutting edge brain science and research with the ancient practice of mindfulness. It shows that you don’t have to go into a monastery to transform your life, overcome past negative clutter, and rewire your brain.

    2. How do we accumulate “emotional clutter,” and why do we need to clear it out?

    No one can control what happens in life. There are losses, aging, and challenges throughout every stage of life, not to mention the daily wear and tear of stress. What we can do is to respond skillfully by not letting the emotional clutter pull us into states of dis-ease and unhappiness.

    By clearing out clutter, we can transform even difficult moments and respond to life in a way that helps us find the inherent joy that is present.

    3. You talk about getting off the emotional elevator. What do you mean by that?

    You can think of your emotions like an elevator that takes you up and down. What moves the elevator? What old programs are running in your head that push the buttons on your elevator to that it moves you up and down? Something good happens in your life and the elevator goes up. Something bad—even a perception of something being bad—and the elevator shoots down. But what if you could control that yourself?

    This book helps you decide who and what you are going to let push your emotional elevator buttons. Letting others push our mood elevator buttons can be exhausting. We’re not in control of our own elevator. Clearing away clutter means you get free from old emotional clutter programming and ways of thinking.

    4. In Chapter Two, you introduced a tool called “Inner-Facebooking.” Can you elaborate a little on this and share an example of how it’s helped you personally?

    Facebook is a wonderful way to post and put up for others what’s happening in our lives. In the same way, we are constantly putting up mental posts in our minds—through our thoughts and beliefs—that represent a kind of second Facebook: An Inner-Facebook, which shapes how we experience the world, ourselves, and others.

    If your Inner-Facebook posts are unhappy and unflattering, no wonder you feel bad and depressed. I have a whole chapter about noticing your Inner-Facebook posts so you can be more aware. Inner-Facebooking is a skill that helps you to emotionally regulate. Then you can change your Inner-Facebook posts to be more positive and accurate.

    Personally, I’ve gotten better at noticing my own inner-Facebooking posts. For example, my luggage was lost when traveling recently. But rather than respond to the highly reactive and anxious thoughts that my mind posted in that moment, I was able to step back and make a new, more realistic and helpful post that said, “My luggage is going to be found. Besides, in the big scope of things, losing my luggage isn’t that big a deal.”

    5. In Chapter Four, you wrote, “Much of the clutter of discomfort, discontent, and conflict that we experience in life comes from our unwillingness to accept things as they are.” I think we often equate acceptance with giving up. How can we simultaneously reduce the clutter of resistance while working to make positive changes in our lives?

    Acceptance is about realistically viewing your situation. It’s about surrendering to the truth that you may not have control over the situation. You recognize that it is what it is. That does not mean you are giving up. Submission, on the other hand, is about giving up.

    Acceptance allows us to surrender to the truth of our situation. So, if you’re frustrated at being caught in a traffic jam on the freeway, for example, you can have acceptance of what you’re experiencing instead of fighting with it. This means that you can then move forward in a more realistic and effective way instead of getting all stressed out and carrying the experience with you throughout your day.

    6. You devoted an entire chapter to “family emotional clutter.” How do we accumulate this type of clutter, and how does it negatively impact our lives?

    In my workshops I always ask, “Does anyone here have a difficult person in your life?” Everyone raises their hands.

    Family emotional clutter can negatively impact our future relationships and how safe we feel around others. If you’ve had negative relationship issues that have been a pattern in your life, that’s a sign you need to work on that clutter. Repairing this will lead to more loving, healthy, fulfilling, and secure relationships.

    7. What’s one thing we can do to begin releasing “family emotional clutter” to avoid these negative consequences?

    First, we can recognize that all people have suffered, even that person in your family who may have mistreated you. In fact, your family’s suffering may go back centuries. So, rather than feeling permanently victimized, it’s important not to pass on the wave of suffering in your family, and to know that you can heal.

    I believe that we can get a new brain download by finding benefactors in our lives. We can learn how to attune and alter our brain’s social and emotional rewiring. It’s a helpful process that I describe in one of the Lifestyle Tools found in Clearing Emotional Clutter.

    8. You talk about friendships as a tool to release emotional clutter. How and why can our relationships help with this, and how can we help other people release their emotional clutter as well?

    Research shows that having friends is the key to a happier life. The three seeds that make friendship grow and mature are the seeds of trust, acceptance, and empathy.

    Trust is essential, and that takes time to develop, so you need patience and real mutuality in a relationship.

    Acceptance means not being so demanding. It means accepting that everyone has flaws. Sometimes you need to let things to as a foundation for friendship.

    Lastly is empathy. Empathy is what lets you really feel connected to a friend. Develop these and you’ll develop friendship.

    9. In the chapter devoted to listening, you shared an acronym, HEAR, that can help us keep our emotional clutter out of conversations and “enter a more spacious and less defensive awareness.” Can you tell us a little about that and how it helps?

    Talking can be clutter that sometimes blocks understanding and deeper meaning. If we are to remove clutter in the moment, we need to be present with all our senses, especially listening. This acronym is designed to help us when we’ve stopped listening—like during an argument, or when we’re feeling defensive or caught up in our own opinion. It goes as follows:

    H- Hold all assumptions. Empty your ego and get curious. Set your personal beliefs and assumptions aside for a few minutes and take a more objective perspective as you listen.

    E- Empathy to engage, not enrage. With empathy, you can enter the emotional world of the other person so you can understand them better rather than try to deny or devalue what they are feeling.

    A- Absorb and accept. Understanding, with openness. Let in the ideas of the other person. Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to agree, but that you can accept this is the other’s belief.

    R- Reflect, then respect. Take time to pause before you respond. Take a step back so that you can think about what you’ve heard. Then, respond respectfully and with kindness.

    10. In Part 3 of the book, you explore ways to prevent new emotional clutter. What’s one practical thing we can all do daily to de-clutter?

    I especially like the idea of being faithful to this moment. You can be 100% committed to whatever you are doing. Uni-task, so you are fully present with this moment. This means fidelity to the breath, to walking, to eating, to working. Whatever you are doing, you can do so fully, without your mind being one place and your body being someplace else.

    That means that when you walk, walk. When you eat, eat. When you drive your car, drive. Cut down on the distractions and do one thing fully. In this way you can appreciate and savor even the most ordinary moments and that “in-between” time that is an important part of our days and lives.

    You can read more about Clearing Emotional Clutter on Amazon here.

    FTC Disclosure: I receive complimentary books for reviews and interviews on tinybuddha.com, but I am not compensated for writing or obligated to write anything specific. I am an Amazon affiliate, meaning I earn a percentage of all books purchased through the links I provide on this site. 

    Woman jumping image via Shutterstock

  • Live for the Moment

    Live for the Moment

    Live for the moment

    Source: Bright Side

  • How to Use Self-Care for a Brighter, Less Stressful Life

    How to Use Self-Care for a Brighter, Less Stressful Life

    Girl Doing Yoga

    “The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.” ~Sydney Harris

    I was working myself into the ground and I knew it. Balancing a full-time job, my fledgling business, studies, home life, and relationships, I was constantly feeling the pressure and slowly, the cracks were showing.

    I was exhausted, I was argumentative, I wasn’t taking care of my health, and my business had transformed from my creative outlet to a source of incredible stress.

    I kept thinking, “I just need one day to relax, just one day!” but even when I had the chance, I couldn’t let go of the pressure I was allowing to take over my life. I felt like I was stuck in a never-ending cycle and I couldn’t escape.

    Of course, I knew I needed to take better care of myself and my health. Deliberately not getting enough sleep so I could work more, skipping yoga to write articles, eating breakfast at lunch time and relying on coffee could only ever take me so far.

    Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to create a life I loved, I needed to start taking self-care a little more seriously. Even though I was ticking the boxes professionally and in my business, I knew I wanted so much more that that.

    What about adventure? What about long baths and good books? What about eating regularly and moving my body? What about sleeping in and taking my dog for walks? I was replacing all of these things that light me up with a cycle of stress, fear, and overwhelm.

    It was time to change.

    I started off small, with a daily five-minute meditation. I figured that no matter what was happening, I could take just five minutes for myself each day!

    After a couple of days, I started to notice how much I was looking forward to my meditations. They refreshed and refocused my mind, uplifted my spirits, and gave me the chance I needed to take a break (even if it was for just a short time).

    As I noticed how these meditations positively affected the way I felt, the way I worked, and the way I thought, I decided it was time to dive deep into this mindful, self-care thing. And I haven’t looked back.

    To bring more mindfulness and self-care into your own life (even when you’re busy!), feel free to try the tips below!

    Take a deep breath, regularly.

    It really is amazing what a simple breath can do! Whenever I’m starting to feel overwhelmed or stressed, my first act of self-care is to take one deep breath. Straight away, I feel any tension in my body begin to release.

    Sometimes that simple breath is enough to refresh and refocus. Sometimes I feel like I need to take a few more breaths. Sometimes I realize that I need a proper break because I’m feeling so overwhelmed that I won’t be doing my best work anyway.

    The beauty of taking a deep breath is that it’s one of the shortest forms of self-care I know! Even if I were to practice it fifty times a day, it would still only take a minute or two, altogether.

    The other wonderful thing about deep breathing is that you can do it anywhere, at anytime. Whether you’re halfway through an exciting meeting, on the cusp of finishing a project, dealing with conflict, or anything in between, you can allow yourself to take that little bit of time to breathe.

    Journal with gratitude.

    Embracing gratitude is another simple way to show yourself some meaningful self-care and inject happiness into your day. I noticed that the more I looked for things to be grateful for, the more I found.

    The wonderful thing about keeping a gratitude journal is that it starts to train your mind to notice the good in your life. Whether you have a safe home, access to nutritious food, an encouraging support network, a healthy body, a beloved pet, or a stable job, gratitude helps you to acknowledge those wonderful things.

    Before I started deliberately practicing gratitude, it was natural for me to focus on the negative aspects of my life because I believed that’s how I would fix them.

    If I kept thinking about not having enough money, it would drive me to make more. If I focused on not going to the gym often enough, I would guilt myself into showing up. If I noticed the things which weren’t going well at work, I would motivate myself to make meaningful changes.

    While that kind of thinking can be useful sometimes, it’s important to keep our eyes open to the good things, too. Our strengths. Our family and friends. Realizing that even if we want more, we actually do have enough.

    Simply note down a few things you’re grateful for at the end of each day to start flexing that powerful gratitude muscle!

    Listen to your body and its needs.

    You know when you’re exhausted, but there’s just one more email to answer? Then, you realize that the dishes need to be washed. And you really should take a shower… Suddenly, it’s after midnight and your alarm is set to go off in less than six hours and just the thought of another exhausting day tomorrow is enough to make you want to cry.

    It doesn’t have to be like that.

    Yes, life gets busy. There might be lots of things to do. However, I noticed that my life started to feel a whole lot lighter when I decided to prioritize my needs above everything else.

    When I’m tired, I try to head to bed early or take a nap. When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m feeling particularly stressed, I go to yoga or meditate.

    All I had to do was start listening to my body and choosing to honor what it was telling me.

    After all, the emails can wait until morning, I can ask someone else to do the dishes and as for a shower—well, that’s what dry shampoo and deodorant is for!

    Learn to say no.

    There’s a big reason why I often had so much going on that I felt like I was drowning—I just couldn’t say no.

    Not only did I struggle to say no to others, I also found it harder to say no to myself. New idea for an upgrade to my website? Sure. Home-cooked meal and dessert? Why not. Exercise? Of course.

    Learning to say no to others, but more importantly, to myself, was one of the biggest stress relievers and forms of self-care I’ve found.

    It’s quite simple, really. “No, thank you.” You’re allowed to say it! You know you want to…

    Go for a mindful walk.

    Sometimes, we just need a good, old break. Time to be alone, away from technology, in nature and in the moment.

    There are several ways to go for a mindful walk, but my favorite method is to really tune into my sense of sight.

    You can easily try this, too. When you go for a walk, notice all the things you can see. What colors are there around you? What have you not seen before? What does the weather look like? Which natural things do you notice? What about man-made things?

    Simply choose to experience the wealth of sights around you for a refreshing, mindful walk.

    Bonus tip: Remember, you’re in charge, here.

    If self-care is something you want, or need, then go for it! Do what feels good for you, lights you up, and reduces stress and overwhelm.

    If one minute a day is all you can manage, that’s okay!

    If you need a week to unwind, take a break and do some of your favorite things, that’s okay, too!

    It’s entirely up to you.

    Girl doing yoga image via Shutterstock

  • How to Draw Your Own Happiness Map & Follow It to Bliss

    How to Draw Your Own Happiness Map & Follow It to Bliss

    Little Girls with Map

    “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” ~Sydney J. Harris

    Cars played a big part in my life growing up in Southern California. As a kid, there was a succession of crappy old station wagons that routinely broke down on the highway because we couldn’t afford anything better.

    I remember Dad standing helplessly outside in traffic as drivers slowed down to gawk at us, then sped up as they drove on into their lives.

    And the rusted green ’42 Chevy pickup truck my grandfather taught me to drive years before it was legal to do so, gears grinding when I missed the shift. My legs weren’t quite long enough to get the pedal all the way to the floor.

    “Lookin’ for the Heart of Saturday Night”

    In high school, I was enamored with the low-riders cruising up and down the boulevards, “lookin’ for the heart of Saturday night,” as Tom Waits so poignantly wrote in his song.

    You know, lots of hairspray holding up very big hair? Black eyeliner with perfectly executed tails? Carefully cultivated coolness? Like that.

    Then there was the older boy, already out of high school and working … a grown-up. He drove a ’67 Chevy Impala SuperSport, with baby blue metallic paint that matched my eyes. I ended up marrying him.

    Before long, though, I realized I needed my own car, my own life. To have those things, I needed to understand what made me happy.

    Believe me, when I was growing up, we did not sit around the kitchen table talking about being happy or fulfilled as we ate tuna casserole mixed with Campbell’s mushroom soup, salty Lay’s potato chips crumbled on top.

    Top-Notch People-Pleaser

    Martin Seligman, Ph.D., says that, “Authentic happiness comes from identifying and cultivating your most fundamental strengths and using them every day in work, love, play, and parenting.”

    My problem? Way too many of my “strengths” were filtered through lenses that didn’t belong to me. Rather, those strengths had been projected onto me by my parents, teachers, and a culture that molds people-pleasing little girls into supportive, one-step-behind young women.

    Things like top-notch people-pleaser, knows how to keep quiet, does her work on time, never complains weren’t going to get me where I wanted to go.

    I needed to learn how to draw my own happiness map, and follow it. Here’s what I learned.

    How to Draw Your Happiness Map

    1. You’ve got to know something about who you are, and what lights you up.

    Get some objective feedback on your strengths, talents, and gifts, using free tools such as the University of Pennsylvania’s happiness questionnaire and Strengths Finder.

    2. Use mindfulness to remember who you are, and what lights you up.

    I love writing, sharing my experiences, helping others; it’s part of my happiness map.

    You may love something entirely different. Great! It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you’re reaching for your stars.

    There’s a lot of magic and plenty of miracles every day, if we only remember to look for them.

    Developing a simple mindful practice helps set the compass point of your personal happiness map in the direction of what matters to you, what you’re willing to work for, who and what you want to love, and why.

    Tara Brach has an incredible mindfulness meditation website—lots of free guided meditations and talks.

    3. Try expressive writing to explore what you don’t want/doesn’t feel good.

    Find a local writing group that focuses on personal narrative/healing; try Julia Cameron’s famous Morning Pages; do some personal writing work with me.

    Sometimes it’s easiest to begin a trip knowing where you don’t want to go. What doesn’t feel good. What (or who) feels like sandpaper against your skin?

    The guy with that ’67 Chevy Impala SuperSport? It didn’t work out.

    Back then, with no self-awareness or insight, all I knew how to do was blindly grab for what everyone else said I should want. That usually doesn’t work out very well.

    4. Use your brain.

    All the fantastic neuroscience findings show us how to consciously use our brains to turn thoughts, attention, and choices toward the direction of happiness.

    I am not those early messages of shame directed at a poor family with too many kids in beat-up cars.

    You are not your thoughts or your emotions. Focusing on what lights you up keeps re-setting your brain for the positive instead of hanging out in its default negativity bias.

    Watch this short Youtube video with my favorite neuropsychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson, as he talks about how to re-wire for positive experiences.

    5. Let yourself love what you love, as poet Mary Oliver invites us to do.

    That’s the direction of your happiness: not your mother’s, not your friends, not what your ego is telling yourself you’re supposed to be doing.

    This is how I end up hosting a popular weekly public radio show. I mean, who knew?! Not me … not ‘till I learned to let myself love what I love.

    A terrifically fun way to do this is to take five minutes before you get of bed, every morning, and watch the movie in your mind called “My Perfect Life.”

    In your imagination, see what your room looks like. What’s the view from the window? Who’s next to you in bed? When you get up, what does your home look like? Where is it? How does it smell? What sounds do you hear?

    What are you doing that day? What are you doing next month? In six months? How do you feel?

    6. Give yourself permission to be human, to be messy.

    Honestly, this one can be pretty hard. Those of us who are perfectionists, or like me, who’ve experienced trauma that caused us to do whatever it took to feel safe in the world, well, we need to re-learn a lot of stuff.

    It’s okay that life is messy. It’s okay that we take wrong turns all the time, even get lost once in a while.

    It’s okay that we’re still learning how to do it better, or make a different choice. As a beloved friend said recently, “Don’t let perfection get in the way of what’s good.”

    7. Remind yourself often that happiness is a direction.

    You’re the one drawing the map. You’re in the driver’s seat.

    I mean, how wonderful is it to be driving down the road, windows down, music turned up, feeling into the peace and freedom of simply being alive?

    We all know it isn’t always easy. That sometimes, it’s a lot of work. Is it worth it, though? Oh my goodness, yes!

    Yes, it’s important to get where you need to get, to accomplish goals and attain competency. It’s equally important, as well, to enjoy the journey. To be grateful for this amazing ride called life.

    And if you change your mind, and decide to take the interstate instead of the dusty dirt road, that’s cool. Why? Because it’s your life, and you’re in charge.

    Taking responsibility for your choices is just about the coolest thing ever. (Almost as cool as my hair looked back in the day, cruising with Eddie.)

    8. Once you’ve drawn your happiness map, you now get to start traveling.

    Using your newfound self-insights, a five-minute daily practice of envisioning your most perfect life ever, and a map (maybe even an actual one), you begin making different choices.

    Do you say no to a couple of commitments and/or people? Choose to take the very first thirty minutes of your day to write instead of check emails? Give yourself an hour of no-tube-time after work, and do one thing that feels good, just because it does, like yoga or taking a community college class?

    It’s all Good

    I’ve had my own car for many years now. I’m living my life on my terms, always heading in the direction of happiness. Yes, I’ve had a few flat tires, and took a couple of back roads that went nowhere. Ended up at the edge of a cliff more than once. That’s okay.

    Flat tires can be changed. Back roads are lovely. Put the car in reverse, and back up, away from the cliff edges.

    Pay attention. Be gentle. From that place, you can begin making better choices. As my son says, “It’s all good.”

    If you’re draining your energy and power, giving it away to people/ideas/choices that do not nurture you, just notice that. And start making different choices.

    Because, if you’re moving in the direction of happiness, you will absolutely, totally, no doubt about it start feeling more fulfilled, more peaceful, and happier.

    Little girls with map image via Shutterstock

  • Why It’s Okay to “Fail” at Meditation 90% of the Time

    Why It’s Okay to “Fail” at Meditation 90% of the Time

    Man Meditating

    “Giving up is the only sure way to fail.” ~Gena Showalter

    So you want to meditate.

    You can’t help but notice the benefits touted everywhere: a clearer mind, more focus, better sleep, and better health and happiness. What’s not to want?

    But then you try it out. And dang, it’s not easy.

    When you sit down on that cushion or chair, your previously normal human brain has turned into a crazy swirl of thoughts.

    Did you have this many thoughts before? Isn’t this meditation thing supposed to be about clearing your mind and getting focused?

    The next thought that comes to mind is usually this one: “I’m failing at meditation. I can’t do this.”

    Welcome to the club! All experienced meditators know this feeling. We’ve all had this experience. We’ve all thought at some point that we’re failing at meditation.

    When you sit still to stop doing and start being, your brain doesn’t cooperate easily. Its job is to think. Our brains will think about the breakfast, plan the day, even have imaginary conversations.

    This is the legendary “monkey mind,” and it’s totally normal. However, bump that into our expectations of clarity and bliss, and we believe we are “failing” at meditation.

    Want in on a little secret?

    Ten-plus years into this meditation thing, I still “fail” at it 90% of the time. My mind wanders somewhere between often and constantly during my daily morning practice. Planning, mostly!

    So my practice is to notice the thinking. I label it “thinking,” or “planning.” Then I bring my attention back to my breath.

    And I’m not the only one.

    Even experienced meditators’ minds wander—a lot.

    A monk from Blue Cliff Monastery joined my meditation group one evening for practice. We did twenty-five minutes of sitting meditation, ten minutes of walking meditation, and ten more minutes of sitting meditation.

    During the discussion time, he shared about his practices. He related that he had about two minutes of clarity during our session—just two minutes!

    It was incredibly freeing for me to hear. If the mind wandered for a monk who spent his whole life in an atmosphere that supported his practice, then I could accept that my mind wanders too.

    Once I accepted that, my practice became even more fruitful. And I knew I wasn’t failing after all.

    You’re still benefiting.

    After years of reading about mindfulness, I finally began to practice at home.

    I’d suffered from waves of deep lows for all of my life. They would hit me on a regular basis. Dad told me that this was just how life was. That I had “an artistic temperament.”

    My life would be going along, with its ups and downs, when the stressors became too much. I couldn’t handle it all anymore. I’d break down with tears and an inability to do anything much for a few days. My ways of coping weren’t healthy—binge eating was my dirty little secret.

    I thought that something was wrong with me. That somehow, I wasn’t strong enough to handle life the way other people seemingly did.

    I’d been reading about the benefits of mindfulness to soothe myself for years. Finally, I decided to step into the area and do it. I had built up my strength and resilience with yoga. I could do this.

    I began to practice meditation by sitting at home for ten minutes almost every day. In a few weeks, I bumped it up to fifteen minutes.

    And I had this thought:

    This is not working. I’m just sitting here basically thinking the whole time. This isn’t doing anything for me.

    But, several months into it, I looked back at my life. I realized that I had not fallen into the pit of a deep low. At all.

    It was an amazing revelation for me. Even though I thought I was doing a crap job at this meditation thing, I was receiving the benefits. It was working!

    Amazingly, I haven’t had those regular series of lows in the ten years since.

    It’s practice, not perfection.

    Mindfulness is a lovely thing to think and read about, but it’s really all about practice.

    Practice doesn’t mean perfection or performance. It’s about making friends with our wandering, imperfect minds.

    Try this now:

    Set a timer for sixty seconds. Sit tall and put your attention on your in-breath and your out-breath. Feel it at the nose, chest, or belly, whatever is most accessible to you. When your mind wanders, label it “thinking,” and come back to your breath until the timer rings.

    You did it!

    Practice diligently. Practice with persistence. Accept that your human mind wanders. It’s an essential part of the learning.

    Keep practicing and keep “failing.” You will still benefit.

    Man mediating image via Shutterstock

  • Enjoy the Ride

    Enjoy the Ride

    Enjoy the Ride

    Source: Natural Life

  • 5 Everyday Places Where You Can Find Presence

    5 Everyday Places Where You Can Find Presence

    Woman Meditating

    “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    Presence. It’s something that used to be an absolute mystery to me.

    During my five years working in the fast-paced world of public relations, I was frequently running from one meeting to the next, nose in my cell phone, barely coming up for air and completely oblivious to the world around me.

    Little did I know, I was missing out on so many moments during my day where I could feel grounded, grateful, and present instead of stressed out and anxious.

    Today, life is much different. I strive to feel present on a daily basis, and while there are still moments where I’m challenged, I’ve found that with commitment and practice, it’s possible to weave small moments of mindfulness into my day.

    I love meditation, but mindfulness doesn’t always have to be closed-eyes, cross-legged experience, either. I’ve found it really helpful to tie my mindfulness practice to everyday activities.

    Here are five places where you can find presence as you go about your daily routine.

    Drinking your morning coffee

    It’s a fair assumption that we all look forward to our morning cup of joe—and as a Brit, I confess I am partial to a cup of tea first thing in the morning. This may not seem like the obvious place to create a spiritual practice, but it’s almost perfect.

    It’s one of the first things you do when you step out of bed and it sets the tone for your day. You can continue racing through this simple activity, if you wish, or you can set aside five minutes (set an alarm on your cell phone) and sit down with your coffee and just be.

    Leave your cell phone alone. Don’t check social media. Ignore your email. Just take in the flavors and aroma of your morning beverage and enjoy the moment.

    In the shower

    My absolute favorite morning ritual is a long shower, and it’s the perfect place to relax and be free. Left unchecked, however, this morning routine can provide a breeding ground for your mind racing through the day’s laundry list of tasks and ‘what ifs.’

    Bring your mind back into the present by becoming aware of the physical sensations of the water on your skin and the smell of the shampoo in your hair. Feel grateful that you have access to fresh, clean water. Breathe in. Relax.

    When you step out of the shower, you will feel rejuvenated not only physically, but in your mind and spirit, too.

    Commuting to work

    Traveling to the office doesn’t have to be a ho-hum activity; it can be an opportunity to fit in a mini-meditation. And granted, this does depend on which mode of transport you take to work and it typically fits a bus or train ride best.

    All you need to do is this—close your eyes and breathe deeply. It sounds simple, I know, but it makes the world of difference.

    If you’re driving, you will of course need to stay alert and aware at all times, so use this as your meditation. Turn off the radio, allow your thoughts to fall away, and simply focus on driving your car as you take in the sights and sensations around you. For me, driving feels incredibly grounding.

    Waiting in line

    Forever short on time during my PR days, I would rush to the bank during my lunch break and inevitably become stressed out at the sight of the long line. I would huff and puff, check my cell phone, and generally panic as I felt my heart rate increase and noticed beads of sweat form on my brow.

    It doesn’t have to be this way. Instead of feeling frustrated at the wait time, take it as an opportunity to relax. Look around you. Connect with your fellow human beings. Smile at the person in line next to you. It can be a simple and beautiful experience.

    During exercise

    I truly believe exercise is a spiritual practice, but if you’re attending a class at the gym after work, it’s so easy to let your mind race and mull over the events of the day and run through your to-do list for the evening.

    Instead, be mindful of which parts of your body you are working and focus on that. Bring your attention to your legs, your shoulders, the muscles in your back. Not only is this meditative, but it also helps bring focus to your workout and improve your form. It’s a win-win.

    —

    By applying these tips, you will invite presence into even the most mundane of daily chores. This not only transforms each moment an opportunity for stillness, it also helps you to be less stressed and more peaceful, no matter what is happening around you.

    Woman meditating image via Shutterstock

  • Giveaway: Let It Go Coloring Book for Stress Relief

    Giveaway: Let It Go Coloring Book for Stress Relief

    Let It Go

    Update: The winners for this giveaway are:

    • Lyndsay G
    • Beth Casey
    • Marsha Lawrence
    • Claudia Menger
    • Teejayhanton

    You can get a copy of Let It Go, Coloring and Activities to Awaken Your Mind and Relieve Stress on Amazon here.

    When I was a kid, I could color for hours. I could be a little Type-A about it; if I went outside the lines, I would often rip out the page and throw it away, and I may even have yelled, “I hate coloring!” while cursing my imperfection.

    But that was a lie—I loved it. So it was only a matter of time before I way lying on my stomach in the living room, humming the Gummy Bears cartoon theme song, and trying again for a crayon masterpiece.

    Years later, in my early twenties, I did the exact same thing in my living room while my boyfriend (at the time) played video games. I remember thinking we were both regressing, but I didn’t care.

    We’d each battled depression before, and were always on the lookout for something to numb the pain. I don’t think we consciously realized it at the time, but that’s exactly what we were doing right then, in a far healthier way than usual.

    There was something so calming about doing these mindless, childlike activities, free from the burden of our usual stresses. Bills were piling up, neither of us had a career path, but for that short time, our minds felt free.

    In my late twenties, having lost touch with my coloring habit for years, I went to a visit a friend who had a toddler at the time. Sure enough, I found her coloring with what she called “Mommy’s markers.”

    Unlike her son’s, these ones had fine point tips, ideal for coloring intricate pictures. I sat down, pulled out a page, and once again I was hooked.

    Still, I didn’t keep the habit for long. I remember thinking she had an excuse—she had a son. But it was a little embarrassing for me to color, alone, in my free time.

    That’s what I thought back then. Now, however, I’m not afraid to admit it: I love coloring. I love my fine point markers. I love my stack of coloring books.

    I love the time I take for myself to clear my head and focus on something fun and creative. I love that this enables me to relax, recharge, and not reflect, as I do all too often throughout my day.

    And I love that adult coloring is all the rage now, and there are so many awesome coloring books to choose from.

    I’m still a little Type-A about it—I admit I’ve ripped out a few pages after coloring outside of the lines. But I’ve also learned to turn “mistakes” into interesting details, challenging my sometimes-judgmental mind to turn the “bad” into “good.”

    Since I’m always on the lookout for new coloring books (a sentence I never thought I’d write as an adult), it was quite serendipitous when I received an email about Let It Go, Coloring and Activities to Awaken Your Mind and Relieve Stress.

    Illustrated by Sherise Seven, the book includes forty one-sided, hand-drawn, perforated coloring pages and eleven activity pages that will “push your brain toward happiness and inspirational positive thoughts.”

    I love how this book is filled with unique, intricate images and uplifting messages. And I especially appreciate that it comes with a color protector page so I don’t ruin any of the awesome pictures from color bleeding through the page.

    Lori-Deschene-Let-It-Go-Coloring

    Yes, that’s my work above. (Look Mom, I stayed in the lines!)

    If you too are looking for a fun, creative, stress-relieving hobby, I highly recommend grabbing a coloring book—and fortunately, I have five copies of Let It Go to giveaway. 

    The Giveaway

    To enter to win one of five free copies:

    • Leave a comment below.
    • For an extra entry, share the giveaway on Facebook or Twitter, and include the link in your comment.

    You can enter until Friday, December 25th.

    Want to grab a copy now? You can get a copy of Let It Go, Coloring and Activities to Awaken Your Mind and Relieve Stress on Amazon here.

    FTC Disclosure: I receive complimentary books for reviews and interviews on tinybuddha.com, but I am not compensated for writing or obligated to write anything specific. I am an Amazon affiliate, meaning I earn a percentage of all books purchased through the links I provide on this site. 

  • How to Be Happier Without Making Any Big Life Changes

    How to Be Happier Without Making Any Big Life Changes

    “The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now.” ~Robert G. Ingersoll

    In 2014 I changed my whole life.

    I quit a horrible job, traveled to Costa Rica and Panama, moved across the country, moved in with my partner, and landed my dream job in an education charity.

    Why did I change so much? The answer is simple—happiness.

    I had spent three years planning and dreaming of a different future for myself. One where I could travel, have a job I found meaningful, and live with my boyfriend in our own flat. Finally, after one morning too many spent in tears, I built up the courage to quit my job.

    I spent the next few months riding on a wave of relief. Everything was going to be all right. I was going to be happy and in love with my life.

    The problem was, this didn’t happen.

    It soon became clear that I wasn’t experiencing the blissful future that I’d dreamed of. I ended up feeling even worse than I had felt before I changed anything. A sense of dread and helplessness crept over me as I realized that changing your life situation doesn’t automatically make you happier.

    There was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

    After a month or two of trying to pull myself out of a depression by making plans for a long off future, I started reading what I could about life and happiness. I went back to books I’d started but hadn’t finished and reread old favorites.

    As I read and reread these books, I started to notice a pattern. At the heart of all the arguments and instructions in those books were the same two ideas:

    1. Be aware of your thoughts so your mind can’t control you.

    Learning how to be aware of thoughts rather than letting your mind control you seems to be essential to experiencing lasting happiness. Meditating every day, even just for ten or fifteen minutes, makes it easier to be aware of your thoughts and to learn how to quiet your mind.

    For me, being aware of my thoughts has made me more intentional about how I think about things. I now try to look at my life positively and search for solutions to issues rather than worrying about problems that might not even happen.

    Being in the present moment also takes the power away from your mind. In the present moment there’s no past to regret and no future to worry about, so you are naturally happier. Though keeping your attention in the present is hard to sustain, it’s simple to try.

    Give it a go by focusing what you can see around you right now. What sounds can you hear? What can you smell? What can your body feel? Don’t answer these questions in words, just move your attention to your different senses and acknowledge what they notice.

    I’ve now made being aware of my thoughts a daily practice. Instead of reading the news on my phone, I dedicate my ninety-minute commute to meditation and being present.

    As I walk to the train station I listen to the birds singing and hear the wind rustling in the trees. On the train I meditate for fifteen minutes before reading a book for the rest of the journey.

    How could you incorporate meditation and being present into your daily routine?

    *Recommended Reading: The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle

    2. Fill your life with things you enjoy now.

    This step is more straightforward. There’s an easy process you can follow to complete it. First, you need to write a list of all the times you’ve felt truly, deeply happy. What were you doing? Who were you with? Are there any common themes?

    After you identify the common themes that brought you so much joy, fill as much of your day-to-day life with them as possible!

    Could you take a walk in nature on your lunch break? Or could you listen to your favorite type of music while cooking dinner? Perhaps you could swap TV time for working on a creative project like crafting, drawing, or writing?

    I realized that some of my happiest moments happened outdoors when I was surrounded by nature. So now I’m trying to spend most of my free time outside, inviting friends and family along too so I can spend time with them. I’ve noticed that I’m so much more relaxed and I really look forward to my weekend’s adventures!

    Now it’s your turn! What changes can you make to fill your life with joy?

    *Recommended Reading: Finding Your Own North Star, by Martha Beck

    Making these little changes doesn’t mean that you can’t make a big change in your life. They will just help you to be happier in the process and put less pressure on the end result.

    Enjoy the journey along the rainbow and it won’t matter so much how much gold is at the end.

  • Accepting Delays and Appreciating the Gift of Empty Time

    Accepting Delays and Appreciating the Gift of Empty Time

    Time for a Break

    “Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    A few weeks ago I had a soccer game about a half-hour away from my house, in the middle of nowhere.

    Grumbling about the heat and the length of the game, I walked down to the field where my team was seated under a tent. In truth, I love playing soccer, but for some reason I was annoyed at how big a chunk of my day it took.

    “Hey,” someone said to me, “the game’s delayed forty-five minutes. We’re just going to sit and wait it out.”

    I walked to the portable bathroom, plunked my soccer bag down, and teared up in frustration. How dare the team, the sport, the world violate my time?

    I walked back over to my team, fuming inside. I thought about the homework I still had left, the near hour I could have spent writing or playing guitar or being quiet and meditative. But I was stuck on a dirt patch miles away from home, sitting in my soccer clothes, with nothing to do but wait.

    Then I thought of the radio show I’d been listening to in the car on the way there. It was about Taoism and the importance of accepting what exists and the natural order of things. The world, the host declared, is in itself perfect, and when we submit to the circumstances of the world we can find peace.

    Sitting there on the field, I forced myself to close my eyes, take a deep breath, and feel the wind settle on my skin. For the first time, I was accepting the unfilled time life had offered me rather than fighting it.

    Meditating on the field was incredible. In that moment, I felt more alive and present than I ever have meditating in my own home.

    Unlike at home, I was submitting to the natural order of things and my reality. Rather than building time for meditation, I was receiving it.

    I don’t know a single person who doesn’t consider themselves busy. We live in a world of technology and mobile devices that allow us to be working constantly. Our biggest rival is time, and our most formidable fear is running out of time before deadlines, projects, and our own eventual demises.

    Because of the finite amount of time we have on this planet, I always thought of time as something I had to organize and maximize. I planned my week and activities so I could have large chunks of unstructured time to get things done. I avoided having short periods of empty time like the plague.

    The more I structured my time, the more stressed I became. I was frugal with my time like I would be with money.

    I was miserable in the face of rescheduling and spontaneous events. Everything the world threw at me threatened to destroy my entire week’s plans. The more I tried to maximize my time, the more I felt like a victim to time itself.

    The spontaneity of the world became my enemy. In trying to use every moment to its fullest, I had turned myself against the present moment and the natural order of things.

    That day on the soccer field changed me in a profound way. That day, I let go of my schedule, my compulsive need to structure my time, and my hatred of the ever-changing world. I embraced the moment that was given to me and allowed myself to be immersed in the time and space I occupied.

    I had never before recognized that I was in a constant battle against time.

    I now see this battle playing out every single day in my life. I get stressed whenever I have five minutes to “kill” without my computer or cell phone on which to do my homework.

    These empty moments threaten us because we don’t know how to accept the emptiness that life offers us.

    In all of our haste to complain about such moments, we miss the opportunity they offer us to tune into the world and submit to its natural perfection. We miss the truth: that every moment, not just the ones we set aside for meditation, can be used to appreciate and revel in the present.

    Emptiness is not evil. Emptiness allows us to breathe, feel, and accept the world as it is.

    Ironically, I always wanted more time in which to meditate. I felt like I could never find a chunk of free time in which to simply enjoy the present moment. Now, I realize that they are all around me, but I fill them with anxiety instead.

    If you’re tired of feeling like time is against you, worn down from all the frustration you’ve felt toward the world and the circumstances taking your time, you must back down from the fight. The world will always win.

    Fortunately, if you accept the world and the time you are given rather than rebelling against it, you also win. That is the perfection of the world: we benefit most when we let the world carry us.

    That is not to say that making plans and organizing your time are useless endeavors. It is important that, as a society, we continue to put time into our jobs and families. I am not preaching a breakdown of schedule, but an acceptance of change.

    Instead of using meditative strategies only in the comfort of your home or nature, find the beauty of the present moment in the time the world gives you to be still.

    Feel your weight in the seat of your car and the smoothness of the wheel in your hands when sitting in traffic. Close your eyes and feel your lungs expanding when someone is running late for a meeting.

    Spend those interim moments of inaction in your life being at peace with the world rather than grumbling at your watch. Those minutes add up, day by day, into all those minutes you wish you could spend meditating instead of sitting in the office.

    Empty time is not forced upon us; it is given to us. Empty time is a gift. Yield to it and accept it, and you will find yourself more in tune with the present moment and more accepting of life and the world.

    The present moment is a gift that we are always receiving. Our choice is whether to deny the gift and suffer, or open it and feel the world’s perfection within and around us in the ever-present now.

    Time for a break image via Shutterstock

  • A Simple Practice to Prevent Binge Eating and Boost Your Happiness

    A Simple Practice to Prevent Binge Eating and Boost Your Happiness

    “Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time.” ~Christine Arylo

    When the alarm went off, the haze of a dream dissolved into the memory of yesterday’s failure. My stomach was still full from last night’s binge, and I was utterly disgusted with myself.

    How could I have blown it again? What was wrong with me?

    I grabbed a notepad and pen and resolved that today would be different. Today I would stick to my diet!

    As I had every day for the previous several weeks, I made a list of every single thing I would allow myself to put into my mouth that day, and its exact calorie count.

    The fact that this totaled up to starvation rations was, to my adolescent mind, perfectly sensible. I had to starve myself.

    Until I reached the (utterly arbitrary) “optimal” number on the scale, I would never be acceptable. Lovable. Enough.

    Or so I thought. The fact that my body was already a healthy weight had nothing to do with it.

    But this day, like all the days before, did not go as planned.

    By the first break period, hunger veered me from my rigid diet and I bought a cup of raisins and peanuts—a “forbidden” snack that took me well over my daily calorie allowance. Then, furious at myself for blowing it, I sought comfort by gorging myself on the very thing I was impossibly trying to avoid: food.

    Day after day it was the same vicious cycle: impose crazy-strict limits, fail to follow them, beat myself up, numb out by binge eating, beat myself up even more.

    Then, in disgust and desperation, I’d lock myself in the bathroom and secretly throw up.

    All of which, of course, only made me feel worse about myself, so I’d impose even stricter limits, which were, of course, even more impossible to stick to.

    This pattern of shame cycled on and off for close to a decade.

    Sometimes it was worse, sometimes better. I had periods when my eating was relatively normal, but for a long time I believed that, like a recovering alcoholic, I’d never be entirely free from the danger of backsliding. “Once a bulimic, always a bulimic,” I often said.

    Over my years of healing, though, I was pleased to discover that I was wrong.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but I’m living proof that it is possible to break free from binge eating behavior.

    I could tell you all the things that helped me in my journey toward health. For example:

    • The attention of my first boyfriend, who made me feel attractive and loved.
    • Giving away all my “skinny” clothes and buying a new wardrobe of clothes that actually fit and made me feel attractive.
    • Studying Feminist theory and learning how my self-concept was programmed and poisoned by a sexist status quo and powerful Capitalist institutions, which greatly benefit when women focus our energies on changing our bodies, rather than changing the world.
    • Experiencing my boyfriend’s family’s attitude of abundance around food, which made me realize that my own family had an attitude of scarcity that exacerbated my dysfunctional eating. (Better eat those brownies now, because there won’t be any more when these are gone!)
    • Eliminating all restrictions and rules around which foods were “allowed” and which “forbidden,” and in what portion sizes. (Restrictions don’t work, because it’s human nature to always crave what’s forbidden!)

    When I looked back from decades later, a pattern emerged. Underlying all of these influences was the simple concept of self-compassion.

    Acknowledging that I’m human, allowing myself to be imperfect, treating myself kindly and gently when I stumble—this, I have learned, is a foundational practice not just for healthy eating, but for living a happy life.

    When I let go of my rigid food rules, and when I ceased to beat myself up for “blowing it,” there was nothing for me to rebel against.

    And when I gave myself permission to be human and imperfect, there was no need to beat myself up anymore.

    It turns out the tendency to over-consume after a small stumble is a well-documented phenomenon.

    The actual scientific term for it is the “What the Hell Effect,” as in, “Oops… I’m trying to quit smoking, but I just took a puff from a friend’s cigarette. What the hell, I might as well smoke the entire pack…”

    Since beating ourselves up seems to invariably lead to the “What the Hell Effect,” a group of researchers wondered whether self-compassion might act as an antidote, and decided to test their theory.

    One study brought women dieters into a lab, one at a time, ostensibly to taste test candies.

    In fact, they were studying the effects of self-compassion on binge eating, but they didn’t tell the women this.

    Upon entering the lab, a researcher wearing a white lab coat (signaling authority) presented each subject with a tray of donuts, and instructed her to pick her favorite kind and eat it (thus blowing her diet!) Then the researcher handed her a full glass of water and asked her to drink it all, so she’d feel uncomfortably full, and hence very aware that she’d blown it.

    Next the researcher showed the woman into a room with several bowls of different kinds of candy, handed her a clipboard and pen in order to rate them, and told her she could eat as much as she wanted.

    What the women in the study didn’t know is that the candies had been carefully weighed in advance. In fact, the scientists threw out the rating sheets—what they were really interested in was how much candy the women ate.

    Here’s where things got really interesting. The only difference between the control group and the experiment group was that before letting the experiment group into the “candy tasting” room, the researchers gave these women a very small self-compassion intervention, which went something like this:

    “You know, we’ve noticed that a lot of women feel really badly about eating the donut. We wanted to remind you that first, you did it for science, and second, everyone blows their diet sometimes. So don’t be too hard on yourself.”

    It seems like such a small thing, but guess what? That tiny intervention made a very big difference. The women who were told not to be too hard on themselves ate almost one third the amount of candy as the control group women!

    This mirrors exactly my own experience with binge eating: When I was finally able to forgive myself, remind myself that I’m human, and treat myself kindly, the bulimic behavior simply dissolved.

    Dr. Kristen Neff, the world’s foremost researcher on self-compassion and author of Self-Compassion, defines self-compassion as being composed of three elements:

    1. Mindfulness (noticing that you’re feeling badly, as if observing yourself from the outside)
    1. Common humanity (recognizing that stumbling, personal inadequacy, and suffering are part of the shared human experience, not your personal pathology)
    1. Self-kindness (being gentle and loving with yourself, as you would a beloved friend)

    Like so much else in life, self-compassion is a practice. Most of us were not trained to be self-compassionate as children, but thankfully, we can learn to do so as adults.

    We can even use self-compassion when we stumble in our efforts at self-compassion!

    In my own life, this simple practice has been life-changing. Not only do I have the healthiest relationship with food of any woman I know, but I’ve learned to allow myself to be human in every other area of my life as well, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

    I wish I could go back and give my seventeen-year-old self a self-compassion intervention—it might have saved me decades of misery.

    Of course I can’t go back in time, but I can share what I’ve learned with you. I hope it helps you as much as it helps me.

    What’s something you’ve been frustrated with yourself about this week? Can you try practicing self-compassion with that? If it were your dearest friend, instead of you, how would you respond to her? Try turning that kind and loving voice on yourself and see what happens. And remember, practicing self-compassion takes practice, so if it’s hard for you, be self-compassionate!

  • The Simplest Way to Create More Calm in Your Life

    The Simplest Way to Create More Calm in Your Life

    Man Relaxing on Beach

    “I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    This particular week, I flunked. I’d be lucky if you gave me a D grade in assessing my calmness.

    Generally, nobody can question my commitment to leading a life of less stress. I try hard. I try very hard.

    You might even be impressed with my healthy diet, my abundance of sleep, and my regular exercise. You couldn’t fault the careful thought and planning that go into my days and weeks. Hell, I can even claim meditation, mindfulness, and self-awareness as long-time, well-practiced skills.

    But some weeks you take your eye off the ball, don’t you.

    And I can’t blame any common stressors that predictably make life tougher: no illness or injury, no family or relationship conflict, no extra pressure at work or excessive financial strain.

    That particular week I failed because I didn’t stop. I didn’t let go. Too much rushing, too much on my mind, too much scheduled.

    And of course I was on edge, with that irksome and uneasy agitation that plagues you when stress gets the better of you.

    It feels unshakeable, lurks about robbing you of simple pleasures, sapping any joy from your day. Left unchecked it will escalate. We all know that stress may pass with little consequence, but let it go and go, and it mutates, into depression, anxiety, or destructive behaviors, ruining work, relationships or your health.

    Despite working hard over the years to build my repertoire of tricks and techniques to restore calm, on this occasion it was more luck than effort that turned things around for me.

    The surprising antidote arrived on the Saturday afternoon.

    Unplanned, Unexpected Calm (and How It Happens)

    “Tilt your head forward so that you’re looking down,” Claire instructed, and boy, did it feel weird. “Yes, it will feel strange, as though you’re swimming downward,” she went on.

    Ugh. What was I doing here? And why?

    Well, I had signed up my husband and I for a swimming instruction session—determined to choose a shared experience that he’d enjoy for his birthday rather than buying more stuff.

    But here I was near the end of a hectic week, with a very full head, stacks of unattended emails, and loads of washing to do. The swimming thing had seemed like a good idea at the time and I knew he’d love it, but maybe I could have skipped it, got some jobs done, and joined him afterward for dinner.

    Then it happened.

    Claire again: “Swim a short distance that you can manage without a breath, go as slow as you can, and try to minimize any splash. How does it feel, what do you notice?”

    I noticed I was beginning to feel better!

    She had my attention now, and with each instruction, she dragged me out of my head (with all of its worries and preoccupations) and into my body, full of new muscle, body-position and watery sensations.

    I let go and resigned myself to the present moment. And why not? The emails and washing were out of reach and my work worries would still be there when I got back to my desk. Anyway, in order to follow Claire’s instructions, I had to tune in!

    I had to listen and interpret her words with my body and my movements.

    Claire is a Total Immersion swimming coach, and this method of swimming is all about slowing down at first to improve the accuracy of your stroke: to get balance and movement right, in order that you maximize propulsion and minimize drag. It’s very mindful. It requires that you commit to the present moment and focus inward.

    Calm was upon me, hooray.

    Take a romantic view, and envisage the sensory experience of the cool and quiet of the water, the slow and rhythmic movements of the body. Or the simple science of it: the activity required me to engage my pre-frontal cortex, thus redressing the dominance of the stress-fuelled, and stress-fuelling, limbic system.

    Your Way is the Best Way

    The swim session reminded me of a lesson I’ve learned before, my pursuit of mindfulness and meditation. Many years ago after the traumatic loss of a loved one, I survived on yoga and walks on the beach.

    Even earlier in life, during anxious exam periods, I had a taste of it when I got some physical and mental relief from dancing around my room and singing along to Thelma Houston and The Pressure Cookers’ “I Got the Music in Me.”

    Some of my friends are also devotees of yoga and meditation, but many of them aren’t. They have their own way of getting out of their heads and into their bodies. Out of the angry memory trap of yesterday’s argument with the boss, or out of the anxiety-ridden imaginings of tomorrow’s tense family gathering.

    They find their way into the present moment and into their bodies via all sorts of sometimes forgotten, yet always relished activities, like surfing, guitar-playing, gardening, painting, baking.

    They rediscover and commit to these cherished activities, and learn as I did again in my swimming lesson, that they rebuild your depleted stores of calm and stop the ravages of stress.

    What is your calm-restoring activity? When was the last time you did it? Or is it time to take up something new?

    (It ought to go without saying that escapist distractions, like the game you play on your phone on the way home, don’t cut—they do nothing to bring you into the present, or into your body!)

    I’m certain you want more calm in your life, and I could give you a long, long list of ways to achieve it. But the simplest and best way to begin is to find your own way and commit to it. But beware.

    The trick to getting started on the path to more calm.

    Finding your way, your chosen activity, is not hard. Making it happen is harder. You must stop. You must stop and let go. Certainly, when I get it wrong, that’s where I go wrong—I don’t stop.

    You won’t find the time for it; you must make the time for it. Thank goodness I booked that swim session weeks before.

    You must stop and give yourself permission to let go of your troubles, even just for a short while.

    It won’t solve your problems, but it will, in the very least, ground you and let you feel better. And it will likely leave you better equipped to deal with your challenges.

    By all means develop your meditation skills and practice. But the simplest way to get more calm right away is to choose your calm-restoring activity, and make a time for it. That’s the trick.

    Calm will happen.

    When you struggle to get out of your head and let go of all that’s in there nagging at you, your activity is the way to go. And this easy indirect way of letting go is, happily, habit forming.

    You will get better and better at stopping. Better and better at returning to the present moment. Better and better at restoring calm.

    Thich Nhat Hanh said: I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.

    Hear, hear. I am renewing my vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free. I will do my best. And to that end, and especially when I struggle, I will make time to swim, or do yoga, or whatever it may be that will bring more calm.

    How about you?

    Man relaxing on beach image via Shutterstock

  • Overcoming Fear-Based Thinking and Creating a Happy Mind and Life

    Overcoming Fear-Based Thinking and Creating a Happy Mind and Life

    Happy Brain

    “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” ~George Addair

    My parents were teenagers when they had their first of three children. I was the middle child. They were uneducated, poor, and had very difficult upbringings.

    As I recall my childhood, most of what I remember is how fearful both of my parents were.

    They were constantly stressed out about money, the kids, the tattered house, the rusty car, and everything else in their lives.

    My mother, my first role model, was so scared of the world. She definitely had an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. She was afraid to drive a car, afraid to eat in restaurants, afraid to go shopping, afraid of strangers.

    She was completely crippled by fear.

    In order to cope with all their anxiety, my parents often turned to binge drinking and smoking.

    I remember watching the cigarette smoke form a thick haze throughout the house. My siblings and I had no choice but to inhale the second-hand smoke every day. Even our clothes and school books smelled like an ashtray.

    I hated to see them drink because it often led to angry outbursts.

    Throughout my childhood, I witnessed many painful and sometimes tragic events. My parents’ reaction to such events was always overdramatized and downright scary at times. They never knew how to cope in a civilized or peaceful manner.

    Needless to say, my childhood was filled to the brim with fearful experiences.

    I desperately wanted to free myself from all the pain and fear. I just wanted to break free and be happy.

    I vividly recall, at the age of eleven, making a promise to myself that I would do my best to get out of that mess. I knew my only escape route would be to study hard, go to university on student loans, and get a good job.

    I locked myself in my bedroom, wearing sound blocking earmuffs, and studied every day until I graduated from university at the age of twenty-three.

    Graduation day was one of the best days of my life. I finally got my ticket to freedom and happiness. At least, that was what I thought….

    After that, everything fell neatly into place. I got a good job, got married, bought a nice house, and had two beautiful children.

    But, despite all of these wonderful external experiences, I hadn’t escaped the clutch of fear. It was like a leech from childhood that wouldn’t let go.

    I often cursed my parents for saturating me with such fear.

    I made sure to hide it, especially from my loved ones and coworkers. I didn’t want my children to suffer like I did, and I didn’t want my employer or coworkers to see my weakness.

    But the fear was building. It was starting to beat me up. I wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.

    I had to figure out how to deal with this fear, and I had to do it fast.

    My heart and soul told me to dive deeply into the spiritual aspect of life.

    I diligently consumed a huge amount of spiritual/self-help/philosophical literature, attended numerous classes and retreats, and faithfully practiced much of what I had learned.

    I was enthralled by it all and genuinely excited. This world wisdom resonated to the core of my being.

    I finally found the tools necessary to help catapult me to the other side of fear.

    Over the past several years I’ve adopted many spiritual practices. They have not only helped me deal with fear, but have improved every aspect of my life.

    Here are the top lessons I’ve learned:

    1. The present moment is powerful.

    There is so much clarity, peace, and joy in the present moment. To truly let go of the past and stop fearing the future is liberating. It’s the doorway to freedom.

    Daily meditation is one of the best ways to fully experience the present moment.

    I have a handful of meditation techniques in my toolbox, but I often resort to simple breath meditation for thirty minutes a day to help ground me in the present moment. As well, I practice mindfulness daily.

    One way I practice is to eat mindfully for one meal each day. I am fully present while I eat. I eat slowly and I engage my senses. I pay attention to how the food looks, tastes, and smells. I feel it in my mouth and how it settles in my body. I try to experience the food as though it was my first time ever tasting it. With such focus, I inevitably slip into the present moment.

    It doesn’t matter if you meditate, practice mindful eating, or turn any other daily activity into an opportunity for mindfulness; what matters is that you create time to practice living fully in the present moment.

    2. Awareness is essential.

    We are not what we think we are; we are not our thoughts. With this higher level of awareness, you can step outside of yourself and watch your mind as it races from one thought to another. And you can witness your habitual emotional reactions to those thoughts.

    You become the empowered watcher of your mind instead of being lost and entangled in the web of thoughts and emotions. You realize that you have a choice in how you react to your thoughts and feelings.

    To give you a more concrete description of what I’m talking about here, I will give you an example of how I use a higher level of awareness to deal with potentially stressful situations in everyday life.

    I had an important work project to complete and I started to feel overwhelmed because I thought I wouldn’t be able to meet my deadline.

    Rather than automatically defaulting back into my fearful feelings, thoughts, and reactions, I stopped myself immediately. I took a few slow deep breaths and focused on the sensations of my breathing. This helped me connect with the present moment and offered space between my thoughts and my actions.

    Then, I spoke statements to myself that made me feel better, including: “It’s not the end of the world if I can’t finish this,” “My boss knows I’m a good worker and he may extend the deadline,” and “If I take a few minutes to relax my mind, I will work more productively.”

    The simple acts of stopping myself, focusing on my breath, and talking positively to myself brought me to a higher level of awareness. I realized I had a choice in how I could think and react. Within a few minutes I calmed myself down completely and I successfully finished the project on time.

    3. Happiness is within.

    All of the great spiritual teachers, masters, and philosophers of the world share the same message that happiness cannot be found outside of us, in the external world. There is no person, place, material possession, or amount of money that will bring you true, lasting happiness.

    Rather, happiness is found within. You have to spend time taking care of yourself and closely evaluating what makes you feel happy. It will vary from person to person.

    My first encounter with true inner happiness occurred during meditation. I had been practicing for about a year at that point.

    As I sat in stillness, I felt myself gently go beyond the tangle of thoughts and emotions. I shifted from a baseline of worry to a feeling of peace and happiness. It was wonderful. I finally tapped into a state of consciousness that was hiding inside of me my whole life.

    I also feel happier inside when I eat well, exercise, sleep well, practice gratitude, spend time with loving friends and family, and listen to uplifting music.

    Shift your focus from externals and you’ll be better equipped to identify the little things that bring you peace and joy.

    Final Thoughts

    I was dumped into the depths of fear when I arrived on this planet. But with courage, focus, belief, and desire I ploughed myself a path to happiness.

    My life today is quite the opposite to that of my childhood. Now, I enjoy my life. I appreciate and love my family, friends, and the life I have built.

    Please don’t get me wrong—my life has its challenges. Challenges are a normal part of human existence.

    But now, I have the tools necessary to prevent myself from defaulting back to my old, habitual, negative, and fearful way of thinking. Instead, I try my best to focus on the good in life and consistently reach for the valuable lessons in every difficulty.

    Today, when I look back at my childhood, I feel love and forgiveness toward my parents. I now realize that they tried their best from where they stood. They were just human beings lost in the whirlwind of fear and struggle.

    In fact, without my childhood, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I feel that my childhood clearly showed me what I didn’t want and, in turn, it forced me to focus on what I really wanted in life, what we all want—to be happy.

    Happy brain image via Shutterstock

  • How Meditation Calms Your Mind and Makes You Feel More Alive

    How Meditation Calms Your Mind and Makes You Feel More Alive

    “While meditating we are simply seeing what the mind has been doing all along.” ~Allan Lokos

    People around the globe have practiced meditation for centuries upon centuries, and it’s quickly becoming one of the most popular pastimes in the modern world. It’s one of the most effective ways to find inner peace, relax, and cope with stress.

    I’ve had my share of stress and troubles over the years. I remember one time, nearly eight years ago, when the stress and anxiety really got to me and made my life miserable.

    I was facing the prospect of being made redundant at work. The economy was in a bad way, money was tight, and my relationships were strained. I didn’t see any clear way out of the oncoming storm.

    The darkness began to surround me. Depression hit, and I began taking tranquillizers. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I was apathetic and often vented my anger on those who were closest to me. On top of this, I treated my body poorly by eating junk food.

    All this was affecting my health, as well as my performance at work and in life itself.

    One day I decided that I could not live like that any longer. I had finally had enough.

    How I Turned My Life Around

    To begin with, I was open and honest with friends and family. I explained why I was so stressed and how poorly I was coping, and told them that I planned to change.

    I told myself that everything would be fine, that these bad days wouldn’t last forever; it was just a temporary experience. And even if I lost my job, sooner or later I would find something else. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

    I joined a local gym and began exercising.

    I’d exercise three or four times a week after work, would eat fresh and healthy meals, which I’d prepare for myself, and would work a little bit in the garden behind my house.

    Work slowly began improving. I kept my job, and once again I felt pretty good.

    At the gym one day, however, I got talking to a guy about general health, fitness, and positivity, and he recommended meditation.

    I was sceptical at first. I thought meditation was something reserved for monks.

    Nevertheless I decided to give it a go, and eventually incorporated it into my daily routine.

    Meditation now comes as natural to me as brushing my teeth and showering in the morning.

    I’d like to share a few of the fantastic benefits that I’ve experienced with meditation in the hopes that maybe you could experience them too.

    1. Meditation helps you foster inner peace.

    As we leave our homes or belongings untidy and unmaintained for prolonged periods of time, they become dirty, grimy, dusty, and aren’t very pleasant to look at or be around.

    Now, imagine your body as an untidy room or belonging. Instead of dirt, grime, and clutter, however, you experience anxiety, stress, depression, and negative thoughts.

    We can pick these up from all sorts of locations, including things we see on TV or on the news, from people at work, from friends and family members, from stressful situations, and just about everywhere else in the world today.

    Rather than stewing over these situations, surroundings, and people, meditation teaches us to simply release the negativity. It won’t remove those feelings, but it does give us tools to be able to cope with them in a more effective way.

    The little things, even the larger things, don’t bother us as much, so we can remain positive, happy, tranquil, and peaceful within our self.

     2. Meditation helps you find more perfect moments.

    Rather than reacting to people and situations, you instead find yourself observing the world that is happening around you.

    Before meditation, I would focus on the negative energy and allow it to overwhelm me. Thanks to meditation, I discovered something amazing: that there is perfection everywhere around us.

    Instead of focusing on the negative, I found myself searching for the positive perfection in each moment. The faint smile from a stranger, the taste of my favorite meal, or even just the comfort of spending a few moments in quiet solitude all became more important to me once I could release the negative energy.

    3. Meditation helps improve your concentration.

    One great benefit of meditation is that it helps you vastly improve your concentration levels, which in turn will help make you far more productive.

    When you meditate, you clear your mind of distractions and instead focus on the act of mediating itself. Then after meditation, you’re better able to focus on what’s right in front of you instead of getting caught up in your thoughts, fears, and worries.

     4. You don’t find yourself bothered by smaller things.

    Say, for example, you drop your dinner plate on the kitchen floor and have to then clean it up. Rather than shouting, swearing, and stewing over the fact that you made a small mess, meditation teaches us to not get bothered by smaller things.

    Instead of feeling angry and sorry for ourselves, we simply grab a cloth and broom, clean up the mess, and get ourselves more food, without getting worked up about it.

    Meditation teaches us to not sweat the small stuff, and helps to really put things into perspective.

    There are people out there dealing with overwhelming problems. In the grand scheme of things, a little mess isn’t that big of a deal.

     5. Meditation helps to awaken forgiveness.

    Another great benefit of meditation is that it helps us let go of anger more easily so we can forgive and forget.

    When I was working abroad I fell ill and had to go back home earlier than I planned, so I took my payment and left.

    What I didn’t realize was that I was entitled to a bonus for my work. It wasn’t much money, but still, it was something.

    A few months later, I found out from a co-worker that “my good friend” had collected my bonus from my boss and did not give it to me when he came back home.

    I was angry and disappointed, especially since we’ve known each other since kindergarten and I trusted him. It was months before I started talking to him again.

    I’m not 100% sure how I would react to something like this today, but I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t keep my anger bottled up inside of me, as it is self-destructive. With the peace I’ve fostered today, it likely would be far easier to let go.

    We all have those moments where we say, “I’ll never forgive that person. Don’t they know what they’ve done to me?” What meditation has helped me to realize is that forgiveness isn’t about giving something undeserved to others. It’s about giving something that is fully deserved to myself.

    6. You begin to feel more alive.

    It might sound a little cheesy, but since I began meditating regularly, I’ve felt more alive than ever before.

    It’s as if all of my senses have been awakened simultaneously. Images seem crisper. Flavors seem tastier. Joy seems happier (if that’s even possible).

    I’ve found that I’m able to read people better, as well, both emotionally and physically. There’s this sense that allows me to detect if something is bothering someone or if they are having a brilliant day. It’s a beautiful experience that was entirely unexpected when I began my pursuit of meditation.

    Above all else, I’m more self-aware. I know what works and what doesn’t work for me. I know how to get the best out of myself, productively and spiritually, and it’s all because I took up meditation thanks to a fateful conversation I had one day at the gym.

    “Small shifts in your thinking, and small changes in your energy, can lead to massive alterations of your end result.” ~Kevin Michel

  • The Key to Freedom: Minding Your Own Business

    The Key to Freedom: Minding Your Own Business

    Freedom

    “The day you stop racing is the day you win the race.” ~Bob Marley

    Let me take you back to the beginning of my day, how I used to do it.

    Flicking through my Facebook newsfeed, clicking on profiles, scrolling through comments, monitoring social interactions, checking how many likes my last post or profile picture got. Then I’m going to my therapist, to talk about how worthless my own life is, how inadequate I feel.

    I’m not saving the world, pursuing my passion, making friends, or traveling. Neither am I getting married or engaged nor having children—and I do not have a clue what the heck I even think about all of these prospects, whether I even want them.

    I can barely look at myself in the mirror. I hate my life and my own weakness for not taking control of this pathetic situation.

    The smiling faces on my social media page grin down at me like clown masks in some perturbed haunted house in a nightmare. I ask myself, why am I taking their happiness so personally?

    We can’t seem to escape comparison. We seem to be enmeshed in it, entangled in it, trapped and suffocated by it. We can’t seem to understand who we are or where we are in life without looking around us to compare our position.

    Somewhere inside us we believe that if we can gain all the information that we can through comparing ourselves to those ‘better than us,’ maybe we will find the key to that elusive happiness, which comes only from the confidence that we are good enough.

    If we keep on social media stalking those who are living the lives of our dreams, maybe we will pick up on that thing that makes them so different from us—so much ‘better.’

    I believe we aren’t after their lives so much as what we perceive is their ease. As much as the freedom they ooze, or the contentment they display, we want their happiness. We forget that most people only display the highlight reels of their lives on the Internet.

    In fact, I used to tell myself that we create ourselves, and I tried to make myself a collage of all the people that I admired—Beyoncé included.

    I told myself, that I didn’t have any preferences. I treated myself as a blank canvas, and by that I mean I slowly rubbed out anything that came from within, without reason or logic, and replaced it with everything I was attracted to externally, like a magpie.

    The noise I was letting in from outside was torturing. And deafening.

    When the toxic concoction of low self-esteem, ambition, insecurity, and unfavorable self-comparison escalates, you may get depressed, as I did.

    My former way of life (in combination with a complex range of other factors) made me ill. While everyone is different, I realized, for me, the key to recovering my mental health was to supplement professional help and therapy with a radical simplifying of my life.

    Today, I wake up in the morning and open my eyes, taking a good look around at where I am, noticing a kitten asleep at my feet. I talk with my sister who I share a room with; we both get dressed for work, joking and teasing the other on our rushed fashion choices.

    I look out of my open attic window and smell the fresh crisp air, watching the stillness of the tree-lined street against a backdrop of rolling green hills, before the storm of traffic and rush hour.

    I get changed and choose my clothes. I pick out a book for my short commute to a digital marketing agency where I work as copywriter. I walk to work lightly, observing my surroundings and feeling life flow through me, a dull vibration at every step.

    I sit on a seat on the public bus as children get on with their parents, gossiping and teasing amongst each other. My mind is still, and I feel strangely alone—but alone in my own company. I am with myself.

    I am whole. How curious. What changed? Very little, externally. I unplugged from the noise around me and started to mind my own business.

    It happened one day, quietly, and I found it made my thoughts less erratic, my mind less split and divided. I didn’t force myself to come off social media; I knew I was way too stubborn and addicted to do that. So I turned my attention, gently, not in distraction, to the present moment instead.

    I peeked out of the quicksand that is an obsession with comparison and self-deprecation, and asked myself out of curiosity, what’s going on in my own life?

    I looked around and thought: this is it. Your dreams haven’t come true yet, and your past is filled with soreness. But there is no escape from that which you consider to be a hellhole, this is your life.

    And you are living it.

    Then a curious thing happened. I allowed any pain to pass through me like water in my hands. I processed the beauty in the same way, and I felt a part of life. Like life itself, in fact.

    I realized that I wasn’t in a hellhole at all. Relentless clinging to my thoughts, obsessions, and desperate escapes from life—resistance—had made it so. And all I had to do to be free was let go.

    Don’t worry, minding your own business doesn’t mean ignoring everyone else’s existence. But it does mean you get to control how you give and what you give, so that it is conscious, not masochistic martyrdom.

    Rather than thinking, I should travel abroad and save all those poor unfortunate souls less privileged than I (which is escapist, and also patronizing, and also doesn’t tackle the issue at the root), I began to help my mother, my siblings, my friends and began to write and share work on poverty and mental illness, as these were my most immediate experiences.

    Everyone has a different path, of course, and this is only one route, which brought me peace.

    I decided to pay attention to my existence, seeing as it was the only thing I had, after all.

    And, I started to really see the things around me, like the dust on the corners of my floorboards, and the hundreds of books I’d bought and piled up in desperation for some kind of knowledge that might bring me certainty or security, thinking I should maybe arrange them in alphabetical order.

    I would barely acknowledge these tiny details of living when I was caught up in the whirlwind of my mind—and now they grounded me in a stillness that calmed me.

    I was able to let myself live and feel worthy of the miracle of existence, with all its highs and lows. Above all, I felt a gorgeous freedom, liberating, vast and expansive, allowing me to have fun with curiosity, gratitude, and peace.

    I told myself I would enjoy the days I had, as I passed through this world, just like everyone else was also passing through. By freeing myself every day, and indeed every moment, from the limits of comparison, competition, chasing, and clinging, I began to mind my own business.

    We can all experience this freedom. We just have to choose to see life through our own eyes, by being present in the only moment that matters: this one.

    Free, happy woman image via Shutterstock

  • Fear Can Only Hurt Us If We Let It

    Fear Can Only Hurt Us If We Let It

    Scared Boy

    “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    I lay in bed staring into the darkness feeling physically ill with an acute sense of anxiety the like of which I hadn’t experienced in quite some time.

    It felt like I had a soccer ball sized, black, dense object consuming the entire center of my stomach, causing nausea to ripple up into my throat uninvited.

    I knew it wasn’t that hot, with the air conditioning on full, yet my legs were sweating, as was the back of my head. I could feel the damp pillow under me and the bed sheets sticking to me whenever I moved.

    I cursed my own stupidity and replayed the previous week’s events over and over again in my mind as though under some illusion that the more I did this the easier things would become. As a coping strategy it wasn’t one of my proudest moments.

    You may think I’m describing some event from my dim and distant past. When the high stress of working in big-ticket sales would cause me endless sleepless nights as I fretted over deals missed and even deals made that may go wrong.

    But this was last month.

    Wind back in time to April with tax day looming. After I forgot to send some bank statements to my accountant she had to file for an extension to help avoid a fine from the IRS.

    I had put aside some money based upon what my tax bill was last year with a little bit extra. I called my accountant a few weeks later and asked her if she could estimate the amount I would owe.

    In fairness to her she was reluctant to do so, but the figure she gave me after much prompting had me punching the air in delight, imaginary high-fiving my dogs, and grinning like a demented Cheshire Cat. It was way lower than I anticipated.

    Shortly after, we got the confirmation that our best friends were coming over to stay for two weeks later on in the year. It was going to be the first time they’d visited in almost five years and to celebrate I suggested we go on a five-day Caribbean cruise.

    They agreed and shortly after everything was booked and I was chilled and thrilled. Then it all went wrong. Horribly wrong.

    No more than forty-eight hours later I got an e-mail from my accountant saying the final tax bill wasn’t what she had advised, but eight times higher.

    How could that be? I called her and she apologized profusely, but it was what it was and there was nothing more she could do.

    As I lay in bed that night I was cursing myself for rushing to book the cruise and for not making higher regular payments to the IRS as I had been advised.

    I have said many times, “I have no sympathy with people complaining about their tax bill, as they can’t charge you for what you haven’t earned.” In the early hours of the morning this was the biggest stick I had to beat myself with, and trust me, it was a very big stick.

    Stress, fear, and anxiety are all much the same thing. They all stem from a feeling that we’re not in control of life’s events. This stimulates the fight, flight, or freeze reaction triggered by the sympathetic nervous system, courtesy of the Limbic System in the brain.

    There was no way I could fight the IRS and I’m not sure where I would fly to, so I lay in bed frozen with anxiety.

    After several hours lying there listening to my own self-recrimination, I remembered to tell myself that it was okay to feel anxious under such circumstances. That it was a perfectly natural response to a negative event, and it was just a feeling.

    And fear is only a feeling, albeit a powerful one. There is no thing called “fear.” You cannot touch it, smell it, see it, or taste it. As with any emotion, you can only feel it.

    Also, we cannot experience fear if we are truly and congruently living in the present moment. Fear is always the mind projecting an inability to cope with a future event or situation.

    It’s not real per se. Fear itself cannot hurt you. It’s how you respond to the perceived threat that hurts you.

    Fear has a valuable evolutionary purpose in the survival of the human species because (for the most part) it stops us doing things that can threaten our health, safety, and well-being.

    However, the worst strategy in dealing with fear is to fight it by resisting. Or to feed it by seeking out the worst possible scenarios to relatively benign situations.

    I was doing both. I was feeding it by dragging myself through an imaginary court of stupidity in my own mind. At the same time I was also resisting it by telling myself I was being stupid to worry about such a thing.

    Finally common sense kicked in and I decided to observe it, to be curious about it and to drop the futile resistance that was only giving it more strength.

    I thanked it for its concern and reminded it that between the two of us we had dealt with every single-issue life has thrown at us for over half a century, and that we would deal with this also.

    I could feel the black ball start to slowly melt and the nausea subside.

    You too have dealt with everything life has thrown at you to date otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post.

    There is nothing in your life you haven’t coped with and there is nothing you won’t cope with. Sure, there will be times when it doesn’t feel like that, when the fear demon is whispering in your ear that things won’t be okay and you start to let it take control.

    But, he is mistaken and the only power he has is the power you give him. Just hug him (or her) and say with sincerity, “Thank you for looking out for me. I know you have the best intentions, but everything will be okay. I promise.”

    Scared boy image via Shutterstock

  • 1,501 Mindful Communication Tips (Interview & Giveaway: What Would Buddha Say?)

    1,501 Mindful Communication Tips (Interview & Giveaway: What Would Buddha Say?)

    Buddha with Sunset

    Update: The winners for this giveaway are Divya Rangi and Sand.

    Growing up in a loud Italian family, I learned early on to scream and speak fast if I wanted to be heard. Neither of these things is conducive to speaking mindfully. And doing these two things together, especially when angry or agitated, all but guarantees a stressful, ineffective conversation.

    I’ve had quite a few of those in my life. And more times than I care to admit I’ve hurt people with things I’ve said—to them or about them.

    I’ve offended people by speaking impulsively, I’ve damaged trust by venting to a third party instead of confronting someone directly, and I’ve insulted people to get a few laughs without really considering the impact of my sarcastic words.

    While I’ve made tremendous progress with these things, I know I still have room for improvement. If you do, as well, you may appreciate Barbara Ann Kipfer’s What Would Buddha Say?

    The book presents 1,501 mindful communication tips based on the Buddhist concept of Right Speech—speech that is useful and beneficial—including:

    It’s not just what you say—it’s how, when, and why you say it.

    Even though what you have to say is important, you can respect what others find important at the time.

    Listen with compassion, without judgment, and with an open mind.

    It’s essentially a massive list of reminders to help you give your full, thoughtful attention to your words so you’re more likely to communicate clearly and less likely to damage your relationships.

    At the back of the book, you’ll find a number of short essays that address issues related to Right Speech, including anger, criticism, and overthinking, along with several meditations.

    While you could read through the book from start to finish, I like to open to a random page in the morning and read one idea to carry into the day. (I recommend using the book this way, since there’s a lot of overlap with the teachings, and they don’t build on one another, but rather complement each other.)

    I’ve found that absorbing just a few words about watching my words helps me set the intention to speak mindfully, and that setting this intention is the key to kinder, clearer, more effective communication.

    I’m grateful that Barbara took the time to answer my questions about her book and Right Speech, and that she’s provided two free copies of What Would Buddha Say? for Tiny Buddha readers.

    What Would Buddha Say?The Giveaway

    To enter to win one of two free copies of What Would Buddha Say?

    • Leave a comment below
    • For an extra entry, tweet: Enter the @tinybuddha giveaway to win a free copy of What Would Buddha Say? http://bit.ly/1giwpOP

    You can enter until midnight PST on Friday, July 10th.

    The Interview

    1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to write this book?

    I am an inveterate listmaker. I started my “things to be happy about” list in 1966, sixth grade. That became 14,000 things to be happy about, which has been in print for twenty-five years and has sold more than a million copies.

    I’ve been a lexicographer for nearly forty years and at one point I was compiling a kids’ encyclopedia. When I got to the subject of Buddhism and started reading about it, I was overjoyed that the Buddha loved lists, too, and he taught others by using lists.

    From there, I decided to learn as much as I could and earned a Master’s and PhD in Buddhist Studies. That knowledge has made it possible for me to write spiritually themed books like What Would Buddha Say?

    2. How can we improve our lives and relationships by practicing Right Speech?

    Here is what I think I should have put for the first entry: If you hear a human voice…listen! That person is probably talking to you! And I am not joking: the biggest improvements we can make in the area of Right Speech are to listen more and talk a lot less.

    Think about how you get yourself in trouble, how you usually get into conflicts with others, how unhappiness is often caused. The majority of the time, the cause is what you say. This book is offered to help readers learn to speak truthfully and with lovingkindness.

    3. What have been the biggest challenges for you personally when it comes to practicing Right Speech?

    Exactly the same as everybody else—which is why I was so keen on writing this book out of the eight parts of the Noble Eightfold Path.

    As a lexicographer and listmaker, I have been awash in the world of words all my life. As a Buddhist studies scholar, I read and read and read about Right Speech. Yet, I say something boneheaded just about every day! I need a book of reminders, so I wrote one.

    I have worked from home for thirty years, so my social skills are not honed like others’ and I’m also sometimes starved for social contact. So when I go to something where there are people, I sometimes overshare or voice my opinions too boldly. I have been practicing mindfulness so that I stop myself before launching into one of these “Barbara thinks” soliloquies.

    4. Oftentimes, we say things we don’t mean to say because we speak when we are angry. How can we work on this so we less frequently say things we regret?

    Before real anger occurs, there is a mental discomfort and an awareness that something is happening that you do not want. By being mindful and aware of that momentary gap before reacting takes over, you can make a controlled, graceful response. Learning how to return to the present moment with mindfulness is like a safety net when you are provoked by anger or hatred.

    5. What, have you found, is the best approach to responding when someone else speaks unkindly to us?

    If someone is expressing anger or unkind words toward you, watch your breath and keep it slow and steady. Pause for several seconds and wait. The person may sense that they are being unkind or angry and they may stop. If you react with hurt or anger, then you yourself destroy your own peace of mind.

    It is not that we should stand there and take it. Often, there are choices. If you do not react and the person continues a tirade, you can simply walk away. You can try to change the subject or even make a joke, but that is often not as effectual as walking away.

    In the pause, remember that you, too, have acted this way toward others—maybe even the very person who is now doing it to you.

    Some compassion may arise. And in the moment of compassion, you can remind yourself that the anger the other person is expressing may have little or nothing to do with you, but has formulated due to other things that person is having trouble handling.

    6. What is one thing we can do to start speaking more kindly to ourselves?

    The most important person to speak kindly and truthfully to is yourself, with inner speech. Negative inner talk only creates a negative inner emotional landscape. Show as much compassion to yourself as you would toward others and watch your life begin to change for the better.

    Part of the reason we are unkind to ourselves is because we overthink things we have done in the past or what we will say or do in the future. Practicing the art of staying in the present moment keeps you from heading off to the past or future, where you tend to berate or prepare yourself.

    Our world is full of competitiveness and comparison. We are faced with it constantly. The expectations we have for ourselves and others create unskillful thoughts, speech, and actions. By first being kind to yourself and giving yourself a break if you say or do something “wrong,” puts you on the path toward being kind to others and giving them a break.

    7. How can we apply the teachings of Right Speech to our online communication to create more intentional interactions and less hurtful ones?

    Whenever you are about to write or say something, ask yourself if the words will result in well-being or harm. If well-being, then say it. If harm, then do not say it.

    8. One piece of advice from your book that really stuck with me was, “Resist the urge to tell others what they need.” Can you elaborate a little on this, and why it’s crucial to Right Speech?

    We like to solve problems and make them go away. We have a great aversion to problems, big or small, ours or others’.

    If someone complains about their job, rather than listen, we may suggest that they quit and get another job. It’s not like the other person does not know that! Why do we feel the need to make such a statement? The reason is, we want things to always be nice, no suffering and no problems.

    We expend a lot of effort trying to control things, to avoid unpleasantness and grasp more pleasantness.

    It is best to listen to a friend, simply listen, without feeling duty-bound to solve the person’s problems for them. Accept not understanding or being in control as a liberation and a positive choice.

    9. In addition to the challenges of speaking kindly, many of us struggle with listening fully, especially since our lives—and minds—can get so busy. What’s one thing we can do to become better listeners?

    Listening is an art. We need to practice it more! It is optimal to listen with a still and concentrated mind. Then it is possible to be responsive to what is being said.

    The combination of a meditation practice and the practice of mindfulness in everyday life is what is needed to cultivate a still and concentrated mind. That mind is capable of the pause, the thoughtful response, the silence instead of yelling or being snippy.

    If you want others to listen and understand you better, think about what makes you want to listen. A person who speaks kindly about others and the world is someone you like to listen to. A person who talks about interesting things, things of interest to more than just themselves, is someone you like to listen to.

    10. What do you hope readers take away from What Would Buddha Say? and its emphasis on intentional communication?

    Remember that Right Speech is a practice. The more you practice, the more you will feel the difference between reacting blindly and responding—being aware of what you do.

    Practice is what makes the difference between a position held in principle and its day-to-day application. Whatever you practice, you get better at.

    The more often you get irritated, the better you get at irritation. The more often you speak kindly, the more often you will default to speaking kindly. If you want to go in a different direction, you need to work at it.

    You can learn more about What Would Buddha Say? on Amazon here.

    FTC Disclosure: I receive complimentary books for reviews and interviews on tinybuddha.com, but I am not compensated for writing or obligated to write anything specific. I am an Amazon affiliate, meaning I earn a percentage of all books purchased through the links I provide on this site. 

    Buddha and sunset image via Shutterstock

  • Look Around (Not at Your Phone) and Be Present in Your Life

    Look Around (Not at Your Phone) and Be Present in Your Life

    Friends on Cell Phones

    “Enjoy the little things because one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” ~Robert Brault

    Ten years ago I moved from the urban metropolis of London, where I grew up and spent the early part of my adult life, to the rural Mediterranean idyll of the coast of the Costa Brava in Northern Spain, in my quest to find the ultimate “quality of life.”

    I was able to make this move largely because I could be digitally connected to the rest of the world from anywhere.

    For me, digital technology in its early form provided a whole new series of life choices.

    Although it was during the pre-smartphone and WiFi era, I was able to be digitally connected via an ADSL cable that magically appeared from a field and connected to my studio, enabling me to work from there, nestled on a remote hill top location, surrounded by languid hilltops and lingering forests, underscored by a sea that merged with the sky like a pair of faded jeans.

    Perfect live/work balance achieved, or so I thought.

    But that was before. That was before something that is five inches tall and a quarter inch thick transformed every aspect of the way we live. The smartphone.

    The advent of the smartphone changed my life, but not in the way that you might think. It actually took me away from life, because it took over my life.

    Suddenly I didn’t need to be in my studio on my laptop to be connected, or to get my emails or to send projects through to clients, as I could do that from anywhere. I was free, no longer desk or studio bound.

    I could access information wherever I was. It was a revelation and totally life changing. However, although it was an incredible, life-enhancing tool in many ways, I think I was slow to realize that having access to the world in the palm of my hand also means the world had access to me.

    As my euphoria at being able to be connected anywhere and at any time began to wear off, it was replaced by the debilitating dependence of needing to be connected anywhere and everywhere, at all times.

    The more I became digitally connected, ironically I began to feel more and more personally disconnected from my surroundings, as my virtual life was not giving me any real nourishment.

    It provided a lot of ‘noise’ but I could no longer find the inherent ‘melody’ and rhythm of my daily life.

    Given that I was living in the sort of surroundings that are viewed as the ultimate off grid environment (the sort of place actually where weekend digital detoxes take place), I realized that the problem could not only be viewed as relating to a purely urban demographic.

    I looked around me, at my friends and colleagues, and realized that we would get together for lunch on a beach or at someone’s house and we would all have our heads buried in our smartphones, oblivious to each other or the breathtaking beauty that surrounded us.

    It was a problem that was wide spread. I realized that what had at first been my life line had little by little started to strangle me.

    My digital dependence had become a habit filled with avoidance techniques, providing constant distraction to avoid being with myself. I found that, without realizing it, my reliance on my digital devices had gone from expanding my life to disabling it.

    When we created the smartphone it was designed to be a tool, albeit a very useful tool, but I was using it for everything it wasn’t designed to do:

    • Distraction
    • Taking me away from awkward situations
    • Making me feel busy
    • Make me feel important
    • Not making me feel alone
    • Anything in fact to avoid spending time with myself

    I took a hard look at myself and found that, despite living in an exquisite natural landscape, I was actually living a digitally reductive, hands-free, edited life, where nothing was messy, chaotic, or emotive.

    My epiphany came on a Saturday morning in my local market, where I had gone to get some vegetables for a dinner I was giving that evening. I arrived at the market, which was a bustling, vibrant gathering of the whole neighboring town, the meeting place for everyone to get together once a week.

    Walking amongst the throngs of people looking at the kaleidoscope of recently picked, sun ripened fruits and vegetables, was a heady, textural experience.

    The air was filled with the aromas of basil, ripe fruits, locally made honey, and soft goats cheeses, but I was oblivious to that, as I was on a mission to get some tomatoes to roast with some fresh fish for the dinner I was making that evening.

    I joined the endlessly long line at the fruit and vegetable stall I usually get my produce from and was checking my emails while I waited, and waited, and waited.

    The line didn’t seem to be moving. The only thing that seemed to be moving were the numbers on the digital clock of my smartphone showing me that I had been standing in line for twenty minutes.

    I was getting more and more stressed thinking, How long can it take to buy a pound of misshapen tomatoes?

    I stepped outside of the line to try and find out what was going on. Looking to the front of the line I saw an elderly lady, with her dog, chatting with the woman who ran the stall.

    They were discussing the stew she had made last week from the marrow she had bought from there, the plight of her neighbor who had had a fall, and the wedding cake she had made for her niece’s wedding.

    They were talking, communicating face to face, sharing the stories that made up their daily lives.

    As I looked along the line I noticed that actually everyone was talking to each other, animated, interested and alive. 

    That was the tipping point for me when I realized that I was physically there but was not present. I was missing in action from my life and missing all the little things.

    For me really being present meant giving myself times to disconnect from digital technology and instead taking time to connect with the seasons, learn the names of the different winds, recognize the cycles of the moon, and read the ever changing personality of the sea.

    Ultimately I learned how to be from going to local farmers’ markets. There, I learned to appreciate the beauty of imperfection. The splendor of a misshapen tomato, appreciating the real meaning of “slow.”

    I had to learn a new rhythm, one without a preset time limit for every thing. Where queuing for twenty minutes to buy some fruit was just how it was, and was something to be savored and appreciated, because every one in the line spoke to each other and wanted to share their stories.

    It was there, waiting to buy my imperfectly shaped, local, seasonal produce, that I began to really connect with where I was and learned to appreciate all the moments and experiences that really matter—those unique fleeting moments that bring us joy.

    If you are finding you are missing in action from your life, try adopting some of the practices that were game changers for me.

    Remember to take some time out every day to put your smartphone away, pause, breathe, look up, and embrace the art of slow by living in the now.

    Scheduling in fifteen minutes of mindfulness meditation practice every morning will set you up for a day of centered calmness, and will encourage a reconnection with yourself and your natural surroundings.

    In order to be more engaged in your life, try to do things more mindfully by concentrating on being present and in the moment.

    These small changes to your daily practices are manageable and meaningful, and will shift your focus from “faster, bigger, better” to an appreciation of the micro moments, the little things that punctuate our daily lives, which ultimately, in the words of Robert Brault, “we realize are the big things.”

    Friends on phones image via Shutterstock