{"id":39679,"date":"2022-01-18T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=39679"},"modified":"2022-01-17T14:58:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T21:58:59","slug":"book-freak-51-2-2-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/book-freak-51-2-2-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Freak #56: How to Practice Mindfulness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk, a renowned Zen master, a poet, and a peace activist. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967. Here\u2019s advice from his best-selling book, <\/em>The Miracle of Mindfulness<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Use your breath to collect yourself<\/strong>
\n\u201cBreath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Focus on what’s now, not what might come<\/strong>
\n\u201cIf while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not \u2018washing the dishes to wash the dishes.\u2019 What\u2019s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can\u2019t wash the dishes, the chances are we won\u2019t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future \u2014 and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Understand that all time is your time<\/strong>
\n\u201cThen Allen said, I\u2019ve discovered a way to have a lot more time. In the past, I used to look at my time as if it were divided into several parts. One part I reserved for Joey, another part was for Sue, another part to help with Ana, another part for household work. The time left over I considered my own. I could read, write, do research, go for walks. But now I try not to divide time into parts anymore. I consider my time with Joey and Sue as my own time. When I help Joey with his homework, I try to find ways of seeing his time as my own time. I go through his lesson with him, sharing his presence and finding ways to be interested in what we do during that time. The time for him becomes my own time. The same with Sue. The remarkable thing is that now I have unlimited time for myself!\u2018\u201c<\/p>\n

Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes<\/strong>
\n\u201cMost people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes,and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We run the\u00a0<\/em>Cool Tools website<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>\u00a0a\u00a0<\/em>video review YouTube channel<\/em><\/a>, and a couple of other newsletters, including\u00a0<\/em>Gareth\u2019s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0What\u2019s in my bag?<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Recomendo<\/em><\/a>. I hope you\u2019ll check them out. You can support our work by becoming a patron via\u00a0<\/em>Patreon<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short pieces of advice from books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39679"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39682,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39679\/revisions\/39682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}