We’re in this together

In times of uncertainty and divisiveness, it helps to be mindful of the people around you and to recognize that we’re all in this together.

Patriot’s Day weekend, 2007, I was at an Omega Institute class in mid-town Manhattan with Zen teacher Sharon Salzberg. The topic was mindfulness. At the end of the class, Sharon asked us to look around the room and imagine that we were going to be stuck in a subway car with this specific group of people – for eternity.

“If you know you’ll be with this group for eternity, does that change how you feel about them? Does it make you more curious? Are you going to get to know them? Or are they going to continue to be strangers?” Continue reading

Life is a game

Roll the dice. Draw a card. Move a colored peg around the board.

Life is a game with an unpredictable outcome, and the fun is in the playing. When you wake up in the morning, are you grateful to be alive? Do you feel energy in your gut anticipating the day?

What will you learn today? Who will you meet? What conversations will you have?

Back to the game. Draw a “Habit” card and see where it takes you…

Continue reading

Getting started with meditation

If you aren’t healthy, it’s pretty hard to stay organized. Eating good food, getting outside, going for walks, and getting enough sleep help you focus on the tasks of the day.

And a big part for me of being grounded in a healthy lifestyle is meditation. I started meditating a couple of years ago after resisting for the longest time because I thought mediation was something you had to “do right”.

What finally got me meditating was a book by Lissa Rankin called Mind Over Medicine. The book isn’t about meditation – it’s about how powerful your mind is in helping you heal.

Here’s Lissa talking about this in a TED talk. Continue reading