I’ve been eating mindfully since I wrote my series on mindful eating, but it’s not always easy. I find that if I begin eating a meal mindfully, then I’m much more likely to finish the meal mindfully. But what’s the best way to begin eating a meal mindfully?
The best way is to start of with a small ritual as you sit down to eat a meal. Here are three possible rituals:
1. Scan Your Hungers
You can scan your various types of hungers and rate each hunger. This is particularly useful if you’re trying to lose weight because it helps you understand how you respond to your hungers. This understanding allows you to make healthier eating choices.
2. Study Your Meal.
You can take thirty seconds to carefully study the food on your plate. Smell and touch the food and appreciate it’s qualities. Food is a life force that allows you to live so take time to appreciate and respect it.
3. Recite a Verse.
You can recite a prayer, mantra or poem in a heartfelt way. I say heartfelt because any ritual can become a thoughtless, automatic process. This won’t help you eat more mindfully because the goal is to become present with the meal.
My favorite verse is the Zen Short Meal Gatha: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Diet, Mindful Eating, Mindfulness, Zen
Dear Precious Reader,
I recently read my friend Jay’s post on Lazy Summer Days in which he reduced his posting schedule for the summer. He explains why:
Because I’ve been out enjoying life instead of sitting on the computer for hours upon hours. My daughter is here. I’m loving the time with her. Swimming. Playing together. Hanging out in bookstores together. Going to museums. Going to the aquarium. Going to Six-Flags. Enjoying life…enjoying the great outdoors as much as possible. Doing fun stuff. Enjoying the present moment as much as possible. You know…being a dad. That’s what’s important to me.
I feel the same as Jay. My son, Ben, is home from college for the summer and our family is together again. Also, I enjoy the warmth and beauty of the outdoors during summer. I want to have more summer fun and spend less time writing.
I try hard to write posts that help you. Only you can decide if I’m succeeding, but I want to maintain the level of quality and usefulness that I believe my posts provide. I don’t want to waste your time with filler or fluff posts just to meet some artificial posting quota.
So, I want to maintain this blog’s quality, but I don’t want to spend as much time writing. Something has to give and that something is the number of posts I’m writing. For the rest of the summer, I’ll only post once every week or two. I hope you understand.
If you live someplace warm, I hope you’ll also have more summer fun. Life is too short to spend too much time in front of the computer.
Sincerely,
Roger 
Tags: Happiness
I previously wrote a post on how to see clearly when you’re worried based on The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte. This post looks at a different part of the book that discusses thinking traps.
Thinking traps are inaccurate or distorted ways of thinking that lead to depression or less resilience to life’s problems. We all have different ways of thinking about problems in our lives. Many of the ways we think about our problems are useful, but sometimes we fall into these thinking traps.
By becoming aware of these thinking traps, you can recognize when you fall into a trap and then free yourself. Let’s look at each of the eight thinking traps.
1. Jumping to Conclusions
Supposed you received the following email from your boss:
I need to see you in my office at 2pm today.
What’s your immediate thought? If you’re like many people, you may think “Oh no, this has to be bad news. I must have done something wrong”. In other words, you jump to a negative conclusion about the meeting without any further details. The meeting could really be about anything: a problem, additional work, praise, or many other things. Even if it’s about a problem, the problem may have been another employee’s fault or nobody’s fault. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Anxiety, Fear, Psychology
Yesterday, I returned from my niece’s wedding in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. The wedding was in a small white chapel designed only for weddings. I was there with my wife, Lisa, my siblings, and about sixty other guests.
The formal wedding begins with the bridesmaids walking down the center isle followed by my pretty niece carrying the traditional bouquet of flowers. She looks so young. Her fiancé is the dress whites of a Naval Officer. He looks poised and relaxed.
The minister begins the ceremony with a prayer for all the people that couldn’t attend this joyous wedding. I think of my dead parents and wish they could be with us. They would have enjoyed watching a granddaughter be married to such a handsome man. I feel sad.
The ceremony continues with matching “I do”s, a magical kiss, pictures, floating bubbles, and the newlyweds departing by horse and carriage for the reception.
The reception is in a small second story hall with a glass wall that faces the Charleston harbor. The view is exceptional with small boats and large container ships regularly passing. I sit at a table with my closest relatives and look around.
I contemplate all the other weddings I’ve attended. I sat in my brother’s wedding when I was about seven years old. He was a Sergeant on leave from a tour in Vietnam. He wore his dress uniform and I remember him walking down the isle in shiny black shoes.
I went to my sister’s wedding when I was fifteen. I remember the reception at my Dad’s country club. It was an extravagant layout of food, but I felt uncomfortable in a suit. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Mindfulness
I’m so tired of exercising that I refuse to run another lap, pump another weight, crunch another ab, or stretch another hamstring. I’m done with exercise because exercise is for losers and I’m no loser.
I don’t care if exercise can increase the length and quality of my life. I prefer to die while I still look young and I only need enough strength to press buttons on my TV remote and mouse. Anyway, don’t we have drugs for diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, and other illnesses that can be mitigated with exercise and healthy eating? Taking pills is so much easier than exercising.
I don’t care if health care costs are climbing because people are too lazy to exercise. If everyone else can be lazy, so can I. Besides, insurance distributes the costs to everybody, right? I won’t have to pay higher insurance premiums because everyone else will subsidize my premiums. What a great system!
My goal is to become a 1,000 pound man. If I become a 1,000 pound man, people will wait on me constantly. I’ll be like a King! My wife already does most of the cooking, so she can bring me all the food I want. Also, once I’m 1,000 pounds, I’ll always have a good excuse to avoid things I don’t want to do.
I have big plans for the extra time I’ll have because I stopped exercising. If I’m lucky, I can use the time to watch my two favorite movies (Bloodsport and Roadhouse) over and over. If not, I can constructively spend my time browsing internet porn. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the last post in a series of posts on meditation for beginners. The Introduction contains links to the entire series. I recommend you read the series in order if you want to start meditating.
Last week, you studied and practiced walking meditation. Jay at Porsidan continued to follow this tutorial and he posted last week’s experiences. Jay has made amazing progress in his meditation practice. He describes only one problem last week:
…I fell asleep again today…
You may fall asleep during meditation if you become too comfortable. To counteract this, you can pick a posture that’s less comfortable, meditate with your eyes open, or adjust the room temperature or your clothing to make yourself colder.
This week I finish this series by describing a few things you can do to improve or move beyond your new meditation skills.
Your Meditation Practice
From previous posts in this series, you already know the various types of meditation: focused, insight, loving-kindness, and walking. I recommend you combine the various types of mediation by meditating thirty minutes per day preferably in the morning. You can break down each thirty minute session like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Habits, Meditation
If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you know I’ve become a Buddhist. I find this difficult to admit because I’ve always been anti-religion. Most religions seemed to do more harm than good. They espouse a set of beliefs that cause some people to be intolerant, anti-science, and violent.
But my attitude began changing ten months ago when I picked up a book on Buddhism, Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World, and carefully read it.
Buddhism was different from any religion I’d previously encountered. The Buddha believed we all have One True Nature, but it’s obscured by thoughts, the busyness of life, and a misunderstanding of reality. His solution involved an Eightfold Path that contained Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. He claimed that following this path leads to enlightenment and an end to suffering.
But what intrigued me the most was that he said his path was experiential. That you should not believe him just because he said it, but you should test the ideas to see if they worked for you. Huh? Where was the absolutism and dogma I’d seen in other religions? This seemed more like a scientific experiment than religion.
I decided to give this 2,500 year old Eightfold Path a try. What the heck? At least the guy admitted you should be skeptical. And wasn’t this advice more proven than the advice of most self-help books? (OK, I admit there are some useful self-help books, but the ratio of useful to useless is one in a thousand). Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Meditation, Mindfulness, Open-mindedness, Zen
This post is part of a series of posts on meditation for beginners. The Introduction contains links to the entire series. I recommend you read the series in order if you want to start meditating.
Last week, you studied and practiced loving-kindness meditation. Jay at Porsidan continued to follow this tutorial and posted his experiences with loving-kindness meditation. I’ve excerpted quotes from Jay’s post and added my comments below.
…I did Loving Kindness on myself, and was (kinda sorta not really) surprised at how uncomfortable that made me feel…
This feeling is common. People in the West think they don’t deserve to like or love themselves. But if you can love others, doesn’t it make sense to love yourself? It’s difficult to be kind to others if you’re unkind to yourself.
…After a few minutes of fighting against my thoughts, I just gave in and allowed myself to use the remaining time to just…think…
There are days when it’s difficult to let thoughts go. You might try using more detailed labels. For instance, if you’re thinking about the dialogue of an argument you had with Joe, you can label the thought “thinking about argument with Joe” and move on. Sometimes a more specific label makes it easier to let go.
Jay also had a follow-up question for me related to labeling: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Habits, Meditation
This post is Part 2 of a two part series. You can read Part 1 here.
In Part 1, I discussed the first six happiness activities in The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky. This post discusses the last six happiness activities.
7. Learning to Forgive Others
When you forgive another person, you increase your happiness. Forgiving others means that you reduce your desire for avoidance and revenge and increase positive feelings and behaviors. It doesn’t necessarily imply you excuse, pardon or condone others.
Forgiving others is difficult, but here are a few techniques you can use:
- Appreciate being forgiven yourself. Remember a time when you were forgiven by somebody. Think about how it felt and why the person forgave you. This makes it easier for you to forgive.
- Imagine forgiving another. Recall somebody that offended you and imagine what it would be like to forgive him. How would you feel emotionally and physically?
- Write a letter of forgiveness. Write a letter to somebody that offended you, but don’t send the letter. This letter is to help you let go of your anger and bitterness.
- Practice empathy. Try to see the perspective of somebody that offended you and understand why he behaved the way he did. You can also use loving-kindness meditation to generally increase your empathy for others.
8. Increasing Flow Experiences
Flow increases your happiness and you can learn more in my previous post about flow. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Exercise, Habits, Meditation, Mindful Eating, Mindfulness, Personal goals, Psychology
This post is part of a series of posts on meditation for beginners. The Introduction contains links to the entire series. I recommend you read the series in order if you want to start meditating.
Last week, you studied and practiced insight meditation. Ann Elise at Ann Elise Mitchell has begun following this tutorial with a 30-day meditation commitment. Jay at Porsidan has continued following this tutorial and has posted his latest experiences. I’ve excerpted some quotes from Jay’s post and added my comments below.
…It was still really hard to keep the thoughts away when I let go of the counting, but when that happened, I went back and started counting again…
Neither Jay nor you should try to block your thoughts. Just let them come and they’ll pass. You’ll recognize that you’re having thoughts BEHIND the counting. It feels like you’re observing or monitoring your thoughts instead of engaging your thoughts.
…My nose started itching, and I was able to pay attention to it for a few moments, acknowledge it, and then let it go…
Jay recognized that his physical sensations are also just thoughts. This is a useful lesson and you can apply it when you feel pain while you’re meditating. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Habits, Meditation
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