How to Mindfully Stop Smoking

photo credit: Matthieu Aubry. via photopin cc

To quit smoking is a tall order. It is for many a great discomfort, big problem and insurmountable obstacle.

I was a smoker from my teenage years year until 2010. I consider 29th of November as my second birthday, because it is the date I quit smoking for good. This enables me to have a balanced view on this matter. 

There are two disclaimers I have to make here:
1. I did not practice mindfulness when I have stopped smoking. I have no idea if this method I will post here will work for anyone. I believe it will, at least,  not hurt your efforts to quit smoking.
2. Allen Carr's book "Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking: The Easyway To Stop Smoking". The author claims on his web site that he sold 10 million of his books. I know people who read his book and did not stop smoking. For me it did the trick, and in this post I will explain how.

I am not the first one to think about mindfulness and smoking. There is a great article in Psychology Today in which Judson Brewer discusses how to do it. I will try to simplify the process. This does not mean it will be easier.

Smoking is probably the most rationalized human behavior. Drug addiction, alcoholism and gambling are on top of that list, too.

Some of most famous statements of smokers:
"I could not drink coffee without a cigarette"
"I must light one when I wake up"
"Smoke after a meal tastes so great"
"I can quit smoking when I want, and now is not that time"
"I would quit smoking but it would make me fat"
"I have tried to quit smoking before and could not do it"
"I have a lot of stress in office these days, it is not the right time"

This way smokers fool themselves. They know that, too. It would be interesting to dissect human urge to do bad things for their health (and others, too). Not only it is bad in a long-term, it is bad even in the moment when they actually smoke. There is no possibility that inhaling any kind of toxic fumes into human lungs is pleasant. The smokers perceive that it is enjoyable because it satisfies their nicotine addiction. It reduces stress caused by that same addiction. In this way smokers see the cigarette as a way to reduce stress thus giving them pleasure. I would not even talk about how wrong that argument is.

Smokers are not mindful. Just look at any smoker and pay attention to his or hers behavior. It goes like this: 
1. They light up the cigarette. 
2. In that moment they are aware of the fact they are smoking.
3. As soon as nicotine injects into the body, the addiction is fed.
4. After that, smokers move their cigarette away, usually out of their sight, and are not aware that they smoke until it is time to put it out in the ashtray.

Smokers are not aware that they are smoking. Ask any smoker if there was a time they actually left a cigarette in the ashtray to burn out and never even noticed until it started to smell bad? This is the case for any smoker who works and smokes in the same time.

There are no benefits of smoking. If you read Allen Carr's book, you will learn this over and over. He burns the rationalizations of smokers one by one and dumps them collectively into the ashtray. See what I did there? :-)

How I stopped smoking?

As I said before, I did not practice mindfulness a that period in my life. I did not even have an idea what meditation or awareness are. I have read Allen's book and just throw half-finished pack of cigarettes in the trash. I have decided to smoke my last cigarette, and I did not even finish it but extinguished it halfway. That was it for me.

Before that I unsuccessfully tried to cut down, to smoke just a few cigarettes a day. I even installed some Android apps that notified me when is the time for next cigarette, taking into account how many cigarettes I may smoke that day. It was a hell for me. After a few days of this i caught myself looking at the smartphone screen and waiting for it to ping.

What happened? I did not think much about what happened to me and made me quit, until recently. I have started practicing mindfulness meditation last year and read some books on the subject. In this process I learned about mindfulness, human brain functions and started noticing things that did not matter to me before.

I have reached the conclusion that Allen's book gave me a prolonged moment of clarity. It made me aware of my smoking habit all the way. I did not simply light-and-forget, I started noticing every smoke I inhaled. In combination with Allen's almost hypnotic writing style and his irrefutable arguments against smoking, that made me realize that each smoke I inhale made me more stupid in my own eyes. I understood that smoking is something that is happening to me now and it was very bad and unpleasant. I saw that clearly at one point and throw away my addiction.

People who tried and failed to quit smoking told me that days after the decisions are like hell. They just could not endure the pangs. They felt nervous and depressed. For me, they were five of my most precious days because I knew that each minute I was further away from hell. I had an issue after four days. I felt intense dizziness, and I had trouble maintaining my balance for two whole days. Fortunately that was my blood pressure dropping, since I did not ingest anymore of toxins and my heart started pumping less intense, lowering my blood pressure. I have helped my heart deliver oxygen to my body, by removing the dirt from my blood. 


What about mindfulness? How would it help?

The plan to quit smoking using mindfulness:
1. When you feel the urge to smoke, take 10 deep breaths. Concentrate solely on the breath and if urge resurface just gently return your focus to the breath.
2. If the urge to smoke does not go away, drink a glass of water. Do it mindfully. Drink deliberately slow and notice how water travels to your abdomen.
3. If the urge to smoke does not go away, feel where in the body you feel this urge. Locate the exact point. When you find it, imagine a soap-bubble around it. Stand outside this bubble and look at your urge. Do not judge it, just feel it and accept it is there. Breathe while you are doing this.

This should help you, and if not, try again. You have to understand that the goal is to clean your body of nicotine. You can not throw it out immediately, since this takes about five days. Every time you light the cigarette, you move that five days window further into the future, thus prolonging your withdrawal symptoms. 

After you are clear of nicotine, you have one more step to do. You need to break the connection between smoking from other activities. You have to learn not to light a cigarette after a meal or while drinking coffee. Be aware of the habit to smoke after waking up in the morning, since the first ten minutes of being awake is the critical time.

I hope this advice will help you and please write your experiences in the comments section!

Why You Will Not Be Happy Tomorrow?

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How many times in our lives we wanted difficult day just to end? It was hard, we were tired of everything and we just wanted to go to bed.

I bet everyone had such days. It is normal and a part of being human. What are the problems with this kind of thinking?

It implies that tomorrow will be better. I will not. Or it will, but it does not matter one bit. Tomorrow will come, most probably, but now is the only time we have. Thinking it will be better tomorrow or in a week is a dangerous trap our minds set upon us, just to help us stay sane. 

You believe "Tomorrow" is a real thing. It does not exist, and yet we like to think about it, and even ruminate about it like a broken record. For example, when you have a presentation in front of hundred people, day before (or week before) you start going over presentation scenarios, imagine how will you speak. You say in yourself what you will speak, again and again and again. You imagine what questions will audience ask, and you rehearse all the answers. This is mindless thinking. What you imagine will most likely never happen. The reality will be so much different. There even might not be any presentation at all!

You think you do not have what it takes. You lead yourself to believe that there is one thing that is missing, and when you acquire that thing things will be perfect. Only when you acquire that thing you will realize that you need another and another after that. Somehow, when you think about it, in all hard situations you managed quite well. The results maybe weren't perfect - but it was good. You had what it takes then, and you will.

You believe something wrong happened to you. Nothing nature throws at you can possibly be wrong. Even if you die, it is a part of life, and it is considered natural. How many people you know lived for eternity? If you do right for yourself, your family and your community, nothing wrong can happen. What is wrong - your thoughts about that event. It has already happened and it is pointless to think a lot about it. You can not change the fact it happened, and if you resist that fact you will be miserable, guaranteed. Why would you make yourself miserable? Do you like being miserable?

You are rationalizing things. You believe that if bad things did not happen to you - you would be good, you would finish that assignment, you would not be late for that meeting and your lunch would not turn to ashes in the stove. It is perfectly normal for humans to rationalize things. Without that we would be all locked out in asylums.

What we need to do?

- Be in the present moment. Understand that it is the only moment you have and will always have. Do not wish it to pass, because it will not. Do step two if you do not know how.

- Follow your breath. Do five minutes of mindful meditation, concentrate on your breath, and if thoughts and emotions come, refocus on your breath and do not beat yourself up because your mind wonders.

- Do something beneficial for you, your family and your community. Listen to reason when deciding what to do. When you do it, you will immediately feel better. You can play with your kids or take a five-minute walk in the park. Watch TV show with your spouse. Call a friend. Exercise for three minutes. All those activities are good for your family and indirectly strengthens the community in the process.

What am I missing?

I have made a claim that you will not be happier tomorrow. I claim you are happy now. What is missing is a definition of happiness.

In dictionaries they define happiness as "the state of being happy." This does not help a bit.

Then what is happiness? There is no easy answer for that question. Almost any philosophy or religion defines happiness in its own way. Those explanations differ greatly from case to case. There is even a science of happiness today.

The problem is that happiness is different for each person on our planet. There are no two people who are happy in the exactly the same way.

They all agree in one - happiness is a state. This means it can happen now and is probably happening even if we are not noticing. Let's say you feel unhappy now. If you break down your present moment, can you tell me what in the present moment is making you unhappy? You must exclude your thoughts and ideas about what makes you unhappy and see clearly if anything present in this moment is making you unhappy. I am 99% sure there is absolutely nothing, unless you are in a hospital bed or trapped in a well. Then why you are unhappy?

You are unhappy because of your thoughts created by prefrontal cortex, part of your brain tasked to imagine. No other species on Earth has prefrontal cortex and can not plan, make decisions or be unhappy about something that is not present. You can easily analyze the behavior of the gazelle after it escapes a hungry lion. One moment, it is in state of total panic running away and after it flees - it peacefully continues to graze, like nothing happened at all. A human would continue running away from the lion in his or her mind for a long time.

There is a terrific Buddhist tale of two monks that goes like this: Two monks were making a pilgrimage to venerate the relics of a great Saint. During the course of their journey, they came to a river where they met a beautiful young woman - an apparently worldly creature, dressed in expensive finery and with her hair done up in the latest fashion. She was afraid of the current and afraid of ruining her lovely clothing, so asked the brothers if they might carry her across the river. 

The younger and more exacting of the brothers was offended at the very idea and turned away with an attitude of disgust. The older brother didn't hesitate, and quickly picked the woman up on his shoulders, carried her across the river, and set her down on the other side. She thanked him and went on her way, and the brother waded back through the waters. 

The monks resumed their walk, the older one in perfect equanimity and enjoying the beautiful countryside, while the younger one grew more and more brooding and distracted, so much so that he could keep his silence no longer and suddenly burst out, "Brother, we are taught to avoid contact with women, and there you were, not just touching a woman, but carrying her on your shoulders!" 

The older monk looked at the younger with a loving, pitiful smile and said, "Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river; you are still carrying her."

Do not carry your thoughts and feelings with you - let them go peacefully.

Large part of being happy is to rein our brain. If we manage to stay in the present moment and let our thoughts and feelings pass, we should be in the state of happiness. It is called nirvana in Buddhism. 


It is not as easy as it sounds, because our minds are preconditioned to think and feel. With practice, you will be more mindful, aware of the present moment and life that happens in front of you all the time!

Start Small Habits Now

I have read a brilliant book by Stephen Guise - "Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results".

In this book, Stephen talks about some serious life changing stuff. He talks about how to develop good habits, and in the process get rid of bad ones.

His method comes from Laozi's book "Tao Te Ching" very famous quote:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

This quote is as much brilliant as it is obvious. It gives universal formula how to do things. It also explains the only way to do things.

Many successful authors borrowed from this philosophy, and expanded on it. Based on this work is famous continuous improvement philosophy Kaizen. Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman helped rebuild Japan destruction during World War II, and Kaizen originated from their work. The main principle of this method is to do small steps toward a goal, and to treat each one as the most important. There are huge Japanese multinational corporations built on this philosophy.

There is a Chinese proverb that says:

"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward."

This can summarize Stephens method. He constructed one ingenious habit called "One push-up Challenge". He challenged himself to do one push-up every day. Silly, right? Not really.

He constructed a habit to assume a push-up position and do one push-up. What do you think happened after he did that one push-up? He did five more.

I strongly recommend you read his book. In this post I will talk about my implementation of what I have learned from it.

I have made a list of small habits that I would like to have in my life. Stephen recommends starting with three or four, but I have started with ten.

The hard part is to do your new habit for first few weeks. Since it is not yet established as a habit, you will forget to do it. Tomorrow you will be aware that you have skipped a day, feel unmotivated and dump the habit altogether. If you skipped one day it is very easy to skip the next one, too.

Aristotle said:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

If we want something to become a habit, we must do it repeatedly. It then becomes our nature and greatly influences our life.

One of the greatest bloggers Leo Babauta has an article on his site Zenhabits, titled "The Habit of Starting". I will quote one sentence from his article:

"... the key to forming a habit is starting each day"

Two main ingredients of forming a habit are:

1. Make habit a small one. It does not matter if it is ridiculously small. I have a habit that says "Eat one fruit". And I did it for 50 days in a row, and counting.

2. Do it every single day. You have no excuse to fail doing a small habit. One push-up. I would like anyone to explain to me how you can not do it if you have all four healthy limbs.

Leo is talking about some other things like accountability. He proposes to share our habit with a friend, and let them know how we are progressing. I do not think that is necessary, especially if that person is not also forming his or hers own habits. Who cares if I have or have not eaten a fruit?

Practicing mindfulness can help you stay accountable to yourself. Do two minutes meditation session mentally checking the list of habits you want to form.

Honestly, I do not do that. I cheat a bit. Habit List is an iPhone app I have installed and it helped me keep track of my daily and weekly habits. What makes me accountable to Habit List? Believe it or not - that three dollars I have paid for it! Somehow the authors of this app have nailed exactly what I needed to start my shiny new good habits, and I am grateful to them for it. I am diligently checking off my ten to twelve habits every day for two months now. I have total of two missed habits out of about 700 total.

Guess who else came to similar idea - famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld. I am paraphrasing his advice given to Brad Isaac:

"Each year, hang a large calendar on the wall, for every day you do your habit, you have the pleasure to draw big red "X" over that day."

The idea was not to break the chain. Breaking the chain makes skipping that habit easier the next day.

You will not break a chain if your habit is small one! This is the brilliant idea Stephen Guise explained to us in his book.

This method is the one you can use to set up mindfulness meditation habit. Start a habit of meditation for three minutes each morning right after you wake up. Do it every day, and if you feel you can meditate for two more minutes then do two more minutes, by all means. If not, you have completed your habit for the day and happily move on.

Add another habit of mindfulness at the office, if at all appropriate. Concentrate on the top of your monitor (if you use one) for two minutes each day. I am sure nobody will notice it and that you will not have any bad consequences.

Establish some "fun" habits, too. I love photography, so I have a habit to post one picture on the Instagram each day. I spend way to much time on Instagram, but with this habit I actually post only one picture, and not three or four as I used to do. What I did, is turn a bad habit into a less bad habit. I will not break that habit, though, because I love to photograph. Photography makes me more mindful about my surroundings, since I am often looking around for some interesting stuff to shoot.

Be creative with your habits. Do not just "exercise", "meditate", "write". I have a habit to eat 20 grams of dark chocolate a day. It is very healthy when consumed in moderation.

With Habit List app I also established some non-daily habits. I have a weekly habit to "take a long walk", which means I go walking to Farmers Market with my wife each Saturday, where we buy fresh produce and fruit, and where we have a cup of coffee in our favorite coffeehouse. Since I work 9 to 5, I do not have two hours each day to spend on this activity, so I proclaimed it a weekly habit.

I have also started writing a journal, with a few sentences about my day, and on top of it a gratitude journal, where I list five things I am grateful about. I can recommend Rick Hanson's book "Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence", to learn how to properly write a gratitude journal. Before reading his book, I have noticed that I do not have too much use of gratitude journal. I would just write some lines there and it would feel like a chore. I have already started and abandoned such journal last year. Now I have started it again but armed with scientifically proven method of how to do it right. Now I am happily on day 37 of my new gratitude journal! I use beautiful "Day One" app to write. This app actually provides me with a bit of incentive, which stacked on  top of my already forming habit and makes me love writing a journal.

Basically, you deal with two habit-forming issues: motivation and willpower. Both are scarce and untrustworthy. By having small daily habits you eliminate the problems. Reading for 10 minutes requires a little willpower and absolutely no motivation.

Stephen Guise gives an estimate, in his book, about how long you have to build your small habits, so I recommend you to read it. This is a tricky bit!

Good luck with your new good habits. Please write in the comments sections which habits you want to build for yourself and how can it be converted to small habit!

Why Is Our Judgement Wrong?

We spend every waking moment interacting with our surroundings, and while we do that, we need a mechanism to routinely make decisions. Our mind is in charge if making decisions, and one of the most important part of decision-making is judgement.

Why is judgement important in decision-making? Because it protects us from bad things that will happen if we choose poorly. 

Judgement has a number of factors:

• Previous experiences
• Upbringing
• Cultural influences
• People you interact with
• Ability to feel empathy
• Social power and influence
• Material wealth

Based on those factors we can conclude that everyone should make a different judgement about the same thing.

Let me clarify this. For example, we see a new iPhone in shop window. There is a decision we have to make - to buy it or not. We might not even consider looking at the shop window or we might think for thirty minutes. Either way, we can make only two decisions: "buy" or "not buy".

Every person facing this dilemma will pick only one option. What I want to show you is that whatever the decision is - it's based very probably on wrong reasons.

First of all, all those judgement filters are influencing your decision. You had bad experience with earlier version of iPhone and you did not like it. Your parents do not have cell phones, and raised you not to value them. Your religion does not allow you to use electrical devices. Your friends all have newest iPhones. You decide to buy iPhone for your poor cousin instead. You buy in because it will look good on that exclusive restaurant table. You can not afford it.

All those reasons are not real. They are the product of our imagination. The reasons are external. Each point on the "filter list" is in your head. Let me make an example of the last filter "Material wealth", in our iPhone buyers case. You decide you can not afford it. Why? You might not have enough money, but you could get part-time job and work for it. You might get older model, or buy "cheaper" one that fallen off the truck (I am not condoning this!). You might have enough money but still decide you can not afford it because you need that money for your daughters schooling. Objectively, you can afford it, but your judgement filters prevent you to do it, and you make a decision. This is completely normal process, and everyone does the same.

Why I believe this decision-making process is bad? It is bad because it does not involve clear thinking. It is not based on objective but subjective values, based mostly on external influences that have nothing to do with our core principles. It is not based on reason. Most judgmental thoughts and feelings are bad. Luckily, it does not make us bad people, only poor decision-makers. 

As Marcus Aurelius say in "Meditations":

"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now."

How do we "wipe out that judgment now"? We need awareness. We need to come back into present moment, by letting go of all filtered thoughts we might have. Ask yourself good questions, concentrating on reasonable and natural standards:

1. "Will this new iPhone benefit or spoil me?"
2. "Will this new iPhone benefit or spoil my family?"
3. "Will this new iPhone benefit or spoil my friends and people I know?"

These are not some generic questions. First question, for example, asks if your current phone is enough for you? Does this new one have some crucial feature that will benefit me, my family and my community? The answer is not complicated. If you just place a call or two a day, and listen to some music, old phone is enough. If you do field work and regularly contact your customers while away from your desk, that longer battery life in the new model will be crucial for you, and then you buy it. The second question prevents you from buying it - if your daughter needs school books. You get the idea.

If the answer to all three questions is "benefit" the you should make positive decision.

The second type of judgement, is self-judgement. This form of judgement is worse than judging other people or things, since it is very negatively biased. This means that you almost always think bad about yourselves. 

In his book "The Power of Now", Eckhart Tolle says:

"The moment that judgement stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind. You have made room for love, for joy, for peace."

You can feel bad about your looks, your career, your anxiety and your iPhone. By accepting the reality, you are free of bad judgement. You do not need to judge something you have already accepted. Not looking into the past and into the future is also the key. Do not create stories about what happened and what might be. If you do, you will naturally start to judge them!

The third issue about judgement is fear of being judged by others. This can cause some real troubles, like obsession, depression, anxiety, perfectionism and high blood pressure. We do not want that, do we?

Nobody can say it better than Brené Brown:

"Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it's about earning approval and acceptance."

I wand to clarify one more thing - I do not see that being judged by other people as bad. It is bad for them, not you. Bad judgement, the topic of this post, is all about your own.

What we need to understand is that people who judge you do it trough their own filters, and we already concluded this way of judgment is defective. So, why are we upset? Because someone else is wrong? We can be upset only when we are wrong, but only briefly. Just accept that someone judged you, did that badly, and feel sorry for they made a mistake. Then, with a clear head, explain why that person is wrong. If he or she still persists, do not get angry or upset. It's still problem on the other end.

One small problem - how we distinguish from good and bad critique? It is very important that we learn this skill. We can do it by being aware, being present in the moment, and clear-headed, asking ourselves the same three questions I have listed above.

Dalai Lama:

"The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis."

Follow your reason, carefully listen to others and you will be fine!

How do you make decisions? Please leave comments below!

What to Do When Things Change

Everyone knows that things change. We learn about it in school, from our parents and from our experience. We notice yellow leaves grace the trees in the fall instead of green ones in the summer, we see the dark clouds when the storm is coming and we notice when one of our parents goes on the very long business trip.

Change happens because it is the way the universe works. Marcus Aurelius says "Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them." It is embedded into our daily lives, it applies to our neighborhood and to our city. It affects our neighbors, our compatriots and the human kind. If we pay attention, we will see the change. It is vitally important that we are aware of the changes around us, and more importantly - within us. 

When we notice it, change is something that we see as normal occurrence, and in the same time it terrifies us. It is in human nature, and we all react the same. People tend to avoid fear, and typical reaction is to run away from it. Sometimes we just stand still until it passes. When noting else works, we face it.

Some of the greatest minds in human history contemplated change and our role in it.

Lao Tzu (Lao Tzu in Wikipedia), author of famous book "Tao Te Ching" (Way of Life) writes:

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like."

In this quote Lao Tzu mentions resistance and its consequences. If you resist change you will be unhappy. He is very specific about it and leaves no room for interpretation. I will, though, clear something up - he is referring to changes that already happened, and are currently happening. He is not saying we shouldn't do anything to effect the upcoming changes in our lives.

What examples of resistance to change can I give you, that you will recognize instantly? Here are a few sentences that are illustration of thoughts we all have sometimes:

• "Why is this happening to me?"
• "I should have bought that dress."
• "That person is really annoying. I am so upset!"
• "Where are the parents of those annoying children?"
• "I hate this rain!"
• "I would prefer it is raining now..."

One of the most beautiful quotes from one of the greatest men in the history of humanity, Mahatma Gandhi:

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Gandhi teaches us that we are the ones that are the only source of our sorrow. Nobody else can control our brains and produce anger, sadness, sorrow, distress and indignation. If you wish to live a peaceful life and to be content, you have the power to do so, and you alone! This amazing quote holds another tip from Gandhi - you are responsible to do the things properly, to work as hard as you can, to make reasonable decisions and to treat people nice. When you see someone doing a bad thing, instead of getting angry at that person, teach him or her politely the right way. When person refuses your words, again - do not get angry. Nobody is required to have the same values as you, to know what you do and to behave as you think is proper. Maya Angelou said "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude."

What about changes within us? Some people believe that they do not change. They always like the same food. They always support the same football team. They always love to go to the same bar. They always hang around with the same friends.

But they do not. Are there some friends in your life that were very close to you ten or twenty years ago, and you have not heard from them in five years. I bet you haven't. Would you give the same amount of money for that fancy sneakers you wanted so much when you were 15, now that you are 30? No, you would prefer that classy shoes to wear at work. 

People change daily, bit by bit, moment by moment. They might not notice it. Even the mountains change: a tree falls, land slides, a ditch forms from heavy rains and a badger digs a hole in the ground. And this happens all the time. If the mountains change, how can we believe for an instant that we can stay the same? There is scientific evidence that we change a big number of cells in our body, so we literally are becoming a different human being. Our brain cells are dying over the yeas, and are not replaced. It is biologically normal that we think differently than ten or twenty years ago. 

What to do when difficult change happens? Marcus Aurelius gives us a hint in his book "Meditations", in Book VII:

"Let external things affect, as they please, the things which can be affected by them; let those complain of them which suffer by them. But if I can prevent any apprehension that the event is evil, I am not hurt. And it is in my power to prevent it."

Recipe is simple - you are the one responsible for how you feel, and whatever happens it's up to you to handle it. 

Famous quote from Shakespeare's "Hamlet", when Hamlet talks with king Claudius spies Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, and discusses Denmark:

"Why then 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison."

Hamlet is the prisoner of his own mind. For him Denmark is a prison, and he is unhappy. If you start thinking you are offended, distressed, wronged or angry - you become exactly that. 

The way to deal with change is to:
1. Acknowledge / see it. If you can not see it, your subconscious mind will, and will go to autopilot mode immediately. Then thinking spiral starts, and you are starting to ruminate. You can see the change only by paying attention to the present moment. That is really the only way.
2. Accept it. Even when you begin to see the change, acceptance process is starting automatically. If it does not, just stand back and observe your thoughts and feelings. Do not judge them, do not thing that you should not have those thoughts and feelings. You are having them, and that is just fine. That will lead to acceptance.
3. Let go of your thoughts and feelings. You had them, they were normal and good, but you do not want to let them run around your head like on a carousel. When observed from the distance, thoughts and feelings might go away.

This is not a guaranteed way to deal with change. Sometimes, the change will overwhelm you, and then you should just repeat the process as many times as required. You might want to meditate for a few minutes, following your breath, and returning to your breath when you notice your mind wandered. This will at least diminish your reaction, and help you make clear-headed decisions.

How do you deal with change? Please write in the comments section!

Why Past and Future Do Not Exist and What to Do About It?

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What is time? Searching Wikipedia I have found the definition: "Time is a dimension and measure in which events can be ordered from the past through the present into the future, and also the measure of duration of events and the intervals between them.", which sounds about right.

The key word in definition is "measure", which suggests that we use time to measure something. Is there any other measure that we use every day? We measure length using meters or yards, we measure temperature using degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Therefore I conclude that measure is not a real thing, it does not exist in a real world. We can not catch, hold, buy, sell, bury or eat nor time or length. We can not throw temperature away when we feel hot or cold. Therefore, measures do not exist. We invented them, and use them chiefly to communicate. We can say that it is 32 degrees Celsius outside, and everyone knows that they should wear shorts and t-shirts. We can meet someone at the cinema exactly at 8 o'clock, so we can watch a movie together.

Marcus Aurelius talks about this in his brilliant book "Meditations", in book 6, paragraph 49:

"Thou art not dissatisfied, I suppose, because thou weighest only so many litre and not three hundred. Be not dissatisfied then that thou must live only so many years and not more; for as thou art satisfied with the amount of substance which has been assigned to thee, so be content with the time."

When we think about past and future, we are exploring non-existing things. "But I have memories, you can't tell me they are not real!", was my reaction when I read about this subject. I could understand this concept about future because it did not happen yet, but I could not deny the past.

In the book The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle writes:

"Time isn't precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is."

What he is teaching us is that any point in the past was actually the present moment. The time, thirty years ago, when I was camping in Greece with my parents was the present moment then. The time my daughter was born was also the present moment. The same goes for the future. In ten minutes, it will still be now. Tomorrow will be now and anytime will be now.

I found this model a bit confusing at first, but quickly understood its value and its truthfulness. The logic is unbreakable. For me, the student of mathematics and Aristotle's logic, and on top of it a computer programmer - logic is obviously the key argument.

Following this logic, I accepted that past and future do not exist, and that all that exist is the present moment (Eckhart's "Now" with capital N). More so, every single point in the past and in the future was or will be - now. Everything that happened and will happen was or will be exactly now. To my amazement this led me to deduce that I live my whole life now, and that everyone else does, too.

As you can imagine, that conclusion destroyed my understanding of the past and the future, and eliminated time as a factor in my life. I understood that if I wanted to live my life I have to live it in the present moment. Every time my mind wonders in memories, or when it starts mindlessly thinking about what will be, I stop living. I become mindless.

I will quote Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition of mindfulness:

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; On purpose, in the present moment, and non judgmentally.”

This quote gave me the practical instruction how to live in the present moment - I have to be mindful. He also mentions the present moment, which is one of the key concepts of mindfulness. I will cover other parts of this definition in later posts.

Jon Kabat-Zinn also says:

"We take care of the future best by taking care of the present now."

He means that what we do now directly influences our future. One important thing - he talks about "taking care" of the present now. That implies action. That also implies that mindless thinking about the future is not what we should do.

Alas, we all do ruminate (definition of rumination). It is part of human nature. Whenever we are in a distressing situation we tend to obsessively think about our plight, sometimes planning ahead and sometimes thinking of the past trouble. You know when you think about some event in the future, some important business presentation to deliver. You explore every possible scenario. You rehearse endlessly what you will say and what people will ask you. You repeatedly do it, sometimes for hours. It's like a broken record playing in your head, and it is very difficult to stop.

The same thing happens when you are in a romantic relationship, particularly when there is some problem. Someone had offended you, done something wrong. You will endlessly think about what you should have said or did. You think about how you will repay the insult, over and over again.

We also react similarly in much less difficult situations, such as when someone cuts the line in the grocery store. We are feeling distressed, and think over and over what should you do. Sometimes, long after you get home, the incident comes back in your mind, and you ruminate again.

If we do not control this, it can lead to very serious conditions, such as depression disorders.

How can we avoid this? One of the methods is meditation. By meditating ten minutes a day, you can achieve to become more aware of your surroundings, your thoughts and your feelings. In this blog I will discuss some meditation techniques, in later posts.

One of the most common ways to practice meditation is to close your eyes and follow your breath. That's about it. Whenever your mind wanders, and it most certainly will, you gently bring back your attention to the breath. Try this for even three minutes, and you will see what I am talking about.

Mindfulness meditation by following your breath is extremely simple, but it is not easy by any means. You will need to practice it daily. This practice is very similar to common exercise, and the difference is you practice your brain instead your muscles. Note that I wrote "brain" and not "mind", since by meditating you are influencing your brain structure (in a positive way). 

Just to drop the possibility this is some mumbo jumbo, I will share a link to Psychology Today's article "Use Your Mind to Change Your Brain", written by  Rebecca Gladding, M.D. There is multitude of scientific proof available to substantiate meditation as a "real thing", and not some eastern religious Buddhist fabrication.

Conclusion is that we can live in the present moment, by practicing mindfulness. Return and read definition of mindfulness once more.

For me, it is beautiful way to live my life. I am by no means mindful all the time, as some meditation masters claim. I am just an ordinary guy, and I meditate daily at least 10 minutes. Even with that practice, I spend most of my day not mindful. For me it is difficult to be aware, but after a year of practice, I am living in the Now for longer intervals. I feel less stressed and I am able to "intercept" stressful thoughts and feelings and let them go. Not all of them, of course.

How I Discovered Mindfulness

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I live a frantic life at work, working for huge multinational corporation. Every day I wake up at 6 am, get ready for work, spend some time with my wife, wake up the kids for school. Then, get some breakfast and go to work. After work, I come home, watch some TV, eat dinner while watching TV, and then go to bed.

My whole family executes this pattern day in, day out, every working day. This routine is something we do on auto-pilot, without much attention. When I brush my teeth I think about my task list for the day. When I eat breakfast, I read the news articles or contemplate about upcoming project at work.

"This is how it should be," I was thinking for years. Everyone I know, my friends, relatives and colleagues live similar lives, doing the same routine, day in, day out - indefinitely.

First, what is mindfulness? The best definition was given by Jon Kabat-Zinn:

"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment, and non judgmentally."

I will get back to this. Sentence is complex and consists of several key areas, which I will cover in later posts.

This depiction describes the exact opposite of my life. Ever since I discovered mindfulness, my life changed and in a positive way.

My first contact with mindfulness and meditation was last summer, when I saw a TED talk by Andy Puddicombe ("All it takes is 10 mindful minutes"). What Andy asked me, and all of his audience, is to do nothing for ten minutes. At the beginning of his talk Andy asked the question:

"I'd like you just to take a moment to think, when did you last take any time to do nothing? Just 10 minutes, undisturbed? And when I say nothing, I do mean nothing. So that's no emailing, texting, no Internet, no TV, no chatting, no eating, no reading, not even sitting there reminiscing about the past or planning for the future. Simply doing nothing. I see a lot of very blank faces." 

You can watch Andy's performance, and see for yourself.

This is the moment something just clicked in my mind, as I fearfully realized that I do not have an answer. This is where I have discovered mindfulness.
Next, I went to Andy's website Headspace, and browsed around, looking at his excellent short videos.

At this point, I downloaded Headspace Android application Headspace (on-the-go), and decided to try out his ten-day free meditation program. I whipped out my headphones and started with Day one video and audio recording. The experience was eye-opening, not to mention very satisfying. After first ten minutes of meditation I felt like a giant boulder just dropped from my hands. Experience passed after several minutes, but I made up my mind to continue the next day, with lesson number two.

Since Andy's program is not cheap (75 EUR for a yearly subscription), I embarked on a quest to find more affordable (meaning "free") material about mindfulness meditation, before coughing up money. Andy's material is so great that I eventually purchased membership.

Next stop was YouTube. As a repository of humongous number of videos, many of them of cats, it houses countless lectures about mindfulness, meditation and awareness. Here is a first video that I saw (Jon Kabat-Zinn - "The Healing Power of Mindfulness"):

If you want to learn more about Jon read about him on Wikipedia. In short, he is professor of medicine and founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine. He has a doctorate in molecular biology from MIT.

Video "The Healing Power of Mindfulness" was an eye opener for me. Here I found out that meditation is not some eastern religious ritual, but a scientifically studied practice. Jon's lecture is clear, and he has a lot to say about the matter.

Next video was Jon's talk in Google. Here I have established a feeling of credibility about Jon Kabat-Zinn, because if you pass Google's screening and get to talk to their employees, you sure have something important to say. As if previous talk in New Hampshire based Ivy League College was not credible enough.

In first video, Jon mentions some guy named Eckhart Tolle. He said we should read his books, so as a member of hyper-connected generation, I have first looked him up on Wikipedia (Eckhart Tolle on Wikipedia) and, afterwards, on YouTube. And lo and behold, I found the video called "Eckhart Tolle in Conversation with Bradley Horowitz | Talks at Google". Here it is:

Now I had another Google hosted talk about the same topic, this time much less scientific and more on emotional side.

Why I insisted on Google lectures? It is for personal reason - I am IT professional, and I am probably quite similar to people working at other IT companies, and have similar concerns, interests and skepticism as they have.

Third video I stumbled on was "Mark Williams on Mindfulness", by professor Mark Williams (professor of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford). For me, this was the best  of four video lectures featured in this post, as it is the most "scientific" of them all. It is more down-to-earth type of lecture, to the point and without excessive ramblings.

After watching the videos, it was high time time to get more serious! I needed to read some books, and since I was new to the field of mindfulness meditation, I struggled to find right book to start with. 

After browsing the web, and amazing website Goodreads (goodreads.com), I found the book "The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment" by Eckhart Tolle. Persuaded by Jon Kabat-Zinn lecture, I have read this book and I was dumbfounded. Eckhart talks about present moment, and proves very easily that present moment is the only moment that ever existed! What a paradigm shift. He explains that every moment in the past was present moment then. Exactly the same logic applies to future moments. He proved that past and future is illusion and that they do not exist. You can not experience or touch past or future, just what is now in this moment. I believe that this perspective change was the single moment that made me choose to continue my study of awareness, mindfulness and the present moment.

It was very important for me to understand the present moment, and to start noticing it in my life. Since I have continued Headspace meditation practice, I could finally understand the reason Andy was telling me to follow my breath and let my thoughts and emotions pass without getting angry with myself that I can not do such a simple thing. "Just gently bring back your attention to the breath", said Andy.

Next book I have read is "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life" by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Jon's history and experience on subject convinced me to read his book. Inside the book, there are chapters about mindfulness meditation, laid out in straightforward way. His style is easier to read than Tolle's. He teaches us how to meditate. The main point for me was his explanation of the difference between "being" and "doing". He even explained to my corporate-driven, productive mind that I am "human being", not "human doing".

This is the end of my list and good starting point for everyone who wishes to learn about mindfulness and meditation. I have read more books, seen more lectures and tried other meditation techniques, and I intend to cover them in later posts.

Do you have any interesting book or video to share? Please write in the comments section below!