Supritha S

When you begin practicing a new habit it requires a lot of conscious effort to remember to do it. After awhile, however, the pattern of behavior becomes easier. Eventually, your new habit becomes a normal routine and the process is more or less mindless and automatic.

The least articulate form of the bad actor explanation might be the one we hear most often: that human beings are terrible and society is terrible. As much as that might explain any problem you can think of, it’s a ridiculous conclusion to make, if you consider that our species is obsessed with right and wrong and discerning one from the other.

The ease itself we can find much more readily by understanding our wants rather than scrambling to relieve them. We live in a society that’s constantly, cynically, promising that ease and relief through the getting of a particular thing, showing us pictures of it whenever possible, showing us how affordable it is. I constantly forget that it’s the ... See more

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

When I’m meditating consistently, I simply have fewer impulses to entertain and comfort myself, because ordinary moments feel more than good enough, most of the time. The smart phone is good barometer of this impulse, because it’s used as an instrument of escape much of the time—escape from boredom, escape from making the next decision, escape from... See more

Sometimes there are discernible reasons for low moods, of course, and it makes sense to act on them. (I don’t have a plan for my consumer debt, and I need one. My relationship is stagnating and I need to address that.) There are also serious, diagnosable mood disorders that need treatment.

Emotions really do work like sets of spectacles. Your “fear goggles” might sharpen and magnify images of future trouble and pain, while images of future joy and relief become faint, or don’t appear at all. Your “admiration goggles” might give a particular person and their ideas a blinding glow, and obscure the appearance of their faults.

This fearing and hoping we attach to many experiences is a kind of visceral neediness—a demand for the present moment to be easier, safer, or more comforting than it actually is. Developing mindfulness means practicing a kind of unconditional courage. You are always willing to experience reality exactly as it is when it arrives.

Feedback is a gift. It lets you know precisely what the other person wants or needs. After you receive the gift, it’s up to you to accept it or not. But shutting down feedback with an argument or by appearing ungrateful makes it less likely you’ll be offered it again. And if you’re getting feedback from a customer or a prospect, shutting it down ma... See more