(Part 3) Top products from r/ZenHabits

If you aren't being facetious... start with these books:

• The Compassionate Life, by Marc Ian Barasch
  
  
• Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi.
  
  
• Anger, by Thich Nhat Hanh.
  
  These are all easy books to blow off. You can dismiss The Compassionate Life as a guidebook for letting other people take advantage of you. You can dismiss Never Eat Alone as the egotistical scrambling of a sleazy salesman. You can dismiss Anger as a hand-wavey tome of feel good nonsense. If you're tempted to do so, I urge you to suspend your judgment and pour yourself into them. Here's why:
  
  From Anger, I learned not to let my fear of feeling and sharing emotions prevent me from opening myself up to other people. The book is about anger, but it applies to everything: jealousy, fear, anxiety, confusion, even joy. It taught me to treat my negative feelings as a part of myself that deserved compassion and nurturing just like anything or anyone else I care about.
  
  From Never Eat Alone, I learned the value of trust and openness. The point of "networking" isn't to collect business cards and shine your teeth at people; it's to establish an extended family of people who you genuinely care about, and thus, through inevitable cause and effect, who genuinely care about you. You don't have to be married to someone or see them every day to love and care about them. You just have to treat them like a human being, and not hide the truth of your human-ness out of fear of being judged.
  
  Finally, from The Compassionate Life, I learned that I'm not the only one walking this path. It gave me the determination to continue walking, even in the face of judgment, ridicule, and skepticism from many people around me. It solidified my hunch that, in the right hands, compassion is a great strength, and not a weakness. It helped me learn to forgive myself and others, even for what felt like irrecoverable wounds or betrayals. More than that, it helped me learn from those wounds, and it helped me learn from the forgiveness. It gave me strength.
  
  That's all I've got for the moment!

I don't know if you need to "get in touch with yourself" per se. It seems as though you have a fairly good understanding and connection with yourself, but simply don't like what you've found.


The suggestion of travel seems to have many up-votes at the moment, but I don't know if I really agree that would help you. Travelling to foreign places will force you to pay attention, but if you can't learn to pay attention in familiar or mundane environments then you lack one of the most important skills a person can have. If I ventured a guess as to the problems you have failed to mention I would guess boredom, and travel would most likely not resolve that when you return from your trips, nor would it resolve the problems you have specifically mentioned. If anything travel would give you a temporary sense of resolution from your boredom, leading to a travelling addiction.


I would suggest you develop a habit of breaking your habits and routines, and your pre-conceived notions. The following list includes a few suggestions, but keep in mind you cannot drastically alter your life all at once as you need to incorporate changes (perhaps every two weeks) in to your life slowly otherwise you may feel overwhelmed.

• Try taking alternative routes to and from work, or other locations. If possible leave a little earlier than you need to so you can take routes you've never taken before and will have the opportunity to absorb the details of these new surroundings.
  
  
• When you go for walk, remember to look up. All too often people look down or straight ahead, but if you happen to live in a city or even a nice town the buildings in your area most likely have some interesting features above your normal line of vision.
  
  
• If you make a conclusion as to the purpose of something you have noticed, comment to or ask someone about it if they would likely have more information about it. They may very well provide you with a response that defies your initial conclusion.
  
  
• Take half an hour each day to listen to an educational audio book, such as one of those from The Teaching Company, preferably on a subject you know very little about.
  
  
• Take half an hour each day to read a book, either fiction or non-fiction, but preferably of critical acclaim in its respective genre. Venture in to genres that normally don't interest you.
  
  
• Engage in zazen for twenty minutes each day.
  
  
  Regarding your family and friends: meaningful relationships certainly help make life more enjoyable, but without knowing about your pre-existing relationships I cannot offer you any advice. Perhaps your family and friends treat you maliciously, in which case you should considered finding new friends or seeking relationship advice from a counsellor. On the other hand perhaps you simply haven't given your relationships the proper effort, in which case you should consider how you may feel about yourself and your relationships should your family or friends die in the near future, because they will likely die sooner than you expect.
  
  
  Regarding your career: perhaps someone can offer you better advice than I as my career has troubled me as well. I have learned that you don't always love what you easily have proficient skill at, and sometimes you have to really work hard to develop your skill for those things you love to do with your time. I've also learned that when you can help people with your work it can fulfill you in a subtle, yet deep and long-lasting manner.
  
  
  If at all possible I would suggest you read If You Meet The Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!, Zen in the Martial Arts and Your Brain: The Missing Manual, as they have proven quite helpful to me. Additionally the documentary Maybe Logic has proven quite helpful to me. These products may not prove helpful to you at all, but if you can find a book or movie that does help you it doesn't hurt to read or watch it whenever you feel yourself slipping back to your old habits. With time you should find yourself reading or watching that book or movie less and less, as you begin to develop some skill with your new life.

> I suppose I am still unsure about TM and am playing devil's advocate. So I appreciate the information. I actually am very interested in TM, but have found Mindfulness to be less controversial. I am, however, reading David Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish, which is about TM and creativity. Have you read it?

I haven't read it, I'm afraid. However, Bobby Roth, Executive Director of the David Lynch Foundation, is in my email address book and we've chatted on teh phone once as well as exchanged emails. Likewise, the email address of John Hagelin, President of the DLF, is in my address book, and we've even chatted in person a couple of times over the past 30 years. I've never met David Lynch, however.

.
>Are their other books you can recommend?

Norman Rosenthal, the researcher who discovered SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, AKA "the winter blues" and how to treat it with bright light therapy), is a long-time TMer. His book Transcendence is pretty nice, but entirely pro-TM. He told me he's working on a new book about enlightenment. Not sure what the title will be.

Craig Pearson, the Executive VP of the TM university in Iowa, spent 30+ years of his life going over world literature and documenting expressions of "higher states of consciousness" and how they fit into TM theory and published his findings: The Supreme Awakening. Obviously also entirely pro-TM.







>Truth be told, I was parroting an old therapist, which is even worse.

Eh, if you're not a hardcore believer, or at least, super-open-minded, you'll tend to read abstracts, and even there, you can mis-read details.

A friend of mine, David Orme-Johnson, is a retired psychology professor from the TM university in Iowa. Even so, when he's not vacationing with his wife and painting landscapes, still maintains a pro-TM-research website and even publishes an occasional research review.

The most famous paper about TM and "depersonalization" or dissociation that I am aware of is:

Depersonalization and meditation

The abstract doesn't sound terribly positive for TM (all 6 subjects were TMers, one of a year's practice, and 5 with 12-15 year's practice) if that is all you bother to read. David, of course, has an agenda to see that TM is looked upon in a positive way, so this is his analysis of the paper, in detail:

13. Richard J. Castillo. Depersonalization and Meditation.

This is his best comment, I think:

>Witnessing is Normal Functioning of the Nervous System.

>One of the interviewees in Castillo’s paper mentioned that the only time he feels uncomfortable is when the witnessing ceases, which usually occurs when he's very tired or ill. The fact that witnessing goes away when the person is ill or fatigued and as present when the individual is healthy indicates that it is a result of normal functioning of the nervous system, and is not an abnormal state.

.

TM is just a relaxation practice. Of course, we assert that it is deeper-than-normal relaxation and so perhaps, for some people, this might be a concern. Even so, the changes that take place during and outside of TM practice are those that happen in people when they relax, only more-so (for good OR ill you could add). There's nothing odd about TM.

I would recommend reading this for a full treatment of this feeling: After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

There are people who stay in the monastery, or the cave their entire lives, trying to see if there is a spiritual peak even higher then the one they just climbed.

If you look for it, there will always be a higher peak. What is doing the looking?

it's also in Zen Shorts if yo want to share it with children of any age that way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Shorts
http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Shorts-Caldecott-Honor-Book/dp/0439339111/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

:)

Have you read Jay Rosen's book, "My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton Erickson"? Loved it.

I haven't read this yet but the idea of it sounds interesting. The book is called Bones of the Master.

I think Get a Life!: The Little Red Book of the White Dot is pretty much the definitive book on the subject. Obviously Netflix and streaming in general should be considered "TV" ... and I'd argue any aimless internet puttering as well (most of my own reddit time for example).

> It is not from a bestselling book — indeed no publisher would want it: even the most eloquent management thinker would struggle to spin a whole book around it.

I'm quite positive a lot of publisher and writers do it and did it. Per example. Another life changing short sentence: 'Feel the fear and do it anyway'.

I like the article. Fits well with the journalling I'm occasionally doing, but put of because I always want to capture all the details.

Save yourself years of meds and conflicting diagnosis: and just drop gains from your diet: http://www.amazon.com/Grain-Brain-Surprising-Sugar-Your-Killers/dp/031623480X

For a deeper dive into techniques, the psychology and practice of this, check out this book by Nicholas Boothman.

There is a bestselling book on this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Checklist-Manifesto-Things-Right/dp/0312430000

I use http://todotxt.com/

https://www.amazon.ca/When-Body-Says-No-Hidden/dp/0676973124

This is a great book that talks about how childhood traumas is linked to specific diseases and how it works through the triggers of stress hormones and the subsequent challenges to immunity and neurological responses.

It's almost untenable what people will accept as 'normal' until illness shuts them down.

Get this book before it disappears off the planet.

Robot and Meaning

In the end it's all the same. Problems and suffering can be beneficial, it's all in how you see them. Read this book for further instruction on a practical guide to seeing problems as beneficial: http://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Problems-into-Happiness-Rinpoche/dp/0861711947