DevYou

A character in Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Rant cooks dangerous objects — things that can break your teeth, stab the inside of your mouth, or cause you to choke to death — into her family’s meals. Why would a caring mother do such a terrible thing?

She does it to force her family to eat slowly. To be utterly focused on the current moment. As they carefully chew each bite, all their attention is in their mouths. They don’t rush through their meals, thinking of what next thing they want to do, living in the future. They don’t read, or watch tv, or do anything at the table other than experience the food in their mouths.

Of course, putting dangerous objects in food is a horrible thing to do, and you mustn’t do it, but this fictional, extreme behavior draws attention to an intriguing question. Namely: how present are we? When we eat, are we really eating? When we walk are we really walking? When we listen to music, are we really listening? Listening with our full attention, aware of every step, chewing as if a thumbtack were hidden somewhere in our meal?

I know I strive to be present, and I know the benefits I will reap, and yet I also know how far I commonly stray from clear awareness. I know I let my attention wander to the future. The next thing. And worse: multiple next things. Whole strings of them, stretching out into the future, further and further away from this, here, now.

I may not crack a tooth on a booby trap in my apple pie, but I miss the sound of the wind in the leaves above me, the flash of affection in my companion’s eye, and the awareness–the centeredness–that dissolves the worry that plagues and torments my future-dwelling self.

What’s to be done? It’s fairly simple. Come back. Be here now. Meditation helps. Being creative helps. Doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy exercises helps. And even GTD helps. How? Because you don’t need to store and hold the various things you must do in your mind if you know that they’re already captured in a trusted system. There is indeed a next action, but for now–chew that bite of food with all your attention, just as if Rant’s nutty mother made it.

If worrying were an Olympic sport, I would have a good shot at a medal. Not gold, but I don’t think bronze would be out of my reach. I do worry quite a bit.

That’s why I was glad to discover Mike King’s guest post today on the Positivity Blog: “Why Worry Gets You Nowhere, and How to Get a Handle on That Destructive Habit.” In the article, King discusses the benefits and costs of worrying, its causes, how to recognize it, and he describes techniques for controlling and limiting it. Good stuff. I highly recommend this article to anyone who has trouble managing worry.

Today on the Psychology Today Enlightened Living blog, Michael J. Formica describes a Yogic breathing technique that can be help combat anxiety. He explains the basis for the technique and how to do it.

Pranayama is a highly complex discipline that has many different aspects and includes a variety of very specific practices. One of the most common, and useful, pranayama practices is called nadi shodhana (pr., nah-dee SHOW-d’nah) or alternate nostril breathing. According to Ayervedic medicine, this practice is intended to purify the pranic channels of the body. From a less esoteric viewpoint, nadi shodhana brings the body — and by association the mind — into a state of balance and neutrality by activating the same energetic pathways that in acupuncture are associated with balancing the hemispheres of the brain. On an even less esoteric note, Western medicine has long known that, while mouth breathing tells the body it is in a state of stress, nostril breathing tells the body it is in a state of homeostasis. This strategy of nostril breathing=homeostasis has been employed by elite athletes for decades.

Read the complete article (Psychology Today).

Hooray! I’ve been looking for ways to integrate exercise into my morning routine better, and I just ran across this great article on the Dumb Little Man blog called 2 Simple Ingredients That Will Boost your Morning Energy. The author (guest poster Dan Boyle) has an energetic writing style, and describes two fast exercises that can easily fit into even the busiest morning.

Realizing that money is tight and time is tighter, let’s discuss a quick workout that doesn’t cost a penny and can be knocked out in no time. Short and free, this routine will boost your morning energy level exponentially, especially if your current workout only consists of a shower.

I’m going to try his routine right now.

Read the full article on Dumb Little Man

Last September I wrote an article for Zen Habits called How to Use Mini-Meditations to Relax and Find Focus. In it, I describe a very simple meditation technique that takes less than a minute to do and yet has a wonderful affect on your mind and well-being.

I find it helpful to have specific times to practice this simple technique. Here’s a list of 10 great opportunities that pop up during our busy days. Enjoy!

1. Just after turning off the shower, before stepping out.
2. Just before starting the car.
3. Just after parking the car and turning off the engine.
4. While waiting for your computer to boot.
5. While washing your hands.
6. While washing the dishes.
7. Waiting for a red light to change. (Keep your eyes open!)
8. Just after waking up.
9. Just before getting into bed.
10. While waiting for your tea to steep.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Paul Plamondon: life coach, workshop designer, and author of Invisible Lives.

It is a fundamental, human dynamic - what we believe influences what we do. Our beliefs can limit or can enhance the results we get in life. When we change our limiting beliefs, we change our lives.

One way to examine and transform our beliefs is by using questions – actually, powerful questions. That’s because powerful questions tend to create connections and inspire possibilities.

Here are six powerful questions that will transform a limiting belief into an empowering belief. Spend 15 minutes on these six questions, and change your life.

Question 1 – Current Belief (2 minutes)

What belief do you currently hold about yourself, others, or the world that seems to limit you in some way?

[Example: I don’t deserve to be successful.]

Question 2 – Current Behaviors (3 minutes)

What adverse behaviors does this limiting belief generate?

[Example: I skip around from job to job about every six months; I leave one job for another at the point when I start to feel comfortable with the work; I avoid making friends; I spend a lot of time playing computer games; I’m eating too much junk food and I’m not exercising enough.]

Question 3 - Current Results (3 minutes)

What adverse results have you been getting from these behaviors?

[Example: Some months, I don’t make enough money to pay all of my bills; it’s getting harder and harder to find new jobs; I have gained 30 pounds in the last 2 months; I’m uncomfortable in my body and my clothes are too tight; I think I’m drinking too much; I’m overeating and not exercising at all; I sometimes feel depressed; it’s hard to wake up in the morning.]

Question 4 – Desired Results (3 minutes)

What positive results would you prefer to be getting?

[Example: Make more money; be able to save enough money to buy a house; pay off my bills; feel more confident; find someone to date; improve my writing skills; stop drinking; feel happy; wake up feeling refreshed; lose 30 pounds; start exercising.]

Question 5 – Replacement Behaviors (3 minutes)

What behaviors will help you achieve these positive results?

[Example: Enroll in a self-development class at the Community College; buy some work-out videos for home; check out the community clinic’s counseling services; find a better-paying job in construction; take a class on architecture and on developing my writing skills; prepare a monthly spending plan or budget; make a weekly low-calorie meal plan and exercise at least 4 days every week; commit to a single job for at least one year.]

Question 6 – The Replacement Belief (1 minute)

What empowering belief will stimulate these behaviors?

[Example: I am in the driver’s seat of the one and only life I have. If I don’t steer the car, no one else will.]

A Few Things to Notice

There are three important elements of this activity to notice:

1) The last three questions are similar to the first three questions, but they are in reverse order. Essentially, once the results of the limiting belief are identified, then you work back through the process;

2) The replacement belief is NOT just the opposite of the original limiting belief – that is, the replacement belief was not I deserve to be successful. Instead, the replacement belief was visually stimulating by virtue of the driving metaphor, which makes it memorable.

3) When answering the questions, avoid getting stuck on the “right” answers. Whatever you come up with will be right. Take a brainstorming approach to answering the questions, avoid judging your answers, and simply enjoy the process.

Try working through this activity with someone else – someone you trust and with whom you can be totally honest and open. Have the other person ask you the questions and, as you verbalize your answers, write them down for you. Working through this process with another person can create a deeper sense of reflection and accountability.

The Simple Dollar is running a great series of articles on “investing in yourself” that I recommend. Today’s article is particularly good. In it, the author discusses a variety of great, practical tips for improving and sustaining your mood.

Accentuate the positive things you do and minimize the negative ones —
No one in life does everything absolutely right, nor do they do everything absolutely wrong, either. While it’s useful to know what your faults are, dwelling on them creates a false impression in your mind that you’re somehow less valuable than you are. Instead, spend time focusing on the positives in your life.

Investing in Yourself: Feeling Good

I have this habit of cramming so much stuff into each and every day that I can’t possibly do it all. The good part about that is I get alot done, but the bad side is that I tend to feel mildly bad about the things I wanted to get done but didn’t. It’s not an overwhelming feeling, but it’s unpleasant and can add up over time and nag at the back of my mind.

A little trick I’ve learned is to plan my day by “looking back” at it.

Here’s what to do:

In the morning, write a paragraph or two about your upcoming day. Use a conversational tone and describe all the things you did and how it went. In other words, pretend you have a time machine and have transported yourself to the end of the day and are looking back at it and describing what happened.

For example:

“Today was great. In the morning, I worked on the Defobrinicator project and made a ton of progress. Then I returned those phone calls and replied to a few emails. I had lunch at Bruno’s Luncheteria. Afterward, I went jogging. In the afternoon, I worked on my taxes, wrote that article about Patagonian tree lichen, and cleaned the rain gutters. Finally, before taking a break for dinner, I followed up on some new client leads and cleared my GTD inboxes.”

The benefit of writing about your upcoming day in the past tense is that you’ll tend to get a much better idea if all the things you’re planning realistically fit into your day — much more so than if you scribble down a list of things you want to accomplish. If you describe a day that’s totally unrealistic, you’ll feel it as you describe it.

Give it a whirl, and see what you think!

The other day, I overheard a conversation in a coffee shop that made me think. Two women were sitting at a table near mine, and said, “I’ve been trying to meditate but I can’t do it. I hear people tell me all the time how great it is to clear one’s mind for 10 minutes every day, but I just can’t do it. When I try to meditate, my head is full of so many thoughts, and I can’t make them stop.”

I think this is a fairly common experience. After all, our minds are pretty unruly and don’t just stop thinking when we tell them to.

What I wanted to tell her was this: Just as an experiment, don’t try to stop your thoughts. Let them arise. Notice them. Let them pass. Don’t try to stop them. Don’t cling to them when they appear.

The idea here is that meditation isn’t an act of sanitizing your mind, forcing it to be sparkling clean when it’s not. Rather it’s an act of familiarizing yourself with how your mind works. Familiarizing. Not sanitizing.

Rather than be discouraged by the unruly nature of her mind, this beginner meditator would do better not worrying about all those thoughts (after all, those worries are thoughts too) and just let them arise and pass. Worrying about her uncontrollable thoughts can only lead to one result: she stops trying. Rather, being tolerant of them — learning to let go of them while gently bringing her attention repeatedly back to some of single thing to focus on such as her breath is more likely to allow her to strengthen her meditation practice. And a stronger, more balanced practice, is more likely to bestow the benefits she seeks.

Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Rankin.

Here in New York City, winter is upon us. Grey skies and cold temperatures, a noticeable lack of major outdoor events, and the high cost of heating seem to be the complaints muttered by everyone from local newscasters to bus drivers to dog walkers. At least in December, they lament, we had daily religious festivities, secular festivities, shopping festivities and a million other reasons to be festive. But now, in this long, frigid stretch between New Year’s and Memorial Day, all we have to hope for is that global warming will bring about a quick demise to winter so that we can get through spring and then onto summer—when things really get good. Ironically, just when the people who are currently pining away for the dog days of summer are finally happily baking away in a mid-June heatwave, a whole other group will start grumbling about how all we have to do is survive another five months until the temperatures drop, the snow starts to fly, and winter returns—when things really get good.

Sadly, when we spend a whole season either complaining on a daily basis about how we wish the weather were different, or we waste away our time daydreaming about a future season, we miss out on a lot of great opportunities. We miss out on a lot of life. As a recovering autumn and winter addict who’s learned to enjoy spring and summer for their own unique qualities, trust me when I say, the whole year’s a lot more fun when we learn to enjoy the season we’re dealt. And, when we’re able to make each year a little better, we’re ultimately making our whole lives a lot better.

From Traditional Chinese Medicine to Pagan belief systems to environmental ecology, it seems that a lot of people talk about the benefits of seasonal living. That is, shaping your life activities to work in conjunction with the nature around you. Now, I’m not going to try to tell you why you should consider living in harmony with the seasons; I’m just going to assume that you already have your own reasons for wanting to give it a try. What I do want to address, though, is a point that I think is often overlooked in a lot of the materials on this topic—how to get started living seasonally when you simply don’t like one or more seasons. There’s no magical formula that will allow you to wake up one day and suddenly start loving every part of the year. But, there are some simple and somewhat universal ways that I think anyone can use to start to change their views on any season.

1. Eat Seasonally – Not only can this be a fun way to introduce new foods into your diet, but it can also help you save money. Simply by focusing on buying food (produce in particular) that’s in season locally, you’ll start to feel a little more tied to the season at hand.

2. Decorate for the Season – This idea can extend to almost anything, from your apartment/house, to your car, to your computer desktop and icons. Put out decorations or use colors that are tied to what’s going on in the nature around you.

3. Dress for the Season – Going outside in the snow in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts is simply living in denial. And, as we all know, denial is often the first sign that you have a problem. By dressing appropriately for the weather, you’re taking the first step toward acknowledging what’s going on around you.

4. Go Outside – So long as you’re already following suggestion number three, then you shouldn’t have any problems with this one. Get yourself outside to experience, first-hand, the seasonal changes taking place in your environment. You’re just not going to feel it if you spend your entire life going from your home to your car to some other indoor setting.

5. Find Holidays to Celebrate – So, maybe there aren’t any holidays in February that you look forward to, but have you ever thought about seeing what holidays people in other parts of the world celebrate at that time of year? There’s nothing to stop you from adopting other culture’s holidays and traditions. Not only can you learn something new about other parts of the world, but you can also give yourself a new reason to look forward to an otherwise lackluster part of the year.

6. Create Seasonal Traditions – Along the same lines as suggestion five, one way to jump-start your excitement about any part of the year is to create your own traditions for that particular season. They don’t have to be elaborate, and they don’t have to mean anything to anyone else but you.

7. Learn from Others – Take the time to find out what other people like about a particular season. Do you hate autumn but know other people who seem to look forward to it all year? Talk with them to find out what they like so much about it. Or, even better, tag along with them on a seasonal adventure. Just getting a fresh perspective on it will help you learn to appreciate any season in ways you might not ever have thought to otherwise.

8. Learn about the Season – One of the best ways to conquer fears, biases, or any other negative thoughts about almost anything is to learn about it. If you’ve got a season you simply don’t like, spend some time researching what changes happen in your area at each time of the year to make it a unique period. You might be surprised to learn some interesting facts that make the season seem a lot better.

9. Adopt a Seasonal Hobby – If you’re still struggling to get into a certain season, why not try to start doing an activity that can only be done in your region at that time of year. This will give you an on-going project to work on and look forward to year after year.

10. Go on a Seasonal Trip – Regardless of where you live, there are certain places in your vicinity that epitomize the changes associated with any particular season. So, go on short trips in your area to see those places. Seeing the season at its best may be enough to change your mind.

And, before I go any further, I want to say that I know there are some people out there thinking to themselves, “Yeah, that’s great, except where I live January is the same as February which is the same as March and every other month. There are no distinct seasons here!” Now, I’m certainly not a biologist, climatologist , or any other kind of natural scientist, but I do know that even in the desert, the arctic circle, and the deepest rain forests, nature changes throughout the year. The changes may be very subtle compared to other parts of the world, but they’re there. And for you, that might just mean that seasonal living is more about nuance than it is drastic lifestyle changes throughout the year. I’d suggest you start with idea number eight to learn about what changes actually take place throughout the year in your region. You might just be surprised to learn that nature changes seasonally in your area a little more than you would have thought.

No matter what your reasons are for deciding to live in harmony with nature and the seasonal changes, the first step is learning to appreciate all the seasons you live in. And while this list of suggestions is by no means exhaustive, there are hopefully few ideas that anyone can use to start to re-think a dislike for any season. Ultimately, learning to acknowledge, accept, and even enjoy every season is just an extension of learning to be mindful and fully in the present moment.