BECOME MORE PATIENT BY R CARLSON

The quality of patience goes a long way toward your goal of creating a more peaceful and loving self. The more patient you are, the more accepting you will be of what is, rather than insisting that life be exactly as you would like it to be. Without patience, life is extremely frustrating. You are easily annoyed, bothered, and irritated. Patience adds a dimension of ease and acceptance to your life. 

It's essential for inner peace. Becoming more patient involves opening your heart to the present moment, even if you don't like it. If you are stuck in a traffic jam, late for an appointment, opening to the moment would mean catching yourself building a mental snowball before your thinking got out of hand and gently reminding yourself to relax. It might also be a good time to breathe as well as an opportunity to remind yourself that, in the bigger scheme of things, being late is "small stuff." Patience also involves seeing the innocence in others. 

My wife, Kris, and I have two young children ages four and seven. On many occasions while writing this book, our four-year-old daughter has walked into my office and interrupted my work, which can be disruptive to a writer. What I have learned to do (most of the time) is to see the innocence in her behavior rather than to focus on the potential implications of her interruption ("I won't get my work done, I'll lose my train of thought, this was my only opportunity to write today," and so forth). I remind myself why she is coming to see me - because she loves me, not because she is conspiring to ruin my work. When I remember to see the innocence, I immediately bring forth a feeling of patience, and my attention is brought back to the moment. 

Any irritation that may have been building is eliminated and I'm reminded, once again, of how fortunate I am to have such beautiful children. I have found that, if you look deeply enough, you can almost always see the innocence in other people as well as in potentially frustrating situations. 

When you do, you will become a more patient and peaceful person and, in some strange way, you begin to enjoy many of the moments that used to frustrate you.

LET OTHERS BE "RIGHT" MOST OF TIME BY RICHARD CARLSON

 One of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself is, "Do I want to be 'right' - or do I want to be happy?" Many times, the two are mutually exclusive! Being right, defending our positions, takes an enormous amount of mental energy and often alienates us from the people in our lives. 

Needing to be right - or needing someone else to be wrong - encourages others to become defensive, and puts pressure on us to keep defending. Yet, many of us (me too, at times) spend a great deal of time and energy attempting to prove (or point out) that we are right - and/or others are wrong. 

Many people, consciously or unconsciously, believe that it's somehow their job to show others how their positions, statements, and points of view are incorrect, and that in doing so, the person they are correcting is going to somehow appreciate it, or at least learn something. Wrong! Think about it. Have you ever been corrected by someone and said to the person who was trying to be right, "Thank you so much for showing me that I'm wrong and you're right. Now I see it. Boy, you're great! " Or, has anyone you know ever thanked you (or even agreed with you) when you corrected them, or made yourself "right" at their expense? Of course not. 

The truth is, all of us hate to be corrected. We all want our positions to be respected and understood by others. Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart. And those who learn to listen are the most loved and respected. Those who are in the habit of correcting others are often resented and avoided. It's not that it's never appropriate to be right - sometimes you genuinely need to be or want to be. Perhaps there are certain philosophical positions that you don't want to budge on such as when you hear a racist comment. Here, it's important to speak your mind. 

 Usually, however, it's just your ego creeping in and ruining an otherwise peaceful encounter - a habit of wanting or needing to be right. A wonderful, heartfelt strategy for becoming more peaceful and loving is to practice allowing others the joy of being right - give them the glory. Stop correcting. As hard as it may be to change this habit, it's worth any effort and practice it takes. When someone says, "I really feel it's important to..." rather than jumping in and saying, "No, it's more important to..." or any of the hundreds of other forms of conversational editing, simply let it go and allow their statement to stand.

 The people in your life will become less defensive and more loving. They will appreciate you more than you could ever have dreamed possible, even if they don't exactly know why. You'll discover the joy of participating in and witnessing other people's happiness, which is far more rewarding than a battle of egos. You don't have to sacrifice your deepest philosophical truths or most heartfelt opinions, but, starting today, let others be "right," most of the time!

IMAGINE THAT EVERYONE IS ENLIGHTENED EXCEPT YOU BY RICHARD CARLSON

This strategy gives you a chance to practice something that is probably completely unacceptable to you. However, if you give it a try, you might find that it's one of the most helpful exercises in self-improvement. As the title suggests, the idea is to imagine that everyone you know and everyone you meet is perfectly enlightened. 

That is, everyone except you! The people you meet are all here to teach you something. Perhaps the obnoxious driver or disrespectful teenager is here to teach you about patience, the punk rocker might be here to teach you to be less judgmental. 

 Your job is to try to determine what the people in your life are trying to teach you. You'll find that if you do this, you'll be far less annoyed, bothered, and frustrated by the actions and imperfections of other people. You can actually get yourself in the habit of approaching life in this manner and, if you do, you'll be glad you did. 

Often, once you discover what someone is trying to teach you, it's easy to let go of your frustration. For example, suppose you're in the post office and the postal clerk appears to be intentionally moving slowly. Rather than feeling frustrated, ask yourself the question, "What is he trying to teach me?" Maybe you need to learn about compassion - how hard it would be to have a job that you don't like. Or perhaps you could learn a little more about being patient. 

Standing in line is an excellent opportunity to break your habit of feeling impatient. You may be surprised at how fun and easy this is. All you're really doing is changing your perception from "Why are they doing this?" to "What are they trying to teach me?" Take a look around today at all the enlightened people.

TODAY IS THE DAY

“You get what you deserve. Instead of being a good person today, you choose instead to become one tomorrow.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.22 

“I don’t complain about the lack of time . . . what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods and shake up the world.” —SENECA, MEDEA, 423–425 e almost always know what the right thing is. 

We know we should not get upset, that we shouldn’t take this personally, that we should walk to the health food store instead of swinging by the drive-through, that we need to sit down and focus for an hour. The tougher part is deciding to do it in a given moment. What stops us? 

The author Steven Pressfield calls this force The Resistance. As he put it in The War of Art, “We don’t tell ourselves, ‘I’m never going to write my symphony.’ Instead we say, ‘I’m going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.’” Today, not tomorrow, is the day that we can start to be good.

WHAT KIND OF BOXER ARE YOU?

“But what is philosophy? Doesn’t it simply mean preparing ourselves for what may come? Don’t you understand that really amounts to saying that if I would so prepare myself to endure, then let anything happen that will? Otherwise, it would be like the boxer exiting the ring because he took some punches. Actually, you can leave the boxing ring without consequence, but what advantage would come from abandoning the pursuit of wisdom? So, what should each of us say to every trial we face? This is what I’ve trained for, for this my discipline!” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.10.6–7 

The Stoics loved to use boxing and wrestling metaphors the way we use baseball and football analogies today. This is probably because the sport of pankration—literally, “all strength,” but a purer form of mixed martial arts than one sees today—in the UFC was integral to boyhood and manhood in Greece and Rome. (In fact, recent analysis has found instances of “cauliflower ear,” a common grappling injury, on Greek statues.) The Stoics refer to fighting because it’s what they knew. 

Seneca writes that unbruised prosperity is weak and easy to defeat in the ring, but “a man who has been at constant feud with misfortunes acquires a skin calloused by suffering.” 

This man, he says, fights all the way to the ground and never gives up. That’s what Epictetus means too. What kind of boxer are you if you leave because you get hit? That’s the nature of the sport! Is that going to stop you from continuing?

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY

“What’s the point of having countless books and libraries, whose titles could hardly be read through in a lifetime. The learner is not taught, but burdened by the sheer volume, and it’s better to plant the seeds of a few authors than to be scattered about by many.” —SENECA, ON TRANQUILITY OF MIND, 9.4

There is no prize for having read the most books before you die. Even if you were the most dedicated reader in the world—a book a day, even—your collection would probably never be bigger than a small branch library. 

You’ll never even come close to matching what’s stored in the servers at Google Books or keep up with the hundreds of thousands of new titles published on Amazon each year. What if, when it came to your reading and learning, you prioritized quality over quantity? 

What if you read the few great books deeply instead of briefly skimming all the new books? Your shelves might be emptier, but your brain and your life would be fuller.

LEARN, PRACTICE, TRAIN

“That’s why the philosophers warn us not to be satisfied with mere learning, but to add practice and then training. For as time passes we forget what we learned and end up doing the opposite, and hold opinions the opposite of what we should.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.9.13–14 

Very few people can simply watch an instructional video or hear something explained and then know, backward and forward, how to do it. Most of us actually have to do something several times in order to truly learn. One of the hallmarks of the martial arts, military training, and athletic training of almost any kind is the hours upon hours upon hours of monotonous practice. An athlete at the highest level will train for years to perform movements that can last mere seconds—or less. 

The two-minute drill, how to escape from a chokehold, the perfect jumper. Simply knowing isn’t enough. It must be absorbed into the muscles and the body. It must become part of us. Or we risk losing it the second that we experience stress or difficulty. It is true with philosophical principles as well. You can’t just hear something once and expect to rely on it when the world is crashing down around us. 

Remember, Marcus Aurelius wasn’t writing his meditations for other people. He was actively meditating for himself. Even as a successful, wise, and experienced man, he was until the last days of his life practicing and training himself to do the right thing. Like a black belt, he was still showing up to the dojo every day to roll; like a professional athlete, he still showed up to practice each week—even though others probably thought it was unnecessary.

HOW YOU DO ANYTHING IS HOW YOU DO EVERYTHING

“Pay attention to what’s in front of you—the principle, the task, or what’s being portrayed.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 8.22 

It’s fun to think about the future. It’s easy to ruminate on the past. It’s harder to put that energy into what’s in front of us right at this moment—especially if it’s something we don’t want to do. We think: This is just a job; it isn’t who I am. It doesn’t matter. But it does matter. 

Who knows—it might be the last thing you ever do. Here lies Dave, buried alive under a mountain of unfinished business. There is an old saying: “How you do anything is how you do everything.” It’s true. 

How you handle today is how you’ll handle every day. How you handle this minute is how you’ll handle every minute.

THE CHAIN METHOD - DON'T BREAK THE CHAIN

“If you don’t wish to be a hot-head, don’t feed your habit. Try as a first step to remain calm and count the days you haven’t been angry. I used to be angry every day, now every other day, then every third or fourth . . . if you make it as far as 30 days, thank God! For habit is first weakened and then obliterated. When you can say ‘I didn’t lose my temper today, or the next day, or for three or four months, but kept my cool under provocation,’ you will know you are in better health.” —EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 2.18.11b–14 

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once gave a young comic named Brad Isaac some advice about how to write and create material. Keep a calendar, he told him, and each day that you write jokes, put an X. Soon enough, you get a chain going—and then your job is to simply not break the chain. Success becomes a matter of momentum. 

Once you get a little, it’s easier to keep it going. Whereas Seinfeld used the chain method to build a positive habit, Epictetus was saying that it can also be used to eliminate a negative one. It’s not all that different than taking sobriety “one day at a time.” 

Start with one day doing whatever it is, be it managing your temper or wandering eyes or procrastination. Then do the same the following day and the day after that. Build a chain and then work not to break it. Don’t ruin your streak.

DON'T GIVE UP! WATCH YOUR TONGUE. FLOWERS ZAUBERER

LEARN TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT. R CARLSON

To a large degree, the measure of our peace of mind is determined by how

much we are able to live in the present moment.

Irrespective of what happened yesterday or last year, and what may or

may not happen tomorrow, the present moment is where you are - always!

Without question, many of us have mastered the neurotic art of spending

much of our lives worrying about a variety of things - all at once. We

allow past problems and future concerns to dominate our present moments,

so much so that we end up anxious, frustrated, depressed, and hopeless.

On the flip side, we also postpone our gratification, our stated

priorities, and our happiness, often convincing ourselves that "someday"

will be better than today. Unfortunately, the same mental dynamics that

tell us to look toward the future will only repeat themselves so that

"someday" never actually arrives. John Lennon once said, "Life is

what's happening while we're busy making other plans."

When we're busy making "other plans." our children are busy growing up,

the people we love are moving away and dying, our bodies are getting out

of shape, and our dreams are slipping away. In short, we miss out on

life.

Many people live as if life were a dress rehearsal for some later date.

It isn't. In fact, no one has a guarantee that he or she will be here

tomorrow. Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have

any control over. When our attention is in the present moment, we push

fear from our minds. Fear is the concern over events that might happen

in the future - we won't have enough money, our children will get into

trouble, we will get old and die, whatever.

To combat fear, the best strategy is to learn to bring your attention

back to the present. Mark Twain said, "I have been through some

terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." I don't

think I can say it any better. Practice keeping your attention on the

here and now. Your efforts will pay great dividends. 

LET OTHERS HAVE THE GLORY. R CARLSON

There is something magical that happens to the human spirit, a sense of

calm that comes over you, when you cease needing all the attention

directed toward yourself and instead allow others to have the glory.

Our need for excessive attention is that ego-centered part of us that

says, "Look at me. I'm special. My story is more interesting than

yours." It's that voice inside of us that may not come right out and say

it, but that wants to believe that "my accomplishments are slightly more

important than yours." The ego is that part of us that wants to be seen,

heard, respected, considered special, often at the expense of someone

else. It's the part of us that interrupts someone else's story, or

impatiently waits his turn to speak so that he can bring the

conversation and attention back to himself. 

To varying degrees, most of

us engage in this habit, much to our own detriment. When you

immediately dive in and bring the conversation back toward you, you can

subtly minimize the joy that person has in sharing, and in doing so,

create distance between yourself and others. Everyone loses.

The next time someone tells you a story or shares an accomplishment with

you, notice your tendency to say something about yourself in response.

Although it's a difficult habit to break, it's not only enjoyable but

actually peaceful to have the quiet confidence to be able to surrender

your need for attention and instead share in the joy of someone else's

glory. Rather than jumping right in and saying, "Once I did the same

thing" or "Guess what I did today," bite your tongue and notice what

happens. Just say, "That's wonderful," or "Please tell me more," and

leave it at that. The person you are speaking to will have so much more

fun and, because you are so much more "present," because you are

listening so carefully, he or she won't feel in competition with you.

The result will be that the person will feel more relaxed around you,

making him or her more confident as well as more interesting. You too

will feel more relaxed because you won't be on the edge of your seat,

waiting your turn.

Obviously, there are many times when it's absolutely appropriate to

exchange experience back and forth, and to share in the glory and

attention rather than giving it all away. I'm referring here to the

compulsive need to grab it from others. Ironically, when you surrender

your need to hog the glory, the attention you used to need from other

people is replaced by a quiet inner confidence that is derived from letting others have it.

DO SOMETHING NICE FOR SOMEONE ELSE- AND DON'T TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT. R CARLSON

While many of us frequently do nice things for others, we are almost

certain to mention our acts of kindness to someone else, secretly

seeking their approval.

When we share our own niceness or generosity with someone else, it makes

us feel like we are thoughtful people, it reminds us of how nice we are

and how deserving we are of kindness.

While all acts of kindness are inherently, wonderful, there is something

even more magical about doing something thoughtful but mentioning it to

no one, ever. You always feel good when you give to others. Rather

than diluting the positive feelings by telling others about your own

kindness, by keeping it to yourself you get to retain all the positive

feelings.

It's really true that one should give for the sake of giving, not to

receive something in return. This is precisely what you are doing when

you don't mention your kindness to others - your rewards are the warm

feelings that come from the act of giving. The next time you do

something really nice for someone else, keep it to yourself and revel in the abundant joy of giving.