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Perspective | Mindfulness would be good for you. If it weren't so selfish.

We may live in a culture of distraction, but mindfulness has captured our attention. Books on the practice are numerous, including guides to " A Mindful Pregnancy," " Mindful Parenting," " Mindful Politics," " The Mindful Diet" and " Mindfulness for Teachers." Corporations, sports teams, even the military and police departments provide mindfulness training to their employees.

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The Thought-Emotion Loop & How Micro-emotions Can Lead to All-Consuming Thoughts

Emotions play a key role in many types of spontaneous thoughts. Even microemotions — which are often fleeting and unconscious — can affect thoughts and influence attention.

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5 Clear Ways to Remove Mental Clutter

If you don't set clear boundaries, your personal and professional lives can become entangled. Bringing your private life into the workspace or, worse yet, bringing work home with you is dangerous. You may have difficulty deciphering between work and life, and sometimes you might not see any difference whatsoever-but there should be.

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Wabi Sabi

The definitive guide that teaches you how to use the Japanese concept of wabi sabi to reshape every area of your life and find happiness right where you are. Fed up with the exhausting challenges of our fast-paced, consumption-driven existence, millions of people around the world are turning to timeless cultural traditions to find true meaning. In this transformative handbook, Beth Kempton introduces you to wabi sabi (”wah-bi sah-bi”), a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics that offers a whole new way of looking at the world. With roots in Zen and the Way of Tea, wabi sabi teaches you to see beauty in imperfection, appreciate simplicity, and accept the transient nature of all things. It inspires you to simplify everything and concentrate on what truly matters. Filled with simple yet profound wisdom, Wabi Sabi will help you slow down, reconnect with nature, and be gentler on yourself. From honoring the rhythm of the seasons to creating a welcoming home, from reframing failure to aging with grace, Wabi Sabi teaches you find more joy and inspiration throughout your perfectly imperfect life.

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7 Little Habits That Can Change Your Life, and How to Form Them : zen habits

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle If you could just pick one or two (or seven) habits to create in the next few months - habits that will have the most impact on your life - what would they be?

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The science behind meditation, and why it makes you feel better

Meditation yields a surprising number of health benefits, including stress reduction, improved attention, better memory, and even increased creativity and feelings of compassion. But how can something as simple as focusing on a single object produce such dramatic results?

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Meditation Techniques For People Who Hate Meditation

When actor and comedian Wali Collins was in first grade, his teacher, Miss Dunn, would lead the class in a group meditation-except that none of the 6-year-olds realized that's what she was doing. Having everyone close their eyes, Miss Dunn would ask the class to tell her what they heard.

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The Book of Ichigo Ichie

Find happiness by living fully in the present with this definitive guide to ichigo ichie--the Japanese art of making the most of every moment--from the bestselling authors of Ikigai. Every moment in our life happens only once, and if we let it slip away, we lose it forever--an idea captured by the Japanese phrase ichigo ichie (pronounced itchy-GO itchy-A). Often spoken in Japan when greeting someone or saying goodbye, to convey that the encounter is unique and special, it is a tenet of Zen Buddhism and is attributed to a sixteenth-century master of the Japanese tea ceremony, or "ceremony of attention," whose intricate rituals compel us to focus on the present moment. From this age-old concept comes a new kind of mindfulness. In The Book of Ichigo Ichie, you will learn to... • appreciate the beauty of the fleeting, the way the Japanese celebrate the cherry blossoms for two weeks every April, knowing they'll have to wait a whole year to see them again; • use all five senses to anchor yourself in the present, helping you to let go of fear, sadness, anger, and other negative emotions fueled by fixating on the past or the future; • be alert to the magic of coincidences, which help us find meaning among the disconnected events of our lives; • use ichigo ichie to help you discover your ikigai, or life's purpose--because it's only by learning to be present, to be tuned into what catches your attention and excites you in the moment, that you can identify what it is that most motivates you and brings you happiness. Every one of us contains a key that can open the door to attention, harmony with others, and love of life. And that key is ichigo ichie. A PENGUIN LIFE TITLE

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Million Dollar Habits

95% of what people think, feel and do, is determined by habits. Habits are ingrained but not unchangeable—new, positive habits can be learned to replace worn-out, ineffective practices with optimal behaviors that can cause dramatic, immediate benefits to the bottom line. In Million Dollar Habits, Tracy teaches readers how to develop the habits of successful men and women so they too can think more effectively, make better decisions, and ultimately double or triple their income. Readers will learn how to organize their finances, increase health and vitality, sustain loving relationships, build financial independence, and take a leadership role to turn visions into reality.

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The Six Secrets of Self-Control

VideoWhat is it about self-control that makes it so difficult to rely on? Self-control is a skill we all possess (honest); yet we tend to give ourselves little credit for it. Self-control is so fleeting for most that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed [...]

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The art and science of mind wandering

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The History of Cognitive Overload - Farnam Street

Highly successful people have many of the daily distractions of life handled for them, which allows them to better focus their attention.

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8 Mindful Alternatives to Meditation

Mindfulness is a conscious state of calm that evokes an awareness of the present moment. When you are mindful, you are able to objectively gauge your own thoughts and feelings at a glance. When you are mindful, you enable yourself to fully live in the moment, and you are thus awake to all you are experiencing.

2 ideas 2.7K reads

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How to Change Your Beliefs and Stick to Your Goals for Good

In one of my very first articles, I discussed a concept called identity-based habits. The basic idea is that the beliefs you have about yourself can drive your long-term behavior. Maybe you can trick yourself into going to the gym or eating healthy once or twice, but if you don't shift your underlying identity, then it's hard to stick with long-term changes.

3 ideas 893 reads

Greenlights

From the Academy Award®-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction. I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights.' So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It's a love letter. To life. It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck.

15 ideas 8.7K reads

📰 Article

How to Change Your Beliefs and Stick to Your Goals for Good

In one of my very first articles, I discussed a concept called identity-based habits. The basic idea is that the beliefs you have about yourself can drive your long-term behavior. Maybe you can trick yourself into going to the gym or eating healthy once or twice, but if you don't shift your underlying identity, then it's hard to stick with long-term changes.

3 ideas 892 reads

Six Habits of Highly Compassionate People

Would you describe yourself as a compassionate person? Even if you don't necessarily see yourself that way, I bet you're compassionate at least some of the time (e.g., when you're well-rested and not in a hurry), or with certain people in your life (e.g., with your closest friends).

3 ideas 2.3K reads

New Study Shows Brief Meditation Can Reduce Anger

A new study in the journal Consciousness and Cognition suggests that one session of meditation can help reduce your body's response to anger. Occasional anger can be normal, and even healthy, but constant and frequent anger takes a toll on your body and mind.

4 ideas 3.6K reads

📰 Article

7 Little Habits That Can Change Your Life, and How to Form Them : zen habits

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle If you could just pick one or two (or seven) habits to create in the next few months - habits that will have the most impact on your life - what would they be?

1 ideas 457 reads

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Spirituality is a brain state we can all reach, religious or not | Psyche Ideas

Neuroscience shows that spiritual experiences are correlated with brain states that we can all aim for, religious or not

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