A Great Meditation Book

In an airport bookstore the other day, I bought a book that ended up being much better and far more fun than I had hoped. It's called 10% Happier: How I tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And Found Self-Help That Actually Works - A True Story. Maybe I was just impressed with the subtitle, that pretty much took up most of the cover. It's by a top network news guy named Dan Harris. And it's really good.

Dan is a highly competitive person in a crazy competitive business and he had gotten so accustomed to the unhelpful nagging critical and often angry voice in his head dogging him throughout the day that he just assumed he was stuck with its stress and negative energy. I won't give away the story, but he discovers the world of self-help and meditation and approaches it all as a very skeptical guy - very funny, and cynical to boot. At some level, he realizes that he needs some help with his inner stress. But he interviews several of the top people who claim to have the answers and comes away just perplexed. There's some great gossip in here, by the way, if you go for that sort of thing - some nice celebrity stories and crazy tales you can enjoy in addition to what you'll learn that's of value.

If you ever wondered about meditation as something you should maybe consider, but didn't know where to start or who to believe about it, then do yourself a favor and get this book. And when you're done laughing, just sit and think about your breath for 5 minutes, in and out. And repeat daily. And, if you're anything like Dan, you'll start noticing a difference, not consistently at first, but over time. And you may even write me a note to thank me for telling you about the book.

You're welcome.

The Urge and the Pause

What makes you eat that extra burger, get that additional serving, have just one more drink, and maybe at least half a one after that? What pulls the trigger on that negative comment or angry outburst in response to what strikes you as idiocy, or as an insulting remark? What moves us to do almost anything that we later regret?

There's an urge, an insistent urge, and we act on it. Or, to use another helpful metaphor, there's a big itch, and we scratch it. In her practical little book on change, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, the American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, passes on some useful advice. Consider poison ivy. When we have it and scratch, we spread the problem. We end up itching even more. And that most often results in even more scratching, and an even bigger problem. Great metaphor.

The meditative approach that she recommends instead is to pause, notice the itch, feel it fully, live with it, and refrain from reacting quickly and naturally by scratching. It's often more helpful to consider the itch than to obey it. You might ask yourself why the itch is there. You might remind yourself what will happen, as it always does, if you scratch, as you normally do. How will you look back on the scratching tomorrow? The intense urgency of the urge is always a passing thing. Resist for thirty seconds, or a minute, and the battle is won.

Scratch it now and you'll have to fight a bigger battle later. Now is always the time to pause, and consider, and learn to feel, before giving in to the urge that never makes things better, but worse.

Small pauses can solve big problems, and help to erase long term habits. When we use our minds properly, we can defeat what may long have defeated us. What we need is a new urge - to pause.