Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Mindfulness

Change Your Perspective, Change Your Reactions

By Leave a Comment

From the eighth-century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (“Entrance to the Path of Awakening,”) a translation from Stephen Batchelor’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (1979:)

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But just leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it
 
Likewise it is not possible for me
To restrain the external course of things
But should I restrain this mind of mine
What would be the need to restrain all else?

A powerful reminder that you can’t magically make the whole world and its people run smooth and easy, but you can reorient your heart and mind to change your perspective and endure the bumps that you’ll encounter.

Idea for Impact: If something isn’t to your liking, change your liking or find something else of your liking. The willingness to adjust is perhaps the single most critical human faculty.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  2. What the Buddha Taught About Restraining and Dealing with Anger
  3. Begin with Yourself
  4. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  5. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be

Imagine a Better Response

By Leave a Comment

In the Discourses of Epictetus (c.108 CE,) Arrian reports, “I must die: must I, then die groaning too? I must be fettered: and wailing too. I must go into exile? Does anyone, then, keep me from going a smile and cheerful and serene?”

You may not choose the circumstance, but you can choose your response to it.

Choose your response, and you can rise above what holds you down.

But how?

Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1959) proposes, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

When circumstances pull for some particular reaction, choose to respond instead.

Don’t react without thinking. Don’t accept reflexive reactions. Instead, learn to become aware that there is a “space” before responding. Learn to recognize, increase, and make use of this “space.”

That awareness ushers a release from the dictates of both external and internal pressures.

Choose a better response. With that, you can find inner happiness.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. It’s Not What You See; It’s How You See It
  2. Get Everything Out of Your Head
  3. Cope with Anxiety and Stop Obsessive Worrying by Creating a Worry Box
  4. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal
  5. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

Get Rid of Relationship Clutter

By Leave a Comment

Don’t hold on to relationships that aren’t supportive or beautiful—they’re robbing you of joy and nourishment. They’re exhausting your resources for the relationships that do matter.

Letting go of relationship clutter isn’t about tossing people out like tatty pairs of shoes. It’s about getting reflective if our relationships honor our soul self. Is there respect, love, and a sense of wanting the best for each other?

Find ways to distance yourself from relationships that drain your soul. Don’t burn bridges, though. Don’t hold onto every issue or argument. It’s more gracious—and better for you—just walk away, head held high, mouth shut. You’ll be glad you did it that way.

Idea for Impact: To get rid of clutter is to make room for more supportive and nurturing relationships.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Affection Is No Defense: Good Intentions Make Excellent Alibis
  2. The Secret to Happiness in Relationships is Lowering Your Expectations
  3. How to … Break the Complaint Habit
  4. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  5. Release Your Cows … Be Happy

Stop Dieting, Start Savoring

By Leave a Comment

Research suggests that excluding entire food groups, banning your favorite foods, forcing yourself to count calories, and measuring success by a number on a scale may actually make you want to eat more. Restrictive dieting can slow your metabolism down, making it even harder to lose weight over the long term.

You’re more likely to be successful at keeping weight off if you lose weight gradually and steadily. Be more mindful of what you eat and how you eat.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying your favorite foods and indulging in your cravings for cookies, potato chips, or ice cream. All you have to do is cut back. Practice awareness by slowing down and thinking about what you’re eating and why you’re eating it.

Don’t gulp your food; you’ll overeat before you realize that you’re full. Instead, rest between bites. Take time to chew your food thoroughly. You really don’t need as much food as you think you do.

When you eat out, keep your food-mindfulness on the right track. Keep hunger under control beforehand. Don’t skip meals. Control portion size. Share your meal or take half of it home.

Idea for Impact: Eating should be a pleasurable activity. No food is inherently good or bad, and there’s no need to build an adversarial relationship with food.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Eat with Purpose, on Purpose
  2. This Isn’t Really a Diet Book, But It’ll Teach You to Eat Better
  3. The Reason Why Weight Watchers Works whereas ‘DIY Dieting’ Fails
  4. Beware the Opportunity Cost of Meditating
  5. Six Powerful Reasons to Eat Slowly and Mindfully

How to Encourage Yourself During Tough Times

By Leave a Comment

My biggest takeaway from Daniel M. Cable’s Exceptional: Build Your Personal Highlight Reel and Unlock Your Potential (2020) is maintaining an inventory of reminders of all of the things you’re grateful for: the achievements, accomplishments, things you’re proud of, and events you want to celebrate—even others’ notes of gratitude.

When you’re entranced by ongoing anxieties and unable to find refuge in presence, the negative self-talk becomes your default setting. Unable to focus on what is happening right now, you spiral downward and find yourself in ruts that hold you back from your potential. Reigniting a certain sense of pride within yourself can jolt you into a more optimistic cycle and create real personal change. It can enable you to maintain a stable center no matter what’s going on in your life right now.

Research on the ‘Reflected Best-Self Exercise’ indicates that scanning the “highlight reel” of the best you’ve achieved in your life can help you, as it would a professional athlete, rediscover and reinforce how to repeat past successes. It can energize you to use your strengths even more and give more to others.

Idea for Impact: You make your most significant impact when focusing on what you do best. A personal highlight reel will remind you how others perceive you when you make your best impact and hope you build upon the unique strengths that make you exceptional.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Cope When You’re Stressed
  2. The Best Breathing Exercise for Anxiety
  3. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  4. The Law of Petty Irritations
  5. Expressive Writing Can Help You Heal

How Emotional Resilience Improves with Age

By Leave a Comment

Studies of social and emotional aging have consistently shown that we tend to enjoy a better sense of emotional well-being as we grow older—starting from our late 50s.

The brain slows down, and memory deteriorates with age, so we process information slower. We get better at regulating the instinct to enact annoyance and anger.

As we get older, we tend to have a positive bias. We stop sweating the small stuff, pick our battles wisely, and find it easier to let go of situations we experience as unfavorable, especially with friends and family.

The lessons these studies bear for us all: organize your life’s physical and social aspects to reduce unnecessary stressors. Happiness is indeed a result, not a cause.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Learn to Manage Your Negative Emotions and Yourself
  2. The More You Can Manage Your Emotions, the More Effective You’ll Be
  3. Anger is the Hardest of the Negative Emotions to Subdue
  4. This Trick Can Relieve Your Anxiety: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  5. This May Be the Most Potent Cure for Melancholy

Decision-Making Isn’t Black and White

By Leave a Comment

Most decisions aren’t “good” or “bad;” most fall somewhere in the middle.

Coming to terms with this reality is a big part of allowing yourself to trust your decisions, especially when dealing with uncertainty. Besides, more thinking can’t always be better thinking.

Let go of decisions you made in the past that you weren’t entirely satisfied with. Don’t let them haunt you in the present. Don’t let them second-guess yourself after a decision has been made.

Idea for Impact: When decisions don’t work out as expected, give yourself a break. Not all bad outcomes result from bad decisions. There are positive and negative implications to everything. And that’s OK.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Embrace Uncertainty and Leave Room for Doubt
  2. A Bit of Insecurity Can Help You Be Your Best Self
  3. Smart Folks are Most Susceptible to Overanalyzing and Overthinking
  4. Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them: The Overconfidence Effect
  5. Best/Worst Analysis: A Mental Model for Risk Aversion

You’ll Overeat If You Get Bigger Servings

By Leave a Comment

So many diets, so little evidence that they work. Many of the better plans boil down to basic strategies: eat lots of fruits and vegetables, stay active, and keep portions under control.

Most people have struggle with portion control

If you’re reading this article, you live in a society with too much food. Food production has become more industrialized and cheaper. Healthy food is not just more expensive than unhealthy food, but less convenient. Portion sizes have increased spectacularly in the past several decades—and that includes packaged foods in the grocery stores, meals served at restaurants, and plate sizes at home.

Dr. Brian Wansink, formerly director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (2001,) has shown that plate size prompts portion size. In study after study, he has found (some of his data analyses have been questioned) that the bigger the plate, the more you eat. This trend derives from an optical illusion—the same amount of food on a bigger plate seems smaller.

Whatever size of plate you choose, you’re likely to fill it. As a result, if you reduce your plates’ diameters from 12 inches to 10 inches, you’ll significantly reduce the amount of food you dish up. Besides, per Wansink, using a smaller plate gives the illusion that you’re getting more food. That’s a first step towards addressing your concerns about your health or waistline.

Visual aspects of a meal, such as portion size and plate sizes, can influence how much you eat

'First Bite' by Bee Wilson (ISBN 0465064981) British food writer and food historian Bee Wilson’s brilliant First Bite: How We Learn to Eat (2015; my summary) states,

Being able to regulate the amount of food we eat according to our needs is perhaps the single most important skill when it comes to eating—and the one that we least often master. The first stage is learning to recognize whether the stomach is empty or not.

The first and most obvious step to weight loss is reducing the portion size—and thus the number of calories you eat. When you’re consuming fewer calories than the body uses, you’re likely to start losing weight.

  • Consider one of those “portion control plates” to help reset and reinforce in your mind what a portion size should be. Sectioned and color-coded, these plates take the guesswork out of getting nutrition from all food groups and reduce the risk of overeating.
  • Slow down when you eat, take time to chew and savor your food, and pause between mouthfuls. Stop when you are already full. You don’t need to eat every morsel of what’s dished out for you.
  • If you’re uncomfortable with not filling up your plate and risking disrespecting a host, say at a holiday party buffet, spread your portions around the plate and leave a bit of space around each food item. Your plate will look full but will have fewer calories.

Idea for Impact: Small plates help make portions look more substantial

If you’re trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, keep the portions down. You certainly don’t need as much food as you think you do.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Stop Dieting, Start Savoring
  2. Beware the Opportunity Cost of Meditating
  3. Six Powerful Reasons to Eat Slowly and Mindfully
  4. Eat with Purpose, on Purpose
  5. How People Defend Themselves in a Crisis

Take Time to Savor Life’s Little Pleasures

By Leave a Comment

Happiness researcher Meik Wiking’s The Art of Making Memories (2019) observes that the Danes are famously happy despite “horrific weather and some of the highest tax returns in the world” because they take time to savor life’s little pleasures. It’s part of Hygge (pronounced “hue-guh,”) the Danish wellness mindset that encourages a spirit of contentedness.

When life gets busy, it’s way too easy to rush through the motions without paying attention to little experiences. Our lives ultimately consist of these tiny movements, one after the other. Fresh sheets. The smell of wet earth after rain. An old favorite song at the right moment. The kindness of a stranger. We take these gifts for granted and brush by them without really breathing in their grace.

'The Art of Making Memories' by Meik Wiking (ISBN 0062943383) Wiking suggests that you can truly rejoice in life by training your brain to focus on the positive in your day-to-day experiences. At the end of each month, reflect on the past month by celebrating the “Happy 10.” Look through the photos on your phone, choose your favorite ten memories, put them in an album or journal, and think about why you enjoy them.

Idea for Impact: Happiness isn’t determined by circumstances. Happiness is what happens when you decide to relish joy.

Savor the beauty and richness of simple pleasures. Take a moment at the end of each day/week/month/year to appreciate what you’re grateful for.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. But Is It Sustainable?
  2. I’ll Be Happy When …
  3. Be Kind … To Yourself
  4. The One Person You Deserve to Cherish
  5. When Giving Up Can Be Good for You

Compartmentalize and Get More Done

By Leave a Comment

One way you can achieve “living in the moment” is by putting your emotional issues into “compartments” within your head and your heart. You can deal with those feelings on your own when you need to.

Many aspects of life can get you sidetracked and distraught. Finding a place to retreat within yourself can be challenging. By compartmentalizing, you can put your feelings where they belong, and you can earmark one challenge to tackle another challenge.

You can focus on the one task at hand and deal with the rest when appropriate.

Mental compartmentalization has a darker side, however. Psychologists identify extreme compartmentalization as a major defense mechanism by which some evade the acute anxiety that can spring from the clash of contradictory values or conflicting emotions. (A very pious scientist, for instance, could hold opposing beliefs about the Judeo-Christian and scientific notions of life’s origins. Compartmentalizing, she may live different value sets depending on whether she’s at church or her laboratory.) Some individuals also fall back on compartmentalization to cope with the lingering trauma of childhood abuse, neglect, and other emotional conflicts.

The day-to-day compartmentalization I’m talking about isn’t denial or avoidance. It isn’t evading conflicts and sidestepping problems—instead, it’s putting things out of the way for the moment and not letting them impede the rest of your life.

You can’t just ignore your issues and expect them to go away, but obsessing on them won’t help either.

Idea for Impact: Compartmentalize and get more done. Putting away the things that hurt or upset you, even if just for a short time, can also help you gain valuable perspective on dealing with them.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus
  2. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  3. Did School Turn You Into a Procrastinator?
  4. Don’t Do the Easiest Jobs First
  5. The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg McKeown’s ‘Essentialism’