How Not to Be a Hot Mess - A Survival Guide for Modern Life - Craig Hase Page 0,5

about who we wanted to have babies with. Back then, there wasn’t a lot of room for rumination. There was danger, it passed, we moved on.

These days, though, your nervous system responds to a hostile email or a politically charged news report or a coworker saying something jacked in much the same way your ancestors used to respond to a saber-toothed tiger. Only now, email and news stories are way more prevalent than saber-toothed tigers ever were. So the body ends up in a continual state of activation, making your emotions and thoughts just spin and spin and spin.

And spinning thoughts are super bad for you. They super freak you out. And they lead to a host of stress-related bad stuff like depression, anxiety, and any number of chronic physical ailments.

When you practice the simple act of bringing attention back to your left foot, or your breath, or even nonjudgmentally bringing awareness to your thoughts, the spinning mind slows its roll and you’re more able to relate to your experience in a calm, collected, and warmhearted way. Stress levels go down. A kind of friendliness develops. And all this is a very good thing.

AND ANOTHER THING…

Letting Go of Expectations

To be honest, I sometimes worry a little when I tell people about the research on mindfulness and meditation. I mean, it’s exciting stuff. I love talking about it. I love getting people excited about this thing I’ve been excited about my entire adult life.

But I want to be careful, too. First, because the science is complicated, there’s more research to be done, and I’m simplifying to make a point or two here. But most importantly, telling everybody how helpful meditation is might actually short-circuit the very ways that meditation is helpful.

Let me explain.

Meditation practice is primarily about letting go of expectations. It’s about being present with whatever’s here, no matter what is here. That includes pleasant physical sensations and unpleasant physical sensations. It includes nice emotional feelings, and not-so-nice emotional feelings. It also includes every conceivable kind of thought.

The power of meditation is not that all these things cease and desist. It’s not that we stop thoughts in meditation—we don’t stop thoughts in meditation. It’s not that our unpleasant emotions and painful bodily experiences disappear. It’s simply that we get really good at letting our experience be exactly as it is, moment by moment, no matter what it is, with warmth and friendliness and maybe even some steady sense of presence. And this engaged acceptance in itself is transformative.

So as you read all the scientific stuff, I hope you’ll be inspired. I hope you’ll sit down in a chair or on a cushion and try meditation for yourself.

But just remember: Once you’ve been inspired to sit down and give it a try, don’t look for some special experience. Don’t block out your thoughts or your feelings. Don’t think this meditation practice will make you into some kind of superhuman with no perceivable problems. Just keep coming back to what is, again and again. That’s the skill we’re really looking to develop.

Meditation Also Helps You Focus

At first blush, increased focus probably doesn’t sound like such a big deal. But think about it. Pretty much every worthwhile thing you do—from playing an instrument to cooking a meal to writing code—requires some level of baseline attentiveness. And the more attentive you are, the better things go.

Take, for example, your daily workflow. You get to your desk. Check your email. Check your voicemail. Check your Slack channel. Check your to-do list. Three people stop by asking for stuff. You get a text from your mom. You get a news alert on your phone. And then somehow you have to find a way to sift through the noise and get cracking.

This is where a lot of people get stuck. There’s so much information. Like a flood of beeping, buzzing, binging noise, and each piece of information is waving flags and flashing lights telling you it’s really, really, really important. So how do you actually choose what to focus on first? And then next? And on and on, moment to moment, throughout your day?

Well, mindfulness training—just that simple act of being intentionally aware again and again—can help. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s take a look at some of the research:3

People who take an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction course see a big jump in focus.4

Long-term meditators show far better focus than well-matched controls.5

People who do a three-month retreat see