While trudging over the snowy expanses of the North and South Poles and climbing to the rarified heights of Mount Everest, Norwegian explorer Erling Kaage discovered something unexpected. He discovered the subtle joy of silence.

“Silence in itself is rich,” Kagge told Natural Awakenings magazine. “It is a quality, something exclusive and luxurious, and also a practical resource for living a richer life. Silence is a deep human need that in our age, has ended up being scarcer than plastic bags from Louis Vuitton…”

It’s true. We live in an exceedingly noisy world filled with blaring horns, cell phone rings, leaf blowers and dripping faucets. Governmental agencies have long sought to reduce noise pollution, acknowledging the health hazards of so much clamor.

But silence isn’t just about the absence of environmental noise. It’s also about the silence that can be found within us and the delicate joy that emerges when we’re fully present with our moment-to-moment experience. Kaage says he walked alone for 50 days and nights in search of total silence, but he didn’t find it until he turned inward toward an inner silence.

For centuries, philosophers, psychologists and statesmen have praised the virtues of silence and personal reflection. Ben Franklin listed silence as one of his thirteen virtues. And the 16^th century philosopher Blaise Pascal remarked: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly alone in a room.”

Taking time to be quiet – even for just two minutes – can be more relaxing than listening to music, according to a 2006 study published in the journal Heart. Research in mice has shown that silence also benefits the brain, regenerating cells within the hippocampus, which is important for learning and memory. Finland feels so strongly about the benefits of silence that the country’s convention bureau created a “silence” marketing campaign designed to entice world-weary travelers searching for peace and quiet. The campaign features images of still lakes with the tagline: “Silence, Please.”

Yet, many of us, like proverbial moths to the flame, are drawn to the noise of our busy, digitally connected lives. So much so that we’d rather receive an electric shock than sit in a room alone with our thoughts. That’s what University of Virginia researchers discovered when they conducted an experiment offering study participants that very choice. Shockingly, most of the participants chose to give themselves an electrical jolt rather than sit in silence.

But treasures can be found when we invite silence into our lives. When we’re quiet long enough for our thoughts to settle, for our bodies to relax and for our feelings to move freely through us, we can often find an abiding joy that exists from simply being.  

Adventurer Kaage found the joy of this kind of inner silence in the extremes of nature. But you don’t have to scale Mt. Everest to find it. Mindfulness –the act of paying attention to the present moment without judgment – can be a means of finding inner silence in the midst of your daily activities. Moments of inner silence can arise whenever you sit quietly and devote your attention to your breath. Inner silence can be found when you do the dishes with your full attention. It can even appear on a crowded bus when you decide to put away your iPhone and take in the moment-to-moment experience of the swaying bus, the passing traffic and the chatting of strangers traveling beside you.

When we fully contact the routine moments of our day in silence, they become fuller and even pleasurable. Doing the dishes with singular, silent attention can elevate a chore into an experience that fills the senses with sounds, sights, temperature and touch.

Whether we realize it or not, we seem to be longing for more quietude in our lives. Sound canceling headphones, white noise machines and recordings of babbling brooks comprise a booming quietness industry.

But a far simpler path to finding inner silence might be to add a bit of mindfulness into your day. Go for a walk alone and make the experience of nature or even the city streets the objects of your singular attention. Spend a few extra moments in bed after awakening in the morning and listen to the sounds of the house and the world outside coming to life. During the whirl of your workday, pause and attend to the rising and falling sensations of your breath. See if a little bit of silence floats to the surface amid the waves of thoughts.

Encountered in this way, silence is not something to fear. Instead, it’s a gentle friend – one who can help you balance the ups and downs of your day, connect you more meaningfully to yourself and add a bit of joy to your life.

Highly Entertaining

Everything is always changing. Sometimes that fact can be frightening. Especially, when we catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror and realize we’re no longer 20 years old. And, yet, change as a constant, if embraced, can be incredibly freeing.

I’ve never had an negative thought, for example, that eventually didn’t go away – sometimes entirely on its own. My morning grumpiness often evaporates after a brisk walk outside or a warm cup of tea. My body has healed from broken hips, arms, fingers and a collarbone. (I’m a klutzy daredevil.)

Longer periods of lament, whether they seemingly last for weeks, months or years, also are far less stagnant than we think. I’ve been depressed and also experienced happiness within the same period of time.

Sometimes, nature can be a powerful reminder of the potential change brings. Watch this fascinating video on the unassuming life of a kidney bean and welcome change as a harbinger of something amazing yet to come. 

Upcoming Classes

I’m offering a new UCLA Mindfulness class in Santa Monica: UCLA MapsII: Next Steps: Improve Your Meditation. The six-week class series begins next week on Thursday Jan. 17th from 7 to 9 p.m. at Hari’s RIE Studio at 2901 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 121, Santa Monica CA. The class is open to those who have taken MapsI or have taken an equivalent introductory mindfulness class. MapsII is a great way to deepen your meditation practice and begin the New Year! 

Also, beginning March 14th, I’ll be teaching another UCLA MapsI class in Santa Monica on Thursday evenings at the same location from 7 to 9 p.m. You can register for that class in February. Stay tuned for registration details. Many students often repeat MapsI as a way to maintain their ongoing mindfulness practice in a supportive environment. 

For more information and to register go to: https://kellybarron.com/classes/

To read previous newsletters go to: https://kellybarron.com/blog/

This blog post originally appeared on eMindful.com

Ever since the advent of the positive psychology movement, we’ve been barraged with advice about how to become happier. And, yet, by many metrics we’re still fairly downbeat. Rates of anxiety and depression are rising not falling.

The divide between our efforts to become happier and our actual levels of happiness surely makes us feel worse. But the problem with happiness isn’t our effort to achieve it. It’s pursuing it in the first place.

Happiness, quite simply, is overrated.

Far from being a sustainable trait, happiness is a state that waxes and wanes. Like pleasure, which fades after eating the first potato chip from the bag, happiness is, as they say, fleeting. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that it took me so long to emotionally understand something that seems so intellectually obvious.

But giving up the pursuit of happiness has made me, well, happier.

Without the expectation of finding lasting happiness, I’m more accepting of unhappy experiences and feelings. Such acceptance doesn’t paper over the difficulties. But it creates a lot less stress and a lot more ease. (What we resist persists.)

I’ve also come to realize just how much we need the things that, on occasion, make us feel bad.

Around Mother’s Day, I fell into conversation with a nurse at a doctor’s office about memories of our mothers – both of whom were deceased. We spoke about how we loved them, but also about the things they did that annoyed us. (I’m a Mom so I write that with absolute love.)

He recalled that when he drove his mother around town she had a grating habit of naming all the signs they passed out loud in an endless, ongoing narrative. (“Lenny’s deli, Mattress Town, Pep Boys”) He laughed, remembering how much that used to bother him and then said:

“I often tell people that life’s good and bad experiences, the things we love about people and the things we don’t love about people, are all woven into a tapestry and if we pull out the thread of a bad experience the whole cloth unravels.”

Whether we admit it or not, we need our petty annoyances and frustrations. We need our dismay and uncertainty. We need our anger and our sadness. We need them because they are the very things that help us define happiness when it arrives.

The feelings that are the flipside of happiness arise within the context of less pleasurable experiences that give our life shape and meaning. Visiting a sick friend in the hospital isn’t as fun as shopping on Amazon, but it’s arguably more fulfilling. Raising kids is a rollercoaster of highs and lows, but being a parent is meaningful. Tackling a new project at work might have equal parts frustration and reward.

In her book, “The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness,” author Emily Esfahani Smith relays a story about Robert Nozick, the 20^th Century philosopher.

Nozick designed a thought experiment. He asked people to imagine that they could live in a magical tank that would give them the happy experiences they wanted. He then asked if they would want to live in the “feel happy” tank for all of their lives. Most people said no. Why? Because as Smith says while you might feel good living in a happy tank, your life wouldn’t be good. A person in a happy tank is a bit like a paperweight. “He has no identity, no projects and no goals to give his life value,” writes Smith.

In other words, as Nozick’s experiment concluded, there’s more to life than feeling happy. What brings meaning to each of our lives is different. But it will likely be a mix of endeavors and experiences that invite frustration, disappointment and even anger as well as gratification.

Paradoxically, embracing the bad begets the good and even the happy.

On My Mind

A window onto the world is a wondrous thing. Life affirming and sweet, taking time to look out the window and mindfully behold whatever arises in the view of your soft gaze is a practice worth trying.

Recently, I stood on the eighth floor of a high-rise in Toronto doing just that: Practicing window meditation for 30 minutes. Boring, you say? Far from it.

During my window meditation, the world below and the sky above unfolded in continually surprising ways. Cars and people moved like insects in the streets and on the sidewalks below. Crows dove from trees to windowsills and down to the ground, pecking for breadcrumbs. Building vents opened and closed, twirling steam into the air.

Beyond the edges of the teeming city, the stillness of Lake Ontario flowed into a baby blue sky. And I was a small part of it all.

Highly Entertaining

What’s your relationship to fear? Small and meek? Bold and bring it on? Do you have enough mindful awareness to know?

Perhaps there’s no better way to gut-test your reaction to fear than by standing on a high-diving board and daring yourself to jump into the pool below. This video called the Ten Meter Tower provides a poignant and very human look at the varying ways we relate to the primal emotion of fear.

Have a look and bring some mindfulness into play. Notice if any sensations arise as you watch. Then ask yourself: What would I do?

How much time do you spend outdoors?

If you’re like most of us, the answer is not much.

The average American spends 90% of their time indoors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. We spend another 6% of our days shuttling around in our cars. For creatures who evolved outdoors, our time in nature nowadays is shockingly short and often relegated to brief transits in and out of buildings and…yes…cars.

I am guilty of too much city dwelling as well. But, recently, I spent a week in Maui where those statistics above got reversed. Much of my time was outdoors, swimming and sunning on the beach. (I know. It’s a tough life.) But I was struck by how much better I felt – in every way – when I returned home.

Could it have been more than just a change of pace? Could it have been the healing salve of nature?

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that “if we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

Research is proving this to be true in more ways than one. Spending time in nature offers a wealth of physical, mental and emotional benefits. Being outdoors boosts immunity. It reduces blood pressure and cortisol levels. Studies also show spending time outdoors improves concentration and focus, social connection and even creativity. But perhaps, most striking is what being out doors does to our moods. Nature, it turns out, is a natural antidepressant.

Spending an hour and a half in nature helps deactivate the part of our brain that controls negative thinking, allowing us to become less preoccupied with our personal problems, explains Florence Williams, author of “The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier and More Creative.” Williams notes that Finnish researchers have discovered that five hours in nature a month can increase overall happiness. (See below for more on the link between depression and our disconnection from nature.)

You don’t have to hike Everest, swim to Cuba or even camp out in your back yard for a weekend to reap the rewards. Just five minutes outdoors will relax your facial muscles and slow your heart rate among other benefits, according to Williams.

All of it is worth bringing some mindfulness to and reflecting on how we not only spend our time, but where we spend it. When was the last time you listened to bird song, basked in the warmth of sun or felt the soft carpet of grass beneath your feet?

On My Mind

Johann Hari’s absorbing book “Lost Connections: Uncovering The Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions” upends traditional theories about how brain imbalances and genetics cause depression. Instead, he proposes another theory: Depression is a disease of disconnection.

Hari’s account, which is part memoir and part investigative journalism, is well researched and surprisingly entertaining. He writes compellingly about how our disconnection from primal needs ranging from community to nature to meaningful work are at the root of what sometimes seems to be a chronic societal sadness.

Hari overstates his argument at times and suggests institutional solutions that may never be achieved. But he nonetheless offers an illuminating view of depression that is undeniably helpful to anyone who may struggle to understand why they feel melancholic or anxious.

“You are not a machine with broken parts,” Hari writes. “You are an animal whose needs are not being met.”

Highly Entertaining

Sometimes government can be inspiring. It’s rare. But in Japan government officials are addressing both our need for nature and our tendencies toward depression by encouraging Forest Bathing. What is that you may ask? Watch this video to learn more:

 

 

The ubiquity of cell phones and social media will likely never go away. But there’s a simmering backlash coming from some remarkable sources about the harm they might be doing to us. Consider:

• Hedge fund Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teacher’s Retirement System, which control $2 billion shares of Apple stock, sent an open letter to Apple last week pressing the company to offer parents more tools to control and limit iPhone use and for more research.
• The California Department of Public Health issued a warning in December against exposure to cell phone radiation, advising people not to keep cell phones in their pockets and not to put them against their ears for long periods.
• Facebook, citing research from the University of Michigan, acknowledged last year that passively consuming social media makes us feel bad.
• Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya told an audience at Stanford Graduate School of Business in December that he feels “tremendous guilt” about his role in creating social media that he believes is “ripping the fabric society apart.”

It’s early days, but the kickback against Apple, Facebook, cell phones and social media reminds me of how the culture cooled on the fast-food industry.

Fast food had become a mainstay of American life by the 1950s as consumers embraced its innovation, convenience and entertainment value. In the ensuing years, the fast-food business grew rapidly, expanding overseas and luring families with children’s menus and toys. It wasn’t until decades later that consumer groups, government agencies and health advocates fully informed the public about the health consequences of eating too many burgers and fries and of feeding them to their kids.

Consumer safety often plays catch up in a free-market economy. Nonetheless, we now know what we’re getting into when we walk into a fast-food restaurant. And as result, many of us choose not to do so.

But when it comes cell phones and social media, we’re still in the dark in terms of understanding just how deeply technology affects our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. In many ways, our interaction with the digital world amounts to a huge biological experiment. Increasingly, that makes many of us uneasy.

If we’re completely honest with ourselves, we already know something isn’t right in our digital domain. For all the benefits our devices bring, they command way too much of our attention. We’re perpetually distracted and we miss real-time moments of our lives when wedded to them. We feel anxious and “less than” when binging on social media. Some of us are addicted to the dopamine boost of receiving a “Like,” a text or an e-mail.

Of course, we could all take more personal responsibility when it comes to how we use our devices and how we allow our children to use them. But we should also demand scientific data from tech companies and government agencies about how cells phones and social media affect us. The California Department of Public Health only issued its recent cell phone safety guidelines after a UC Berkley professor sued the agency to release its detailed findings.

As technology continues to expand its reach into our daily lives, there’s urgency to getting answers – particularly for our kids.

After citing research that 78 percent of teens check their phones at least hourly and half report feeling “addicted” to their phones, Jana and Calstrs executives wrote to Apple that “it would defy common sense to argue that this level of usage, by children whose brains are still developing, is not having at least some impact or that the maker of such a powerful product has no role to play in helping parents ensure it is being used optimally.”

On My Mind

What’s the difference between seeing and looking? Is there a difference?

These are questions I often ask elementary school children when teaching them visual mindfulness. Most of them eventually conclude that seeing involves more attention and focus while looking doesn’t. In meditation and in practicing mindfulness in our daily lives, we’re often instructed to settle the mind by attending to our breath, to sounds or to sensations in our bodies. Seeing gets short shrift.

And, yet, seeing is a lovely mindfulness practice. Thoughts arising in the mind are often accompanied by a cinema of images. We can notice the images and increase our awareness. When we’re out and about, we can stop and really see the sky, a leaf or another person and more fully inhabit our world.

Playwright Henry Miller said: “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”

So, try this simple practice: Close your eyes. Take a breath. Then, open your eyes and gaze upon an object within your field of vision. (Use the image of the flower above if you like.) Take in its shape, its color and its size. Make a study of it. Notice details you might otherwise miss. If the object is small enough, reach for it, hold it in your hands and as Miller suggests marvel at its awesomeness.

Highly Entertaining

Watch this intriguing video and learn how the quiet life of Billy Barr, aka “The Snow Guardian,” has given scientists a treasure trove of climate change data. Barr devoted his life to measuring snow and to living simply. He makes me want to live more simply, too.

Flossing your teeth nightly. Exercising regularly. Meditating daily. These are helpful things to do. Though, many of us don’t want to do any of them. The question remains: Why is it so difficult to begin and keep a good habit?

At the end of my recent meditation retreat, the teacher mentioned that many people go on long, silent retreats every year and meditate for hours a day but fail to maintain a daily practice once they get home. It’s true: One of the hardest things about meditation is doing it…regularly.

While there’s no shortage of advice on behavioral change, the crux of beginning and keeping a good habit might be much simpler than we think. One approach: Take the smallest step possible in the direction of your goal.

“Radical change is like charging up a steep hill—you may run out of wind before you reach the crest, or the thought of all the work ahead makes you give up no sooner than you’ve begun,” writes Dr. Robert Maurer, a faculty member with the UCLA School of Medicine and author of “One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way.”

Maurer argues that our brains hate change and, in fact, feel threatened by it. Setting big audacious goals can block rather than pave the way to good habits. On the other hand, making a small commitment to change turns off the brain’s fight-or-flight response and lowers resistance. Repeatedly taking smalls steps toward change creates new connections between neurons to support the new habit. It also builds confidence.

Maurer relays an example of a former client named Julie who had difficulty exercising regularly. Instead of advising her to join a gym or sign up for a 5K, Maurer told her to march in place for a minute while she watched television every night for a week. That small, seemingly meaningless commitment changed Julie’s attitude toward exercise. Her enthusiasm snowballed and over time she developed a lasting exercise habit.

So, try flossing a single tooth before bed. Do one push up. Rather than meditating daily for 30 minutes or more, do so for a minute. After a week, see if you can increase it by a minute more or meditate a minute several times a day. Even a few minutes of silence and solitude (see below) can be mind altering.

For a deeper dive into the strategy of how small changes equal big results check out:

• Stephen Guise’s book: “Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results.”http://stephenguise.com/
• Author James Clear’s article: The Paradox of Behavior Change https://jamesclear.com/behavior-change-paradox
• Or Arianna Huffington’s interview with Tim Ferriss. https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/ After collapsing from exhaustion, Huffington retooled her life and founded Thrive Global, a company dedicated to health and wellness information. “I’m a big believer in micro-steps,” she tells Ferriss.

On My Mind

One day, 20-year-old Chris Knight drove his Subaru Brat to the edge of the Maine woods, tossed his keys onto the center console and walked into the forest. He wasn’t seen again for another 27 years.

Michael Finkel’s page-turning book about Knight; “The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit,” is a fascinating peak into the mind and the odd life of a man who feels more comfortable alone than with people. But it’s also a thought-provoking reflection on solitude.

In the age of social media, even a modicum of solitude is something most of us avoid. That might be a shame. Poets, psychologists, sages and scientists have long extoled the value of spending – if not 27 years – brief periods of time alone. Albert Camus wrote: “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”

As for Knight, Finkel describes his solitary existence in the woods as a timeless, perpetual now that while not without fear or suffering was suffused with satisfaction. Finkel writes:

“The dividing line between himself and the forest, Knight said, seem to dissolve. His isolation felt more like a communion. ‘My desires dropped away. I didn’t long for anything. I didn’t even have a name. To put it romantically, I was completely free.”

Highly Entertaining

Research shows that kindness is contagious. Try the following one-person loving kindness experiment: Watch this video and notice the feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise. Do you feel like be kinder?