Compassionate Practice

Written by on

Buddhism has a very powerful meditation called Metta Bhavana or “Development of Compassion” which is an excellent exercise in developing loving kindest or friendship.

Recent studies have suggested that regulate Metta practice can have positive effects on both your physical health and your mental well being.

How To Do It

There are six stages to the traditional Metta Bhavana, spend a few minutes on each stage, in order. To help you keep time you can use a stopwatch, countdown timer, or fancy meditation app for your smartphone.

To learn more about the basics of meditation, read my ebook here.

1 .Yourself

You cannot have compassion for everyone else without having compassion for yourself. If you are full of self loathing you cannot help but to project that outwards. To be be truly compassionate you must accept yourself fully.

2. A Good Friend

Think of a good friend, imagine those feeling of friendship you have towards them, focus on sending them your loving kindest and compassion.

3. A “Neutral” Person

Take someone who you don’t really have any feelings for, a neutral person, and project those feelings of loving kindest onto them.

4. A Difficult Person

This is where you may waiver! Think of someone you personally know who you do not like, notice where those thoughts and feelings come from and what memories come to mind. Now imagine that person as a friend, project those same feelings towards them, notice how your feelings towards this person slowly changes.

5. All Four of the Above Equally

Focus on all four people and feeling that loving kindest equally for each one, so one has no more feeling of compassion towards one than the other.

6. And Then Gradually The Entire Universe

Expand this feeling of compassion to all the people on our planet, all living things and as far out into the universe as you can imagine. See yourself as part of an intricate and complex system, not an individual but interconnected.

Remember, don’t leave this feeling on the meditation mat! That is just practice for being compassionate in the real world!

Matt

Compassion: The Second Keystone of a Tortoise Mind

Written by on

Compassion is not very fashionable nowadays. Our hare-brained society rewards and favours (and even deifies on some occasions) the rude, the aggressive and the self centred.

Hare-brained people hide behind terms like “assertiveness” or “honesty” or “just telling it how it is”, when they are simply being rude, judgemental and self centred. They mock people who try be nice, who think the best of people, calling them “drips” or “saps”, they think acts of compassion are acts of “weakness”.

They are wrong.

Compassion, simply, is recognising that everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available to them. No matter how seemingly stupid, rude or just plain wrong those actions appear.

Compassion isn’t about going round hugging everyone, agreeing with everyone or being an utter pushover. It isn’t about naively trusting people or not thinking things through and assessing situations critically.

Nor is about accepting or condoning bad, or illegal behaviour, of course you can (and should) condemn  atrocious acts.

You can also be utterly antisocial and still be compassionate.

It is about recognising we are all interconnected and our actions have ramifications we may never be aware of. It is about seeing ourselves in other people, about understanding that we are more similar than we are different. We have all made stupid choices and rash decisions and snap judgments.

Above all it is about forgiveness.

Compassion is a key tenant of the tortoise mind. Compassion comes from and helps you be slower and more mindful, better mannered, more patient and understanding. Offer to help, say “please” and “thank you”, don’t be quick to judge or snap at someone doing something you think is wrong, take a genuine interest in someones life. These are all acts of compassion.

Anger at other people is the anger with your self projected outwards. If you were at peace with yourself, accept yourself fully and completely, warts and all you would act more compassionately naturally.

Think about how different you have acted when you have been in a good mood rather than a bad mood. What was the difference in your tolerance and understanding?

This is why practicing compassion always starts with being compassionate to yourself. If you cannot be compassionate to yourself, how can you be compassionate to people around you? See yourself as someone who truly loves and accepts you. Can’t think of anyone? Imagine someone!

Like all things, compassion is it’s own reward, by being more compassionate and tolerant you will be less stressed, angry and worked up, you will feel calmer and who know how you will affect the world around you?

Do a random act of compassion today, even it is as little as saying an earnest “thank you” to someone or giving your loose change to charity…

Matt

How to Develop Slow Speech

Written by on

Here are just a few ways you can practice slow speech, become less critical and more positive in what you say. This will have an affect that more people will like you and want to hang out with you. Which is nice…

Be grateful – the happier you are with your life the less likely you will be to be a moaning bitch!

Practice your manners.

If you find yourself moaning and complaining – Stop! Take a deep breath and focus on something good.

If that doesn’t work, give yourself exactly 1 minute and 37 seconds to get it out of your system, on the understanding that as soon as that time is up you will go and do something more useful. Time it and stick to it!

Give everyone you meet today  a compliment.

Compliment your kids/husband/wife/better half AT LEAST 10 times each day…

Reflect on what you say before you say, don’t rush to comment.

If you are mean about someone in your head (shout at an inconsiderate driver for example), send them good wishes immediately afterwards.

Become genuinely interested in people. Everyone is unique and fascinating, learn about them and express that interest and fascination…

Slow Speech

Written by on

This post comes to you as part confession. I am a whining, moaning, angry bitch. Everything that comes out of my mouth is either a moan, a complaint, a rant or a criticism.

OK I may be exaggerating slightly for effect, but I have becoming frighteningly aware recently that I have become more critical and impatient with my speech and it is a trend I don’t like and intend to do something about.

I have spoken a lot about how “manners maketh the idler” and having good manners is an essential trait of the tortoise mind. It makes you act more mindfully and more compassionately.

However, you can be as polite as you like but if you are still moaning and whining then it makes no difference at all. You need to practice Slow Speech (which isn’t just talking slowly…).

The Buddhists call it Right Speech. It is part of the Noble  Eightfold Path and described In the Pali Cannon as “…and what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter [gossip?]: This is called right speech…”.

As you become more mindful and aware of the interconnectivity of things you will find yourself more compassionate and that will come through it what you say. Also by practising Right Speech; being mindful of your words and how you talk and what you say, you will become more mindful and compassionate (to read more about the Buddhist, read my article in the latest New Escapologist).

Or as your grandma used to say “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say it at all”…

The Deck Chair Diaries Part 5

Written by on

A day in the life…

A lot of people ask me what I get up to on a day to day basis, so I thought I would give you a timetable of my “ideal idle day”. I admit, things don’t always work out this well, but I try and use for this template. You may be surprised by how many hours “work” I actually do. This is partially because the current times require it and partially because I enjoy it! (as Confucius once said “Choose a job you love and you will have to work again”). I am always looking at reducing the amount of hours I work, ideally I would like to work like mad before lunch and take a more leisurely approach to the afternoons, but I don’t ever seem to have got this sorted and still tend to work longer hours than I would really like.

I wake up early nowadays, around 6 o’clock, I was never very good at getting up early and for most of my teens and twenties I would lie in for as long as possible and drag myself out of bed, under umbrage, at the very last minute. As I have gotten older, I have found it easier (and more enjoyable) to wake up early.

I have cup of tea and then walk the dogs. I use the walk as a time to be mindful and contemplate the day ahead.

After breakfast I will check my emails and write a short list of my three most important tasks (MIT’s), and any important chores and emails I need to do that day (I used to scrawl these on reams of A4 paper, but now I use the beautiful and brilliant moleskine notebooks – which also has an iphone app for when I can’t get to my notebook!) . Then I will meditate for 25 minutes or so. I know many meditation guides will tell you to sit when you very first wake up, but I am not very good first thing in the morning, my mind is often spinning and having two energetic dogs, once I am awake they are pestering to go out. Not the best atmosphere to sit in! I find once I have walked, had breakfast and and sorted out my day, then I can sit undisturbed and get the best out of my practice.

I will do an hour or so of work. I work very intuitively. I know many productivity guides tell you to work on your Most Important Tasks first. That doesn’t really suit me and I will do what seems most appropriate at the time, whether that is clearing my emails, writing some stuff or doing some admin. If I have to pop out I will normally do this now and  get it out of the way.

Around mid morning I will usually do some exercise, whether that is some bodyweight work, a run, Tai Chi or Yoga etc. I don’t really have a work out plan and again work intuitively about what I am in the mood to do. I keep detailed records, so I know how I am getting on and will check back before I start, which will often help me decide what to do. I enjoy exercise, I use it as a form of mindfulness or contemplation and find that, in the longer term, it give me more energy and makes me feel more alive.

Then it is snack time before I return to work until lunch. In the afternoon, depending on how I have gotten on, I will maybe read, research or sort notes for longer term projects or do some chores around the house. Around mid afternoon I walk the dogs again, then it is downhill until the end of the “working” day…

After spending years working every hour of the day and weekend, I make the effort to finish work no later than 5 o’clock. I usually wrap up before then and then sit again for 25 minutes. I do a variety of different meditations from a variety of different styles, but most often than not I will do a simple mindfulness exercise, counting my breaths (for more details see my eGuide to meditation here).

Days don’t always pan out this way!  Things will often crop up that interrupt this timetable and some days my day won’t resemble this at all. When I am away training, or I have clients, or teaching Tai Chi I usually just make things up as I go along, squeezing in meditation, exercise and reading where I can. I find, although a timetable works very well for me when I am at home with nothing booked in, when I am away working, I have to just be intuitive and do what I can when the opportunity arises.

Matt

Blog as if No One is Reading

Written by on

I have just deleted Google Analytics from this site.

I got sick of staring at it, of worrying about how many readers I have, who has been looking at my site, what keywords people are using.

Every time I wrote a blog entry I would panic about how many people would read it, whether they would like it or leave, never to return.

I would get painfully jealous of more “successful” bloggers (by which I mean bloggers with more – or at least, claim more – readers than I) and be mean about them in my mind.

I now resolve to write as if no one is reading. What I mean is this:

I endeavour to live the “slow life”, the idle life, to embrace the Slow Movement, to cultivate my “tortoise mind”. I also help other people to do the same. I blog about it, I enjoy blogging about and hope my blogs are interesting and useful to those that find them. No matter how many (or few) readers there are.

Fretting about how many people were actually reading (or subscribing) just distracted me from this. I was blogging to get readers (or not lose any). I was going about it all the wrong way.

So here I am, writing this having no clue how many people may read it. I can no longer worry about whether my blog is more or less popular than the next persons, as I just don’t know!

It feels incredibly liberating.

See you again soon (assuming someone is actually reading this…)

Matt

Flirting with the Muse: Overcoming Writers Block

Written by on

Wow! It has been awhile…

In fact I haven’t really got into the rhythm of writing yet in 2011 and it is April already.

I have been going through a period of unprecedented busyness since the start of the year. I recognise it all as the interplay of Yin and Yang, expansion and contraction, busy and not so busy and so on, but it does mean that I have got horrendously behind with everything I have wanted and needed to get done in that time. Now I have a mad scramble to catch up (especially with my correspondence, before people start to get very annoyed with me for not getting back to them/doing what I promised/etc).

This busy time has meant I have not had the time I like available to me to write. This lack of writing has effected my creativity muscles. They seem to have atrophied a little and like returning from a physical injury, I need to undergo a spell of mental “physio”  (if that is not a contradiction in terms) before my skills return to their usual (admittedly mediocre) level.

In this “dry spell” I have got out of the habit of thinking of hooks and ideas of posts, my thoughts have started to play a game of peekaboo; popping up into my head when I have no way of recording them and then running and hiding as soon as I break out a notepad or word-processing programme.

The ancient Greeks understood all too well the vagaries and fickleness of the creative process and ascribed creativity to Muses, goddesses that had to be romanced and flirted with to give up their gifts.

How I have Flirted the Muse: Getting My Creativity Back

Well, to begin with, creativity needs time and space.

It is one of the ironies of the human psyche that we cannot force creativity through the power of will alone. In fact that kind of tension seems to be poison to creativity. It is way writer block is so insidiously evil. Writer gets a block. Writer panics and beats themselves up and stress about the block, The block gets worse…

Saying that avoidance is not the answer!

So here are a few things I have found helped me get back into the creative writing flow (it is a collection of things I have picked up along the way – I have referenced the people I learned it from where I can so you can go and explore some more if you want), I hope they help you if you go through a similar thing:

Relax

From my preamble we know that creativity hates tension, stress, haste and demands. So, first things first, relax. Give up any notion of writing anything (for now at least) and just relax, have a bath, go for a stroll, watch TV If you want a more formalised process of relaxation try my “Deep Relaxation Primer” here.

Immerse Yourself

Read. Read anything; books, blogs, articles, magazines, whatever. Read things that are relevant to what you want to write about. Keep some sort of “capture device” (see next tip) at hand and jot down any ideas that come to mind as you are reading. I wrote several interesting ideas down recently whilst reading “Status Anxiety” by Alain De Botton (for a great interview with him grab the latest copy of the “New Escapologist”).

Capture

Make sure you have some way of capturing ideas when they strike. I have recently been using the notes function my iphone, but it is very slow and when I sync it the notes tend to disappear (I am sure I am doing something really obvious wrong!). I also love moleskine notebooks and often carry one round with me. I admit, this doesn’t help if inspiration strikes in the shower…

Set a Deadline, Target or Goal

Charlie Brooker asserts that all you need to overcome your writers block (or fear of starting) is not creative writing skills but a good solid threat of a deadline.

Sebastian Faulks and Terry Pratchett refuses to leave their desk until they have written a predetermined amount of words, whether that is a single line or a chapter (depending on the goal for that day).

Set a goal (keep it very, very attainable to begin with) and stick with it.

Just Write!

You are not in the mood to write. You start writing anyway. You get in the mood to write. Simples.

The comedian Richard Herring writes something every day, Joe Vitale and Dan Kennedy advise just sitting and writing whatever is in your head, stream of consciousness style with no editing for at least 10 minutes a day.

I write snippets, cool sounding hooks and seed crystals for post entries. Then I just start piecing it all together. I write fragments of sentences to return to at a later date, slowly a post will take shape.

Put More Effort Into Editing

Apparently (according to my friend Rob Wringham and I have not reason to doubt him), Stephen King in his book “On Writing” advises as the editing process to “kill” every 10th word. I also advice trying to change every 10th adjective or adverb. Get a thesaurus.

Learn to enjoy the process, like pruning some topiary. Editing (as long standing readers may have noticed) is my least favourite part of writing, I tend to write, do a bit of a slapdash spelling and grammar check and pop it up online.

I now resolve to edit better.

All these steps (maybe not quite in the order I have written here  and I am still a bit lax on editing) were how this post got created. It took me a week, but at least I did it.

Right now to get started on my next entry and I should have it some time in, oh, June?

See you there,

Matt

PS, since this blog is a bit of ramble and a bit of a “how to”, and I couldn’t figure out where to put it, so I have put it in both the Journey and the Knowledge category.

Embrace Your Own Tempo Giusto

Written by on

In music Tempo Giusto means to play in “exact time”, in Carl Honore’s seminal work “In Praise of Slow(ness)” he discusses the idea of Tempus Guisto as applied to our lifestyles meaning living at the “right tempo”.

You see, the Slow Philosophy is not about doing everything at a snails pace, crawling along or grinding things to a halt just for the sake of it, out of some contrary reaction to our modern Society. The Slow Philosophy is about doing things at an appropriate speed for the given context. We all hate sitting in traffic queues or being on hold. We don’t want the emergency services to dawdle to an accident.

In your own life the Slow Philosophy is very nicely thought of as an application of Tempo Giusto. Find your own pace to do things. Slow is about doing things at the pace and time that feels comfortable for you. It is about not reacting to the push and pull of society. It is easy to give in to these pressures, to do things the expected way, at the expected speed. And we are always pressured to go faster, often faster than necessary, seemingly just for the sake of doing it faster (just because we can).

You need to find and embrace your own Tempo Giusto. Find when and at what speed you best act. Do your best not to give in to external pressure about what you should be doing, the speed and rate you are doing it and the time you feel best to get it done.

Matt

Welcome to Tortoise Knows Best 2.0

Written by on

Hello and welcome to Tortoise Knows Best 2.0. It has taken me a little longer than hoped to get everything done. It is still a little rough around the edges and in particular the “Buy Stuff” page still needs a bit of work. I have, however, added an eGuide page and a Guided Meditation page, both powered by e-junkie. I haven’t added the specific product pages yet, I am still writing them, so if you want to know any more detail please contact me.

A Note On Comments

I have switched comments off as I was sick of spam, idiots and self promoters. I am comfortable enough to blog without needing the reassurance of kind comments from you lovely and intelligent readers. If you have something you would like to ask or say, please contact me via twitter, facebook, or if you would prefer to do so privately via my contact page.

Simplified Categories

The previous site lost focus a bit and posts became excessively random and a bit too eclectic. So, to refocus on the true raison d’être of this blog (strategies to help you cultivate your “Tortoise-Mind”), I will be simplifying the categories to:

The Journey
These are meandering posts of my thoughts, musings and ideas. Things I have been contemplating, or something I have read, seen or been introduced to that has triggered some insight that I think it would be useful to share. They are more personal. I ramble. It is about the journey after all.

The Knowledge
These are your classic “how to” posts, they will give you an idea, technique or strategy for you to try out to help you cultivate your “tortoise mind”, sometimes they will be linked to the journey post. Sometimes not.

Suggested Reading From Version 1.2

Older posts are not organised in this way and are all now listed as “uncategorised”, so please feel free to dip in and out of those. I have done my best to link back to older posts where relevant (with a related post link at the bottom of each post and the most popular posts on the right hand sidebar), but if you are new here I would recommend you start with these posts:

  1. This is a Slow Blog
  2. The Slow Philosophy
  3. Slow Down From the Inside Out
  4. The Businessman and the Fisherman
  5. Hare Brained or Tortoise Minded?
  6. Meditation Makes You Cool
  7. Four Physical Ways to Slow Down
  8. International Day of Slowness
  9. The 3 Keys to A Slow and Happy Life
  10. Learn to Let Go
  11. The Overflowing Tea Cup (and your own list here)
  12. Life is A Journey Not a Destination
  13. Manners Maketh the Idler
  14. A Beginners Guide to Slowing Down
  15. Can I?
  16. The Little Things

To get a daily dose of Slow Wisdom please follow me on twitter, or if you don’t use twitter try my facebook page (which seems more popular anyway, I don’t think Slowbies/Idlers like Twitter too much…)

All this is repeated (with a bit more detail) in the “About” page.

Things being as there are here, as everywhere else, are in constant flux, so more changes will occur off and on. Some large, some smaller. Please contact me via twitter, facebook or my contact page if you have any thoughts or comments.

Matt

Please Excuse The Mess

Written by on

Hello there, as you can probably see Tortoise Knows Best is going through a little bit of a renovation and redecoration; a slap of whitewash and some restructuring work. Most of it has been done on a test site, but there are a few things I need to do live as it were.

The site is fully functional, it just looks a bit messy at the moment. Please feel free to browse around and contact me if you have any questions.

Just don’t lean on the wet paint…

Thank you for your patience.

Matt