We experience our lives through the filters of our moods. How we feel about ourselves is reflected in our moods. Like the chicken and the egg, it is hard to tell which comes first, the self or the mood. We may be in a bad mood and start thinking bad things about ourselves, or we may start thinking bad things about ourselves and fall into a bad mood. Bad moods and negative self-talk can perpetuate themselves and spiral into monster moods like depression and rage.

We like to think of our moods as our own personal experience, but moods are socially contagious and carry momentum. A person in a really bad mood will feel antagonized when confronted with cheery people. An angry person will lash out and create bad moods all around. This kind of interaction is what may turn a person in a monster mood into a mood monster…read more

Zen folks make a big deal about being present because how and how often we are present with ourselves and with each other has a lot to do with our personal wellbeing. Babies demand presence from their parents. They feel a sense of security when they can stare into their parent’s eyes and their parent is staring back. When the parent looks away, the baby becomes anxious. A baby’s survival depends on attentive parents, so from the very beginning we learn to depend on a quality of presence.

Babies themselves are only present. Their world is an unmitigated sensory experience, so all they have is presence. As we grow out of infancy and into adolescence and adulthood, we remain ever present with relentless sensory experiences, but we also acquire language and some context for all of our experiences. We develop a sense of time and a sense of purpose…read more

We are creatures of habit. Whatever we do one day, we’re likely to do something very similar the next. However we feel today, we will probably feel like that again tomorrow. If you’re feeling great, that’s great news. If you’re feeling sad and lonely, that is terrible news. Who would want to feel that way day after day? Nobody. Who would want to fly into a rage 10 to 100 times a day because little things keep going wrong? Nobody. Unfortunately, lots of people habitually feel these ways. Fortunately, there is a simple thing anybody can do to change their habitual feelings. Starting a new compassion habit can break old patterns and change your life.

A compassion habit mostly requires recognizing suffering. People are naturally compassionate. We all want to feel good and not suffer. Compassion is how we create comforts for each other and ourselves. It’s how we respond to the suffering we encounter in a way that makes it hurt less. Hurting less though, always begins with hurting more. So creating a compassion habit starts with seeing where it hurts.

Things hurt all the time so opportunities to practice compassion are plentiful…read more on Substack

Whether you know it or not, you design your mind. Other people help (and hinder), but you are the master craftsman of your world. You are the one who toils in the trenches, reacting and responding to everything as only you can. The outside world competes for your attention with a constant barrage of sensations, and you, moment by moment, make choices of where to aim your awareness. The choices are made so frequently and so fluently that they seem automatic. That unconscious choice shapes your mind just like the conscious choice, but it designs without designs, which makes you prone to more suffering. Nobody means to design a mind prone to suffering, but everybody does it. Fortunately, figuring out that you are the one in charge and then making a few conscious adjustments gives you the opportunity to create a mind you can live with…read more

It is easy to recognize the difference between our sleeping dreams and our waking experience. It is not so easy to recognize the dreamlike quality of reality. Dreams seem intensely real while we are in them, then often absurd when we recall them when awake. In dreams, people who have died are alive and people who are alive may die. Although, dreams defy time and physical boundaries, they maintain an internal logic where, no matter how unlikely, impossible, or ridiculous something may be for real, it all seems natural within the dream. When we are awake, our waking life feels natural too. In that way, it is dreamlike.

This natural way of experiencing life involves constantly making sense of the world around us. Because the world is so complex and unfathomable, we have to break it down into little bits that we can pretend make sense to us…read more