A better thing to shoot for on a moment to moment basis is presence, not the perfection of the end product. Perfection is a massive burden. In the past, I spent an inordinate amount of time aiming for perfection. This doesn’t work. You have to just be in the moment and try your best.
A trick that I often use when I feel that my mind is racing, is placing awareness on my feet. I might, for instance, pay very close attention to each step that I take while walking down the stairs of my house. I can usually feel an immediate relaxation of the mind. There is a sense of moving back into the body.
This sense of moving back into my body is pleasant but not without discomfort. When I do this, I also become more aware of the emotional discomfort that was hiding behind the mental loops. The trick is to not immediately run away from that feeling by retreating back into the mind. The trick is to investigate the feeling.
Life is pain.
Life is suffering
This is true on Earth—but truer on Olrania
These are the introductory sentences of Chasing the Sun, a sci-fi novel that took me multiple years to write. I wanted to touch on a universal truth in those sentences. That everyone—no matter who they are—suffers. Also, things can always get worse. This is certainly the case for the crew of the Algora when they crash land on a desert planet. The story also touches on the idea that, as humans, we are often our own worst enemy.
But this post is not about Chasing the Sun. Rather it is about the suffering that we all have to endure while we are here on Earth. It’s about how we can counter that suffering with a strategy of mindfulness, a strategy to stay present even when things get difficult. My view is that mindfulness lessens our suffering in the moment, but it also moves us closer to peace as we cultivate it.
Continue reading “Mindfulness | A strategy for life.”
Over the last few years, I’ve probably seen dozens of videos and blog posts that discuss methods and tips on how to read more. But my big breakthrough in reading came when I shifted from reading more to reading more slowly. Reading really slowly fits in nicely with my commitment to mindfulness and presence, but it also made me a better writer and reader. I think we can learn a lot, not by reading more, but by reading with more focus and effort.
Continue reading “Don’t Aim to Read More. Read Slower.”
The present, viewed though the lens of future, is often rushed or fearful.
We often do things, not just for the sake of doing them but because we want some outcome from the activity. Sometimes we even look down on activities that don’t yield some sort of gain somewhere down the line. We also find that many people around us discourage doing something for mere joy or fun of it. Many things can fall into this category. Running for example. We don’t just go running for the sake of running. We go running because we want to lose weight. Or because we want to improve our health. Or because we feel guilty about not doing enough exercise. But running for the mere sake of running is the best kind of running. It is not just an activity we do to get to some other more desirable state. It is just a fun activity (for me at least).
Continue reading “The Present viewed through the lens of the Future”The present, viewed through the lens of the past, is often heavy and burdened.
This means that we can, in any given moment, choose to attach some narrative about our past experiences to whatever we’re doing or feeling.
An example would be pain. Pain, in the present moment, is just an unpleasant feeling. It can be as simple as that. But when we analyse an unpleasant feeling through the lens of a narrative that says I never feel well, or I always feel terrible that feeling becomes more burdened and heavy with the baggage of the past. Some part of our narrative might be true, but it doesn’t serve us. It often just weighs us down.
Continue reading “The Present viewed through the lens of the Past”
There is comfort in mental loops. Going around and around in your head about how unfair someone acted is easier than feeling the emotions underneath the thoughts. Repetitive mental loops can, of course, initiate and perpetuate certain emotions. But often it’s easier to loop through narratives than it is to feel the emotion. In other words, there is comfort in the thinking pattern.
When we stop and try to be silent for a while, all sorts of uncomfortable emotions can bubble to the surface. These can be hard to feel and the temptation is to return to the thinking (or doing) cycle. This is why mindfulness (or mind-stillness) is the foundation of emotional work.
Continue reading “Emotional Work: Mindfulness as a foundation”
Robert Greene in Mastery talks about how easy wins or successes can sometimes be a curse rather than a blessing. Greene argues that most things in life do not come easy and if we have the expectation that it should, then that can cripple us. This is because the expectation for things to be easy can cause us to give up too quickly. When I read Mastery years ago I did not fully appreciate that insight, but over the years, I’ve seen that it’s not only true but also beneficial to not expect quick results. In other words, it might be better to expect certain things to take a long time. Your best strategy is to favour process over progress.
Continue reading “Process over progress”
I do laundry about twice a week. I’ve never timed myself but I conservatively estimate that it takes me about one to two hours per week in total.
Continue reading “Why you should do laundry mindfully”
There is sometimes pain in the stillness and that can be a barrier to sitting quietly and turning inward. But the alternative, I’ve found, is being knocked around by thoughts the entire day. You must still do this. Oh, remember that. What if that doesn’t work out. Instead of being present with whatever I’m engaged in I get distracted by these constant internal interruptions.
Sometimes I just give up arguing with all the thoughts in my head and ask myself: What is truly important? As I go down the winding road of ideas, I inevitably always get to the same answer: being present.