Zenatude

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Every time I write something on the topic of personal productivity, a few people suggest that maybe doing more isn’t appropriate at all.

As a friend of mine suggested on the Facebook page, Western society has an obsession with productivity. We grow up being taught that we want to “do well” but we’re not often taught explicitly what that means.

Success is a vague word, and in the absence of a meaningful definition it seems to refer to little more than having an above average income and a lot of phone calls to return."

"If you count yourself amongst those who are unhappy in their job—or at least have that occasional niggling feeling that your work and self are out of alignment—how are you supposed to go about finding a meaningful career? What does it take to overcome the fear of change and negotiate the labyrinth of choices, especially in tough economic times?

Here are six pieces of essential wisdom drawn from some of the best brains in the field."

A new study finds that training in compassion makes us more altruistic—and explores the neuroscience behind why.

Technology may make it easier to communicate electronically, but more difficult to do so emotionally.

"A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, “I know, I know, I know” over and over.

I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us."

"Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much. -Robert Greenleaf

In a recent post, we talked about why you might be undervaluing your listening skills, and how that’s costing you.

In this post, I’ll share some helpful techniques to improve your listening ability.

But before you keep reading, check yourself: how important is listening to you, really?"

"When talking about our minds, we have a tendency to take complicated processes and treat them as simplified things. For example, we say we want “happiness” or “confidence” or “motivation” but how do we know when we really have them?

These things aren’t something you can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell, they aren’t something you can buy at a store, and they aren’t something you can carry around with you in your pocket wherever you go.

So what do we mean when we talk about “happiness,” “confidence,” “motivation,” or other aspects of our mind? What are we really referring to?"

Wherever you are in your journey is a starting point. Whoever or whatever it is you're chasing, slow down.

"Why don't successful people and organizations automatically become very successful? One important explanation is due to what I call "the clarity paradox," which can be summed up in four predictable phases:

Phase 1: When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success. 
Phase 2: When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities. 
Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts. 
Phase 4: Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

Curiously, and overstating the point in order to make it, success is a catalyst for failure."

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Busy is both my drug and my defense. By that I mean that I use busy-ness to make me feel numb and safe, the way you use a drug, and I use busy-ness as a way of explaining all the things I dropped, didn’t do well, couldn’t pull together, as a defense.

And I’m telling you this because I want to stop. I want to drop the drug and the defense, one from each hand, letting them fall with heavy thunks, and I want to live a new way."

"We spend a significant amount of our life working. It is a large piece of our life. And it is important to think thoughtfully and intentionally about it.

I have known countless people who are happy with their work. They find meaning, significance, and joy in it. Additionally, I have met many people who are unhappy with their work and choose to spend an additional percentage of their life complaining about it. Interestingly enough, these differences in attitudes have little to do with the actual work being done—in fact, two people in the same field can have completely different responses to the same job.

This is helpful because it means enjoying work has less to do with your actual job and more to do with your attitude towards it. And changing our attitude towards work is often far easier than changing jobs. It also means that, with only a few exceptions, you can be happy in your work today. You can find joy and fulfillment in it. And sometimes, this can come with a simple change in thinking."

"Happy ever after: We want it for ourselves, we want it for our kids, and we want it now. But what if everything we know about happiness is a lie? What if the relentless pursuit of pleasure is in fact making us miserable?

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/are-we-caught-in-a-happy-trap-20130615-2ob85.html#ixzz2WN9lwb34"

"The benefits of gratitude go beyond a sense of self-worth, self-efficacy, and trust between employees.

When Greater Good Science Center Science Director Emiliana Simon-Thomas analyzed data from our interactive gratitude journal Thnx4.org, she found the greater the number of gratitude experiences people had on a given day, the better they felt. People who kept at it for at least two weeks showed significantly increased happiness, greater satisfaction with life, and higher resilience to stress; this group even reported fewer headaches and illnesses.

Building a culture of gratitude at work is not easy, but the science says it’s worth it. So here are five research-tested tips for fostering gratitude on the job"

A giant in the field of social psychology draws on five decades of teaching and research to reveal the secrets of a fulfilling life to today's graduating seniors.

“Living simply is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. It’s about living an examined life where one has determined what is truly important and enough…and then just let go of all the rest.”   ~Duane Elgin

Minimalism or simple living offers so many benefits and rewards that it is impossible to name just one. The best way to uncover them is to just do it!

""The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We've all heard it and we've all said it. "I just want to be happy." Or "All I want for my children is happiness." Or "Why can't you just be happy?"

I know that I've said these things myself a million times, but when I really think about it, I don't think that this is what I want at all."

"Conscious eating isn’t just about being calorie-conscious.  Conscious eating is about being conscious.  It’s about counting moments, not just calories. So, put aside this tedious business of counting nutritional calories for a moment and ask yourself: What else am I getting out of this eating moment? How is my mind being enriched?"

"You’ve got a job. But it sucks the life out of you. You’ve got a nice family. But your life bores you to tears.

Your life seems pointless.

Sure you’re happy some days, but it all feels aimless. What’s real anyways? Is having good friends and watching the game really what life is all about?

If you’re honest with yourself, you want more. You want deeper.

You want real.

Here’s the real reason your life seems pointless:

Minimalism is a broad stream. Addiction-to-stuff is fairly common.  As a result, many people are becoming attracted to this idea of "living with less". There are so many perspectives on what it is ...