10% Happier

Make the present moment your friend rather than your enemy. Because many people live habitually as if the present moment were an obstacle that they need to overcome in order to get to the next moment. And imagine living your whole life like that, where always this moment is never quite right, not good enough because you need to get to the next one. That is continuous stress.

When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.

What mindfulness does is create some space in your head so you can, as the Buddhists say, “respond” rather than simply “react.” In the Buddhist view, you can’t control what comes up in your head; it all arises out of a mysterious void. We spend a lot of time judging ourselves harshly for feelings that we had no role in summoning. The only thing you can control is how you handle it.

There’s no point in being unhappy about things you can’t change, and no point being unhappy about things you can.

Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.

pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.

But it was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head—the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember—was kind of an asshole.

Your demons may have been ejected from the building, but they’re out in the parking lot, doing push-ups.”)

Everything in the world is ultimately unsatisfying and unreliable because it won’t last.

May you be happy. May you be safe and protected from harm. May you be healthy and strong. May you live with ease.

Perhaps the most meaningful exchange I had on the subject was a completely random discussion with my uncle Martin at my parents’ annual summer pool party. Martin, a former entrepreneur who was now in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, turned to me and asked an intriguing question: “Which is more exciting to you? Reality or memory?” I paused, considered it, and said, “I wish I could say reality, but it’s probably memory.” And then I asked, “What about you?” At which point Martin stared blankly back at me and asked, “What was the question?

The Buddha captured it well when he said that anger, which can be so seductive at first, has “a honeyed tip” but a “poisoned root.

The fact that you exist is a highly statistically improbable event, and if you are not perpetually surprised by the fact that you exist you don’t deserve to be here.

The ego is never satisfied. No matter how much stuff we buy, no matter how many arguments we win or delicious meals we consume, the ego never feels complete.

She nailed the method for applying mindfulness in acute situations, albeit with a somewhat dopey acronym: RAIN. R: recognize A: allow I: investigate N: non-identification

We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these “if only” thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

Marturano recommended something radical: do only one thing at a time. When you’re on the phone, be on the phone. When you’re in a meeting, be there. Set aside an hour to check your email, and then shut off your computer monitor and focus on the task at hand. Another tip: take short mindfulness breaks throughout the day. She called them “purposeful pauses.” So, for example, instead of fidgeting or tapping your fingers while your computer boots up, try to watch your breath for a few minutes. When driving, turn off the radio and feel your hands on the wheel. Or when walking between meetings, leave your phone in your pocket and just notice the sensations of your legs moving. “If I’m a corporate samurai,” I said, “I’d be a little worried about taking all these pauses that you recommend because I’d be thinking, ‘Well, my rivals aren’t pausing. They’re working all the time.’ ” “Yeah, but that assumes that those pauses aren’t helping you. Those pauses are the ways to make you a more clear thinker and for you to be more focused on what’s important.

the Buddha’s main thesis was that in a world where everything is constantly changing, we suffer because we cling to things that won’t last.

Don’t you ever get pissed off, annoyed, irritated, sad—anything negative?” “No, I accept what is. And that’s why life has become so simple.” “Well, what if somebody cuts you off in your car?” “It’s fine. It’s like a sudden gust of wind. I don’t personalize a gust of wind, and so it’s simply what is.

Picture the mind like a waterfall, they said: the water is the torrent of thoughts and emotions; mindfulness is the space behind the waterfall. Again, elegant theory – but, easier said than done.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it. According to the Buddha, we have three habitual responses to everything we experience. We want it, reject it, or we zone out. Cookies: I want. Mosquitoes: I reject. The safety instructions the flight attendants read aloud on an airplane: I zone out. Mindfulness is a fourth option, a way to view the contents of our mind with nonjudgmental remove.

If you stay in the moment, you’ll have what is called spontaneous right action, which is intuitive, which is creative, which is visionary, which eavesdrops on the mind of the universe.

I’m thinking: Yes, right—there is a point to sitting around all day with your eyes closed: to gain some control over the mind, to see through the forces that drive us—and drive us nuts.

However, research shows that “firm but kind” is the smarter play. People trained in self-compassion meditation are more likely to quit smoking and stick to a diet. They are better able to bounce back from missteps. All successful people fail. If you can create an inner environment where your mistakes are forgiven and flaws are candidly confronted, your resilience expands exponentially.

This, as Joseph had pointed out on retreat, is the lie we tell ourselves our whole lives: as soon as we get the next meal, party, vacation, sexual encounter, as soon as we get married, get a promotion, get to the airport check-in, get through security and consume a bouquet of Auntie Anne’s Cinnamon Sugar Stix, we’ll feel really good. But as soon as we find ourselves in the airport gate area, having ingested 470 calories’ worth of sugar and fat before dinner, we don’t bother to examine the lie that fuels our lives. We tell ourselves we’ll sleep it off, take a run, eat a healthy breakfast, and then, finally, everything will be complete. We live so much of our lives pushed forward by these “if only” thoughts, and yet the itch remains. The pursuit of happiness becomes the source of our unhappiness.

There’s a reason why they call Buddhism “advanced common sense”; it’s all about methodically confronting obvious-but-often-overlooked truths (everything changes, nothing fully satisfies) until something in you shifts.

when you squelch something, you give it power. Ignorance is not bliss.

We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self, and vying against other isolated selves. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? “Dust to dust” isn’t just something they say at funerals, it’s the truth. You can no more disconnect from the universe and its inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.

They had a term, too, for that thing I did where something would bother me and I would immediately project forward to an unpleasant future (e.g., Balding → Unemployment → Flophouse). The Buddhists called this prapañca (pronounced pra-PUN-cha), which roughly translates to “proliferation,” or “the imperialistic tendency of mind.” That captured it beautifully, I thought: something happens, I worry, and that concern instantaneously colonizes my future.