Throw Yourself a Grappling Hook

Not Your Job

No Regret, No Anxiety

"People don't realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind."

— Eckhart Tolle

Whom to Please

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."

—e. e. cummings

Clear the Mind

 

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.’

— Thomas Jefferson

Impermanence is Your Power

What We Enjoy

 

happiness is not:

perfection, control or determined

by external events and people.

happiness is:

a product of your perception and

inner balance. When you define your

own energy, you bring your harmony

with you wherever you go.

 — yung pueblo

Your Ai Mindfulness Coach

Ai summary: Cures for low-level anxiety focus on natural lifestyle adjustments, stress management techniques and behavioral shifts, such as deep breathing, exercise, meditation and limiting caffeine. Effective, immediate techniques include grounding exercises (like the 5-4-3-2-1 technique), journaling and engaging in calming hobbies to reduce stress hormone levels. 

Key Natural Coping Strategies:

Grounding & Relaxation: Practice deep breathing exercises, the 5-4-3-2-1 sensory technique (five things you see, four feel, three hear, two smell, one taste), or use a weighted blanket to trigger the body’s relaxation response.

Lifestyle Adjustments: Prioritize 7-9 hours of sleep, maintain a balanced diet to avoid blood sugar drops and limit caffeine and alcohol consumption.

Physical Activity: Regular, moderate exercise or yoga helps metabolize excess stress chemicals and boosts endorphins.

Mindfulness & Routine: Meditate, journal thoughts or use a set daily routine to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed.

“What-If” Analysis: Actively challenge anxious thoughts by asking, “What is the worst-case scenario?” to stop repetitive, worrying thought cycles. 

Being Alive

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist and author who was called the "father of mindfulness." He popularized Engaged Buddhism, which applies Buddhist insights to social, political and environmental issues (Ai summary).

A Room or an Hour

"You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning — a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be."

— Joseph Campbell

William James on Mindfulness

Harvard professor William James (1842–1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher who is regarded as the “father of American psychology.” He developed of the philosophical school known as pragmatism. 

Count Calories and Encounters

How to Let Go

David R. Hawkins: “The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going.

"When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates."

The Dark Side of Mental Advancement

The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book,  Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, is always on my coffee table. It offers great practical advice on recentering your mind and reenergizing your life.

Kenshō Series: Bancroft

Kenshō Series: Hetherington

Kenshō — a Japanese Zen Buddhist term meaning “seeing nature” or “true essence” — refers to an initial, sudden glimpse or insight into one’s true nature, ultimate reality or the absolute. The experience is a temporary psychological state, a moment of awakening that signifies a fundamental shift in perception and understanding of oneself in the world. Kenshō is said to be not full enlightenment, but rather a critical first awakening that serves as a starting point for further training and integration of this understanding into daily life. “Kenshō” is often used interchangeably with “satori.”

Lighting the Lamp

“We have a lamp inside us, the lamp of mindfulness, which we can light anytime. The oil of that lamp is our breathing, our steps and our peaceful smile. When this lamp is lit, darkness disappears. Our practice is to keep it shining.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child

The Four Faces of a Single Man

 “I did get the conception clear which Gerald often speaks of — of looking over the Ego’s shoulder while it’s jumping about.

“Useful to think of that part of my will which wants this way of life as a research worker, fallible but serious-minded. The research worker has to share his study with Maggie, his lisping, cute little daughter; Grandfather Chips, his miserly, selfish old parent; and Libido, an immense gorilla who, when aroused, can be really dangerous, but who spends most of his time snarling, or bolting his food, or snoring, or nastily playing with himself. 

“The research worker tries to concentrate, while Maggie dances about, prattling of her exploits, and Grandfather Chips fusses over his money and plans to get more. Sometimes he has to intervene to restrain the gorilla, who is apt to smash up all the furniture, and overturn the work bench with his apparatus…”

“Remember, every word spoken to another human being is spoken in the presence of these four. They all hear it, and make a note of the information, privately planning to use it for their own purposes, when the opportunity offers.”

— Christopher Isherwood’s diary, July 16, 1941

The Fracking of the Mind

I’ve long been aware what a dreadful attention sink we’re in now as a society.

It’s a topic that Laura Marsh talks about in the March 27, 2025, New York Review of Books.

“In The Attention Merchants, (Tim) Wu likened these developments to another kind of resource extraction. The smartphone ‘appeared capable of harvesting the attention that had been, as it were, left on the table, rather in the way that fracking would later recover vast reserves of oil once considered wholly inaccessible.’ Wu, a legal scholar who has written extensively on antitrust, tells this story through sketches of the corporations that unlocked new segments of our attention. (Chris) Hayes writes more often from the perspective of the user; the person whose mind is being fracked feels, he remarks, ‘that our very interior life, the direction of our thoughts, is being taken against our will.’ Distraction has always been big business, but the immersive quality of digital media, in his account, makes it much more powerful and toxic.”

“(T)he algorithms of social networks can show each user content tailored specifically to them, based on all the things they’ve clicked on before. (This is how Hayes loses an entire hour, one stoned evening, watching videos of people assembling sandwiches and slicing them in half.)

“Social media can also capitalize on direct appeals to the audience by name. One of the more intriguing facts that Hayes cites comes from a 1959 study of people’s ability to tune out background noise and conversation when they wanted to focus: ‘The only stimulus so far found that will break through,’ the researchers wrote, ‘is the subject’s own name.’ Platforms that notify users each time they are ‘mentioned’ work on this principle; the most reliable way to draw someone in, even if the content on offer doesn’t particularly appeal to them, is by creating the impression that other people are talking about them.”

The Answer is Attention

The more I consider it, the more I realize that attention, properly directed, is the solution to many of our difficulties. 

We tend to underrate the value of the simple act of attention, but I assure you that Madison Avenue and political propagandists do not.

After all, as the philosopher Alan Watts once observed, “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”

And the poet Mary Oliver advised, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

Merely momentarily shift your attention from your driving to your phone, for example, and a child may die. This isn’t a metaphor, but a memory. The driver was a teenage girl, and the child was an 8-year-old boy.