Try and let more things roll-off, which may help your mind be more at ease.
In a world in which everything is changing constantly, people suffer because they cling to things that won’t last. The route to true happiness, according to the Buddha, is achieving a visceral understanding of impermanence.
Dan Harris says your ego constantly assesses your worth by looking at your own wealth, looks, and social status, and then finding the next best person with more of it to compare it against.
Therefore, your ego’s default setting is more. The minute you feed your ego a new achievement, toy, or compliment, the baseline for desire is reset and it starts looking for the next thing. It thrives on drama and worry, and will instantly look for the next bigger achievement to compare yourself to, and if none is there, dig up some ancient problem or crisis and pester you with it.
That’s why the ego is never happy, and it’s up to you to take charge of that, because no matter which new heights you reach, it’ll never be enough.
“Everything we experience in this world goes through one filter — our minds — and we spend very little time bothering to see how it works.”
“Make eye contact and smile at people. This simple habit will make you feel more connected and much better each day. “
“Some of the traits we think are fixed like a quick temper or moody-ness or compassion are learned skills, not fixed characteristics.”
“Many people assume they must be paranoid and worry if they want to stay at the top of their game.”
We spend so much time searching for transformational change in one easy step, but can we all just admit that we’re looking for the easy way out here?
Just because you can’t change everything at once doesn’t mean you can’t get better.
In many cases, most cases in fact, you are only going to see a very small increase from each action. One workout builds a very small amount of muscle. That is what is to be expected. You’re not doing it wrong if you get very tiny results. Most strategies deliver tiny results and require consistency over a long period of time.
In the book, Harris makes a comment about therapy only working a little bit:
“The limit isn’t your therapist. The limit is therapy itself.”
It makes a small difference, but it still makes a difference. The key is to embrace these daily marginal gains rather than dismissing them because they are small.
Meditation is like doing focused reps for your mind. Focus on the breath, lose your focus, bring it back to the breath, repeat. This is the whole game. Keep bringing your mind back to the breath.
How to meditate and achieve mindfulness
Sit somewhere comfortable, keep a straight spine, focus on a spot, and bring your focus back to your breath whenever you lose it. Meditation helps you shut down your monkey mind for a moment.
We have 3 habitual responses to everything we experience:
1) We want it.
2) We reject it.
3) We zone out.
Mindfulness is the fourth response. Viewing what happens in the world without an emotional response about it.
“Mindfulness represents an alternative to living reactively.”
Interesting self-sabotage insight: many people worry that if they meditate they will lose their edge and no longer be competitive or driven.
“When you squelch something you give it power. Ignorance is not bliss.” You should not run from your problems and pain. You should acknowledge them.
Mindfulness seems to be about awareness of the self. You recognize and acknowledge the things going on around you and the emotions you are feeling. Rather than let the emotion drive everything, you step outside of it and see it from afar.
Being mindful doesn’t change the problems in your life. You still need to take action, but the key is that mindfulness allows you to respond rather than react to the problems in your life.
Meditation will make you more resilient, but it is not a “cure-all” that fixes your problems or relieves all stress in your life.
Scientists have developed a term for the consequence of all our multitasking: continuous partial attention.
Be as ambitious as possible, but let go of the result. This makes it easier for you to be resilient and bounce back if the result is poor.
Striving for success is fine as long as you realize that the outcome is not under your control.
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