Recognize that suffering and negative behavior often stem from not seeing the world clearly. By striving to see the world more clearly, a process aided by practices like meditation, you can become both happier and a better person, as these three aspects tend to converge.
Practice mindfulness meditation to gain critical distance from your feelings and thoughts, allowing you to observe them without identifying with them, and thus decide whether to act on them or let them go. This reduces their power to control you and leads to liberation from discomfort.
When experiencing unpleasant feelings like anxiety, remorse, or self-loathing, instead of pushing them away, absorb yourself in them and experience them fully through meditation. This counterintuitively creates detachment and critical distance, preventing you from identifying with them and accepting their discomfort.
Approach your feelings with a certain kind of skepticism, examining them mindfully to decide which ones are truly worth following and which are not. Evolutionary psychology suggests that our feelings were not designed to be inherently trustworthy in ways that matter to our well-being.
By not identifying so closely with your own needs, demands, and petty grievances, and by feeling more continuity with the external world, you can naturally become a better person. This metaphysical selflessness leads to moral selflessness.
Engage in ‘mindful resistance’ to avoid emotionally driven, strong reactions that can inadvertently play into the hands of opponents or exacerbate societal problems like political polarization. This approach suggests a more conscious and less reactive engagement.
Beyond a morning sitting, practice short doses of meditation throughout the day, especially when you encounter difficulty working or feel distracted. This can be more effective than other diversions for getting back on track, feeling better, and sustaining that positive feeling longer.
Engage in a standard mindfulness meditation practice for at least 30 minutes each morning, beginning by concentrating on your breath to establish equanimity.
Cultivate a new kind of attention to everyday things, as this practice can accentuate their inherent beauty, transforming even mundane sounds or objects into something aesthetically pleasing.
When observing things, try not to categorize them with preconceived labels (e.g., ‘refrigerator sound,’ ‘weed’). Relaxing your sense of inherent essence in objects and sounds can lead to a deeper appreciation of their beauty and a more luminous perception of the world.
Be mindful of the tendency to categorize people with fixed ’essences’ like ’enemy,’ ‘good person,’ or ‘bad person,’ as this triggers cognitive biases that can lead to trouble and conflict. Intensive meditation can help relax this categorizing machinery.
Practice mindfulness meditation to increase your awareness of how feelings subtly govern your thoughts and behavior, especially in areas like political polarization or tribalism. This awareness helps you become less susceptible to cognitive biases driven by emotional responses.
Identify and name recurring neurotic thought patterns or ‘inner characters’ (e.g., ‘El Grandioso,’ ‘Robert Johnson’) that arise in your mind. By acknowledging them with a phrase like ‘Welcome to the party,’ you can continuously disarm their influence and gain distance from them, similar to recognizing different modules of the mind.
Acknowledge that revenge fantasies are likely to arise, but the victory lies in intercepting them mentally before they translate into physical actions or regrettable online behavior, such as sending a nasty tweet.
Consider attending a one-week silent meditation retreat, as it can be a transformative experience that helps you overcome initial difficulties with meditation and lead to profound shifts in consciousness.
Aim to transcend the natural selection-built incentive structure of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, as exemplified by monks who endured extreme suffering with stoicism. This transcendence, achievable through deep meditation, is considered a path towards nirvana and enlightenment.
Experiment with a meditation technique where you concentrate on your breath during the inhale and then shift your focus to sounds in the environment during the exhale.