Month: June 2019

How to Get Started Meditating

I don’t think I can overstate the role meditation has played in my life. It’s given me a lot of peace and hope. It’s honestly one of the healthiest things I do.

But meditation has NOT been easy to get into. And it has NOT been easy to continue doing.

Recently I wrote about 7 Ways Meditating Has Helped Me, from stress relief and managing anxiety to learning compassion and being present. When I published that post I offered to help anyone who was interested in meditation to get started. A few people have talked with me about it since then, so I decided to go ahead and put together a starter kit.

I love a number of types of meditation, but I’ve found mindfulness meditation to be especially helpful and accessible for just about everyone. So in this blog post, I’ll recommend resources and ideas for getting started with mindfulness meditation specifically.

Getting into meditation can be confusing and there is SO MUCH material out there that it can be hard to know where to start. So here are some ideas. I hope this helps!

BEFORE YOU START

“Meditation. It’s not what you think.”

I thought I should pass along Jon Kabat-Zinn’s warning before I go any further.

Meditation is not some weird ritual that brings you other-worldly feelings. It’s also not this quick exercise that rids your life of pain and frustration. If what you’re looking for falls at either of those extremes, meditation might not work for you.

In fact, meditation might not “work,” regardless. Actually, that’s kind of the point. One of the points, anyway. True, as meditation becomes a consistent part of your life, I’m sure you’ll find that stress, anxiety, and mind-numbing distractions hold less control over you than before. But one of the strengths of meditation is the opportunity it provides to daily practice acceptance of your whole self just the way you are and of the world just the way it is. In other words, meditation isn’t really about changing your life. It’s about accepting your life. Which, ironically, can be life-changing.

That means, if you’re going to give meditation a shot, don’t look for it to work. Don’t assess its effectiveness at the end of a session. Don’t check to make sure it’s changing or fixing you. Don’t expect it to feel good.

Actually, do expect that you’ll feel like you’re really bad at it! Do expect to feel like it’s “not for you.” Do expect to feel like giving up, to get bored, to get distracted, to feel like it’s hard work.

If you’re okay with all that, then let’s get started:

TRY IT OUT

Spotify has an album from the Oxford Mindfulness Centre called Mindfulness Meditations with Mark Williams. Its tracks are very simple, basic guided meditations. These are hands down the best guided meditations I can recommend for getting started.

Don’t try meditating for too long your first time around! That can lead to discouragement. Here’s a great one to try first: 10 Minute Sitting Meditation

LEARN ABOUT IT

Anything by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Books, lectures, interviews.

Start out easy. He has abridged audiobook versions of two books that are ideal for mindfulness meditation:

3-hour Wherever You Go There You Are. Start with this one!

And 3-hour Coming to Our Senses. 

Reading the full books is also a great idea! Wherever You Go There You Are is a pretty easy read and a fantastic introduction to mindfulness meditation, geared towards a western audience–not too “weird.” I like his book Coming to Our Senses even better, but fair warning–it’s a biiiiig book.

MEDITATION FOR SKEPTICAL DOWN-TO-EARTH PEOPLE WHO FEEL LIKE IT’S TOO WEIRD AND ARE LIKE A LITTLE BIT INTERESTED IN IT BUT ALSO WOULD FEEL SUPER AWKWARD MEDITATING AND WOULD DEFINITELY NEVER LET THEMSELVES BE CAUGHT TRYING THAT WEIRD BUDDHIST MUMBO JUMBO

If meditation just sounds way too sketch for you–too weird, too silly, too spiritual, or just–yeah–totally weird. . . . don’t worry, you’re not alone. A lot of people find their interest piqued but are either too weirded out or too self-conscious to try it.

If that’s you, check out the podcast 10% Happier with Dan Harris. The name of his corresponding App says it all: “10% Happier: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.”

This is an oddly specific suggestion, but if you’ve ever heard the comedian John Mulaney (or if you haven’t), Harris’s conversation with Mulaney is a really good example of how meditation works in the lives of really normal people for whom meditation doesn’t come naturally. If you’re having a hard time picturing this weird mindfulness thing as a regular part of your life, give this one a listen. You can also browse his podcast for other names you recognize. I think hearing how meditation has worked for others can help make it more accessible.

Another great episode to start with is his interview of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who also leads a short meditation demo.

A FEW TIPS TO HELP ALONG THE WAY

Don’t check whether it’s working.

Don’t try too long at first. Short and frequent is the best start.

Don’t get too caught up with finding just the right thing to listen to, or just the right place and time to meditate. Imperfect and unexciting meditation is meditation.

Don’t be afraid to listen to the same guided meditation again and again. Find what works for you.

You’ll get worse at it after you get better. Some days you’ll be antsy and bored and skeptical. Other days you’ll feel like a badass yogi. It’s all okay.

You WON’T be “good” at it, and that’s okay!

If you give it a shot and would like some more ideas, let me know! And I’d love to hear your meditation story, too!

Jon Kabat-Zinn - surf the waves

When in conflict: 1 question you HAVE to answer

Fight or flight. Adrenaline’s pumping. You’ve been pushed and you’re ready to push back.

STOP!

Remember to ask yourself one question!

It’s a question we forget about all the time, but it’s what really matters to you in a conflict. We have a tendency to make knee jerk decisions before we stop and think. And even if we do take time to think, we tend to base our decisions on what would feel good. Running away, lashing back out, proving a point, putting someone in their place, taking a stand, not backing down. Sometimes when we make decisions that feel good–that our fight or flight instincts tell us to make–we later regret those decisions. We didn’t stop to really think about the one thing that mattered:

What do you want out of this situation?

It seems so simple. And it is. But we get stubborn. We get scared. We get angry. We get vindictive. We get tired. We get embarrassed.

Especially we get stubborn. A lot of the moves we make in conflict tend to be moves we don’t really want to make, that will get us to a place we don’t really want to be, just because we’ve been pushed and we don’t like it. . . . “Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.” – Aubrey de Grey

So before you burn a bridge, turn tail and run, or stubbornly refuse to compromise–ask yourself: What do you ACTUALLY want out of this situation?

Sometimes the way to get the thing you actually want is through boring, unimpressive, unflashy communication. Sometimes getting what you want will mean not doing conflict the fun way, the feel good way, or the badass way.

So when in conflict, STOP–before you do something you’ll regret–and ask yourself: What outcome do I ACTUALLY hope to arrive at? What do I really want out of this situation?

And then focus on that. Not winning. Not proving a point. Not defending yourself. Just on that—the outcome you want.

Howard Baker - take emotion out of conflict

7 Words of Hope from a Nazi Death Camp

One of the hardest books to read, but one of the most rewarding. I just finished psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. During the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of an estimated 17 million humans like you and me, Frankl was moved from camp to camp, doing forced labor in brutal conditions, threatened constantly with death. Man’s Search for Meaning serves both as a memoir of sorts for his time in concentration and labor camps and as an explanation of how that experience shaped his understanding of psychology.

I want to share with you just a few of the words of hope that I found in Frankl’s book, and I hope you’ll be inspired to read the rest of the book yourself. I can’t state strongly enough the impact that this book has had. No matter how sad its stories, I found it to be one of the most hopeful books I’ve read.

1. You matter.

Some days you may question whether there’s any point to your being here. But even in the worst of times, Frankl found that if he and his fellow prisoners considered the impact they might still have on others through their love and their work in the future, they could see just how much each of them did matter.

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.'” – Viktor Frankl

2. You get to choose your life’s meaning.

Life is a weird path of twists and turns for each of us, and in comparing ourselves to others or to the ideals we think we’ve learned, we sometimes can’t find how we matter. But Frankl learned that peace can be found in giving up the search for an ultimate meaning, and instead choosing what you will live for.

“Everyone has is own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it. . . . Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” – Viktor Frankl

3. You can always find joy and fulfillment in LOVE.

Love is a powerful and beautiful thing. For me, this was one of the most meaningful and helpful messages in the book. In a strongly individualistic society, it is hard to grasp the significance and fulfillment in just loving another person. It is okay to live for love.

“My mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. . . . A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth–that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” – Viktor Frankl

4. You can reduce your suffering by observing it objectively. 

It’s hard to imagine suffering worse than prisoners in a concentration camp, but even in such intense suffering, Frankl found relief. He discovered that a simple change in how you observe the present moment can make a bad situation much more bearable. He told a story about when, during a particularly awful day, he started imagining that he was actually retelling his situation in a future psychological lecture. Just this simple mental exercise helped immensely, reminding him that life was bigger than his current hurt, that the present was simply a circumstance that could be observed.

“By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself. . . . What does Spinoza say . . . ‘Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.'” – Viktor Frankl

5. Feelings of joy and suffering are relative. You’re not stuck in your feelings.

This may be a blessing and a curse, depending on how you look at it and what focus you choose. Frankl observed that the feelings of despair, suffering, frustration, and sadness, weren’t necessarily worse or more overwhelming, in a situation as awful as a concentration camp, than in a less severe circumstance. Humans tend to feel suffering very completely, whether the stressor is big or little. On the one hand, that can mean a small disappointment can be overwhelming. On the other hand, that can mean that you may handle the very worst circumstances much better than you think–which is a hopeful thought. Studies have shown that people who go through awful events often end up much less devastated, at least after a while, than they think they will be. In the same token, feelings of happiness and joy can be extremely strong, even when found in very simple experiences.

“Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative. It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys.” – Viktor Frankl

6. Growing old is going to be okay.

This one sucks. I always hate thinking of growing old, watching my remaining time in this life get shorter and shorter. This book honestly helped with that. Frankl has the most beautiful perspective on this that I’ve heard. It’s a peaceful and hopeful one. I’ll let him speak for himself. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.

“At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence. . . . I should say having been is the surest kind of being. . . . The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a younger person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? ‘No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.'” – Viktor Frankl

7. You are always free to choose and change.

Another one that is near and dear to my heart, that inspires compassion and hope for myself and for others: His life in Nazi death camps persuaded Frankl that people are not stuck being, thinking, speaking, or acting as they have, or as they’re conditioned to. Sure, the deck may be stacked against you. And on average, people tend to stick with their patterns. But at the end of the day, each of us is free to choose. Free to choose how we will react to the circumstances life brings to us. Free to choose who we are.

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant. . . . one of the main features of human existence is the capacity to rise above such conditions, to grow beyond them. Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.” – Viktor Frankl

Guys, it’s hard to communicate how much I loved this book. It wasn’t the most impressively written, it wasn’t the most exciting, it wasn’t the most pleasant. But it was full of the raw experiences of real life in all its nitty gritty weirdness. It was honest. And it was full of hope and inspiration. So full of hope. Real hope.

I hope you’ll read it. And I hope that every day for the rest of your life, you’ll find hope.

~

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Viktor Frankl

Life’s little adventures

I’m heading home on an airplane tomorrow morning. Which is a little concerning because I still don’t believe that flying is science. Usually you’d only want to sit in a big metal tube if it were on the ground, because things tend to fall when they are in the air. But out of all the times I’ve flown before, we haven’t fallen out of the sky yet. Thank goodness.

My flight Monday was an adventure. Nothing really happened about it or anything, but as usual, I found myself holding my breath a little when we took off and landed. I actually do love flying, but it also makes me nervous.

What was different about this flight was that I randomly remembered as we were landing that I love flying so much! Even though I get a little nervous. If you don’t take it for granted, flying is an absolutely amazing and thrilling experience. It’s crazy, right?

And once upon a time, when you did something like fly, you’d be wide-eyed in-the-moment absolutely blown away. You’d be on the edge of your seat gazing out the window in awe.

On some flights you can look down in the sunshine at the bright white blanket of clouds below. You can see the weird shapes and patterns. They look so real, like you could reach out and touch them, or lay in them, and they’d be soft, comfortable.

On one flight we dipped below one thick bed of clouds only to find another directly below us. I don’t know the meteorological term for that, but it was so cool! You couldn’t have seen us from above or below, but we weren’t in the clouds, we were in this quiet little gap, miles wide in either direction. I don’t know, maybe that’s not that cool. But it also kind of was.

That brings up a great question. Are all these simple little beauties and adventures in life actually beautiful and adventure worthy? I think that the adult in us would argue that they’re not. That “we’ve seen this so many times.” That “there are more important things.”

Some of us tend in the opposite direction. “This is the most profoundly life-changing and moving thing in my life! I must take pictures and tell everyone that this is the most profoundly life-changing and moving thing in my life. I must explain to others why this is so meaningful and why they also must be moved by it.” #guilty #alsonotguiltybecausethisalsoisaworthwhileactivity

Sometimes the adult in us isn’t wrong. Sometimes circumstances can’t help but distract us from the fascinating world all around us. And sometimes the other kind of adult in us, the one that needs to prove and share why everything is beautiful and epic and work really hard on being happy and spreading happiness–sometimes that adult is also right and helpful and exactly what we all need.

But sometimes–sometimes… maybe even a lot… there are just lots of little adventures all around us that we can just live in. Live in without ignoring, but also live in without analyzing, live in without justifying, live in without documenting, live in without discussing, live in without trying about it. (I know that doesn’t make sense, but read it slowly.)

I honestly think a lot of the adventures all around us lose their enchantment when we try about them… try to analyze, justify, document, discuss. Kind of like my little experience in the clouds that was so much more fulfilling when it was just me with them in the moment, instead of me writing a blog post for you about my thoughts about them. Yeah.

So where is all this rambling going? I guess I hope you’re inspired to do 2 things:

First: Find the adventures all around you. Open your eyes. Look closely.

And second: Just BE in those adventures. Let them be what they are. Just bask.

What adventures have you found today? Don’t tell me. Just enjoy. :)