Kindle highlights of The Zen Habits Beginners Guide to Mindfulness last highlighted 2025-01-14 04:56:00+00:00
Highlights
- This is a book about training your mind. And shifting your focus. And dealing with struggles. And changing your habits. (Location 43)
- We often struggle with finances and clutter, based on habits of procrastination and urges to buy stuff on impulse. (Location 51)
- Note: Thats me
- Courage training. We normally try to avoid the things that arise, but we’re going to develop the courage to stay with them. This takes practice, and you’ll want to put this off, run to distractions, or use various methods to feel you have control over things that come up. Instead, we’ll just focus on staying. (Location 59)
- But the best method, I’ve found, is to give compassion to these difficulties, like a good friend would if you were struggling. (Location 63)
- In fact, you might be able to read the entire book in one sitting, but I recommend that you do a chapter a day for about two weeks. (Location 69)
- Here’s the honest truth about mindfulness: It’s hard It’s messy It involves lots of failure You have to push into discomfort (Location 82)
- It will often pull rug out from under your feet It takes lots of practice It takes years to get good at it You forget a lot You think you’re doing it wrong It’ll show you that you’re not as disciplined as you think Just when you think you know what you’re doing, you’re asked to go deeper When you think other people should be more mindful, you’re wrong It requires love (Location 83)
- You can get better at focus and overcoming procrastination (Location 90)
- How are your feet? If you’re sitting on a chair or couch, have your feet flat on the ground if possible. (Location 111)
- Let your jaw relax instead of clenching. Keep your mouth closed but your teeth slightly apart. (Location 115)
- Note: Medittion101
- Now do a scan of your body, noticing where there’s tension. Try tensing your muscles in a tense body part, then relaxing them. (Location 117)
- Keep your attention on your breath as it enters and exits your body. (Location 125)
- There are lots of ways to meditate. You can meditate on a mantra or koan, you can do moving meditation or transcendental meditation, you can focus on a candle or all your surroundings, there’s loving-kindness meditation and equanimity meditation, and much more. (Location 134)
- We’re trying to learn to become aware of our mind wandering and what’s coming up in our minds, and we’re also trying to learn to deal with the struggles. (Location 147)
- Drowsiness. It’s normal to start to nod off when you’re meditating, especially if you’re doing it early in the morning or at the end of a long, tiring day. (Location 183)
- No time for meditation. Thinking that you have no time is actually a form of resistance to meditation (see item above). You have time … even one or two minutes is all you need to do to practice. You just feel rushed, feel like there are other things to do. (Location 193)
- You can increase to five minutes after a week of doing it without missing. Don’t let yourself increase to five minutes otherwise. (Location 222)
- For example, these struggles we find in meditation are the same ones we find in everyday life that lead to procrastination, frustration, relationship problems, unhappiness and more: (Location 240)
- Uncertainty Fear (Location 242)
- Disappointment with our experiences Unhappiness with ourselves Frustration with how things are going Anxiety about how we’re doing Worry about how we’ll do in the future Stress about getting things right Negative self-talk A story we’re telling ourselves about what we’re doing (Location 242)
- This is also what causes anger, disappointment, and hurt feelings. There’s an ideal, reality doesn’t meet our ideal, and we become frustrated, hurt, disappointed, angry. (Location 274)
- Life is never ever certain. It’s often uncomfortable. It’s never really under our control. So it doesn’t meet with our ideal. (Location 283)
- The difference between reality (uncertain, uncomfortable, uncontrollable) and our ideal causes the stress and fear. (Location 284)
- When we experience what Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön calls “groundlessness,” we experience fear and pain. (Location 316)
- Some of the ways we try to get solid ground include: Clinging to an ideal even if the ideal isn’t real. Trying to regain control by ordering people around, making a plan, creating an orderly list, making a system. Avoiding the pain and finding something comfortable or pleasurable — food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, TV, video games, the Internet. Procrastination is one form of this. Getting mad at someone. Striking out at them. (Location 317)
- This is what we’re doing when we practice mindfulness. Meditation is a constant practice of staying with the groundlessness. (Location 325)
- Very few of us realize we’re doing it, but our habitual response to fear, discomfort, frustration, uncertainty … is to run. (Location 342)
- Notice when you’re frustrated, angry, fearful, uncertain. Notice the urge to run from this. Instead, turn towards the feeling. Tell your mind to stay, with gentleness, not harshness. Find the courage to stay. Try to be curious about the feeling, instead of already knowing that it will “suck.” What is it like? Where is the feeling located? What can you learn about it? Notice that it’s not that big a deal. You are OK. It’s uncomfortable, but not the end of the world. (Location 356)
- The problem is that we often don’t want to loosen our attachments to ideals. No, what we really want is for the ideals to come true. That’s because we’re clinging tightly! (Location 373)
- There’s a mindfulness practice that can help us work with this clinging. It’s called compassion practice. (Location 375)
- perhaps a child or really good friend. Think about this person, and imagine them in pain or struggling with something. (Location 378)
- Notice that you’re clinging to an ideal. If you can let it go immediately, great! If you’re still clinging, notice the stress that results from that clinging. (Location 386)
- Give yourself compassion. From the same place in your heart, wish for your stress and difficulty with this clinging to be over. Give your stress some love. (Location 388)
- Try this when you’re losing patience: Notice that you’re frustrated or feeling impatient. Notice the stress that you feel as a result of clinging to the way you want things to be. Give yourself some loving-kindness. Simply wish for yourself to be happy. (Location 409)
- When everything seems to be coming at you at once, or you feel overloaded with too much to do … it’s not so easy to find peace in the middle of the chaos. (Location 422)
- So how do we learn to deal with everything more peacefully? There’s a practice that is called “equanimity practice” that can be helpful. (Location 423)
- In your next few meditation sessions, practice the equanimity exercise I outline above. Cultivate this ability, because it can be useful at any moment in your life. (Location 440)
- Pick a trigger — something you already do in your regular life, like waking up or brushing your teeth or opening your laptop. (Location 446)
- Notice the resistance. Shine the spotlight of awareness on the feeling of not wanting to do your new habit. The same is true of procrastination. It’s a feeling of wanting to avoid, wanting to run to distraction. (Location 464)
- Watch the urge to switch away from the task. You’ll very likely have the urge to go do something else, check email, check the news, check your favorite distractions, clean up, anything but stay with the task. This is good! Watch the urge. (Location 500)
- Face the urge and stay with it. Don’t actually run from the task, but instead just face the urge. See what you can discover about it. Watch it rise, then fall. Notice its energy. (Location 502)
- See every single thing, every person, every moment, as a teacher. When you find something or someone frustrates you, thank the universe for giving you a great teacher! (Location 535)