Yesterday I had a conversation with some colleagues, and one of them said she wished she had time for herself. Time to meditate and just think about her. I asked her why she didn't. She responded with comments like, when she gets home from work she is tired, or she wants to watch her programs on television. This was pretty much the response from all of them. "I have time for myself every night," I told them. That in my house we read, write, play guitar, meditate. We don't have television , we turn the phone except for one hour during the day. My wife owns the phone, I don't even own a phone, and never will. I explained to them that if you wait for time to do these things, it will never happen. We have to make time. I told them that the first thing they needed to do was get rid of the television. This is such a waste, plus it is making people dumber than they already are. Then I told them to get rid of their cell phone if possible, and if not possible turn it on for only one hour a day. I don't own one and never will. Cell phones are stupid as anyway. We don't need them, people just think they do. "Those things would be a good start," I told them. Then I told them if they are not willing to do those things , then quit bitching about their shit. I wasn't the most popular at the table, but they brought it up. Make the time people, make the time. Have a good day Keith.
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I just finished reading a great book titled, Tuesdays's with Morrie by Mitch Albom. What a great book. This man lived more while he was dying than many of us live at all. There are many life lessons to be learned in this short work. All of us writer's usually write about life lessons. Our own life lessons that we have experienced that we share with other's on paper. If your a fiction writer of course, we put a spin on our work, to make it more interesting, but nevertheless, it is our experience. In this book, Morrie states that you can't learn how to live until you learn how to die. What I take from that statement is that you have to accept dying as a part of life and be at peace with it, just as we have to accept certain things in living and be at peace with that. This is an older novel and perhaps I am way behind in reading it, but if you haven't read it, check it out. It is inspirational, and what I found most interesting about it was that I have never read a book about dying that was so inspirational. If we take this dying man's advice, then our life will be much happier. Question is, will we take his words to heart? Have a good day.---Keith
A 69-year-old monk who scientists call the 'world's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes per day
Matthieu Ricard, 69, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk who has been called "the world's happiest man." That's because he participated in a 12-year brain study on meditation and compassion led by a neuroscientist from the University of Wisconsin, Richard Davidson. Davidson hooked up Ricard's head to 256 sensors and found that when Ricard was meditating on compassion, his mind was unusually light. Simple Capacity details the findings: "The scans showed that when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produces a level of gamma waves – those linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory – ‘never reported before in the neuroscience literature’, Davidson said.The scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex compared to its right counterpart, allowing him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity." Ricard — who says he sometimes meditates for entire days without getting bored — admits he's a generally happy person (although he feels his "happiest man" title is a media-driven overstatement). He spoke with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Here's his advice for how to be happy. Stop thinking "me, me, me"To Ricard, the answer comes down to altruism. The reason is because thinking about yourself, and how to make things better for yourself all the time, is exhausting, stressful, and ultimately leads to unhappiness. "It's not the moral ground," Ricard explained. "It's simply that me, me, me all day long is very stuffy. And it's quite miserable, because you instrumentalize the whole world as a threat, or as a potential sort of interest [to yourself]." If you want to be happy, Ricard says you should strive to be "benevolent" which will not only make you feel better, but it will also make others like you better. (That's not to say you should let other people take advantage of you, Ricard warns, but you should generally strive to be kind within reason.) "If your mind is filled with benevolence, you know —the passion and solidarity ... this is a very healthy state of mind that is conducive to flourishing," Ricard says. "So you, yourself, are in a much better mental state. Your body will be healthier, so [it] has been shown. And also, people will perceive it as something nice." That all sounds great in theory, but how does a person actually become altruistic and benevolent and not let selfish thoughts creep in? Start training your mind like you'd train to run a marathonRicard believes everyone has the ability to have a lighter mind because there's a potential for goodness in every human being (unless you're, say, a serial killer, and there's something actually chemically abnormal going on with your brain). But like a marathon runner who needs to train before he or she can run 26 miles, people who want to be happier need to train their minds. Ricard's preferred way of training his is meditation. "With mental training, we can always bring [our level of happiness] to a different level," Ricard explains. "It's like running. If I train, I might run a marathon. I might not become an Olympic champion, but there is a huge difference between training and not training. So why should that not apply to the mind?... There is [a] view that benevolence, attention, emotional balance and resilience are skills that can be trained. So if you put them all together, you could say that happiness is a skill that can be trained." Ok, so how does one train their mind to be happier? Just spend 15 continuous minutes per day thinking happy thoughtsStart by thinking happy thoughts for 10 to 15 minutes per day, Ricard says. Typically when we experience feelings of happiness and love, it's fleeting and then something else happens, and we move on to the next thought. But Ricard says instead, concentrate on not letting your mind get distracted and keep focused on the positive emotions for the next stretch of time. And if you do that training every day, even just 2 weeks later you can feel positive mental results. And if you practice that for fifty years like Ricard has, you can become a happiness pro too. That's backed up by neuroscientists by the way. Davidson found from his study that even 20 minutes of daily meditation can make people much happier overall. |
AuthorKeith Kelly currently lives in Rio Rancho New Mexico. Archives
October 2020
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