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July 2 - August 18, 2022
writes the monk Bhante Gunaratana. “Distractions are really paper tigers. They have no power of their own. They need to be fed constantly, or else they die.”
“If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.”
Michelle was not watering the seeds in her life that she wanted to be watering, and it was showing.
It’s astonishing how much of our time, energy, and attention we devote toward tasks that do not serve us well.
“How we spend our days is . . . how we spend our lives.”
It’s worth regularly asking yourself if you are directing your attention and energy in ways that align with these values.
What changes can you make in your life, both personal and professional, so that you can spend less time on the shallow and more time on the meaningful?
To be effective and hold her center, Donna had to learn a new way of leadership, a new way of being. She had to learn to practice patience.
Generally speaking, good things take time to come to fruition. Patience is an advantage in athletics, business, creativity, science, and relationships.
In his own words, he considered his success to be due chiefly to “the love of science, unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject.” Arguably the greatest scientific breakthrough of modern history wasn’t really a breakthrough at all. It was over two decades in the making.
According to Winnicott, the good enough parent does not respond to their child’s each and every need. They do not helicopter-parent, but they do not neglect their child either. Rather, the work of a good enough parent is to create a safe space for their child to develop and unfold on their own.
For many of the big projects in our lives—including our own unfolding, and certainly raising children—it can be helpful to adopt the mindset of a good enough parent.
When you feel the urge to intervene by taking expedited action, ask yourself what it would look like to slow down whatever it is you are doing by 10 percent. What would it look like to take a soft step back and let things unfold on their own time for a bit longer?
Sometimes it does make sense to intervene. This pause—and more generally, adopting the mindset of a good enough parent—simply helps you bring discernment to that decision
Rather than focusing on the heroic achievement of big goals, practice breaking them down into their component parts and then concentrate on those parts.
If you are concentrating on the work that is in front of you, you will be better off. This attitude, what I have come to call a process mindset, helps prevent you from trying to rush toward an outcome when taking your time is a better strategy. For most consequential endeavors,
Cultivate a Process Mindset First, set a goal. Next, figure out the discrete steps to achieving that goal that are within your control. Then, mostly forget about the goal and focus on executing those steps instead. Judge yourself based on your level of presence and the effort you are exerting in the moment.
a common piece of writing advice is to stop one sentence short, to end a block of writing when you are still in the flow of things so that you can more easily pick up and then settle into a rhythm in your next session.
Throughout this ordeal I learned an important lesson. I needed to stop trying so damn hard to be invincible, to live up to any notion of heroic individualism, and instead just be myself.
It can be helpful to think of vulnerabilities as cracks. The way that you fill them is by facing them and, when appropriate, revealing them.
poet and philosopher David Whyte speak. I left the event with the following scribbled in my notebook: The things you care about make you vulnerable. The things you care about break your heart.
Yet to those who deliberately ventured toward Pan and chose to pay him worship, he was harmless. He bestowed upon his willing visitors abundance, health, and the ultimate gift—wisdom.
“Even when examples of showing vulnerability might sometimes feel more like weakness from the inside, our findings indicate that, to others, these acts might look more like courage from the outside. Given the positive consequences [increased trust and connection, improved learning from others, and forgiveness after making a mistake] of showing vulnerability for relationship quality, health, or job performance, it might, indeed, be beneficial to try to overcome one’s fears and to choose to see the beauty in the mess of vulnerable situations.”
researchers aptly coined their finding “the beautiful mess effect.”
For each difficult thought, feeling, or situation, ask yourself the following: What am I running from? What do I fear? What lies underneath this fear? What if this fear—be it of irrelevance, failure, losing control, running out of time, embarrassment, or death—is simply an unavoidable part of the human condition? What would it look like to make space for this fear, first in myself, and then perhaps by being more open about it with others?
The act of investigating your fears in this way changes your relationship to them. Though it may be tough at first, over time you will no longer feel as strong an urge to repress them or push them away.
The human condition demands that we hold multiple emotions at once and skillfully navigate them.
in the moment you need to summon the courage to say what you really want to say. You can always increase your vulnerability progressively, starting small and gradually exposing more of your backstage self over time.
DeMar DeRozan says that his mom always told him, “Never make fun of anybody because you never know what that person is going through. . . . You never know.”
BUILD DEEP COMMUNITY The old-growth redwoods in Felton, California, are awesome.
DEEP COMMUNITY IS A BASIC HUMAN NEED In researching his groundbreaking book, Tribe, investigative reporter Sebastian Junger found that many soldiers are more satisfied at war than at home.
“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it,” he writes. “What they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary.” Junger’s observation
LONELINESS AND COMMUNITY BUILD ON THEMSELVES John Cacioppo’s research shows that when you are connected to others you not only feel good but you also feel secure.
In other words, the brains of lonely people were continually scanning for threats and primed to identify them; in essence, they were always on edge. This is not a great state of mind for making connections. Fortunately, there is reason to believe the opposite effect is also true.
Augustine describes his conversion not only as a pathway to a more spiritual life but also as a commitment to a community of people whom he needs and loves.
Throughout his life, he would remark, “I could not be happy without friends.” Friendship gave Saint Augustine’s life meaning. In a famous sermon delivered sometime in the fourth century, he remarked that “in this world two things are essential: a healthy life and friendship.”
The Buddha replies enthusiastically yet sternly: “Not so, Ananda! Not so! This is the entire spiritual life, that is good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship.”
Erich Fromm, in his 1955 book The Sane Society, warned against developing a marketing orientation: “[When someone’s] body, mind, and soul are his capital, and his task in life is to invest it favorably, to make a profit of himself.
for The New York Times, coined this the “Shalane Flanagan Effect: You serve as a rocket booster for the careers of [those] who work alongside you, while catapulting forward yourself.”
The science and experiences of highly fulfilled peak performers like Shalane Flanagan all coalesce around the same basic truth. We are mirrors reflecting one another. The people with whom we surround ourselves shape us, and we shape those around us, too.
It’s far more likely that you and the people in your community are saving each other. Remember the Buddha’s advice to his loyal attendant Ananda: “Good friendship, good companionship, good comradeship is not half the spiritual life. It is the entire spiritual life.”
Join a Support Group From mental health to studying to fitness to parenting, it’s easy to use the internet to search for and find support groups for just about anything.
“If you consort with someone covered in dirt you can hardly avoid getting a little grimy yourself,” wrote the Stoic philosopher Epictetus in a two-thousand-year-old warning about being around assholes.
The most important people in a leader’s orbit are those who are comfortable doing the opposite—challenging the leader and pointing out problems before they explode.
Mens sana in corpore sano:
is that pushing your body teaches you to experience pain, discomfort, and fatigue and accept it instead of immediately reacting to it or resisting it.
if you rush the process or try to do too much too soon, your chances of injury and overtraining increase. There is no escaping or denying this. Your body simply lets you know. You learn patience, in your tendons and bones.
They found that, on average, Americans have more than 4.5 hours per day of leisure time, the vast majority of which is spent sitting in front of screens.
I would strongly consider reframing physical activity not as something you do separate from your job, but rather as an integral part of your job.
begin to view physical activity as an essential part of their jobs, they are more likely to make it a regular part of their lives. This shift in mindset provides many of my clients with both the permission and motivation to spend time moving their
