The Gist
The author, Dan Harris, experienced a panic attack on live television that sent him on the journey of discovering different ways to prevent this from happening. Or, at least, understand the cause of his anxiety and stress, and find better ways of mitigating these triggers in the future. He wanted to find a way to live a more fulfilling life, and turned to mindfulness and meditation to get started.
Some people don’t feel comfortable with the concept of spirituality or looking inward. Even if that’s you, this can give you a feeling of what it means to be still. To overtake those voices in your head. Once you can start to tame those nagging little judgments, rejections, comparisons, worries, etc. you start to have power over yourself.
The Tips
- Tame your inner-critic: There are going to be times where the voice in your head is frustrating you. It’ll tell you that you aren’t good enough. That you should stop while you’re ahead. That you’re weak, disappointing, a failure. But, the power is with being able to overtake the voice in your head.
- Meditation is your mental workout: You should focus your mind, focus your breaths, focus your thoughts. Doing reps and sets along the way.
- Mindfulness is logic: It represents an alternative to living reactively. Start viewing what happens in the world without an emotional response to it.
- Use the RAIN Technique: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Non-Identification. Recognize: What are you feeling? Allow: Permit yourself to feel what you are feeling. Lean into it. Investigate: What is it doing to your body? Are you flushed? Are you tight? Non-Identification: Remember that you are feeling this right now and not forever. Impermanence.
- Is This Useful?: The question that you should ask yourself when you are in a worrying cycle.
- Be Wise-Selfish: There are two types of selfishness. Foolish selfishness and wise-selfishness. A foolish selfish does shallow activities that are self-centered pleasure. A wise-selfish does things that benefits other, which in turn makes you feel good.
- Smile More: It’ll make you feel more connected to other people around you.
- Continue to Strive: It doesn’t mean that you want more necessarily. But aim for something and try to achieve it. The pursuit is under your control, not the result.
- Advanced Common Sense: You want to analyze the simplest fundamentals of something until you have a deeper understanding of it.
The Get
You should read this book if you are stressed or anxious and are looking for a way to recapture who you are. You might be a burnt-out executive, a mompreneur, or a college student preparing for a final. But, one this is consistent, you are dealing with a lot at one time and need a way to filter through the mental mess.