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<h1 style='display: inline' id='search-inside-yourself-book-notes'>"Search Inside Yourself" book notes</h1><br />
<br />
<span class='quote'>Last updated 23.7.2024</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='mindfulness-and-personal-development'>Mindfulness and Personal Development</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Mindfulness is not about reaching a different destination; it's about fully inhabiting your current state and recognizing the power of your complete presence and awareness at this moment. This book is about the potential everyone has to develop an extraordinarily capable mind that is profoundly peaceful, happy, and compassionate. It emphasizes the importance of deeper emotional awareness—the ability to detect an emotion as it arises, observe it as it subsides, and notice all the subtle changes in between. </span><br />
<br />
<span>The book also highlights the significance of giving yourself quality time, such as by reducing work hours. By prioritizing self-care, you can discover ways to achieve more while doing less. </span><br />
<br />
<span>Additionally, it teaches you to distinguish between stories and reality. Following the exercises in this book, you will learn how to calm your mind on demand and perceive your mental and emotional processes with increasing clarity.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='three-steps-of-search-inside-yourself'>Three Steps of "Search Inside Yourself"</h2><br />
<br />
<span>1. **Attention Training**</span><br />
<span>2. **Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery**</span><br />
<span>3. **Creating Useful Mental Habits**</span><br />
<br />
<span>Train your attention to cultivate a mind that is both calm and clear. This quality of mind forms the foundation for emotional intelligence.</span><br />
<br />
<span>Develop the ability to observe your thought stream and emotional processes with high clarity and from an objective, third-person perspective. This deep self-awareness eventually leads to self-mastery.</span><br />
<br />
<span>Imagine thinking, "I wish for this person to be happy," whenever you meet anyone. This habit transforms interactions at work, as sincere goodwill is unconsciously picked up by others, fostering trust and leading to highly productive collaborations.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='even-an-engineer-can-thrive-on-emotional-intelligence'>Even an Engineer Can Thrive on Emotional Intelligence</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of success at work and fulfillment in life, and it is trainable for everyone. Emotional competencies are not innate talents; they are learned skills that you can acquire with practice. </span><br />
<br />
<span>Goleman classifies emotional intelligence into five domains:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1. Self-awareness: Knowledge of one's internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.</li>
<li>2. Self-regulation: Management of one's internal states, impulses, and resources.</li>
<li>3. Motivation: Emotional tendencies that guide or facilitate reaching goals.</li>
<li>4. Empathy: Awareness of others' feelings, needs, and concerns.</li>
<li>5. Social skills: Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.</li>
</ul><br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='emotional-intelligence-enables-three-important-skills'>Emotional Intelligence Enables Three Important Skills</h2><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1. Stellar Work Performance</li>
<li>2. Outstanding Leadership</li>
<li>3. Creating Conditions for Happiness</li>
</ul><br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='1-stellar-work-performance'>1. Stellar Work Performance</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Top six competencies that distinguish star performers from the average in the tech sector are:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>1. Strong achievement drive and high achievement standards.</li>
<li>2. Ability to focus.</li>
<li>3. Conceptual thinking (intellectual competency).</li>
<li>4. Analytical ability (intellectual competency).</li>
<li>5. Initiative in taking on challenges.</li>
<li>6. Self-confidence.</li>
</ul><br />
<span>From these, only two (conceptual thinking and analytical ability) are purely intellectual competencies. The other four are emotional competencies. So the conclusion is, that training your emotional intelligence can help everyone become outstanding at work, even engineers.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='2-outstanding-leadership'>2. Outstanding Leadership</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Effective U.S. Navy commanders are "more positive and outgoing, more emotionally expressive and dramatic, warmer and more sociable (including smiling more), friendlier and more democratic, more cooperative, more likable and 'fun to be with', more appreciative and trustful, and even gentler than those who are merely average." "Nice guys finish first."</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='3-the-ability-to-create-the-conditions-for-happiness'>3. The Ability to Create the Conditions for Happiness</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Happiness is a skill that can be practiced through deliberate training. The other side effects may include resilience, optimism, and kindness.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='attention-training'>Attention Training</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Train your attention to cultivate a mind that is both calm and clear. This quality of mind forms the foundation for emotional intelligence.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='train-attention'>Train Attention</h3><br />
<br />
<span>How to begin training emotional intelligence? Begin by training attention. A strong, stable, and perceptive attention that offers calmness and clarity is the foundation upon which emotional intelligence is built. </span><br />
<br />
<span>To see ourselves objectively, we need the ability to examine our thoughts and emotions from a third-person perspective. The attention should be stable, clear, and non-judgmental. "Response flexibility" refers to the ability to pause before you act, allowing a moment to consider how to react in an emotional situation. </span><br />
<br />
<span>Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and happiness. Attention is trained with "mindfulness meditation." </span><br />
<br />
<span>Mindfulness is a quality of mind that we all experience and enjoy from time to time, but it can be greatly strengthened with practice. Once it becomes sufficiently strong, it leads directly to the attentional calmness and clarity that forms the basis of emotional intelligence. </span><br />
<br />
<span>There is scientific evidence showing that improving our ability to regulate our attention can significantly impact how we respond to emotions. Simply with attention training, someone can become good at regulating a part of the brain as primitive and important as the amygdala (the part of the brain dealing with emotions). </span><br />
<br />
<span>"Affect labeling" is a self-regulation technique, which simply means labeling feelings with words. When you label an emotion you are experiencing (for example, "I feel anger"), it helps to manage that emotion.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='self-knowledge-and-self-mastery'>Self-Knowledge and Self-Mastery</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Develop the ability to observe your thought stream and emotional processes with high clarity and from an objective, third-person perspective. This deep self-awareness eventually leads to self-mastery.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='creating-useful-mental-habits'>Creating Useful Mental Habits</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Imagine thinking, "I wish for this person to be happy," whenever you meet anyone. This habit transforms interactions at work, as sincere goodwill is unconsciously picked up by others, fostering trust and leading to highly productive collaborations.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='optimize-thyself'>Optimize Thyself</h2><br />
<br />
<span>The aim of developing emotional intelligence is to help you optimize yourself and function at an even higher level than what you are already capable of. Emotional skillfulness frees us from emotional compulsion. Neuroplasticity tells us that we can intentionally change our brains with training. </span><br />
<br />
<span>It is possible to train the brain to overcome even serious emotional disorders; just imagine the possibility of using it to greatly improve the quality of our emotional lives. This also works with physical pain. Suffering can be trained "away." Brain. Trainable. Good.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='train-at-the-level-of-physiology'>Train at the Level of Physiology</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Every emotion has a correlate in the body. Emotional experiences are not just psychological; they are also physiological. We can usually experience emotions more vividly in the body than in the mind. Therefore, when trying to perceive an emotion, it is often more effective to bring our attention to the body rather than the mind.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='high-resolution-perception'>High-Resolution Perception</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Your perception can become so refined across both time and space that you can observe an emotion the moment it arises, perceive its subtle changes, and watch it in the moment it ceases. The way to develop high-resolution perception of emotion is to apply mindfulness to the body.</span><br />
<br />
<span>Because emotions have such a strong physiological component, developing emotional intelligence necessitates operating at the level of physiology. Much of our intuition comes from our body, and learning to listen to it can be very fruitful. Our approach to cultivating emotional intelligence begins with mindfulness.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='mindfulness-in-two-minutes'>Mindfulness in Two Minutes</h2><br />
<br />
<span>In the evenings, sit together in mindfulness for two minutes. For two minutes a day, quietly enjoy being alive and being together. More fundamentally, for two minutes a day, enjoy just being. The good news is that mindfulness is embarrassingly easy. The hard part in mindfulness is deepening, strengthening, and sustaining it, especially in times of difficulty.</span><br />
<br />
<span>The creatively named *Easy Way* is to simply bring gentle and consistent attention to your breath for two minutes. That's it. The *Easier Way* is, as its name may subtly suggest, even easier: All you have to do is sit without an agenda for two minutes.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='meditation-is-exercise'>Meditation is Exercise</h3><br />
<br />
<span>There is no such thing as bad meditation. After a few weeks or months of starting a regular meditation regime, you have more energy; your mind becomes calmer, clearer, and more joyful; you get sick less; you smile more; your social life improves (because you smile more); and you feel great about yourself. </span><br />
<span>The best meditation posture is one that helps you remain alert and relaxed at the same time for long periods of time. Use this as a guideline, and find whatever posture is comfortable for you. Keeping eyes closed during meditation is good because it helps you stay calm and keeps away distractions. However, the problem is that you may fall asleep. </span><br />
<br />
<span>The idea is to open your eyes slightly, look slightly downward, and gaze at nothing in particular. Whether eyes are closed or opened, try out what works best for you.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='sustaining-your-practice'>Sustaining Your Practice</h3><br />
<br />
<span>The keyword is practice. Mindfulness is like exercise - it is not sufficient to just understand the topic; you can only benefit from it with practice. The bad news is that after the first few days, many people find it hard to sustain the practice. Happily, the difficulty of sustaining a mindfulness practice often lasts only a few months. </span><br />
<br />
<span>It is like starting an exercise regime. The first few months are usually really hard - you probably have to discipline yourself into exercising regularly, but after a few months, you find your quality of life changing dramatically. You become happier, calmer, more emotionally resilient, more energetic, and people like you more because your positivity emanates onto them.</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>*Do less than you can:* Keep the practice from becoming a burden. If mindfulness practice feels like a chore, it's not sustainable.</li>
<li>*Take one breath a day:* I may be the laziest mindfulness instructor in the world because I tell my students all they need to commit to is one mindful breath a day. Just one. Breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and your commitment for the day is fulfilled; everything else is a bonus. If you commit to one breath a day, you can easily fulfill this commitment and can then preserve the momentum of your practice. </li>
</ul><br />
<span>Also, creating the intention to meditate is itself meditation.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='breathing-as-if-your-life-depends-on-it'>Breathing as if Your Life Depends on It</h2><br />
<br />
<span>There is nothing mysterious about meditation; it's really just mental training. Meta-attention, the attention of attention, is the ability to pay attention to attention itself. Simply put, meta-attention is the ability to know that your attention has wandered away.</span><br />
<br />
<span>When your meta-attention becomes strong, you will be able to recover a wandering attention quickly and often. If you recover attention quickly and often enough, you create the effect of continuous attention, which is concentration. When the mind becomes highly relaxed and alert at the same time, three wonderful qualities of mind naturally emerge: calmness, clarity, and happiness.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='happiness-is-the-default-state-of-mind'>Happiness is the Default State of Mind</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Happiness is not something you pursue; it is something you allow. Happiness is just being. That insight changed my life. The biggest joke is that after all that has been done in the history of the world in the pursuit of happiness, it turns out that sustainable happiness is achievable simply by bringing attention to one's breath. Life is funny.</span><br />
<br />
<span>Mindfulness can increase happiness without changing anything else. We take for granted many of the neutral things in life, such as not being in pain, having three meals a day, and being able to walk from point A to point B. In mindfulness, these become causes of joy because we no longer take them for granted. Pleasant experiences become even more pleasant because our attention is there to fully experience them. </span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='experience-without-judging-or-reacting'>Experience, Without Judging or Reacting</h2><br />
<br />
<span>Whatever it is that you are experiencing, just experience it. Do not judge it to be good or bad. Let it be. If possible, try not to react to it. If you have to react (for example, if you really have to scratch), try to take five breaths before reacting. </span><br />
<br />
<span>The reason for this is to practice creating space between stimulus and reaction. The more we are able to create space between stimulus and reaction, the more control we will have over our emotional lives. This skill that you develop here during sitting can be generalized to daily life.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='attention-and-mindful-meditation-is-like-macgyvers-swiss-army-knife'>Attention and Mindful Meditation is like MacGyver's Swiss Army Knife</h2><br />
<br />
<span>The reason we create a powerful quality of attention is to develop insights into the mind. Just eight weeks of mindfulness meditation made subjects measurably happier and showed an increase in immunity. Upgrading the operating efficiency of our brains with mindfulness meditation is akin to pumping iron: if you work out a lot, you will have bulging muscles even when you are not working out in the gym. Similarly, with extensive meditation training, you will have strong mental "muscles" for calmness, clarity, and joy even when you are just hanging out.</span><br />
<br />
<span>It is remarkable that mindfulness helps improve everything from attention and brain function to immunity and skin disease. Mindfulness feels almost like MacGyver's Swiss Army knife - it is useful in every situation. Your attention naturally gravitates towards things that are either very pleasant or very unpleasant, so if you can train yourself to keep your attention on something as neutral as your breath, then you can maintain your attention on anything.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='meditation-techniques'>Meditation techniques</h2><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='expensive-food-meditation'>Expensive Food Meditation</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Imagine if every meal was rare and expensive. Call it "expensive food meditation." In this case, every meal becomes superb. Accelerate this by purposefully bringing mindfulness to daily activities. Bring full moment-to-moment attention to every task with a nonjudgmental mind, and every time your attention wanders away, just gently bring it back. </span><br />
<br />
<span>It is just like sitting meditation, except the object of meditation is the task at hand rather than just the breath.</span><br />
<br />
<h3 style='display: inline' id='walking-meditation'>Walking Meditation</h3><br />
<br />
<span>Practice walking meditation every time you walk from the office to the restroom and back. Mindful walking is restful for the mind, and a relaxed mind is conducive to creative thinking. Problems often get solved in the mind during restroom breaks.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='mindful-listening'>Mindful Listening</h2><br />
<br />
<span>When a friend or loved one is speaking to you, adopt a generous attitude by giving the person the gift of your attention and airtime. The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers. If there are people in your life you care about, be sure to give them a few minutes of your full attention every day. They will bloom like flowers.</span><br />
<br />
<span>The main reason we do not listen to others is that we get distracted by our own feelings and internal chatter. The best way to respond to these internal distractions is to notice and acknowledge them. Listening means giving the gift of attention to the speaker. Looping means closing the loop of communication by demonstrating that you have heard what the person is saying. Dipping means checking in with yourself, knowing how you are feeling about what you hear.</span><br />
<br />
<span>You can practice mindful conversation during any interaction, but it is most useful when communication is at an impasse, such as in a conflict situation. After the speaker offers their input, repeat their remarks in your own words to ensure you understood them correctly.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='lightness-and-joy-in-meditation'>Lightness and Joy in Meditation</h2><br />
<br />
<span>When I was new to meditation, I struggled with the simplest and silliest of all problems: I could not breathe. I tried too hard. Once I stopped trying so hard, I caught myself breathing normally. That was the first time I was able to pay attention to my breath properly. Only by not trying did I finally succeed.</span><br />
<br />
<span> In a humorous way, meditation is like trying to fall asleep. The more relaxed you are, the less you are fixated on the goal, the easier it becomes, and the better the outcome. The better you are at letting go, the better you become at both meditating and falling asleep. Relaxation is the foundation of deep concentration.</span><br />
<br />
<span>A similar mechanism works in the practice of mindfulness. I found lightness to be highly conducive to mindfulness. Lightness gives rise to ease of mind. When the mind is at ease, it becomes more open, perceptive, and nonjudgmental.</span><br />
<br />
<span>A good way to practice mindfulness is by using joy as an object of meditation, especially the type of joy with a gentle quality that doesn't overwhelm the senses. For example, taking a nice walk, holding hands with a loved one, enjoying a good meal, carrying a sleeping baby, or sitting with your child while she is reading a good book are great opportunities to practice mindfulness by bringing full moment-to-moment attention to the joyful experience, to the mind, and to the body. I call it Joyful Mindfulness.</span><br />
<br />
<span>The first effect of bringing mindfulness to joyful experiences is that they become even more enjoyable, simply because you are more present to enjoy them - extra enjoyment at no additional cost. Joyful Mindfulness is not a replacement for formal sitting practice but a complement to it. Formal practice requires you to bring mindfulness to neutral experiences like your breath.</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Formal mindfulness: Gives you better mindfulness gains but also requires discipline.</li>
<li>Joyful Mindfulness: Gives you fewer mindfulness gains but is far more sustainable.</li>
</ul><br />
<span>Doing both practices every day is like making use of the full set of gears in your car: You can start the car moving smoothly and get it to a good speed. After a while, formal meditation may be infused with a powerful quality known in Sanskrit as sukhā. The most common translations for sukhā are "bliss," "ease," and "happiness." </span><br />
<br />
<span>Sukhā is the quality of joy that does not require energy. It is almost like white noise in the background, something that is always there but seldom noticed. It is highly sustainable and so subtle that it takes a very quiet mind to access. You need to learn to quiet the mind to reach it. Once skillful at doing that, you have a highly sustainable source of happiness that does not require sensual input. Talk about life-changing.</span><br />
<br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='mastering-both-focused-and-open-attention'>Mastering Both Focused and Open Attention</h2><br />
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<span>Strength and stamina. To be a well-rounded athlete, it is good to have both. Focused attention and open attention. To be an accomplished meditator, it is good to be strong in both. Focused attention is an intense focus on a chosen object. Open attention is a quality of attention willing to meet any object that arrives at the mind or the senses.</span><br />
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<span>There are a few important features common to both focused and open attention:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li>Strong meta-attention (attention of attention)</li>
<li>Clarity and vividness of attention</li>
<li>Both meditations require a balance of effort and relaxation.</li>
</ul><br />
<span>Regarding the last point: Too much effort makes it tiring and unsustainable, while too little effort causes you to lose your grip on your attention. One fun way of maintaining this balance is to play it like a video game: Just difficult enough to be challenging but not so difficult that you will lose every time. In either meditation, it is possible to get into a very good state of ease and flow. Very cool.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='meditation-circuit-training'>Meditation Circuit Training</h3><br />
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<ul>
<li>1. Sit comfortably in a position that enables both relaxation and alertness at the same time.</li>
<li>2. Shift into focused attention. Focus on the breath or any other object of meditation you choose. Do this for 3 minutes.</li>
<li>3. Shift into open attention. Bring your attention to whatever you experience and whatever comes to mind. Do this for 3 minutes.</li>
<li>4. Repeat focused attention for 3 minutes and open attention for 3 minutes.</li>
<li>5. End by resting the mind. If you like, you can again visualize the breath to be a resting place, or a cushion, or a mattress, and let the mind rest on it. (Long pause).</li>
</ul><br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='zen-and-a-walking-baby'>Zen and a Walking Baby</h2><br />
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<span>There seem to be two stages in one's meditation progress, which I call "initial access" and "consolidation."</span><br />
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<ul>
<li>Initial Access Stage: In this stage, you find yourself able to access a certain state of mind, but you cannot maintain that mind for very long.</li>
<li>Consolidation Stage: This is when you become able to bring up a state of mind on demand, at a desired intensity and duration. Progress in this stage seems to be an exponential function.</li>
</ul><br />
<span>This means you may go for a frustratingly long time without any apparent progress, and then suddenly—boom—within a very short period, you make huge strides and arrive at full consolidation. The lesson here is to avoid feeling discouraged when your meditation does not seem to be progressing. It will come suddenly, and every moment of effort brings you closer to that point. In Zen, we call it gradual effort and sudden enlightenment.</span><br />
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<h2 style='display: inline' id='clarity'>Clarity</h2><br />
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<span>Compare two versions of a picture: one with higher resolution and vividness than the other. The combination of resolution and vividness makes the image more useful to us. We can also make meditation more useful in two ways:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li>Increase the Resolution: Enhance the precision at which we perceive our emotions, so we can see emotions the moments they arise and cease, and notice subtle changes in between.</li>
<li>Increase the Brightness and Contrast: Make our perceptions more vivid.</li>
</ul><br />
<span>This combination provides us with very useful high-definition information about our emotional life.</span><br />
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<h2 style='display: inline' id='about-self-awareness'>About Self-Awareness</h2><br />
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<span>"I cannot scream at that guy; he is the CEO!" Our engagement of the neocortex in every experience of emotion is a necessary step in gaining control over our emotional lives. The moment you can see a raging river, it means you are already rising above it. Similarly, the moment you can see an emotion, you are no longer fully engulfed in it.</span><br />
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<span>Daniel Goleman defines emotional competence as a "learned capability based on emotional intelligence that results in outstanding performance at work." He suggests three emotional competencies under the domain of self-awareness:</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='1-emotional-awareness'>1. Emotional Awareness</h3><br />
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<span>Recognizing one's emotions and their effects. It asks questions like: What are my strengths and weaknesses? What are my resources and limitations? What matters to me? Accurate self-assessment builds on emotional awareness.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='2-accurate-self-assessment'>2. Accurate Self-Assessment</h3><br />
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<span>Knowing one's strengths and limits. This is also referred to as "self-objectivity." On competence assessments, average performers typically overestimate their strengths, whereas star performers rarely do; if anything, the stars tend to underestimate their abilities, an indicator of high internal standards.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='3-self-confidence'>3. Self-Confidence</h3><br />
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<span>A strong sense of one's self-worth and capabilities. One is able to project confidence not because they make an effort to look confident, but because there's a sense of humor about their own ego or sense of self-importance. </span><br />
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<span>Remember to treat the ego with humor and let it be small enough that the "self" doesn't matter, but big enough that you feel perfectly comfortable speaking to a Nobel Peace Laureate at a peace conference as an equal. Understand the most immediate failure mode (e.g., stumbling on English words while speaking) and the recovery mode strategy (e.g., breathing deeply, smiling, maintaining mindfulness) and not letting occasional faltering bother you.</span><br />
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<span>The type of deep self-knowledge and blatant self-honesty needed for sustainable self-confidence means having nothing to hide from oneself. We learn about our deepest priorities in life, what is important to us, and what is not important that we can let go. With that clarity, we create space that allows us to view our own emotional lives as if seeing it as an objective third party. In other words, we gain objectivity, and we begin to perceive each emotional experience clearly and objectively as it is.</span><br />
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<h2 style='display: inline' id='developing-self-awareness'>Developing Self-Awareness</h2><br />
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<span>Self-awareness is a neutral mode that maintains self-reflectiveness even in the midst of turbulent emotions. Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment. Both mindfulness and self-awareness are trainable in similar ways.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='body-scan'>Body Scan</h3><br />
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<span>Emotion is a physical experience; therefore, the best way to create high-resolution awareness of emotion is by applying mindfulness to the body. The simplest way to do it is to bring mindfulness to your body all the time. The body scan is one of the core practices in stress reduction.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='scan-for-emotion'>Scan for Emotion</h3><br />
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<span>Did you find any emotion in your body? If there is any, just notice its presence in the body. If not, just notice the absence of emotions and catch one if it arises in the next two minutes. Notice that we only invite you to bring a positive emotion in this exercise, not a negative one. Attention drives neurological change. By bringing attention to the body, we help it relax. Very often, bodily tension builds up because we are not paying attention to the body.</span><br />
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<h3 style='display: inline' id='journaling'>Journaling</h3><br />
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<span>Journaling is the practice of self-discovery by writing to yourself. It is an important exercise to help you discover what is in your mind that is not in clear, conscious view. You are trying to let your thoughts flow onto paper so you can see what comes up. </span><br />
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<span>The purpose is an open-ended sentence such as "What I am feeling is..." For those three minutes, write down whatever comes to mind. Try not to think about what you're going to write—just write. There is only one rule: Do not stop writing until your time is up. If you run out of things to write, just write, "I ran out of things to write. I have nothing to write. I still have nothing to write..." until you have something to write about again.</span><br />
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<span>You can think of journaling as mindfulness of thoughts and emotions: paying moment-to-moment, non-judging attention to thoughts and emotions as they arise. Researchers asked 49 college students to take two minutes on two consecutive days and write about something they found to be emotionally significant. The participants registered improvements in mood and performed better on standardized measures of physiological well-being. Four minutes can make a measurable difference. Pick out one or two prompts each day. Here are some suggested prompts:</span><br />
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<ul>
<li>What I am feeling now is...</li>
<li>I am aware that...</li>
<li>What motivates me is...</li>
<li>I am inspired by...</li>
<li>Today, I aspire to...</li>
<li>What hurts me is...</li>
<li>I wish...</li>
<li>Others are...</li>
<li>I made a happy mistake...</li>
<li>Love is...</li>
</ul><br />
<h2 style='display: inline' id='my-emotions-are-not-me'>My Emotions Are Not Me</h2><br />
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<span>As we deepen our self-awareness, we eventually arrive at a very important key insight: we are not our emotions. With enough mindfulness practice, you may eventually notice a subtle but important shift—you may begin to feel that emotions are simply what you feel, not who you are. You may begin to see emotions simply as physiological phenomena. Emotions become what we expe
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