The Daily Mind

Daily Steps To Mindful Living

Mindfulness

How to Raise More Mindful Kids

Anyone who has kids will be able to relate when I say that, more than anything in life, they inspire us to be better individuals and motivate us to keep on living in a more mindful manner. With our kids’ futures on the line, we can’t help but to look beyond ourselves and act in ways that will hopefully give them a chance at a better life, and one way we can ensure that is by raising them to be more mindful as well.

angelic kid

Photo Credit: Gizaa

If you think of raising kids in a more mindful manner as one of the tasks you need to fulfil as a parent, then you will find that is definitely not the easiest item on your endless TO DO list. After all, chasing around a curious 2-year old all day or waiting for a teenager to come home all night can sap anyone’s energy and patience, leaving you feeling like you don’t have what it takes to teach your kids anything about mindfulness. However, if you approach raising your kids in a more mindful manner as something that you impart naturally to them as you live it yourself on a day to day basis, then it becomes more doable. You don’t have to feel pressured when your little one “fails to share” his toys or your teenager commits some “dreadful mistake” in life when you’d hoped that they would have learned to make better choices by now because you know that the seeds you plant as a parent will eventually come into fruition and that, as long as you continue to live by example, your kids will have a compass to guide them even when they seem to lose their way.

Still, to help you feel a bit more empowered as you strive to raise your kids to be better persons, here are a few tips on raising your kids to be more mindful individuals:

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Originally posted on July 25, 2013 @ 4:09 am

Four Things I Learned from Facebook on the Topic of Discretion

Going on an internet hiatus is a great way to help you focus more on your inner self since it strips you of endless distractions. This is especially true if you are addicted to Facebook and keep on checking everyone’s status updates and their comments on yours every few minutes. Of course, just because you’re on Facebook does not mean that you have a Facebook addiction that you need to beat. In fact, Facebook does offer some interesting nuggets of wisdom for those who pay attention to such posts.

As part of a simple exercise, I did a quick scan of my Facebook friend’s posts yesterday and picked out some quotes which I thought would be interesting to share with you. With so many wise (and not so wise) quotes going around I thought that sticking to one topic would be better, and what better topic to stick to than discretion? After all, in this world of airing dirty laundry on Facebook, holding one’s tongue now applies not only to face-to-face conversations but to Facebook posts and comments as well.

So here’s the stuff I learned about discretion from Facebook.

 

be careful with your words quote

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Originally posted on July 20, 2013 @ 11:56 am

Tips for the mindful traveller

I’ve not mentioned this before, but I’ve been writing my blog posts for the Daily Mind whilst travelling through South East Asia.

It’s been an enlightening journey in many ways, but I was particularly struck this week by the behaviour of my fellow travellers. We’ve been visiting some fascinating sites, from the Buddha park in Vang Vieng, Laos, to the Grand Palace at Bangkok, yet so few travellers seem to be living in the present moment and absorbing what they are seeing. Most people are busy clicking away on their cameras or filming the view that I wonder how much of the actual experience they are taking in. Others are texting or updating their Facebook and Twitter, telling their friends about what they’re seeing.

I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past, so I’ve decided to make it a bit of a project to be more mindful and present during my travels/holidays in order to fully appreciate the experience. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with, which I think can also be relevant to everyday life:


Creative Commons License photo credit: Venturist
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Originally posted on November 15, 2011 @ 9:51 am

How to Make Every Minute of Your Life Meaningful


Creative Commons License photo credit: Desirée Delgado

“My religion is to live and die without regret.” – Milarepa

Something that scares me more than anything else is dying with regret. I don’t want to look back on my younger years wishing I had done something differently or wishing that I hadn’t hurt this or that person. Regret scares me. And the only way to live and die without regret is to find a way to make your life truly meaningful. When your every action, thought and word has meaning you will find that your death (and indeed your life) will be a very peaceful process.

In this post I am going to give you some ideas about how you can discover the secret to making every minute of your life meaningful.

Is your life meaningful?

Take a second to do a little “meditation” with me. I want you to take your hands off the mouse and just spend two minutes imagining your death. Imagine you are laying on your bed with your family around you. Imagine you have only five or six breaths left before you depart to the next world. How do you feel? Do you have regrets? Are you afraid?

Some people get really angry when I talk about death. They send me emails asking me to stop talking about this terribly taboo subject. I find this attitude really sad because death is the one thing we can be sure of in this world. Nothing else is certain, but our death is. No one in the history of the planet has ever avoided death. Everyone has to go through it. So why, then, is everyone afraid of preparing for it?

Don’t be someone who is afraid of death. Do the meditation and really try to imagine what it is going to be like. How do you feel? If you find you are afraid, anxious or regretful then I can guarantee you aren’t living your life the way you intended. You aren’t making every minute meaningful. By looking at death we can get a great insight into our life.

How to make every minute of your life meaningful


Creative Commons License photo credit: DmitriyO

You are probably like me. You want to live and die without regret. So how do we do that? How do we make every minute of our existence count? Here are some ideas.

1. Make your life about others
The most important thing you can ever do is make your life about other people. Our world is so self-centered. We are brought up to believe that we are more important than everyone else and that we need to take care of our own needs and wants before the needs and wants of others. But after a while we realize that we feel kind of empty. That’s when we have the midlife crisis. The crisis occurs because we realize that we have spent our whole lives working to make ourselves happy but we still feel crap.

The great Buddhist master Shantideva said:

“All the suffering in the world comes from wanting happiness for oneself. All the happiness in the world comes from wanting happiness for others.”

It is one of the truest quotes you will ever read. A life spent helping others is a life well spent. And when your time comes to an end there will be no regrets because you have used your time well. You have made a contribution.

2. Don’t procrastinate
A few months ago I wrote an article designed to help you stop procrastinating. I believe that procrastination is one of the worst things a human being can do. If you want to make every minute of your life meaningful you have no time to procrastinate.

Think about the last five years of your life. How fast have they zoomed by? I remember my first day of high school as if it were yesterday and it seems as though I have achieved very little since then. I have spent too much time procrastinating. And this is a cause for regret.

We hear it all the time but we never take it in. Life is short. It will be over in the blink of an eye. And to make matters worse, you have no idea when your life is going to end. You could die of a heart attack in your 80’s or you could die from cancer in a week. You could get hit by a bus. So now ask yourself this: if you knew you had only five years left would you change the way you are living? I bet most of us would.

3. Don’t get angry
Anger, it is said, is the worst of all the negative emotions. The Buddha once remarked that a single moment of anger can destroy 100 years of good deeds. I can see how this can be so. Lots of bad things happen because of anger – violence, rape, wars, etc. And the bad thing about anger is that you always end up regretting it.


Creative Commons License photo credit: Hamed Parham

Think about the last time you got angry and acted on it. You might have yelled at your partner or a coworker. How did you feel five minutes later? Did you feel vindicated and justified or did you feel heavy and burdened? I am betting it was the latter. Every time I have said or done something in anger I have come to regret it. Life is too short for anger.

Angry people don’t succeed in life. They sabotage their happiness and they end up living very lonely and shallow lives. Take a look at any friend you have that is constantly angry. They are never happy. They are always frowning and they get no joy from life’s simple pleasures. Anger is the worst thing you can do. Don’t become one of those people who finds the worst in every situation. Look for the best.

Conclusion

Life is so short and fleeting. You could die in your sleep tonight. Make sure you live your life in a way that will allow you to pass away with no regrets. Make compassion, love, patience and energy the main pillars of your existence. If you do you will leave behind a wonderful legacy.

So now the question is; are you making every minute of your life meaningful? What is holding you back? Leave a comment and let us know. I would be very interested to see what the main problems are.

Originally posted on May 8, 2009 @ 3:05 am

How to Let Go of the Past and Not Fear Your Future

 

“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” – Wayne dyer.

The other night I was sitting down with my brother watching a late night soccer match when we started talking about the “good ole days” and all of our plans for the future. After a while we paused and then started laughing because it seemed as though I was trapped in the past and he was fearful of the future. The whole conversation I had been talking about how things used to be and he spent the whole time talking about how hard things are going to be. It was a bit of an “Ah huh!” moment as we both realized that grasping on to the past/future was keeping us from being happy.

In this post I want to talk about how to let go of your past and not fear your future. It is one of the most important things you will ever attempt to do – living in the present is the only way to be happy.

NOTE – I have divided this article into two posts as they were quite long. Today’s post will be on letting go of the past and tomorrow’s post will be on learning how to not fear your future. Make sure you subscribe to the feed if you don’t want to miss out.

As always, if you have something to add or a comment that you think might help someone out there please leave a comment and let us know. All comments are greatly appreciated.

How to let go of your past

For some people, the past is like a ball and chain. It follows you wherever you go and it stops you from achieving your goals in life. It is restricting, heavy and extremely burdensome. A lot of people never break free. If you feel a little bit like that then please read through these suggestions and take them to heart. If you can break free from your past you might find your present and future moments are looking a lot brighter.

1. Realize that it cannot be changed
The most sobering thing about the past is that it cannot be changed. Things have already happened. And seeing as there is no way to travel back in time, there is no way to change the past. Learn to accept it.

I once read about a man who sped through a traffic light because he was late to work and ran over a mother and bay. Both mother and child were killed but the driver survived unharmed. This man became an alcoholic and a drug user and his life started spiraling out of control as his guilt was so painful. It took him almost 30 years but one day he realized that what was done was done and there was no way to change it. By destroying his life as well he was effectively ruining three lives.

If you live in the past and are having trouble letting go you need to realize that it cannot be changed. You can never go back to those times and you will never erase what happened. By living in this past moment you are preventing yourself from actually fixing what you did wrong.

2. Don’t make “mind stories”
Sometimes when I cast my mind back to my days in high school or my first trip to India I get a swell of emotion and then start to create “mind stories”. These stories can go on all day and basically consist of my going over all my good memories and then getting upset when I realize that times have changed. Don’t do this.

We all make “mind stories” to some extent. My mother is the opposite of me and she spends all day going over all the bad things that could happen or all the negative events that occurred in the past. The mental chatter is poisonous. As soon as you start, it is almost impossible to stop. One thought leads to another and before long you realize that you have a whole day of your life in the past.

3. Think about impermanence
It wouldn’t be a post by The Daily Minder without mentioning impermanence. I can hear of you all groaning now – “here he goes… rambling on about impermanence again!” It is an important truth to realize, however, and it is particularly useful when dealing with an inability to let go of the past.

First of all, we need to realize that we don’t have a lot of time on this Earth. Death can come at any moment. You could eat a poisonous dinner, choke on a carrot or get hit by a car. You could get cancer tomorrow. Imagine if a wise old meditation master came to you and said you only had two weeks left to life. Would you regret spending so much time thinking about the past? Would you consider that you wasted your time here on Earth? I know I would.

The next time you start worrying about the past I want you to remember impermanence. Say to yourself, “I don’t have time for this” and just drop it. Over time you will train your mind to ignore those thoughts and as the days and weeks go by the attachment to the past will fade away.

4. Meditate on compassion
A few years ago I was in North India listening to a talk by an old Tibetan Lama who had grown up in Tibet and fled to India in the 60’s. At the end of the talk the Lama answered a few questions from the audience. One of the questions said:

“Tibet was one of the most beautiful countries where people had freedom to practice meditation and live in peace. Do you miss those days?”

The Lama, without even pausing for a moment, just shook his head and said “No”. Then he followed up by saying, “thinking about times gone by is useless. It doesn’t help yourself and it doesn’t help other people”. I was impressed. What he said left an indelible mark on my mind – dwelling on the past is a fruitless pursuit and it helps no one.

If you are stuck in the past you need to realize that those thoughts and habits are helping no one. It is an extremely uncompassionate way to live your life and it will get you no where.

5. Understand we can’t control everything
I am a firm believer that we control our destiny. I do not think God or anyone else plans things out for us, I think we are the ones who forge our future and I think we are the ones responsible for our actions. Sometimes, however, we have to realize that we cannot control everything that goes on.

I once heard a mate of mine say that people who dwell on the past are just trying to control everything. I think he was right. Sometimes I feel like my sense of independence means that I blame myself too heavily when things go wrong. And that means I am often dwelling on my mistakes.

If you spend a lot of time cursing yourself for things you have done in the past I ask you to go easy on yourself and to stop trying to be so controlling. You cannot control everything. You cannot control everyone. And although you are the one in charge of your destiny there are times when you will be utterly unable to change a set of circumstances. So let it go. You will be glad you did.

Conclusion

Letting go of the past is like lifting a weight off your shoulders. It allows you to move on and make a new life and it stops you from staying stagnant. Like any habit, however, it will be hard to accomplish and it will take a lot of practice. But it is possible to let go of the past and live completely for the present.

The next post will be on how to not fear your future. Make sure you are subscribed so you don’t miss out.

Originally posted on March 17, 2009 @ 6:54 am

How to Become More Patient With Friends, Enemies & Circumstances


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“He that can have Patience, can have what he will” – Benjamin Franklin

Would you like to become a more patient person? Are you constantly snapping at friends and family for seemingly meaningless issues? What about your enemies? Are you ever patient towards them? Did you get angry the last time someone cut you off in traffic?

In this post I am going to show you how to become a more patient person. Most importantly, however, I am going to show you why patience is one of the most important qualities that a person can develop.

Why is patience so important?

It is said that of all the negative emotions it is anger that is the worst. In fact, the Buddha said that a single moment of anger can destroy the results of a hundred of years of positive deeds. Such is the corrupting and degrading effect that anger has on one’s mind and the people around you. Anger has been the motivating force behind the world’s most heinous acts and crimes. Everyday we hear about angry outbursts leading to:

  • Murders
  • Violent acts
  • Harsh speech
  • Wars and battles
  • The destruction of friendships and alliances
  • Etc.

So, if anger is the worst of all the negative emotions then surely the direct antidote is the king of all qualities? And what is that antidote? Why it is patience, of course! Patience is the way to deal with and destroy your anger. Only by becoming patient will you finally come to live a peaceful and hate free life. If everyone reacted with patience there would be a lot less suffering and hurt in this world. And that is why it is so important.

How to become more patient with friends, enemies and circumstances


Creative Commons License photo credit: Hugo Chinaglia

Now I would like to give you some simple suggestions for how you can become a more patient person. These tactics will not work over night. They will take months and years of dedication and committed effort. But, if you can stay focussed and driven you will find that your patience develops quite naturally. After all, I truly believe that we are all patient creatures at heart.

1. Look at the bigger picture
One of the best ways to become a more patient person is to take a step back from your scenario and look at the bigger picture. Sometimes in the heat of the moment this can be extremely hard to do. But, if you can manage to remind yourself of this technique you can be assured that you will see results.

So what do I mean by “look at the bigger picture”? Well, it is quite simple. The next time a friend does something to hurt you and you get angry try taking a look at the cause of their actions. Why did they do it? Did they do it to deliberately hurt you? I don’t think so. It is much more likely that they behaved in that way because there is something going wrong with their life at the moment. They might have just lost their job or been cut off in traffic. Viewing the bigger picture like this can help you get some perspective.

But you can take it even further. You can apply this on a bigger and more societal level. For example, if someone does something to piss you off you might want to think about the tough upbringing that they had or the fact that their weren’t presented with the same opportunties for growth that you were. As a result of missing out on those opportunities they decided, at that last moment with you, to do something nasty. But, instead of getting angry at them you are going to react with patience.

2. Understand that your enemy is your greatest teacher
One of the most significant ideas that the Buddha introduced to his students was the idea that your enemy is your greatest teacher. Why? Because only your enemies can give you the chance to develop true patience. If there was no one around to harm you, there would be no chance to develop real patience.

Let’s think about this logically for a second. We are people who are interested in self development. Some of us may meditate while others might just be interested in being better people. Regardless of what we are trying to do with our lives or which religion we belong to, we can all see the advantage of developing patience. Without it our ethics would be incomplete.

So, the next time someone tries to hurt your feelings I want you to try to remember that this person is the kindest person you know. This person is your teacher, your guru, your master. This person is presenting you with an opportunity to develop the king of all virtues – patience. How could you possibly hate such a person?

3. Use your logic
The next suggestion that I want to give you is the idea that you can use logic to become more patient. In particular we should use the logic of cause and effect.

Let’s pretend that you are a pretty angry sort of a person. You might snap at your parents without much warning, yell at your coworkers or even criticize your friends for their minor faults. Over time you will find that people stop wanting to be around you. People start moving away. No body wants to be associated with an angry person because it just doesn’t feel very good.

So the next time you are presented with an opportunity for anger why not remind yourself of the logical progression of that anger? Why not remind yourself that if you continue to react like this you will soon find yourself alone, bitter and not very happy? This type of logic works.

4. Look inwards, not outwards
A funny thing happens when you start to meditate. You begin to realize that most of the problems that you experience in life are due to your perception of certain events, not the actual events themselves. In line with this I put it to you that one of the most powerful ways to become more patient is to learn to look inwards, no outwards.

Think of the last time you got angry. Think of the last time you lost your cool. Now be truly honest with yourself and ask whether or not the angry response had anything to do with you. I am betting that it did. Now as yourself this question: would everyone have become angry in that situation? If you answer is “no” then you can be certain that it had a lot to do with you.

The next time you feel like getting angry it would be excellent if you could try to become aware of it. Instead of focussing so much on the object of your anger you should look inwards at your own mind and your own reaction. Is it reasonable? Is it helpful? Is the anger really going to make the situation more bearable? I doubt it. Learning to look inwards is a fantastic skill to have in life because you will finally have a solution for all of the problems that the universe throws at you. The solution is you.

5. Understand that patience is the easier option
I don’t know about you but when I get angry it ruins my whole day. If someone did something to me and I allowed myself to become angry I stay angry for a long time. I might spend the whole day cursing that person or the situation that happened. It really is a lot of work.

One way to become more patient is to realize that patience is, in reality, the much easier option. You don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is not do something; get angry! This is quite hard for some people to accept at first but I guarantee that patience is easier than anger. It is easier in the short term and it is easier in the long term.

The next time you want to get angry and some one or some thing try and remember that anger is a lot of work. It stresses you out and it makes you feel lousy. Being patient is so much easier! This is one time when laziness is a good thing!

6. Think about the impact on others
I have several extremely powerful memories from my early childhood. One of these memories has stuck with me my entire life and it pops up all the time. The memory is of my father yelling at my mother and then watching the two get in to a big screaming match. The event left an indelible mark on my mind.

However, one good thing that came from that memory is the awareness that anger really does hurt other people. One single angry outburst can stay with a person their entire life. Take the example of domestic violence – a man may lose his temper and hit his girlfriend and for the rest of that poor woman’s existence she feels fearful and afraid of connecting to men. It really is very sad.

Next time you are thinking that anger is a good idea for the particular scenario that you are in I want you to remember how much it could damage the recipient. Is that something you really want to do? Do you really want to be that person?

Conclusion

Patience is a practice. It takes time and it takes effort. We are so accustomed to anger that we find the natural state of patience to be quite foreign. However, as I mentioned, patience is something that is innate in all of us. The tips I have given you today are just methods that will help you reconnect with it. I hope they are of some benefit to somebody.

If you have any other tips or ideas about patience please leave a comment. Patience is a person favorite quality of mine and I am always interested to learn new ways to work on it.

Originally posted on January 23, 2009 @ 1:43 am