5 Big Lessons from the book “Mindful Zen Habits” by Marc Reklau & Manuel Villa.
This book is written in a way to cover over 30 days wherein Authors have shared insights on self-development with a focus on mindfulness and Zen Meditation for each day. Here are my 5 key takeaways from this wonderful book:
Lesson 1: How to Find Happiness
Science is on our side. In the last 2 decades, there has been a revolution in the field of psychology and some of the best psychologists found out that happiness is not something that comes from the outside, our external circumstances, but depends much more on our habits, our thoughts, our beliefs and our attitude than we ever thought. Scientifically speaking, we can choose to be happy by choosing where we put our attention. Happiness is an internal state. It’s creating simple little habits day in and day out, like setting goals, being grateful, meditating, or doing physical exercise.
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% what you do with what happens to you.
Scientifically speaking, external circumstances make up to 10% of your happiness, your genes make up 50% of your happiness, and 40% of your happiness is made up by international activities- and that’s where the learning, hobbies, and exercises come into play
Lesson 2: Suffering is optional
Pain is inevitable while suffering is optional
Buddha
Pain always carries a physical component and suffering is something totally mental. It is perhaps more possible to associate pain with emotion and suffering with an accumulation of thoughts that adhere to it. Thus, allowing ourselves to feel the emotion of pain without added mental tribulation keeps suffering to a minimum.
Consumer society continually teaches us to enjoy the pleasure to the extreme and beyond, but nobody tells us how to learn to handle frustration or how to deal with suffering.
How to do it?
1. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT.
2. Meditation, dis-identifying with our thoughts and fully accepting our emotions, but without getting caught up in any more reflections as to why, is the best formula to ‘skim’ off anxiety and keep only the ‘dry extract’ of the most inevitable pain, more integral to life itself.
Lesson 3: We have 4 ACES and a JOKER in our Hands. Now, we have to play our cards
We all come to this world with 4 Aces in our hands.
GRATITUDE; KINDNESS; ACCEPTANCE; AUTHENTICITY
The systematic practice of gratitude becomes one of the most typical habits of Mindful Zen. Maybe at the beginning you might have to force your smile a little.
Kindness opens unsuspected doors. Unruly, petulant or even perverse people end up surrendering to those who do not cease in their kindness.
Authenticity is always a banner for lasting changes. Being Authentic implies knowing oneself well, knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses, nurturing the former, and tempering or recycling the latter in favor of humility and the search for support.
Acceptance: Without accepting that not everything is in our hands, the omnipotence sold as empowerment by many current self-help books can sabotage our deepest beliefs. Taking full responsibility for what concerns us and accepting what does not belong to us prevent the breakdown. Knowing how fragile we are makes us stronger.
And if all this were not enough, we still have the JOKER in the form of LOVE. Love solves everything, it is like the universal remedy for any deviation, mistake, or failure.
Lesson 4: Don’t strive for perfection, embrace the world of possibilities.
Tolerance and Flexibility are values that are both positive and necessary.
Do not be a perfectionist. Be a “POSSIBILIST”. Move forward, make mistakes, fall and get up again. That is constant improvement. That is KAIZEN
Lesson 5: Change Your Habits, Change Your Life
We change our lives by changing our habits
Aristotle
The most important thing about deciding to change your habits is becoming aware of them. Once you are aware of them, equip yourself with that necessary bit of self-discipline and willpower, and the process of change starts.
How to form new habits?
- Try to implement the more difficult habits just after getting up.
- The key is to put the desired actions or behaviors as close as possible to the path of least resistance.
- Activation energy refers to the initial effort or action required to initiate a positive behavior or change. Many people struggle to make positive changes or adopt new habits because the activation energy required feels too high. However, by reducing the activation energy, we can make it easier to start and sustain positive actions.
Identify your “ACTIVATION ENERGY”– what it is that you need to start, whether it is time, decisions, or mental and physical effort, and then reduce them. If you can cut the activation energy of habits that lead to success even by as much as 20 seconds, you will be able to reap the benefits in no time. - Authors recommend reading “The Happiness Advantage” by Shawn Achor
- The key to creating habits is REPETITION.
- Having a visual interpretation is helpful- a habit tracker, or simply a calendar where you mark every day you made the habit with a cross. Once you see a pattern or many crosses in a row, you won’t want to break the chain.
Everybody wants to be a champion until they found that to become a champion you have to work very very hard.
Read the complete book to know how to inculcate mindful zen habits to replace your old habits and achieve kaizen. Check out the book here.
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Stay blessed and Happy Reading!