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Tips for Living More

BY ANDY PUDDICOMBE

What follows are just a few of the most important ways tosupport your meditation practice and strengthen your practiceof mindfulness in everyday life^what I call "headspace." Thetheme that runs throughout is awareness, an understandingof both oneself and others. It's about developing a gentlecuriosity: watching, noticing, and observing what's happeningin every aspect of your lifehow you act, how you speak, andhow you think. It's not about trying to be someone else: it'sabout find ing a sense of ease with you as you are, right now.

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1PerspectiveCHOOSING HOW YOUSEE YOUR LIFEFor meditation to be effective, it doesn'treally matter how you view your life.But it can be useful to acknowledge thegeneral theme, because that w ay you canbe more alert to the tendency to slip intonegative patterns of thought. A nd it'sthis increased awareness that providesthe potential for sustainable change.It's also useful to notice how yourperspective can shifthow one dayyou can get on a crowded train an dnot be too bothered about it, while onanother occasion it appears to pushevery button you have. Th e goodthing about this realization is thatclearly it's not what's happening outsideof ourselves that causes us the mostdifficulty, but rather what's going oninside our own mindswhich, thank-fully, is something that can change.No ticing these shifting perspectivesfrom day to day, and from mom entto mom ent, can provide a very strongsupport for your daily meditation.

2CommunicationRELATING TO OTHERSIf you want to find a greater sense ofhappiness through the practice of medita-tion, you'll need to notice that taking outyour frustrations on others is unlikely toencourage a calm and clear mind. Com-municating skillfully and sensitively withother people is rherefore essential on theroad to getting some headspace. This couldmean applying a greater sense of restraint,empathy, or perspective to your relation-shipsor maybe all three!

Th at said, there are some people who,no matter how well intentioned jo are,will still choose to pick a fight. In thesesituations there is often little you can do.Trying to empathize with them andrecognizing similar states of mind within

yourself can be helpful, but if someone isconsistently unpleasant toward you, then itmay be best to just stay clear, if youpossibly can.

3App recia tio nSMELLING THE ROSESHave you ever noticed how muchemphasis some people place on even thesmallest amount of difficulty in theirlives, and how little time they spendreflecting on mom ents of happiness? Pa rtofthe reason for this is the idea thathappiness is somehow rightfully ou rs,and that everything else is thereforewrong or out of place.

The idea of taking time out to begrateful may sound a little trite to some,but it's essential if we want to get somemore headspace. It's very difficult to becaught up in lots of distracting thoughtswhen there is a strong sense of apprecia-tion in your life. And by developing amore heartfelt appreciation of what ivehave, we also begin to see more clearlywhat's missing in the lives of others.

4KindnessTOWARD BOTH YOURSELFAND OTHERSW hen you're kind to someone else, itfeels good. It's not rocket science. It feelsgood to you and it feels good to them.It makes for a very happy, peacefulmind . But while you're at it, how aboutshowing yourself some ofthat kindness,especially in the challenging process oflearning to be more m indful? W e livein a world with such high expectationsthat we can often be critical of our ownprogress in learning something new.

Fortunately, meditation has a strangeway of bringing out the kindness in people,and practicing kindness in everyday life

will feed back into your own meditation.Kindness makes the mind softer, moremalleable, and easier to work with inyour practice. It creates a mindset thatis less judgm ental a nd m ore accepting.Clearly this will have profound implica-tions for our relationships with others.

5CompassionIN THE SHOES OF OTHERSCompassion is not something that we can"do" or "create"; it already exists in each andevery one of us . If you thin k of awarenessas a clear blue sky, the same image can beapplied to compassion. In fact, you couldsay that the blue sky represents both aware-ness and compassion in equal measure .

Sometimes compassion will arise sponta-neously, like the clouds parting to revealthe blue sky. At other times we may have tomake a conscious effort, which is a bit morelike imaginingwhat the blue sky looks like,even when it's obscured by clouds. But themore you imagine this scenario, the morelikely it is to happen naturally. Compassionis a lot like empathy put ting ourselvesin the shoes of another and experiencinga shared sense of understanding.

6BalanceA SENSE OF EOUANIMITYTh e ebb a nd flow of life is not unlike thesea. Sure, sometimes it's calm and serene,but at other times the waves can be so bigthat they threaten to overwhelm us. Thesefluctuations are an inevitable part oflife.But when you forget this simple fact, it'seasy to get swept away by strong waves ofdifficult emotions.

By training the mind thro ugh medita-tion, it's possible to develop a more balanc edapproach, an d thus experience a greatersense of equan imity in life. This sh ouldn't

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be confused with a boring existence wbereyou float along in life like some emotionlessgrey blob. In fact it's quite the opposite.Having greater awareness of your emotionsmeans that, if any thing , your experience ofthem w ill be heightened. It's just that inbeing less caught up in them , you will nolonger feel as though you're at their mercy.7AcceptanceRESISTANCE IS FUTILENo matter how fortunate yourcircumstances are, life can at times bestressful and challenging. We often tryto ignore tbis fact and tberefore feelfrustrated and disappointed wben wedon't get our own way. Just as we didwben approacbing compassion, it canbe useful to thin k back to the blue skyanalogy when you reflect on accep-tance.

The journey to acceptance is aboutdiscovering what we need to let go of,rather tban what we need to start doing.By noticing mom ents of resistancethroughout the day, you can start tobecome more aware of what preventsacceptance from naturally arising. Thisin turn will allow you to view thethoughts and feelings that arise duringyour meditation with a much greatersense of ease.

8ComposureLETTING GO OF IMPATIENCEFor many people, life nowadays hasbecom e so busy, so hectic, that anaccompanying sense of impatience isperhaps inevitable. In such moments,you may notice your jaw tightening,your foot tapping, or your breathgetting increasingly shallow. But bynoticing the impatience with agenuine sense of curiosity, the verynature of the impatience begins to

cbange. Somebow the m omen tumslows down and its grip is released.

Impatience is just as likely to showup in your meditation practice as itdoes in everyday lifeone simplyreflecting the other. In fact, if you'relike most people, you may well findyourself asking, "Why am I notexperiencing results more quickly?"But remember, meditation is not really

abotit achievement and resultswhichis why it's such a nice change of pacefrom the rest of life. Instead, it 's aboutlearning to be aware, to rest in tbe spaceof natural awareness with a genuinesense of ease.

9DedicationSTICKING WITH ITMindfulness is about a fundame ntal shiftin the way you relate to your though ts a ndfeelings. While that m ay sound exciting,or perhaps a little overw helming, it'sactually brought about by repeating theexercise briefly and often. So this meanspracticing me ditation on a regular basis,no m atter how you feel. Just as when youacquire any other skill, you'll become m oreconfident and familiar with the feeling ofmindfulness the more often you apply it.By practicing in this way a little but

oftenyou can slowly start to buildup a stable sense of awareness in yourmeditation, which will naturallyfeed through to the rest of your life.Conversely, being more mindfulin everyday life will have a positiveimpact on your practice. If you're re-ally clear in your motivation, know ingwhy you're learning meditation andbeing aware ofthe people around youwho are likely to benefit from yourincreased sense of headspace, thenyou're unlikely to have trouble sittingdown for ten short m inutes each day.

10PresenceLIVING LIFE SKILLFULLYLiving skillfully can mean having thepresence of mind to restrain yourselfwhen you sense you are about to sayor do some thing you'll later regret.It can also mean having the strengthand stability of awareness to respondsensitively to difficult situation sratber tban reacting impulsively. Soliving skillfully requires a certainamount of discriminating wisdom.Unfortunately, wisdom can't belearned from books or magazinearticles, no matter how profoundthe writing. Instead, it arises froman x/Jmfwft'z/understanding oflife, which meditation can help toenhanc e. Just as we saw tbat com pas-sion and acceptance are analogous tothe blue sky, so too can we experiencesimple presence. Wisdom isn'tsomething you can "do" or "makehappen" it's tbere in all of us . By be-coming more familiar with that spacewithin ourselves and trusting our owninstincts more fully, we can learn toapply this quality of discriminatingwisdom in everyday life and begin tolive more skillfully in the world.

Andy Puddicombe i s a form er Buddhistmonk and the fo under o f Headspace, apro ject that a ims to make medi ta t ionaccessible and easy to lear n. This ar tic lewas excerpted from h is book Get SomeHeadspace 2012. Repr in ted wi th per-miss ion o f St. Mart in 's Gr i f f in .

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