The Secret Coffee Meditation No One Talks About

Who: You and anyone else who wants to start a meditation practice that will stick.

What: The Coffee Meditation. It’s simply meditating on your couch or overstuffed living room chair (or any other upright comfortable position) with a hot mug of coffee in your hands.

Why: Because you’ll actually do it.

When: First thing in the morning before everyone gets up. Or whenever it works for your schedule. The key to the success of this meditation is to personalize it so it fits your life in a way that you’ll do it.

How: Pour yourself a cup of coffee (or tea if you’re a tea drinker). Sit in a comfortable spot. Hold your coffee firmly on your lap or set it down beside you. Set your alarm for however many minutes you want to meditate. Start meditating. Feel free to take sips from your coffee during this meditation. When you drink, turn your attention onto your coffee. After your yummy sip, turn it back to your breath or however else you are meditating.

Repeat each day.

3 Ways to Be the Boss of Your Attention (without Meditating)!

I know, I know. Everyone is doing it. Everyone who is successful that is.

Meditation is all the rage in this super fast paced, distractible world. It is thought of as the holy grail to offset all of the ills of modern attention-sucking living.

But is meditation the only way to be the boss of your attention? Ugh, say it aint so!

Let me explain a little about attention, we’ll explore a few other non-meditation possibilities and then decide. Sound good?

Attention is how we actively (either consciously or subconsciously) allow into our awareness one thing and not another. We pay attention to stimuli going on outside our heads and thoughts and emotions inside our heads. Sights, sounds, and sensations (both internal and external) all vie for the limited amount of awareness we have at any given moment.

Notably, we often give preference to the sights, sounds and sensations that are the most interesting to us. Or those that are the most threatening to us!

The goal of being the boss of our attention is to cultivate one’s ability to choose what we want to attend to versus being at the whim of what our brains want or our habits choose to attend to.

So, how do we get better at choosing and sticking with what we choose?

An easy and pretty accurate way to think about attention has been to liken it to a muscle. Muscles are strengthened with use and get weak without use. Using this analogy, in order for us to be the boss of our attention we need to practice using it to strengthen it.

Some ways we can practice and strengthen our attention (without meditating) are:

1. Set a timer. When you do an activity, set a timer and only do that one activity until the timer is done. No exceptions (unless, of course, you naturally finish the activity before the timer is up.) Often we bop between activities, web pages, notification blips, straightening the rug, going to get water etc. and in doing so are constantly weakening our ability to stay focused. A gym analogy for this would be like like doing one push up, going over and doing a couple of leg presses then picking up a weight and doing a few bicep curls. Sure all those exercises may do something helpful for you physically but think of how focusing on one thing at a time would improve your efforts considerably. If you set a timer to do this a few times at work each day or with a few activities around the house each day you’ll do your reps and strengthen your attention in no time!

2. Count to 3 before you look. Another way to strengthen your attention is to disrupt the autopilot reaction you have to stimuli. You can do this by counting to 3 the next time you’re working and some other sight, sound or sensation tries to grab your attention. The practice of delaying the urge to check out everything that tries to get our attention does an amazing job at strengthening our attention. The ability to tune things out is crucial to cultivating the ability to be the boss of our attention. The caveat here, of course, is if something is grabbing your attention because it is a safety issue. In that case, autopilot is the way to go!

3. Give up the multi-tasking dream! It doesn’t work. Yep, even for you. Research has found that despite our opinions to the contrary, humans can’t multi-task. What we end up doing is switching our attention from one task to another, not doing them simultaneously and not doing them particularly well. We also lose a lot of time and effort in the process. So, in order to become the boss of our attention, we need to recognize this and stop multi-tasking. It’s a hard habit to break but try it and see if your attention doesn’t strengthen as a result!

Now you might say that attention has a biochemical component that makes it more difficult for some. And while that may be true, the keywords are ‘more difficult’. There are many things that make choosing and sustaining attention hard. Just like there are many things that make going to a gym and working out our muscles hard. That doesn’t mean we’re destined for weakness and tiny muscles. It just means that it’s going to take more effort to get to the gym and get strong.

Same with our attention. If you have a predisposition for difficulty paying attention, bump up your practice of the 3 strategies above and make it more of a priority. It may be harder or more challenging but it is possible to improve.

Follow the 3 practices above and become an attention boss…without meditating!

Do you have any strategies to add? Leave me a comment below, I’d love to hear about them.

Captain Obvious? Fertile Ground for Anxiety.

This may sound like Captain Obvious but it actually might not be. You be the judge. Here it is:

Constant anxiety is not directly caused by events, situations and behaviors. It’s a result of our thoughts about those things. 

Two people can experience the same event or situation but interpret it differently and therefore have different results. One person might think of worst-case-scenario thoughts of failure (resulting in anxiety) and another may see it as an opportunity to improve (not resulting in anxiety). Same situation different outcomes. 

If anxiety is something you’ve experienced over a period of time or for as long as you can remember, chances are high that it’s not situational. Chances are it’s the result of how, over time, you've interpreted, predicted and repeated thinking about things. They usually include envisioning worst-case scenarios in your mind, thinking you’re going to be exposed as ‘not good enough’ and reflecting on what you did or said as stupid. Or some version of those.

Over time, without realizing it, we create a fertile and inviting place for anxiety to take root and grow. Without this fertile ground made possible by the way we interpret and think about things, many of those situations and events would just fade into the background.

This also goes for how we interpret feelings in our body. 

Is this oversimplified? I’d love to hear about your experience and thoughts below. 

Guidelines for Deploying Pessimism

Am I a cheerleader for pessimism? Well as it turns out, sometimes I am. 

Generally speaking, pessimism can be thought of as the tendency to expect a negative outcome. Oppositely, optimism can be thought of as the tendency to expect a positive outcome. 

Dr. Martin Seligman’s research strongly suggests that optimism categorically leads to more personal and professional success when compared to pessimism. 

That said, he also points out that certain situations benefit more from a pessimistic approach.

Seligman, the Father of Optimism, offers the following guidelines for when we should err on the pessimistic side and when we should err on the optimistic side. These are handy to keep in mind!

Times to err on the pessimist side:

1. “If your goal is to plan for a risky and uncertain future, err on the pessimism side. 

2. If your goal is to counsel others whose future is dim, err on the pessimism side.

3. If you want to appear sympathetic to the troubles of others, err on the pessimism side.”

On the flip side, times to err on the optimistic side:

1. “If you are in an achievement situation (getting a promotion, selling a product, writing a difficult report, winning a game), use optimism.

2. If you are concerned about how you will feel (fighting off depression, keeping up your morale), use optimism.

3. If the situation is apt to be protracted and your physical health is an issue, use optimism.

4. If you want to lead, if you want to inspire others, if you want people to vote for you, use optimism.”

Can you think of any other situations to deploy either pessimism or optimism? 

Optimism. Forget about Positive Thinking. How about Just Non-Negative Thinking?

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

Optimism isn’t a cure-all but it does have an important place in our lives. Some things optimism helps us with is protecting against depression, enhancing our physical well-being, raising our level of achievement, and improving our mental state. If you’re not naturally inclined toward looking on the bright side or recognizing things can get better and want to bring a little more of this into your life know that optimism is a skill you can learn.

Dr. Martin Seligman writes in his book Learned Optimism, “We have found over the years that positive statements you make to yourself have little if any effect. What is crucial is what you think when you fail… Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.”

Next time you mess up or think you mess up, do these two things. 

1. First, pay attention to your internal thought commentary. If it’s negative, don’t try to switch to the positive, just experiment with not contributing additional negative comments. It’s okay if something negative pops up first as an automatic reaction. Your job is to invoke the power of non-negative thinking by not piling more on.

2. Second, pay attention to how you explain your mess up, setback or failure. The manner in which we habitually explain to ourselves why events happen is another critical skill in optimism. Do we think failures are permanent, effect every area of our lives and because everything is out to get us? Or do we recognize that failures have specific causes, are just about this one thing and things will get better? The way we explain setbacks plays a major role in our ability to be optimistic. Practice explaining failures as temporary, confined to just what it effects (not an indication of you in general) and assign responsibility accordingly (not automatically, think about it).

So You Gave Meditation a Shot? Didn't Work Out? 5 Things to Try Next.

I get it. Even though I’m 20 years into my meditation journey, I have a pretty good idea of what you are going through. Here are a few things I wish I would have known when I started my meditation path. 

If you’ve tried to start a blissful meditation practice and it just isn’t sticking, here’s what’s next.

1. Know that meditation (or attempting to meditate) is like flossing. Even if you do it once a leap year, it’s never a waste.

2. Try to really focus on one thing when you’re working at work or doing things around the house. If you can sustain your attention on whatever you are doing for 15 minutes, you are essentially meditating. Not in the mind clearing sense, but that isn’t my idea of meditation. For me, meditation is the ability to focus on one thing and let distractions just come and go. So you aren’t focusing on your breath? That project due next week works too!

3. The next time you are driving by yourself, see if you can just pay attention to driving for five minutes. If something takes your mind off driving, like the fb notification you just received or what you are going to do when you get home, bring your focus back to the feel of the steering wheel, the signs passing by, etc. The practice of bringing your attention back to what you are doing right now is as good as any five minutes on a cushion.

4. Take a nice, slow deep belly breath at least twice a day, or as many times as you think about it. If you remember to do this multiple times a day you won’t have to sit on a tiny little cushion another day in your life.

5. Keep the door open to all forms of meditation. Even the kind you tried that sucked. Keeping an open mind keeps us flexible and in and of itself is an offshoot of meditation. It is sort of like driving up to the top of Pikes Peak versus hiking up. The view at 14,114 ft. is the same either way.

Takeaway #1: Any attempts to pay attention to something without distraction is beneficial to our brains and can “count” as meditation.

Takeaway #2: By refraining to label ourselves as someone who “just can’t meditate” we avoid further entrenching that thought into our brains.

Do you have any other “next step” suggestions?

Do You Have a Stress Outlier?

Can you think of a stressful situation that doesn’t fall into one of these 5 categories? 

1. When we find ourselves in situations where there are high demands on us. 

2. When we find ourselves in situations where we have little control and few choices. 

3. When we find ourselves in situations where we don’t feel equipped.

4. When we find ourselves in situations where we may be harshly judged by others.

5. When we find ourselves in situations where consequences for failure are steep or unpredictable.

Do You Treat Your Thoughts Like a Prized Pony?

I don’t know why this analogy popped into my head but it has a good ring to it and brings up a visual that is extremely helpful. 

Think of all the ways you’d take care of a prized pony if you had one. Think of how highly you’d value their wellbeing, the effort and emphasis you’d place on its’ care, how kindly you’d nurture it and the priority it would take over many things. Of course this is how you’d treat something of such high value and capable of bringing so much joy to your life! 

Now, reflect for a moment on the quality or nature of most of the thoughts that go through your head each day. Are they of the self critical nature? Do you frequently have a loop of worst-case scenario fears? Are they full of dread or dissatisfaction? Do you overanalyze everything you say and all your interactions with people?

If you answered yes to one or a few of these you’re in good company! Most of us get into such negative thought habits that we don’t even realize we’re thinking that way until it’s brought up like this. 

So the question becomes, not why do we do this, because that answer can get complicated fast. But the question becomes what if we were to change this negative thinking pattern and treat our thoughts more like how we’d treat a prized pony? That’s right. 

What if we were to put energy and effort into thoughts that promoted our wellbeing versus those that fed our fears? Thoughts that were nurturing versus exhausting?

The fact of the matter is that our thoughts and what goes on between our ears is even more valuable than a prized pony! It’s arguably THE most important thing we have. And yet, too many of us take it for granted and don’t put the proper effort and emphasis on its’ care. 

If you just realized you fall into this category, here are 3 steps to take:

1. Ask yourself what you have to lose if you start changing the types of thoughts you have for ones of a higher quality (i.e. less worry and fear, more nurturing and positive). This one is important. We often hold onto beliefs that keeping our minds churning with worry and fear actually is helpful. So giving them up doesn’t seem like a prudent thing to do. But that’s not correct. Worry and fear is exhausting and keeps our brains operating on a lower “fight or flight” cognitive level.  

2. Remind yourself this. The nature of your thoughts IS the nature of your life. Take a moment and let this really sink in. The thoughts you tend to have today will be the thoughts you’ll have tomorrow and the next day, and the next, through your whole life. If they are negative, naggy, uncaring, worrisome and critical then your life will be that way. How can it be any different? 

3. Experiment with your self talk. Ok, I hope I don’t lose you here… I won’t go so far as to say talk to yourself like a prized pony but I will suggest that you make a concerted effort to talk to yourself nicely. At the very least, nice-er. Seriously. We need to take responsibility for our thoughts and stop the unhelpful ones and increase the positive, nurturing ones. 

Bottom line: You would not be negligent with a prized pony so try not to be negligent with your thoughts!

5 Ways to Counter your Anxiety without Breaking a Sweat

Let me be blunt about this. A real long-term sustainable anxiety change requires work on our thoughts. A strategic, focused and repetitive approach to wrangling up, challenging and putting problem thoughts out to pasture has to be part of a solid anxiety treatment plan. I don’t want to pretend this isn’t critical. What I do want to convey, however, is that there are many things we can do to support our ability to address our thoughts and overcome our anxiety. Best of all, many of you will agree, they don’t require even breaking a sweat! 

Here are 5 ways we can set up our successful anxiety counterattack:

1. Belly breathe more often. Breathing is a necessity of life that usually occurs without much thought. When you breathe in air, blood cells receive oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a waste product that is carried back through your body and exhaled. Improper breathing can upset the oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange and contribute to anxiety, panic attacks, fatigue and other physical and emotional disturbances. Most people often get into the habit of chest breathing, that is breathing in a way that expands the chest and shoulders. Typically, this is a shallow and rapid habit of breathing. In order to make sure we are fully oxygenating our bodies, properly expelling carbon dioxide and soothing our central nervous system, we need to belly breathe more. To do this, inhale slowly and deeply through your nose. Keep your shoulders relaxed. Your abdomen should expand, and your chest should rise very little. Exhale slowly through your nose or mouth as your belly pulls back in toward your spine. Repeat this as often as you think to do so. With time and practice, you’ll slowly shift from your autopilot chest breathing to this healthier way of belly breathing. 

2. Apply pressure on your wrist. Acupressure is an ancient Chinese healing method. It involves putting pressure with your fingers or the hand on certain points of your body to unblock the flow of Qi and release tension to restore inner harmony. I think we all agree, when we’re feeling anxiety we are definitely not experiencing inner harmony! The great thing about acupressure is that it is something you can do on your own so subtly that you can use this technique wherever you are when anxiety strikes. This is just one of many acupressure points to help with anxiety. Apply pressure with your thumb at the point where your wrist forms a crease with your hand. Press on the pinky side of your wrist. Hold the acupressure point for about 2 minutes, applying a generous amount of pressure. 

3. Cut down on caffeine. Okay, full disclosure, I’m writing this sipping on a coffee… But, taking anxiety and other things into account, I’ve begrudgingly figured out my caffeine limit and this coffee is my last one of the day. I’m what one might call a practical health nut. That is, I need pretty convincing and good reasons to limit things I like. Caffeine, and for me that almost entirely means coffee, definitely falls into that category. As a powerful stimulant, caffeine revs up our system and often creates physiological effects similar to anxiety: agitation, restlessness, twitching, dizziness, increased heart rate to name a few. So in order to help your anxiety without lifting a finger, simply acknowledge that caffeine may be increasing your anxiety and experiment with cutting back. 

4. Sing a song (inside your head). I stumbled into this one by accident when I was a kid visiting my cousins. My cousin Katie had a stuffed animal that sang the song “I Whistle a Happy Tune”. For some reason, I loved that song, committed it to memory and sang it (inside my head of course) whenever I felt afraid. It worked like a charm! I expanded that experience from fear of the boogeyman and continue to use that song to disrupt my looping, worrisome thoughts or to switch tracks when I catch myself overanalyzing things I just said to someone. As a little aside, it was almost 40 years later that I found out was from the popular 1950’s musical King and I. 

5. Reach out and make a social connection. One solid way to help us with mental wellbeing that ranks as high as good sleep and eating our veggies is to make and maintain connections with friends and family. Well, assuming family doesn’t totally stress you out. We are social beings and the need for a connection to others is built into our DNA. Unfortunately, and I know from experience, makes social anxiety particularly difficult. But taking time out of your busy day to catch up with a friend, join a book club and prioritize their meetings, or talk to the cashier as you’re checking out will help you with your anxiety. And totally worth turning these little connections into a routine or habit.

These 5 things aren’t the ‘silver bullet’ type of anxiety help. But they are totally in the ‘it takes a village’ type of help.

It’s easy to underestimate or blanketly dismiss this type of help without even trying. For some counterintuitive reason we tend to overvalue big, hard to do things and brush off easier things as not being worth it. If you feel like bucking the system, give these a try! You’ll be pleasantly surprised! 

5 Unusual Questions for Successful Meditation Onboarding

Welcome! I was expecting you. You’ve always struck me as the meditative type. Even so, you’ll probably need a little assistance to get up to speed. It’s not personal. These questions aren’t what people typically associate with being important to a meditation practice. 

You may be thinking, “What possibly do I need to think about in order to totally bliss out?” As it turns out, 5 critical things. Answering these will set you up for a legit long-term meditation practice. So before you even try to convince your hip flexors into that zen-like cross-legged lotus position check out the following. 

1. Know your motivation. This isn’t a riff off of Simon Sinek's, “Know your why.” It’s more basic than that. Are you being told you should do this or are you coming to meditation on your own volition? Have you tried other solutions that didn’t work? Does meditation seem like it’s the easiest thing you can do to get the results you’re looking for? Are you doing it to impress some hot so-and-so at work? Your motivation is what it is. BUT it will be extremely helpful to the success of your practice if you are honestly aware of what is driving your interest to meditate. 

2. Know your level of trust that meditation will actually help with what you’re wanting to see happen. For many, the practice of meditation seems too simple, boring, stupid (or fill in your own blank) to really be helpful. On the other hand, many think meditation is the holy grail to achieve what they’re looking for and trust it wholeheartedly. Both sides of this spectrum have their downfalls. Know your level of trust going into this. It will directly impact what your brain will ‘see’. It will also put a spotlight on where your biases, both pro and con, will influence your experience. 

3. Know your history of sticking with things that don’t show immediate results. Most of us totally stink at persisting with things that are more of a marathon than a sprint. Or we stink at sticking with things that are more subtle and nuanced than overt and plain to see. Unfortunately, meditation falls into both these categories, marathon and subtle. These aren’t problems in and of themselves, just super important to know ahead of time. Recognize your normal operating preferences and where they might be counter to what meditation offers. If needed, calibrate your expectations taking into account where you might have to do things counter to your preferences. 

4. Recall your past attempts at meditation. Dwelling on the past isn’t what we’re talking about. What we are talking about is that knowing your past can help you be more strategic in the future. Think about what your experiences with meditation were like in the past. Frustrated you couldn’t get your brain to turn off? Totally fidgety and bored after 2 minutes? Didn’t feel rested and rejuvenated after sacrificing 20 minutes of your day that you’ll never get back? Again, this beta is critical. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

5. Define specifically what ‘success’ and ‘successful timeline’ looks like for you. You gotta think about this. You may not be in the habit of thinking along these ‘specific’ lines. On the other hand, you may have pretty strong expectations and specific benefits you’re looking for. Knowing what you’re setting yourself up for will help you. Are your signs of success realistic? Is your timeline realistic? Look at your expectations here and tweak where needed. 

Meditation really does offer all the benefits you’ve read about so don’t let these questions deter you. Use the information you’ve uncovered about yourself to offset any meditation surprises that may pop up and set up a practice that will truly last.