Worthwhile Living

Like my last post on exercising your brain by learning a new language, here’s another worthwhile endeavor to exercise your brain: Do something different every day.

Every time you do something different your brain takes note. It’s given new stimuli, it has new things to think about, and see and do.
Because of all this new stuff, it has to work a bit harder and make more connections, and that’s good exercise. The more new connections it has to make, the richer your brain becomes, and the better off you will be now and as you age.

It’s also good practice for dealing with change, which is inevitable.

So what should you do differently? Here are some ideas:

• take a random route to work, or to the store, or wherever you are driving.
• go for a walk down different streets in your neighborhood.
• cook a new recipe
• read a genre of book you don’t usually read
• add a new exercise to your routine.
  For me, I realized that doing 100 crunches and 30 pushups were becoming routine, so over the last week I’ve increased them to 120 and 35. now I feel more challenged.
• travel
• pick something from a Sark poster and do it, like “invite someone dangerous for tea”
• tie your shoelaces differently, see Ian’s Shoelace Site [via Seth Godin's blog]
  Seth says he ties his shoelaces in a different way to, “reject the status quo.” While that’s a good enough end in itself, looking one level deeper you might see that a worthwhile life is one of constant change, constantly rejecting the status quo in favor of dealing with what is happening on a moment-to-moment basis. That is, the “status quo” is about what was, not what is.
• tie your tie in a different way. Did you know that there are 85 possible ways to tie a tie?
• Update: Peel your banana from the other end. (I’m still tickled by this one every time I do it.)

In general, be aware of the ruts that you are in, and climb out of them. The view is much better up there.

What sorts of things can you do differently?

Some apropos quotes from my Worthwhile quote database (you see a random quote from this database on the top of the main page.):

• “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.” — Gail Sheehy
• “Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.” -— William O. Douglas, American jurist, Supreme Court justice (1898-1980)
• “If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens” — Fay Weldon

  

As many studies show, your mind is a “use it or lose it” proposition. (see, Mental Exercise Nearly Halves Risk of Dementia, for example). That is, your mind will inexorably decline as you age (just as your muscles will) if you don’t continue to stimulate it.

This is one of the reasons that I decided to learn French. I’m also hoping for a trip to France this year. And, frankly, I always thought French was too hard to learn, so I decided to challenge myself! (Turns out it is pretty difficult to get the pronunciation correct, but not at all insurmountable.)

It’s really quite stimulating to learn a new language. I usually do one lesson per day, while in the car. Sometimes I’ll repeat a lesson if I don’t feel familiar with the new material. I feel like I’m progressing quickly, and am really enjoying it.

One interesting side effect is that my Spanish is improving too. Since it’s the same part of the brain that’s getting exercised it stands to reason, but I was surprised to find that the Spanish I already know comes out more fluidly now.

Whatever you do, do something out of the ordinary with your brain. Many people swear by crossword puzzles as a way to exercise your brain. I’m sure it works, as it forces you to think of things that aren’t part of your normal life. But for me, I want an activity that seems like a worthwhile use of my time. That’s why I’m learning a new language. Maybe you should try it too?

To learn French, I’m primarily using the Pimsleur course, which I highly recommend. It’s especially good for learning good pronunciation. I’m also trying out the Rosetta Stone language learning program. It is also good, but it excels at teaching vocabulary; I find it not as good for pronunciation as Pimsleur, though they are different paradigms. Pimsleur is an audio course, and the Rosetta Stone is a computer program.

TIP: Pimsleur CDs and Cassettes can be checked out from a library for free. Note that there are new editions of French (and probably other languages) to account for the currency change to the Euro, and other improvements, I’m sure. So be sure to get the most current one. I started on the previous edition, and find the sound quality better on the new edition that I got.

Technorati Tags: Languages

From “Slaughterhouse-Five” (Kurt Vonnegut):

“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes’.”

Working with your breath is an important way to affect your mental state. It’s easy too, since you always have your breath with you.

I have been using this highly effective technique since I read Dr. Andrew Weil’s, “8 Weeks to Optimum Health”. I recommend getting the book too, as it has a wide range of practical and insightful tips that I have used to improve my life.

From Dr. Andrew Weil’s site:

Unhealthy stress can wreak havoc on your body and mind. One effective way to help manage stress levels is through breath work, especially through a breathing exercise known as the relaxing breath. This exercise is simple, takes almost no time, requires no special equipment, and can be done anywhere. Start by sitting with your back straight. Place the tip of your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth, and keep it there through the entire exercise. You will be exhaling through your mouth around your tongue; try pursing your lips slightly if this seems awkward.

• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
• Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
• Hold your breath for a count of seven.
• Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.
• This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Note that you always inhale quietly through your nose and exhale audibly through your mouth. The tip of your tongue stays in position the whole time. Exhalation takes twice as long as inhalation. The absolute time you spend on each phase is not important; the ratio of 4:7:8 is important. If you have trouble holding your breath, speed the exercise up but keep to the ratio of 4:7:8 for the three phases. With practice you can slow it all down and begin inhaling and exhaling more and more deeply.

Technorati Tags: Breath, Breathing, Meditation, Stress

When I started meditating it was often difficult to know when to end. I didn’t want to have to be worrying about the time. When I’d set an alarm of some sort it was often jarring and unpleasant.

So I searched for a nicer way to signal the end of the meditation and found that the sound of a bell worked nicely, and I got one on MP3.

Then I was able to set up a playlist with an appropriate amount of silence for the mediation, and then the gong would ring.

For example, I set up the following if I wanted to meditate for 20 minutes:

1. 30 Seconds of silence
2. gong sound
3. 5 minutes silence
4. 5 minutes silence
5. 5 minutes silence
6. 5 minutes silence
7. gong sound

This way I got a little bit of time to get settled, then a gong to start off with. Then 20 minutes of silence, then a gong to end with. I used a file of 5 minutes of silence so that I could set up different playlists for different lengths of time.

This worked very well, and could be adapted for use on a CD, if you wanted to. That is, just burn a CD with the appropriate tracks of gong or silence depending on how long you want your mediation to be.

I have a Palm Pilot that can play MP3s and has a speaker, so I just set up playlists like above and used them to time my meditations. (Nowadays, I found a great alarm program, Palmary Clock, that has a timer that can use an MP3 as the alarm sound, so I use that with my gong sound.)

Since I’ve heard that people are looking for a tool like this, I’m posting the gong sound I use and the tracks of silence in various lengths for you to download and use as you wish. I’ve included two different gong sounds. The first has the little “tap” before the striking of the gong, which I prefer. The second is just a gong sound.

Mindfulness Bell
Meditation Gong
Silence – 1 Minute
Silence – 5 Minutes
Silence-30 Seconds

Technorati Tags: Meditation

I just finished a great book, “The Curse of Chalion”, that was not only a great read in the “speculative fiction” (fantasy) genre, but had a lot of bonus spiritual insights. The following quote is one of those.

Cazaril’s attention was arrested by a pebble that lay on the pavement near his knee. It was so dense. So persistent. The gods could not lift so much as a feather, but he, a mere human, might pick up this ancient unchanging object and place it wherever he wished, even into his pocket. He wondered why he had never apprecaiated the stubborn fidelity of matter. A dried leaf lay nearby, even more stunning in its complexity. Matter invented so many forms, and then went on to generate beauty beyond itself, minds and souls rising up out of it like melody from an instrument … matter was an amazement to the gods. Matter remembered itself so very clearly. He could not think why he had failed to notice it before. His own shaking hand was a miracle, as was the fine metal sword in his belly, and the orange trees in the tubs–one was tipped over now, wonderfully fractured and spilling–and the tubs, and the birdsong starting in the morning, and the water–water! Five gods, water!–in the fountain, and the morning light filtering into the sky…

Cazaril ignored it all, taken up with his pebble again. He wondered where it had come from, how it had arrived there. What it had been before it was a pebble. A rock? A mountain? Where? For how many years? It filled his mind. And if a pebble could fill his mind, what might a mountain do? The gods held mountains in their minds, and all else besides, all at once. Everything, with the same attention he gave to one thing. He had seen that, through the Lady’s eyes. If it had endured for longer than that infinitesimal blink, he thought his soul would have burst. As it was he felt strangely stretched. Had that glimpse been a gift or just a careless chance?

This, to me, is a wonderful description of what “mindfulness” is supposed to be. Being intensely aware of a single thing, and not just of the thing, but of where it came from, what it affects … where does this one thing fit into the great web of interbeing? In meditation this is one of the reasons you might concentrate on your breath. It’s not just to feel yourself breathing, but to be intensely aware of the air moving in and out of your body. There are meditative exercises that make it feel like the universe is breathing you, instead of you breathing the air (and of course that might be how it works ). When you do walking meditation, you relate to the earth beneath your feet in a much different way that you do when you are walking normally.

Of course, formal meditation is just the practice so that we can learn to live each moment that way, not just while on the cushion. We also practice so we can extend our awareness beyond the breath and beyond a single thing, on to all things.

Mindfulness of this sort reminds us that every thing, and every moment, is a miracle. Endeavor to take nothing for granted.

“The Curse of Chalion” (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Technorati Tags: Meditation, Mindfulness

We all do things because we’ve always done them that way. Or maybe because that’s the way our parents did it when we were growing up. Seth Godin, on his blog, posted about some things we do today that are relics of some reason that’s now obsolete.

This reminds me of one of my favorite “make you think” stories:

A newly-wed couple was making their first dinner of roast beef together. The wife proceeded to take the roast and cut off one end before she put it into the oven. She wrapped the extra piece up and put it in the fridge. The husband asked why?

She said she didn’t know but that she’d always done it that way because her mother did it that way. The husband says, “that’s crazy, why would you cut off a perfectly good piece of meat and not cook it? Let’s call your mother and ask.”

So they call the wife’s mother. She says, “I don’t know why we cut the end of the roast off. I’ve always done it that way, because my mother always did it that way.”

So they call the wife’s grandmother. She says, “I don’t know why we cut the end of the roast off. I’ve always done it that way, because my mother always did it that way.”

Luckily, the wife’s great-grandmother is still alive. They call her in the nursing home and ask why, for generations, these families have cut the end of the roast beef off before cooking it. She says, “that’s simple. When I was cooking roasts, I didn’t have a big enough pan, so I cut off part of the roast so it would fit.”

One of the goals of mindfulness is to “look deeply” at everything. That includes looking at the reasons you do things. Next time you’re doing something (anything! everything!), look deeply at why you’re doing it, or why you are doing it in that way. You might just discover that you’re being controlled by people and justifications long gone. Make sure you have a reason for everything you do. Do you like those reasons?

Here’s testament to being able to find inspiration in unlikely places. I was listening to the Bob Edwards Show on a podcast (via Audible) and heard him talking with the author of a book called “Last Dance in Havana”

The author read an excerpt of the book that struck me as a description of how the universe might work. Perhaps we’re all a part of some greater action, some large-scale existence that we cannot possibly grasp or even know about, but still we’re an integral part of it. And more, each of our actions and non-actions are connected to everyone else and are a necessary part of the whole. Nothing is unimportant, everything matters and affects everything else. As Dan Millman says, “there are no ordinary moments.”

It’s not unlike how our own bodies work. Each cell has its own existence, it’s own job. But none of the individual cells has any idea of the larger concept: that it is part of a working whole we call the body. It takes all of the cells, working together, to create our body and our existence. Like that, maybe, our individual existences, along with the existence of everything else is creating something…

This notion was even mentioned, albeit tongue-in-cheek in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the earth, and all of its inhabitants, is essentially a big computer. And it’s very much contained in Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea of Interbeing.

But if we cannot conceive of that which we contribute to, how does this have any effect on us? For me, it has these implications, which I try to put into practice:

• Everything I do is important. Every moment is significant. There are no ordinary moments. Therefore, be mindful of every moment.
• The roles we play are important to the larger whole. Therefore I should fill that role to the best of my ability.
• Nothing I do is so significant that everything depends on it, nor is anything I do so insignificant that I should discount it. Therefore, I try not to be devastated when things seem to go wrong, nor do I become bored when I seem to be doing the “same old thing”, neither do I think myself so important when I have achieved something — just enjoy being a part of the interplay, whatever happens.
• Everything is connected to everything else in some subtle, and not so subtle ways. Therefore, look deeply to see those connections, however slight: How is something that I’m doing now going to affect my family, my neighbor, someone half the world away, someone 100 years from now, etc.
• We only exist for, and because of, our connection to other things (people, animals, plants, minerals … everything!). Therefore, seek to understand those connections and strengthen them.

Of course the book had nothing to do with any of this, but almost as proof of this concept it was in there. Here’s the excerpt:

Across the extent of this huge space, filling it to capacity and beyond, couples were dancing. But dancing does not begin to tell what they were doing. They were whipping, They were twirling. They were circling, diving beneath locked arms, embracing. They were bumping, grinding, releasing, spinning, caressing, all but making love. They were doing all those things in a dense crowd, somehow coordinating their moves so that whenever a man swung his partner toward a given point on the floor, the man or woman in the neighboring couple who was occupying that space somehow moved out of the way just in time, gracefully shifting into another space that a millisecond earlier had likewise been magically vacated.

At first it looked to me as if some higher intelligence were guiding the movements of each of these hundreds of people. But then, as I continued to watch, another metaphor took over. This was an exercise in massively parallel computation. Many minds, each solving its own bit of an otherwise unsolvable problem. No one genius could have attended to so many vital details so perfectly. This group movement was decentralized but coordinated, almost like flocking or schooling but not at all instinctive, not in the least bit unconscious. It was brilliantly human, and clever, both spontaneous and purposeful, and it was one of the most stirring and beautiful sights I have ever seen.

“Last Dance in Havana” (Eugene Robinson)

Since sleep hacking is a popular topic, here are some updates:
I have been waking up at 5AM for many months now. The last few weeks have introduced some challenges to that schedule. I have found that when I alter the routine, I don’t feel right. I tried sleeping late by an hour, and it threw me off balance for the rest of the day. I went to bed before I was tired, and slept horribly. For me, having a rhythm is apparently very important. That is, getting up at the same time every day seems to do the trick for me. One of the neat things is that I’m more productive, and have more energy, throughout the day with this schedule than I was when I was sleeping 2 hours more. Go figure!

So if a little sleep hacking works, what about a lot of it?

Steve Pavlina, who introduced me to the “how to be an early riser” thing, has been tinkering with his sleep and is now trying Polyphasic sleep. And a friend of mine is also trying it, or has he calls it, Sleeping Like Leonardo & Buckminster Fuller.

I can imagine having an extra 30 waking hours a week would be fantastic, but the system seems too extreme to me. I mean, sleeping only a few hours each day in naps spread over the whole day? It seems unnatural! No, it is unnatural. But maybe it works. I’ll let these two guys try it and see how they fare before I try it.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s a great tradition without religious overtones, with no obligations for presents. It’s just about family, friends, good food, and most importantly, about taking time to be thankful.

But you have to remember to be thankful. And not just for the luxuries or even the normal parts of your life… but just be thankful you are alive.

Anthony Robbins says, “For me, appreciation and gratitude are two of the most spiritual emotions, actively expressing through thoughts and actions.”

Here’s a story that Thich Naht Hanh likes to tell. It’s from his book “No Death, No Fear” (which I highly recommend to anyone who is facing or has gone through a loss).

Appreciating Earth

Suppose two astronauts go to the moon. When they arrive, they have an accident and find out that they have only enough oxygen for two days. There is no hope of someone coming from Earth in time to rescue them. They have only two days to live. If you asked them at that moment, “What is your deepest wish?” they would answer, “To be back home walking on the beautiful planet Earth.” That would be enough for them; they would not want anything else. They would not want to be the head of a large corporation, a big celebrity or president of the United States. They would not want anything except to be back on Earth — to be walking on Earth, enjoying every step, listening to the sounds of nature and holding the hand of their beloved while contemplating the moon.


We should live every day like people who have just been rescued from the moon. We are on Earth now, and we need to enjoy walking on this precious beautiful planet. The Zen master Lin Chi said, “The miracle is not to walk on water but to walk on the Earth.” I cherish that teaching. I enjoy just walking, even in busy places like airports and railway stations. In walking like that, with each step caressing our Mother Earth, we can inspire other people to do the same. We can enjoy every minute of our lives.

As Joni Mitchell said, “…you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

In light of these teachings, today on Thanksgiving Day, or any day, or every day, I invite you to try this exercise for deepening your appreciation of things:

• List out things you are thankful for. You could think up this list, or write it down. I recommend writing it down at least once. Set aside some time and really think about all the things you are thankful for. Your family, your friends, your job, your home … the fact that you can see and hear and taste and smell and touch, the sunrise, the sunset…anything and everything.
  Even if you just do this part, you will deepen your appreciation for the things in your life. But if you’re adventurous, continue on.
• With each item (or maybe the top 5 or 10) close your eyes and imagine this item. Hold it in your mind and lovingly appreciate it. Really feel the joy of having it a part of your life.
• Now, with the same item, imagine it gone. Perhaps the person died, or moved away; perhaps you became blind, or maybe you lose your job. Dwell for some moments in the feeling that the thing that you were just cherishing is now gone forever. Capture the feelings of loss.
• Now, again with the same item, imagine you still have it: it’s back! Again, spend a moment cherishing that this item is in your life: really appreciate it. After the feelings of relief, you may feel that your appreciation for this item has deepened after imagining it was gone. Or you may see it in a totally different perspective.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to treat everything in your life this way. To cherish each person, each item, each moment. To be thankful for each and every thing. Don’t wait until they’re gone.

Happy Thanksgiving.