Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about beliefs, and how they filter our experience of the world. It continues to amaze me how our interpretations of the world around us have such an incredible impact on our happiness and well being.

Each of us experiences a different world – namely, the one constructed in our minds. Our experience of the world is a story made up of what our senses perceive, and the distortions that our thoughts, emotions and beliefs apply to the signals from our senses. By consciously choosing different filters, we are able to literally experience a different world. In that spirit, here are a few strategies that you might like to try out and see if they work well for you.

Anything that happens in your life, regardless of whether you wanted it or not, say “thank you”

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. (Meister Eckhart)

This is pretty easy to do in the case of “good” things happening – broadly speaking, when you get what you want. Even in this situation, though, some people aren’t in the habit of expressing gratitude for the good things in their life. This is a good place to start. The entitlement mindset is antithetical to happiness, because even when you get what you want your attitude is “Yeah, so what? – I expected that”. If you aren’t in the habit of expressing gratitude for all the good things in your life, then start doing so now. Seriously. It will make an amazing difference in your baseline level of happiness.

Expressing gratitude is much harder when you don’t get what you want, and especially when you get something that you really don’t want. However, through facing these challenges and exercising your power to choose your thoughts, you can develop the ability to reframe almost any kind of situation.

Instead of looking at the surface meaning of a situation – something “bad” happened and your life is worse off because of it – could you make an honest attempt to trust that whatever happened is something that is actually for the best? This is relatively do-able for small situations – someone cuts you off in traffic, the waiter mixes up your order at lunch. It’s a little harder for bigger and more challenging situations – the loss of a important job or a costly fender bender. And it’s downright painful and difficult for life’s big challenges – the loss of someone close to you, or a diagnosis of a serious illness.

That’s the whole point, though. Instead of assuming that you know the absolute truth of what something means (”it’s terrible“) and how it will impact your life (”definitely for the worse”), why not assume that literally everything is for the best, even if it doesn’t appear that way? After all, reality is always present. You can either have reality, plus an interpretation that brings sadness, or else reality, plus an interpretation that is more flexible, and could potentially bring you happiness. Why not choose the latter?

Assume that everyone and everything that you encounter in your life is an enlightened master who here to teach you a lesson

This is an interesting thought experiment due to the author Richard Carlson, who wrote Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff – and it’s all small stuff, among other books. The exercise consists of reframing your point of view by 180 degrees. Instead of assuming that (1) you are right and (2) you really know what’s going on – the usual state of mind for most people – you instead assume that you don’t really know what’s going on and that everyone else does.

Most people look “up” to those they believe are above them, and “down” to those they believe are beneath them. We’re evolved from apes who operate in very hierarchical tribes, after all. But what if your greatest hero and that homeless crack addict on the street were both equally enlightened, and were both here on Earth to teach you something about how to live? How would this change your response to others? The lesson is to look down upon no one and up to no one but instead to learn whatever you can from their presence in your life.

When you are faced with a choice between love and fear – always pick love

When you’re in a situation where you would typically respond from a state of fear, make a conscious decision to step back and approach the situation from a standpoint of Love instead. Ask yourself “what would Love do?” – that is, the big-picture, universal, cosmic version of Love, not the interpersonal, human version of love that we typically talk about when we use that word.

What does this mean? Visualize the universal concept of Love, as a force field permeating all of existence. This is the Source of all peace and happiness. If this universal force were personified in you, right at the moment of your choice, what would you do?

One way to start putting this concept into practice to mentally say “I love you” in your mind to every person you pass on the street. It may feel very weird at first, but it helps you internalize the concept and habit of choosing to operate from the standpoint of Love rather than fear. It’s reminiscent of the common practice at the close of yoga classes, where the students and teacher all bow and recite the Sanskrit word namaste – loosely translated as “the light in me bows to the light in you”. This is an acknowledgement of our common origins, equality, and ultimate Oneness.

Believe that you are the ultimate cause for everything in your reality

All “It was” is a fragment, a riddle, a dreadful change – until the creative will says to it: “But I willed it thus!” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

“Always at cause, never at fault” is a good way to describe this strategy. Assume absolute responsibility for everything in your reality. Like, literally, everything. This is a powerful frame of mind, because it cuts through blame and hesitation. Instead of a victim mindset, in which you’re set upon by other forces in your life, you adopt a powerful creator mindset in which you are responsible for everything in your life.

Some people incorrectly interpret this to mean that their cancer (or other tough situation in their life) is their own fault, and set about hating and blaming themselves, but this is really not what we’re aiming at here. Remember, never at fault. The intention behind this belief is that you can take charge of any situation, and assume responsibility for changing it, if you’d prefer to have a different situation in the future. As the psychotherapist Nathaniel Branden reminds us, “no one is coming”. We’re ultimately responsible for our own lives and our own salvation. Nothing happens, and nothing changes, unless we individually take action to make things happen, and to change things. Would you do things differently if you knew that you were absolutely at cause for everything in your reality, and took complete responsibility for everything in your life?

Admittedly, each of these beliefs is, in its own way, kind of “crazy”. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter if they are literally true or false, crazy or sane – what really matters is the results that they create in your reality. If they work, doesn’t that make them worthwhile and “true enough to use”? And if they don’t work for you, try something else. There are a lot of possible beliefs out there – pick the ones that empower you.

Whenever you feel like you want something, ask yourself this simple question: if I got what I think I want, then what would that do for me? Most of the time, the thing you think you want is not something you really want deeply. Usually, it’s just a mask for something else – something much deeper. By asking this question repeatedly until you reach something that doesn’t stand in for anything else, you can figure out what you really want.

For example, if you see a $250 000 red Ferrari drive by, and experience a strong feeling of desire – Oh, I’d be so happy if only I had a Ferrari! – your pattern of questions and answers might go something like this:

If I had a Ferrari, then what would that do for me?
It would prove that I was rich and successful.
If I could prove that I was rich and successful, then what would that do for me?
My brother, the marathon-running vascular surgeon, would have more respect for me.
If my brother had more respect for me, then what would that do for me?
I would feel loved and accepted.
If I felt loved and accepted, then what would that do for me?
I would feel secure.
If I felt secure, then what would that do for me?
I would have a deep sense of inner peace.
If I felt a deep sense of inner peace, then what would that do for me?
Ummm… I’d feel a deep sense of inner peace…?

Usually, you’ll converge after a few question-answer steps onto something much deeper and more fundamental than your initial wish. For example, “inner peace” isn’t something that you want for any reason other than it feels really good to have inner peace. The same is true of all deeper desires – you may wind up with words like oneness, happiness, love, liberation, and so forth. Ultimately, these words only go a certain distance in describing such deep, positive states of existence. The only way to really understand these states is to experience them first hand.

All of us have fantasies of “perfect” lives of absolute ease and total abundance, where all our material needs and desires are met instantly. Using that simple question – if I got what I think I want, then what would that do for me? – you can leverage these superficial fantasies to uncover your deepest and most authentic wishes. Suppose that you were the person in the example above, and you already had your desired state of “inner peace”. In that case, the experience of owning and/or driving a Ferrari would be entertaining if it actually happened, but ultimately it would be irrelevant. After all, your would already have satisfied your underlying desire for “inner peace”. What more could you need?

When you can create for yourself such deep positive feelings and inner states, then you can transform your experience of being human and living in the world from a stressful competition into an enjoyable game. Since you’ve already “won” the real game that you’re playing inside yourself, you can play the game in the world outside yourself for fun. You can release any attachment to concepts like “winning”, “losing” or “results” in the outer game, and simply enjoy exploring the experience and sharing it with others.

See you on the playing field!

Related Posts

What would you choose to feel…
The things that you think will make you happy won’t make you happy
Change your thoughts to change your reality

Recently my apartment was robbed – one of my roommates had a laptop stolen, while another lost a digital SLR camera. Me? I lost two laptops – one six-year old PowerBook that wasn’t in use, and my primary computer, a three year old MacBook. This is the first time that I’ve ever had personal property stolen from my home [1], so it was a new experience for me. I felt like I had a reasonable, balanced reaction to this situation, so I wanted to share what I learned.

Strangely, I didn’t feel any anger, fear, or sense of violation following this incident. While I was happy that I didn’t react very negatively, it also surprised me a little bit.

Had I become too stereotypically “Zen” and detached from “normal” human reactions? “Should” I have been reacting with rage, feelings of violation, and a fierce desire for revenge? In fact, none of those emotions sound like very much fun, so I am glad that I didn’t experience them. Instead, I observed myself responding with the following feelings.

Gratitude

Obviously, I am grateful that no one was hurt in this incident. The roommate who discovered the situation was concerned that the thief might still be in the apartment, but fortunately this wasn’t the case. I am also grateful that other valuable items in my room, like a digital camera and an audio recorder, weren’t taken.

I’m especially grateful that I had the foresight to back up all my personal data in multiple places. Due to the theft, I was able to test out my backup system in a “live fire” situation. Ultimately, I lost no data and was up and running again in less than eighteen hours. The time elapsed would have been far shorter if I’d been able to make it to the electronics store the same day. The Time Machine software from Apple worked as promised, and my new computer now has all the software, settings, and (most important) files and documents that were on the stolen computer. It’s as though the exact state of the other computer was cloned perfectly and transferred into a new, better body [2].

But what about the items that were actually stolen?

Honestly, I won’t really miss the old PowerBook – the last time I used it was a couple of years ago when my main computer was in the repair shop, and I was already frustrated by its slowness at that time.

However, I can’t pretend that I didn’t care about losing my primary computer, because in my roles as a blogger, writer, and “information worker”, I prefer to have access to my laptop most of the time – after all, inspiration can strike at any moment.

Still, it was a three and a half year old machine, and I had already been eyeing new computers over the past few months. So rather than being angry that someone stole it, I chose to be excited that I now had a very strong reason to “upgrade”. That is, to upgrade to “having a computer” from “having no computer at all”.

Compassion

One of my roommates made the point that while we’ll all recover and move on from this incident relatively easily, the person who stole from us is almost certainly living in far worse circumstances. In fact, the officer who took the police report suggested that it was probably “a junkie” who took our things, and that he sees a lot of these property crimes in our area.

People who are feeling happy, living in a state of abundance, and willing and able to contribute positively to the lives of others don’t generally risk jail time, and their personal reputation, to steal a few hundred dollars of electronics. Conversely, people who are miserable, living in a state of scarcity, and who are unable or not inclined to contribute positively to the lives of others, are far more likely to consider such a risk worthwhile.

It makes more sense to feel compassion for a person who is in such desperate circumstances as to feel they have no choice but to steal from others. It must be painful to live in such a state day after day. Whether they were taught by their life experience to behave like this, or “born bad”, it doesn’t sound like a very happy existence either way.

Even if the thieves aren’t caught for this particular incident (or caught at all), I believe they are already facing karmic consequences for their actions. Living a parasitic lifestyle that violates other peoples rights is already a painful and dismal situation to be in, and people who do this are their own worst enemies.

Abundance

In contrast with the likely circumstances of the thief, I feel very fortunate that I have enough credit card headroom to be able to acquire a new computer immediately.

Instead of giving me feelings of anger, this incident makes me want to help and teach others all the more. Imagine how the world would be if this thief, and all others like them, could have learned from an early age how to live a life of service and contribution, rather than a parasitic life of harm and negativity.

This incident has given me a new appreciation of the abundance already present in my life – supportive friends and family, educational opportunities past and present, time, financial resources, good food, interesting things to do, and so forth.

Forgiveness

It’s often said that we don’t forgive for the sake of others, but for our own sake. Holding on to feelings of resentment and anger, and thoughts of revenge or retribution hurts exactly one person – us. After this incident, I was able to work on the practice of forgiveness in a live and emotionally tense situation – after all, I really liked that computer, dammit! – and was ultimately able to release any feelings of negativity or anger that I held toward the thief.

Impermanence

If my main computer hadn’t been stolen, I would have continued using it until it stopped working or, more likely, replaced it with a newer model. In any case, the thief took one computer that I hadn’t used in several years, and one that I was on the verge of replacing soon. Just like all other material things – including our own bodies – computers are impermanent. Eventually they break down. In this case, the impermanence manifested through a different channel, but from my subjective perspective, the outcome is the same in the end.

One thought experiment on impermanence was suggested by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits – to “see the glass as already broken”. Becoming attached to impermanent things is a recipe for suffering. Releasing attachment and recognizing the reality of impermanence is the path of wisdom.

A final thought

Of course, my reframing of this situation into a positive experience is not to be interpreted as a license for people to take advantage of me or others. While we can learn positive lessons from a “negative” experience, and forgive others after the fact for the damage they have done, it doesn’t mean that we can ever support or condone actions that harm other people.

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[1] In university, I worked in a lab where things started to go missing. It turned out that the night custodian was stealing money from peoples desks, and food and drinks from our fridge. We eventually caught him using a webcam and some free motion-detection software.

[2] Transhumanists take note – this is your dream.

First, an old fable:

Back in ancient times, a clever hero saved a kingdom from ruin. The king promised him anything he wanted in gratitude. The hero asked for something that seemed terribly humble.

“Your majesty, I’ve calculated how much rice we need. You have agreed to give away thousands of times the value of the entire kingdom!“

Such is the power of exponential growth, which can be seen in many different situations. One of the most familiar examples is compound interest on investments and debts. The percent rate of return is the most important standard in evaluating whether an investment is worthwhile. This is for good reason – the interest rate has a powerful influence on the value of the opportunity: an investment paying a reliable 6% per year doubles your money in 12 years, while an investment paying 12% doubles in only 6 years. Very high rates of exponential growth have caused the market value of companies like Microsoft and later Google to surge past other companies that had been around for decades longer.

We see exponential growth in action in other areas. In biology, we observe a tiny seed growing into a redwood tree hundreds of feet tall over decades. The same growth pattern happens in social trends and the spread of popular ideas – one person tells their friends, who tell their friends, and so forth.

Of course, in the physical, economic, and social worlds, there are ecological limits to this kind of rapid growth. Once “everyone” is your customer, there’s no more growth in your market. Once an animal reaches its full adult size, its growth levels off. Naive extrapolations sometimes show that a fast-growing company will be more valuable than the entire world in a few years. This makes no sense – obviously, the growth slows down at some point as the company reaches a dynamic equilibrium with its markets and with the rest of the world.

Exponential growth and self development

In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying, so get in motion and grow. (Lou Holtz)

Can you imagine how exponential growth might operate in area of your personal development? If you improve in one area by just 1 percent a week, every week, you will be over 70 percent better in that area by the end of the year. Conversely, if you decay in one area by just 1 percent a week, you will be over 40 percent worse by the end of the year. That means that if you started with a 100 pound maximum bench press, you would grow to be able to lift 170 pounds, or decay to be able to lift only 60 pounds.

This doesn’t just apply to physical areas, of course. Increasing the size of your social network connects you to exponentially more people with whom you can share value. Your knowledge of a subject can compound on itself as you develop a more holistic understanding, and you grow more able to remember small details because they fit into an organized “big picture” framework. Even areas such as emotional or spiritual development operate according to this model, although their “results” are not as easy to measure numerically.

It can be a very inspiring practice to observe and measure your personal development this way. After all, improving by 1 percent a week is going to feel extremely slow when you’re going through it day-to-day. But looking back after a year or two, you are likely to see that great changes and positive outcomes took place over time. Therefore, it’s important to remain motivated and recognize that the journey is almost never a fast and easy one.

Compounding habits

Sorry to say it, but everything you do counts in the game of life. It’s not one cigarette, or one act of avoidance, or one expression of anger, that kills you – it’s the reinforcement of that negative habit through “compound interest”.

If your negative habit becomes 1 percent stronger each week that you practice it, you dig yourself deeper and deeper into a hole the longer you let it progress. Quite honestly, practicing a bad habit “just this once” is not a big deal, and is unlikely to actually hurt you. The actual danger of “just this once” is that many negative habits operate according to the laws of exponential growth. When each instance of practicing the habit reinforces the habit, it often leads to another instance, and then another. Once the habit is locked in and stable, it becomes harder and harder to reverse the behavior.

For example, parents and mentors don’t teach children to avoid smoking because a single cigarette, or even an entire pack, can hurt them permanently – in fact, it probably won’t [1]. Instead, they teach them to avoid smoking because the first few cigarettes have the potential to lock in the habit very quickly, through the exponential growth effect. Once the habit is installed and stable, the real danger comes from the hundreds of thousands of cigarettes consumed by a habitual smoker over the next several decades of life.

This effect is also known as a positive feedback loop. It’s most commonly seen when someone holds a microphone too close to the loudspeaker – the sound level grows exponentially over a very short time, creating an loud and annoying ringing. The sound entering the microphone is amplified, comes out the speaker, enters the microphone again, comes out the speaker, and so forth, until it reaches the power limits of the amplifier.

Fortunately, there are positive habits that operate this way as well. You may have heard of “runners’ high”, in which athletes grow accustomed to the pleasurable endorphin release associated with working out. The feeling of relaxation associated with a yoga practice or a habit of meditation are other good feelings that a person can become “addicted” to. The challenge in installing positive habits that sustain mental and physical health is that their effects are often more subtle than the effects caused by drinking, drugs, overeating, or by powerful emotions such as anger. (In technical terms, their exponential growth rates are slower.)

Breakthroughs and plateaus

Of course, in the area of personal growth, things aren’t quite as simple as compound interest on a savings account. In some cases, our improvement will show an extremely rapid growth rate (”breakthrough”), and other times it will be extremely slow (”plateau”). We often see this pattern in athletic performance, for example.

In all forms of personal, professional, and interpersonal growth, patience and resilience are essential. While exponential growth is often a great analogy to use, the rates of change are almost never as stable as they are with a savings account. Real life is a lot more like an unpredictable startup company. We have periods of growth and decay, and the best thing we can do is to work to ensure that our long-term growth and improvement shows an overall positive trend. Short term ups and downs are inevitable.

The key is to figure out ways to remain motivated even during the plateaus and down periods, when you are still investing the time and effort but not experiencing the rapid growth that we realized during breakthrough periods. It’s easy to be motivated when you’re changing and growing rapidly, but it takes a lot of guts, character, and discipline to stick to a challenging practice when your rate of development slows down. You can see this in peoples’ professional activities – great numbers of people move into day trading during times of fast growth in stock markets, or become real estate agents when house prices are growing quickly. Many of these rapid converts are quick to leave during a downturn – they weren’t in the profession out of love, but only out of desire for a quick profit. Everyone has different reasons for pursuing their personal goals, so your reasons for staying motivated through tough times will be highly specific to you. Figure them out and hold on to them during the tough times.

The ultimate message is simple: we are never standing still – we’re either growing or decaying. Regular and persistent efforts enable us to leverage the power of exponential growth to make positive progress and reach our most important goals, even in the face of unpredictability.

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[1] In fact, one time-tested method of punishment for a child caught smoking cigarettes is to make them finish the entire pack on the spot. After the coughing and vomiting subsides, the child will have associated extreme discomfort with act of smoking.

While I love writing for an audience and sharing ideas that I know will benefit others, there are times when I prefer to write for an audience of one: myself.

Writing just for yourself has many tangible benefits. At its core, personal writing is a great way to guide yourself along the path of living a happier life. For example, you can clarify your values, beliefs, and goals; identify areas where you want to change and improve; and explore how your mind responds to a wide variety of situations. It’s also a great way to take charge of your creative capabilities and channel your energy into producing and shaping new ideas. In short, journaling is a great way to get insight into into the way your mind works.

One of the most obvious happiness boosters from personal writing comes from the ability to record your habitual thoughts. As a result, you can surface and interrupt your most unproductive circular thought patterns – you can repeatedly expel those thoughts onto the page, in a tangible, recorded, external form. As a result, you can apply rational analysis to these thoughts and neutralize their power. You can far more easily deconstruct your thoughts, beliefs, habits and behaviors, and examine their real-world consequences when you’re writing, as opposed to when you are sitting and thinking (or worrying, or ruminating). It can sometimes be scary if you write things down with no self-censorship. But that’s also a great advantage of it, since you can bypass your internal barriers and habits of avoidance, and dig into the areas where you need the most work!

Looking back at your writing as a snapshot of your thinking at a particular time is also valuable. I have read journals that I wrote during difficult times, observed the patterns of how I was thinking and writing, and felt gratitude that I was in a happier situation. It’s also a lot of fun to review journals that describe good times, and to recall the positive memories and thoughts that were present in your mind at those times.

In your creative work, journaling is a great way to get random, partly-formed ideas down on the page where they can be refined, improved, and ultimately transformed into something valuable for yourself and others. Many times, in a flash of insight, I have come up with what seemed like an incredible original idea, and in a fit of humility and modesty, congratulated myself on my creativity and brilliance . Then, upon looking back over a few months of journaling, I would see the very same concept, or something similar, repeated many different times, in different ways. The subconscious mind was working on the concept over time, and eventually, the conscious mind caught hold of the idea and treated it as its own, with great self-congratulation and ego. So don’t take credit for everything you think! Just let the ideas flow where they may, and when you see a good one, catch it.

If you would like to get started writing in a journal or other personal writing, but you’re not sure what to write down, here are a few simple, structured ways to get started.

A gift to your future self

When you’re in a particularly great mood or high energy state, it’s an excellent idea to write a letter to your future self, in anticipation of a future low point. Write down as much detail as you can: the process by which that state or mood arose; how grateful you feel that you are able to experience such happiness – as well as the specific reasons for it; and the specific pictures, sounds, sensations, and emotions that are stand out to you the most in your peak state. Interestingly, by performing this exercise a few times a year in order to help your future self out at a low point, you practice habits of happiness and actually make that low point much less likely to occur. (You’re probably not likely to say “Damn! I didn’t get to put my letter to my future self into practice!” – I bet you’ll just enjoy the greater happiness without even knowing why it’s there.)

Writing your side of the story

It doesn’t have to be a full biography. Perhaps something specific happened recently that was energizing, upsetting, or just interesting. By telling your side of the story you receive insight into how your mind operates. For example, you could write out your reaction to something that aroused negative emotions in you. It’s no good pretending those feelings aren’t there, but sometimes they aren’t always clear. By writing down your reaction and getting really specific about the feelings and sensations, you can understand they way your mind in particular responds to that situation. It’s often beneficial to get very tangible in your descriptions. For example: How did the reaction feel? What color was it? What temperature was it? Was it heavy or light? What were the pictures, sounds or sensations associated with your reaction? Did it remind you of any good or bad memories?

Dear so-and-so…

Write down things that you don’t believe that you could say directly to another person, for whatever reason. For example, the person might be dead or otherwise no longer present in your life; they might be emotionally inaccessible and unlikely to react well to your message; or they could be a role model who is hard or impossible to reach because of gatekeepers or because they are fictional (e.g. The Dalai Lama, God, Yoda).

This can be a very healing exercise. By releasing all your feelings, good or bad, onto the page- anger, frustration, pride, resentment, gratitude, happiness or whatever – , you can bring great clarity to your relationship with this person even when they are not present. After all, as Byron Katie said, “no one has ever been angry at another human being – we’re only angry at our story of them”. In doing this exercise, you can clarify what your “story” of this person really is.

In the world that I see…

Write down a detailed description of an idealized future, that you want to be your reality in the future – perhaps one, two or five years. When you get experienced with this technique you may want to stretch this out even further – 10, 20, 50 years – as you clarify your vision of your overall lifetime goals and contribution, your ultimate gift to the world. When you get practiced at this, it can be scary how accurately your vision of the future turns out to be. Is it the Law of Attraction in action? I don’t know. I’ve seen it work, though.

Brain dump

This is a creative writing exercise in which you write down a pile of “anything” for a specific number of words, pages, or minutes. There are no rules – you may write fiction, non-fiction, nonsense, poetry. It doesn’t even have to be grammatically correct. One of the most popular schemes for doing this is called Morning Pages, as presented in Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way. She describes them as follows:

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages – they are not high art. They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind – and they are for your eyes only. (Julia Cameron)

In my experience, the process of writing morning pages “burns off” the surface layer of nonsense thoughts that are on your mind. As a result they help to stimulate creativity, release circular or unproductive thoughts, and keep your mind fresh, clean, and clear.

Keep a notepad with you

Journaling doesn’t have to involve a big, premeditated effort. Interesting ideas or insights can come to you at any time – on the subway, walking down the street, driving, in the shower. Obviously, when you write ideas down in these situations, you won’t likely write hundreds or thousands of words. However, you can easily record the key points of an idea in order to remember it for more detailed work later on. You can use a high-tech or low-tech method to do this – it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that you save these interesting little idea seed crystals for later use. Who knows where they might lead?

Final Words

Practicing journaling regularly is a great idea. Since the process is so versatile, it can be used in almost limitless ways for creative problem solving and idea exploration. Getting into the habit of writing regularly, for an audience of one, has great power to improve your experience of life, and generate abundant happiness.

What will you write about today?

The concept of “creative destruction”, commonly associated with the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter, describes the process of upheaval and change in society and the economy that arises due to innovation in products, services, processes, or business models. Companies that stick to the old ways may find themselves with fewer and fewer customers, and may ultimately go out of business if they don’t adapt. All their business processes and practices are based on assumptions that no longer hold true. For example, when Wal-Mart cut their costs over time by reinventing many aspects of the general retail store business, many local, independent stores and other chain stores couldn’t compete and ultimately closed their doors.

There’s a similar process that takes place within our own lives as we grow and change. When major changes happen, old assumptions that we depended on no longer apply, and the landscapes of our lives shift, sometimes radically. In these situations, it’s often necessary to destroy certain aspects of our “old life”, and then to rebuild them differently in order to adapt to our new reality.

What kinds of things undergo creative destruction in our personal lives as we grow and improve? Here are some examples:

Beliefs. Letting go of old, incorrect beliefs and replacing them with more accurate beliefs about the nature of reality is an important part of the process of growth and positive change.

Habits. Growth and improvement tends to go hand in hand with destroying old habits. For example, many smokers wish that they had never started, and seek to eliminate this habit from their lives.

Physical objects. When intimate relationships or close friendships end, people often choose to deal with the transition by physically destroying mementoes of the relationship such as photographs and letters, or selling objects that anchor significant memories. These objects are no longer congruent with their new reality, and may hinder them from moving on from that relationship. Something similar happens when people reach prosperity after a long struggle – their shabby old possessions remind them of their former poverty, and they want to replace them with shiny, new ones. (This is fine, as long as they avoid the hedonic treadmill and the temptation of more stuff! )

Social connections. People eliminate social connections for a wide range of reasons – sometimes to cause a life change, and sometimes in response to one; sometimes deliberately and sometimes not. A former heroin addict may consciously break his connections to his former social circle because the temptation to relapse is too great when he is among them. High school friends sometimes drift apart when they live in different cities or no longer have things in common.

Identity. Transitioning from one role to another means that we may have to let go of aspects our old identity in order to be successful in the new role. A college graduate is unlikely to be successful in a new job unless they transform their identity into “new professional” and stop clinging to their old identity. Adapting to new responsibilities and new challenges make this transformation necessary.

Resistance to change when change is inevitable is counterproductive to happiness in peoples lives. Change can – and usually will – be uncomfortable. The process of creative destruction in our lives is an absolutely necessary part of growing and changing in a positive direction.

Recommendations for applying creative destruction in life

So we’ve illustrated the analogy between creative destruction in business, and creative destruction in personal growth. What are some ways that we can actually put this idea into practice?

Release some clutter. Very few of us live a simple enough lifestyle that we could not stand to get rid of a few material objects. We’re all affected by our physical environments, and when we live in a crowded, cluttered space, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Serious decluttering often means making hard choices about which things stay and which ones go. Fortunately, donating, selling, or throwing away even a small number of unwanted things always creates a great feeling of lightness and release that makes the process worthwhile. Trust me, after the recent flood in my basement when I was away for several days learning vipassana meditation, I know this one quite well – and from experience.

Kill a bad habit. What do you do regularly that you wish you didn’t? Make a list of habits that you have that you would prefer not to have, pick one, and do some research on how to quit it.

Let go of a bad relationship. This is a tough one, but sometimes it’s necessary. Most of us have encountered people who make things difficult, drag others down, and bring negative energy wherever they go. All of us have low moods at times, and I absolutely don’t recommend avoiding or rejecting people in your life just because they would benefit from some cheering up. However, when a friend, acquaintance, client, or associate is a reliable and unending source of pain and frustration, over a long period of time, it’s worth asking whether your life would be better with or without them.

Start over as a beginner, or take something familiar to the next level. Being a beginner delivers an important lesson in humility and is a good experience for an “healthy” ego. Taking an introductory class in something you know nothing about, or a more advanced class in something that you already know well, is a great way to create this experience for yourself. For maximum growth, work at your edge. Destroy the feeling that you have it all figured out. Even as an expert, work with a beginner’s mind!

Rethink a belief. If you think you’re open minded, try out a different belief or set of beliefs for a time, and see how viewing the world from a different perspective feels. If you’re an atheist, read the Bible and test out some of the more unusual beliefs promoted in the book (I don’t recommend sacrificing a ram, however.). If you’re a life-long political conservative, try believing some of the liberal tenets that you have criticized in the past. You can always set a new belief aside if you find that it isn’t working for you. It’s important to make this a good faith effort, and not an attempt to prove others wrong. If you go in with the attitude of “I’m just trying this to see how the idiots on the wrong side think”, it won’t lead to much growth or learning, just reinforcement of your pre-existing attitudes.

As I described in my article on attention, when you pay attention to something or someone, you literally make them the most important thing in your life – at least for that moment. The process of creative destruction helps you withdraw your attention from things that no longer play a valuable part in your life, and frees up energy, mental space, and yes, attention, that you can redirect to focus on your highest priorities.

Growth is painful because going through the process of creative destruction can be painful. Just remember, if you’re growing, you’re uncomfortable [1]. Staying in your comfort zone is a great way to feel safe, at least for a time, but that’s about all it’s good for. By constantly working to expand your comfort zone, and growing comfortable with the process of change – paradoxically, becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable – you make yourself far more able to cope and thrive in the face of inevitable change.

–

[1] However, the reverse isn’t necessarily true. Don’t assume that just because you’re uncomfortable, you’re growing!

Our attention creates our experience of reality. It’s all we’ve got in life. Some say that time is all we have, but attention is actually more fundamental – after all, we only perceive the apparent passage of time by paying attention to it.

The past is an illusion. Our memory is simply an imperfect recording of thoughts and sensory experiences that we once decided to pay attention to. Any of us could have been newly created a second ago, with our memories exactly as they now appear in our minds. How would we ever know the difference? The future is equally an illusion. Our future plans are just memories of thoughts we once had about possible futures. Our attention is the only thing that can connect us with what’s happening right now.

Why does attention matter?

At any moment, the only true certainty is our ability to pay attention to one thing or another – something in our body, in our mind, or in our surroundings. What are you giving your attention to in this moment? Whatever you’re paying attention to is by definition your highest priority right now – do you want to assign that thing the highest priority in your life (even for a little while)?

From time-management expert Alan Lakein comes the insightful question that he recommends asking several times during the work day – what is the most valuable use of my time right now? This question almost always has just one answer. That one thing is our highest priority, and deserves our full attention, until the answer to the question changes.

Our attention is the source of all insight, learning, communication, connection with others, beliefs, and emotions in our lives. The only way for something to enter our minds is for us to give it our attention and thus to invite it in. Working on living our best and happiest lives, and making our greatest possible contributions to the world, are intimately bound up with a simple habit: focusing our attention on those things that are most important to us. The choice of what we pay attention to is the most fundamental thing in our lives. It literally creates our experience of reality.

Attention to past, present and future

Most meditation techniques and several spiritual traditions present the concept of consciously guiding our attention as part of the goal of staying aware of the present moment. But what happens when we pay attention to the past (memories) or the future (plans and goals)? Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

Neuroscience research suggests that when we recall a memory in detail, the same pattern of brain cells activates as when we were experiencing the original event. In other words, it feels like we are actually reliving the experience. The same is true about visualization of possible futures – from the perspective of the brain, we’re actually having the experience right now. The question to ask is: am I paying attention to the past or future consciously and with intention? Or am I letting the “monkey mind” have free rein, and allowing my attention go running out of my conscious control?

When many people give their attention to the past or the future, they often create stories of regret or worry. These stories often manifest as out-of-control thoughts and feelings that would be best avoided – for example, reviewing old memories that are upsetting, not to learn what to do differently, but just out of obsessive habit; or envisioning failure and sadness as part of a threatening future.

On the other hand, consider an Olympic athlete performing a visualization exercise. He is imagining running a race with perfect form, feeling the fatigue and pushing through it, and crossing the finish line winning the gold medal. This is an example of consciously paying attention to a different time, in a controlled way, for a specific purpose: mental training for athletic peak performance.

Deliberately reviewing something from the past in order to learn from it, or envisioning possible futures in order to plan for them, are both good uses of our attention. The important thing is that we pay attention to the past and the future deliberately, and by choice, rather than just to let our attention drift and to realize later that we were daydreaming.

Taking charge of attention

We face a faster paced lifestyle and more distractions than any people in history, but the basic anatomy of our brains hasn’t changed. This raises the question of what we can do to improve our abilities of focus and concentration, in order to direct our attention by conscious choice and intention, rather than by habit or distraction.

Meditation. You knew this one was coming up, didn’t you. The fact is, this is the most direct form of training to focus our attention. Performing an apparently “boring” activity, and conditioning ourselves to maintain our attention on something specific, at will, is a great way to develop a focused mind and resistance to distraction. This is what meditation does for us.

Optimize your surroundings. Make sure that you aren’t distracted by irrelevant things in the surrounding environment. Switch off your toys and gadgets when you really want to focus. While it’s great to develop a resilient mind that can focus even in the middle of a busy street, it’s still easier for such a mind to focus in an environment with fewer distractions. When you have important work to do, take this into account.

Do one thing at a time. Our attention is essentially binary – we can only really focus on one thing at any moment. People are able to multitask to some degree, but we often delude ourselves about how good we really are at this. In fact, recent research suggests that rapid switching between tasks reduces performance on both tasks, and increases the time taken to complete them. In his book, The Miracle of Mindfulness, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and writer Thich Nhat Hanh discusses the process of performing a simple chore with complete attention:

While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way that I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle tossed here and there on the waves.

When every simple chore becomes an opportunity and a challenge to practice focusing the mind and paying attention, the inevitable “boring” tasks become a lot more valuable and even interesting. Being honest, but not judgmental, with ourselves when we’re distracted will make it easier easier bring our focus back to where we want it to be.

Eat the right foods. It’s harder to concentrate on a creative task when you’re in a food coma, or when the mind is buzzing from too much caffeine, or when you’re drunk. In most cases, large portions of refined carbohydrates or high-fat foods are likely to make you sleepy. However, the specifics of this will differ for everyone, and you’ll probably want to find out what diet and eating habits work best for you. In most cases, though, going for a third plate at the Indian buffet right before getting started on your most demanding creative work won’t give very good results (not that I speak from past experience or anything… ).

Keep learning. New experiences tend to catch our attention and and bring us back to “beginner’s mind” – the unfamiliarity signals the mind that it’s important to pay attention. When we get into a rut in our professional or personal life, the cure for the inattention caused by boredom and familiarity is to learn something new. Perhaps this means learning something new about a task that we’ve repeated a thousand times, or perhaps it means taking a course in something completely unfamiliar. Either way, returning to beginner’s mind and seeing a situation with fresh eyes is a great way to make sure that we keep paying attention.

Keep a list. Thoughts happen. It’s inevitable. Some of them are even useful, and worth recording. When you’re in the middle of creative work, it’s better to take a few seconds to write down a potentially useful thought, than to promise that you’ll remember it and let it continue to distract you. For a few years I’ve followed David Allen’s suggestion to perform “ubiquitous capture” of ideas and thoughts whenever possible, so as to avoid distraction by trying to remember too many things. This allows us to trust that we’ll remember our idea without needing to be derailed by pursuing it, and empowers us to keep our attention focused where we want it.

Our attention is the only truly certain thing – it creates our experience of life, and our decision of where to direct it has the power to make us happy or miserable. In a world where so many forces compete for it, it is more important than ever to develop the ability to focus our attention in service of our own highest goals and purposes. Our attention is life itself.

When we’re in the middle of a bad mood that has persisted for a couple of days, it’s sometimes hard to snap out of it and to feel better. Especially when it seems to have no cause, the result may be confusion and fear that the mood will continue indefinitely – “I don’t know why I feel this way – everything seems to be fine!” Or worse, self-punishment – “I have no reason to feel this way. Something must really be wrong with me to feel like this when lots of people are less fortunate!”

Sometimes, when we’re in that kind of state, the feelings extend as far as our sense of personal effectiveness. We may think to ourselves, when considering taking action of one kind or another – “What’s that point in doing X? It won’t make me feel better.” In these cases, it’s better to pay less attention to the criticizing, negative part of the brain (after all, it’s certainly not helping us feel any better!) and have faith that the following time-tested mood boosters will help us out eventually. Generally speaking, taking action and doing something – no matter how imperfect – is better than doing nothing.

Get out

When we feel unhappy, we often want to be left alone. However, being alone often encourages needless contemplation and “thinking things over”, which isn’t the best way to recover from a low mood. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to force ourselves to interact with lots of people if we really don’t feel like it (introverts take note!). Even going to a public place such as a coffee shop, bookstore, library or park can provide the uplifting experience of being among other people. Spending time with friends is another great way to improve our mood, as long as we allow them to raise us up, instead of bringing them down by taking advantage of the opportunity to complain or vent. In either case, however, being among people removes the feeling of isolation. It creates a feeling of common ground with others, which is a great way to move out of a slump.

Focus on gratitude

There’s always something to be thankful for. When we’re in the middle of a low point, it will probably be harder than usual to think about reasons to feel gratitude. In fact, we’re more likely to go in the opposite direction – focusing on things going wrong, frustration, and reasons to feel ungrateful.

Being systematic about the process of gratitude, even if it means doing an “artificial” exercise like making a list of things that we’re thankful for, can help turn around a persistent negative mood. Artificial or not, it’s a lot harder to continue feeling bad when we have just written down a list of the ten best things in our life!

Exercise

Doing something physical can boost our moods naturally, through the release of endorphins. This creates a feeling of relaxation and well-being that can counteract a persistent low mood. For greater benefit, choosing activities like weight lifting, yoga, or team sports, that demand focused attention and constantly change, can also break the cycle of counterproductive thoughts. More repetitive activities like elliptical or treadmill workouts won’t work as well as mental distractions, although the physical benefits of exercise would still remain.

Meditate

Meditation has been demonstrated to generate an experience of greater happiness in its practitioners over time. Even in the midst of a bad mood, meditation can calm breathing, help the meditator be less attached to their thoughts, and create a more balanced perspective on sources of stress.

Since meditation is such a quiet, introspective activity, it’s extremely important to ensure that our meditation session not turn into a thinking and complaining session. After all, 20 or 30 minutes of focusing on the reasons why we’re feeling low will potentially make us feel even worse. The potential upside is large, though – the same length of time spent concentrating on the breath, a mantra, or other focal point can definitely upgrade our mood.

Start again

Building forward momentum in some kind of productive activity is a great way to boost our moods. After all, it’s harder to feel bad about things when we’re making progress on one of our goals. But what if we don’t feel like doing anything precisely because we’re in a slump?

Neil Fiore suggests in his book The Now Habit that we use the reminder – I choose to start on one small, imperfect step, knowing that I have plenty of time to play. This “mantra” addresses many of the different concerns that create the habit of procrastination.

Using the language “I choose to” is deliberate. We may not “want” to do the task or “look forward” to it, but we can set these concerns aside for a few minutes and at least get started. It also avoids the common but misguided phrase “I have to”, with all of its tendency to generate resistance (”I have to? Who says?“).

Deciding to “start on one small, imperfect step” is equally important. We’re not promising something unlikely – working for three hours with perfect concentration, or completing a huge task in record time. We are just choosing to start on a small imperfect step. Perfection, refinement and completion comes later – just getting started is enough for now.

The final part of the sentence “knowing that I have plenty of time to play” is also important. This reminds us that we aren’t bound to keep working if things don’t go well. We can take a break, relax for a bit, and return to start again.

As long as we’re kind to ourselves about it, getting started making progress on one of our goals is a great way to help us move out of a low point and improve our mood.

Remember, this will pass

Although it may not feel that way from the middle of a low point, everything arises and passes away in time. This is certainly true of moods, both good and bad. The aversion that we have toward negative feelings and emotions is just the flip-side of the craving and attachment we have toward positive feelings and emotions. We want the one to end as soon as possible and the other to last longer. As a result, we tend to feel the transience more for positive feelings, and less for negative feelings. It’s very important for us to remind ourselves of this reality when a feeling of negativity or sadness is present.

…and remember to make it a habit!

Even if our actions don’t make us feel better, it’s important to remember the final point – regardless of what else happens, the mood will eventually pass and change into something else.

The long-term solution is to create habits rather than to be at the mercy of feelings. The more we practice the six habits described above, the more resources we will have at our disposal to create positive moods and diminish negative ones. Even so, our feelings are somewhat like the weather. We can build the most comfortable house in the world, but that just keeps us more comfortable during bad weather – it doesn’t control the weather itself.

So it is with these habits – even with regular practice, no habit can guarantee that we won’t fall into a negative mood now and then. Fortunately, the habits do give us some powerful tools to leave negativity behind much more quickly.

I recently returned from a nine day residential course in meditation at the Vipassana Meditation Centre (VMC) in Shelburne, MA, USA.

The Centre, and others like it worldwide, provides residential vipassana meditation courses from the teacher S. N. Goenka and his assistant teachers, at no charge. Although embedded in a Burmese and Indian cultural tradition, and similar to a range of Buddhist practices, the vipassana practice itself is presented in a non-sectarian way. Thus, it can be practiced without risk by followers of any religion or by those who have no religious beliefs at all. The course is given freely, as though the students had begged for it in the manner of a monk, and is funded out of the donations of previous students who found the courses beneficial [1].

My goals entering this course were to provide an inspirational and motivational boost to my own meditation practice, and to face the challenges of meditating for ten hours a day for several days in a world that was prescribed, scheduled, and incredibly constrained compared to my “normal” city life.

Meditation

Vipassana meditation practice was the absolute focus of the entire course. Everything about the students’ life during the course was calibrated to create the optimal environment for meditation practice, and every other aspect of life was subordinated to this single goal.

To provide context and encouragement for meditation practice, recorded lessons and chants of support from the head teacher Goenka were played during the start and end of the meditation periods. Nightly videos of Goenka’s dhamma discourses – extended practical lectures on vipassana meditation – were played after the evening group meditation. However, the primary focus of the course was the actual practice of meditation itself, rather than hearing or thinking about it.

The initial focus of the meditation sessions was simple, passive observation of breath or anapana meditation. This was intended to create deep focus of the mind (samadhi).

During the first three days of anapana meditation, my “monkey mind” was operating at full power. I found it a real challenge to concentrate and do nothing but sit and observe the breath in a quiet environment after transitioning from my typical urban lifestyle – running from appointment to appointment, with constant input from city life, conversation, phone, iPod, internet, television, and so forth. It seemed like my mind was looking for some form of entertainment, and so it would replay movie scenes, pieces of music, and events and memories from my own life.

My theory is that in modern society, the mind is accustomed to a fire-hose of input from so many different sources. When all that input is removed at once, the mind doesn’t know what to do without its familiar noise. So it creates its own “noise” for a while, reacting to the absence of input with stimulation of its own. Once it grows accustomed to the new, reduced level of input, and the simple practice of anapana meditation, it eventually quiets down.

With a quiet mind, and focused samadhi, we next learned the principal (vipassana) technique for observation of physical sensations on the body. This style of meditation is extremely minimalist – it uses no visualization, mantra, or pranayama (breath control). It is purely passive and observational. The goal and the yardstick for measuring progress in the vipassana technique was the level of equanimity in the mind, with respect to both pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the body. In other words, the goal was to avoid both craving (the desire for something pleasant either to happen or continue happening) and aversion (the desire for something unpleasant either not to happen or stop happening).

Lifestyle

The day-to-day lifestyle at the course was similar to living as a monk in Asia. Volunteers rang the wake-up bell at 4:00 AM, and the usual bedtime was 9:30 PM. During each day, we meditated for 10 hours. We depended on the sound of the bell as a signal for everything – to wake up, to walk to the dhamma hall for meditation, to signal meal time. Men and women were completely separated for the duration of the course. No speaking was permitted apart from interaction with the teacher or course manager. This “Noble Silence” was intended to minimize distraction from focus or confusion within our meditation practice. In particular, students were unable to discuss or compare meditation experiences with each other (”You felt a tingling sensation and saw lights? I didn’t – am I doing it wrong?“). Likewise, students were prohibited from writing and any reading aside from the public notice boards. We had no access to telephone, internet, television, or outside food. Anything that would significantly distract from the meditation practice of 10 hours a day was discouraged.

All students lived in dorms, cabins and tents during the course. I shared a 3 man dorm room with private bath. The rooms were extremely simple – each student had only a bed, bedside table, and shelf / clothing rack.

Each student agreed to follow five precepts for the duration of the course: to refrain from killing, stealing, telling lies, taking intoxicants, or practicing sexual misconduct. They were relatively easy to follow due to the lifestyle constraints. For example, the “Noble Silence” blocked all speech, not just lies; since men and women were separated, any kind of heterosexual temptation or interaction was impossible.

Because of the first precept (refrain from killing), all the food provided during the course was vegetarian, with vegan-friendly options. Since my usual eating habits involve frequent snacking, I thought that I would be unable to handle just two meals a day (plus fruit as a afternoon tea time snack for the new students). But none of these were a challenge. I didn’t feel emotionally hungry once, in the sense of craving either specific foods or food in general, although I occasionally observed hunger as a physical symptom for a little while, mostly prior to breakfast at 6:30 AM. Overall, I found the meals to be tasty and abundant. For those who wish to complete a course while following an extremely specialized diet, such as low carb or raw food, the relatively fixed menu may present a challenge. On the other hand, omnivores open to vegetarian meals, and conventional vegetarians and vegans are likely to do fine.

As someone who likes to be connected at all times, I thought that I would be seriously bothered by the lack of internet access or access to a phone. As it turned out, I didn’t face any withdrawal symptoms or miss internet or phone access at all. Occasionally I felt slightly curious, in a detached manner, about what emails or text messages might be waiting for me when I returned, but I never craved access to my Blackberry, computer or other electronic gadgets. In analyzing this after the fact, my theory was that craving and distraction tends to happen in association with things that are both near by and desirable but not yet immediately available in hand. I didn’t crave things that were “impossible” like internet or chocolate. Why bother? They just wouldn’t be an option for a few more days.

After a few days of ongoing meditation practice, my mind felt anchored to the rhythms of nature and the regular, unchanging schedule. Watching bees and flowers was my main entertainment. I saw a hummingbird moving from flower to flower outside my window. I saw a small frog hop off the path into the garden, and watched a nervous looking rabbit nibbling at plants near one of the walking paths. I became familiar with the behavior of the local chipmunks and birds. When not meditating, listening to the nightly dhamma discourses from the teacher, or performing basic maintenance on my physical body and few possessions (i.e. eating, washing, toilet, laundry), there was nothing to do but walk in the woods or look out the window at the natural world.

Challenges

The greatest challenges that I encountered were simple tiredness due to the rigorous schedule, and leg pain due to experimentation with new meditation postures. In speaking with others when Noble Silence was lifted, I learned that several of them had entertained ideas of leaving. Interestingly, I had never imagined that I would leave early. Maybe my meditation posture would be atrocious, maybe I would be distracted and meditate badly, maybe I would face airborne allergies due to the rural setting, but I resolved to stay.

Some strange things happened in my mind as I adjusted to my new life. During the middle of the course, I could not find my favorite T-shirt. In the midst of my spaced-out thoughts, I convinced myself that this was some kind of deliberate experiment run by the course management, intended to make the students let go of their attachment to physical possessions. But how did they know that this was my favorite shirt? I later found it hanging on the clothesline – I had dropped it while carrying my dry laundry back to my room, and someone had hung it back up. Obviously, there was no experiment going on – it was all an act of my imagination.

Another odd experience happened when I accidentally took the footwear of another student who had the same sandals in a couple of sizes smaller. (According to the Burmese custom, we always removed our shoes before entering residential buildings or the meditation hall.) After leaving the meditation hall and putting on “my” sandals, I stared at them for a while before questions arose – Have my feet swollen during meditation? Have my sandals shrunk in the sun? Am I just losing my mind completely? Am I dehydrated? I contemplated these questions for a few hours before we all congregated at the same location and I was able to realize that I had just taken the wrong sandals.

Perhaps my lowest point emotionally arose in the middle of the course when I read the announcement of the addithana requirement – group sitting meditation for one hour without moving. At all. The specific requirements were to avoid opening your hands, legs, or eyes for the entire meditation period. You could not scratch an itch, shift your legs, or brush a fly away if it chose to land on your face. Before addithana, my longest continuous meditation experience had been 30-40 minutes in cross-legged position, generally quarter lotus, and I had usually changed positions (i.e. changed the cross of the legs, if nothing else) at least once or twice. So I felt a bit intimidated by this requirement. This low point transformed into one of my peak experiences of the course when I completed the first addithana without moving. It felt painful and unpleasant. This turned into a whole day (3 group meditations), then two days. After that point, I believed deeply that I could complete all addithanas successfully, and did so. I believe that using a small meditation stool that enabled a kneeling posture was a key part of enabling this for me. I’m not sure if I could sit for an hour in a cross legged posture without moving yet.

I experienced some very unusual and vivid dreams during the 3rd and 7th days, and seemed to remember my dreams somewhat more than usual. The dreams felt like they ought to be nightmares due to their unpleasant subject matter, but I felt calm and relaxed during them. I observed the dreams unfold, reflected while dreaming that before the course I probably would have felt very uneasy and frightened, and noticed that I felt calm and relaxed.

I also recall a very low mood during the 6th day that arose in the morning for no apparent reason, and persisted until the middle of the afternoon.

Recommendations for first timers

The following are the things that I would have liked to have known before going to the course, and that I intend to follow for any future courses that I attend.

Practice and get used to a meditation position that you can hold for an hour or more. I think that the course would have been less physically challenging if I had had a more regular meditation practice under way prior to starting the course. My practice before the course began consisted of sporadic 20 minute sessions. At the same time, I felt that completing all the required addithana sessions without moving was a great breakthrough for me, and one that I didn’t know would be necessary at the outset. Other students who had taken more than one course told me that things feel physically easier and more familiar in subsequent courses, but that they can get mentally more challenging as you dig into deeper layers of your mind.

Figure out what physical support and cushions are best for your meditation practice. Not having used traditional meditation cushions in the past, I had to learn what worked by rapid trial and error. There wasn’t time to explore every possible meditation cushion before the supply of certain shapes ran out, so knowing what I was seeking in advance of the cushion selection process would have been valuable. As it happened, I was able to use a couple of blankets that I had brought from home to support my legs when sitting cross legged, but some experimentation at a local meditation centre might have saved me some confusion.

Pay attention to logistics and make sure you have a sufficient supply of whatever you need. I ran out of toothpaste and was concerned about the level of my contact lens solution. Because of the rigors and challenges of the days of meditation, the less you have to think about mundane matters like this, the more you can focus on the main task at hand. Since you can’t run out to a store to buy supplies during the course, having enough when you start is important – otherwise you may go without. (However, you can contact the course manager if you are missing something essential.)

Bring flip-flops or other slip-on sandals. I wore sport sandals with Velcro straps, and these weren’t as easy to put on and remove quickly as I would have liked.

Coda

I came home to find all my possessions in storage in the basement of my apartment house had been destroyed. Apparently, during my absence, heavy rains in the Boston area had caused extensive flooding and the water level in our basement had risen to five feet deep. I realized that all this physical “stuff” had been weighing heavily on my mind over the preceding several months: “I don’t want it… but I can’t throw it all away since it’s still usable; I guess I can donate some of it, sell some of it, etc.” Losing it entirely felt strange, surprising, and not completely unwelcome. The only thing that I ultimately rescued undamaged was a painting, sealed in plastic wrap and bubble wrap, that had some level of sentimental value. For a while I thought that even it was gone too, along with everything else, and felt OK about that for a time as well.

I found this to be an interesting synchronicity, since I had been meditating for days by observing the reality of change and impermanence in my physical body. It was as though the universe saw fit to teach me a very practical lesson of what I had been learning in meditation – that is, all is अनिच्चा (Pali: anicca (ah-NEE-cha) = impermanent) .

Conclusion

Overall, I found this course was an incredibly valuable experience.

On the mundane level, I felt good that I was able to meet the challenge of facing a complete withdrawal from habits and conveniences that I ordinarily take for granted, such as frequent snacks, and always-on internet access, and to adapt myself to a rigorous and monastic schedule. Likewise, I was happy that I could meet the physical challenge of the addithana group meditations, and meditate for an hour without moving during each session.

On a more spiritual level, I feel that I have learned a very practical, logical meditation technique and passed through a genuine “boot camp” in the practice of that technique. If an hour a day is a “normal” practice for a meditator, then the course packs the equivalent of three months of practice into nine highly focused days. I feel like I have dug into the mind and now understand, at an experiential level, the nature of reality a little better. I feel like I have grown at least a little bit in my level of equanimity with respect to both pleasant and unpleasant things happening in life.

I would recommend this course to anyone who wishes to know their own mind better, and to understand the spiritual nature of reality by exploring the impermanence of all things, starting within the framework of their own physical body.

Finally, for those of you who know what I mean, “start again, start again”.

[1] On the off chance you were wondering about the absurd title of this article, enlightenment is not guaranteed, and because you don’t actually pay anything for the course, there’s no refund.

The habit of perfectionism is deadly because it causes procrastination, by generating resistance to both starting and completing projects. Both of these forms of resistance emerge from the fear of judgment and fear of failure. A fear of starting arises when a creator judges first drafts as harshly as finished products; a fear of finishing arises when a creator wants to avoid judgment by others, and thus wastes time making unnecessary refinements to a finished product.

Everyone does these things to some extent, but when they become a real barrier to getting started, working effectively, and completing our work, then it’s important to intervene. Practicing the following five habits helps us break the habit of perfectionism and to make regular progress on our projects.

Apply the 80 / 20 rule

In the big picture of overall productivity, the habit of perfectionism is highly counterproductive. This can be easily seen through application of the Pareto principle. Also known as the 80 / 20 rule, the Pareto principle is the general observation that 80 percent of the “results” arise from the first 20 percent of the “input”, and the last 20 percent of the “results” arise from the last 80 percent of the “input”.

The relevance of this principle to perfectionism is simple – by releasing perfectionism and permitting ourselves to consider projects complete when they are good enough to earn a “pass”, we can get much more work done overall. In most cases, this really is good enough. Randy Pausch, who became world-famous for his moving Last Lecture, pointed out in his online time management notes that most projects in life, outside of formal education, are graded pass / fail.

When the 80 / 20 rule applies literally, we can complete five times as many “pass” projects in the time consumed by a single “100% quality” project. The numbers can vary: in a 90 / 10 situation, we increase our output by ten times; in a 75 / 25 situation, by four times. Regardless of the exact numbers, the key point stands: unnecessary perfectionism is the enemy of high productivity in satisfying requirements.

Of course, for our own personal reasons, we might be motivated to exceed the basic requirements for a “pass”. For example, if we wanted to submit the final paper from a pass / fail college class to a journal for publication, it would make sense to do more than the minimum required for the class. In this case, we’re simply choosing to level up to a more demanding pass / fail game – either the paper is published or it isn’t. The important thing is that when we choose to perform extra work, we do it for reasons other than a nagging sense of perfectionism and fear of “failure”.

Create the habit of starting, and finishing will become a lot easier

By making the promise that we only “have to” work for 15 minutes on an unwanted task, and allowing ourselves to stop immediately when that time is up, we can get over the barrier of starting. After all, “it’s only a few minutes, how bad can it be?” Of course, once we’ve built up some momentum working on our task, doing another 15 minutes, and then another, is a lot easier.

Professor Dan Gilbert’s research on “affective forecasting” (a fancy of saying “predicting how we’re going to feel in the future”) points out that we are bad at guessing what will make us happy. In a similar way, we’re pretty bad at guessing what will make us unhappy. We can procrastinate for an hour on an “unpleasant” task, and then five minutes in, we are making great progress and wondering why we ever hesitated.

However, it’s important to make sure that our promise to ourselves is genuine – if we really don’t want to continue after the first 15 minutes, we have absolute permission to stop. Breaking promises and forcing ourselves to continue when we really don’t want to do so will make this habit harder to practice in the future.

“Eat the frog”

Brian Tracy describes the thought experiment of imagining that one of our tasks is eating a large frog every morning. With such an unpleasant, Fear Factor-worthy task facing us, procrastination feels like a great option. In fact, eating the frog first thing is a much better choice than waiting. Completing the hardest task of the day first is motivating because we know that anything else on our to-do list that day will seem easy in contrast. This is a direct and simple method to build self-discpline and mental toughness. Simple, but not easy. Fortunately, our real-life toughest task is unlikely to be as nasty as consuming a raw frog (and if it is, swift and significant life changes are strongly recommended).

Write a “shitty first draft”

Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird introduces the concept of the “shitty first draft” [pdf]. In her field – writing – most of the work that people see is edited, polished final product. As a result, many aspiring writers have the mistaken notion that their successful role models just sit down at their computer, type perfect prose paragraphs, complete a book, and then send it off to the publisher for printing and distribution to millions of adoring fans. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the top writers produce more crap than anyone else – the difference is that within that crap can be found the diamonds that actually gets published and released to the public. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike. Depend on habits, not feelings, in order to produce.

In most cases, regardless of our specific “work product”, we can produce an SFD. Write a rambling, confused legal brief. Code up a short program that breaks easily. Create an incomplete document outline that helps structure our ideas. Some “all or nothing” cases exist, where it might appear that the rule doesn’t apply – flying aircraft or performing surgery, for example. In these cases, however, practitioners still complete SFDs. They just do them in a safe environment, using a cadaver, or a flight simulator.

Why not allow ourselves to make mistakes? Like, lots of mistakes. Perhaps not on the final version that’s going to the client or management, but in the initial attempts. Just get started on the SFD – it’s the only path to a finished product.

ABC – Always Be Creating

OK, I couldn’t resist the Glengarry Glen Ross reference [warning: profanity, etc.]. Seriously, though, let’s be clear about what creating means. Reading web pages, however useful as “research”, isn’t creating. Reading documentation isn’t creating. Sitting and thinking deep thoughts isn’t creating. Checking our email isn’t creating.

For a writer, writing is creating. For a medical doctor, seeing patients is creating. For a programmer, writing code is creating. For a sales professional, communicating with prospects and clients is creating. Every job has “overhead” – necessary, ancillary parts that are needed in order to support the creative part. This is inevitable. The important thing is that during our “money hours” we focus on our creative, productive work.

Mark McGuinness cites the example of Bach, who “spent several decades writing an average of 20 pages of finished music a day”. The vast majority of that music is forgotten and rarely played, but among the work that he left behind is found several of the most respected musical compositions of all time. Could he have written those masterpieces without the producing the “chaff” that he wrote for his “day job” at St. Thomas Church? Unlikely. McGuinness writes that: “[t]he truly great composers produce more masterpieces than the others, mainly because they produced more work overall.”

Summary

The conclusion is simple: we can increase our productivity and creativity by releasing perfectionism, getting started, by being willing to fail and to make mistakes during the working process, and by going for volume rather than perfection in our output. In so doing, we will produce more “ordinary” work, but due to the sheer volume of what we create, we will produce more “great” work as well.

What are you going to start on today?