Trying to avoid a problem, exit from it, or even comfort yourself — these have limited effectiveness. We know that by now, because despite our best efforts, the down times keep happening. We get in a slump, we get miserable, we feel down. Here’s a mental shift that might help: when you’re feeling hurt, sad, angry, overburdened … think of it not as a problem, but as an experience.
Category: zen habits
The Ground of Your Basic Goodness
Basically, life can feel groundless – no solid, stable ground under your feet. And the truth is, that’s almost all the time. Our lives are always groundless, even if we try to get routines and control and stability. Things constantly happen to pull the rug out from under our feet, and that kind of uncertainty can be stressful, disappointing, painful, uncomfortable. So what can we do?
A Life of Peacefulness
Most of us want a greater sense of peace and ease in our lives — life can be stressful, chaotic, overwhelming, full of distractions, exhausting. We want to get away from all of that, exit the madness, and get to a place of greater peace. I’m going to share how to find that life of peacefulness in one simple method.
Finding Stillness: Resting at Home in the Middle of Chaos
There’s a part of us that wants to find peace from all the chaos in our lives, all the busyness and distractions and complication and stress and overwhelmingness of it all. We want to get away from it all, or get control of everything and create order out of the mess. We want stillness, we want rest, we want peace.
Act with Devotion & Intention; Letting Go of Attachment to Outcome
Letting go of our attachment to the outcome is freeing. It helps us to be more present with the doing, the being, the act itself, rather than what might come in the future. It can help us have better relationships, because we’re more focused on the people than the goal.
When You Have a Voice Telling You You’re Inadequate
This week I had conversations with a couple of loved ones who struggle with an inner voice that tells them that something is wrong with them. It made me think about many years where I felt this sense of inadequacy, a deep sense of not being worthy. I still struggle with it sometimes. So what can we do when we have this inner critic, this voice inside us that doesn’t seem to feel that we’re worthy?
Creating the Time to Do What You Love Every Day
Our days are often filled with things we have to do, and things we do to comfort ourselves from the stress and tiredness from doing what we have to do … so we end up putting off what we really want to do.
A Mantra for Dealing with Life’s Annoyances
When you’re in a state of stress or tiredness, it can also be easy to get annoyed at little things — the dog barking or construction noises outside, people making rude comments or being late (yet again), tech problems and the state of national politics. Yep, all of these and much more can be super annoying. But being constantly annoyed isn’t good for us. We not only become less happy, we are less pleasant to our loved ones, less open to the world, less devoted to what we care most about, less focused on the important work we’re doing in the world.
Mental Resiliency: Letting Go of the Guilt of Not Getting Things Done
It happens to all of us: we don’t get done what we hoped to get done, then we feel stressed or guilty about it. It’s time to let that go, because it’s not helping us. We can build resiliency around this, with a little mental training. And it will help us in magical ways.
Four Antidotes to Procrastination
In this article, I want to offer a few antidotes to procrastination, so that we can all find a path to doing the meaningful work we want to do, a path to offering our gift fully to the world.