Mindfulness Meditation Is Rediscovered

Amy Gross retired from her job as editor-in-chief of O, the Oprah Magazine to pursue a career in mindfulness meditation:

The key shift is in turning toward pain, when all your life you’ve turned away from it. You give it your full attention—you yield to it—and, paradoxically, its hold on you diminishes. (The majority of chronic-pain patients in an eight-week meditation course are able to reduce their medications and become more active.) You open to emotional pain as well. As you meditate, the grip of your history loosens and you get a little saner, lighter, less entangled.

Via Ben Brooks

Merry

John Gruber:

Late last night, inspecting Santa’s handiwork, a simple thought occurred to me. A decade or so from now, when, say, I’m waiting for my son to come home from college for his winter break, and, when he does, he wants to spend his time going out with his friends — how much will I be willing to pay then to be able to go back in time, for one day, to now, when he’s eight years old, he wants to go to movies and play games and build Lego kits with me, and he believes in magic?

Beating the Social Overeating Habit

Leo Babauta has compiled 12 tips for beating the social overeating habit. It’s a good list, and I particularly like this contribution from Alessandro Shobeazzo:

Cheat without guilt. For one or two occasions a year, allow yourself to eat as much as you want, which doesn’t necessarily mean to stuff yourself, but to eat without thinking too much about consequences. Two big meals on Christmas or similar occasions don’t spoil a year-long habit of healthy eating. Don`t overanalyze, just enjoy, without any bad conscience.

Step off, step on.

The Many Faces of Fiddling

Great article by Brett Kelly on the many faces of fiddling:

Always think, but resist the urge to think about it more than is required. Make a decision and execute on it. If the decision turns out to be the wrong one, then your gut now has a little more context for next time.

Brett offers his own response to this week’s Back to Work, but he also takes the concept of fiddling beyond the physical. Mental fiddling, or what Brett refers to as unproductive learning and over-thinking, is also something we need to be aware of. Really well put.

Read to Discover

Devir Kahan has a nice post on reading outside your bubble, wherein he shares a conversation with a teacher who feels curating what we read is problematic:

He said that reading things solely online - and curating what you read through things like RSS - is an even bigger problem. If we are only reading things that interest us, we'll never find anything new. We'll never try something a little bit outside of our comfort zone, and we'll never grow as humans.

I definitely see his point, but like Devir, it makes me feel a little self-conscious because I enjoy reading things online. In fact, browsing my RSS reader is one of my favorite things to do on my iPhone or iPad.

I also agree with Devir in that I feel I've grown a lot via the articles I read online. If I had never gotten hooked on reading the web, I might never have discovered minimalism, the Apple community, the Paleo lifestyle, or any of the other things I'm passionate about today.

That's why I feel it's important to differentiate between merely "reading the news" and "reading online". For me, "reading the news" refers to the headlines and events of the day. Whether that comes from CNN or Engadget, it's primarily informational and (hopefully) fact-based. You could say it's the who, what, when, and where: the essence of reporting.

This basic reporting is different from opinion pieces and editorials about the news. John Gruber discussed this distinction with Josh Topolsky on On The Verge last week:

The thing I always wanted to do is, in newspaper parlance or magazine parlance, is I don't want to be a reporter, I wanted to be the columnist. I wanted to be the guy on the back page. I wanted to be the guy on the ed-op page who just gets to say what he thinks.

What distinguishes Gruber — and what makes me prefer Daring Fireball to a news aggregate like Engadget — is that he tells me what happened, but he also tells me what it means and what he thinks about it. It's the "how" and "why", which I feel is more valuable and more interesting. This is not to say I prefer to be told what to think, but rather that I enjoy hearing others' opinions on topics that interest me. It humanizes what would otherwise be a list of facts.

(Coincidentally, there's been quite a bit of fervor over opinions in the news lately. See: MG Siegler and Ben Brooks.)

This distinction comes down to reading headlines versus reading writers. That is, I prefer to read Gruber rather than Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, et al. because I feel he offers more depth than a typical reporter. Most of the online reading that I do, therefore, is not "reading the news", but reading my favorite writers. I don't follow CNN, I follow Merlin Mann, Shawn Blanc, and Michael Lopp because these are the writers that offer valuable articles on topics I enjoy. Rather than an endless regurgitation of headlines, these writers expose me to new ways of thinking: their own. That's why I choose to follow human beings.

That brings us to this quote by Tim Van Damme, which Devir cites:

Living inside a comfort zone is dangerous, and turns you into an uninteresting human being fed by other people’s opinions. Broaden the topics of things you read and learn how to have your own opinion.

This is true, and it's good advice, but I don't think you should force yourself to read things you don't care about either. How many topics do we need to read about to avoid becoming "uninteresting"? I think a better strategy would be to seek out as many different opinions about our chosen topics as possible. I'd rather be knowledgeable and passionate about A, B, and C than knowledgeable and indifferent about A-Z. We do, however, need to be mindful and avoid the trap of accepting opinion as fact, which I've discussed several times before. It is the responsibility of the reader to evaluate an opinion before accepting it.

Devir concludes that there are three different types of reading, all of which are vital to our growth as human beings:

1. "Technical writing". To me, this is reporting. While I wouldn't necessarily label this kind of reading as "dangerous", it can be dry, unimaginative, and do little to expand our horizons. That doesn't make it useless, however.
2. "Books". I agree with Devir here. Books are timeless, fun, and have the potential to inspire. I use books as a means of escape. Reading a book is also different from reading online, which is why I own both an iPad and a Kindle.
3. "Inspirational and insightful articles". For me, these are original pieces written by the authors mentioned above. Very different from just "covering the news" — and far more fulfilling.

The only tweak I would offer is that any piece of writing — not just articles — can be inspirational and insightful. An aspiring journalist might find a piece of technical writing very impressive, just as a budding author might be in awe of Dostoyevsky. We must also not discount verse, newspapers, magazines, or other ways to read. So, while there are innumerable mediums, any and all of them may be deemed inspirational and insightful by a particular individual. As I've said in defense of e-readers, it's the content that matters, not the medium in which it is presented.

I can see why some would argue that reading only technical writing is cause for concern, and it's certainly possible. In the end though, my conclusion is a cliché: variety is the spice of life. For those of us who live to read and learn, the solution should be wonderfully obvious. We shouldn't force ourselves to read stuff we don't care about, but by exposing ourselves to a greater variety of media, we increase our chances of discovering something new and delightful.

Thinking Time

Jacob Gorban on thinking time:

I put it in my calendar, weekly, as the first thing to do each week. It’s a good way to start a new work-week. While most of the population rushed to the jobs thinking “It’s @#$%@#$ Monday again”, I start the week slower, walking the streets or sitting on a park bench or under a tree to write things down, breathing real air.

Shawn Blanc, in response:

It’s easy to forget that, as a writer, you don’t have to have your fingers on the keyboard to be doing your job. Sometimes your best work is only realized when you are away from the very place where that work will later be put onto the page.

The Secret Rule to Changing Anything

Leo Babauta offers the secret rule of changing anything:

When we have urges to eat something we know is bad for us, we often give in. But is it that simple? The truth is that our mind is actually rationalizing why we should just eat that cake, why it’s too hard to not eat it, why it isn’t that bad to eat it. It asks why we’re putting ourselves through pain, why can’t we let ourselves just live, and don’t we deserve that treat?

All of this happens without our noticing, usually. It’s quiet, in the background of our consciousness, but it’s there. And it’s incredibly powerful. It’s even more powerful when we’re not aware it’s happening.

Stop Speed Reading

Iain Broome wants you to stop speed reading:

I want you to stop speed reading. I want you to not worry about how many books you’ve read and focus on the one that you’re reading right now. Speed reading is for panicking students and literary agents. It’s not for you and I.

I admit to buying a speed reading book a while ago, but I never really got into it. Now that I’m out of school, reading as fast as possible no longer has any appeal. I’d rather take the time to enjoy a book and really absorb what the author has to say than blow through it just so I can check it off my reading list.

Push-up Habits

On Wednesdays, I teach the black belt class and the junior beginner class back-to-back. The black belt class is for ages twelve and younger, and the junior beginner class is for white, yellow, and orange belts, ages seven to eleven.

The difference between the two classes is striking for a number of reasons, some of which are on my end, and some of which are on the students’. For my part, the black belts get to learn advanced material, while the beginners work on the basics. The black belts sweat and throw each other around, while the beginners have fun and learn about respect, self-discipline, and self-control.

However, what the juxtaposition of these two classes illuminates is the level of enthusiasm between a beginner and an advanced student. While the length of their careers evidences their love of the martial arts, the black belts are often lazy and complacent because they’ve been doing it for so long. They’re comfortable, and it takes extra effort on my part to keep them motivated, interested, and at peak performance.

By contrast, the beginners are hungry, brimming with excitement, and eager to please. Everything is new, so they don’t mind doing jumping jacks, push-ups, and sit-ups. It’s still fun because they haven’t amassed the thousands of repetitions that come with wearing a black belt.

These two dynamics are ironic because my expectations for the black belts are much higher than they are for the beginners, but the beginners exceed my expectations far more frequently than the black belts do.

One pet peeve of mine is when a black belt wimps his way through a set of push-ups with terrible form, rushing just to get them over with. It’s inexcusable. Upon seeing this today, I realized that such a student suffers from one thing: bad habits.

Somewhere along the way, they allowed themselves to get by with crappy push-ups, and now they can’t imagine doing them any other way.

The problem with bad habits is that the longer they’ve existed, the harder they are to rectify. Hence, my inability to cure certain students of their straight-leg syndrome, noodle-arm disease, or mountain-butt push-ups. As I explained to them, I can only tell them what to fix so many times; eventually, the change has to come from within. Self-discipline is the name of the game.

I’ve only been working with this particular generation of black belts for about seven months — a fraction of their training — while I’ve known most of the beginners from day one. It dawned on me that I did not want these beginners to lose their enthusiasm or develop bad habits that would plague them for the rest of their martial arts careers.

As such, we spent about ten minutes discussing what makes a good push-up, what bad habits to avoid, and what good habits to cultivate instead. Nothing depresses me more than seeing an advanced student with his arms out in front of him and his butt up in the air, bobbing his head like a chicken and groaning because I told him to do twenty-five. I told the beginners that if they wanted to get stronger, they needed to start doing good push-ups right now. If you develop bad habits now, I said, you will always groan over push-ups because they will always be painful and difficult. But if you learn to do them right — even if you can only do one — you’ll get stronger every single day. That’s when one becomes two, and two becomes ten.

Imagine doing crappy push-ups for four years; they’re still going to hurt, even after all that time. But imagine doing awesome push-ups for four years; think of how many you’d be able to do! I’ve learned to love push-ups by doing a lot of them properly. As I stressed to the class, creating a foundation of good habits serves you well time and time again.

I don’t mean to tout my teaching abilities, but the “good habits vs bad habits” lesson seemed to resonate, and it got me thinking about my own bad habits, which kick my ass on a daily basis:

I’m pretty sure I’ve been biting my nails since birth.

I will go to bed at 3am and sleep until noon if left undisturbed.

I usually say, “Nothing.” when asked what’s bothering me.

Just to name a few. Some time long ago, I picked these things up, and now I struggle with them. Sometimes I can stop biting my nails for a few weeks, but I always regress. Alarms and obligations do a pretty good job of managing my sleep schedule, and sometimes I’ll be comfortable enough to express myself openly. But it’s always an effort.

A foundation of good habits is invaluable. You can’t be a strong martial artist if you have a weak horse-stance. You just can’t. And bending your knees after years of having straight legs hurts like hell.

Brain Dump: November

I don’t love November.

Traditionally, it’s a busy month for me, one laden with stress and anxiety. 2011’s version is proving to be no different.

This year’s November started off with a freak Halloween snowstorm, which left us without power for five days and nineteen hours. Let me tell you, no suburban plight brings you closer to moral collapse than sitting in the dark for six days with nothing but your thoughts, particularly when those thoughts center on the fact that you broke up with your girlfriend a week before your one-year anniversary. That sucks no matter who you are.

November also happens to be NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, in which participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I’ve completed NaNoWriMo twice, but this year I find myself languishing with little time, energy, or motivation to produce anything other than emotional brain vomit: a nonsensical stream-of-consciousness rant largely concerning the aforementioned romance issue. At this point, I’m many thousands of words behind schedule, and there’s a good chance it’s not going to get done, which disappoints me. I’m not one to half-ass something.

I also haven’t felt like much of a writer lately regarding this website, which has resulted in increased link posting and far fewer long-form articles than I’d like. This is my fourth month writing QLE, so I guess a little slump is inevitable once the initial novelty wears off, but it still disappoints me that the site isn’t operating at a level I’m happy with.

November is also the month of our annual tournament in Old Sturbridge, Massachusetts, which attracts over 500 competitors every year. I’ve never loved competing. It stresses out my shy and introverted side, and my heart rate increases just thinking about it. I’m much more used to competing now than when I was younger, and I have to do it to set a good example for the students, but it remains a source of dread nevertheless.

And of course, underlying these issues are the usual drags: student loans are looming, the days are growing shorter and colder, and my thesis has taken a back seat to the above grievances.

However.

Times like these are when our perspective becomes most important. We may not be able to control the things that happen to us, or the obligations we have to go through, but we can control how our mind deals with them. Making it through to the other side comes down to two things: focusing on the positive, and reframing the negative so it doesn’t seem so bad.

For every stressor, annoyance, and bummer November throws at me, there are many, if not more, things to be thankful for and happy about. It is the month of Thanksgiving, after all.

For example, I love my Kindle. Thanks to this little $79 guy (and said power outage), I was able to rip through all 656 pages of the Steve Jobs biography in about two weeks. Finishing a big book like that was tremendously satisfying and gave me a feeling of accomplishment I haven’t had in a long time. I’ve now moved on to Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, and I’m really enjoying it. The Kindle makes me want to find time to read. I do, and that feels fantastic.

I also love my yoga class. My dad had been going to our local yoga center for a while, so to get my mind off things, I decided to stop in and try it out. I had taken a men’s yoga class while working on my master’s degree and loved it, but it only lasted eight weeks. I tried doing P90X’s yoga video once a week at home, but at ninety minutes, Tony Horton quickly fell out of favor with me. Taking a class is so much more satisfying and rewarding. Yoga people tend to be very warm, calm, and inviting, so meeting them is a pleasure. You get to sweat like hell and forget about everything else bouncing around in your head for a while. Plus, the strength and flexibility training has been an invaluable asset to my martial arts ability. I’m going three times a week now, and I absolutely love it. Having something to look forward to on your schedule is always great for lifting your spirits.

As a nerd, I’m psyched that Apple finally released iTunes Match, which enables you to upload your entire music collection iCloud and access it on all of your devices. It took more than 24 hours for iTunes to match and/or upload my 13,000 song library, but now all of my music is only a tap away wherever I go. I don’t have to haul my dinosauric iPod Classic around anymore or deal with picking only 32GB worth of music for my iPhone. That makes my life easier and simpler, so of course I’m all about it.

My friend Rich has also been teaching me how to play chess. I’m terrible, but I still find the game very enjoyable, and it’s a good brain workout. A new hobby is a great distraction from what ails you.

Despite all these new sources of joy, the negative things can still find a way to overwhelm and get you down. The only way to overcome these pains in the ass is to reframe the way your mind thinks about them. I could stress out about not finishing my NaNoWriMo novel this month, or I could simply tell myself that it’s just for fun anyway. Whether I write 50,000 words or 5,000, that’s still more than I would have written otherwise. Something that’s supposed to be a fun creative endeavor shouldn’t stress me out.

As much as I can already feel the nervousness and anxiety of this weekend’s tournament, I can just as easily envision the feeling of relief when it’s all over. It’s just one day. One day of nerves and excitement, and it will inevitably come to an end. Those feelings aren’t going to last forever. When I wake up Saturday morning, every minute that goes by brings me closer to the end of the day, when I can finally breathe a sigh of relief and relax, win or lose. It’s going to be a big day, but when it’s over I can enjoy a long drive home listening to my favorite music, and then it’s smooth sailing to the holidays.

As for the breakup, I can’t have any regrets about my performance or the person I was for the past year. When you look at the big picture, it was really, really great. My expectations were a little mismanaged, but what can you do other than remember that for next time? If something doesn’t work out, something else will.

Sometimes there’s so much going on in our heads that it can be impossible to think straight, and that’s when we get overwhelmed. As I’ve said here before, there’s only a finite amount of space between our ears; keeping everything locked up and bouncing around in there is a recipe for a mental breakdown. That’s where the brain dump comes in: writing down every single thing on your mind in one huge list. Every phone call you have to make, assignment you have to do, errand you have to run, person you have to talk to, thought you need to capture, anything and everything. Once it’s down on paper, you can stop worrying about it. You don’t have to think about it, and you won’t forget it because it’s written down. It’s out of your head. Emptying your brain frees and calms your mind, which makes it much easier to breathe.

I still don’t love November, but emptying my mind out here helps me put things in perspective. The good things will last forever; the bad feelings are temporary. November is just a bump in a very long road, and it’s only a matter of time before December 1.

A Saying No System

David Sparks in a post about his No Journal:

Moreover, I have no doubt that some of the projects I was truly passionate about ended up substantially less awesome because of my inability to say no to other things. Put simply, saying yes too often means that you will, necessarily, be mailing it in on everything.

[…]

Another benefit of saying no is that it reminds me how special those things are that make the cut. Whether it is writing an article, giving a killer presentation, or just taking a walk with my wife, those are items that I’ve chosen to do because they are so special. It makes mindfulness easy.

David takes saying “no” to a whole new level by implementing an actual system. It may sound a bit extreme, but the importance of saying no cannot be understated. If you said yes to everything, you wouldn’t have time for anything. The rejection of things that add no real value to your life is a cornerstone of minimalism: do what makes you happy, and eliminate the rest.

Read Slowly

Randy Murray on how you’re reading too fast:

There’s a difference between a walk in Central Park and zipping through it cab [sic]. You might see it, but you don’t experience it, understand it. Yes, you get from point A to point B, but what you missed, well, you missed the point of the park being there in the first place.

Exactly what I needed to hear today.

How to Not Miss Out

Leo Babauta challenges us to stop worrying about missing out:

It’s why we’re so busy — we take on so much because we don’t want to miss out. We take on dozens of goals and aspirations, because we don’t want to miss out.

The title of Leo’s piece, “The Tragedy of Missing Out,” is ironic. At first glance, it sounds like missing out on things is tragic; we tend to interpret the act of missing out as a negative experience.

But it’s actually the fear of missing out that causes us to miss out in the first place:

If you always worry about what you’re missing out on, you will miss out on what you already have.

The tragedy lies not in missing out on things; that’s unavoidable. Instead, the tragedy lies in the mindset of “I’m missing out”. When we feel like we’re lacking — in experiences, social circles, possessions — we feel compelled to chase after those things in the hopes of feeling complete and of not missing out. Thus, our minds trick ourselves into pursuing things out of fear, rather than enjoying and being content with what we already have.

You will miss out, but in striving to do everything, you’ll miss out on the wonder of the thing you are doing right now.

File that under “mindfulness”.

A Fair Fight

Leo Babauta on the amazing power of being present:

If you are completely present, the external forces are no longer a problem, because there is only you and that external force, in this moment, and not a million other things you need to worry about.

Vital, but so very challenging. It’s really hard, for example, to do yoga when you’ve got a hundred things on your mind and a ton of stuff to do after you’re done. It’s really hard to go to work after having a rough morning and realize it’s only Tuesday.

I thrive when I have things to look forward to. It can be anything, really: plans with friends, a new podcast to listen to, a new album coming out. Having these things in the back of my mind helps me get through the stuff I’d rather not be doing. It’s a means to an end; you have to get through the obligations in order to reach the things you’re passionate about.

But when there doesn’t seem to be anything to look forward to other than long workweeks and uneventful weekends, things can seem pretty bleak. So while having stuff to look forward to can be an advantage, it can also be a detriment when there’s nothing exciting on the calendar. That is, reliance on always having something to look forward to is not the most effective method for avoiding a bad mood.

Leo’s advice about being present is the solution. It’s a form of mindfulness:

Being present becomes, then, a way to handle any problem, any distraction, any stressor. It allows everything else to fade away, leaving only you and whatever you’re dealing with right now.

If I’m at work, I’m responsible for teaching a great karate class. I can’t let the thought of having nothing to do this weekend affect my performance. The better option would be to focus on the present moment and think about what I can do to make this class memorable for the students. Then, my fear or longing for things outside the moment will fade away, rather than dictate how I feel. This allows me to give my full attention to whatever I’m doing right now. In other words, don’t let something happening in the future affect your happiness in the here and now. Deal with it when it arrives, not when you can’t do anything about it.

If you’re present, you can fully enjoy the moment. Even if the moment finds you working on something you’d rather not be doing, you’ll be better equipped to deal with it when it has your full attention, not when you’re simultaneously thinking about ten other things.

When it’s just you and the moment, it’s one-on-one: a fair fight. All that other stuff will still be there afterward. One thing at a time.