The Beginner's Guide to Zen Living: 10 Steps to Transforming Your Life with the Spirit of Zen

One of the major intentions of my life is to live with the spirit of Zen.

That's the spirit with which I live my everyday life and the very spirit of Buddhaimonia.

I'm a firm believer that we all hold a certain intuitive wisdom within each of us, and it's that wisdom which hints at our naturally harmonious and interconnected nature.

It's also this wisdom which, if we so choose, can be used to bring this world together in greater peace and harmony.

And it's this intuitive wisdom which we share that is the very spirit of Zen.

Zen is a sect of Buddhism which focuses on the practice of meditation. But that's a very "textbook" response and hardly communicates the true spirit of Zen.

When it comes down to it, Zen has an individual "essence", an essence that speaks directly to us.

Why is this? Because Zen speaks that same language of intuitive wisdom that I mentioned a moment ago and which we all have deep within us.

We may not have practiced or studied Zen, meditation, or even be completely familiar with Zen, but the wisdom it speaks resonates with us because it's in line with the way we feel that we should live our lives.

So what does it mean to actually live with the spirit of Zen? My favorite explanation of this is in renowned Zen teacher and author Philip Kapleau's Introduction in Thich Nhat Hanh's book Zen Keys, where he describes Zen as a possible antidote to many of the problems of modern society:

"One obvious answer is- through Zen. Not necessarily Zen Buddhism but Zen in its broad sense of a one-pointed aware mind; of a disciplined life of simplicity and naturalness as against a contrived and artificial one; of a life compassionately concerned with our own and the world's welfare and not self-centered and aggressive. A life, in short, of harmony with the natural order of things and not in constant conflict with it."

In a way, this isn't Zen at all- Kapleau's describing life itself. This is the intuitive wisdom I speak of. To me, this is simply how we should all live:

• With the energy of mindfulness - Fully aware, alive in each moment, with a single-pointed awareness. If we're cleaning, we're fully present for the act of cleaning; if we're with our loved ones, we're fully present for them; if we're relaxing at home, we're simply relaxing and not letting the events of the day or worries of the future cloud our mind and distract us.
• Simply and naturally - Understanding that less is more and being aware of how this affects the state of our mind as well as accepting things fully as they come or "going with the flow of things" so to speak (among other things).
• Compassionately and lovingly - Concerned for our own well-being as well as the well-being of all other beings together as one, ultimately understanding how we're all interconnected.

As Kapleau put it, this is about overall living in harmony with the natural way of things (and not creating friction).

Figuring out how to truly live with the spirit of Zen in my everyday life has been pretty difficult at times, but along the way I've learned quite a bit.

And it's been infinitely worth it, more so than anything else I've ever done in my life.

In this guide, I hope to impart some of that to you.

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Zen for Everyday Life Online Course...Coming Soon

If you're interested in learning how to live a more authentic Zen life and bring peace, joy, and balance into your everyday life, then you'll love my upcoming course, Zen for Everyday Life.

If you'd like to be notified when more information is available, as well as get some cool exclusive bonuses from here until release, fill in your name and email below!

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10 Steps to Transforming Your Life Through Living with the Spirit of Zen

Below you'll find 10 steps to making Zen living (living with the spirit of Zen) a reality.

Some are straightforward, some are quick, and some are slow and will be more of a constant work-in-progress. But overall, if you put all of these strategies together, they'll make nothing short of a life changing impact throughout your entire life

Many of these tips will seem closely interlinked. That's on purpose. By being able to see clearly how one point leads into another you're able to see clearly the overarching effort involved in making this a reality.

Also, keep in mind that this isn't about perfection. Don't expect to get these all right the first time, or for them to all happen quickly (as mentioned above, some may and some may not). Your focus should simply be on making your best effort.

I hope some, or all, of these 10 steps can help you find the spirit of Zen in your own life.

1. Simplify your daily activities down to the essentials
2. Do a mind cleanse
3. Reevaluate your dreams and goals
4. Establish a daily routine for your life
5. Establish a home meditation practice, but make practice simple and convenient (blend it in to everyday life)
6. Identify the resistance and remove it (lean in to your problems, don't run from them)
7. Become aware of dualistic thinking
8. Live with the energy of mindfulness
9. Do One Thing
10. Respect and Appreciate Life

1. Simplify your daily activities down to the essentials

Before working on anything else, it's often most important just to clear away the unnecessary clutter, and that's exactly what these first 2 points are all about.

The first area to work on centers around your physical activity, so this is all about discovering what's unnecessary or unimportant, but which is still seemingly taking up your time, and then either removing them completely or reducing them as much as possible.

This has significance in literally every aspect of your life: personally, professionally, spiritually/religiously, and psychologically.

An important point:This first point is all about simplifying your mental activity by way of simplifying your physical activity (or physical world).

When it comes down to it, it's not about simplifying your physical life. Simplifying your physical life is only nice because of the fact that it simplifies the "mental clutter", not the physical.

That might not be so clear now, but think on it and you'll see that it's true.

How to do it:

So, how can you begin making this a reality? Simplifying you daily activities can seem like a huge task, and it can be if you go all out, but if you take it one step at a time you'll have created a hugely positive effect in very little time.

These are the most important categories to keep in mind when working on simplifying your life as a whole:

1. Finances - Remember when I said that this really comes down to simplifying mental activity? Almost nowhere is it clearer than when simplifying your finances.

This includes mostly how you spend and how you save.

2. Mental stimulation - This includes associations, T.V., the Internet, news (wherever you get it), books, audio, etc.

This is such a huge category that it's the entire 2nd of 10 steps, but also because it's really its own beast altogether (that's when we get much more directly mental rather than physical).

3. Material possessions - This is the most well-known of all "simplifying your life" tactics.

This one might not sound like it has much to do with our mental state of being, and it does have the least effect, but it still very much matters. Physical clutter in our homes and life overall can have a real effect on us and so tackling this is a worthwhile early venture in seeking to live the spirit of Zen.

4. Daily actions - The one area we've yet to cover is daily actions. This is one of the biggest and most important as it deals with everything you actually do physically all day long: go to the bank, go to work, what you do at work, run errands, visit friends and family, spend off-time, spend time with your loved ones, etc. Literally everything.

There is some overlap between this and #2, but again that's an important point to isolate because it's so important.

I've written a few articles which deal with this exact topic, even one taking you through a 30-day plan to simplifying your life in every aspect. Here they are:

1. 30 Simple Steps to Simple Living in 30 Days: How to Simplify Your Life from Start to Finish in 30 Days
2. 13 Simple Ways to Increase Productivity, Reduce Distractions and Have More Time for What’s Most Important
3. The 10 Most Important Ways to Simplify Your Life

2. Do a mind cleanse

We often don't realize just how much outside stimuli affects the state of our minds.

It can fog our mind, distract us, completely detract and divert us altogether, as well as lead us to be more aggressive, fearful, and paranoid (among other things). It can have just about any and every effect on us possible.

This step is all about what's called "mental food", and it's extraordinarily important.

What do I mean by mental food? This includes everything from associations (people, relationships) and environments to forms of media such as video (T.V., YouTube, news sites), audio (radio, audiobooks, podcasts), and text (books, blogs, and essentially the Internet as a whole).*

*It's important to note that the Internet is included in every one of those categories, being that social networks are a big part of our associations and the environments we engage in as well as including all forms of media: video, audio, and text. Also, associations and media crisscross because we interact with others via video, audio, and text.

So then, what is a mind cleanse?

A mind cleanse is about taking each of those categories and purging (or reducing) the bad mental food to "cleanse" our minds.

How to do it:

When it comes down to it, for the majority of people, a mind cleanse includes tackling these 3 categories:

1. Associations (people) along with the environments you engage with people in - This is always the most difficult, but also the most powerful, of all the categories in this step. There's rarely an easy way to go about dealing with this but to realize the hard fact that if you continue to be around people who willfully bring you down, it's going to have a definitive effect on your life.

2. T.V. - A point of interest here is the nightly news, talk shows, sitcoms, soap operas, and advertisements in general.

3. The Internet - Again, this is a huge category. The most important points here are social networks (you could be positively spending your time there or not so positively, you'll have to find this out for yourself), news and gossip sites, and blogs.

A mind cleanse such as this can take time, or you can do it all within a week or two (usually, outside of associations unless you're in a position to just stop hanging out with the people in question), it's really up to you (some might need more time, it just depends on your situation).

The first time I did this was back in high school, and it had an extraordinary effect. What kind of an effect? Let me explain...

What you'll notice when you do this is you'll naturally turn "inward" more than you were before.

What I mean by that is, you'll be willing to sit down to read, meditate, and do other more nourishing activities far more often than you were before. It's almost as if you just gravitate towards these things more now than before, you'll almost be compelled to.

*An important note: This won't last forever- it will likely only be an initial feeling that will last a few weeks or even a few months. But as with anything, consistency is key. This is your opportunity to build new and better habits. If you can do this, that period after the mind cleanse will be that much more beneficial.

That leads me to the next point. So what do you replace this bad mental food with? Many things, such as:

1. Books - Preferably self-help of some kind (this doesn't have to be non-fiction either, it can be fiction. See: The Alchemist), although I'll strongly warn against consuming the wrong kind of self-help centered around making more money, becoming successful and powerful, and other ways we try to fill ourselves up falsely.

2. Audio - Audiobooks (same guidelines as with books above), podcasts (see books again), guided meditations, etc.

3. Positive TV programming - There's a lot out there, just have to make your best judgment.

4. Positive groups and environments - This is all about the people and emotions you're around on a regular basis. This can have a considerable effect on your life as a whole, but be equally difficult to find. This one may take time, but if you're always on the lookout you'll begin to see possibilities.

3. Reevaluate your dreams and goals

Most of us are striving towards something.

We have a dream or a goal and we want to achieve it, and we look forward to the way our life will be when we accomplish it.

In many ways, having a dream and a goal is just fine. But it's natural for us to become attached to it, to the point where we convince ourselves that we can't be happy until we get it.

This kind of attachment is very unhealthy, and unfortunately it's something that most of us have fallen for (I was no exception). This next step is about evaluating that very thing.

How to do it:

How do you evaluate your dreams and goals? This includes:

1. Evaluating why you want to achieve said dream or goal - Do you want it because you believe you'll find happiness? Or do you want it because you'll believe it's a worthwhile pursuit that will help others? Or simply something worth spending your time on?

2. Evaluating your daily actions with these dreams and goals in mind - How are your daily actions colored by these dreams and goals? Most importantly, is what you're doing to achieve your dream or goal sacrificing your well-being or the well-being of others?

3. Identifying the thoughts and ideas that exist within your mind in connection with these dreams and goals - An idea of this would be working off point #1, identifying that you want to achieve this goal because you believe you'll find happiness. That's an idea you hold in your mind in connection with the dream or goal.

This last point can take time to develop, and largely comes through developing your mindfulness and meditation practice (which we'll talk about in a bit), so just become aware of these thoughts and ideas as they arise when possible.

The overarching idea here is to begin identifying the harmful thought patterns you hold within your mind so that you can begin releasing them. This step is very important because it's so often this attachment to a dream or goal and the idea that, "I'll be happy when ____" that holds us back from realizing peace and happiness in the present moment.

*An important note: You won't be able to release this idea of "I'll be happy when ____" right away, nor is it required. Just begin to become aware of them, that will be enough right now.

4. Establish a daily routine for your life

Sometimes, we think that things like "order" and "structure" are boring and only slightly useful in some situations, when in fact when used in the right way they can be the breeding ground for much peace, joy, and freedom.

How? A daily routine, for instance, allows for a quieter mind because there's less to think about.

Ultimately, that's really what you want- less to think about = more enjoying the peace of the present moment.

In modern life, planning ahead and remembering certain things is necessary to a point, but by structuring things in the right way and pre-planning, we can remove much of that mental clutter that builds up as a result of our many everyday tasks, to-do's, and important events.

We're so afraid of forgetting what we have to do that we often feel the need to cycle those things repeatedly through our minds until the time comes to do them. The thing is, that cycle never ends because new things come up. So our minds are constantly cluttered with, "Remember this!", and "Remember that!"

By establishing a daily routine and some form of order to your life, you remove a lot of feeling that you need to do that. And as a result, you remove more mental clutter and give yourself more peace and quiet.

How to do it:

So, what should this daily routine look like? That's completely up to your own daily schedule and life as a whole.

To some degree, that will change day-by-day, but as long as you make your major daily (or weekly) activities routine than you'll have just about done your best.

Outside of that, for those activities that are irregular or one-time, I'd suggest keeping a simple to-do list.

Don't let this to-do list rule your life though, only use it to keep a few important points for that day (or group of days). I'd suggest keeping this list at no more than 3-5 things for the sake of simplicity and for keeping it from becoming its own monster (to-do lists are helpful, but only to a point).

I prefer Trello due to its simplicity (and it works across all devices), but you could use anything.

*Two more important points:

Having some form of structure, a daily routine namely, keeps you from wasting time. It improves your efficiency towards the task at hand because you act with more of your being in every moment. This is a very important part of Zen in itself as well, so they go together nicely.

On top of that, breaking that sense of order and structure from time to time can become a very liberating experience.

Zen monasteries have always been run with a sense of order and structure because they're perfectly aware of the benefits of it.

Zen priests don't run monasteries with a strong sense of order just because they feel like it- everything in Zen is calculated- they do it to create a breeding ground for those students to better realize greater awakening, and their true nature.

So use a sense of order and structure to liberate yourself in your own life by creating a daily routine, giving yourself more mental energy for what really matters.

5. Establish a home meditation practice, but make practice simple and convenient (blend it in to everyday life)

Meditation (zazen in Zen- meaning literally "sitting meditation" in Japanese) is obviously an important part of living the spirit of Zen, but with regards to doing so in your everyday life (modern life), this can't be done the same way a full-time Zen monk or student practices meditation.

Within this point there's really 2 important sub-steps:

1. Begin your home meditation practice

First and foremost, for those new to meditation, here's a few guides to get you started:

The Little Book of Mindfulness– Discover the power of mindfulness meditation in simple, straight-forward, and crystal clear language. You can get this free eBook by clicking here.

The Mindfulness Survival Guide– Learn 5 powerful meditative practices for overcoming life’s difficult challenges and living more mindfully. You can get this free guide by clicking here.

5 Tools to Help Start Your Home Meditation Practice– This is a guide all about teaching you both the basics of sitting meditation (instruction included along with the 5 tools) as well as the 5 tools you can use to help build your practice. A great beginner's guide.

2. Blend meditation into your everyday life (and make it a daily habit)

Once you've begun your meditation practice, you'll likely discover that it can be pretty difficult to stay consistent. That's where this next point comes into play.

First, because simply meditating isn't enough, focus on establishing meditation as a daily habit. But also, do it in a way that allows you to blend meditation into your everyday life.

Read this guide to establish meditation as a daily habit:

5 Steps to Making Meditation a Daily Habit

These are the only 5 steps you need do to make meditation into a daily habit. You can read the guide here.

This also happens when you bring the energy of mindfulness into your daily activities, which we'll talk about in a moment.

These 5 steps also help you to bring meditation into your daily life in a way that "blends" with it, but here's a few additional points to really make your practice as convenient as possible:

• Meditate morning, afternoon, and night (even if only for a few minutes) to create powerful "anchors" that keep you grounded throughout each day. Early on, spreading out your meditation practice (even if you meditate for less time on each session) is a powerful way to support and encourage your practice. Ultimately, you're just trying to get used to sitting and to make the act of sitting in meditation become as comfortable as possible to you.
• Place your cushion in a place you reside in often, a very common area you'll see regularly and be likely to encourage yourself to sit even if for only a few minutes at a time. This is the best example, outside of living with mindfulness, of blending meditation into your daily life.
• Sometimes, meditate without a cushion (work with what you've got, don't restrict yourself). I work from home and help my wife put our two sons to nap. Well, my oldest son gets a little crazy sometimes, so I often find myself waiting on him to make sure he falls asleep and doesn't instead go berserk around the room before I go back to writing. While I wait, I sit in what's called the "seiza" position and meditate (this is essentially sitting on top of your lower legs and feet, to where your butt is sitting on to bottom of your feet), as I've found it very easy to sit in when I don't have my cushion near me. Sometimes, you just have to work with whatever you've got, and this is a great way to do just that. Remember, you can always meditate while sitting in a chair as well.

Overall, the idea here is to make sitting down to meditate simple and convenient to do. If you can do that, you've surmounted a great hurdle to living with the spirit of Zen in your everyday life.

Don't overlook the importance of meditation. It may by the 5th step, but it's one of, if not the, most important.

6. Identify the resistance and remove it (lean in to your problems, don't run from them)

The idea of resistance is something I've talked about before, and it's a very important part of Zen living.

What do I mean when I say resistance? I mean specifically:

Resistance:Fighting against reality and the true nature of things.

When I say fighting against, what do I mean? Ultimately, I mean accepting some things and not accepting others.

For example:

- A break up or divorce: When one person just won't let the other person go and continues to be tortured by the person's absence.

- Driving home from work: When we drive home from work with the expectation that we'll get home without a hitch, but end up running into traffic and becoming very annoyed and angered as a result. That expectation we're holding on to is driving us to anger, not the reality of things.

- Striving for greatness: Living your life wanting to "get it all" for yourself, constantly trying to bend and rearrange things to get what you want. Ultimately, you're doing this to be happy, but this isn't where true happiness lies. Because this isn't the way things work, where true happiness actually exists, you get sent down a path of bad habits and patterns that fight against the true nature of things, leading to pain and suffering for either you and/or other beings.

Ultimately, this is us clinging or attaching to certain ideas and expectations that just aren't true. And by clinging to these ideas and expectations we're resisting reality (or the true nature of things) and causing ourselves pain and suffering.

Another important point to note here is that, since we were little, many of us have been taught to distract ourselves from our problems as opposed to facing them.

This behavior stays with us to adulthood, and we end up living our lives doing everything we can to avoid our problems. We:

• Eat
• Drink
• Smoke
• Have sex
• Play games
• Surf online
• Watch T.V.
• Engage in groups that help justify our actions
• And so much more...

...because we've been conditioned that the only way to get away from our problems is to drown them in patterns of bad behavior.

*A side note: Almost none of these behaviors are bad in-and-of-themselves, they're bad when used as a way to avoid our problems and difficulties.

But the reality is, you'll never overcome your problems and realize peace and happiness unless you summon the courage to face those problems and lean in to them.

This can be very difficult to do, but it's absolutely worth it.

How can you begin facing and leaning in to your problems instead of running from them?

Your mindfulness and meditation practice will help uncover these problems and challenges, so from there it's your job to simply lean in to them.

Simply accept the situation as it is fully and openly and allow yourself to feel any emotions that arise in conjunction with it.

Do this:When something arises or occurs, stop to follow your breath and be with it. Imagine yourself facing across from your perceived problem or challenge and accepting it fully with each in-breath and out-breath.

In this way, you can begin making friends with these perceived problems instead of running from them.

7. Become aware of dualistic thinking

All our lives, we were taught that there's "bad" and there's "good" and that these are very separate things. But this is very misleading.

This is because, without the bad, there would be no good.

You wouldn't have the capability to identify happiness if it weren't for your challenges and struggles.

These challenges and struggles should be appreciated, because they allow the opportunity for us to experience the beauty and joy that life has to offer.

If we can begin to remove this dualistic thinking and see that without the bad, without the challenges, there would be no good, no beauty or peace or joy, we can begin to can transform our relationship with those occurrences so that they no longer affect us the way that they once did.

And, going a bit deeper, much of what we identify as "bad", "annoying", etc. is only so because of the concept we hold in our minds.

Much of the suffering we feel exists because of:

Something happens -> Touches mind, Idea (or combination of ideas) triggered -> Creates suffering

It's when the event registers in our minds that we draw a judgment on it that leads us to react negatively to it. This is, again, something we've been taught since we were little ("This is bad." "That's good.").

This takes non-dualistic thinking to another level: preventative. This is all about living in a way that we simply don't draw judgment on anything and accept it full as it comes (remember the last step).

In this way, those things you once considered "bad" no longer affect you the same as they once did, and you can even oftentimes find joy in them.

This is closely connected to living without expectations, understanding that it's not the traffic which caused us to become angry, it was the expectation in our minds which triggered the anger when we encountered the traffic.

For now, this is something simply to become aware of. Just work on identifying this dualistic thinking and you'll begin to gain clarity about the way they affect your life.

8. Live with the energy of mindfulness

In many ways, mindfulness is an energy. It's very contagious. The more you practice, the more mindful you become throughout the rest of your life. In this way, mindfulness practice compounds on itself.

In Zen, this is all about taking the energy of your zazen (sitting meditation) practice into your daily life.

Zen monks for centuries have lived their practice partly with the intention of living every moment of their lives with mindfulness.

The first and clearest example of how this becomes possible is in their practice of walking meditation.

Zen monks often break from zazen practice to do what's called "kinhin" (literally "walking meditation" in Japanese). The idea is to bring the same energy you've developed in your zazen practice- that cultivated one-pointed awareness- into motion.

From here, Zen monks practice to live every moment of their lives- on the cushion and off- with this same spirit of one-pointed awareness, or mindfulness.

This works as a great practice to begin bringing the energy of mindfulness into your everyday life.

It's so important to live with mindfulness throughout your daily life, instead of just sitting to meditate for a few minutes 1-2 times a day.

Live with the spirit of greater awareness in daily activities, giving your full presence around loved ones, and with complete (but not exclusive, still open) attention during your work and you'll see the significant effect living with mindfulness has on every aspect of your life.

My second book, Zen for Everyday Life, is about teaching you exactly that. It's a valuable resource for further developing this step:

Zen for Everyday Life– Learn how to live with the energy of mindfulness throughout your everyday life. You can get the first 2 chapters free by clicking here.

9. Do One thing

This is a very simple step with a lot of significance.

Ready for it?

What's the one thing you're doing right now?

Give your full attention to that thing (and nothing else).

That's the practice of One Thing.

That's it...really. OK, let me break it down a little bit more for clarity sake:

Is it being with a person? Give your full presence to them.

Is it a physical task? Focus on the movement of your body and be fully present for the act of doing that thing.

This doesn't have to be difficult. Start off by picking one hour (say 7-8 P.M.- picking something random here) where you practice One Thing and then gradually expand your practice from there.

Afraid that you might fall behind in your planning and daily agenda if you do this too often? Then you really need this point.

And don't worry, start small with the 1-hour suggestion and bring this practice into your life slowly.

If you have kids, you could reserve one hour a day to being fully present for them.

If you like to clean, or just need to do it out of necessity, then you can do this while cleaning for one hour (or less) a day in the beginning.

As you can tell, your mindfulness practice and this are very similar (which is why this point follows the former), although the practice of One Thing isn't strictly mindfulness and can be practiced by itself.

The point is to get you accustomed to not having to feel like you have to multi-task and to begin becoming used to letting the things in your mind go for at least a short period during your daily life and doing things with a single-pointed mind.

As you let this practice and that of mindfulness bleed into your daily life you'll begin to realize a greater and greater level of peace and freedom.

10. Respect and appreciate life

In many ways, this is something you'll begin to cultivate on your own through following a number of the steps on this list. But this is still a very important point to mention on its own because a lot is included within it. This includes:

- Respecting and appreciating your own life and understanding your own impermanence (you only have so long to live, appreciate every moment of life).

- Understanding the precious nature of life and not purposely harming or hindering it unless necessary (using/wasting resources, not killing or abusing, etc.).

- Being aware of your interconnected nature, and as a result serving others in some way (there are many ways to do this, it's up to you- aiding physically or financially, teaching, inspiring, being an example).

In many ways, this point is all about living in harmony with the natural way of things, and all of existence.

It's about understanding your place, your relationship with other living and non-living things, and the fundamental truths of this world (impermanence, interconnectedness).

These are principles which we can all use to improve our appreciation for life, so it's really through understanding these truths that we can begin to cultivate that respect and appreciation for life in the first place.

Living in this way, every moment, every interaction, and every thing becomes beautiful and infinitely valuable.

You can see significance in something as simple as a tree or flower.

You can see absolute truth in the smile of a child.

And you can see great beauty and importance within yourself.

And in this way, you realize you never needed anything to be "filled up", because you were full all along.

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Living Zen Spirit...Coming Soon

If you're interested in learning how to bring more authentic Zen spirit into your life, then you'll love my upcoming book Living Zen.

If you'd like to be notified when more information is available, as well as get some cool exclusive book bonuses from here until release, fill in your name and email below!

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The Mindfulness and Meditation Master Resource: 20 Guides and Resources to Help You Learn Meditation and Live with Mindfulness

Since Buddhaimonia's start just a year and a half ago, I've put together a lot of guides, eBooks, blog posts, and other resources (nearly all free) on the subjects of meditation (many different forms) and living with mindfulness.

While it's true you can find meditation and mindfulness instruction anywhere now with the advent of the Internet, what I found when beginning my own meditation and mindfulness practice is that most of it either unclear or confusing, and a lot of it doesn't clearly show you how it applies to everyday life, so it's only so useful.

Sure, there's great wisdom and advice out there, but it's mostly scattered in books by various authors and other resources. In creating Buddhaimonia, I wanted to simplify things and create a single resource that people could use to learn meditation and mindfulness practices in simple and straightforward language, with clear instruction, and highly applicable to everyday life.

This post is all about bringing those resources I've created over the past year and a half together in an effort to better help you learn meditation, live with mindfulness, as well as to help you develop both practices in countless different ways depending on both your preferences and lifestyle.

I hope you find one (or many) of these resources useful to you.

20 Guides and Resources to Help You Learn Meditation and Live with Mindfulness

Click on either the link title, image, or links within the text below to access any of the guides/eBooks/post pages. Enjoy!

1. The Little Book of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is something very dear to my heart, because it single-handedly transformed my life in so many ways.

That's why my very first book absolutely had to be on mindfulness. I wanted to help others transform their life in the same way that mindfulness was able to do for me.

The Little Book of Mindfulness is all about breaking mindfulness down to make it simple, straightforward, and crystal clear to understand and begin practicing.

And the cool part? It's completely free.

To date, thousands of people have downloaded the book and I still receive emails each week in appreciation for the book.

It's made me really happy that people have been able to make such great use of the book. I hope it can be useful to you as well.

2. The Mindfulness Survival Guide

The Mindfulness Survival Guide is something that people have REALLY loved since the first time I posted about it.

It's all about showing you how you can use mindfulness to help navigate and even overcome the various challenges we face in everyday life and live with greater mindfulness.

I've since improved the guide (which may later be developed into a book, so look out for that), which you can download for free by clicking here.

3. Zen for Everyday Life

Zen for Everyday Life is my first "full length" book. The book is a moment-to-moment mindfulness guide made to help you discover peace and happiness in your everyday life using more than 40 meditations and exercises. It’s a universal path to peace and joy made to complement your life as it is through the use of mindfulness.

If you'd like to get 2 additional free chapters, plus my free email course, enter your name and email below, click the yellow button, and you’ll get the download link sent straight to your inbox:

If you'd like to purchase or get details on the full book, click here.

4. 5 Ways I Use Mindfulness Meditation Every Day to Live More Fully, Freely, and Peacefully

This is yet another free guide I put together to help others understand how to really bring the practices of meditation and mindfulness more easily and practically into their everyday lives in really meaningful and "productive" ways.

This guide is all about the 5 practices I use most often each day to live more fully, freely, and peacefully in the present moment.

You can check out the guide and download a copy for free by clicking here.

5. 7 Steps to Overcoming Attachment and Letting Go with Meditation

This is a blog post dedicated to showing how one can overcome the typical attachments we get held up on in everyday life and develop the ability to let go all with various meditation practices.

This post is simple, straightforward, and takes you through literally step-by-step.

If you'd like any further elaboration on the meditations mentioned in the article, feel free to contact me here.

6. 5 Steps to Making Meditation a Daily Habit

This article is a powerful yet super simple one because it combines the tips I've discovered in my own meditation practice (and in instructing others) to create a full-proof plan to making meditation into a daily habit.

For anyone looking to establish a daily meditation practice, this is required reading (and really all you need, as far as steps and actions to take, to make meditation a daily habit). 

This is best combined with 5 Tools to Begin Your Home Meditation Practice (#8).

7. 7 Ways to Live More Mindfully in the Busy, Fast-Paced, and Plugged In Modern World

Making meditation a daily habit, as well as learning to live with mindfulness, is difficult in itself.

But what happens when you combine that with a very busy, very fast-paced, and super plugged in modern world?

The recipe is both of those things become even more difficult to make a reality.

But alas, there's much you can do to combat the difficulties of establishing a daily meditation practice and living with mindfulness in the modern world, and this post is all about showing you how to do just that.

8. 5 Tools to Help You Start Your Home Meditation Practice

This is another super useful post for beginning your own personal meditation practice because it's all about the 5 tools you can use to best and most reliably start a home meditation practice.

These tools are all things I've used personally to develop a strong and consistent daily meditation practice.

I also made a free downloadable guide version of this post with detailed meditation instructions, which you can download directly here.

9. 5 Powerful Ways Mindful Eating Will Transform Your Relationship With Food

Eating is one of the cornerstones of everyday life. So, by learning how to bring the energy of mindfulness into this frequent daily activity, you can turn mealtime into an amazing opportunity to deepen your daily practice and find greater peace and enjoyment.

This post breaks down 5 simple practices you can use to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner a deeper, more fulfilling, and more peaceful practice.

You can check it out here.

10. 50 Awesome Meditation Tips for Beginners

As you might imagine, 50 tips makes for a pretty large post, but if you think this sounds a bit outrageous- don't.

This post is filled with tips I wish I knew about when beginning my own meditation practice.

If it seems a little overwhelming at first, I'd suggest just reading through it and picking out the ones that are most immediately helpful to you at your stage of practice and in your lifestyle.

There's SO many great tips here, it's definitely worth checking out.

You can read the post here.

11. How to Find Peace and De-Stress with a Simple Tea Meditation

This how-to guide is all about tea, and a simple tea meditation I do often.

This guide covers a short history of tea and how it came into the hands of Zen monks, a little about the significance of tea ceremonies in Zen Buddhism, and how you can practice a simple tea meditation easily in your own home to de-stress and find greater peace in everyday life.

You can learn how to do this simple tea meditation here.

12. Meditating on the Cosmos: Instantly Gain Perspective and Reduce Stress with This Simple Meditation

Have you ever looked up at the sky, pondered on the immense scale of the universe, and thought, "Wow, my problems are so small."

That's what this post is all about.

In this post, I take that idea and create it into a simple meditation for helping you instantly gain perspective and reduce stress.

You can learn how to meditate on the cosmos by reading the meditation instructions here.

13. Learn How to Meditate in the Next 5 Minutes: The Quick Start Guide to Mindfulness Meditation

I have some pretty big guides on Buddhaimonia, but I know sometimes people just want to get to the point.

For those people, I created this guide.

This guide doesn't just show you how to learn meditation in 5 minutes, you can read the post + begin meditation in the next 5 minutes altogether (it's very short, intentionally, like the next article).

If you just want to get to the dang thing and start meditating, click here.

14. 30 Seconds to Peace: How to Regain Control of Your Mind and Body

This is a simple and very short post I did a while back that's intended to bring you back to "center" if you're having a tough time.

My average posts on Buddhaimonia are really large (3,000 words?), so this is a pretty unique one.

But its shortness isn't an accident, it's intentional. For those looking for a simple message and simple practice to help them "find themselves" again in the difficulties of this moment, this is a great post to start with.

You can bring yourself back to center in 30 seconds by reading the post here.

15. 10 Awesome Tips and Tricks for Beginning with Mindfulness

This is a post which eventually became a chapter in The Little Book of Mindfulness, but which stands on its own as a valuable resource for anyone beginning to establish their own mindfulness practice.

This post includes 10 of my best tips for those just beginning to live with greater mindfulness while navigating the challenges of everyday life in the process.

You can read about those tips and tricks here.

16. How to Create a Zen Space: Finding Peace by Creating a Personal Space That Nourishes Your Mind and Body

How to Create a Zen Space is actually a preview chapter of Zen for Everyday Life, my 2nd book, which takes the principle of creating a dedicated meditation space that I talk about from time to time on the blog and expands on it.

You can learn how to create a Zen (meditation) space by reading the post here.

17. 10 Things Mindfulness Will Teach You About Life

For those just beginning in their mindfulness practice, or who simply began practicing to de-stress and feel a little less mental racket, this post will show you just how powerful learning to live your life with mindfulness can be and open you up to the significance in true mindfulness practice.

This guide covers many powerful life lessons I've learned throughout my personal mindfulness practice. I hope you find it useful to you in your own practice.

You can find out those 10 things by reading the post here.

18. The Ultimate Guide to Meditation: The What, Why, and How of Meditation

This is one of my earliest guides, and it remains a popular post on Buddhaimonia.

This post breaks down the basic principles of meditation simply and clearly, gives basic instruction in multiple forms of meditation, and provides a list of resources to help move your practice along.

This is a pretty big guide, but you can download a PDF version of it if you want to take it with you on the go.

You can read the guide here.

Or you can download the PDF guide and take it with you on the go here.

19. Love is the Way: The Universal Path to Peace, Happiness, and Enlightenment

Love, compassion, and kindness are important principles which I've talked about several times before, but never isolated and discussed by itself.

This recent article seeks to change that and show you how, as always simply, clearly, and in a straightforward way, the way of love can be used as a singular spiritual path and way to greater well-being all in itself.

This article includes what I believe is one of the most powerful forms of meditation, so it's absolutely worth checking out.

You can read the guide here.

20. Journey to the Present Moment, the Buddhaimonia online course

Journey to the Present Moment is my official online course, and it's all about showing you how to live more fully, freely, and peacefully through, you guessed it, developing a daily meditation practice and learning to live with mindfulness.

The course includes everything from a complete plan to establishing a consistent daily meditation practice, a complete plan to then bring mindfulness into your daily life and make it a way of life, as well as step-by-step guidance not only through the process of both of those plans but guidance through much of the "deeper" levels of mindfulness and meditation practice (really everything you need to know to handle skillfully the things that arise as you develop your practice).

The course is currently closed for enrollment, but you can sign up to be notified when it comes back up by clicking here.

Now Get Started

That's it! I hope you found The Mindfulness and Meditation Master Resource a helpful resource no matter what stage you're on in your meditation and/or mindfulness practice.

If there's something I've yet to write about that you're interested in me writing about (lots of post drafts planned, only so much time), feel free to comment below or send me an email. I'd love to hear from you!

Love is the Way: The Universal Path to Peace, Happiness, and Enlightenment

“The source of love is deep in us and we can help others realize a lot of happiness. One word, one action, one thought can reduce another person’s suffering and bring that person joy.”

― Thích Nhat Hanh

We all think we need something (at least most of us do).

We want to find "the one" to make us whole.

We want to do some great thing so that we feel valuable and worthy.

We want to acquire something grand so that we feel our life is complete.

No matter what it is, it's us wanting to acquire or do something to "fill ourselves up".

I'm no exception. For years I wanted to accomplish greatness and become something amazing so that I would be successful and admired by others.

But after a while of consistent meditation practice, and making the effort to live with mindfulness, I realized that I was only striving for that because I felt inadequate, and wanted to acquire a sense of self-worth.

But striving to "fill ourselves up" isn't the way to what we want, it only leads to more striving.

We continue to look for a cure and continue to feel "incomplete", spinning around like a hamster trying to beat the wheel.

This isn't the way.

The way to feeling whole, to being happy in our own skin, is LOVE.

But the word love has been greatly overused in modern times to mean everything from romantic attachment and attraction to the way you care for your family and friends, to something you have a passion for or even just something you really like.

So the rest of this post is dedicated to clarifying exactly what this means (and making it crystal clear) and showing you clearly and simply how you can begin to truly live and apply this wisdom in your everyday life.

The Universal Way to Peace and Happiness

"In the universal sense, love is the divine power of attraction in creation that harmonizes, unites, binds together." - Yogananda

The Buddha, Jesus Christ, Rumi, Yogananda, Krishnamurti, ancient Indian (Hindu) wisdom, Native American wisdom, and great modern teachers such as The Dalai Lama, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr...

Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Yoga, Hinduism, and independent thinkers and mystics all around the world and of various (and many times completely unrelated) parts of the world...

What do they all have in common?

They all preach that love is the WAY.

But this isn't the typical image of romantic love we think of when we hear the word love, the kind of love based on clinging and grasping to "fill" ourselves up and feel whole again (ultimately, a pursuit of the ego). This type of love isn't love at all.

True love is boundless and universal, it's a state of being which doesn't discriminate between white and black, us and them, or even you & I.

In true love, we realize the lines which once existed to us were mental formations, imaginary constructs in our mind, all along. And as these lines begin to blur, we realize not only our own true nature but the true nature of the world around us (as well as the relationship between the two).

In many ways, love is a state of being, the very essence of life, because it's the energy we feel when we come in contact with things in a very deep and authentic way.

Our true nature is that of an interwoven tapestry, both interconnected with all living and non-living beings and interdependent upon so many various conditions that you'd be unwise to say we exist independently, separate from the rest of existence.

We can see this clearly in our everyday lives if we take the time to look.

For us to come to exist now in this moment we depended upon various factors, such as our parents coming together.

We even depend on factors in this very moment just to be alive, such as access to food, water, and medicine.

We also depend on factors to live the lifestyle we're living now, while not necessarily affecting our ability to live, still directly affecting the way we live each day of our lives in significant ways. This includes cars, electricity, and the Internet.

This is the nature of the world, of all existence. Of you, me, the plants, the animals, and even non-living things.

We're all interconnected, like one great big interwoven tapestry.

This isn't just some amusing thing we can spot in our everyday life, though.

Many sages both past and present have preached that TRUE love, the love we feel when we look deeply into ourselves and the world around us and both realize and directly experience the deep connection we share, is the way to fully realizing our true interconnected nature and realizing our inherent "wholeness".

It's the very energy we feel as a part of that interconnected nature.

"The mind can pursue sensations, desires, but it cannot pursue love. Love must come to the mind. And, when once love is there, it has no division as sensuous and divine: it is love. That is the extraordinary thing about love: it is the only quality that brings a total comprehension of the whole of existence." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

So true love isn't based on possessing or acquiring something, it's in realizing that there is no separation between you & I.

The best real-world example of this authentic love? Yogananda, the great 20th century Yoga teacher, described the love that a student on the spiritual path has for his teacher, or guru, as being the best example of authentic love.

The Dalai Lama, and Buddhist wisdom in general, agrees with this in saying that the best place to start in cultivating true love for all beings isn't to start with just anyone you love but with someone you greatly respect as well (a spiritual teacher being one of the best examples of this).

Another great example is the love a mother or father has for their child. No matter what that child does, the mother still loves her child. Unconditional love is absolutely an aspect of true love.

This isn't the best example because even a parent can sometimes attach to a child in a way that better fulfills their desires or insecurities, but it's still a great example when that isn't in the way.

So, love is the way. The way to realizing this great interconnected nature, our true nature, as well as realizing our natural wholeness and no longer needing to strive to acquire or accomplish.

But why else is it significant?

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” - The Dalai Lama

Imagine yourself as a tuning fork. You're constantly attuned to some sort of signal, and that signal is the greatest influencer of your overall mental and emotional well-being.

By adjusting yourself ever so slightly, a little at a time, you gradually come closer and closer to attuning to your natural state, or true nature.

As you do this, you also become more "attuned" to peace, happiness, and overall greater freedom through having realized great clarity about the true nature of yourself and the world around you.

True love is ultimately the way to peace, the way to happiness, the way to FREEDOM from the cycle of pain and suffering we encounter throughout life (in Buddhism, this is referred to as "Samsara"), and the way to feeling whole again.

"Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity. The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death." - Rumi

The path of cultivating love for all beings, of realizing true love, isn't the only path, but true love is an important aspect of all paths, and it's the one path and principle which unites us all.

How to LIVE the way of love

"Love is the capacity to take care, to protect, to nourish. If you are not capable of generating that kind of energy toward yourself- if you are not capable of taking care of yourself, of nourishing yourself, of protecting yourself- it is very difficult to take care of another person. In the Buddhist teaching, it's clear that to love oneself is the foundation of the love of other people. Love is a practice. Love is truly a practice." - Thich Nhat Hanh

Like a muscle, love can be strengthened with practice. We can develop our capacity to love, And in doing so come more "in tune" with our true nature and realize greater peace, happiness, and enlightenment.

Living the path, or way, of cultivating love for all beings can sound vague and obscure, but there's actually a lot of practical wisdom you can use right within your everyday life to begin doing this yourself.

Ultimately, when it gets down to it, there are 2 stages to the way of love:

1. Cultivating self-love - This is about cultivating self-love and self-compassion, and it's very much about clearing away the fog so you can experience the truth of love without obstruction because you can't truly love others until you love yourself.

In that way, not loving yourself works as a sort of obstruction to fully cultivating love for all beings, so it comes first before anything else (in loving-kindness meditation, a popular form of Buddhist meditation, you always begin by cultivating love for yourself).

2. Cultivating love for all other beings - This is about developing love for others, or all beings. It's often been suggested to do this through seeing God, the ultimate (whatever you consider that to be), or those you respect greatly in others.

In basic terms, this is about seeing others as being no less significant or important than anyone or anything else in the world (or: seeing them with the same significance).

It's at this point that it's important to point out: This isn't mushy gushy love. This love, in fact, takes great courage and strength, because it involves you stepping outside your comfort zone and often putting yourself into difficult situations.

Cultivating self-love takes courage because you're facing yourself in the process, and can at times be a very difficult task.

Cultivating love for all beings takes courage because you're facing the many mental formations that you've built up over the course of your life: biases, certain attitudes, and various other wrong perceptions.

On both stages of the path, what you're really facing is yourself.

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." - Rumi

Practical ways to live the way of love in your everyday life

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” - Gandhi

As I mentioned earlier, living the way of love can seem vague and obscure, but there's much you can do that's extremely applicable to everyday life and very easy to learn and understand.

Let's cover practical ways for cultivating both stages of the way of love.

An important note: While cultivating self-love is the first step, you don't need to do one then the other.

Cultivating love for others may depend on developing self-love, but to separate yourself from others is in any way- especially in practice- is a mistake.

Both practices for cultivating self-love and cultivating love for all beings can be done simultaneously throughout your daily life.

Cultivating self-love

As I mentioned a moment ago, because a lack of self-love and self-compassion works as a sort of blockade to fully cultivating love for others, it's the first stage, or aspect, in following the way of love.

Cultivating self-love is very much about gaining clarity about what goes on within your mind, so mindfulness and meditations which turn your attention inward (such as mindfulness of breath) are the first stage and the most important aspect of cultivating self-love.

Since I talk a lot about mindfulness and meditating on the breath, and there really isn't enough room in this article to mention everything I'd like to talk about (without writing a book) I think it's better that I direct you to a great (free) resource that will teach you the basics of mindfulness:

You can download my 100+ page eBook, The Little Book of Mindfulness, for free here.

Also, The Mindfulness Survival Guide shows even more clearly how mindfulness (and cultivating understanding through greater clarity) allows you to cultivate self-love and self-compassion.

Cultivating love for others

"To love those that love you is easy. To love those that love you not is not so simple. If you want to change anyone, set a better example. Show more kindness, more understanding, more love. That has a sure effect. To those who are not kind, show kindness. To those who are mean, show bigness of heart." - Yogananda

There are 2 important ways to develop love for others (all beings) that I'd like to cover:

1. Developing understanding

2. Seeing the divine/ultimate/those you love in others

Let's break each down and cover some simple practices for both:

Developing understanding

"The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, 'to suffer with.'" - Thich Nhat Hanh

The above quote from Thich Nhat Hanh perfectly sums up the idea here: understanding is the foundation, or essence, of love and compassion.

Moving on from the first stage, cultivating self-love, living mindfully is very important to cultivating a deeper understanding of the world around us because it's the energy of mindfulness which allows us to see more deeply in our everyday lives.

But aside from that, you can also take a more "proactive" role to develop understanding.

I use a simple exercise constantly that allows me to "open up" my mind to possibilities and, while it's not cultivating real understanding, cultivate an environment more conducive to love, compassion, and understanding.

I call it "Healing Through Understanding", and it's a very simple exercise:

- Hold a specific person (and the events) in your mind and brainstorm as many possibilities as you can for their behavior. You don’t even need to know why they actually did it, just brainstorm (think of possibilities).

- By doing so you’ll begin to gain clarity and will develop compassion for the other person if you do the exercise honestly.

- That's really all there is to it, but if you'd like to get more detailed instruction on this meditation (plus 4 other valuable meditations I use daily) you can pick up my free guide, “5 Ways I Use Mindfulness Meditation Every Day to Live More Fully, Freely, and Peacefully in the Present Moment”.

Seeing the divine/ultimate/those you love in others

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Seeing the ultimate, or simply someone you respect and have a great love for, and practicing seeing that/them in others is a simple yet extraordinarily powerful meditation.

This is very much an active meditation you can use throughout every moment of your daily life in which you meet and interact with others.

This is a short excerpt from a lecture by Ram Dass, a teacher whom I deeply respect. This is taken from his blog and website at ramdass.org:

"It is his response to a question from an audience member “What did Maharaji say about love?”

Maharaji on Christ:

“Christ said love all beings as children of God, serve them. Give everything to the poor, even your clothing. Give it all away. Jesus gave it all away including his body.

How did Christ meditate, Maharaji? He was lost in love. He was one with all beings and he had great love for all in the world. He was crucified so that his spirit could spread throughout the world. He was one with God. He sacrificed his body for the dharma. He never died. He never died. He is atman living in the hearts of all. See all beings as the reflection of Christ.

Maharaji, what can I do to gain pure love for Ram? You will get pure love for Ram by the blessings of Christ. Hanuman and Christ are one. They are the same.

What is the best method of meditation? Do as Jesus did and see god in everyone. Take pity on all and love all as God. When Jesus was crucified he felt only love.

Maharaji, who are you? Everyone is a reflection of my face."

If that sounded a bit cryptic, let me offer a more straightforward version of the meditation.

For this meditation, you're simply looking deeply into another and seeking to identify those precious universal qualities in them.

In many ways, you're pretending the other person is something to fully realize that significant quality in them which you know is true, but which you don't yet fully see clearly.

Seeing Love in Others meditation

1. Choose the object- Depending on your tradition, you can choose God, the ultimate, or simply someone you have great respect and love for as your object of the highest significance.

Depending on the object you picked, this may sound difficult, but it's really just about getting the right idea, holding it in your mind, and treating that person as such.

2. See that person in everyone. If your object is someone you respect and love deeply, imagine that each person you meet is that very person. If you respect and love Gandhi, imagine everyone you meet is Gandhi. How that changes the way you act when interacting with others!

It's really that simple. This is absolutely one of the most powerful meditations I've ever practiced, and can definitely be a major (even your single major) practice in your efforts to live the way of love.

Following the way of love

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." - Jesus Christ

Following the way of love is a lifelong path, a way of life that isn't always easy (what is?).

But turning our attention from "me, me, me" to having compassion & kindness for and helping others has an interesting ability to transform our challenges and difficulties into peace, happiness, and freedom through deepening our understanding of the world around us and bringing us more "in tune" with our true, interconnected, and interdependent nature.

Live the way of love diligently in your everyday life- small steps, one step at a time- and before long you'll begin to experience the transformative power of love throughout your life.

As the Buddha said, “with dripping drops of water, the water jug is filled.”

“Ceasing to do evil, Cultivating the good, Purifying the heart: This is the teaching of the Buddhas.”

- The Buddha

The ONLY Thing You Need To Make Meditation Into A Daily Habit...

Establishing a daily meditation practice can be tough, but it can be so much tougher if you don't know what you're doing.

When my first son Malik was born I had a very hard time sticking with a consistent meditation practice.

The combination of my son's sleep schedule, my work schedule, and additional responsibilities really didn't mix well to create the ideal circumstances for keeping a consistent meditation practice.

Becoming an early riser definitely helped my daily meditation practice, but what helped me more than anything is a simple bit of insight that has to do with utilizing our natural patterns of behavior.

It's called the path of least resistance.

Don't make this mistake (or you'll easily fall off of your practice)

Before I get into that, I want to touch on a very critical mistake that many people make when beginning their meditation practice.

What is it?

The idea that you have to meditate for a long (or a certain) period of time.

A mistake people often make when beginning their meditation practice is to believe that they need to meditate for 20 or 30+ minutes to get anything from their meditation session. At the heart of it, it's the idea that the individual meditation session is more important than a consistent practice.

This is big mistake.

Here's a key insight. You ready? Here it is:

The only thing that matters in the beginning of your meditation practice is developing it into a daily practice (a daily habit).

That might sound nice, but what exactly do I mean by that? And how do you go about actually doing that?

That leads me to the only thing you need to make meditation into a daily habit...

The ONLY thing you need to make meditation into a daily habit...

I use the phrase "habit energy" somewhat often. When it comes down to it, our daily habitual patterns really are best understood as forms of "energy" of different intensities.

This energy pushes and pulls us in different directions every single day, without considering what we actually want to do.

For that reason it's a pretty basic understanding that to make positive improvements in your life, you need to begin by getting a better grasp on your daily habits.

And if you look at habits as forms of energy, it becomes very easy to see how you can begin to "rewrite" these habits and shift yourself in a more desirable direction.

When you wake up on the weekend, and you're faced with the choice between starting a workout routine and turning on the T.V., do you know why you turn on the T.V.?

Mentally, it feels much easier to do that than to work out.

Part of that is you're used to doing so, but part of it is also simply that it feels easier in your mind (whether it actually is or not).

If the T.V. controller is sitting right there on the arm of your chair or couch, and all you have to do is click "Power" vs. putting on your workout clothes, grabbing water, your bag, your keys, and driving to the gym- what are you more likely to do? Watch T.V., of course!

This is the path of least resistance, and it's our natural pattern of behavior as humans.

We have the natural tendency to gravitate towards that which takes the least amount of energy, or in other words, that thing which is the easiest thing to do in any given moment. That's the path of least resistance.

An important note: While we may be talking about physical actions, what keeps you from acting is very much mental (but it is affected by the physical world, and that's the point here).

Why do you sit down to watch T.V. or surf online (what you could call an "intentional distraction") instead of sitting on your meditation cushion, even though you know how beneficial it is for you to do so and how wasteful it is to sit and watch T.V./surf random sites? Because there's some form of mental resistance.

So, where and how does the physical action, and the path of least resistance, come into play?

That mental resistance (or lack of resistance) exists partly in how our physical world is structured.

Go back to the exercise example I used a second ago: If your workout clothes are in your closet when you wake up, and you have to spend 10 minutes just getting ready to go to the gym, then the likelihood that you're going to do it (in the beginning) is greatly reduced than if you set everything up the night before.

What would that look like? In this example, it could be putting on your workout clothes before bed, setting your workout shoes next to your bed so you can slip them on as soon as you wake up, and putting your water, keys, bag, and anything else you're going to bring with you right next to the door.

By doing this, you remove nearly all potential mental resistance to the idea of going to the gym and make it (perceivably, in your mind, is the most important thing here) easier to go to the gym vs. not going.

From there, you allow yourself the ability to establish exercise as a daily habit far more easily, and that can have a positive effect on the rest of your life.

Applying The Path of Least Resistance to establish a daily meditation practice (make it a daily habit)

So it's by utilizing the path of least resistance, our natural pattern of behavior, that we can partly remove that mental resistance and gently "nudge" ourselves towards what we want to do and away from what we don't want to do. 

For this reason, you don't even have to do the full action itself. The real obstacle is just getting yourself going.

In the exercise example this could mean not even going to the gym at all, but simply getting yourself ready, for say 2 weeks, and from there you'll find it much easier to get yourself to the gym than if you were not to have done that after those 2 weeks.

With regards to making meditation a daily habit (or establishing a daily meditation practice), using the path of least resistance, it's essentially one single idea used in various ways.

What's the specific idea here? What's the exact action we're trying to get ourselves accustomed to doing? To get you onto the meditation cushion on a daily basis.

This really breaks down into 2 efforts:

1. Set up a dedicated meditation space (physical). Lay out your meditation pillow in a dedicated area, literally reserved for your meditation practice and only for your meditation practice. This removes the need for setting up a meditation area every time you intend to sit and meditate.

This could be in the corner of a room, an entire room itself, or somewhere else where you can face a wall (preferably, to remove distractions).

This space should be set up with keeping potential distractions to a minimum in mind:

• Establish your meditation space in a room you visit often, which is comfortable and realistic for you.
• If potential distractions exist in this room (such as T.V. or the internet), make it as difficult to do that thing as possible. If it's T.V. then keep the remote in a kitchen drawer (somewhere weird and out of the way, you get the idea), if it's your computer then turn it off while you're not using it, etc. The idea is to make that thing you don't want to do more difficult to do than to sit on your meditation cushion. 

2.Set up a dedicated meditation space (time). Set up a regular meditation time and remove potential "time" distractions. This is all about removing distractions from a strictly time and scheduling perspective. Make sure you have a strategy in place in case some scheduling conflict arises, so that you make up your session at a later time.

This is all about prioritizing your practice and treating is as the important thing that it is.

Do this and you'll be 1000% more likely to meditate than if you weren't to do these things.

But I saved the most important tip for last...

Meditate for 60 seconds (remove resistance)

One more powerful tip to help you establish meditation as a daily habit, once again utilizing the path of least resistance (probably the most important)- meditate for just 60 seconds.

What?

OK, at this point that advice probably doesn't sound as crazy as it would have then if I'd started the article with it.

This is absolutely one of the most powerful bits of advice anyone can use when first developing meditation as a daily habit.

By meditating for just 60 seconds, you remove the greatest amount of "mental" resistance to the thought of sitting in meditation and increase the chances of you establishing it as a daily habit as a result.

Again it doesn't matter to what extent you take the action, just so long as you start doing the action to some degree every day.

So don't do 30, 20, 10, or even 5 minutes of meditation in your first 1-2 weeks, just sit for 60 seconds to establish your practice and you'll be set up for a "successful" practice far into the future (just keep it up!).

Remove ALL possible obstacles to your practice by setting up your meditation area in advance (both in physical space and time), minimize additional distractions, and sit for just 60 seconds.

Do this for 2 weeks and you've already got a solid daily meditation habit you can then begin to expand upon (increasing in 5-minute chunks every few weeks).

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How to Discover Your Life Path: The Simple (and Fun) 4-Step Exercise to Discovering What to Do with Your Life

How to discover your life path, or your "calling", is a popular topic that I get asked about pretty regularly, so I wanted to cover a useful (and super fun) technique which I used years ago that eventually led me to discover my life path.

This is also a technique- and in many ways a meditation- which I've now taught to many of those Buddhaimonia readers who have emailed me in the past about the topic.

At Buddhaimonia, I'm careful if and when I talk about finding your purpose in life. That's because when you really take the time to look deeply you'll see that the idea of needing to find your purpose is really just another way for us to tell ourselves that we're missing something and that until we get that "thing" we can't ever be happy or at peace.

When we believe this, we gain the feeling of being lost, like nothing we do really matters all that much.

But, the thing is, this is simply a lie that's been instilled in us through the collective consciousness- meaning it's no particular person's fault, it's just how we think before we take the time to really look deeply into the issue- and is something we need to learn how to move beyond if we ever hope to find a meaningful and purposeful path for our lives.

The real shift that needs to happen is to go from believing that you have some innate calling, something you were "meant" to do, to understanding that you create your own sense of meaning and purpose in life.

But that still doesn't answer the question- how DO you figure out what you're going to do with your life?

So you decide, you create, your own life path and as a result your own sense of meaning and purpose. But how do you actually figure out what it's going to be?

Several years ago I asked this same question. And to answer that question, I devised an exercise. The exercise centered on discovering two major things:

1. Find out what you love to do. This means finding out what you have a passion for, what you REALLY enjoy doing, versus those things which you just kind of like.
2. Finding out what you're good at. Preferably, not just good, but really good at. Those things that come naturally to you. This comes secondary to #1, but is still very important, because we can derive an equivalent sense of meaning, purpose, and joy from anything which allows us to contribute to others with our gifts. In fact, contributing to others or "helping the greater good", along with loving what we do, is what actually instills in us a sense of meaning and purpose, to begin with.

Why did I center on these two things? Because when it comes to what to do with your life, it all comes down to these two things.

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Get the "Discover Your Life Path" workbook

I put together a pretty large workbook to accompany the "Discover Your Life Path" exercise. You can pick it up for free by clicking the green button below:

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The "Discover Your Life Path" exercise

1. List your previous (and current) loves and interests. I started by listing every single thing I had ever loved to do in my life starting way back from childhood to the present moment. For me, this included things such as basketball, games, drawing, music, writing/poetry, business/entrepreneurship, martial arts, and philosophy (particularly Eastern).
2. Questions. From there I asked myself questions such as why I thought I liked those things so much, what I thought of them now, what new things seemed like fun to try and whether I could see myself pursuing any of them.
3. Get out there and test (have fun!). I then tried out each of those things again, or for the first time if they were new. I did them for a few moments, some a few days, some longer. Whatever span of time I felt was necessary to give that activity an honest shot, I did it.
4. Record your findings. I then recorded my thoughts and feelings. Make sure you don't hold back here. Write down everything that comes to mind, good and bad.

I then repeated the steps for those things which I discovered I was good at throughout my life.

You might need to dig a bit for this one, don’t just stay at base skills like “I’m good at basketball”. Go deeper to, “People have told me I’m very kind and compassionate, and I often volunteer when I have time.” Think “wider”, not narrow to base activities like the last exercise.

Number 2 then becomes, "Why am I good at those things?", as well as, "What are my specific skills/talents which I can find out from this?"

Number 3 stays the same, but you're essentially asking yourself the question, "Do I truly enjoy doing this?", and, "Could I see myself doing this for a living, each and every day, for the rest of my life?"

Doing this exercise for our skills and talents is important, because simply by doing what we're good at, specifically as a medium to help others, we gain a great sense of meaning and purpose.

Number 3 shifts to centering around those questions because you while you might be good at a certain activity, or have a certain quality, you can't see yourself doing that activity nor do you see yourself using that quality while doing any of the activities you've narrowed down thus far.

And lastly, Number 4 is identical to the first version of the exercise.

I did this same thing with people even:

1. List the people. I went through a list of all the people I had idolized throughout my life and listed the specific qualities that I admired about them.
2. Record your findings. I then recorded any themes that popped up and how I felt about those qualities (did I have them, did I not, did I want them and did I feel like that was me?)

This third version of the exercise further helped me discover things about myself such as what I valued and what interested me.

By no means is it required, but it can be helpful.

Once you've finished:

Once you've completed the exercise, take time to study what you've discovered.

One thing you can opt to do, especially if the first round revealed some new activities you didn't expect to enjoy so much, or if you want to try something new you didn't think of before, is to do the exercise over again, with a second round of activities.

This second time there's likely only to be a few things you'll be trying (or trying again), but it can be beneficial depending on what you discovered the first time you did the exercise.

By now you've probably noticed that a huge part of this exercise is really just having fun doing a bunch of different activities you might consider devoting your life to. When it gets down to it, this exercise really is a blast to do.

An important note on what gives us meaning and purpose

I wanted to take a second to make sure to "clear the air" so to speak about something connected with the typical ideas we have about finding "meaning" and "purpose" in our lives.

I mentioned earlier about how it's important to understand that you create a sense of meaning and purpose in your life and not to wait around for it to hit you over the head.

But what's also very important to understand is that we don't realize a sense of meaning or "purpose" through just doing things we enjoy, but through connecting with others in positive and meaningful ways.

It's when we come together and work in harmony that we're compelled with a feeling of purpose and meaning in our lives, and so once you decide what you'd like to do (or begin to narrow it down), start thinking about how you can truly do that while connecting with others in a way that benefits others in some positive way.

The cool thing about this is, you can connect with others in positive ways doing just about anything (not literally, but just about), but the tough part is this part is really up to you to figure out.

Just keep in mind: doing something for the sake of yourself won't ever instill in you a sense of meaning and purpose in your life, no matter how hard you work, how successful you are, or how good you become.

A positive side effect: the personal and spiritual significance of the "How to Discover Your Life Path" exercise

I wanted to make sure to highlight this in its own section as it was pretty profound for me.

This exercise had a positive side effect on me- it gave me a crystal clear perspective on my life as a whole and what had driven me up to that point. This is was an invaluable insight.

It helped me, more than anything else in the exercise, discover that just maybe what I wanted to do was always sitting right in front of me and I was just never willing to accept it out of fear of being judged by others or out of the fear of the consequences of deciding such a path.

Maybe when you were little you just wanted to sing and dance but your parents scoffed at the idea, veering you towards the traditional (and gravely incorrect) mindset of “be a doctor or a lawyer” that so many of us were subjected to.

Or maybe when you were in high school you wanted to be an artist but completely forgot about the notion and buried it deep within yourself after everyone around you said comments like “you’ll never make any money” “it’s so hard to be a successful artist” “you should pick something else easier”.

Whatever it is, by doing this exercise you’ll begin to see at what points in your life you were being authentic and at what points you were letting fear take the wheel.

As Brene Brown learned from her decade’s worth of research, the willingness to be vulnerable is required to discover and express your authentic self, and this is directly connected with discovering your path in life.

Keep in mind, this exercise will likely take weeks to complete. It took me nearly a month and that was just the first exercise I just listed, not the process of discovering my completely authentic self.

You’re digging deep on this one, rummaging around in the darkest parts of your mind for things you potentially haven’t thought about in years. This is your entire life you’re scanning through, so don’t rush the process.

It will be well worth the time spent.

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Get the "Discover Your Life Path" workbook

I put together a pretty large workbook to accompany the "Discover Your Life Path" exercise. You can pick it up for free by clicking the green button below:

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