Take responsibility for your mental health by customizing practices to work for you, empowering yourself to be your own teacher. This bottom-up approach removes barriers and fosters personal growth.
Progress your activities from unconscious state-shifting (Tier 1) to deliberate habit-forming (Tier 2) that creates trait changes, and finally to a contemplative practice (Tier 3) that transforms your relationship with reality. Consciously move your habits deeper.
Integrate concentration (commitment), clarity (awareness), equanimity (openness/surrender), and care (heartfulness) into all your practices. These four skills are essential for making any activity deeply transformative and meditative.
Deliberately learn from your specific habits and spread the positive qualities (like presence, focus) to all other areas of your life. This prevents practices from becoming isolated and ensures they enrich your entire existence.
Navigate challenging times by alternating between opening to intensity and discomfort to build capacity, and swinging back to restorative rest (e.g., watching TV, lying down) when overwhelmed, without guilt. This intelligent balance builds resilience and wisdom.
Look at your daily life to find activities that already shift your state, then intentionally make them more deliberate habits by scheduling them and paying attention to their benefits. This leverages existing positive actions for deeper impact.
Guide others in your personal practices and share what works for you, empowering them to find their own unique path. This amplifies the practice’s impact and fosters a community of mutual learning.
Consider engaging in a seated meditation practice, as it is the simplest and most effective way to cultivate core skills like concentration, clarity, equanimity, and care, and to understand your baseline consciousness. These skills can then be applied to other areas of life.
Regularly seek feedback and support from a community and experienced practitioners. This is crucial for personal development, providing guidance and preventing the onus of growth from resting solely on oneself.
When engaging in relaxing activities like watching TV, maintain awareness of why you’re doing it (for rest/disengagement) and recognize when it stops serving you or becomes problematic. This transforms passive relaxation into a conscious, guilt-free coping strategy.
When filming, choose an interesting frame, set up the camera, and wait for movement to enter it, rather than chasing action. This cultivates stillness and attentiveness, allowing for deeper engagement with the present moment.
Engage in creative hobbies (like jewelry making or painting) with a primary focus on the creation process itself, rather than solely on the final product. This cultivates focus, patience, humility, and can be a mental cleanse.
Before performing (e.g., acting), take a moment to acknowledge the audience, express gratitude, and set an intention to be present and use your gifts wisely. This practice centers you and reminds you of the moment’s possibilities.
Write handwritten letters to people to foster stillness and contemplation. This “old school” practice slows you down, can be therapeutic, and helps you live more fully in a busy, technology-driven world.
Before starting your day, take a moment to connect with an essential tool or object (like a white cane), appreciating its function and the freedom it provides. This simple ritual can create a “sphere of calm” and help you respond thoughtfully to challenges.
Before bed, sit outside in the dark for at least 30 minutes and listen to the wind, focusing on its multidimensional qualities (volume, speed, direction). This practice fosters stillness, attentiveness to transient phenomena, and a deep connection to life.
With a partner, use a “Night Practice” to describe what’s happening in your body (felt sense) rather than the content of problems. This 10-minute practice releases tension, fosters mutual understanding, and deepens connection.
To manage energy challenges, engage in physical movement like shaking your body (even for a minute), biking, or running. This helps discharge excess energy and regulate your system.
Engage in a writing practice where you explore a topic, even if you don’t know what you’re writing about initially, and keep working it. This sustained exploration can generate insight and clarify your experience.
Engage in nature practices by learning about plants (e.g., herbalism) and actively observing their properties and habitats. This shifts attention outward, fostering a receptive space and learning from the natural world.
Guide meditation for others, as the responsibility of guiding can make you super present and lead to profound meditative experiences, fostering a sense of no separation.
When relaxing with TV or similar activities, remove your phone and avoid multi-screening. This ensures true relaxation and prevents distractions from hindering the restorative effect.
Opt for high-quality, creatively meritorious content for entertainment. Engaging with good narrative art can be restorative and enriching, offering more value than passively consuming “stupid” content.
Identify competencies developed in one area (e.g., professional interviewing skills) and consciously apply them to other parts of your life (e.g., family interactions). This spreads the benefits of specialized skills throughout your life.
Reflect on moments of presence in specific activities (like interviewing) and deliberately try to invoke those qualities in other daily interactions. This bridges the gap between specialized competencies and general life, fostering consistent presence.
Share your personal practices by submitting them to Jeff Warren’s website (jeffwarren.org). This contributes to a collective understanding of practice and can inspire others.