I rewired my brain in six weeks
bbc.com
bbc.com
Practicing gratitude daily, e.g. giving myself reasons to be thankful for my lot in life is 1) really easy to do, and 2) takes about 5 minutes.
The rest of it felt like new-age hippy trash, if I'm completely honest.
Different people derive benefit from different things. Why not just leave it at, "the other stuff didn't work for me"?
Different people have different opinions. Why not leave it at "I think the other stuff is not new age hippy trash"?
I would prefer to live in a kinder world. I explicitly appealed to the parent's likely desires for same. If you prefer to live in a world where people are casual dicks to one another, then I guess there's nothing to take away from my original comment.
Different people have different preferences. Can't you just leave it at that? Why do you have to go around telling people not to say stuff you dislike in a public forum?
The whole point of forums is to productively disagree and hopefully learn something. It's not sugar coating to avoid being casually mean or dismissive -- it's advancing the very reason we're supposedly here.
The first person who starts to attack an individual will be told to stop, that is the only reasonable way to make people stop attacking individuals so we can argue freely.
My general rule is that I try to have thicker skin when it comes to assaults on ideas, and be careful not to offend persons.
OP is being kind to everyone by allowing them to avoid the frustration of wasting time with something that adds no value.
You on the other hand are being needlessly confrontational just because someone has an opinion you don't like.
I would say: "I don't care what you think. It works for me, if it doesn't for you then it doesn't."
Directing the putdown "trash" to an idea and presenting it as a subjective opinion ("The rest of it felt like new-age hippy trash") is quite different to applying the putdown "trash" to a person and presenting it as a fact ("your gratitude practice is actually new age hippy trash").
"Felt like" means "It feels like this to me, your experience may be different"
while
"is actually" means "This is objective fact, regardless of how I feel about it".
It's the difference between saying "that idea is idiotic" and saying "you are idiotic".
The origin of this wave of academical interest comes from that: a few mates in Harward - including K-Z, who butchered the concept introducing the absurd naming which uses the reverse of the concept of 'mind' - were intrigued by suggestions from the Orient. Events such as the fall into disgrace of Leary have been relevant (creating difficulties to said wave as a reaction - a general reaction with the crisis of its parent "hipster" wave).
It seems to me that the popular (American) practice of gratitude is just a substitute for Christianity, filtered out not to mention any deities explicitly, but still containing references to them implicitly.
I consider universe a random and chaotic place. In that worldview, there is nobody to be grateful/thankful to, so the practice of gratitude doesn't make sense.
For having all of my digits
Clean drinking water
Effectively infinite light at my fingertips (most of humanity couldn't do much when it got dark).
The world's knowledge.
So much food that I have to monitor how much I eat so I don't get too fat.
For having a loving family, friends.
For being given the opportunity to go to university.
For having a career that pays well.
That's just on the top of my head, but there's many more reasons to be grateful. That kind of thing. I have some physical disabilities, but reminding myself of the good things I do have grounds me, makes me realise all the things I used to stress about aren't really that important.
Thinking about it more, I suppose I'm also grateful for the individuals in this world who have had an incredible impact on this world. e.g. Jonas Salk, the guy who invented penecillin, etc.
I just really dislike people framing it as "practicing gratitude". I guess it comes from the childhood feelings of being thankful to one's parents for stuff, which is then generalized to "any feeling that resembles that feeling".
I can accept "consciously acknowledge positive things in your life" and I can see why it would be beneficial to one's mental health. Depression and anxiety are often caused/worsened by focusing on the negative aspects of life.
And not so much as grateful to but more like grateful for.
A definition of the word "gratitude" I've found online is:
the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness
So when you say "I'm grateful for being alive", to whom exactly are you grateful? Who exactly has shown you kindness by letting you be alive? More generally, who exactly has shown you kindness by giving you everything good that you're grateful for?
The only entity that could possibly be responsible for everything is a hypothetical omnipotent entity - a god. So outside the religious frame of mind, the answer is "nobody", and the word "gratitude" here means something else than it usually means when used in everyday context. In that case, I'd like to know the exact meaning in this special case.
But I think I've got my answer in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37566516
Grateful for the outcome of the cosmic dice roll.
Or really just relief that things aren't a lot worse.
The dictionary definition isn't the only meaning of a word.
To whom, the cosmos? Cosmos is not a person. You can personify it if you want, sure, but that doesn't make sense to me.
> The dictionary definition isn't the only meaning of a word.
Which is exactly why I'm asking for what people mean when they say stuff.
You have always been this honest? or is this something you realize you have to be after being exposed to "mindfulness" mumbojumbo?
I just realized that "hippie", "hip", "hep" make more sense, for the area in context, than the disgraceful label K-Z introduced.
'Hippie' was used for those who wanted to be "hip", i.e. "up-to-date", because "aware". Originally, the term was used in the underground and was 'hep'.
Now, it is pretty clear from the sound why 'hep' can be related to "awareness". And it would make more sense, in reference to that "zone", than using terms that refer to the "mind".
They're both more like "how to" guides than spiritual, and mention Buddhism or other practices only in passing (both have much more explicitly spiritual material too for those who want that), and Fronsdal jokes about the "B-word".
What I get out of it varies, going from just 5-15 minutes of calm and relaxation to multi-hour deeper meditation, to tumultuous sessions where I get no calm but all kinds of issues or ideas force themselves to the surface. I feel I benefit from all of it, but it's a method or a tool for me, not spiritual.
There are studies showing mindfulness works, but they've only tested the whole smorgasbord of techniques vs. placebo. I guess it would cost a lot more to test each one individually.
All the mindfullness was practised because deep down he felt at unease. Don't get me wrong, it is good to be observant and mindfull, but it is unnatural to be it all the time.
Our minds also need daydreaming, dull phases, excitement, the whole package.
In order to correct a bad tendency, you have to exercise effort (as resistance) in all the spans in which the tendency may show.
Suppose for example you are standing: you have consolidated the function and the effort is optimal - but if you tended to fall you would have to spend more.
Don't fet me wrong, I have nothing against mindfulness, as I said it can be very good to be mindful. But as I said I have met quite some people who talk about practising it who do not come across as the balanced individuals they believe themselves to be.
I still don't believe being mindful all the time is good. Maybe being "meta-mindful" — so to be aware when it is also good to tap into other modes of perception — is better.
Then you would be in a very different context from that which I was mentioning: you brought to topic two, that of some discipline and that of "people with issues". I was explaining why discipline can be a full time job.
> Don't fet me wrong
You are probably getting me wrong, because I never said I am defending proposals from Harvard.
> who do not come across as the balanced individuals
Where is the surprise? Already since students are not qualified teachers by definition. (And there are evident reasons even before that, about the different categories called by some interest.)
> I still don't believe
Are you sure you understood what should be understood with an imprecise expression "all the time", with reference to what I wrote in the parent and which may have little to do with the practice that the people with issues described to you?
Well, at least they're honest about that :)
You may as well be a bald person complaining about a hairstylist's article - "Ah! but I'm bald! No amount of styling will give me hair!"
It makes sense why people would think that since this started as a religious exercise (and also because to this day there are still lots of people who connect the two in their practice), but you can simply not do that. I treat it simply as an exercise to make my brain calm down from stress and anxiety and it has been extremely helpful for me.
It could be coincidence.
I'm not dismissing it, but we have no means to go back in time, split her in two and examine a copy of her brain after six weeks without mindfulness as the control.
Of course, that doesn't get reported in every new age social media channel.