2984: Mindfulness is the Opposite of Neediness by David Cain of Raptitude on Releasing Our Attachment to Outcomes

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 2984 Mindfulness is the Opposite of Neediness by David Cain of Raptitude.com And I'm Justin Malik here to help you find a little bit of extra inspiration,

[00:00:15] motivation and happiness in your day. You can hit the subscribe or follow button in your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every single day of the year. But with that let's get right to another post and start optimizing your life.

[00:00:32] Mindfulness is the opposite of neediness by David Cain of Raptitude.com Whenever someone tries to convince you that eating breakfast prevents weight gain or that cold weather makes you sick, just send them one of Tyler Vegan's charts. He graphs strange similarities between seemingly irrelevant statistics

[00:00:55] demonstrating that you can find apparent links between all kinds of unrelated events. Per capita cheese consumption appears to mirror the number of accidental deaths due to being tangled in bedsheets.

[00:01:10] The number of pool drownings, rises and falls with the number of films Nicholas Cage has appeared in that year. Tyler has written a book on this phenomenon called Spurious Correlations. Still we can't help but notice patterns in life and they aren't necessarily

[00:01:27] coincidence. I don't have any data to back this up, but I'm convinced meditation makes your phone battery last longer. I've tracked this relationship informally over a few years and I believe there's a causal effect.

[00:01:42] Whenever I get away from meditation practice, my phone needs charging earlier in the day. During the summer I got inconsistent with my practice and my phone's battery died really fast. Now that I'm back to two brief sessions a day, I don't have to charge it until bedtime.

[00:02:00] The explanation is pretty simple, but it hints at something more profound going on. A simple usage tracking app would surely confirm that the more consistently I meditate the less time I spend digging with my phone throughout the day. There are other behavior changes

[00:02:18] I'm sure are related. I'm eating less junk food, I make fewer dumb purchases, I get out of bed with less fuss and I'm more attracted to work. Basically I've been much less impulsive and that's because regular meditation makes me more mindful throughout the day.

[00:02:36] Whenever you're being mindful the present moment doesn't seem to need improvement. This means there are fewer moments that I feel could be improved by pulling out my phone and checking my Twitter. So my phone stays in my pocket, I stay in the moment and my battery stays green.

[00:02:54] When ordinary moments are good enough. 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.

[00:03:09] The smartphone is a 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 troublesome thoughts. It's kind of sure thing even though it's never that great.

[00:03:26] Checking a weather app before you go outside is one thing but checking Instagram for the sixth time in a day is obviously a kind of thoughtless pleasure hunting that we wouldn't bother with if we were finding contentment in ordinary moments.

[00:03:40] As my practice became consistent again, I noticed signs that a particular kind of confidence had returned. Social anxiety has gone dormant. I look forward to errands. I interrupt myself less while I'm working. I spend little time ruminating and a lot more time moving doing and finishing things.

[00:04:01] I find myself enjoying strange details the hem of my shirt sleeve, the blackness of a tree's shadow, the orderliness of city blocks, the hum of my fridge. General insecurity about the future, about my capabilities,

[00:04:18] about particular dilemmas in my life has waned even though I have more work to do under greater time constraints than I did in the summer. It's as if a layer of okayness which seems indifferent to day-to-day circumstances has been laid down on top of my daily routines.

[00:04:37] This is a familiar feeling by now, this background sense of assuredness that comes with living mindfully, even though it always sneaks away quietly when I get away from my practice. I've known for a long time that life gets easier the more frequently I sit and meditate

[00:04:54] but this time the principle behind it is very clear. Mindfulness is the opposite of neediness. The more consistent my practice, even when I'm only sitting a few minutes a day, the fewer of my moments seem to need something added to them,

[00:05:11] least of all the low-brow thrill one gets from flipping through social media updates on their phone. Ordinary unheralded moments, the walk across a parking lot being my favorite example, begin to carry a certain sense of satisfaction that doesn't depend on outcomes or results.

[00:05:29] They feel strangely fulfilling in themselves and because life contains a nearly unlimited supply of these kinds of moments, you can't help but feel rich. Mindfulness is a basic respect for the present moment. For those who don't know quite what meditation is,

[00:05:48] essentially, you're taking a bit of time to sit down and notice what it's like in detail to be a human being sitting there. This is more interesting than it sounds because there's a lot going on when you pay attention.

[00:06:03] Firstly, there's a whole variety of bodily feelings, breathing, pressure, color patterns behind the eyes, tiny aches and twinges, unidentifiable pulsing and tingling, air touching the skin, tongue touching the teeth, joints and muscles all reporting back to you. There are sounds and vibrations in the room around you.

[00:06:26] On top of these concrete details is an ever-drifting skyscape of thoughts and feelings, desires and urges. The basic idea is to gently observe some part of this sea of experience, usually the breath at first, and whenever you notice the mind has wandered,

[00:06:43] you return it back to the present. The most important part of this attention paying is to do it mindfully, that is to simply notice what it's currently like, suspending any intention to change it.

[00:06:57] What the experience is, is more important than what it should be or what you want it to be. This, observing something without trying to immediately change it, is a new experience for many people and it's what's responsible for that emerging feeling of okayness and confidence.

[00:07:15] You learn what it's like to allow a moment to unfold without fearing or hoping, you'll go a particular way. 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,

[00:07:33] or more comforting than it actually is. Developing mindfulness means practicing a kind of unconditional courage. You're always willing to experience reality exactly as it is when it arrives. This is not something we do automatically, we're highly reactive creatures still calibrated for the savannah.

[00:07:54] We can experience a fight or flight adrenaline reaction over a dot of mustard on a shirt cuff. Non-reactivity and non-neediness have to be practiced. There's no safer and easier time to do that than when you're sitting on a cushion in your home for a few minutes.

[00:08:11] Think of it as developing a certain respect for the character of the present moment just as it is, the same way we learn to respect a person despite their faults and imperfections. Essentially your whole life is a progression of such meetings.

[00:08:28] A moment will present itself warts and all, you can either respect and welcome it as the imperfect thing it is, or you can insist that it needs to be better, prettier, more sympathetic to you. And of course at that moment it can't be.

[00:08:44] The side effects of this kind of basic respect appear in unexpected places and depend on your own personal quirks and hang-ups. Work ethic improves because you're willing to work through tough spots and ugly dilemmas. Social interactions improve because you're willing to accept that you may be judged

[00:09:03] or misunderstood. And your phone battery lasts longer because not many moments make you want to turn away from them and look at a tiny screen instead. You just listened to the post titled, Mindfulness is the opposite of neediness by David Kaine of raptitude.com. Thank you to David.

[00:09:28] In there he talked about ordinary moments having more satisfaction and referenced walking across a parking lot. That's actually a little reference to an article of his which I happened to narrate back in 2017 and one that I'll likely bring back because it's one of my favorites too.

[00:09:45] But if you want more around this topic and want to check it out now, you can search for episode number 686 or the words optimal living daily parking lot that should also find it for you. But anyway, I can completely relate to what David is talking about.

[00:10:00] I have in previous years spent hours and hours meditating, sometimes up to eight hours in a day when at a retreat. And what he said about developing mindfulness being a practice of unconditional courage rang true for me.

[00:10:16] It can be really uncomfortable to just sit and basically do nothing for an extended period of time. It goes against what we're used to. But boy does it have some nice effects. If you're up for it give it a try.

[00:10:29] You can also look for a meditation class or group near you. They're often free. Or try a retreat too. It was pretty life changing for me. And with that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, hopefully a mindful one.

[00:10:43] And I'll be back tomorrow as usual where your optimal life awaits.