The best way is to start of with a small ritual as you sit down to eat a meal. Here are three possible rituals:

1. Scan Your Hungers

You can scan your various types of hungers and rate each hunger. This is particularly useful if you’re trying to lose weight because it helps you understand how you respond to your hungers. This understanding allows you to make healthier eating choices.

2. Study Your Meal.

You can take thirty seconds to carefully study the food on your plate. Smell and touch the food and appreciate it’s qualities. Food is a life force that allows you to live so take time to appreciate and respect it.

3. Recite a Verse.

You can recite a prayer, mantra or poem in a heartfelt way. I say heartfelt because any ritual can become a thoughtless, automatic process. This won’t help you eat more mindfully because the goal is to become present with the meal.

My favorite verse is the Zen Short Meal Gatha:

We receive this food in gratitude to all beings
Who have helped to bring it to our table,
And vow to respond in turn to those in need
With wisdom and compassion.

If you recite this Gatha, then it helps to focus on all the steps that were required to bring the food to your table. For instance, you could think of

1. The people that prepared the food.
2. The people at the grocery store where you purchased the food.
3. The truck driver that delivered the food.
4. The people that built the truck for the truck driver to drive.
5. The people at the factory that processed the food.
6. The farmer that grew the food.
7. The people that sold the farmer seed and equipment to grow the food.
8. And so on.

The more you think about it, the more you realize the we’re all a web of interconnected dependencies and you can be grateful for those connections that brought you your meal.

You can also focus on the fact that plants and animals die so that you may eat. This is not a morbid idea –  it’s just the nature of things. You can be thankful for the plants and animals that died so you can sustain your life.

Do you have any ideas for a useful ritual at the start of a meal? What do you do?

Related posts:

1. 30 Days of Mindful Eating – Day 14
2. Your Mindful Eating Mission
3. 30 Days of Mindful Eating – Day 30

I recently read my friend Jay’s post on Lazy Summer Days in which he reduced his posting schedule for the summer. He explains why:

Because I’ve been out enjoying life instead of sitting on the computer for hours upon hours. My daughter is here. I’m loving the time with her. Swimming. Playing together. Hanging out in bookstores together. Going to museums. Going to the aquarium. Going to Six-Flags. Enjoying life…enjoying the great outdoors as much as possible. Doing fun stuff. Enjoying the present moment as much as possible. You know…being a dad. That’s what’s important to me.

I feel the same as Jay. My son, Ben, is home from college for the summer and our family is together again. Also, I enjoy the warmth and beauty of the outdoors during summer. I want to have more summer fun and spend less time writing.

I try hard to write posts that help you. Only you can decide if I’m succeeding, but I want to maintain the level of quality and usefulness that I believe my posts provide. I don’t want to waste your time with filler or fluff posts just to meet some artificial posting quota.

So, I want to maintain this blog’s quality, but I don’t want to spend as much time writing. Something has to give and that something is the number of posts I’m writing. For the rest of the summer, I’ll only post once every week or two. I hope you understand.

If you live someplace warm, I hope you’ll also have more summer fun. Life is too short to spend too much time in front of the computer.

Sincerely,

Roger

No related posts.

Thinking traps are inaccurate or distorted ways of thinking that lead to depression or less resilience to life’s problems. We all have different ways of thinking about problems in our lives. Many of the ways we think about our problems are useful, but sometimes we fall into these thinking traps.

By becoming aware of these thinking traps, you can recognize when you fall into a trap and then free yourself. Let’s look at each of the eight thinking traps.

1. Jumping to Conclusions

Supposed you received the following email from your boss:

I need to see you in my office at 2pm today.

What’s your immediate thought? If you’re like many people, you may think “Oh no, this has to be bad news. I must have done something wrong”. In other words, you jump to a negative conclusion about the meeting without any further details. The meeting could really be about anything: a problem, additional work, praise, or many other things. Even if it’s about a problem, the problem may have been another employee’s fault or nobody’s fault.

To counteract this thinking trap, you can review the facts and recent information. You can ask additional probing questions:

• When you think back to yesterday, did you do something wrong or poorly?
• What else could the meeting be about?

Jumping to Conclusions is a catchall for the other traps. In other words, the other traps are really just more specific cases of jumping to conclusions.

2. Tunnel Vision

Suppose you’re giving a presentation in a meeting with Mary, Joe, Bill, and Sue. Mary and Joe are paying careful attention to everything you’re saying. Bill, your boss, asks a few questions during the presentation and yawns once. Sue’s cell phone rings two-thirds of the way through the presentation, she answers the cell phone, and permanently leaves the meeting.

How is the meeting going? If you’re like many people, you may conclude that the meeting is going poorly which will negatively impact your presentation. You assume Sue doesn’t want to be in the meeting and Bill is bored.

But is that an accurate assessment? You have tunnel vision because you’re only focusing on negative cues. Mary and Joe are paying close attention. Bill is asking intelligent questions. Maybe Bill had a late night. Sue’s phone call could have been about a crisis that she needs to immediately resolve.

Nobody can pay attention to every person in every meeting at every moment, but you have tunnel vision if you see ONLY the negative or positive.

To counteract tunnel vision, try to focus on the big picture. Ask yourself if the you’ve made an accurate and fair assessment of the situation.

3. Magnifying and Minimizing

Suppose you’re being considered for a promotion. You remember you’ve managed ten large projects and you spectacularly completed nine of the projects. You failed to complete one of the projects due to circumstances beyond your control.

Will you get the promotion? If you like some people, you’ll magnify the one failed project and minimize your nine successes. As a result, you’ll believe you won’t get the promotion. This attitude can be self-fulfilling and make it difficult to maintain a positive outlook.

Similarly, you may magnify the good and minimize the bad. If the statistics above were reversed, you may only focus on the one successful project.

Magnifying and minimizing is different from tunnel vision. With magnifying and minimizing, you’re aware of all the relevant events, but you choose to enhance or diminish each event. In tunnel vision, you are only SEEING selective information. You’re not even aware of the other information.

To counteract magnifying and minimizing, you can ask what are the good (or bad) things that have happened with the projects? How is your overall performance?

4. Personalizing

Suppose you’re working jointly with Bob, a co-worker, on a business proposal for an important client. The proposal involves customizing and selling a customer relationship management software solution. You write the section on the business reasons the client should buy the solution and Bob writes the technical overview for the solution. You both present the proposal to the client in a meeting. The client rejects the proposal because

• The business section you wrote didn’t contain enough detailed cost saving information.
• The technical section that Bob wrote was too technical and failed to provide a high level overview.

Who caused the failure? If you personalize, you will believe you’re at fault and completely ignore the problems that Bob created. You may say something like “We didn’t get the business because I screwed up.”

To counteract personalizing, you must consider other causes for the failure. Yes, you caused some of the problems, but Bob also created his share of problems.

5. Externalizing

Externalizing is the opposite of personalizing. Given the same circumstance described in Personalizing, you believe that Bob caused the failure. You may think “We would have gotten the business if Bob hadn’t screwed up.”.

To counteract externalizing, you must consider how you contributed to the problem.

6. Overgeneralizing

Overgeneralizing involves making a broad assumption based on specific evidence. Given the same circumstances described in Personalizing, you conclude that you are (or Bob is) a “bad employee”. Therefore, you take one specific failure and generalize the overall abilities of yourself or another.

To counteract overgeneralizing, you ask questions that can narrow down the situation. Is there a more specific explanation than the one you chose? For instance, maybe you are (or Bob is) just having a bad week or you need (or Bob needs) to improve a particular skill.

7. Mind Reading

Mind reading means you jump to conclusions about what people are thinking. Given the same circumstance described in Personalizing, suppose later in the day you pass Bob’s cube and he is whispering something to another co-worker. If you believe Bob is criticizing you for your work on the client proposal, then you’re mind reading. Bob could be talking about anything: a personal matter, another project, his boss, and so on.

To counteract mind reading, you can think of other reasonable explanations for the behavior. If possible, you can directly communicate with the person and test your mind reading assumption.

8. Emotional Reasoning

Emotional reasoning occurs when you let your feelings influence your judgment. For instance, going back to the Personalizing example, suppose you exit the client meeting feeling really good. You’re relieved and happy that the meeting is over. If you decide the meeting went really well because you feel happy, then you’re using emotional reasoning.

To counteract emotional reasoning, you have to separate your feelings from your judgment. You can probe yourself with question like “How did things really go if I ignore how I feel?”. You can also reevaluate the situation after your feelings have subsided.

The most common thinking traps I fall into are overgeneralizing and mind reading. What thinking traps do you fall into?

No related posts.

The formal wedding begins with the bridesmaids walking down the center isle followed by my pretty niece carrying the traditional bouquet of flowers. She looks so young. Her fiancé is the dress whites of a Naval Officer. He looks poised and relaxed.

The minister begins the ceremony with a prayer for all the people that couldn’t attend this joyous wedding. I think of my dead parents and wish they could be with us. They would have enjoyed watching a granddaughter be married to such a handsome man. I feel sad.

The ceremony continues with matching “I do”s, a magical kiss, pictures, floating bubbles, and the newlyweds departing by horse and carriage for the reception.

The reception is in a small second story hall with a glass wall that faces the Charleston harbor. The view is exceptional with small boats and large container ships regularly passing. I sit at a table with my closest relatives and look around.

I contemplate all the other weddings I’ve attended. I sat in my brother’s wedding when I was about seven years old. He was a Sergeant on leave from a tour in Vietnam. He wore his dress uniform and I remember him walking down the isle in shiny black shoes.

I went to my sister’s wedding when I was fifteen. I remember the reception at my Dad’s country club. It was an extravagant layout of food, but I felt uncomfortable in a suit.

I remember my own wedding in the golden-domed County Courthouse of Hendersonville, North Carolina. My wife stood in her homemade wedding dress with only my parents and a friend present. A judge married us so fast that I barely had time to become nervous.

I remember my other niece’s wedding followed by my nephew’s wedding. Geez, I remember when these people were born and now they have children of their own. I realize I’m a Great Uncle and it makes me feel old.

The pace of our lives is measured by great events – deaths, births, marriages. In retrospect, it all seems to happen so fast. Time doesn’t march forward; it runs at top speed.

I realize that in 100 years all the people I see at this reception will be gone. They’ll be nothing but ashes, dust, or bones. Change and mortality are inevitable. It’s a sobering thought.

I return to the present moment of the reception. Dinner is over and I see the younger people dancing with sensuous pleasure. Their bodies vibrate to the beat of the music. They look very happy and contented. They’re in the here and now.

The young people dancing have the right idea. I realize we can’t take life for granted. That every moment is precious and must be lived and appreciated to the fullest. I happily talk to my Aunt Janet, Uncle Bill, my brother Terry, and my sister Beverly. I stand on the balcony and watch the ships pass. I eat wedding cake. I dance with my attractive wife, Lisa. I’m happy just to be here.

Change is inevitable, but each moment is precious and unique. The only way to build your life is on a foundation of accumulated present moments. Are you present for your moments?

No related posts.

I don’t care if exercise can increase the length and quality of my life. I prefer to die while I still look young and I only need enough strength to press buttons on my TV remote and mouse. Anyway, don’t we have drugs for diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, and other illnesses that can be mitigated with exercise and healthy eating? Taking pills is so much easier than exercising.

I don’t care if health care costs are climbing because people are too lazy to exercise. If everyone else can be lazy, so can I. Besides, insurance distributes the costs to everybody, right? I won’t have to pay higher insurance premiums because everyone else will subsidize my premiums. What a great system!

My goal is to become a 1,000 pound man. If I become a 1,000 pound man, people will wait on me constantly. I’ll be like a King! My wife already does most of the cooking, so she can bring me all the food I want. Also, once I’m 1,000 pounds, I’ll always have a good excuse to avoid things I don’t want to do.

I have big plans for the extra time I’ll have because I stopped exercising. If I’m lucky, I can use the time to watch my two favorite movies (Bloodsport and Roadhouse) over and over. If not, I can constructively spend my time browsing internet porn.

I hope you’ll join me in casting off exercise and become a winner. Let’s join our fat hands and declare Saturday, June 13th as National Sit On Your Ass Day!

I’m sure I missed other great advantages of not exercising. Can you think of any advantages?

Related posts:

1. 10 Ways to Avoid Exercise Injury

Last week, you studied and practiced walking meditation. Jay at Porsidan continued to follow this tutorial and he posted last week’s experiences. Jay has made amazing progress in his meditation practice. He describes only one problem last week:

…I fell asleep again today…

You may fall asleep during meditation if you become too comfortable. To counteract this, you can pick a posture that’s less comfortable, meditate with your eyes open, or adjust the room temperature or your clothing to make yourself colder.

This week I finish this series by describing a few things you can do to improve or move beyond your new meditation skills.

Your Meditation Practice

From previous posts in this series, you already know the various types of meditation: focused, insight, loving-kindness, and walking. I recommend you combine the various types of mediation by meditating thirty minutes per day preferably in the morning. You can break down each thirty minute session like this:

• Focused meditation (2 minutes)
• Loving-kindness meditation (4 minutes)
• Insight meditation (20 minutes)
• Walking meditation (4 minutes)

This gives you a nice combination of all the meditation techniques. The walking meditation at the end doubles as meditation and as a way to reduce your stiffness from sitting meditation. Of course, you can meditate more or less, but the important thing is to do some meditation every day with the right level of concentration.

Concentration is a critical component of meditation. Focused meditation is designed to develop your concentration so other types of meditation are more beneficial. It’s important to keep practicing focused meditation until you can do it for at least fifteen minutes without losing count. My meditation teacher recently had me backtrack to do this and I practiced focused meditation exclusively for a week. It significantly improved my concentration.

You may be curious about my meditation practice. I generally meditate for thirty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening. I plan to work up to forty minutes in the morning. On Sunday morning, I participate in group meditation at the Soji Zen Center and meditate for about 1.5 hours.

Meditation Equipment

One of the convenient things about meditation is that it requires little special equipment. You can use a blankets and towels for sitting on the floor or a chair for sitting higher.

However, if you go to a meditation center, you will find equipment that’s useful if you sit on the floor. The following picture shows some of the specialized equipment:

The woman on the left is sitting on a white Zafu cushion which rests on top of a purple Zabuton. It raises her butt off the ground to make it more comfortable to sit in various cross-legged postures. Zafus can be filled with either Buckwheat Hulls or Kapok. Buckwheat Hulls feel like a beanbag so that you can shape the Zafu in various ways. They are easier to use for a beginner.

However, most meditation centers have Kapok filled Zafus. Kapok is a fibrous plant material that acts somewhat like cotton. Kapok Zafus must be broken in because they’re overstuffed and gradually compress with use. An advantage of Kapok Zafus over Buckwheat Zafus is that you can turn a Kapok Zafu on it’s side and use it like a meditation bench (described below).

If you decide to buy a Zafu and Zabuton, I recommend Samadhi Cushions. This is the brand we have at my Zen Center and we put the cushions through a lot of wear. They seem to hold up well. This is also where I bought my Kapok Zafu and Zabuton.

The woman on the right is sitting on a meditation bench. This is an easier posture for some Westerners with back difficulties or inflexibility. I have a meditation bench from MeditationBench.com. If you decide to buy one, I suggest the folding bench with rounded legs. You can also buy a Zabuton or use a folded blanket for your knees.

Group Meditation

If you’re interested, group meditation is a great way to experience harmony in a group. The meditation is special because of the group energy and dynamic. The people are generally kind and inspiring.

You can use the Independent Meditation Center Guide to try to find a meditation center near you. If that doesn’t work, I suggest you Google “meditation” or “buddhism” and the name or postal code of your city.

Find a Meditation Teacher

I don’t know much about higher levels of meditative states called Jhanas. But if you want to advance your meditation practice to achieve the higher Jhana states, you’re going to need a teacher. There are many ways to get “stuck” in meditation without realizing it. A good meditation teacher will help you become “unstuck” so you progress.

I’m a Zen Buddhist and so I have a Zen Sensei, Jules Shuzen Harris Sensei, as my teacher. My teacher is from the White Plum Lineage of Zen which is the largest Zen lineage in the United States.

Additional Reading

If you’re uninterested in a teacher, then reading books is the next best thing you can do. The best book I’ve found on meditation is the following:

The book title is misleading because the book focuses on meditation rather than just mindfulness.

If you would like to know more about Zen Buddhism, then I suggest the reading list at Village Zendo.

It’s important to me that you learn to meditate. Please leave a comment or send a confidential email (roger at acontentlife.com) with any questions, problems, or observations. I’m here to help.

Related posts:

1. Meditation for Beginners (Week 5) – Walking Meditation
2. Meditation for Beginners (Week 4) - Loving-Kindness Meditation
3. Meditation for Beginners (Week 2) – Focused Meditation

But my attitude began changing ten months ago when I picked up a book on Buddhism, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, and carefully read it.

Buddhism was different from any religion I’d previously encountered. The Buddha believed we all have One True Nature, but it’s obscured by thoughts, the busyness of life, and a misunderstanding of reality. His solution involved an Eightfold Path that contained Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. He claimed that following this path leads to enlightenment and an end to suffering.

But what intrigued me the most was that he said his path was experiential. That you should not believe him just because he said it, but you should test the ideas to see if they worked for you. Huh? Where was the absolutism and dogma I’d seen in other religions? This seemed more like a scientific experiment than religion.

I decided to give this 2,500 year old Eightfold Path a try. What the heck? At least the guy admitted you should be skeptical. And wasn’t this advice more proven than the advice of most self-help books? (OK, I admit there are some useful self-help books, but the ratio of useful to useless is one in a thousand).

Part of the Eightfold path is Right Concentration which basically involves meditation. So I started meditating everyday. It was pretty cool. I could tell within a few months that my mind had changed. I was seeing things in a different way. I could often step outside my thoughts and watch myself thinking. (Please don’t ask me who was watching the thoughts because that opens up a whole thing about no-self and my head will start spinning like a top.)

I read many books on Buddhism, but after awhile, I began to feel stuck. The Buddha said that you should take refuge in the Buddha (the idea that you have one inside of you), the Dharma (the teachings of the Buddha), and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists). Most books argued that you need a Sangha and a Teacher. I had no Sangha, but I started attending some of the educational meetings of the Philadelphia Buddhist Association and met some fellow Buddhists. They seemed like a nice group of people that I could relate to.

Then I started walking to The Philadelphia Meditation Center and doing group meditation. Within the Center, I found other people who regularly meditate, so I no longer felt like a complete oddball. So I went there and it was nice, but there was still no teacher.

Finally, I discovered the Soji Zen Center which turns out to be an eleven minute drive from my house. I was nervous about Zen because it’s reputed to be a hardcore form of Buddhism. There’s not much touchy-feely, kumbaya activity. Zen is a back-to-basics movement that believes in LOTS of meditation. On the positive side, Zen teachers are authorized to teach only after years of rigorous training. This limits the number of fraudulent or incompetent teachers.

The first time I go to the Zen Center, I park across the street in a bank parking lot and start walking over. I see people streaming into this small storefront along a slightly rundown group of storefronts. I notice some people are wearing robes that look like something you see in a Kung Fu movie. I wonder what am I getting myself into. I mean I really like Kung Fu movies, but this looks a little cult-like to me. I figure I can always escape if the things get too crazy.

I walk inside the Zen Center and I’m surprised everything is neat and organized. The mediation cushions are perfectly aligned on a spotless hardwood floor. There are Japanese screens artfully located to create a beautiful boundary to the room. The altar with the Buddha is the fanciest I’ve ever seen. It sits on top of a tall, dark wood table. There are multiple levels with candles, flowers, incense, water, and, of course, the Buddha.

There are many people in the Kung Fu robes, but there are also many dressed like me. Most wear muted blacks and grays and look all Zenny. I say hello to a couple of people, pick a spot, and sit on a cushion. Eventually, one person starts banging this large, thick wooden board with a wooden mallet. I figure that must be a call to take your seat and start meditating.

Pretty soon, this guy enters the room and he has the fanciest robes of all. He must be the teacher. He walks around the room in a scripted way and bells start ringing. We all bow to the Buddha altar three times. Then thin books are passed out, we turn to page 4, and start chanting the Heart Sutra in a monotone. It sounds like my computer reading speech. I’ve only done loving-kindness chanting by myself, so I’m self-conscious. But it’s very structured and I’m fascinated by everything happening.

We sit down to start meditating for thirty minutes. We all face the wall so we’re not distracted. I barely meditate because another guy quietly enters the room and starts tapping people on the shoulder. Then a tiny bell periodically rings and somebody that was previously tapped quietly stands and walks to another room. They must be meeting with the teacher.

I found out later that this is called Dokusan and each student meets with the teacher to discuss his practice. The teacher may also assign Koans, which are short riddles designed to break logical discursive thought. The student may discuss a Koan or his meditation practice with the teacher depending on his circumstances.

I’m terrified the guy is going to tap me on the shoulder and then what do I say to the teacher? I’m nervous I’ll screw up or that the teacher might try Voodoo Magic on me. I pray he doesn’t ask me to snatch the pebble from his hand like the Master in the original Kung Fu TV series.

After thirty minutes, a Big Bowl Bell is struck three times. A wooden clapper sounds to signal the start of walking meditation. We all line up and slowly snake around the room in a pre-defined pattern. It’s cool because everybody is moving at exactly the same speed with the same posture. It feels oddly harmonious. The wooden clapper sounds again and we start walking faster. I’ve never done walking meditation this fast, but I’m just going with the flow. The wooden clapper sounds again, people put their hands in a prayer position, and then we stop at our seats.

We begin another thirty minute mediation session. This time we face each other. Now I can’t stop surreptitiously looking around the room to watch everybody else meditate. I study the robes more carefully. They’re long and layered. Some of the robes have something that looks like a bib.

I found out later that the bibs are Rakusus and signify that the wearer has taken the Zen Buddhist Precepts. This is list of principles that you agree to follow as part of an official ceremony. It’s also a commitment by your teacher to teach you and by you to learn from your teacher. It’s a big deal.

Anyway, another thirty minute meditation session goes by and we do more walking. Then we sit down for another thirty minute session, but it only lasts about twenty minutes before the Big Bowl Bell sounds three times. We stand and the teacher returns.

The teacher gives a ten minute talk that’s difficult for me to comprehend. (This youtube video shows my teacher giving a talk, but not the talk I heard that day.) I’m very distracted by the teacher and all the students. The talk ends and a few students ask questions.

We begin the closing ceremonies, do more bowing, and chant The Four Great Vows. The formal portion ends.

A guy in one of the robes stands to make announcements. Then another person talks about Work Practice tasks. Work Practice is when students clean and spruce up the Zen Center. No wonder the place looks so neat and tidy — they have an army of students performing maintenance. I leave because I’m a guest and I feel a urgent need to go outdoors, breath air, and make sure the universe still operates they way it did before I entered the Zen Center.

I go home and discuss the experience with my wife, Lisa. She asks “Are you going to go back?” I reply “I think so. It was weird, but it was a good kind of weird.” I felt a sense of connection with the others. Plus, I wonder what it would be like to meet the teacher.

I’ve been going back ever since.

It’s never too late to challenge long-held beliefs with new information.

P.S. I was sad to learn that David Carradine, the lead actor in the Kung Fu TV series, died yesterday. If you’re too young to remember the series, you may remember him as Bill in Kill Bill 1 and 2.

Related posts:

1. Meditation for Beginners (Week 6) – Next Steps

Last week, you studied and practiced loving-kindness meditation. Jay at Porsidan continued to follow this tutorial and posted his experiences with loving-kindness meditation. I’ve excerpted quotes from Jay’s post and added my comments below.

…I did Loving Kindness on myself, and was (kinda sorta not really) surprised at how uncomfortable that made me feel…

This feeling is common. People in the West think they don’t deserve to like or love themselves. But if you can love others, doesn’t it make sense to love yourself? It’s difficult to be kind to others if you’re unkind to yourself.

…After a few minutes of fighting against my thoughts, I just gave in and allowed myself to use the remaining time to just…think…

There are days when it’s difficult to let thoughts go. You might try using more detailed labels. For instance, if you’re thinking about the dialogue of an argument you had with Joe, you can label the thought “thinking about argument with Joe” and move on. Sometimes a more specific label makes it easier to let go.

Jay also had a follow-up question for me related to labeling:

The thing with the labels is that it leads to more thinking for me. I have the thought, then I label it, and then I (unintentionally) go off on a tangent about the reasons behind my feelings and thoughts of ____. For example, let’s say I think about pizza. The thought forms: “Boy, pizza would be good for dinner tonight.” And I start thinking about all the ways it would be good, and then I catch myself. “Oops, I’m thinking about pizza. Label it. I’m thinking about pizza. Back to counting. But why am I thinking about pizza? Am I hungry? Am I upset and need comfort food? What is going on with me? Why pizza? Oops, thought train derailed. Back to counting.

So I guess my question is how to I become more mindful, so that I stop the train before it even gets going? Does that just take more time and practice?

I understand because the same thing happened to me in the beginning. It takes more practice, but also requires right effort. Imagine you’re a swordsman and you are in a duel with a sword master. (I know this is farfetched, but indulge me.) The blades are whirling at unbelievable speed and if you lose your concentration for a moment, you’ll be cut and possible killed. Would you stay focused or would you start thinking about pizza? I’m willing to bet you would stay focused. That’s right effort. You have the ability to stay focused, but you’re unaccustomed to focusing at will. Try hard and keep practicing and you’ll gradually improve. It gets easier with time.

Ann Elise at Ann Elise Mitchell also wrote her first update about following this meditation tutorial. I’ve excerpted quotes from Ann Elise’s post and added my comments below.

…For some reason, I kept feeling slightly panicked that nothing was happening, like there needed to be a great insight or there was no benefit…

Assume nothing is going to happen. Most weird or mystical stuff that happens is meaningless anyway. On rare occasions during insight meditation, you’ll better understand something in your life. Trying to make something happen never works. Assume any sitting is a good sitting and try not to judge or evaluate.

Most of the benefits are subtle and slow to develop. Consistent practice and good attitude are important to reaping the benefits.

…I seem to be going backwards. I’m not sure I made it to 10 breaths even once!…

Everybody who meditates has days when it’s easy to meditate and days when it’s difficult. The difficult days are just as beneficial and valuable as the easy days. In fact, difficult days may be more valuable because they help you “see” your noisy mind. As a result, meditation will at least slightly calm your mind.

This week, you’ll meditate using walking meditation.

There are two purposes of walking meditation. First, it helps you transition the mindfulness you cultivate during meditation to your daily life. Second, it’s used as a break from sitting meditation. During group meditation, it’s often interspersed with sitting meditation so that your body can recover from the stiffness of sitting.

Walking meditation is simple and involves these steps:

1. Find a space where you can walk at least five tiny steps. You can do walking meditation anywhere, but it’s best to start alone in a room. Otherwise, you may be too self-conscious of other people watching.
2. Stand at one end of the room holding your hands together in front of you. You can also hold your hands behind you or at your sides, but most people hold their hands in front.
3. Keeping your head upright, cast your eyes down at a forty-five degrees angle. Keep your eyes open during walking meditation so that you maintain your balance, but don’t focus on anything in particular.
4. Pause and center yourself for about fifteen seconds.
5. Slowly take a tiny step. Pay close attention to your feet and breathing. How do your feet feel leaving and contacting the ground? How does the your shifting weight feel on your feet? If you want to, you can time your breathing to the steps. For instance, inhale as you lift your foot up and exhale as you place it on the ground. Alternatively, you can inhale as you begin to lift your foot, exhale as you move it, inhale when it touches the ground, and exhale as it’s firmly planted. There are no fixed rules about timing your breath – it’s up to you to decide if and how you do it.
6. When you reach the end of your walking path, stand for about fifteen seconds. Then make one ninety degree turn and pause for a few seconds and then another ninety degree turn and pause for about fifteen seconds.
7. Begin walking in the opposite direction.
8. Repeat for the duration of the walking meditation.

Here is a video that shows the slow speed and small steps of walking meditation:

You’ll find that practicing walking meditation makes you more mindful when you walk normally. During your next outdoor walk, become mindful of your feet contacting the earth. How does it feel?

This Week’s Assignment

Your assignment this week is to do at least ten minutes of sitting meditation using focused, insight, or loving-kindness meditation. Immediately after sitting, do at least ten minutes of walking meditation. Pay close attention to how you transition between sitting and walking meditation. Transition in a slow, mindful way.

It’s important to me that you learn to meditate. Please leave a comment or send a confidential email (roger at acontentlife.com) with any questions, problems, or observations. I’m here to help.

Related posts:

1. Meditation for Beginners (Week 6) – Next Steps
2. Meditation for Beginners (Week 4) - Loving-Kindness Meditation
3. Meditation for Beginners (Week 3) – Insight Meditation

In Part 1, I discussed the first six happiness activities in The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky. This post discusses the last six happiness activities.

7. Learning to Forgive Others

When you forgive another person, you increase your happiness. Forgiving others means that you reduce your desire for avoidance and revenge and increase positive feelings and behaviors. It doesn’t necessarily imply you excuse, pardon or condone others.

Forgiving others is difficult, but here are a few techniques you can use:

• Appreciate being forgiven yourself. Remember a time when you were forgiven by somebody. Think about how it felt and why the person forgave you. This makes it easier for you to forgive.
• Imagine forgiving another. Recall somebody that offended you and imagine what it would be like to forgive him. How would you feel emotionally and physically?
• Write a letter of forgiveness. Write a letter to somebody that offended you, but don’t send the letter. This letter is to help you let go of your anger and bitterness.
• Practice empathy. Try to see the perspective of somebody that offended you and understand why he behaved the way he did. You can also use loving-kindness meditation to generally increase your empathy for others.

8. Increasing Flow Experiences

Flow increases your happiness and you can learn more in my previous post about flow.

9. Savoring Life’s Joys

Savoring life’s joys leads to happiness and a greater appreciation of life. “Savoring” refers to any thoughts or behaviors that can generate, intensify, or prolong enjoyment. The thoughts can be about the past, present or future.

There are several ways you can savor life:

• Be mindful and relish the ordinary. Be mindful and appreciative during daily activities. An activity can be as simple as walking or eating mindfully.
• Savor and reminisce with others. You can increase your joy of life if you share it with others. Appreciate the present moment with another or discuss a shared memory.
• Replay happy events to yourself. Remember moments or days when you were really happy and mentally relive them.
• Celebrate good news. When something good happens to you, share it with others to help you savor more deeply.
• Be open to beauty. When you see something beautiful, take time to appreciate it.

10. Committing to Your Goals

I believe goals may be unnecessary for happiness, but Sonja’s research indicates otherwise. Goals provide a sense of purpose, improves our self-esteem, improves our time management skills, adds structure to our lives, and forces us to engage with other people and life.

Picking the right goals is critical. The kinds of goal you choose should have the following characteristics:

• Intrinsic: Pick goals that have meaning to you as opposed to goals that are given to you.
• Desirable: The goal should involve approaching a desirable outcome (finding a great job, finishing a woodworking project, making two new friends) rather than avoiding an undesirable outcome (avoid being fired, preventing an argument, making sure your car doesn’t fall apart).
• Harmonious: You goals should complement each other. Conflicting goals create frustration — it’s difficult to spend more time with your family AND build a new business.
• Active: Pick goals that require unending activity. For instance, the goal of joining and participating in a chess club will bring more happiness than the goal of buying a beautiful chess set. Once you’ve purchased the chess set, you’re done. The chess club activity continues forever.

11. Practicing Religion and Spirituality

Research shows that practicing religion helps with short-term trauma recovery, improves long-term health, and makes you happier.

Religion overlaps spirituality, but they’re not equivalent. Sonja refers to spirituality as a “search for the sacred” – you try to find meaning in life that’s larger than yourself. People that do not believe or participate in a religion may still be spiritual. For instance, you may describe your life’s work as your “calling.”

If you chose to practice religion and/or spirituality, here are a few tips:

• Seek meaning and purpose. For instance, you could seek meaning in God, enlightenment, art or science.
• Pray. If you can, dedicate a period of time each day to pray.
• Find the sacred in ordinary life. Develop the ability to see holiness in everyday things like a meal or a walk in the park.

12. Taking Care of Your Body

Taking care of your body is an obvious way to improve happiness. Sonja suggest three separate ways to care for your body:

• Meditate. I meditate everyday and find it extremely useful. I’ve written a series on beginning meditation.
• Be physically active. Exercise is one of the best ways to get regular physical activity. You can turn exercise into a habit.
• Act like a happy person. It seems odd, but research shows that just pretending you’re happy will make you happier. For example, you can smile, be engaged, give hugs, and pretend your enthusiastic.

I’ve only touched on some of the ideas on Sonja’s The How of Happiness book. If you want to learn more, please read the book.

Do you already practice any of these happiness activities? If so, which ones work best for you?

Related posts:

1. 12 Happiness Activities – Part 1
2. Flow
3. My First Zen Experience

Last week, you studied and practiced insight meditation. Ann Elise at Ann Elise Mitchell has begun following this tutorial with a 30-day meditation commitment. Jay at Porsidan has continued following this tutorial and has posted his latest experiences. I’ve excerpted some quotes from Jay’s post and added my comments below.

…It was still really hard to keep the thoughts away when I let go of the counting, but when that happened, I went back and started counting again…

Neither Jay nor you should try to block your thoughts. Just let them come and they’ll pass. You’ll recognize that you’re having thoughts BEHIND the counting. It feels like you’re observing or monitoring your thoughts instead of engaging your thoughts.

…My nose started itching, and I was able to pay attention to it for a few moments, acknowledge it, and then let it go…

Jay recognized that his physical sensations are also just thoughts. This is a useful lesson and you can apply it when you feel pain while you’re meditating.

…Every now and then, I’ll catch myself trying extra hard to pay attention to whatever it is I’m doing…

Jay is experiencing brief periods of mindfulness outside of meditation. This happens to everybody who meditates well, but usually takes a few months to develop. You won’t have to try — it’ll just happen automatically.

This week, you’ll meditate using loving-kindness meditation. The purpose of loving-kindness meditation is to increase your sense of empathy and kindness towards yourself and others.

Pick a Mantra

You must pick a mantra that you’ll say aloud during loving-kindness meditation. The traditional Tibetan mantra is om mani padme hung which translates to “The jewel is in the lotus.” The jewel refers to wisdom and compassion and the lotus refers to you. In other words, the wisdom and compassion you seek is already in you. You can use the official pronunciation or my pronunciation:

http://acontentlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ommanipadmehung.mp3

Alternatively, you can also use an English mantra:

May I be filled with loving-kindness
May I be well
May I be peaceful and at ease
May I be happy

You’ll begin with “I” in the mantra and replace it with other people or groups as you repeat the chant. For instance, suppose you have a friend, Mary, and you want want to project loving-kindness towards her. The mantra would change to the following:

May Mary be filled with loving-kindness
May Mary be well
May Mary be peaceful and at ease
May Mary be happy

You can do a similar substitution for a group of people. For instance, you could substitute “my co-workers” for “I”:

May my co-workers be filled with loving-kindness
May my co-workers be well
May my co-workers be peaceful and at ease
May my co-workers be happy

If you don’t like either of these mantras, you can make up your own mantra. Keep it simple and easy to remember. It can be a phrase or a small group of unrelated sounds.

I use “om mani padme hung” as my mantra because I like the soothing way the sound resonates through my body. It feels right to me.

Pick an Image of Unconditional Love

You must also pick and visualize an image that represents unconditional love to you. For instance, you could pick Buddha, Jesus, Mary, a personal saint or angel, your own spiritual teacher, or even a parent. It should be an image that you can visualize and feel gratitude, trust, faith and devotion towards. I use the Buddha.

Chant and Project Loving-Kindness

You’re ready to do loving-kindness meditation. Please follow these steps:

1. Assume your normal meditation posture. This is the same posture you’ve been using for focused or insight meditation.
2. Close your eyes and visualize your image of unconditional love. Focus on the image and experience all your good feelings about it. Do this for about a minute.
3. Recite your chant aloud. At the same time, project a feeling of loving-kindness towards yourself. You can’t be kind to others unless you first learn to be kind to yourself. Then project it to somebody close to you. Pick another person and project it towards that person. Continue projecting your loving-kindness to a specific person or group of people. At end of the meditation, project your loving-kindness to all people on the planet.

When you start out, stick with people you already feel good about. You should gradually add people you feel indifferent towards. For instance, you may feel neutral towards your mailman or a co-worker.

As you progress with this practice, you should start adding people that you dislike or are angry with. You aren’t necessarily forgiving the person. You’re simply recognizing that all human beings deserve happiness and peace.

You must be careful to project empathy and not sympathy. Empathy creates a feeling of connectedness between you and the other person. You are him and he is you. Sympathy, on the other hand, creates a feeling separateness. You feel thankful you’re not experiencing his suffering rather than a connection.

Loving-kindness meditation is my favorite meditation because it has an immediate impact on relationships with yourself and others. You’ll feel a connection with others and less lonely. You may even feel more affinity towards people you dislike.

This Week’s Assignment

Your assignment this week is to practice loving-kindness meditation everyday. Do five to ten minutes of loving-kindness meditation followed by ten to fifteen minutes of focused and/or insight meditation. As I always say, the time is less important than the consistency and quality of your meditation.

It’s important to me that you learn to meditate. Please leave a comment or send a confidential email (roger at acontentlife.com) with any questions, problems, or observations. I’m here to help.

Related posts:

1. Meditation for Beginners (Week 6) – Next Steps
2. Meditation for Beginners (Week 5) – Walking Meditation
3. Meditation for Beginners (Week 1) – Introduction