Search inside yourself

emotional intelligence , book-notes

Training Emotional Intelligence through mindfulness. Search inside yourself is a meditation training manual for engineers. It’s also a pun as the author works at google, and built the program internally at Google. Joy on demand by the same author, is less engineer focused, and uses joy as a path to medatitive bliss.

This is a summary of Search Inside Yourself and Joy on Demand, and the place I learned many of my emotional health practices

FYI, I now do a different practice; See my experience with SKY

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1) What is Emotional Intelligence (EI)? How to train it?

Even engineers can use empathy

  • GOAL:EI is a collection of trainable skills, this book teaches them.
  • IE is Ability to monitor your, and others, feelings, and use the info to guide your own thinking and actions.
  • Background on EI: What makes a leader article.
  • Foundational Skill 1: Focus attention
  • Foundational Skill 2: Perceive feelings in the body since body manifests feelings
    1. before mind realizes it
    2. with more granularity.
  • Mindfulness is THE WAY to build those foundational skills.
  • Once have the mindfulness can use to build the components of EI.
  • Easy and Easier Mindfulness Methods. Easy follow the breath. Easier have no thoughts.

2) Theory and practice of mindfulness

Breathing as if your life depends on it.

  • GOAL: Be Relaxed, Non Judgmental, and Alert at the same time.
  • Meditation trains Attention(ability to concentrate), Meta-Attention(notice not paying attention).
    • Like bike balancing. Constantly re-balancing so seems like rider always balanced.
  • Meditation is like exercise
    • Work out, tough work out, much better then no workout.
    • More you practice stronger you become.
    • After a while, you just feel better and not sure why.
  • Intention - Intention == Affirmation == mental habit == good.
  • Grandmother mind: be gentle with yourself, the more you do it, the more of a habit it becomes.
  • Process Model:
    • External Observer: Follow Breath, Distracted, Regain Focus
  • Dealing with distraction
    • Experience without judging or reacting
    • If you need to react, continue being mindful
    • Let it go
    • Sitting Time
  • Concepts I’m not summarizing
    • Proper meditation posture
    • Dude where is the science.
    • Happiness default state of mind.

3) Extend mindfulness beyond formal practice

Mindfulness without butt on cushion

  • Goal: Extend from formal to informal situations (rest to activity) and from self to others.
  • Mindfulness in activity
    • Will happen naturally from formal practice, but you can accelerate it.
    • Imagine focusing on every meal as if it was prepared by a world class chef.
    • Walking can be a formal “activity based” meditation.
  • Directing mindfulness on others. Informal/formal practice of mindful listening/conversation.
    • Focusing on others, give them your full, non-judgmental attention.
  • Formal Practice of Mindful Listening
    • Speaker: Speak for 3 uninterrupted minutes. You own them, even if silence.
    • Listener: No speaking, acknowledge (maybe, but don’t over acknowledge). If silence, be silent.
    • Swap speaker.
    • Meta conversation on process: How do you feel, anything you want to talk about.
  • Informal Practice of Mindful Listening
    • Give the gift of your full attention.
    • Because they’re your close one, they deserve time and space to express themselves.
    • When attention wanders, bring it back.
  • Mindful Conversation
    • A. Mindful Listening
    • B. Looping - close the loop, by repeating what you think you understood. Speaker works with you till fully understood.
    • C. Dipping - We usually don’t listen as we’ve wandered off. Dip into yourself _ Listener - notice if you’re being distracted, try to let it go. _ Speaker - notice how this makes you feel, decide to talk about it, or let it go.
  • Formal Mindful Conversation
    • Monologue 4 minutes: * Listener: Pay attention, and periodically dip.
    • Looping: 6 minutes to describe what i heard, and loop.
    • Meta: 4 minutes meta conversation.
  • Informal Mindful Conversation
    • Just like formal method, but you don’t tell.
    • Be sure to seek permission for looping - what you said sounds important, can I check what I understood?
    • Consider explaining what you did, and let the other person join you.
  • Sustaining your practice
    • Like exercise, only hard for first few months. Tips
      1. Have a buddy ask: Am I doing it? Why is my life better? How did this conversation go?
      2. Do less then you can
      3. At a minimum, do a breathe/1 minute/2 minute.
    • Keep the difficulty at just below what you can achieve - think of how video games work.
  • Lightness and Joy in Mediation
    • Want a relaxed (light) focus on meditation. Try meditating on Joyful event.
      • Bring full attention to something pleasant, holding kids hand, a nice meal, etc.
    • Theory: This gain can be generalized to other practices, but still need formal meditation.
    • Eventually Meditation causes - Sukha - non-energy expending joy.
  • Mastering focused and open attention:
    • Focused attention - intense focus on chosen object.
    • Open attention - let focus move to any incoming event without judgement.
    • Values from circuits
      • Requires Strong Meta Attention to stay on focus
      • Strong clarity - analogy, strong torch light
      • Relaxed Attention - needed so don’t get exhausted from meditation.
  • Meditation Circuit Training (4x)
    • 3 minute closed - keep focus on breath.
    • 3 minutes open - allow focus to apply to each incoming thought
  • Stay motivated - you’re going to suck till you don’t
  • Walking Meditation
    • Focus on walking while walking.
    • Feel your feet touching the ground
    • Don’t take anything for granted.

4) Self awareness leading to self confidence

All natural organic Self-Confidence

  • GOAL: Emotional Awareness -> Self Assessment -> Self Confidence
  • Self Awareness - The basis of EI - Your internal state, preferences, resources, and intuitions.
    • Emotional Awareness
      • Resolution - See subtle differences between emotions.
      • Vividness - Turn up the contrast, so we can see easily see the additional resolution.
      • (Am Happy -> Feel Happy -> Experience Happy in my Body)
      • The moment you observe an emotion, it’s already less powerful.
    • Accurate Self Assessment - Strengths and Weakness
      • Essential for managers.
      • We’re not perfect, but how can we succeed despite these gaps.
    • Self Confidence - Ego as big as Mt Fugi, or as small as grain of sand as needed.
      • Ego gets in the way of listening, need to let it go to be open.
      • Ego required when doing hard tasks like leading, need it to grow to take on the challenge
      • You can admit weakness, without self-blaming
      • Grandma Mind requires huge confidence
  • From Emotional Awareness to Self Confidence
    • Emotional Awareness -> Self Assessment -> Self Confidence
      • Engineers confident in systems when understand operational, failure, and error recovery behaviors.
      • Understand operational, failure, and error recovery behaviors -> Self Assessment.
      • Self Assessment has low SNR because of emotions . Boost Emotional Awareness -> Boost Self Assessment SNR
    • Misc
      • More we study ourselves, more objective we can become.
      • We know all the skeletons in our closets, and can deal with them.
      • Pep talk give transient boost, but it’s NOT sustainable.
  • Body Scan 13m
    • General
      • Every time you scan, you build mental habit of polling your body.
      • Attention, not sensation matters.
      • SIY Body scan less intense then MBSR body scan.
    • 1m Warm up mindful breathing
    • 6m Scan Body 1 m per region, 6m total.
      • Head - top, ears, back
      • Face - Forehead, eyes, cheeks nose, lips, gums/tongue.
      • Neck+Shoulders - neck, throat, shoulders
      • Back - low, mid, upper back.
      • Front - Chest and stomach
      • Whole Body
    • 2m Scan for Emotion - for an emotion, ok if none found.
    • 3m Experience Positive Emotion - think of something awesome, and see how it feels in your body/face/shoulders/tension.
    • 1m Cool Down mindful breathing.
  • Journalling For Self Assessment
    • Journal
      • Prompt, then free association on paper. (I use 750words)
      • Prompts to try:
        • What I am feeling now
        • I am aware that
        • What motivates me is
        • I am inspired by
        • Today, I aspire to
        • What hurts me is
        • I wish
        • Others are
        • I made a happy mistake
        • Love is
    • 2m Positive Prime - Times when you did great, and are satisified.
    • 2m per Prompt/Free Associate - 1. Things that give me pleasure are. 2. My strengths are.
    • 2m Negative Prime - Times when you responded negatively, where you weren’t satisified.
    • 2m per Prompt/Free Associate - 1. Things that annoy me are. 2. My weaknesses are.
  • My emotions are not me.
    • Emotions go from existential -> experiential -> physiological
    • I am happy -> I feel happy -> I experience happy in my body

5) Developing Self Mastery

Riding your emotions like a horse

  • GOAL: Compulsion -> Choice (7H: Choose your response)
  • About Self Regulation
    • Self-Control: Disruptive emotions under control
    • Trustworthiness: Maintain honesty and integrity
    • Conscientiousness: Responsibility for personal performance
    • Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change
    • Innovation: Being comfortable with novel ideas
  • NOT Avoiding or Suppressing Emotions
    • It’s about being skillful with emotions.
    • Anger vs Indignation, anger powerless, but indignation a source of calm power.
    • Negative emotions are at time appropriate, like for feeling empathy.
  • Letting go WHILE STILL appreciating the ups and downs.
    • Emotions going to happen, BUT we have the power to let it go.
    • PAIN is short, but SUFFERING is grasping and aversion.
    • Grasping - holding on to something and not letting it go.
    • Wilting flowers don’t cause suffering, it’s the unrealistic desire for them to last forever.
    • Aversion - avoiding something and refusing to think about it.
    • Pain doesn’t cause suffering, it’s the desire not to experience it that causes suffering.
  • Dealing with distress
    • Know when you are not in pain - have a habit of enjoying when not in pain, this gives strength.
    • Do not feel bad about feeling bad - (Meta distress) is not helpful, have grandmother mind on distress.
    • Do not feed the monsters - distress needs fuel, stop retelling the same story.
      • Personal story - freak out over screwed up basement.
    • Start every thought with kindness and humor - It’s nicer that way, gives us reserve to deal with hardship.
  • Triggers - A small event results in an objectively too big response.
    • Often have a repeated ‘emotional’ injury.
    • Need to respond quickly in the moment (SBNRR), but do a SBNRR meditation afterwards to proces and get better.
    • More time you proactive long form, better you get in short form.
  • Identify triggers:
    • Body - shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat, sick to stomach.
    • Emotions - Amydala hijack, fight or flight, frozen
    • Thoughts - Victim, blame, judgment, trouble focusing, outrage
  • SiBerinan Northern RailRoad:
    • Stop, Breathe, Notice, Reflect, Respond.
    • Stop is sacred, even for a few seconds. Breathing extends the pause.
    • Notice to realize and calm the is a physiological response,
      • I am angry -> I feel angry -> my body is experiancing anger.
    • Reflect to calm the psychological response, and engage cognative process [cognative reframe].
      • Every one wants to be happy, and act in a rationale way.
    • Respond think of most helpful/appropriate response you can think of.
      • Triggering the other person, will make situation escalate. Be calm.
      • People will feel bad on own if needed.
  • Siberian northern railroad Meditation.
    • 0.5m of mindful breathing: Warm up
    • 2m: Priming/Focus negative emotions
      • What was the emotion, the first emotion, where did you feel it, how do you feel now.
      • Relive the negative emotion
    • 0.5m: Stop/Breathe
    • 1m: Notice and Experience
    • 1m: Reflect on Origin
    • 1m :Imagine Response
    • 2m: Return to grounding: Tight fist, open to release emotion, 60s mindfulness breathing.
  • From self regulation to self confidence.
    • Aversion operates by distracting. Instead of feeling vulnerable, we focus on other person being a dick.
  • Making Friends with emotions
    • Blindly reacting to emotion or fighting hard, makes it worse.
    • Instead, just observe, and reflect on the emotions, befriend them and they go away.
    • See Getting to yes with yourself.

6) Art of self motivation and building resilience

Making Profits, Rowing Across Oceans, and Changing The World

  • GOAL: Find your purose then be resilliant to failure.
  • Learn your Purpose, as you get good you hit flow, and then you get recognition and pleasure. See post
    • Priority order: Satisfaction, Flow, and Pleasure.
  • Motivation: Align work with purpose. Envision future we desire. Overcome obstacles through resilience.
  • Alignment - Work is meaningful for you, you frequently hit flow.
  • Flow - focused attention. Meditation helps.
  • Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose
    • Pink’s candle attach candle to wall experiment
    • AMP provides creativity, rewards do not.
    • Give employees why and outcome, let them figure out the how.
  • Know and align yourself
  • Discovering values and higher purpose
    • Prompts: My core values are, I stand for.
    • Alone: Journal
    • Group Mindful Listening: Speaker describes, group mindful listening, then free discussion afterwards to clarify.
    • End meta.
  • Envisioning: Begin with the end in mind.
    • Visualize it makes it much easier.
    • Doing your mission exhausting at first (discovering your values) then energizing (figuring out how to achieve it).
    • Prompt: If everything goes well, what will I be doing in 5 years.
      • Who are you and what are you doing
      • How do you feel
      • What do people say about you
      • Open mindfulness for a minute
    • Write for 7 minutes.
  • Alternate Envisioning:
    • You’re at your own Obituary
    • You’re at a talk that is deeply touching and inspiring.
      • What did the speaker saying why is it touching you.
      • What makes you look up to the speaker, what do you envy.
      • Imagine the speaker is you.
  • Share your ideal future LOTS. Because: 1) Inspire you. 2) Find Allies
    • More you talk, more real it becomes for you, more you flesh it out.
    • People want to be inspired
    • People want to help.
    • Sharing with others, will inspire others, and some will help.
  • Resilience - ability to remove obstacles, and return to baseline when troubles.
    • Inner Calm - Foundation of optimism and resilience
    • Emotional Resilience - Success/Failure are emotional experiances, build this, and can always celebrate progress.
    • Cognitive Resiliece - How to explain setbacks to ourselves and others, to develop optimism.
    • Leaders provide this service to their organization and teams
  • Inner calm
    • Day to day things go wrong, but have a deep well of calmness, and can always return to it.
    • Mindfulness key training.
  • Emotional Resilience
    • Success/Failure emotional experiences -> Grasping/Aversion
  • Resilience Meditation
    • Aversion is an emotion in the body. Get used to it, invite it as a friend.
    • 3 deep breaths to calm the mind.
    • Focus on breathing
    • Quick Body Scan
    • 4m - Experience failure - observe emotions/body
    • Recall these are physiological experiences in the body, not you. Get used to feeling aversion.
    • 30s pause.
    • 4m - Experience success - observe emotions/body
    • Recall these are physiological experiences in the body, not you. Get used to not feeling grasping.
    • Back to mindfulness
  • Cognitive Resilience
    • Success is 99% failure.
    • You’ll suck until you don’t
    • Best explorers lost most of the time’.’
    • Bill gates/Brinn have no idea where they are going till they land it.
    • Optimists: Setbacks are temporary and circumstantial. Overcome by effort and activity, how to overcome.
    • Pessimists: Setbacks make me helpless, I am a failure . Thinks nothing can be done, gives up.
    • Default, negative emotion 3:1 ratio.
    • Imagine you get 2$ for every 1$ lost. Objective HUGE win, but subjective feel like a loser.
    • Realize you have a huge negative bias.
  • Reducing cognitive negative bias -> Becoming an optimist
    • Don’t worry you’ll overdue this, your negative bias so string, you’ll be lucky if you get to objective.
    • Focus on positive - gratefulness journal.
    • Become objective and transform thinking on Success/Failure:
      • How does your body feel?
      • What story are you telling yourself?
      • Positive, notice if you’re downplaying, and take credit
      • Negative, notice you’re uplaying:
        • Find evidence temporary.
        • Feeling inadequate, focus on past success.

7) Developing Empathy by connecting to others

Empathy and the Monkey business of brain tangos

  • Empathy is feeling how others feel.
  • How to increase empathy
    • Kindness Up => Empathy Up.
    • Similarity Up => Empathy Up.
    • What we think, We Become (why affirmations work)
    • See people and think “they’re just like me”, and “I want to be kind to them”.
  • Like me/Loving kindness practice
    • Think about the person is like you (to do record script)
    • Think about the person want loving kindness (todo record script)
  • When you get in a fight, go off in corner and do sameness/loving kindness meditation.
  • Traditional practice of loving kindness
    • 2M: May I be well, May I be happy, May I be free from suffering
    • 2M: Neutral Person: Be well, Be happy, Be free from suffering
    • 2M: Negative Person: Be well, Be happy, Be free from suffering
  • Start with Sincerity, Kindness and Openness
    • Easy for emotional brain to think someone is “bad”
    • Easy for your cognitive brain to see someone is good, but hard to convince your emotions.
  • When a new relationship, or things go south
    1. Give people benefit of the doubt.
    2. Trust begins with Trust
  • When chairing a meeting: some assumptions
    1. Everyone here to serve a greater good, till proven otherwise
    2. Thus assume, None of us have hidden agendas, until proven otherwise.
    3. Thus assume, Reasonable, even when disagree, until proven otherwise.
  • Empathic Listening:
    • Mindful Listening. BUT: answer “I heard you feel”, instead of “I heard you say”.
    • Prompts:
      • A difficult work situation,
      • Time when you felt pain, but couldn’t do anything,
      • Other emotional juice.
  • Strengthening empathic listening:
    1. Mindfulness: makes us more perceptive
    2. Kindness: lets us listen better to feeling
    3. Curiosity: wonder at what people might be experiances
    4. Practice: Causes more of mindfulness, kindness, curiosity.
  • Informal practice of empathic listening
    • Harder: people don’t like to hear ‘I hear you feeling …’
    • PRIME: Mindful Breathing, Loving Kindness/Like Me,
    • START: Remind to be curious, give lots of time.
    • If possible ask how they feel.
    • Interesting you say that, listening to you, I’m hearing….
    • END: Make lots of time to listen and give them lots of air time.
    • META: Was this conversation helpful to you?
  • Political Awareness: Empathy at the organization level, instead of personal level.
  • Political awareness practices:
    • Empathy practices, but on steriods.
    • Have a cross organization network of people you care about and trust and nurture them.
    • Read the currents: How are decisions made? Authority/Consensus? Who is influencer?
    • Distinguish: Your/Team/Organization’s interests.
    • Use Self awareness to understand your role.
    • Use Empathic listening to undresatnd how people feel about situation and each other.
  • Political awareness exercise:
    • Journal, or tell a friend
    • PRIME: Think of a big, real conflict with lots of potency to you.
    • Describe the situation as if you’re right for 3m.
    • Describe the situation as if other person right for 3m.
    • Meta conversation.
  • Good news
    • Empathy is feeling what other feels. Better Self Awareness, Better Empathy.
    • XRef: Trust is basis of Mentoring
    • XRef: Lack of Trust basis of 5 dysfunctions of a team.
    • Kindness is a sustainable source of happiness
  • Not summarized
    • Empathy, the brain and monkey business
    • Praising people for working hard, not for being smart.
      • TODO: Get Sean/Ammon’s help on these.
      • Your super power is someone can bring you a rough story, and you will make it great.
      • NOT:Your super power is you’re a great story teller.

8) Leadership and Social Skills

Being Effective and Loved at the same time

  • Lead with compassion, influence with goodness, communicate with goodness.
  • Mantra: Love them. Understand them. Forgive Them. Grow with them.
  • Most effective commanders are liked by their crews.
  • Talking about personal stuff, helps both of you build empathy.
  • Using Kindness to grow friendship from an ugly situation
    • When something goes wrong, you can usually help each other, and through that build respect, trust and friendship.
  • Compassion: Mental state with concern for suffering of others and aspiration to see suffering relieved.
    • Cognitive Compassion - I understand you
    • Emotional Component - I feel for you
    • Motivational Component - I want to help you.
  • Compassionate leadership is the most effective leadership
    • Go from “I” to “We” to unlock the team. I is personal ego and doesn’t allow others to participate and engage.
    • Good to Great best business book ever, Defines Level 5 leaders.
    • L5 leaders highly ambitious, but focused on greater good.
      • Removes the self, and thus, allows others to inspire and contribute.
      • Compassion (I understand you) and (I feel for you), remove the I, and (I want to help you) causes greater good.
  • Training compassion by multiplying goodness
    • Build mental habits - more you think about it, more often you do it.
    • Compassion mental habit is goodness.
    • Use visualization to help us, since visualizing it helps.
  • Multiply Goodness Meditation
    • Visualize breathing in goodness, it multiplying 10 fold, breathing out goodness.
    • 2M pause
    • Visualize each in breath bringing in goodness, it multiplying 10x in heart, breath out and white light expands
    • 2m pause
    • Visualize goodness in those we know. Visualize goodness radiating from their bodies, when you breathe in, bring it int o your heart.
    • 2m pause
    • Visualize goodness in everyone on the planet, breathe in all the goodness into your heart.
    • 2m pause
    • 1m mindfulness

  • Why multiply goodness works - it trains

    • Seeing goodness in others - Builds (I understand you, and feel for you)
    • Giving goodness to all - Builds I want to help you.
    • Confidence that you can do it - Become comfortable doing it more and more.
  • Compassion Training For the brave - Tonglen:
    • Advanced practice, come back when you’ve mastered more exercises.
    • Like multiplying goodness, but you breathe in suffering, transform it to suffering, and radiate it out.
    • Dali Lama main practice
    • Trains you that you can transform suffering into goodness.
    • Powerful since teaches you you can avoid aversion because you can remove suffering.
  • Influencing with goodness
    • Already influencing, GOAL: Expand, and use it for good of all.
    • People want to minimize danger (HUGE energy) , maximize reward (small energy).
    • Negative Interaction have huge impact, vs Positive Interactions have small impact.
    • Marriage needs 5:1 positive to negative to avoid divorce.
  • The SCARF MODEL for social brain
    • Status: Where am I in the pecking order
      • BUILD: Give credit, and feedback, ups peoples status
      • Predicts longevity
      • Threats triggered very easily
      • Feel good about our status by compare ourselves to former self improving.
    • Certainty: Do I know what what’s going on.
      • Build: removing ambiguity, and giving people certainly on things that matter.
      • Uncertainty causes rumination, and can be debilitating
      • Worried about your job, can’t do anything cuz sucks up all brain power.
    • Autonomy: Do I have control over the situation?
      • Build: making clear it’s people’s choice, not yours.
      • Not having control causes the stress, not the “experience”.
    • Relatedness: Is other person friend or foe.
      • Build: by taking time to know people.
      • Easy to make friends by saying hi, shaking hands, etc.
    • Fairness:
      • Build: making clear that you’re being fair.
      • Voluntarily injure themselves to fight injustice.
      • Doesn’t make sense but happens - see ultimatim experiment.
      • Never underestimate sense of fairness, causes people self sacrifice.
  • Expand your influence
    • Know you have influence
    • Build confidence (removes ego) in lets you do this.
    • Understand people and help them succeed -
  • How goodness can change a man’s life in 10 minutes
    • Paul eckmen, 10 minutes holding dali lama’s hand experienced goodness, stopped being angry, and decided he wanted to change the world.
    • Goodness extremely powerful.
  • Communicate with insight
    • Empathy not enough for conversation, also need insight into what is going on.
  • Difficult conversations
    • Prepare by walking through the 3 conversations
      • Content: What happened?
        • Be as objective as possible
      • Feeling: What emotions are involved (see SCARF)?
        • Understand emotion impact for you and them.
      • Identity: What does this say about me (am I competent, am I a good person, am I worthy of love)?
        • What is at stake for you about you, and for them about them.
    • Decide whether to raise the issue
      • Is it to make them feel bad? Or to learn something?
    • Start from the objective 3rd story
      • I and You have different perspectives, focus on what a third party will see.
      • Best way to find a common ground.
    • Explore their story and yours
      • Listen to their stories,
      • Reframe from blame/accusation to learning how both contributed, and emotions involved.
    • Problem solve.
      • Figure out a win/win.
  • Insight and exercise for difficult conversations
    • Impact was not intention - Clarify her impact on you.
    • Beyond content and emotion, there is identity issues - Hardest thing to talk about, but should be addressed.
      • Boss gives critical feedback, threatens my competence as employee.
      • Wise boss opens with I’m confident with your work. But this thing went wrong, lets talk about it.
  • Prepare for difficult conversation
    • Talk to friend or journal
    • 3 conversations from your point of you, including identity (competent/good/love worthy).
    • 3 conversations from their point of you, including identity (competent/good/love worthy).
  • Mindful E-mailing + Practice
    • In person get lots of emotional queues non-verbally.
    • Worse, lack of information makes us assume the worst AND believe it to be true.
    • Remember human on other end, just like me. Will make up missing information.

  • Practice Difficult E-mail.

    • Deep breath.
    • Reflect what the other person will read, think about 3 conversations.
    • Write e-mail.
    • Don’t send, wait some time, and think through what reader will read. Assume already threatened by you.
  • Compassion leads to happiness:
    • Happiest state is compassion.
    • Zen monks sending happiness off the fMRI chart, say compassion is what puts them in happiest state.
    • Second happiest state is open attention.
  • Not summarized

9) The story behind Search Inside Yourself

Three easy steps to world peace

  • Start with Me
  • Make meditation a field of science
  • Make meditation like exercise

Inclining the Mind Toward Joy

FP: NOTICING JOY IN ONE BREATH

IP: NOTICING JOY IN DAILY LIFE - Attending to Joy - Joy on Demand

FP: INVITING AND ATTENDING TO JOY - The Joyful Mind Rocks at Meditation

  • IP: ATTENDING TO THE JOY OF PLEASANT DAILY EXPERIENCES

  • “Someday, I Will Die,” and Other Happy Thoughts

  • IP: AWARENESS OF MORTALITY

  • The Joy of Not Being in Pain

  • IP: JUST NOTE GONE
  • FP: JUST NOTE GONE
  • Do Not Expect Every Moment, Meditation, or Day to Be Joyful
  • Daily Practice to Incline the Mind Toward Joy

Uplift the mind in seconds - Sublime States

Loading (/sublime)

Working with suffering

When suffering, you need to get to the cognative reframes, but first you need to be able to focus clearly, this requirs calming the mind and experiences the pain (and first joy) to handle the reframes.

Step 1: Calm the mind Need to be calm enough to observe and experience.

Step 2A: Affective - experience joy

  • Can always find joy
  • Like an oasis in the dessert
  • Some days harder then others
  • Some days impossible, just need to wait
  • Train in non
  • pain makes it easier, like gym.

Step 2B: Affective - experience pain

  • Pain in Body
  • Tension
  • Pit in stomach
  • Heart pounding
  • Nausia
  • Be willing to experience the pain in the body

Approach:

  • Realize unpleasant experiences in the body
  • Realize root cause of suffering is aversion
  • Apply loving kindness to the aversion and the self
  • Apply equinimity - be calm watching the emotions
  • These emotions are not me
  • These thoughts are not me
  • Just bodily experiences

Step 3: Cognition - Use your cognition to resolve

  • Many reframes
  • Caused by others
    • apply kindness and compassion
    • Think the best of the person
    • Human attribute error
    • Get mad at suffering not the person. Like mad at the thrower not the rock.
  • Caused by self/mistake
    • apply kindness and compassion to self
    • See through eyes of best friend
  • Something bad has/will happen - test if catastrophizing. We make up stories
  • Gain perspective - more time, more dimensions
  • Realize what a mircle everything is - earth/civilizatoin/body/etc
  • With humor - no humor; no perspective

Failure comes pre-installed

  • First I walk down the street, don’t see the hole and walk in
  • Second, I see hole, and walk in.
    • The hardest day
    • You see the hole, but can’t stop yourself as don’t know how
  • Third, I see the hole, and I avoid it
    • Build the ability to fix the problem, to walk around the hole.

It’s like juggling. Just because you can juggle 3 balls, you can’t juggle 4 or 5 or 7.

Also like diving. Any small issue can kill you.

Dive training requires handling and practicing each failure mode.

New divers can handle 1 problem, and then frequently abort their dive. Experienced diver can probably handle 2 or 3 then abort Pro divers can handle several combinations of problems.

  • Step 1 in Working with Emotional Pain: The Attentional Step
  • Step 2 in Working with Emotional Pain: The Affective Step
  • Willingness to Experience Joy
  • The Tiger and the Strawberry
  • Just Because You’re in Pain Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Be Joyful
  • Willingness to Experience the Emotional Pain
  • Step 3 in Working with Emotional Pain: The Cognitive Step
  • Being Very Good at Working With Emotional Pain
  • Is That So?
  • Failure Is Not an Option, It Comes Preinstalled
  • The Art of Suffering Is Love
  • The Art of Suffering is love.

What meditation mastery looks like

  • Joy Is Not the Only Path
  • When Meditation Becomes Effortless
  • What Is It Like to Be Very Seasoned at Meditation?
  • Maturity of Samatha (Calm-Abiding) Practice
  • Mastery of Samatha (Calm-Abiding)
  • Maturity of Vipassana (Insight) Practice
  • Mastery of Vipassana (Insight)
  • Maturity of Brahmavihara (Sublime States) Practice
  • Freedom!