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
- 1) What is Emotional Intelligence (EI)? How to train it?
- 2) Theory and practice of mindfulness
- 3) Extend mindfulness beyond formal practice.
- 4) Self awareness leading to self confidence
- 5) Developing Self Mastery
- 6) Art of self motivation and building resilience
- 7) Developing Empathy by connecting to others
- 8) Leadership and Social Skills
- 9) The story behind Search Inside Yourself.
- Inclining the Mind Toward Joy
- Uplift the mind in seconds
- Working with suffering
- What meditation mastery looks like
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
- before mind realizes it
- 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
- Have a buddy ask: Am I doing it? Why is my life better? How did this conversation go?
- Do less then you can
- 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.
- Like exercise, only hard for first few months. Tips
- 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.
- Want a relaxed (light) focus on meditation. Try meditating on Joyful event.
- 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
- Emotional Awareness
- 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.
- Emotional Awareness -> Self Assessment -> Self Confidence
- 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.
- General
- 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.
- Journal
- 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
- Mindfulness -> Self Awareness -> You can figure out the opportunities to AMP.
- Abstract concepts, need to verbalize or write down to find them.
- 7H: Personal mission statement, funeral exercise.
- 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 Resilience - 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
- Give people benefit of the doubt.
- Trust begins with Trust
- When chairing a meeting: some assumptions
- Everyone here to serve a greater good, till proven otherwise
- Thus assume, None of us have hidden agendas, until proven otherwise.
- 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:
- Mindfulness: makes us more perceptive
- Kindness: lets us listen better to feeling
- Curiosity: wonder at what people might be experiances
- 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.
- Status: Where am I in the pecking order
- 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.
- Content: What happened?
- 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.
- Prepare by walking through the 3 conversations
- 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
- Loving-Kindness and the Happiest Day in Seven Years
- IP: WISHING FOR RANDOM PEOPLE TO BE HAPPY
- Familiarizing the Mind with the Joy of Loving-Kindness
- FP: ATTENDING TO THE JOY OF LOVING-KINDNESS
- Loving-Kindness Is the “Gateway Drug” to Compassion
- FP: CULTIVATING COMPASSION THROUGH PEACE, JOY, AND KINDNESS
- FP: UPLIFTING AND SETTLING THE MIND WITH ALTRUISTIC JOY
- IP: REJOICING IN INNER GOODNESS AND ALTRUISTIC DEEDS
- Selfless Love, a Short Poem
Working with suffering
- 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!