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

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
    • 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
    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

  • 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!