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Inner Peace For Busy People
Inner Peace for Busy People consists of 52 weekly entries of 800 to 1,000 words that are both inspirational and practical. Through story and science, spirituality and humor, the readers will be given easily learnable skills to help them change their lives and attitudes to recover inner peace, one week at a time. Life is a precious gift to be savored, not an endless series of chores to complete. The to-do list is immortal. It will live on long after we are dead. Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace. With a little common sense, we can learn to understand and tame the dirty tricks department of the mind, live with kindness and love, enjoy the shelter of one another, and grow in wisdom and creativity. The 52 brief lessons and stories in the book are an enduring and practical guide to developing inner peace in a busy world. You don't have to be a monk devoted to hours of special practice to walk your life's journey with graciousness and joy. All that is required is to pay attention, choose wisely, live with purpose and passion, laugh often, and live with fierce commitment to honesty and kindness.
Contents
Introduction Part I: The Absolute Basic Strategies For Life
Excerpt: Introduction and Part I: The Absolute Basic Strategies For Life Introduction My husband, Kurt, and I live on a quiet mountaintop, in a sleepy Colorado town where there are almost as many dogs as there are people. Our own four canines, ranging in size from a petite Maltese to a noble collie, are part of the local fauna. They love to run in the spruce and pine-filled wilderness, to chase each other through the winter snow, and fetch balls and sticks in the riotous abundance of summer wildflowers. There is very little traffic on the rutted dirt roads, and consequently, bears, foxes, and even the occasional mountain lion sometimes lope across the streets. Perhaps you're already thinking, What can she possibly know about inner peace in a busy world? For starters, I travel about 150 days a year. Peace can evaporate quickly on airplanes, in traffic jams, in seminars, in lonely hotel rooms, and when my computer turns demonic and digests the e-mail with a burp of satisfaction. Then there are our six adult children. I am the "not-so-evil-stepmother" of two remarkable young women and two fine young men; the grandmother of strapping, eight-year old Alex; and the mother of two wonderful sons. They keep me busy. On my way up the mountain, I earned a Ph.D. in medical sciences from the Harvard Medical School, where I also completed three postdoctoral fellowships. Also a licensed clinical psychologist, I co-founded one of the country's first mind/body clinics in the early 1980s; did cancer research; and investigated the effect of emotions on immunity, health, and disease. I've been an assistant professor of anatomy and cellular biology at Tufts Medical School, and an instructor in medicine at the Harvard Medical School. I spent several years in private practice as a psychologist; taught yoga and meditation; wrote ten books; created a large series of audiocassette tapes on health, healing, and spiritual growth; grew a business; and have an active career as a consultant and international speaker. Just writing about it makes me want to take a nap. I won't pretend that juggling motherhood, marriage, and career has been easy. It has not. But a bout of serious stress-related illnesses, which descended like a flock of vultures when I was still in graduate school, taught me lessons about inner peace that made the following years much easier and more rewarding. Barely 25, I was tormented by migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, and an immune disorder that led to frequent episodes of bronchitis and pneumonia. Within six months of learning some simple skills to manage my mind, and taking up yoga to relax my body, the illnesses abated. I became a staunch believer in the mind/body effect. In the 30 years that have passed since that time, the world has become progressively busier and more complicated. Telemarketers, arguably the devil's own spawn, reliably call during dinner. More television programs seem to exist than eyeballs to watch them. The Internet, with all its wonders, swallows some people whole. There are even support groups for computer junkies. And in a time when the media fosters the impression that every person needs an expensive car, electronic toys, and fancy restaurant meals, too many Americans are accumulating crippling debt. The average college undergraduate carries $2,748 in credit-card obligations. Thirty-two percent of these young people have four or more credit cards. They are going to be even busier than their parents were at the same age, just struggling to make the payments. Comedian George Carlin quipped that he went into a bookstore and asked the clerk where the self-help section was. She refused to tell him since that would defeat the purpose. He could probably have followed the scuffs on the floor. In the year 2000, Americans spent $563 million on self-help books. It's little wonder. Approximately one in three people is sleep deprived, complaining of exhaustion and trouble holding things together. We are an anxious and worried culture. Between 1990 and 1997, the number of doctors' office visits for anxiety increased by 31 percent. The visits for panic disorder more than doubled. Approximately 12 percent of Americans are depressed, and another 10.2 percent have chronic "low mood." Seventy to 90 percent of visits to primary-care physicians are attributed to stress. And many more people suffer outside doctors' offices where the statistics are gathered. But you don't have to be a statistic. Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace. Finding inner peace doesn't require hours of daily practice. You don't have to stand on your head or stare at your navel. All it takes is a little willingness and common sense. Life is a precious gift to be savored, not an endless series of chores to complete while you complain about being "crazy busy." Remember - your to-do list is immortal. It will live on long after you're dead. The 52 lessons in this book are simple steps that anyone can take to live in the present with more joy, courage, kindness, wisdom, and peace. The best way to use this book is to read it all the way through, getting a feel for the overall message. Then you can go back and put each chapter into action, one week at a time. Change is much easier and more exciting when you share your intentions and progress with someone you care about. Try reading a chapter to a friend, your mate, or an older child, and then discuss it together. Or form an Inner Peace Group and use the book as your springboard to action. Check in with each other on your progress. The process will bring you closer, and create a space where love and understanding can flourish. If you apply yourself to the simple lessons, the changes that take place are likely to be far more radical than you can begin to imagine. As the Dalai Lama frequently reminds people, we are all alike in that our primary goal is the desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. The entire field of self-help, in all its aspects, is aimed at this very goal. As Albert Einstein once said of life, "It's simple, but not easy." My hope is that through the combination of science, story, psychology, and wisdom from the world's great spiritual traditions compiled in these pages, I have taken the simple... and made it easy. The rest is up to you. Part I The Absolute Basic Strategies For Life 1. Relax and Be More Productive When I was directing the Mind/Body Clinical Programs, a stress-disorders program at what is now the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, many of the participants were high-powered executives. A little brush with a heart attack or cancer had them knocking reluctantly on my door. They wanted to use the power of their mind to heal, but were afraid that learning to relax would take away their competitive edge and dull their motivation. Visions of transcendental zombiehood danced through many minds. Some feared that they would have to trade their three-piece suits for a turban, and a lifetime of navel-gazing and herbal teas. More than once I heard the sentiment that it might be better to forget the whole thing and just die in the saddle. My department chief and mentor, cardiologist Herbert Benson, M.D., knew better. In the late 1970s, he wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review featuring an arcane, but immediately obvious, relationship called the Yerkes-Dodson Law. Don't let the words scare you. Named after two intrepid physiologists, this handy little law looks like an upside-down letter U on a piece of graph paper. As stress increases (the x axis), so does productivity (the y axis). In other words, the more stressed you are, the better your output until you get to the top of the curve, where the upside-down U is poised to start down again. From there it's a rapid downhill slide to poor productivity. Whereas mild to moderate stress helps us power through to-do's, more serious stress gives rise to the un-do's. Let me give you a down-home case in point. If company is coming in an hour and the house is messy, I feel slightly stressed, and challenged to clean up so as to avoid looking like a slob. I get a certain look in my eye, and swoop into action like the white tornado. My husband, Kurt, calls this "getting initialized." My output is truly unbelievable. Like a thousand-armed goddess, I vanquish the dirt and sort the piles. But suppose, on a particularly bad dirt day, I find out that company is coming in ten minutes. The stress is so great, and the job seems so big, that I'm likely to get flustered and confused. I may then be found wandering around the house, looking dazed, with the same pile in my hand for several minutes. My internal wiring is sizzling, and smoke seems to be coming from my ears, because the load on the circuits is too large. I believe that most busy, highly productive people operate in the high-stress range, somewhere on the descending limb of the stress/productivity curve. Their output is still high, but the internal wires are starting to short-circuit and burn. If they learned to relax and shifted back to the left on the Yerkes-Dodson curve, they would find themselves nearer to the top of the inverted U. Their output would actually be greater, while the toll on their body would be lessened. If they relaxed even more - to a point where it seemed like the turban was only another breath away - they would still be able to maintain the same output they had before, when they were burning out. The only workable strategy for maintaining productivity over the long haul is to learn how to relax. There are literally thousands of ways to do that. My hope is that this book will give you suggestions that appeal to your unique physiology and preferences. I don't know what relaxes you, and neither does anyone else. You are the best and only judge of what it is that shuts off the internal dialogue that's always urging you to do more, do faster, and do better. But shut off the internal dialogue we must, if the clever system of body and mind is to restore itself and be available in its full power. This week, put aside an hour a day - yes, I really mean that - to relax in whatever way you enjoy. You will find that instead of constricting the amount of time available for you to get things done, the day will seem to unfold in a more languorous, spacious way. The to-do list will still get done, but you will live to tell about it. 2. Remember That Peace Is Already Within You When my grandson, Alex, was a toddler, he used to run around giggling at what seemed to be empty space. Sometimes his body would actually shake with excitement, and his face would light up for no apparent reason. His mother, Natalia, called this delightful behavior "talking to the angels." That pure joy of playing in the mud, splashing in the tub, or playing peek-a-boo is innate. That inner radiance of peace and joy is our birthright, our own true nature. And while small children are effortlessly spontaneous and joyful, as adults we have to read books and go to classes to learn how to come back home to ourselves. It's frustrating to believe that peace is some distant goal, attainable only by a few fortunate souls blessed by good genes, superior brain chemistry, plenty of money, or a calling as a monk. But peace has not deserted even the crankiest and busiest among us. The most basic fact about being human is that peace is our own true nature, our fundamental state of mind. There's a Buddhist saying that peace is like a sun that's always shining in your heart. It's just hidden behind clouds of fear, doubt, worry, and desire that continually orient you toward the past or the future. The sun comes out only when you're in the present moment. I can still remember my first yoga class, adrenaline junkie that I am. After an hour of contorting like a pretzel, huffing and puffing, I'd forgotten everything but the sensations in my muscles. It felt great to give my busy brain a rest. It was time for the final relaxation, where you lie on your back and try to emulate a corpse. This is supposed to bring you back to your own true nature of peace. Everything slows down. Breathing practically stops as your muscles unwind and your mind goes into low gear. The teacher walked among us and tested our relaxation by lifting an arm and letting it drop back to the floor. There were thuds all around. That got me thinking: Everyone else is relaxed. That woman beside me hasn't breathed for a minute; she's practically a real corpse. I always tense up under pressure. How can I let go when the teacher comes over and tests me? Before I realized what had happened, my arm had been lifted. It stayed up in the air like the leg of a dead canary. In spite of myself, I burst out laughing. Some yogi. But failure can be freeing, since there's nothing else to lose. After the laughter, I just let go. My limbs felt like they would have migrated to China if the floor hadn't been there. Exquisite feelings of peace flowed through me. My God, I remember thinking, this must be what people are talking about when they say that they're relaxed. I hadn't felt that sensation since I was about Alex's age, when I sat in my father's lap and leaned my head on his chest while he told me stories. As an adult, do you ever feel that you're "right here, right now"? When you're in the present moment, past and future fade away. There are no mental conditions for happiness. The simple pleasures of a sunrise or a sunset, the breeze on your face, a smile that seems to reach into every cell of your body, or a heartfelt conversation, are always available. When you're able to let go of thinking and relax, the clouds part. You automatically become like a child again, and feel the radiant joy of the inner sun. When that sun shines, you feel whole - a part of something that extends far beyond your separate self. The words whole, holy, and healing come from the same root. In the holy moments of presence, you feel a kind of solidarity with life that is the very essence of inner peace. The problem is that most adults are rarely present. As the old saying goes, "The lights are on, but nobody's home." We seem to be awake, up and about, but life is passing us by while we're thinking about something else. A lot of the exhaustion and world-weariness that we blame on being busy isn't from busyness at all. It's from being anywhere but in the present, laying down conditions for when we'll finally be able to come back home to ourselves. "When I make those phone calls, when my computer stops dumping my files, when I get a new car, when the kids go to bed, when my lover or spouse or boss finally appreciates me . . . then I can be happy." This would be like a five-year-old thinking, When I'm a grown-up, then I'll be happy. Think about it. If not now, when? When you're dead? Michelangelo was once asked the secret of making his beautiful sculptures. He replied that he just chipped away the part of the stone that wasn't the sculpture. So it is with inner peace. The sculpture, the work of art, is already within you. Sculpting your life to reveal its essential beauty requires a consistent intention to chip away the insidious habits of mind that rob you of the childlike ability to stay present to the flow. When you feel "crazy busy," try taking a breath and letting go of whatever is on your mind. Think, Here I am. Let your body relax, and feel your connection to the larger whole. This is not an easy task, but it becomes more and more possible with practice. Here you are. The possibilities for joy are all around you.
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Inner Peace For Busy People addresses issues of people in the 21st century who feel "crazy busy." Why have we allowed busyness to become a badge of honor and a jaw-clenching, mind-bending competition? Slaves to phones, beepers, e-mails, faxes, piles of snail mail, to-do lists, congested traffic, and pushy telemarketers who call during dinner, many people are also trying to balance the demands of family and career. As a result, they often feel squeezed out of their own lives, and unable to extend the kindness and care to their loved ones that they would really like to. The paradox of this century is that Americans are wealthier than ever before, yet we are more stressed, depressed, anxious, and overwhelmed than at any time in our history. We have very little peace of mind.