Waking Up

The foci of my ruminations for the past month have been the connections between meditation, social and emotional intelligence, and metacognition, which is the awareness of one's own thought processes. A key insight I have gained is that emotional and social intelligence are the corollaries of metacognition in the realm of the heart-- the high-level skills that enable true understanding and mastery. And meditating mindfully develops insight into each of these areas.

How does it do all that? It's quite simple. Mindfulness meditation is simply the act of becoming aware of the processes of own's one consciousness, which includes any physical, emotional, and cognitive stimulus that reaches the level of awareness. Every appearance in consciousness is perfect fodder for mindfulness, whether it be a sensation such as pain, sleepiness, sound, or visual stimuli, an emotion like anxiety or happiness, or a thought like a thing on today's to-do list or something stupid you said yesterday. And therein lies the secret to why mindfulness benefits people across so many different domains. With practice, meditators become more sensitive to their own emotional, physical, and cognitive states, which creates a question where before there had not been one: is this the state of being in which I want to remain? Or put differently: If this were my last day on earth, is this what I would want occupying my time and attention? Without this awareness, we remain lost in thought and at the mercy of our mercurial moods.

Of course, sometimes you have to do the laundry, take out the trash, and call in to that meeting. But even the mundane can be lived in with a beautiful, open state of awareness and sensitivity. I often see this in Mindy. When I call to check in with her at home, she is almost always eager to connect and open to deeper conversation. And the same holds with her when friends and family call-- if they need an empathetic ear, they know they can count on Mindy to provide it. Over the course of her life, she has cultivated this posture of empathetic openness even with fraught relationships, which I've been deeply impressed by time and again. And a little envious of-- but I'm starting to improve in that area, thanks to her influence.

Another cornerstone of emotional intelligence is the ability to delay gratification, which is something I can remember possessing even as a young child. No doubt this capacity played a large role in getting me where I am today-- it's been shown to be more strongly correlated with educational, social, and professional success than just about any other factor. This was one of the main points of the book by Daniel Goleman I just finished, Emotional Intelligence. Another, related point is that the security of attachments in the first four years of life exerts outsized influence on the rest of one's emotional life. So-- thanks, mom and dad! Knowing the kinds of people you were / are, I know you got me off to a great start, even though I don't remember it!

There were many other insights to be gleaned from that book, so check it out if you haven't read it. He gives a nice overview of the neurology of emotions, has a great chapter-length summary of John Gottman's research on healthy relationships, and gives helpful tips on how to navigate the workplace in an emotionally intelligent manner. But the highlights of the book for me were his prescriptions on training children in emotional intelligence both at home and school. If you're a parent or teacher, the last two chapters of the book are a must-read.

One of the modalities he touches upon is meditation-- specifically, its benefits upon children's ability to pay attention in school. Having just listened to Sam Harris interview him on the "Making Sense" podcast, I know that in the 24 years since he wrote the book, Goleman has seen and been impressed by the range of benefits of meditation. If he were to revise the book, no doubt meditation would assume a much more prominent role in his discussion. 

So with all that said about meditation, I've finally started doing it in earnest. So far, I haven't missed a day this month. I've found Sam Harris' Waking Up app to be invaluable in training me how to think about meditation. In particular his progression into more advanced topics is incredibly well thought-out, and he has a clear, consistent, and concise way of communicating ideas that is right up my alley. Convinced yet? You should be! Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Thoughts on The Bucket List

No, this is not a post about the movie of the same name.

The phrase "bucket list" came to my attention, along with many other concepts, sometime during my college years. Until recently, I've unreflectively accepted the idea behind the term, that there are things people want to accomplish before they die. But I've never sat down and made a bucket list of my own because the line between "must-haves" and "would be nice ifs" is always evolving, new ideas are always popping up, and older ideas often lose their luster. Lately, I've come to question the utility of having a bucket list at all, since the things that tend to appears on people's bucket list are not the types of things that make for a deeply fulfilling life. Rather, the bucket list seems designed to engender dissatisfaction with one's normal life and a desire for more exotic and expensive vacations and experiences, feeding the excessive self-absorption of our already overly Instagram-ed culture.

That's my thesis, anyway. Which leads to the following questions: What are the things that make for a deeply fulfilling life? And how can we escape the trap of self-absorption?

My strong feeling is that there are as many answers to these questions as there are people. For me, avoiding social media was an initial step towards less self-absorption. Mindfulness meditation (currently utilizing Sam Harris' Waking Up app) is becoming another important tool in calming mental chatter and realizing the truth of non-duality on both conceptional and experiential levels. And the more the various areas of my life approach the harmony I seek for them, the more fulfillment I experience. Obviously, a healthy marriage is a central goal of my life, one that Mindy and I have been steadily moving toward. To one degree or another on this blog, I have documented other developments in the relational, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and vocational components of my life, and doing so helps me to clarify my goals and reminds me to stay on track. And it's those things, in sum, that add up to a fulfilling life, more than the "skydiving and Rocky Mountain climbing" about which Tim McGraw so sincerely croons.

But you know, he was spot on in the next few lines of that song... so I'm going to do something I never thought I would do: I'm going to end a blog post with a quote from a country music song. For all the cliches, there are still some things to appreciate about good old Nashville country, and one of them is that they sometimes talk about death, which I like. My mantra for the past year is memento mori: remember death. So when he says, "Someday I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying," I think-- we can-- we all can! And we all should, because living in the knowledge of our impending death has a way of keeping our priorities in order and preventing us from wasting our precious life energy, time, and consciousness on petty things. Anyway, here goes the most improbable conclusion to this post, straight from Tim McGraw's sweet lips:

I loved deeper

And I spoke sweeter

And I gave forgiveness I'd been denying...

And I watched an eagle as it was flying.

Triathlon Season 1 recap

My first full season of triathloning is in the books. The first thing I would say about it is that I'm hooked-- when I was in Copenhagen a couple weeks ago, I watched an Ironman, and experienced some serious triathlon withdrawals-- a sure sign that the triathlon bug has gotten in my blood. It wasn't a smooth season, but the bike wreck I suffered during my first triathlon of the year steeled my resolve to keep racing, and my calf strain during my final few weeks was little more than an annoyance. 

Next, I'm happy to report my final two races went very well! I placed 26th out of nearly 200 and 3rd in my age group in the Lake Lure Sprint, and a little farther back but still in the top 50 out of nearly 200 in the Lake Logan International. I've since taken three weeks off of serious training, but have started back training for next season as of yesterday. And at some point in the past 3 weeks, my calf healed itself. The body is a magical thing.

Now that I've nailed the basics of triathloning, I plan to have aerobars installed on my bike, get a stationary bike trainer of some kind for winter training, and look for a serious training partner and/or a coach to get me to the next level by next summer. If all goes well, I'm considering stepping up to one half-ironman to see what that feels like. I'm looking at doing another four races or so next year-- enough to keep me motivated throughout the spring and summer, but not enough to take over my life.

Below is my final graph of my year of training. You can see a little dip in the spring after I had my wreck, but overall I'm happy with my efforts. Now that I have a solid base in place and plan to do more winter bike training, I anticipate a much earlier rise in my training volume in the coming season, likely in November. In the meantime, I'll be focusing more on kayaking, meditation, gardening, and a medical bedside ultrasound course I'm taking. And blogging!