Just one thing : developing a Buddha brain one simple practice at a time

26. Have Insight

By insight, I mean understanding yourself, particularly how your mind constructs your reactions to things.

Let’s say I’ve just come home from a frazzling day of work, and my wife gives me a hug and then asks in passing, “Did you get any eggs?” (which we had not discussed; I hadn’t known we needed any)—and I get irritated, tense in my body, and a little sad. What’s happening here?

Her casual, neutral question about the eggs—the stimulus—led to a response of irritation, tension, and sadness due to several factors at work in my mind: stress, a sensitivity to possible criticism (that I had forgotten the eggs) from growing up with a fault-finding (although very loving) mother, and my guilt about not doing enough housework. If those factors disappeared, so would my upset.

Recall a moderately irritating or worrying situation of your own: what were your reactions to it, and why were you reacting that way? Consider stress, fatigue, your temperament, how you interpret certain events, your history with the others involved, and the impact of your childhood.

As with everybody else, your reactions come from causes inside your mind. Therefore, if you can change the causes, you can change your reactions for the better:

Seeing, in the moment, how your mind has colored your perceptions and turbocharged your emotions can transform your reactions—sometimes rapidly and dramatically, like waking up from a bad dream.

Over time, you can gradually alter or get better control over the mental factors that wear on your well-being, relationships, and effectiveness.

How

Begin by shifting attention away from the external causes of your reactions—like what someone said to you—and toward the causes inside your own mind, such as how you interpret what was said, attribute intentions to the speaker, or feel especially prickly because of your history with that person.

The mind is like a great mansion, with cozy dens, dusty closets, and dank cellars. Insight explores it, opening closed doors and making sense of what it finds: sometimes a treasure chest, sometimes smelly old shoes—though truly, it’s usually treasure, including your natural goodness, sincere efforts, and lovingkindness.

Nonetheless, it can feel scary to look around (especially in those cellars); these suggestions could help you keep going:

Remember the benefits of insight. For example, I’m very independent, so I remind myself that the main forces controlling me are actually inside my own head (e.g., beliefs left over from childhood); understanding them reduces their power over me.

Bring to mind the feeling of being with someone who cares about you—like a friend walking with you down a dark street. As they say in AA: “The mind is a dangerous neighborhood; don’t go in alone.”

Regard what you find without making it good or bad. It’s not you. It’s only a sensation, feeling, thought, or want arising in a room in your mind. Try to be accepting rather than self-critical, compassionate rather than shaming. Everybody, me included, has wild stuff in the mind; it’s a jungle in there!

Drawing on the resources in the bullet points just above, look around inside your mind. Now sense beneath the surface and ask yourself one or more of these questions:

What is softer—such as hurt, sadness, or fear—below hard and defended stuff like anger or justifications?

What am I really wanting, deep down? What are the good desires underlying bad behaviors? Such as the normal desire for safety at the root of anxious rumination.

What material here is from a time when I was younger? (For example, because I was often excluded from groups in school, I still sometimes feel like an outsider in groups when I’m really not.)

What am I getting stuck on? Like fixating on a position or goal—or even a word. What am I trying to control that’s not controllable (e.g., whether someone loves me)?

How is my gender shaping my reactions? Or my temperament, cultural and ethnic background, or personality?

You can use these methods for insight on the fly, when things come up for you. And you can use them to drill down into a specific issue, such as sensitivity to criticism, longing for approval, tension with your parents, or efforts to get into a good relationship

Whatever you find, try to relax and open to it. Helpful or unhelpful, it’s just furniture in the mansion of your mind.

27. Use Your Will

Life has challenges. To meet them, you need to be able to push through difficulties, stretch for other people, restrain problematic desires while pursuing wholesome ones, and do the hard thing when you must.

This means using your will.

We commonly equate will with willpower—the deliberate application of vigorous effort, such as lifting the last, strenuous rep of weight in a gym.

But will is a larger matter: it’s a context of commitment, as for a mother devoted to the care of her family. Will is giving yourself over to your highest purposes, which lift you and carry you along. This kind of will feels like being pulled by inspiration rather than pushed by stubbornness. Surrendered rather than driven.

How

What does it actually mean, to make your highest purposes the engine of your life? As a framework for the answer, I’d like to draw on four qualities of a strongly dedicated person identified by the Buddha which have meant a lot to me personally: ardent, resolute, diligent, and mindful. Please consider how each of these could help you be more willful in one or more key areas, such as being braver in intimate relationships, completing your education, doing your fair share of housework, or sticking with a diet.

Ardent(a variation on ardor) means wholehearted, enthusiastic, and eager. Not dry, mechanical, or merely dogged. For example, why do you care about what happens in this aspect of your life, why does it matter? Let yourself be heartfelt and passionate about your aims and activities here.

Resolutemeans you are wholly committed and unwavering. Bring to mind an experience of absolute determination, such as a time you protected a loved one. You may feel a firming in the chest, a sense of every bit of you pulling for the same thing. Explore this feeling as it might apply to a particular part of your life. Imagine yourself staying resolute here as you face temptations—saying no, for example, to the donuts offered in a meeting—and take in the ways this would feel good to you. Get in touch with your resolve each morning, surrender to it, and let it guide you through the day.

Diligentmeans you are conscientious and thorough. Not as a grind, not from guilt or compulsion, but because—from the Latin root for “diligence”—you “love, take delight in” the stepping stones toward your higher purposes. This is where ardency and resolution often break down, so to help yourself:

Keep in mind the reasons for your efforts; open to and try to feel their rewards, such as knowing that you are doing the best you can in the service of a good cause and deserve what’s called “the bliss of blamelessness.”

Translate big purposes into small, doable daily actions. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed.

Find the structures, routines, and allies that help you keep going.

Tell the truth to yourself about what’s actually happening. Are you doing what you had intended to do? If you’re not, admit it to yourself. Then start over: re-find your wholehearted commitment, see what there is to do, and do it.

Mindfulmeans that you know if you’re being willful or lackadaisical. You’re aware of your inner world, of the mental factors that block the will (e.g., self-doubt, lethargy, distractibility) and those that fuel it (e.g., enthusiasm, strength, grit, tenacity). You recognize if you’ve grown willful to a fault, caught up in purposes that are outdated or not worth their cost. You’re able to make skillful course corrections that keep you aligned with your highest purposes.

Last, enjoy your will. Exercising it can get kind of grim if you’re not careful. But actually, a person can be both lighthearted and strong-willed. Take pleasure in the strength in your will, and the fruits it brings you.

28. Take Refuge

In Hawaii one time, my wife Jan and I visited a “place of refuge.” People fleeing for their lives could come there and be sheltered. Related customs exist around the world; for example, in medieval Europe, a person could take refuge in a church and be protected there.

Less formally, we all need everyday refuges from challenges, sorrows, and the occasional sheer craziness of the world. Otherwise, you get too exposed to the cold winds of life, and too drained by the daily round. Without refuge, after awhile you can feel like you’re running on empty.

Refuges include people, places, memories, and ideas—anyone or anything that provides reliable sanctuary and protection, that’s reassuring, comforting, and supportive, so you can let down your guard and gather strength and wisdom.

A refuge could be curling up in bed with a good book, having a meal with friends, or making a To Do list to organize your day. Or remembering your grandmother, feeling strength in your body, trusting the findings of science, talking with a trusted friend or counselor, having faith, or reminding yourself that although you’re not rich, you’re financially okay.

The world’s religions also have refuges that may speak to you, such as sacred settings, texts, individuals, teachings, rituals, objects, and congregations.

Personally, one of my favorite refuges is practice itself: the theme of this book. It makes me feel good to trust that if I keep plugging away, then I can gradually become happier and more loving.

What gives you a sense of refuge?

How

Make a written or mental list of at least a few things that are refuges for you. And if you can, take a moment each day to consciously take refuge in those things.

You can “take refuge” in several ways:

Go to a refuge

Come from a refuge

Abide as a refuge

Sense a refuge at work in your life

Personally, it’s been a breakthrough to imagine that my refuges already exist inside me, that I can live from them, as an expression of them in this life. When you take refuge in this way, you are giving yourself over to wholesome forces, and letting them work through you and carry you along.

You can take refuge explicitly, with words, by saying things in your mind like I take refuge in ___________ . Or I abide as ___________ . Or ___________ flows through me.

Or just sense the refuge without words: feel what it is like for you to be in it, safe and supported, home.

Then repeat your way of taking refuge for each of your refuges. Try to do this every day, as soon as you remember to do so. It only takes a few minutes or less. And you can even do it in the middle of traffic or a meeting.

Once you have finished taking refuge, sense the good feelings and thoughts sinking deeply into you, filling you up, and weaving themselves into your being—a resource and inner light that you’ll take with you wherever you go.

29. Risk the Dreaded Experience

When things happened to you as a child—or you saw them happening to others—you naturally formed expectations about what you’d likely feel in similar situations in the future. Based on these expectations, you developed responses: do this to get pleasure, do that to avoid pain. Then experiences in adulthood added additional, related expectations and responses.

Consequently, the following sequence routinely happens inside you, me, and everyone else many times a day—usually within a few seconds and often unconsciously:

A feeling or desire emerges in the mind, seeking expression.

This activates an associated expectation of emotional pain (from subtle unease to extreme trauma) if the feeling or desire is expressed; this pain is the “dreaded experience.”

This expectation triggers an inhibition of the original feeling or desire in order to avoid risking the dreaded experience.

For example, (1) you’d like more caring from someone, but (2) but your childhood has led you to be cautious about revealing those vulnerable longings, so (3) you play it safe and don’t ask for anything.

Take a moment to find one or more ways that this sequence—(1) an emerging self-expressionleads to (2) an associated expectation, which leads to (3) an inhibiting response—unfolds in your mind. Here are some examples:

(1) You want to get closer (e.g., emotionally, physically) to someone, but (2) moving closer exposes you to the risk of rejection, so (3) you do something that is distancing.

(1) A feeling comes up (e.g., sadness, anger) but (2) expressing this feeling (or feelings in general) was discouraged in your childhood, so (3) you change the subject, make a joke, or otherwise move away from the emotion.

(1) A desire arises to make something happen (e.g., aim for a new goal at work, write a song, plant a garden), but (2) you fear being unsuccessful, unsupported, scorned, or thwarted if you stick your neck out, so (3) you set aside your dream one more day.

Sometimes this is reasonable. For instance, (1) the urge to tell your boss to stuff it (2) prompts an expectation of big trouble if you do, (3) so you keep quiet.

But if you’re like me and most people, your expectations of pain are often unreasonable. The negativity bias of the brain makes you overestimate both the likelihood of a bad outcome from self-expression and the amount of pain you’ll feel if something bad actually happens. Further, the deep-down expectations that most shape self-expression developed when you were a child, so it is normal for them to be:

Concrete, simplistic, and rigid—even though now you can think in more abstract, complex, and flexible ways

Based on a time when you (a) were stuck with certain people (e.g., family members, peers), (b) had few resources, and (c) felt pain keenly—even though now you have much more (a) choice in your relationships, (b) assertiveness, money, and other resources, and (c) capacity to cope with pain.

These unreasonable expectations lead to responses that are needlessly pinched and cramped: we numb out internally, muzzle ourselves, stay safe and distant in relationships, and shrink our dreams. The experiences we dread hem us in, like taboo lands surrounding a shrinking little pasture, controlling us, telling us: “Don’t chance that, live smaller.” And most of the time, we suffer these costs without even realizing it.

What’s the alternative?

It’s to risk the dreaded experience—and reap the rewards that result. For example:

(1) Wishing for something from an intimate partner, (2) you feel nervous about saying it, yet you know it’s likely to be well-received and that you’ll be fundamentally all right if it’s not, so (3) you decide to speak up and risk feeling let down—and with some zigs and zags, it works out pretty well.

(1) You don’t feel your boss fully appreciates your abilities, but (2) he reminds you of your critical father and you dread those old feelings of hurt and low worth if you ask for more challenging (and interesting) assignments. So you plan carefully and identify a project he’ll probably support, and you bring to mind, again and again, positive experiences of feeling seen and valued by others to help you cope if he is dismissive of you. (3) Having done your homework, you approach your boss with strength and clarity, which increases your odds of success.

(1) You want to start a business. (2) Even though you worry about looking like a fool if it fails, you remind yourself that most people respect those who stick their necks out and have an entrepreneurial spirit. (3) So you start that business and do your best, at peace with whatever may happen.

How

Start by observing how this sequence proceeds in your mind: (1) self-expression → (2) expectation of pain → (3) inhibition. This is the most important step (which is why the explanation above is longer than usual). You’ll frequently see it in retrospect, when you replay a response you had in a situation—a (3)—and realize that its function was to shut down your self-expression. At bottom, many of our reactions are strategies (often unconscious ones) for avoiding a dreaded experience.

Next, challenge your expectations. Are they really true? Help yourself appreciate the fact that expressing your emotions and wants—in reasonably skillful ways—will usually lead to good results. Speak to yourself like a wise, firm, and encouraging swim coach talking you through the first time you dove into a pool, with lines like Other people have done this; it turned out okay for them and it can be the same for you. You have the abilities to make this work. Yes, it won’t be perfect and might be uncomfortable, but you will be all right. I believe in you. Believe in yourself.

Then, move out of your comfort zone by taking calculated risks. Start with easy situations in which the odds of self-expression causing a bad result are small—and even if the bad result were to occur, it would be only mildly uncomfortable for you. Then work your way up the ladder of increasingly vulnerable and high-stakes self-expression. A wonderful freedom grows in the heart as you do this; you’re less cowed by dreaded experiences and not clipping your wings to avoid them. If a particular self-expression does lead to a painful result for you, notice that you can cope with this pain and that it soon comes to an end, and absorb the reasonable lessons (e.g., it’s not wise to confide in a certain friend). Overall, you could well decide that it’s worth occasionally feeling some pain in order to gain the much greater pleasures of fuller self-expression.

Last, take it in when you risk self-expression and it turns out fine (as it usually does). Really highlight it in your mind when pessimistic expectations don’t come true, or when feared events do occur but they’re not all that upsetting. Open to the satisfaction of expressing yourself, and let it sink in. Feel the healthy pride and self-respect earned by being brave enough to dive in.

30. Aspire without Attachment

To live is to pursue goals. Out of healthy self-interest and kindness to yourself, it’s natural and fine to seek security, success, comfort, enjoyment, creative expression, physical and mental health, connection, respect, love, self-actualization, and spiritual development.

The question is whether you go after your goals with stress and drivenness—in a word, with attachment—or with outer effort and inner peacefulness, rewarded by the journey itself no matter the destination: with aspiration.

The difference between attachment and aspiration got really clear for me one time in Boulder, Colorado, where I’d gone with my old friend Bob for a week of rock climbing. Our guide, Dave, asked us what our goals were, and I said I wanted to climb 5.11 (a stiff grade) by the end of the week; at that point I could barely climb 5.8. Bob stared at me and then said this was crazy, that I’d only get frustrated and disappointed (Bob’s pretty driven, and doesn’t like falling short). I said no, that it would be a win for me either way: my goal was so ambitious that if I failed to reach it there’d be no shame, and if I did manage to fulfill it, wow, that would be a ton of fun. So I kept banging away, getting steadily better: 5.8, 5.9, easy 5.10, hard 5.10 . . . and then on the last day, I followed Dave without a fall on solid 5.11. Yay!

At the heart of attachment is craving—broadly defined—which contains and leads to many kinds of suffering (from subtle to intense). And while it may be an effective goad for a while—the stick that whips the horse into a lather—in the long run it is counterproductive, when that horse keels over. On the other hand, aspiration—working hard toward your goals without getting hung up on the results—feels good, plus it helps you stretch and grow without worrying about looking bad. Paradoxically, holding your goals lightly increases the chance of attaining them, while being attached—and thus fearing failure—gets in the way of peak performance.

If you sit on the couch your whole life and never take care of or go after anything important, you can avoid the pitfalls of attachment. But if you have a job, intimate relationship, family, service, art, or spiritual calling, the challenge is to stay firm in your course, with dedication and discipline, centered in aspiration.

How

Aspiration is about liking, while attachment is about wanting—and these involve separate systems in your brain (Berridge and Robinson 1998; Pecina, Smith, and Berridge 2006). Liking what is pleasant and disliking what is unpleasant are normal and not a problem. Trouble comes when we tip into the craving and strain inherent in wanting, wanting, wanting what’s pleasant to continue and what’s unpleasant to end. So learn to recognize the differences between liking and wanting in your body, emotions, attitudes, and thoughts. I think you’ll find that liking feels open, relaxed, and flexible while wanting feels tight, pressed, contracted, and fixated.

Then, see if you can stay with liking without slipping into wanting:

Help little alarm bells to go off in your mind—Alert! Caution!—when you get that familiar feeling of wanting/craving, especially when it’s subtle and floating around in the back of your mind.

Relax any sense of “gotta have it.” Feel into the ways your life is and will be basically all right even if you don’t attain a particular goal. Seek results from a place of fullness, not scarcity or lack.

Try to remain relatively peaceful—even in the midst of passionate activity—since intensity, tension, fear, and anger all fuel strong wanting.

Release any fixation on a certain outcome. Recognize that all you can do is tend to the causes, but you can’t force the results (chapter 37).

Keep the sense of “me” to a minimum. Success or failure will come from dozens of factors, only a few of which are under your control. Win or lose, don’t take it personally.

Along the way, watch out for the widespread belief that if you’re not fiercely driven toward your goals, you’re kind of a wimp. Remember that you can have strong effort toward your aims without falling into attachment to the results. Consider the description I once heard of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who has accomplished many things as a peace advocate and teacher:

A cloud, a butterfly, and a bulldozer

31. Keep Going

I once attended a workshop led by Joseph Goldstein, a Buddhist teacher. I had realized something about the lack of a fixed self, and shared the insight with him. He nodded and said, “Yes, right.” I felt seen for taking a step forward. Then he smiled and added something I’ve never forgotten: “Keep going.”

Of all the factors that lead to happiness and success—such as class origins, intelligence, personality, character, looks, luck, race,—the one that typically makes the most difference over time is persistence. Knocked down ten times, you get up ten times.

If you keep going, you might not reach your goal—but if you stop, you’ll never reach it.

We respect people who persist. There’s a magic in determination that draws others toward it and elicits their support.

And you just don’t know when your day will finally come. There are so many stories of “overnight success” that actually arrived after many years of effort, often including some failures. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was an obscure colonel in 1939—and nearly forty-nine years old—when Germany invaded Poland to begin World War II; four years later he was in charge of all Allied forces in Europe; nine years after that he was elected president.

How

Make sure your goals are worthy of your perseverance. You can be determined to a fault. Don’t “keep going” down a tunnel with no cheese. Consider the collateral damage: are you winning battles but losing the “war” of overall health, well-being, integrity, and welfare of others?

Know the feeling of tenacious persistence. It could be fierce, strong, stubborn, unyielding, clear, inspired, surrendered, on-mission, purposeful, focused, committed—or all of these. Recall a time you had this feeling, and know it again in your body. Call it up whenever you need to draw on resources inside to keep going.

Take the step that’s right in front of you—one after another. I’ve taught many people to rock climb: Beginners will often have one foot down low and one foot at knee level, on solid placements, plus two good handholds, yet they can’t find any new holds, so they feel stuck. But when they simply stand up on the higher foothold—taking the step that’s available—that brings higher handholds and footholds within reach.

Find the pace you can sustain; life’s a marathon, not a sprint. For example, on my first Boy Scout backpack trip, I was a skinny, nerdy, unathletic kid. But I wanted to be the first to our campsite. We set out and the burly “alpha” boys raced ahead, while I kept up a slow-but-steady pace. After a few miles, I passed them sitting down on the side of the trail. They were startled to see me trucking along and soon got up and raced past me. But after another few miles, once again they were laid out by the side of the trail, this time really fried as I walked past them—and I was very happy to get the first, really cool tent spot.

Keep going in your mind even if you can’t make any headway in the world. Maybe you’re truly stuck in some situation—a job, an illness, a certain sort of marriage. But at least you can continue to reflect on what’s happening, learn to cope with it better, and love the people around you. And over time maybe things will improve. As Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

Have faith that your efforts will pay off. You may have heard this teaching story: A bunch of frogs fell into a vat of cream. They couldn’t jump out, and one after another drowned. But one frog refused to quit and kept swimming and staying alive, even after all the other frogs had died. Finally its movements churned the cream to solid butter—and it hopped out to safety.

Keep churning!

PART FOUR:

ENGAGE THE WORLD

32. Be Curious

A couple years ago, my father and I were driving to the ocean, near where I live north of San Francisco. Born on a ranch in North Dakota in 1918, he’s a retired zoologist who loves birds, and I wanted to show him some wetlands.

The twisting road was carved from the side of coastal hills plunging to the sea. After a while we paused at a pullout for a pit stop. Returning from the bushes, I found my dad scrutinizing dried, scraggly grasses sticking out from the mini-cliff next to our car. “Look, Rick,” he said excitedly, “see how the layers of dirt are different, so the plants growing in them are different, too!” He sounded like a little kid who’d discovered an elephant in his backyard.

But that’s my dad: endlessly curious, never bored. I and ten thousand other drivers had sped around that turn seeing nothing but another meaningless road cut. But he had not taken the commonplace for granted. He wondered about what he saw and looked for connections, explanations. For him, the world wears a question mark.

This attitude of wonder, interest, and investigation brings many rewards. For example, engaging your mind actively as you age helps preserve the functioning of your brain. Use it or lose it!

Plus you gather lots of useful information—about yourself, other people, the world—by looking around. You also see the larger context, and thus become less affected by any single thing itself: not so driven to get more of what you like, and not so stressed and unsettled by what you don’t like.

As our daughter once pointed out, curious people are typically not self-centered. Sure, they are interested in the inner workings of their own psyche—curiosity is a great asset for healing, growth, and awakening—but they’re also very engaged with the world and others. Maybe that’s why we usually like curious people.

How

To begin with, curiosity requires a willingness to see whatever is under the rocks you turn over. Usually it’s neutral or positive. But occasionally you find something that looks creepy or smells bad. Then you need courage, to face an uncomfortable aspect of yourself, other people, or the world. In this case, it helps to observe it from a distance, and try not to identify with it. Surround it with spaciousness, knowing that whatever you’ve found is just one part of a larger whole and (usually) a passing phenomenon.

With that willingness, curiosity expresses itself in action, through looking deeper and wider—and then looking again.

Much of what we’re curious about is really neat, such as the development of children, the doings of friends, or the workings of a new computer. And sometimes it pays to be curious about some sort of issue. As an illustration, let’s say you’ve been feeling irritable about a situation. (You also can apply the practices below to different aspects of your mind, or to other people or to situations in the world.)

Looking deeper means being interested in what’s under the surface. For example, what previous situations does it remind you of—particularly ones when you were young and most affected by things?

Looking wider means broadening your view:

What are other aspects of the situation, such as the good intentions of others, or your own responsibility for events?

What factors could be at work in your mind? For example, have you worked too much lately, or felt underappreciated, or not eaten or slept well? Did you appraise the situation as a lot worse, or a lot more threatening, than it actually was? Did you take it personally?

Looking again means being active in your investigating. You keep unraveling the knot of whatever you’re curious about, teasing apart the threads, opening them up and seeing what’s what. You don’t take the first explanation as the final one. There’s an underlying attitude of wonder and fearlessness. Like a child, a cat, a scientist, a saint, or a poet, you see the world anew.

Again.

And again.

33. Enjoy Your Hands

Sometimes it’s worth remembering the obvious: you engage the world with your body—often with your hands.

Human hands are unique in the animal kingdom in their dexterity and sensitivity. Their capacity for skilled action helped drive the evolution of the neural networks that handle sophisticated planning, decision-making, and self-control.

Your hands reach, touch, caress, hold, manipulate, and let go. They type, stir pots, brush hair, wash dishes, shift gears, scratch ears, open doors, throw stones, hold loved ones, and help you snuggle into bed. They may not be perfect, and with aging, they may sometimes be in pain, but they’re always lovely and vital.

Appreciating your hands makes you appreciate living. Being mindful of them—paying attention to what they’re feeling and doing—is a simple and available way to drop down into a more sensual, in-the-body connection with the world, including the people you touch.

How

Right now, take a moment to be aware of your hands. What are they doing? What are they touching? They are always touching something, if only the air. What are they sensing? Warm or cool? Hard or soft?

Move your fingertips. Notice how incredibly sensitive they are, with about 20,000 nerve endings per square inch. Play with the sensations of your fingers stroking your palm, your thumb touching each finger in turn, the fingers of one hand caressing the fingers of the other one.

Soak up the enjoyment your hands give you. Use your hands to draw you into pleasure such as the warmth of holding a cup of coffee, the relief of scratching an itchy head, or the satisfaction of getting a pesky button through its hole.

As appropriate, touch others more. Feel the grip of a handshake, a friend’s shoulder, a lover’s skin, a child’s hair, a dog’s or cat’s fur.

Feel the skillfulness of your hands: steering a car, writing a note, replacing a lightbulb, sawing wood, planting bulbs, measuring garlic, peeling an onion. Feel their strength in holding a knife, making a fist, lugging a suitcase.

Watch your hands talk: pointing, rising and falling, opening and closing, thumbs-up, okay, waving hello and goodbye.

Many times a day, try to sink awareness into your hands.

Feel them feeling your life.

34. Don’t Know

Once upon a time, a scholar and a saint lived on the same street, and they arranged to meet. The scholar asked the saint about the meaning of life. She said a few words about love and joy, then paused to reflect, and the scholar jumped in with a long discourse on Western and Eastern philosophy. When the scholar was finished, the saint proposed some tea, prepared it with care, and began pouring it slowly into the scholar’s cup. Inch by inch the tea rose. It approached the lip of the cup, and she kept pouring. It ran over the top of the cup and onto the table, and she still kept pouring. The scholar burst out: “What are you doing?! You can’t put more into a cup that’s already full!” The saint set down the teapot and said, “Exactly.”

A mind that’s open and spacious can absorb lots of useful information. On the other hand, a mind that’s already full—of assumptions, beliefs about the intentions of others, preconceived ideas—misses important details or contexts, jumps to conclusions, and has a hard time learning anything new.

For example, let’s say a friend says something hurtful to you. What benefits would come from an initial attitude that’s something like this: Hmm, what’s this about? I’m not sure, don’t entirely know. First, you’d buy yourself time to figure things out before putting your foot in your mouth. Second, you’d naturally investigate and learn more: Did you hear correctly? Did you do something wrong you should apologize for? Is something bothering your friend unrelated to you? Did your friend simply misunderstand you? Third, she’d probably be more open and less defensive with you; a know-it-all is pretty irritating.

The great child psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that there are essentially two kinds of learning:

Assimilation—We incorporate new information into an existing belief system.

Accommodation—We change a belief system based on new information.

Both are important, but accommodation is more fundamental and far-reaching. Nonetheless, it’s harder to do, since abandoning or transforming long-held beliefs can feel dizzying, even frightening. That’s why it’s important to keep finding our way back to that wonderful openness a child has, seeing a cricket or toothbrush or mushroom for the very first time: child mind, beginner’s mind . . . don’t-know mind.

How

For a few minutes, or for a day, a week—or a lifetime—let yourself not know:

Be especially skeptical of what you’re sure is true. These are the beliefs that often get us in the most trouble.

In conversation, don’t assume you know where other people are headed. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say; you’ll figure it out just fine when it’s your turn. Remember how you feel when someone acts like they know what you’re “really” thinking, feeling, or wanting.

Let your eyes travel over familiar objects—like the stuff on a dinner table—and notice what it’s like during that brief interval, maybe a second or so, after you’ve focused on an object but before the verbal label (e.g., “salt,” “glass”) has come into awareness.

Or go for a walk. Notice how the mind tries to categorize and label—to know—the things around you, so it can solve problems and keep you alive. Appreciate your mind—“Good boy! Good girl!”—and then explore letting go of needing to know.

Ask yourself if it’s important to you to be a person with the right answers, the one who knows. What would it be like to lay down that burden?

This may seem a little cosmic, but it’s down-to-earth: Look at something and ask yourself if you know what it is. Suppose it’s a cup. Do you really know what a “cup” is, deep down? You say it’s made of atoms, of electrons, protons, quarks. But do you know what a quark is? You say it’s energy, or space-time, or sparkling fairy dust beyond human ken, or whatever—but really, do you ever, can you ever, actually know what energy or space-time truly is?? We live our lives surrounded by objects that we navigate and manipulate—spoons, cars, skyscrapers—while never truly knowing what any of it actually is. And neither does anyone else, even the world’s greatest scientists.

Since you don’t really know what a spoon is, do you even know what you are? Or what you are truly capable of? Or how high you could actually soar? Consider any limiting assumptions about your own life . . . how you’ve “known” that your ideas were not very good, that others would laugh (or that it would matter if they did), that no one would back you, that swinging for the fences just means striking out. What happens if you apply “don’t know” to these assumptions?

Notice how relaxing and good it feels to lighten up about needing to know. Take in those good feelings so you’ll feel more comfortable hanging out in don’t-know mind.

May you know less after this practice of not-knowing than when you began.

And therefore, know more than ever!

35. Do What You Can

Researchers have shown that it is remarkably easy to produce “learned helplessness” in dogs, whose neural circuitry for motivation and emotion is quite similar to ours. Then it takes much, much more training to get the dogs to unlearn their helpless passivity (Seligman 1972).

People are much the same. We, too, can be easily trained in learned helplessness, which can be tough to undo. Think about some of the ways you’ve felt pushed around by external forces, and how that’s affected you. Learned helplessness fosters depression, anxiety, pessimism, low self-worth, and less effort toward goals.

As a human being like any other, your biological vulnerability to learned helplessness makes it very important that you recognize where you do in fact have some power, and that you take the actions that are available to you—even if they must be only inside your own head.

How

Begin by considering a useful idea from Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Imagine a circle containing the things you have influence over, and another circle containing the things you’re concerned about. Where those circles overlap is the sweet spot where you can actually make a difference in the things that matter to you.

To be sure, sometimes there are things we care about but can’t change personally, like people going hungry. I’m not saying just ignore those things or be indifferent to them. We should focus on what we can do, such as bearing witness to the suffering of others and letting it move our hearts, staying informed, and looking for opportunities to make a material difference, such as helping at a homeless shelter.

But trying to control things that are out of your hands will plant seeds of helplessness, make you suffer, and undermine your capacity to exercise the influence you do have.

Ask yourself: How could I pull my time, money, energy, attention, or worry away from stones that will never give blood or houses built on sand—and instead, shift these resources to where they will actually make a difference?

Then take an inventory of the key strengths and other resources you do have. Your circle of influence is probably a lot bigger than you think it is!

Consider how you could draw on some of those resources to take beneficial actions in ways you haven’t ever done, or have never sustained. Challenge assumptions, like: “Oh, I just couldn’t do that.” Are you sure? Bring to mind someone you know who is very self-confident, and then ask yourself: “If I were that confident, what new things would I do?”

In particular, think about actions you could take inside your own mind. Compared to trying to change the world or your body, usually your mind is where you have the most influence, where the results are most enduring and consequential, and where you have the greatest opportunity for a sense of efficacy and a chance to undo feelings of helplessness. For example, how could you nudge your emotional reactions in a better direction over time, or develop more mindfulness or warm-heartedness? These are all within your reach.

When I don’t know what to do about some difficulty, sometimes I think of a saying from a boy named Nkosi Johnson, who lived in South Africa. Like many children there, Nkosi was born with HIV, and he died when he was twelve. Before that happened, he became a nationally known advocate for people with AIDS. His “mantra,” as he called it, always touches my heart: “Do all you can, with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.”

That’s all anyone can ever do.

36. Accept the Limits of Your Influence

The previous practice was to exercise the influence you do have: to do what you can.

Of course, it’s also true that each one of us is very limited in what we can do or change. You can’t change the past, or even this present moment. Looking to the future—the only thing you can actually affect—you have little influence over other people, including their thoughts, actions, or suffering. And even less influence over the economy, government policies, or international affairs. Things happen due to causes—and of the ten thousand causes upstream of this moment, most of them are out of your control.

You don’t have the power to make something happen if the prerequisites aren’t present. For example, you can’t grow roses without good soil and water.

If you’ve been pounding your head against a wall for a while, it’s time to stop, accept the way it is, and move on. As I sometimes tell myself: Don’t try to grow roses in a parking lot.

How

In general, when faced with some fact you can’t change—like you’re stuck in traffic, or you feel sad, or your young daughter has just poured milk on the floor (speaking of some of my own experiences)—ask yourself, Can I accept that this is the way it is, whether I like it or not?

Understand that acceptance does not mean approval, acquiescence, overlooking, or forgiveness. You are simply facing the facts, including the fact of your limited influence.

Notice the good feelings that come with acceptance, even if there are also painful feelings about various facts. Notice that acceptance usually brings you more resources for dealing with life’s difficulties.

If you cannot accept a fact—that it exists, that it has happened, whatever your preferences may be—then see if you can accept the fact that you cannot accept the fact!

More specifically, consider these reflections:

Review a life event that has troubled you. See if you can accept it as something that happened, like it or not—and as truly just a part of a much larger and probably mainly positive whole.

Consider an aspect of your body or personality that you don’t like. Tell the truth to yourself about the extent to which you can change it and make a clear choice as to what you will actually do. Then see if you can accept whatever remains as just the way it is—and as only a small part of the much larger and generally positive whole that is you.

Bring to mind a key person in your life. Have there been any ways that you’ve been trying to affect or change this person that are just not working? What limits to your influence here do you need to accept?

Consider something you’ve wanted to happen but been frustrated about—perhaps a career shift, or a certain school working out for your child, or a sale to a new customer. Are the necessary supporting conditions truly present? If they are, then maybe stick with it and be patient. But if they are not present—if you’re trying to grow roses in a parking lot—consider shifting your hopes and efforts in another direction.

37. Tend to the Causes

Let’s say you want to have your own apple tree. So you go to a nursery and pick out a good sapling, bring it home, and plant it carefully with lots of fertilizer in rich soil. Then you water it regularly, pick the bugs off, and prune it. If you keep tending to your tree, in a few years it will likely give you lots of delicious apples.

But can you make it grow apples? Nope, you can’t. All you can do is tend to the causes—but you can’t control the results. No one can. The most powerful person in the world can’t make a tree produce an apple.

Similarly, a teacher cannot make his students learn long division, a business owner can’t make her employees invent new products, and you cannot make someone love you. All we can do is promote the causes of the results we want.

This truth has two implications, one tough-minded and another that’s peaceful:

You are responsible for the causes you can tend to. If you are not getting the results you want in your life, ask yourself: Am I truly doing everything I reasonably can to promote the causes of those results?

You can relax attachment to results. When you understand that much of what determines whether they happen or not is out of your hands, you worry less about whether they’ll happen, and you suffer less if they don’t.

Paradoxically, focusing less on results and more on causes improves the odds of getting the results you want: you zero in on creating the factors that lead to success, and you aren’t worn down by stressing over the outcome.

How

Do what you can to lift your personal well-being. This is a global factor that will turbocharge all the other causes you tend to.

So ask yourself: what makes the most difference to my well-being? It could be something that seems little; for me, a big factor is when I go to bed, since that determines whether I can wake up in time to meditate in the morning, which transforms my whole day. It could also mean dropping something that brings you down, like needless arguments with other people.

Pick one thing that will lift your well-being and focus on this for a while.

Also consider a key area in your life where you are not getting the results you want, such as work, love, health, fun, or spirituality. In that area, identify one cause that will have big effects. For example, in a logjam, there’s usually a “key log” that will free up the whole mess if you get it to move.

For example, if you want to lose weight, tend to the cause of exercise. If you want a mate, tend to the cause of meeting new “qualified prospects.” If you want your kids to cooperate, tend to the cause of parental authority. If you want a better job, tend to the cause of an organized job search. If you want more peace of mind, tend to the cause of routinely relaxing your body.

Tell the truth to yourself about causes and results: Are you pursuing the right causes of the results you’re seeking? Or are you pulling hard on a rope (a cause) that’s just not attached to the load you’re trying to move (the result you want)?

Maybe you need to tend to other causes—perhaps ones at a deeper level, such as letting go of self-doubt or fear from childhood. Or perhaps the result you want is out of your power, and you just have to accept that.

Let the results be what they are, learn from them, and then turn your attention back to causes. Don’t get so caught up in your apples that you forget to water their tree!

38. Don’t Be Alarmed

The nervous system has been evolving for about 600 million years. During all this time, creatures—worms, crabs, lizards, rats, monkeys, hominids, humans—that were real mellow, watching the sunlight on the leaves, getting all Zen, absorbed in inner peace . . . CHOMP got eaten because they didn’t notice the shadow overhead or crackle of twigs nearby.

The ones that survived to pass on their genes were fearful and vigilant—and we are their great-great-grandchildren, bred to be afraid. Even though we’ve come a long way from the Serengeti, we’re still quick to feel unsettled in any situation that seems the least bit threatening: not enough time to get through your e-mails, more news of a struggling economy, no call after two days from someone you’ve started dating, and so on.

Even if the situations you’re in are reasonably good, there are other, innate sources of alarm rooted in our biology. Basically, to survive, animals—including us—must continually try to:

Separate themselves from the world

Stabilize many dynamic systems in the body, mind, relationships, and environment

Get rewards and avoid harms

But here’s the problem: each of these strategies flies in the face of the facts of existence:

Everything is connected to everything else—so it’s impossible to fundamentally separate self and world.

Everything changes—so it’s impossible to keep things stable in the body, mind, relationships, or environment.

Rewards are fleeting, costly, or unobtainable, and some harms are inevitable—so it’s impossible to hold onto pleasure forever and totally escape pain.

Alarms sound whenever one of these strategies runs into trouble—which is many times a day because of the contradictions between the nature of existence and what we must do to survive. Alarms below awareness create a background of unease, irritability, caution, and pessimism; the ones you’re consciously aware of are emotionally and often physically uncomfortable—such as anxiety, anger, or pain.

Don’t underestimate the amount of background alarm in your body and mind. It’s hard-wired and relentless, inherent in the collision between the needs of life and the realities of existence.

While this alarmism has been a great strategy for keeping creatures alive to pass on their genes, it’s not good for your health, well-being, relationships, or ambitions. Threat signals are usually way out of proportion to what is actually happening. They make you pull in your wings and play safe and small, and cling tighter to “us” and fear “them.” At the level of groups and nations, our vulnerability to alarm makes us easy to manipulate with fear.

Yes, deal with real threats, real harms—but enough with all these false alarms!

How

Take a stand for yourself: “I’m tired of being needlessly afraid.” Consider the price you’ve paid over the years due to false alarms: the running for cover, the muzzling of self-expression, the abandonment of important longings or aspirations.

Try to be more aware of the subtle sense of alarm, such as a tightening in your chest or face, a sinking feeling in your stomach, a sense of being off balance, or an increase in scanning or guardedness.

Then recognize that many alarm signals are actually not signals at all: they’re just unpleasant noise, meaningless, like a car alarm that won’t stop blapping. Obviously, deal with real alarms. But as for the ones that are exaggerated or entirely bogus, don’t react to these alarms with alarm.

Accept that bad things sometimes happen, there are uncertainties, planes do occasionally crash, nice people get hit by drunk drivers. We just have to live with the fact that we can’t dodge all the bullets. When you come to peace with this, you stop trying to control—out of alarm—the things you can’t.

Keep helping your body feel less alarmed. I imagine my “inner iguana” lodged in the most ancient and fearful structures of the brainstem, and gently stroking its belly, soothing and settling it so it relaxes like a lizard on a warm rock. The same with my inner rat, or monkey, or caveman: continually softening and opening the body, breathing fully and letting go, sensing strength and resolve inside.

Alarms may clang, but your awareness and intentions are much larger—like the sky dwarfing clouds. In effect, alarms and fears are held in a space of fearlessness. You see this zig-zaggy, up-and-down world clearly—and you are at peace with it. Try to return to this open-hearted fearlessness again and again throughout your day.

39. Put Out Fires

In your heart, right now, you know if there are any vital matters that you’re not dealing with: a harm or threat that’s not being addressed, or a major lost opportunity. These are real alarms, and you need to listen to them.

For example, there could be unpaid bills on the verge of harming your credit score, a teenager who’s increasingly disrespectful and defiant—or caught in the undertow of depressed mood—month after month without much exercise, a marriage that’s unraveling thread by thread, abuse of alcohol or drugs, a co-worker who keeps undermining you, chronic overeating, or a nagging sense that there’s something wrong with your health.

Quickly or slowly, “fires” like these will singe a life, and sometimes burn it to the ground.

If something’s urgent—such as a clogged toilet, a letter from the IRS, a lump in an armpit—most people will get after it right away. But what if it’s important-but-not-urgent—an issue or goal that you can always put off dealing with for one more day? It’s easy to let these fires smolder—but in the end, they’re the ones that usually cost you the most. You still know they’re out there; they cast a shadow you can feel in your gut. And eventually their consequences always come home—sometimes during your last years, when you look back on your life and consider what you wish you’d done differently.

On the other hand, when you come to grips with important things, even if they’re not urgent, that unease in the belly goes away. You feel good about yourself, doing what you can and making your life better.

How

Open to an intuition, a sense, of whatever you may have pushed to the back burner that truly needs attending. Consider your health, finances, relationships, well-being, and (if this is meaningful to you) spiritual life. Notice any reluctance to face significant unmet needs—it’s normal to feel guilty or anxious about them—and see if you can release it.

Ask yourself: what gets in the way of you addressing important-but-not-urgent matters in a typical day? What do you finesse or manage each day but never solve once and for all? Or what do you keep postponing altogether? What’s not actually getting better no matter how much you hope it will?

Write down the name(s) of the important thing(s) you need to address. Tell a trusted person about this. Make it real for yourself that this issue matters. Face it. Keep facing it.

Bring to mind some of the many benefits that will come to you and others if you tackle this issue. Help them be vivid in your mind. See how your days will improve, how you’ll sleep better, feel better, and love better. Open to your heart’s longing for these benefits. Let the benefits call you, drawing you like honey does a bee.

Also bring to mind the short- and long-term costs to you and others of this issue continuing to smolder away. Be honest with yourself—willing to feel guilt, remorse, or shame in order to do the so honorable, so hard thing of looking squarely at these costs.

Feeling the benefits, and feeling the costs, make a choice: Are you going to put out this fire? Or wait another day?

When you choose to confront this issue, open to feeling good about that.

Then get to work. You don’t need to have a complete plan to get started. Just know the first step or two—such as talking about the issue with a friend or therapist, gathering information (e.g., assessing a health concern), seeing a professional, doing one or more small positive actions each day, or getting structured support from others (e.g., a buddy to exercise with, a regular AA meeting). If you’re stuck, you don’t need a more perfect plan; you need to take imperfect action. The breakthrough will come when you commit to addressing an issue and then structure ongoing support and action toward that end.

If you find yourself procrastinating or getting bogged down, imagine that you are looking back on your life as you near its end. From that perspective, what will you be glad that you did?

40. Dream Big Dreams

Everyone has dreams: goals, big plans, reasons for living, contributions to others. They include starting a family, changing careers, going to college, deepening the emotionally and sensually intimate aspects of a long-term relationship, writing a book, living a spiritual practice, making art, getting a stoplight installed at a dangerous intersection, losing thirty pounds and keeping it off, saving the whales, saving the world.

Many of these dreams are rooted in childhood visions of what’s possible. When the young elements are peeled away, what remains is often still deeply true for a person.

What are your own longings of the heart?

They could be quite concrete—and still be big dreams. Like everybody in the family doing their share of housework. Or finding a job that takes less than an hour to drive to. Or coming to peace with your mother or your son. Or planting roses. Or carving out half an hour a day for yourself.

Or they could be more far-reaching or lofty. Such as reducing bullying in schools or carbon dumping in the atmosphere, or pursuing your own spiritual awakening.

If you truly open to this question—What are the dreams that matter to me?—don’t worry, you won’t get caught up in silly stuff, such as wanting to get super rich and famous. Instead, you’ll hear your soul speaking—your essence, your core, your deepest inner wisdom.

It’s worth listening to what it says.

And then worth looking for ways—practical ones, grounded in daily life, that move you forward one real step at a time—to bring your dreams to life.

How

Find a quiet time and place, and ask yourself what you long for. Also imagine younger versions of yourself, and ask them what their dreams are.

Try to be open to what comes up, rather than dismissing it as unrealistic, too late, “selfish,” or foolish. Perhaps write it down, even just a few words, or tell someone. If you like, make a collage of pictures (and maybe words) that represent your dream(s). And remember that your dreams aren’t set in stone; you can let them breathe and change and grow.

Make room for your dreams in your thoughts and actions. Be their friend. Feel what it would be like if they came true, and how that would be good for you and others.

Without getting bogged down in details or obstructions, give thought to what you could do, in realistic ways, to move toward the fulfillment of your dreams. Look for the small things you can implement and build on each day. Perhaps go further and write down a plan for yourself, with—gulp—dates on it. Don’t be daunted by things getting more real.

Then take action. If it helps, tell the truth about and keep a record of your actions—like writing down how much time you spend each day exercising, talking lovingly with your mate, or simply curled up relaxing. Focus on the things that will make the most difference; put the big rocks in the bucket first.

Throughout, let your dream live you. Feel into the wholesome heart of a dream—how it comes from deep within, how it is healthy, how it will serve you and others. Give yourself over to your dream.

Let your dream be a friend to you.