Book Preview #3: The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 3: Awakening to Your True Nature

The Little Book of Mindfulness Book Previews: 1. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 1 2. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 2: Finding Peace Within 3. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 3: Awakening to Your True Nature (Current)

Coming Soon

I'm excited to announce that I'm now half way done with writing The Little Book of Mindfulness. I'm going to keep my intro short this week because I'm trying to finish another new article for you by Saturday.

I'm super excited to complete my first book, but I'm taking my time and making sure it turns out to the quality standards I've held all of my previous work to. I make it a point to never finish a piece of writing until I'm 100% happy with it.

I hope you enjoy the next chapter of The Little Book of Mindfulness, titled Awakening to Your True Nature. In this chapter, I describe the deeper level of spiritual practice and how mindfulness plays an important role.

I haven't decided yet if this is my last preview of the book before I release it or not. In any case, look for the book (in all versions) to be released next month!

As always, let me know what you think!

Part 1, Chapter 3:

Awakening to Your True Nature

As we discussed in the last chapter, mindfulness can allow us to obtain a tranquil mind and thereby bring a wellspring of peace and joy into our lives. But mindfulness has another important role. It’s the energy which allows us to discover the truth. Specifically, the true nature of things including ourselves. So the second power of mindfulness is the ability to help one obtain perfect clarity and awaken to one’s true nature (vipassana). By true nature, I’m referring to our true “way” or our natural existence. By seeking to live in this way we can unearth wrong perceptions and discover our true selves.

To discover one’s true self is something so many people strive for. Some strive to discover this elusive state most of their lives. But so many of us have no idea what exactly this entails. Where do we start? The very question of “who am I?” is as confusing as it is open ended. For the most part, this question is difficult to answer because there are so many hidden forces at work in our lives: the negative emotions which keep us locked in a perpetual “mental prison”, the ego which strives to protect our self-worth at all costs, the ever-present pressure from society to conform to often unrealistic or misguided ideas, other false views which distort our perception, and worst of all: fear. Fear of everything. Fear of what people think of us, fear of losing those close to us, and fear of losing our position in life, among other things. These forces alter our perception of reality. We think that these things are “us”, so the question of “who am I?” becomes a seemingly impossible question to answer. But these things aren’t really us. By living with mindfulness we can see beyond these wrong perceptions to our true nature.

What is our true nature? It’s beyond all perception, beyond all mental formations, beyond the physical body we inhabit, and beyond the sense organs we use to experience the world around us. And it’s beyond consciousness. You’re not your thoughts, emotions, or sensations. You’re not a separate self, disconnected from everything and everyone around you. You’re limitless. You’re in the trees, the flowers, and the clouds. And these things are in you. To confine ourselves to a limited identity such as “I am this old, this nationality, this sex, good at this, bad at this, I work here, and I’ve accomplished this.” is to confine ourselves inside of a small box. Our true nature is boundless. We’re closely interconnected to all living and nonliving things. We and everything around us is impermanent, and yet, we exist beyond life and death itself in an endless continuation of energy. Our true existence is the very ground of being, the plane of existence beyond words in which all things exist as one.

The essence of discovering our true nature is to come in contact with the ultimate. What is that? It goes by many names- the ultimate reality, the ultimate dimension, the ground of being, Buddha mind, and even God. The ground of being is the ultimate level of reality. It can’t be completely described in words because it’s beyond the concept of language. It can only be experienced. It exists in some form in just about every religion and spiritual tradition on Earth. I don’t want to speak too much about it, but know that the ultimate purpose of all spiritual practice is to touch the ground of being. By living deeply in this reality, the historical reality, we can touch the ground of being. By touching the ground of being, we see beyond all the things that once kept us chained down. We rise above fear, no longer have any need for hatred, anger, or jealousy, and we break the illusion of limiting beliefs. To touch the historical reality deeply is a very meaningful and fulfilling practice. You don’t need anything else. In that moment, everything is perfect. And you realize what true happiness is. To discover our true nature is in fact to discover our true selves and our true potential.

Building a resting place

It’s important to become aware of the ideas in this chapter, but if you’re just starting out don’t bother with awakening or any of this ultimate reality stuff. Just focus on calming the mind. Work on stopping, calming, fully resting, and healing as we spoke about in the last chapter. Develop your mindfulness practice by sitting, walking, breathing, and doing as many basic tasks throughout your day with mindfulness. Do this for at least a few months. Let your practice progress naturally.

As we spoke about in the last chapter, with time you’ll develop a great feeling of calm, experience a strong sense of peace and joy in everyday life, obtain complete rest, and heal the mind. These are all very important. But it also takes time to develop mindfulness as an ability and as a habit, so don’t try to rush through this part. You won’t get anywhere if you do that and will therefore just end up wasting a lot of time and effort. The practice of calming the mind never ends, it will be something you practice for the rest of your life and it’s equally important to gaining clarity of mind. Don’t think you can bypass this and become truly at peace without it. There’s no separating the two states of samatha and vipassana, in reality, they’re two sides of the same coin.

Remember when I said that calming the mind was the foundation for obtaining a clear mind? Tranquility and clarity are natural extensions of one another. When we calm our mind, it’s like we’ve built a nest for our mind. This nest nurtures and heals the mind naturally. This is our resting place. But this resting place is also fertile ground for receiving insight. Take the time to build this resting place and you’ll have a strong foundation which will allow you to begin touching reality deeply.

There’s no separating the two states of samatha and vipassana, in reality they’re two sides of the same coin.

Shining the Light of Mindfulness

So how does mindfulness help us discover our true nature? Mindfulness is the very vehicle which helps us see reality in its true state. By learning to live with mindfulness we can develop great clarity in order to see the world as it is. By “as it is”, I’m referring to seeing into the true nature of all things. This is reality in its true form, free from wrong views. This extinguishing of all wrong views and concepts is called Nirvana. Nirvana can best be translated as freedom. That is, true freedom. Freedom from all views in fact, because all views are wrong views when speaking in terms of the ultimate reality, which can only be experienced directly and is beyond all forms and concepts. And the act of obtaining this great mental clarity is traditionally called “awakening” (or “enlightenment” in many English translations of ancient Buddhist text). Why is all this important? Because it’s through this process of awakening that we discover our true nature and experience the ground of being. And it’s only until we learn to touch the ground of being that we discover true inner peace.

Imagine an orange. Your whole life you’ve seen this orange and you think the way that you see it is the way that it is. But, as we spoke about earlier, our wrong views color the lens (our perception) with which we perceive reality through. This wrong view of reality, which can be caused by a combination of “mental formations” such as fear, anger, and ignorance among many other things, is the ultimate source of all our suffering. By suffering, I’m referring to a sort of mental ill-being. Think of it as the opposite of inner peace. With mindfulness, the true nature of the orange will gradually reveal itself. You’ll see the orange peel back its skin and reveal something completely different from what you had perceived before. This is the process of awakening to the true nature of things.

Just as with calming the mind, gaining clarity of mind is a process. Don’t expect some sudden enlightenment to happen one day while practicing mindfulness. Moments of clarity can happen. These are moments of insight. But awakening is the slow process of peeling yourself and everything else in the world back one piece at a time to unveil the truth. You’ve lived your whole life “collecting” these false views. Imagine if you could wear ten pairs of sunglasses at once. Ten lenses, one in front of the other, in a row. Each of these lenses is a different color- green, pink, red, black- and each represents a wrong perception or mental formation which block you from experiencing reality in its true state. Your job is to remove each lens, one by one, until all ten pairs of sunglasses are gone. Each lens is blocking you from experiencing the full magnificence of the light. But with each pair of glasses you remove the more clearly you can see the light. It will take time to free yourself from all the things coloring your perception. But this is the ultimate liberation. This is true freedom. To be free from all false views, to no longer be tortured by deep-seeded issues or controlled by the ego, and to realize our limitless potential. I give this example to show that clarity is a gradual process. But as you work to wipe away your false views you’ll develop a great sense of peace and liberation. It doesn’t just come at the end of removing the last pair of sunglasses. Every moment of mindfulness is an opportunity to touch the ground of our being. This is the magic of living deeply.

To live deeply is ultimately what a spiritual practice is about. This is because to live deeply is to touch the ground of being and be liberated from all afflictions. Living deeply means nothing is trivial. Every single action, no matter how minor, holds great significance. Living in such a way, you appreciate every little thing in your life. You appreciate the water you have to drink, the food on your plate, the clothes on your back, and for having healthy eyes with which to see. Living deeply, in a way that cultivates a deep appreciation for the world around you, is a very fulfilling practice. By letting our mindfulness guide us, that is, being fully present for every action and placing our entire being into everything we do, we can realize our true nature.

Mindfulness is itself our “true vision”. Remember the field of mindfulness example I gave earlier? Mindfulness is the quiet observer of everything. It judges nothing, so it sees with absolute clarity. It sees the outside world, the mind in mind (observing one's thoughts), and it sees the mind in things, that is, our perception of the things we experience in the outside world. So mindfulness is itself awakening. When you’re practicing mindfulness you are awakened. It will take time though to identify and realize your true nature. But know that there is nothing to be gained, nothing you need to accomplish. You’re perfect just as you are in this moment. So to live deeply with mindfulness is to strive to live true to our nature and touch the seed of awakening in us.

How do we live deeply with mindfulness? This will be a natural progression of your mindfulness practice. Once you’ve become fully rested your mind will be able to rest in mind. You’ll now be able to experience mindfulness of the mind in the mind and the mind in things. Previously, we discussed the fact that everything we see, everything we experience, passes through our perception before we experience it. Because of this, the mind itself is part of what we’re experiencing. This is mindfulness of the mind in mind. In simple terms, there’s no escaping the mind because the mind is us. So when we observe the behavior of the mind with mindfulness that’s mindfulness of the mind while in the mind. We think we’re looking at a book, but in reality, we’re looking at our perception of the book. This is because, in reality, there is no separating subject and object. You can never separate mind from that which the mind is perceiving. What you think of the book- whether you like the book or not, think the cover looks funny or cool, or if the book conjures some sort of old memories good or bad- arises from the mind and becomes your perception of the book. So to be mindful of the book is also to be mindful of the mind in the book. Furthermore, this means that what we perceive isn’t necessarily the real world at all. The book that we see is first and foremost an object of our consciousness. When you and I look at the book, we see two different books. I might have a bad memory of the book which distorts my perception of it. On the other hand, you might have a good memory of the book with positively distorts your perception of it. Neither is correct, they’re both distorted perceptions of the book. It’s when we can see the true book that we experience our own true nature.

Mindfulness is our master tool in the study of the self.  By developing the power of mindfulness to the point where we can experience the mind in mind and the mind in things we begin to see that everything is mind. If the book we see (not the real book) is really an object of our consciousness, and the process of gaining clarity of mind is really about extinguishing all false views such as these, then mindfulness’ role is the tool which allows us to see deeply into ourselves and identify these false views. The light of mindfulness, the great observer, is also a great healer. Remember the animal that simply sits and rests in peace and quiet in order to heal its wounds? Mindfulness is the healing energy which allows us to gradually erode all false views and concepts in order to attain nirvana and touch the ground of our being. To realize our true nature is the only way to experience true inner peace. It will be difficult at first, but if you let mindfulness be your guide it will lead you to an existence filled with peace and joy.

UPDATE: Get My eBook, The Little Book of Mindfulness, free

Book Preview #2: The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 2: Finding Peace Within

The Little Book of Mindfulness Book Previews: 1. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 1 2. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 2: Finding Peace Within (Current) 3. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 3: Awakening to Your True Nature

Making Progress

Writing a book is best done one chapter at a time. If you try to tackle too much at once you'll just end up overwhelmed and incapable of even finishing a single chapter. This has been a big challenge, but the biggest writing challenge for me has always been finding out how to explain things in a simple manner while still getting the complete point across.

"You never really know something until you have to teach it to someone." This isn't an exact quote, just something I've remembered roughly ever since I was a kid. And it couldn't be truer.

You might think you know something, or are good at something, but until you have to explain it/teach it to someone else you realize your knowledge was only fuzzy. Writing forces you to sharpen your focus on the subject at hand. It has the ability to help you develop an incredibly clear level of understanding. And for this reason, writing is best used to convey some truth which has the ability to teach either yourself or another something valuable. For discovering that in my own life I'm grateful, but it's because of this that I also feel the need to tell others about the power of writing.

If you're faced with a difficult situation, or sense some strong or confusing emotions rising to the surface, take out a pen and paper or sit down at your computer and just write. Write whatever comes to mind. "It kind of feels like anger.", or, "I think I'm jealous of my sister." Whatever rises to the surface when you begin to write, just let it out. This can be an incredibly healing activity and a great partner to mindfulness.

I hope you enjoy this exclusive preview of Part 1, Chapter 2 of The Little Book of Mindfulness: Finding Peace Within. Let me know what you think!

 Part 1, Chapter 2:

Finding Peace Within

So, now you have a general understanding of what mindfulness is. But why practice mindfulness? What’s so important about being mindful? Knowing how mindfulness works is only part of what constitutes a complete understanding of mindfulness. In the introduction, I covered briefly some of the reasons why you should practice mindfulness. In this chapter, I’ll expand on what I mentioned there and show you why mindfulness is the key to both finding inner peace and true happiness.

All spiritual practice can be broken down into obtaining and maintaining two states: 1) a calm mind, and 2) a clear mind. In Buddhism, these two states are generally referred to by their Pali/Sanskirt terms depending on the Buddhist lineage. The first state, samatha, is a state of tranquility, inner peace, or calmness of mind. And the second, vipassana, is a state of awakening or clarity of mind. The first state, samatha, is typically translated as “stopping” (referring to the mind). Samatha is the process of stopping, calming, fully resting, and healing the mind. The growing popularity of mindfulness as a way to “manage” one’s emotions and reduce stress comes from the samatha side of the equation.

Samatha, which moving forward I’ll refer to as inner peace, tranquility, or calmness of mind, is the necessary basis for the second stage, vipassana, which refers to seeing deeply or with clarity. The English equivalent of vipassana is “insight”, and it’s the word typically associated with vipassana. Insight is wisdom gained through direct experience, and insight into the “true nature of reality” is what vipassana is all about (moving forward I’ll refer to vipassana as awakening, insight, or clarity of mind). You’re likely familiar with the concept of “learning from experience”. You know, the idea that, say, reading something in a book and “knowing” it is different from experiencing it yourself. You might have read ten books on true love and think you know all about it, but until you actually experience true love for yourself you don’t really know true love. That’s insight. In the case of spiritual practice, though, this direct experience is typically a direct experience of the “Ultimate Reality”. This ultimate reality goes by many names: the ultimate or absolute dimension, the ground of being, or even God, depending on your interpretation. But we’ll get more into that in the next chapter.

Likewise, the “benefits”, or purpose, of mindfulness can be separated based on these two states as well. Which brings us to the topic of this chapter: the first “power” of mindfulness. The first power of mindfulness is the ability to help one obtain inner peace or a calm mind (samatha).

Inner peace is the very foundation of spiritual practice. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to obtain awakening, the state of complete liberation and true happiness. How does mindfulness help us attain inner peace? The process can be broken down into four components: stopping, calming, fully resting, and healing (the mind and body).

Stopping

Obtaining a tranquil mind, the practice of samatha, is ultimately about stopping. We need to learn how to stop. At first, this might seem silly, “I’m sitting while I’m reading this book. I’m stopping!” But it’s not so simple. By stopping I mean we need to stop both body and mind. A mind at rest is a peaceful mind. So we need to learn how to fully stop and let our minds calm. By doing so we bring us back to ourselves. This is called the practice of “going home”, and it’s the practice of going home to ourselves by reuniting mind and body. The practice of mindful breathing does just that- it allows us to reunite mind and body as they’re truly meant to be. This is important because the way we typically live our lives both mind and body are almost always separated.

Mindfulness is in opposition to the way we usually live our lives. That is, halfway in our heads, bouncing around in an endless stream of thoughts, and halfway in the present moment, only partially awake to what we’re doing. This state of semi-consciousness, or mind dispersion, is a state where we’re unable to attain complete rest and our minds are perpetually clouded.

This semi-conscious state, or mind dispersion, is what the Buddha often referred to as our “monkey mind”. Our monkey mind is constantly bouncing from one thought to another. We’re doing one thing (body) but thinking about another (mind). We’re driving home from work while we’re thinking about work, and then bills, and then dinner, and then that dinner date with your old friend coming up, and then your daughter’s school project, and then whatever happened to your favorite band because they seemed to drop off the map, and then “When was that TV special again?”, and then work, oh and then that sounds good for dinner, and then you look in your overhead mirror and think “I look tired today”, and then a Sit-And-Sleep commercial for some reason pops into your head and so you start thinking about how you really should get a new mattress soon, and then you think about home again and how the day is passing so quickly, and then, and then, and then…it never ends. That is, unless you take action.

Mindfulness delicately brings the mind to rest and unites body and mind as one force. When you walk to work you’re walking to work and you’re enjoying the walk with all of your being. You’re not thinking about what’s for dinner or what you’ll say to your boss about that project when you get into the office. When you drive home you know you’re driving. You’re not letting yourself be distracted by the billboard advertisements or passing retail outlet signs. You’re truly enjoying the drive home in peace and quiet. When you’re sitting down to play with your children you’re fully present for them, giving them you complete and undivided attention. When you live with mindfulness you’re able to truly appreciate the presence of your loved ones.

This state of mind dispersion does more than just make us stressed and take us away from our loved ones. On top of heightening stress and anxiety it decreases our productivity, restrains our creativity, disconnects us from the world around us, and overall makes us less happy. Instead of being at peace, our minds are in chaos. And as long as our attention is dispersed this monkey mind will rear its mischievous little head. The only way to stop our monkey mind is with mindfulness. Mindfulness gives us the ability to stop our monkey minds. Once we learn how to do this, the process of calming the mind, obtaining complete rest, and healing comes naturally. This is because, in reality, there’s no separating the four components of inner peace (samatha) as you’ll see in the next sections.

Calming

By living in the present moment with mindfulness we’re able to bring our mind into a state of deep calm. A natural byproduct of learning how to stop the mind and body and simply be fully present, such as for the act of following one’s breath, is a calm mind. Indeed, the opposite of our monkey mind is a calm mind.

Calming the mind is a process, though. It doesn’t happen all at once. We build up a lot of stress and tension in our everyday lives and it takes some time to fully calm the mind, especially assuming your current life doesn’t just stop when you begin practicing mindfulness (which it doesn’t!). You’ll still have the same headaches and stressors as before and so you’ll need to calm the mind despite these things constantly getting in the way. Of course, this is a two-sided problem. You might need to reevaluate why you do certain things which are causing you stress. But your focus should always be on your practice of mindfulness. By making the act of stopping a priority and seeking to live your life fully in the present moment, cherishing every moment of life, you’ll naturally begin to calm the mind.

Resting

Nowadays, we’re so productivity focused we even map out our vacations. A checklist for a vacation? Yeah, we’ve lost our way. We live off of checklists and to-do lists at work and at home. We think the more things we check off of our list the better we’ll feel. We don’t even notice it but what we’re chasing is inner peace. We’re hoping for just a little slice of it here and there. Even if it’s temporary. But we don’t have to settle for these temporary states of peace. We can have the whole pie. Indeed, if we could only learn how to truly come in touch with it, we’d see that this pie is limitless.

We need to learn how to attain complete rest. By complete rest, I’m referring to a fully rested mind and body. A state which most of us rarely if ever feel. And a full night’s sleep doesn’t provide this for us either. We’re tossing, turning, and bending our bodies in uncomfortable positions which lead to aches and pains. To add to that we’re dreaming constantly. And the more your mind is racing when you go to bed, the more it will be racing in your dreams when you go to sleep. Worst of all, though, our sleep can be interrupted (especially if you have kids!). That really sets us off. Then there’s the fact that sleep primarily rests the body and does very little for our monkey mind. The second we wake up, we’re right back in the jungle.

Mindfulness, particularly sitting meditation, allows us to attain this state of complete rest. It gives our minds the rest it needs. My favorite example is the image of a pebble slowly falling to the ocean floor. Imagine your mind is the pebble. The longer you meditate, the deeper the pebble sinks. And the deeper the pebble sinks, the more calm and peaceful your mind becomes. Meditate until you feel your mind reach the ocean floor. Imagine your body slowly sinking just like the pebble. Then simply sit there for however long you’d like. Be fully present for this state of absolute calm. This is what inner peace feels like. This is true rest.

If we can learn how to rest in this way we give ourselves the ability to overcome so much. Without a doubt, the major reason we experience so much stress and anxiety in modern life is because we don’t know how to attain complete rest.

Healing

This last section is about learning how to utilize the body’s natural healing ability. In order to attain inner peace, it’s not enough to stop, calm, and completely rest the body. These are key aspects of achieving a tranquil mind. But if we don’t know how to heal our mind and body then we’ll have no chance of attaining inner peace.

Our mind and body come equipped with a natural healing ability. We’ve all but forgotten about it, living in an age of advanced medicine, thousands of both over-the-counter and subscription medicines, and a whole roster of mental and physical professionals all ready to help us heal our mental and physical wounds. It’s because of this that we now grossly underestimate our own ability to heal.

We’ve forgotten that the only thing necessary in order to heal is to be with that which needs to be healed. My favorite example of this is from Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. He often speaks of how, when injured, an animal’s natural instinct is to find somewhere safe and quiet to lie and rest. This is what it means to be with an illness, whether mental or physical. By stopping all activity the animal conserves every ounce of energy. This puts all of their being into the process of healing. You can do this yourself to heal both mental and physical illness.

What is a mental illness? In the case of the mind, this could be a deep-seated negative emotion or limiting belief. Maybe you hold a deep sense of resentment, and maybe even anger, towards your spouse. Years ago, when you first started dating, things were great. You were both young and you had the entire world at your fingertips. You had fun and generally lived life with wild abandon. But years later you become married, have children, and gain multiple responsibilities. Now you feel as if the entire world has closed in around you. You feel like all the opportunity and possibilities that were once at your fingertips are all but gone. Never to return. Because of this, you now resent your spouse. This is an example of a very deep-seated emotion which needs to be overcome before you can achieve inner peace.

To heal this and any other form of deep-seated emotion you need to sit in meditation and simply be with the emotion. When mindful, you awaken and see through all illusions. Your limiting beliefs rise to the surface. This allows your body and mind’s natural healing process to take effect. You simply need to care for the emotion. Tend to it. Accept it fully with compassion. Much of our suffering comes from our tendency to bottle up emotions and ignore them, thinking that if we do they’ll go away. But this never happens. Neglect won’t heal your wounds. You need to face these emotions with your mindfulness and full of self-compassion. Know that you’re human and everyone has emotions such as these. Accept it fully with your mindfulness and it will subside. This is our natural healing ability and anyone can utilize this with practice.

As you can see, there’s really no separating these four areas from each other. Stopping and calming essentially always happen simultaneously to some extent, resting involves stopping, calming, healing can really be considered a form of resting (or vice versa), and all four can be a part of one single mindfulness practice.

Finding Peace in the Age of Distraction

Distraction is a force which takes our already dispersed attention and splits it into a million different strings. It brings our monkey mind to a whole new level. This was already touched on in the section on “Stopping”, but our modern world warrants extra focus on this particular point. If it wasn’t enough that our minds are already naturally inclined to this semi-conscious and stress inducing state, the modern era has brought us many of the worst sources of distraction all within a matter of decades.

These distractions, which are the substance of our monkey mind, are always within arm’s reach in our modern world. Smartphones are in our pockets, desktops are at our place of work, and TVs are in our homes. It’s so easy to distract ourselves from reality. But if we can bring our attention back to the present moment with mindfulness we have the ability to attain both a tranquil mind and clear vision.

This is the reason mindfulness is so attractive to us. Our modern world is plugged in 24/7 and it’s difficult to get away from these distractions even if you make an effort. More than ever it’s so easy to live in a mindless, disconnected, state of being. Most of us are rarely fully present. We live in a state of perpetual distraction. We live the majority of our lives in one place while thinking of another. We’re at work but we’re thinking about what to make for dinner at home. We’re at home thinking about that project we have to finish at work. We’re enjoying eating out with our family but we’re really inside of our heads, stressing about the bills we have to pay next month.  We all think this is normal. That it’s OK. But it’s not. This mind dispersion is the cause of much of our suffering and discontent.

After a tough day, one where you’ve been rushing around constantly and inevitably forgotten to take time for yourself. Your mind will naturally be more active. If you sit down to meditate during this time you’ll see that your mind is literally like a firecracker. It will be very difficult to keep the mind in one place for more than a few seconds. In this situation, the mind will often be distracted over nothing special. It’s still racing because it’s conditioned to you racing around, not because there’s anything particular going on in your consciousness. Mindfulness of these distractions won’t lead to any great liberation. This is simply a sign that you need to slow things down. If your life continues as is it will be very difficult to attain complete rest and fully quiet the mind. And if you can’t calm the mind you certainly won’t be able to get to the point where you can start gaining clarity of mind. Of course, that’s part of the point of mindfulness. At the beginning, in order to practice mindfulness of anything you’ll have to do it very slowly. If you’re constantly rushing around your mindfulness practice won’t be authentic. You’ll be telling yourself that you’re practicing mindfulness but you won’t actually be mindful.

Computers, smartphones, and TVs aren’t the enemy. But you do need to be careful not to go overboard. For this reason (among many others), it’s important to establish mindfulness as a way of life as opposed to simply “something you do sometimes”. By making mindfulness a way of life you’ll begin to notice how these things distract you and pull you away from the real beauty of life. You’ll naturally begin to distance yourself from these devices a bit. A busy mind is only natural and the modern age has made our minds more chaotic than ever. But by developing the practice of mindfulness in your daily life you have the ability to stop, calm, fully rest, and heal the mind and body which will provide a renewable sense of peace and joy in your everyday life. In Part 3 I’ll cover all the tips and tricks I’ve personally used to establish mindfulness as a way of life.

UPDATE: Get My eBook, The Little Book of Mindfulness, free:

Book Preview: The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 1

The Little Book of Mindfulness Book Previews: 1. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 1 (Current) 2. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 2: Finding Peace Within 3. The Little Book of Mindfulness, Chapter 3: Awakening to Your True Nature

The Little Book of Mindfulness

About a month ago I made a major decision. I decided to write my first book. Well, my first two books. Yeah, I'll be writing two books in a row(!?). It's something I knew I would do eventually, but it felt unbelievable in the beginning. Well, writing a book, not two books at once...

I had to get through an overwhelming paralysis at first. The realization that I was writing an entire book, and hopefully completing it over the next month-month and a half was a little heavy at first. The first few days went like this: "OK, you're writing a book....you can start now.....or now....any day now...maybe tomorrow". It took a few days, but eventually the paralysis wore off and I was able to get to work.

In case you're wondering, minus last week my posting schedule will stay the same. Actually, if you include book previews, my posting rate will increase over the course of the next two months. I have dozens of great posts lined up outside of the content for my books that I'd also like to get to. But most of all, I'm excited for these two huge projects which I promise will provide a huge amount of value.

The major foundation of these two books is to be as clear, useful, and applicable in daily life as possible. The content in these two books is written in plain English, explained clearly, there's no use of jargon, and the chapters and content are organized in a way that makes it easy to find answers to common questions and provides tons of useful information.

This is an exclusive preview of my first-ever book, "The Book of Mindfulness: Going from Stressed and Distracted to Happy and Alive". Over the next two weeks, I'll be posting full chapters of the book for you to preview. "The Buddha's Practice" is the first major chapter of the book.

"The Book of Mindfulness" is a book all about mindfulness. Literally top to bottom, this book explains everything there is to know about mindfulness, breaks it down so that it's easy to understand, gives examples of how to practice with full instruction, and I also provide an entire section on ways to fight against old habit energies and develop mindfulness as a practice in your everyday life. And this first book is a short one, it will likely end at around 50 pages. I think that length fits best for a book about a single subject which I want to keep simple and clear.

Keep in mind that the paragraph format below isn't my usual blog post format with short paragraphs and lots of bold on important points. I'm currently writing the book in a very traditional book format, so there will be VERY long paragraphs below. It reads very smoothly in Microsoft Word though so I think you'll enjoy the flow when the book is finished.

I hope you enjoy the first chapter. It's just 5-6 pages in traditional book-length so it's a short read. Feel free to let me know what you think!

The Buddha’s Practice

When the Buddha was asked, "Sir, what do you and your monks practice?" he responded with, "We sit, we walk, and we eat." The man then asked, "But sir, everyone sits, walks, and eats." The Buddha replied, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating." This was the Buddha's practice.

But what exactly did he mean by that? What the Buddha was referring to was living fully in the present moment with mindfulness. Living in a way that we’re fully awake to the present moment. To the Buddha, mindfulness was a matter of life or death. But not life or death in a literal sense. Rather, to do something in mindfulness is to become truly alive in that moment.

So, what exactly is mindfulness? In a nutshell, mindfulness can be defined as a complete and nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment or present events. It’s also been defined as “the moment to moment awareness of present events”. In fact, it’s been defined dozens, if not hundreds, of times and most of those definitions suffice. There’s no one agreed upon way of defining mindfulness. This is because mindfulness is a state of being beyond words or concepts. One must practice mindfulness in order to truly understand what mindfulness is. The origin of the word mindfulness is in the Pali word “sati”, and its Sanskrit counterpart “smrti”, which both literally mean “memory”. But perhaps more precisely sati represents “presence of mind” or “attentiveness to the present”. This is what the Buddha was referring to when he said, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating." He meant that when the Buddha and his disciples sat, walked, or ate, they were fully present for the act of sitting, walking, or eating.

Even when becoming lost in thought, while practicing mindfulness the practitioner is fully aware that they just became lost in a particular thought and are mindful of the thought itself. This is because mindfulness isn’t just mindfulness of an object in the present moment such as one's breath, steps, or food. It’s also mindfulness of anything which might arise in the present moment while concentrating on an object. In a way, mindfulness is the observer of change. While concentrating on the object of meditation, such as one’s breath or steps, we become distracted by thoughts, feelings, and other sensations. These are “changes” in the field of mindfulness, the area which mindfulness observes. In this way think of mindfulness as a motion detector. If nothing moves, if nothing changes, then nothing is detected. The practitioner just continues to concentrate in mindfulness on the object of meditation until a thought, feeling, or some other sensation arises. This is when the real work begins.

Mindfulness is a complete and nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment or present events.

Think of mindfulness as a “field of attention” with a point of concentration in the center acting as an anchor to the present, rather than just a pointed concentration on something while pushing away everything else around you. Imagine a dream catcher. The idea behind a dream catcher is it’s supposed to “catch” your bad dreams as you’re sleeping. Just as a dream catcher catches your bad dreams, imagine each thought, feeling, and sensation being caught by your “field of mindfulness”. While in mindfulness, each thought, feeling, and sensation that arises automatically enters into this field of mindfulness and, this is the important part, is gently acknowledged and accepted “as it is”. By “as it is” I mean without judging it in any way.

If this is hard to imagine, don’t worry. For the most part, this nonjudgmental awareness happens naturally when you practice mindfulness correctly. The important thing to remember for now is that mindfulness is not a rejection of anything. Mindfulness is an open acceptance of everything that comes into your awareness. If you’re practicing mindful breathing, don’t reject thoughts that come into your mind just because they interrupt your mindful breathing. Observing these thoughts, which are typically unnoticed but always dispersing our awareness and coloring our perception, is a major point of mindfulness. So this is perfectly fine. Simply acknowledge the thought in mindfulness, just as you were doing with your breath, and then let the thought pass. Then bring your focus back to your breath. As time goes on the distractions will lessen and your ability to concentrate on one point for a period of time will improve. And with it, the quality of your mindfulness practice will improve as well.

Mindfulness has a number of different “qualities”. Like anything else, if you break it down into parts it becomes much easier to understand. We’ve covered the basic concept and workings of mindfulness so far, but in order to gain a deeper understanding of mindfulness let’s break it down and look at each quality individually. There are 5 key aspects of mindfulness which I’ll cover below.

Mindfulness is:

1. Mindfulness of something-Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. It’s not just a conscious directing of your awareness to the present moment, it’s a conscious directing of your awareness to something which is occurring or existing in the present moment. Common centers of focus are your breath, steps, or some other area or areas of the body. Concentration, or Samadhi in Sanskrit, is a force which works in tandem with mindfulness. Concentration is “single-pointedness of mind” and it’s just that- the act of focusing on a single point. While practicing mindfulness you will be developing your power of concentration as well as your mindfulness. There is no separating mindfulness and concentration. They are partners on the path to attaining a tranquil and clear mind. Think of concentration as the “hard” force and mindfulness as the “soft”. Concentration is exactly what it sounds like, it’s the forceful act of focusing on a single point. Imagine your field of mindfulness enveloping everything within your perception in a soft glow. Next, imagine a thin line piercing out from your mindfulness directly to an object. This is your concentration. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a sort of soft awareness. Remember the dream catcher? Mindfulness is the field of awareness which then “sees” everything that arises while concentrating on an object. Mindfulness is what notices when your concentration lapses and your thoughts stray. Think of mindfulness as the ultimate, voiceless, and nonjudgmental observer. It judges nothing. It makes no distinctions. It simply observes everything that comes into its field of awareness. Your concentration, the force anchoring your mindfulness to some object in the present moment (the object of meditation), is the instrument of mindfulness. Mindfulness decides where the point of concentration will be. It observes the anchor point (the point of your concentration), notices when concentration strays and where it strays to. This might be difficult to imagine at first, but for now just know that the act of practicing mindfulness will feel much like concentrating on an object, such as your breathing, and then doing your best to notice when your thoughts stray. Just being able to notice when you’re thoughts stray will take some time. In the beginning, your practice will look and feel like this: 1) concentrate on your breath, 2) lose concentration, sometimes aware of the thought you strayed to, most of the time not, 3) back to concentrating on your breathing. That’s it. But after a while, you will begin to notice these thoughts more often and more clearly and then be able to acknowledge them with mindfulness.

1. Mindfulness of something in the present moment- Moving on from the last point, mindfulness is always mindfulness of something in the present moment. But it doesn’t have to be something existing in the physical world. As we spoke about earlier, it can be mindfulness of thoughts that arise in the present moment while practicing mindfulness of breath, body, or some external object. What mindfulness isn’t is reflecting on the past or thinking about the future. When reflecting on the past or thinking about the future you are consciously directing your attention to the past, future, or some altogether imagined place. Therefore it’s not something which exists in the present moment. Mindfulness is always the observing of what is occurring in the present moment. As we go about our daily lives, we often don’t notice how our perception or mental filters, such as bias, affect how we see the world around us. And we think that what we’re thinking and seeing with our eyes are two different things. But they aren’t. What we see with our eyes passes through our perception before we even realize we see the object. It’s like we have an internal checkpoint which we’ve built up from our life experiences. And this checkpoint is filled with both good and bad things which “color” our perception and affect our experiences. Imagine someone offers you a piece of food which you’ve never tried before. This food somewhat resembles, say, Brussel sprouts (bleh!). As soon as you lay eyes on it, you have a negative sensation. Maybe you get a bad taste in your mouth, your body cringes a little, and a bad memory of eating Brussel sprouts flashes into your mind. This new food item could be amazing. You have no idea if it is or isn’t. You’ve never actually tried it. But your perception has already completely colored the experience for you to the point where it will actually affect how it will taste. This is an example of how our perception colors everything around us. Everything you perceive is your mind. You might think you’re observing your breath, a Brussel sprout, or a flower. But what you’re really observing is your perception of those things. Mindfulness is about observing what is occurring in the present moment so that you can pierce through your wrong perceptions to eventually witness reality as it is without any mental filters getting in the way. This is why mindfulness is mindfulness of something in the present moment. The point of mindfulness is to experience reality as it is. Truly free, unbound, and able to experience reality in all its beauty.

1. A conscious decision-Mindfulness is a purposeful directing of your consciousness to the present, it doesn’t happen on accident. To be fully awake to the present moment you have to decide “I am fully awake to this moment” by directing your consciousness to an object in the present moment. You decide to be mindful in any given moment. It doesn’t happen on accident. I mentioned earlier how the point of your concentration, or object of meditation, works as your anchor point to the present moment. The starting point for the anchor and the eventual anchor point is this conscious decision. Think of mindfulness as a ship and you’re the captain. You make the conscious decision to place the anchor down and where to place it. You then throw the anchor, your concentration, off the ship. The anchor then hits the intended anchor point, or object of meditation, where it will rest. Of course, at first, this anchor won’t be very strong. It will be made of, say, plastic. Not a very good anchor. But with time it will develop into a heavy and resilient anchor.

1. Nonjudgmental awareness- All spiritual practice in an overall sense is about finding true peace and happiness through accomplishing total liberation (or freedom). And we become liberated by discovering the truth. That is, by uncovering all false views and any other negative forces in our life. This is the ultimate purpose of mindfulness. It’s this nonjudgmental awareness that makes mindfulness so important in finding true peace and happiness. Mindfulness accepts everything as it is. As I mentioned earlier it makes no distinctions, holds no bias, and is completely separated from all other mental filters which distort your perception of reality. Mindfulness allows you to experience true reality. This is liberation. As I mentioned earlier, if you’re not sure how to do this at first then don’t worry. Mindfulness is itself nonjudgmental. It’s helpful to keep this point in mind at times, but you’ll find this will happen somewhat naturally. If you sense bias or get the feeling that you’re somehow coloring your perception of something while practicing then this is a good thing. Simply by noticing this it means you’re becoming mindful of your various mental filters. If this happens, know that you’re on the right path. As always, simply acknowledge it and bring yourself back to your object of meditation. It’s not bad that you lose your concentration. It’s only bad if you don’t observe with mindfulness what distracted you.

1. Developed like a muscle- Mindfulness works like a muscle. In the beginning, your energy of mindfulness will be very weak. But over time your mindfulness will strengthen and you will notice a significant difference both in your ability to concentrate and in your ability to see with mindfulness. This is important to know at the beginning because it’s at the very beginning stages where things are most difficult. While trying to establish the practice of mindfulness as a part of your life you’ll be constantly fighting old habits. In Buddhism, this is sometimes called “habit energy”. Imagine everything you do carries with it a certain energy. The more you do something the more energy it develops, and with it, the more “pull” it has. You can develop energy anywhere in your life. In both positive and negative places. So when starting out don’t become discouraged when you’re having a hard time sticking to your mindfulness practice, such as when you forget to practice for an entire day altogether. I went through this constantly at first and it’s just going to be a battle. There are no two ways about it. Part 3 is all about helping you develop mindfulness in your daily life and it includes some great tips and tricks all of which I’ve used to develop my own practice of mindfulness.

Mindfulness, which has been practiced for over 2,500 years by the Buddha and his long lineage of disciples, as well as many other spiritual traditions (whether they call it mindfulness or not), isn’t the only key to spiritual awakening or even just a healthy spiritual practice. But it is one of the major, if not the major, cornerstones of a nourishing and healing spiritual practice which leads to true peace and happiness.

UPDATE: Get My eBook, The Little Book of Mindfulness, free:

Meditating on the Cosmos: Instantly Gain Perspective and Reduce Stress with This Simple Trick

It's very nice to feel. You're nothing. You're just nothing when you're near a volcano.

- Katia Krafft

Our problems are the biggest problems in the world.

Well...not really. But they sure seem that way a lot of times.

It's only natural. We can feel the gravity of our own problems fully. But the problems of others? Not so much. Most of us find it pretty difficult to feel the same for others and their problems as we do for us and our own. After all, feeling the same for others emotionally as we do ourselves is not something we're naturally equipped to do.

In fact, many of us don't even take more than a few seconds on any given day to think about someone else's problems other than our own.

We're so immersed in our ourselves all the time. No wonder we feel our hardships and difficulties so intensely.

And then when something actually does happen? It never turns out as bad as we thought it would in our head.

It's this self-centered mindset that is the cause of much of our suffering. Many of our misconceptions about the way that the world works, how to find happiness, and how to become successful are caused by this self-centered mindset.

If we'd only take a second to step back and look around, at the BIG picture, we might feel differently.

Meditating on the Cosmos

I can't remember the first time I did this exercise, but I've used it a few times over the past couple of years when life really seemed to be coming at me from all sides.

I say exercise, but this is really a mindset. Just as being self-centered is a mindset, there is a universal mindset. By transforming your self-centered mindset into a universal mindset you become aware of your connection to everything.

When you have this mindset you're aware that the matter which makes up your body is not yours at all. This matter existed in other things before you, such as stars which exploded billions of light years away from the planet you stand on today.  And it will continue to exist in another form when you pass.

You could view this in a way that's specific to your religion, in a spiritual sense, or strictly in a scientific sense. However you view it and whatever you call it, it's the same. There is no difference. We're all a part of the same great big cosmic family. It's because of this that we are large. We are infinite. But our problems are not.

Have you ever seen those people who draw on grains of rice? It's pretty cool. Our problems are like the writing on those grains of rice. No- if someone wrote letters inside of the letters on the grain of rice then that would be the real size of our problems compared to the rest of the world.

But they feel so real.

And they can be so overwhelming.

How do we begin to experience this cosmic mindset, this universal mindset, and loosen the mental bind they put us in? By looking to the cosmos.

Tonight, go out and sit under the stars. If you live in a city make it a trip- go just outside the city to somewhere peaceful where the light and the smog of the city isn't blocking your view of space.

And just sit there, looking up. Don't think about anything. Don't think about your problems, don't think about your hardships, and don't think about yourself. Forget about yourself- stop thinking and stop moving. Lose yourself completely in the deep, mysterious, and unimaginably vast universe.

Contemplate on the universe in mindfulness for 20-30 minutes (or as long as you'd like). Be mindful of the stars, of the sky, of the universe. But most of all contemplate the size of the universe.

• There are at least 200 BILLION galaxies in our universe.
• There are at least 100-200 BILLION planets in our galaxy alone, the Milky Way.
• That means there is at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one septillion) planets in the universe...

Now look down. If there are people around you become mindful of them. See them walking, driving, running around in different directions and doing different things. Understand that each one of them is also focused on themselves and their own problems. In fact, many of them are probably thinking about them right now.

See how trivial most of our problems really are. See how so many of us are so steeped in ourselves that we have no idea life isn't nearly as bad as we make it seem. And then look at yourself. Reflect on your own problems and your life as a whole. Feel your problems shrink.

Do all of this while staying in your universal mindset. Take another few minutes to look up at the sky if you'd like. Imagine how big this universe really is. And you are a part of it. But your problems....are not.

So...now how big do your problems feel?

You will never find people who truly grasp the cosmic perspective ... leading nations into battle. No, that doesn't happen. When you have a cosmic perspective there's this little speck called Earth and you say, "You're going to what? You're on this side of a line in the sand and you want to kill people for what? Oh, to pull oil out of the ground, what? WHAT?" ... Not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

13 Simple Ways to Increase Productivity, Reduce Distractions and Have More Time for What's Most Important

Overcoming Our Obsession with Productivity

Our world is obsessed with productivity.

We likely developed our obsession with productivity as a result of the industrial revolution. At least, that's probably where the seed first sprouted.

As a result of this, our focus shifted from producing quality to producing more in a shorter and shorter period of time. But this didn't just affect the way we work. Over time, it's seeped into other areas of life. Now many of us believe that's "just how life is".

But is this even a bad thing? Unfortunately, it has been the cause of some major downturns in our overall well-being. Most notably, I believe, is the decline of both our health and relationships.

A productivity mindset is dangerous because there's no end to it. You could work on making yourself consistently more productive for your entire life and still have room to improve. It's easy to see why it can become a dangerous obsession.

But productivity in and of itself isn't bad. It's not bad to want to become more productive or efficient. Productivity has its place, but we need to be careful.

The Buddha spoke of the principle of The Middle Way. In a nutshell, The Middle Way is the life lived between extremes, particularly self-denial and self-indulgence. Not being too here and not being too there. Part of this principle has to do with the understanding that, even if something is bad for us, oftentimes it's impossible to complete remove it.

Destroying things isn't typically considered a good thing. But to think that you can ever live in a way where you destroy and consume nothing for the rest of your life is completely unreasonable. You can kill an ant when stepping out of your car, accidentally drown a plant when watering your garden, and any product you use in your home took materials to be made. That involves killing and consuming things.

It's easy to understand how that's just an impossible goal. But you should still do your best to reduce your destruction and consumption.

This is The Middle Way, and it's the example we should follow when considering how productivity should be allowed to shape our lives.

We need to restructure our lives in a way that puts quality before quantity. We need to reevaluate our priorities and then act on them. That means we need to live in a way that puts what's most important to us, our families and our society at the forefront.

As long as what we do to become more productive does not conflict with what's really important in life such as our health, happiness, and the health and happiness of our loved ones, better yet enhances those things, then it's fine. If it harms those things we've deemed most important though then we need to tone it down.

Redefining Productivity: Learning How to Increase Productivity without Sacrificing Health and Happiness

Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the idea of self-actualization or of reaching one's "potential". Of course, I'd later come to realize that I was far from the first person to be interested in it.

Naturally, you could consider a part of that productivity. So it's something that's often been on my mind. But I never cared about multitasking or marking off the most things from my to-do list. In fact, I've learned that neither of those things directly lead to or signify productivity at all.

Rather, the way I've viewed productivity has always, thankfully, been in the scope of doing the best job possible in whatever I'm doing. It's because of this that, to me, efficiency is the term we should be more concerned with.

Since being introduced to Zen Buddhism, and spirituality as a whole, my idea of productivity has changed somewhat, but it still very much plays a part in my life.

Productivity has never, and will never, be about moving faster to me. What it is about is doing your best in all areas of your life. Productivity should be about giving us more time to do what- and be with who- we love. The things that matter most, such as our health, happiness, and the happiness and well-being of our loved ones, shouldn't be sacrificed in order to get "ahead" in our personal and professional lives.

Imagine a life where you have more than enough time to do what you love. A life where each day you have dedicated and uninterrupted time for your family and loved ones. You know what's most important to you and the majority of your time goes towards those things. This is the life that productivity should be geared towards.

Here are 13 simple tips and tricks, that I've used personally, which you can use to help you get there:

1. 60 seconds to clarity

   Sometimes we get carried away with the busy-work of life and lose track of what is most important. We can’t always focus on what is most important, sometimes we need to get gas, make a deposit, meet someone for this or that, run two more errands, pick up the kids and make dinner. Anyone would lose track of themselves after a day like that. So you’ll need a technique to bring you back to what’s most important when you get lost.

   This one is pretty straightforward. I’d suggest keeping this one in your pocket for when you feel like your day, or days, are getting out of hand and you need to refocus. Simply ask yourself the question:

   Is this the most important thing I could be doing right now?

   This simple question has the ability to refocus you when you’re at your most chaotic. Again it’s best used sparingly, not as a daily technique. But if you use it when life seems to be slipping out of your grasp it has an amazing ability to give you back your sense of clarity.

2. Figure out what’s most important to you

   This sounds like a simple one, but most of us don’t know what’s most important to us. We rarely think about what’s most important to us let alone spend time figuring out how we can get more time for what’s most important to us.

   Building off of the first point, if you haven’t even figured out what’s most important to you then you need to really take the time to sit down and figure that out before you do anything else in your life. It’s so important I’d take a day off just to go somewhere quiet, sit down, and think.

   Your search will likely be something closer to how it was for me, though: a process. I took a whole lot more than just one day to figure it out. But looking back it was definitely one of the best and most important decisions of my life.

3. Re-examine priorities

   Now that you’ve listed out what’s most important to you, start paying attention to what you spend your time on each day. Don’t change your day up forcefully- just let it play out as it usually does.

   Now, take that observation and analyze it compared to what you decided is most important to you. Do they match up? Or is there a conflict? Is something less important, like your job, keeping you from spending time with your kids?

   You might have realized by now that this step can be painful. But don’t be scared of this type of discomfort. This type of discomfort just means you’re growing. This step can be tough because it’s making you face a difficult decision: do I keep going how I am and live my life contrary to what’s most important to me or make a stand and decide to put what’s most important first?

   No one said it was going to be easy. Living in a way that you put what’s most important to you first is difficult, but it’s indescribably rewarding if you’re not already doing it. The process of shifting your life to match your priorities is often best done slowly, especially if it involves a big change for you.

   Focus on one step at a time. And know that not all things can be changed completely right away. Some things will have to be slowly reduced while others slowly increased.

4. Replace, don’t add

   Be mindful of your daily activities. If you decide to add something new, like running in the morning, building an online business, or taking up a cooking class, know what it’s taking the place of.

   You only have 24 hours in a day. If you add something to your weekly or daily schedule then something else is going to be squeezed. In order not to complicate your life and make you less effective at all your other tasks you should make it a point, if possible, to remove something whenever you add something.

   For ideas on how and where to simplify your life to make room for something new, you can read The 10 Most Important Ways to Simplify Your Life.

5. Learn to say no

   A lot of us have difficulty telling others no. Whether you like to please everyone, try to handle everything out of ego or are afraid of telling someone no, you need to learn the art of “no” sooner or later if you want to maintain your peace.

   Being unwilling to tell others no, whether it’s a simple request to run an errand, assistance on a big project or help with a future responsibility, can eat up your time like few things can. This isn’t to say you’re unwilling to help people. What we’re talking about here is knowing two things: your limits and your priorities.

   The reality is you can only handle so much at once. And while I’m all for pushing yourself to do your best, you’ll still at the end of the day have your limits even if you learn to go beyond what you once thought was your best.

   No is a requirement of daily life, not a sign of weakness. Don’t be afraid to use it.

6. Ask for help

   To bounce off of our last point, sometimes it’s better to ask for help than to try to handle something yourself.

   The best example of this is something that involves a skill or resource which you don’t have but someone you know does. If you need help with something but you know someone who is way better at that something than you, don’t be afraid to ask for their help. Explain the situation and how you could use their skills.

   Helping others is the ultimate goal and provides the greatest reward in life, so there’s more than enough in it for them by you genuinely asking for their help. Don’t feel like you’re burdening people by asking them for help. If they’re a genuine friend then they’ll be willing to help. And if they’re not, well, better you find out now than later.

   Of course, don’t overdo it. The point isn’t to pawn off tasks to others and delegate your life’s responsibilities. The point is to get help with things that come up of which you’re not well-equipped to handle.

7. Accommodate the path of least resistance

   It’s not always easy to move yourself to action. The lowest level of productivity is non-action, so if that’s a problem for you then that’s one of the first places you should start. We’re all familiar with the fact that it’s hard to push yourself to do something good for you but which is also difficult or less-than-fun.

   Whether it’s working out, eating right, and even meditation. Pre-plan the activity, set it in stone, and then preset any necessary tools to get the job done. The idea is to make the thing you want to do the easiest thing for you to do at the moment in which you want to do it.

   What this means is if you’re going to work out in the morning, then the night before you should place you shoes next to your bed, lay out your clothes, and place your keys, water bottle, and bag with anything else you need all next to each other so you can literally wake up, grab them, and go. This concept makes you 10,000 times more likely to do something, whatever it is.

   With eating right you can buy a healthy snack to go with the not-so-healthy snack you usually get and place the non-healthy snack up in the cupboard and the healthy snack out in the open on the counter. You can also place all the healthy stuff in your fridge in front of the unhealthy stuff.

   Google uses this principle in their offices. They place the healthy snacks in front of the unhealthy ones where they’re easier to grab. This might sound like laziness, but it’s not, it’s just how we’re programmed and it’s something you can take advantage of.

8. The Zorro circle

   This one is from Shawn Achor’s The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work.

   I’ve applied this in my own life and found it’s amazing for taking on larger projects and goals. Large projects can be overwhelming. Recently, I started my most overwhelming project to date: I’m writing my first book.

   For the first couple of days after finishing my outline I was nearly frozen. That’s because I’d sit back and look at this huge project I had to complete all by myself and had no idea where to start. Naturally, your mind races and it’s this mental panic that’s the problem.

   If you take a second to calm your mind, look at your project and pick a small piece or section to work on, and then block out everything else and begin working on that section like it’s the only thing that exists then you’ll have a much easier time taking on large projects whether at work or home.

   Take it piece by piece and before you know it you’ll be on your way to tackling something you never thought you could do.

9. Pre-Plan your day

   It’s important to have a general idea of what you plan to do in a given sitting, day, week, or month depending on what you’re doing. Without this, it’s so easy to become distracted and veer off in another, less productive, direction.

   By pre-planning your time you’ll know what you’re supposed to be doing and will be able to catch yourself when you become unfocused. Without a plan, it’s usually just chaos.

   I’m not talking about having a written plan for everything you intend to do at every moment of every day. I don’t write down most of what I plan to do, but I know what I plan to do and about when I plan to do it.

   As long as you have a general idea, especially for those things which are most important, then that will be more than enough.

10. Meditate

    Meditation quiets the mind. I talk about meditation often on Buddhaimonia for other reasons, but meditation’s ability to quiet the mind increases your productivity as well. And it does it in the right way.

    Meditation reduces mental distractions and mental dispersion and allows you to put your best work out. This is what productivity should be about anyway. Doing more does nothing for you if everything you do is crap. You should strive to produce quality, not quantity.

    To begin developing a meditation practice you can read The Ultimate Guide to Meditation: The What, Why and How of Meditation and Learn How to Meditate in the Next 5 Minutes: The Quick Start Guide to Mindfulness Meditation.

11. Reduce information over-consumption

    [Tweet “A distracted mind is an unproductive, unpeaceful, and unhappy mind.”]

    Meditation isn’t the only way you can calm your mind. You should attack all sources of the problem. This includes the over-consumption of information which leads to distraction and mind dispersion.

    Part of the purpose of a Zen Buddhist becoming a monk and moving into a Zen temple is so that they can reduce distractions which could harm their practice. I’m not a monk, I live a “normal” life, but I’ve found a number of ways to reduce the distractions of modern life in order to improve my practice, help me find peace, and become more productive.

    In today’s age distractions are a dime a dozen. Smartphones are the real killer, but our TVs, desktops, and tablets are always there to help distract us further. Do yourself a favor and reduce your consumption of information. You’ll reduce mental distractions and mental dispersion and increase your productivity, as well as your happiness, as a result.

    For ways to cure information over-consumption, you can read The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Your Life Through Mindful Consumption and The 10 Most Important Ways to Simplify Your Life.

12. Become an early riser/wake up early

    Waking up early can afford you a beautiful few hours of the most productive time you’ll ever get in a day. I can’t overstate how much more productive I am in the morning versus the rest of the day.

    It’s easy to see why: distractions are at an all-day minimum. I never have anything planned outside of my own work, no one calls me or texts me at 4 or 5 AM, the kids are asleep (big one!), and there’s a peaceful quiet like nothing else I can describe.

    You can think. You can work. You can relax. You can breathe. Waking up early can be difficult to do, but it has some major benefits. You can read how I became an early riser by reading How to Become an Early Riser: The 12 Techniques I Used to Go from a Night Owl to Waking up at 4 AM Daily.

13. Practice mindfulness

    Multitasking is a killer. Unfortunately, it’s an icon of our modern world. We’re becoming more conscious, but we still have a long way to go.

    Multitasking actually makes you less productive and more stressed out. Stress is a good indicator you’re doing something you weren’t meant to do (whether internally or externally). We’re constantly dispersing our concentration and, as a result, never putting out our best work.

    You can never do your best job on anything when your mind is constantly split in three or more different directions at any given moment. By developing the practice of mindfulness you learn how to focus on one activity which allows you to increase the quality of everything you do and do it right the first time.

    To learn how to practice mindfulness you can read my guide What is Mindfulness? A Simple Guide to the Power and Practice of Mindfulness.