mindfulness

Quiet Time

Have you ever had a feeling that you are just on the go all the time? There is always something to do or someone to entertain! I know a number of people who enjoy this fast pace life. But it is good to give yourself a timeout every now and then and recharge yourself. So today, let’s discuss enjoying quiet time on your own.

First, let’s look at why quiet time is important in our lives. A quiet time allows us to self-reflect. It actually may lead to daydreaming. When we are in a quiet zone, our mind tends to focus on what matters most in our lives. I do want to caution you though. If you are not used to quiet time, at first, it would seem like the mind wants to go everywhere but eventually, it will settle down. As we get accustomed to quiet time, we will become mindful and see the advantages of being in the present moment.

Staying quiet also has physical benefits it seems. A 2006 NIH study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860846/) shows that staying quiet for 2 minutes significantly reduces heart rate and blood pressure. The opposite is also true and a noisy environment increases blood pressure and heart rate.

Some people have difficulty staying silent. Fear of missing out has a lot to do with this. A lot of people in our society need external stimuli such as social media and personal devices to keep themselves busy. If you think about it, they are trying to avoid their inner thoughts and feelings. Have you noticed that young adults tend to get bored easily? They just don’t know how to be with themselves. I often say that if you enjoy your company, you will never be bored! Another advantage of being quiet is that it allows us to make sense of it all. All the chaos that may be happening around us all of a sudden makes sense. We can see the bigger picture if you will. Here is interesting research I found. Boredom leads to creativity. According to John Eastwood of the Boredom Lab at York University in Canada (I am as surprised as you are that there is such a thing as Boredom Lab!), two key things are happening in the mind when we are bored. The first thing is they have a desire to do something. The other is that there is access to mental capacity that is available. A combination of these things leads to creative ideas.

So how do we stay quiet you might ask. There are a number of ways to practice staying still. Here are just a few of them. The easiest thing you can do is stay in the bed a little longer. Pick a weekend day and just don’t get out of bed for a few hours! Another approach is to seat after your meal at your dining table. My wife excels at this! She would just seat quietly for an hour after her meal. That is her own time. Another approach is to try to challenge yourself to stay silent for a certain amount of time. We used to play this game when kids were growing up. Whoever can stay silent the most wins the game. This is such a relief as a parent I tell you. Kids get to play the game and you enjoy a little peace and quiet! Yet another way is to go for a swim or a hike without your phone. That is going to be some quality quiet time.

A Harvard Business Review article from 2017 notes that quite time “increases your chances of encountering novel ideas and information and discerning weak signals.” When we’re constantly fixated on the verbal agenda—what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next—it’s tough to make room for truly different perspectives or radically new ideas. It’s hard to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention. And it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truly novel ideas are found.

So here is an interesting idea. Some people think the craving for silent time is somehow cheating the system or not taking care of your responsibility. That cannot be further from the truth. We all need that alone time. That is the time where we can take care of our mental needs. Our mind needs that rest.

I hope this gives you something to think about and make quiet time part of your daily routine. If you have young children, I strongly encourage you to teach of how to be quiet. It is difficult but well worth the effort for their own future well-being.

Your Life, Your Choices

Have you ever thought about why you are where you are in life? Two people who grow up in similar environments end up being completely different places in life. Why does that happen? The simplest answer is the choices we make in life. Today, let’s look at how the smallest choice we make can have an impact on our life in the long run.

I was talking to a group of young adults recently and we were discussing life in general. All of a sudden one of them said something interesting. He said when we were in high school, our focus was to get good grades by hook or by crook and not really on the love of learning. Mind you, this kid goes to Stanford and is probably one of the brightest young men I have known. He went on to tell me that the habits they developed in high school are making it difficult at his college. He said he wished he made a better choice back in high school. I thought that was very profound for a young adult to realize. You see most people go through the motion of life without realizing that where they are in life is largely due to choices they have made for better or for worse. They don’t realize that life just doesn’t happen.

I recently came across a book called “Living By Choice” by Michael Nelson. He is a pastor from Memphis, TN and it is an interesting read. Some of the choices he advocates for better living include:

The choice to embellish others and not yourself: think about it, most of the time we are too busy talking about ourselves and our achievements rather than giving credit to others who have done a phenomenal job.
The choice to be the leader of your life: I have always believed that one has to be a leader in one’s family as opposed to being a manager. You see, most people are managing their lives and their family. When you don’t lead, someone else will. That is how outside influences such as social media become dominant. There is no leadership in life.
The choice to be patient: It really doesn’t help when we get all worked up and impatient. Instead, when we come across a challenging situation, it is helpful to take a deep breath and assess the situation and be patient.
The choice to be loving: This is perhaps the most important emotion in life. When you have love in your heart, the fear and angst disappear. Next time you find yourself stressed, try love as an antidote. It seriously works.
The choice to be tolerant of opposing views: This is so much needed in today’s world. We are at a point in our public square where no one is willing to listen to anyone else. All of us have decided that our opinion is the right opinion and anyone who does not agree with us is an idiot. The media is mostly to blame along with social media algorithms that keep us in our own biased bubble.
The choice to be giving: We have talked about this so often. Giving ignites our sense of greater good and is very contagious.
The choice to show gratitude: I don’t think I have to say a lot about this. We start every session with a gratitude attitude and hopefully, you have seen a difference in your lives.
The choice to be respectful to yourself and others: R E S P E C T. It’s such a simple word but people had to fight to get respect in history. If you look at African American history or the Apartheid or Indian Freedom Struggle, a lot of people died to get a spec of respect.
The choice to follow your passion: This is so important for young adults. It is good to follow one’s passion. Because that leads to true happiness.

One thing I want to point out is that no one sets out to make a bad choice. Often we tend to make choices that lead to short-term gain or instant gratification as opposed to what is good for us in the longer term. The human brain is wired this way because in the caveman days, what was important was you get to eat or you die. We have come a long way from that day and most people don’t have to worry about day-to-day necessities. So we have to be mindful about choices we make that are good for us in the long run as opposed to what feels good at this moment. Developing mindfulness is very helpful. The easiest way to develop mindfulness is by creating a daily meditation practice.

You Are What You Eat

I am sure you have heard the phrase “You Are What You Eat.” I recently came back from a vacation. Although mindful of my diet, eating out every day on a vacation caused me to gain a few pounds of weight! You see, when we eat out, other than salads, mostly what we are eating is processed food. Even when I was making healthier choices, that process food caused me to gain some weight. So I thought today we can talk about what it means to eat healthily and what kind of effect does food has on our body as well as our mind.

Let’s first start with the low-hanging fruit and talk about the effects of food on our bodies. Most of us have sometimes during our lifetime, tried some variation of a diet. We wanted to lose just a little bit of weight. If you had the discipline, you succeeded in losing a few pounds. The problem is if you are like most people, the moment you stop your diet, you gained back most if not all of your weight. Nowadays, there are so many diet options it’s insane! I even saw the so-called psychological-based diet. Not sure how that works but point is that there are just about a million options out there.

I have gone through different diet phases in my life. What really worked for me were two things. One is self-control. If I was particular about not putting any junk in my mouth, it would work. The moment, I gave to temptation, all bets were off. The second thing which I thought was really useful was the lack of processed food in our diet. After my heart attack, I stopped most if not all processed food. And that my friend was a real kicker. My weight just was balanced. My appetite actually increased but the weight gain stopped. So if you are trying to lose a couple of pounds, try that next time you decide to go on a diet. There are other benefits of not eating processed food as well. According to a National Institute of Health study (https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-finds-heavily-processed-foods-cause-overeating-weight-gain), processed food is not good for us. In their study, people who ate processed food on average gained 2 pounds in a month. Those who did not eat processed food actually lost 2 pounds. In this study, The ultra-processed and unprocessed meals had the same amounts of calories, sugars, fiber, fat, and carbohydrates, and participants could eat as much or as little as they wanted. Even a bagel and cream cheese are considered processed food so it is important to know what we put in our bodies. Processed foods are full of chemicals. They also tend to be addictive. These products make up 60% of the daily calories in the American diet. They are also full of added sugar.

When we stop eating processed foods, our health improves. There is actually a laundry list of benefits including better sleep, weight loss, better mood, better immune response, and so forth. In the yogic system, there is a whole world about satvik and non satvik foods but we will keep that discussion for another day.

Can food affect your psychology? My dad always says that who cooks your food has an impact on you psychologically. I never believed that or agreed with that for the longest time. Then, I started to notice a trend. Sometimes when I ate out – not always, I would get these violent dreams. I am a lucid dreamer so I generally remember parts of my dreams. After tracking this for a year or so, I am convinced that who cooks your food has an impact on you. When we eat out, a lot of times the line cooks are people who have recently been released from prisons as part of rehabilitation programs, and maybe that is what drove those dreams! Again, I have no scientific evidence to back this up so please take it with a grain of salt.

Mindfulness actually comes very handy when we are trying to eat healthily. Mindful eating allows us to only eat when we are hungry as opposed to eating for the sake of eating. It also allows us to eat what is right for us instead of what is in front of us. And there lies the kicker. When we eat impulsively, we have no idea what we are eating and in what quantity. Mindful eating takes charge of our impulsiveness and helps us stay the course. Research shows that meditation helps stop overeating. It decreases binge eating and so-called emotional eating. Emotional eating is the use of food as a way to deal with feelings and emotions. We all know that meditation reduces stress and a lot of people overeat because of stress.

How can meditation help with all this you might ask? It is quite interesting actually. According to a National Institute of Health study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5324577/), high cortisol levels in our body tend to cause weight gain. Another NIH study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28863392/) found that meditation and mindfulness help reduce cortisol levels in our bodies. Go figure!

Luck of the Draw

Last week we discussed victim mindset and how we should avoid blaming others for things that may be happening in our lives. Today, I want to take this one step further and examine, why things happen in our lives the way they do. We all have certain tendencies that keep us in this loop of a specific pattern. Two people trying the same thing and coming out with a different result. I call this Luck of the Draw. Let’s dig deeper.

Although our tendencies are what keeps us in a pattern, have you ever thought about what creates those tendencies within us? We are all predisposed to certain thought patterns, actions, and behavior. It all comes down to our Karma. Our karma influences our thoughts and creates tendencies that put us in these patterns whether positive or negative.

Let me give you an example. There was this famous Indian Buddhist monk named Atisha. He was one of the most recognized scholars of his time. The king of Tibet at the time decided to invite him to teach his people. Atisha happily accepted and went to Tibet. He brought a cook with him. Now Atisha’s cook was known for his bad temper. He was impolite and otherwise rude to Atisha. He would cook the food and then would ask Atisha to eat if he wanted to and would not care if the food was tasty or not. The Tibetan people were watching this drama for a few weeks. Finally, one of them could not resist. He went to Atisha and said, you know, we have good cooks here in Tibet and we are happy to lend you a couple of cooks. Why are putting up with this nonsense from your cook? Atisha had a brilliant answer. He told them he create certain karma that put him in this position and that reminds him that he needed to learn patience. His cook was both allowing him to work out his karma and teaching him how to be tolerant!

You see, all of us are put in certain situations based on our karma and we must accept that and make the best out of our situations. Warren Buffet calls this the Ovarian Lottery. Your fate in this world is decided by where you are born. If you happen to be born in a first-world country, your life will turn out one way versus if you are born in a poor country. This is karma.

So how do we get out of the karmic tendencies we have? The answer is really simple. By being mindful of every decision and every thought, you are breaking that cycle of tendency. So how do we become mindful? The first thing to do is to recognize what type of tendencies we have developed over the years. For example, some of us may tend to get into a negative thought process about someone or something, someone else may tend to make nonbeneficial decisions such as gambling, etc. Once we recognize the type of negative tendency that always ends up hurting us in the end, we can then begin to address this. One thing to be careful of here is not to take on all of our negative tendencies at once. That can get overwhelming. So let’s just focus on one tendency that we can begin to break.

Once we have identified this tendency, mindfulness will help us break the trend. We need to be mindful about when the thought or action related to that tendency begins to creep in. If we are mindfully watching when it does, we will begin to remind ourselves why we want to break that tendency. Initially, it may be difficult to break the habit and you may snap right back into it. That is perfectly OK. In my experience every three or five times you are successful at breaking that tendency, you will fall right back in once. So we start again. After a few cycles, the gap between relapse increases. Now you are not snapping back into your tendency for longer and before you know it, you have overcome this tendency.

So you see, we all have these karmic tendencies or habits. I call it luck of the draw. Our challenge is to not accept those as they are or to blame others for it but to learn to snap out of those karmic cycles. I encourage you to dig deep and identify one tendency you would like to break. It is not easy to identify but with enough introspection, you will be able to do it.

We have talked on and off about we need to be mindful and how mindfulness helps us maintain peace within our mind. So today, let’s explore mindfulness a little more in-depth. In the simplest terms, mindfulness is being aware of your mind from moment to moment. If you are aware of your mind, your thoughts will not control you.

Let’s think about this real quick. Did you have a problem today? Did it feel like it was a really big deal and potentially could have a huge impact on life? Now think back 30 days. Do you remember what the problem of the day was on this day last month? Chances are you don’t remember. But we are sure that at the time it felt like a really big deal. What does that mean? It means we are paying inappropriate attention to our uncontrolled thoughts.

My teacher Kadam Lucy points to this study that was done a few years. All the study subjects were asked how many of the thoughts they were in control of daily. What do you think the answer is? I have asked a few people myself and in most cases, they do not know. Well, this scientific study found that 9 out of 10 thoughts people have daily, they were not in control of their thoughts. 9 out of 10! There is also a study that we have on average 6,000 thoughts per day. That means we have 5,400 uncontrolled thoughts per day. No wonder most people are not feeling happy 90% of the time.

According to Buddha, our uncontrolled mind is the main cause of our suffering. Uncontrolled thoughts usually arise from inappropriate attention. That brings delusions including anxiety, anger, attachment, jealousy, pride, and so on. These delusions keep our minds occupied all day long. The only way out is to get control of these delusions is to tame our minds. The famous Indian scholar Atisha once said that Since you cannot tame the minds of others until you have tamed your own, begin by taming your mind.

So mastering our mind is key to getting control of our thoughts and in essence, mastering our life. With meditation practice, we can begin to get control of our uncontrolled thoughts. There are many meditation techniques we can try. The simplest and most common meditation practice is breathing meditation. This is where we focus our attention on the sensation of our breath. One of the more effective meditation techniques we covered in the past known as MAC technic. M-A-C. Mindfulness is what resists temptations to follow our thoughts, when we lose our attention and start thinking of distracting thoughts, Alertness keeps an eye out for our mind wandering off and brings it back to the object of our meditation, and Concentration is when we focus on meditation so we don’t begin to start wandering around.

Concentration is our ability to control our mind, to direct it at will, to focus, and eventually stay there for as long as we want. It allows us to think the thoughts we want to think as opposed to the thoughts that just show up uncontrollably in our minds.

Concentration makes our minds strong, clear, and relaxed, and we become more productive. It always makes us feel better, far more peaceful. It even makes us more physically comfortable.

Buddha said that there is nothing more powerful in this universe than a fully concentrated mind. The reason our mind lacks power is that it is fractured. It is all over the place. We talk to ourselves, apparently, at a rate of a thousand words a minute.

I hear a lot about I am not able to concentrate or I am not able to meditate and thoughts keep coming. I want to assure you that you are making a progress. Every time you notice that your mind wanders off and you try to bring it back, you are getting better at meditation. No matter how many times you have to bring your mind back (initially, it feels like that’s all we are doing), you are making progress. I can assure you it gets easier with practice. If you develop a regular practice say 10 minutes per day, before you know it, you will be able to focus on peace within you.