change

I had always thought my best sessions were the ones where I explained things clearly. It turned out my patients liked the ones where I was passionate about change. It mattered less to them what I said than what they sensed stirring in my soul. I stopped trying to emulate the detached, cerebral style of the shrinks I’d grown up with. Instead, I

this is the point where people self-destruct. At the first taste of success, they stop working on themselves. But reality hasn’t changed. They need the tools even more than before.”

At the same time, do not expect the mind to change simply because you are identifying less with it. You are not trying to change your mind! That's not possible. You can, however, change your relationship to the thinking mind, and this is great news. Your life will change and the mind will keep running its inflexible, predictable computer program.

regular sitting practice has been shown to enhance concentration, lower blood pressure, and improve sleep. It is used to treat chronic pain, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Meditators develop valuable insights into their personality, behaviors, and relationships, making it easier to recognize and

We have the best chance to change our behaviour over the long term if we start with a realistic idea about the difficulties of behavioural change (Dean 2013).

The reason this is so liberating, for anyone with even a hint of perfectionism, is that it means you get to give up on the exhausting struggle to take charge of your life, so as to steer it in a new direction. You get to abandon all hope of one day finding the perfect time management system– or perfect relationship, job, neighborhood, etcetera– and

Go to bed early and get up early. Most people in the West fill their evenings with activity and stimulation. As you get into a yogic way of life, those activities such as “hanging out,” movies, TV, “making out,” etc., cease to exert such a strong influence over you. Then the change in schedule becomes easy. If you have the opportunity to live away

It’s simply that it’s scary to take even one step forward; also, that you don’t want to make realistic efforts. You don’t want to change so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the pleasures you enjoy now—for instance, the time you spend playing and engaged in hobbies. In other words, you’re not equipped with the courage to change your

The moment we deny ourselves some gratification, we feel deprived. Part X appeals to our selfishness, telling us we should never have to feel deprived.

The only way to fight this is to have an equally selfish reason not to give in to our impulses. In other words, we need to find a reward in depriving ourselves. In the lower-channel, purely material