#122: The Magic of Mindfulness: Complain Less, Appreciate More, and Live a Better Life

Optimal minimal. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question now? Would assume the perfect time. What if I give the altitude I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton Ferris show. Hello boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in between episode. It's a short little morsel, a tidbit for your mind that will hopefully help you kick off a great weekend or week. If you want the longer interview format where I talk to people like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Josh Waitzkin, who's considered a chess prodigy, General Stanley McChrystal, et cetera, about their habits and routines, then you can find all of those@fourhourworkweek.com podcast but this is going to be a wee bit smaller and it's going to discuss mindfulness. Much of what I usually talk about is effectiveness, doing the right things and then doing things rightly in that order. So effective and efficient. And we'll get into a bit of that. But we're going to talk about, like I mentioned, mindfulness and what that means is up for debate, depending on who you ask. But let's define it as a present state awareness that helps you to be non reactive. And I'll get into why that's important. But before we even get into it, I will of course list out a number of tools that I've found very helpful. But the question is why do I think it's important? And that is because it doesn't come naturally to me. And that is a huge handicap in life for any type A personality or someone who is hardwired that way. Working on achievement is really easy, but we tend to do it, of course, by working harder. And this isn't the first place we should focus as good old Abe Lincoln, who's misquoted on the Internet everywhere, but I think this is a proper one, has said give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the axe. So perhaps we should spend more time sharpening our axe, the most important axe, our mind, before acting indiscriminately, which is of course a form of laziness. Mindfulness helps you to complain less, appreciate more, react less, and ultimately do more of the important stuff. What's very fascinating though about mindfulness, so just being very focused on and aware of the present state moment, which includes your emotions, your, your reactions, etc. That it works in the opposite. In other words, if you complain less, you develop more mindfulness. If you appreciate more, you develop more mindfulness. So it is a two way street. And that gives you many more options for developing this skill that most people limit to say, meditation, which the vast majority of people hate and feel like they fail at. So they don't do it. So let's get started. Some of these are macro, meaning I do them once a year or once a week, once a month, once a quarter, and some of them are daily. We'll start with a really big one, the 21 day no complaint experiment. This originally came across my purview because of Will Bowen, who at the time at least was a Kansas City minister who had recognized that word choice determines thought choice. Think about this for a second, it's very profound. But what he did is even more interesting. So word choice determines thought choice. And in fact there are people who believe that consciousness and conceptual thinking develop along with vocabulary. So if word choice determines thought choice, that therefore determines also emotions and actions. But it's not enough to just decide you're going to stop using certain words. You might overuse though. You need to be conditioned. So if you fix the words, you fix the thoughts. How did Will do this? Well, he created a purple bracelet. It was a simple bracelet, kind of like the Livestrong bracelets that were yellow back in the day. And he would give these out to his congregation. Well, why did he do that? He would ask them to do a 21 day no complaint experiment. So anytime they complained, they had to switch the bracelet to the other ribbon wrist and start the clock over. And this became hugely popular, spread via word of mouth. And at last count that I checked out, there were 6 million of these bracelets floating around because of in part his congregation. And then he wrote a book called the, I think it's the no complaint world or a complaint free world. That's it. Which is worth reading. But what is a complaint? This was an issue that I had with some of his descriptions because with his rules he will ask you to switch wrists whenever you gossip, criticize or complain. But again, the definitions can be a bit vague. He also requires you to switch wrists if you tell someone else that they're complaining. I think that's counterproductive because it's constructive criticism. So here's where I drew the line. And you can use a rubber band, as I did for a long time for this or a bracelet. I define complaining for myself as follows. Describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. And I added profanity to this because I was trying to curse less and emulate people like Matt Mullenweg, who's incredible and is one of the been interviewed on this podcast. And what that means is if you say I was standing in line at the post office and this fucking idiot took forever, that's a complaint. You start the clock over. In the other words, in the other words, if you say I was at the post office, the guy in front of me took forever. And I learned and I decided that from now on I'm not going to go to the post office unless it is between 8 and 9:30am, something like that, suggesting a fix. That is a pass. It's not ideal, but it's a pass. All right, so the 21 day no complaint experiment. This will change your life. If you even attempt it, even if you get one week through, it will change your life. So try it out again. And this is using, not complaining to become more mindful. Because it works both ways. Alright? The next one is something that I try to do once a quarter or so, but even once a year is very, very helpful. And that is practice poverty for a week. And this comes from stoicism. And I'll have a lot more to say about stoicism and Seneca in But practicing poverty for a week, I'm going to paraphrase here, but in the words of Seneca would effectively be limiting yourself to the cheapest of food, the coarsest of dress, the most meager of an existence for a week. All the time asking yourself, is this the condition I so feared? And it teaches you to value the things that you should value and to realize that the worst case scenario really isn't generally that bad. And this enables you, emboldens you to take risks or things that you might previously consider risks like starting your own company, moonlighting, ending a relationship, starting a relationship, quitting a job, whatever it might be, if there's a financial component to it, you realize that the downside really isn't that bad. It's basically going back to college. I think a lot of people in life spend their entire careers trying to get back to their quality of life that they had in college. So. So what does practicing poverty mean? It can mean many different things, but it means, for instance, for me, I would take one pair of jeans, wear those all week with a cheap pair of vans shoes, maybe a white T shirt, only white T shirts like Hanes, and eat rice and beans for a week, and you get to the end of the week and you're like, wow, I actually saved a lot of cognitive load by not having to decide about these things. So there are benefits to that simplicity as well. Alright, so practice poverty for a week and read up on Seneca. I will be top secret. Don't tell anybody. 27 hours of audio related to Seneca. I think it's 27 that is coming out very shortly. I'm super excited. So keep your ears peeled for that. The next one, the Jar of Awesome. This was not my idea. This was actually thanks to an ex girlfriend who is a real sweetheart, is I'm sure still a sweetheart. And she created something for me called the Jar of Awesome. And this is because I'm very good at achievement and not always very good at appreciation. And this was a Mason jar with Jar of Awesome in glitter basically on the side. And anytime something really cool happened that I got excited about to avoid my forgetting it next to immediately because I tend to celebrate very briefly if at all. I should write it down on a slip of paper and put it in the top of this Mason jar. And it really had a tremendous impact. I kept it where I could see it and it was a real mood elevator and emphasized the importance of appreciation. And if you want to have any real success, and I hate to use that word, but it's appropriate here because if you only have achievement and you never appreciate the small wins or the big things for that matter, and they have no duration, then it's a hollow victory if you could call it a victory at all. So if you don't want to have a Jar of awesome written on it because you'll feel foolish, you could just take a huge exclamation point like put an exclamation point on the side of a Mason jar or something like that and then drop these things in. It's an easy practice and a fun practice. And I think I don't have kids, but if I had kids I would have them also put things into the Jar of Awesome next. This is a daily practice and I've spoken about it before. I talked about my morning routine. So I won't go into great depth here, but I meditate every morning and I failed in my mind at trying meditating for 10 years. Now try it for two or three days and get pissed off and quit. The method that worked for me was transcendental meditation. TM.org, you can check it out. There's things I don't like about their organization in terms of how they make you look at a picture of a, of an Indian guy with a beard and they give you the blah blah blah and they charge a good amount of money. But it was worth it for me because there was accountability and it was very secular after the fact. And they focus on logistics and contingency plans a lot in the teaching. But something like Vipassana or otherwise could work very well. I meditate for 21 minutes each morning. I'm supposed to do it in the afternoon. I very rarely do. I do it right after getting up and it's like a warm bath for your mind. People will get all woo woo about meditation. This is where your sharpening the axe and what I find is that if I take the 20 and it's 21 minutes because I take 60 seconds just to fidget and be an idiot and get settled and then I count the 20 as my session. If you take those 20 minutes you will get I would say and this is obviously just spitballing but 20 to 30% more done that day of important things with 50% less stress. So it is a huge ROI on that time. Even if as is common for me and I have an episode with Rainn Wilson, best known as Dwight from the office coming out soon where we talk about meditation. Even if you only focus on what you're focusing on, your breath or whatever for 30 seconds a minute in that 20 minute session, it is a successful session. If you want an easy way to get your foot in the door with this stuff, download one of the apps or both calm or headspace and just start using guided meditations in the morning. And you don't have to start with 20 minutes, 20 minutes. Start with 5 minutes and do it consistently for 5 to 7 days to establish the habit. Then you can up the time. Okay, next morning pages or journaling in the morning when I get up I won't go through the whole morning routine because I've done that elsewhere. But when I journal, which is very early in the morning after meditation, well early in the morning meaning in my morning I usually get up between 7:30 and 10:30. So not exactly Jocko Willink. Sorry Jocko. Working on it. In any case, the five minute journal. Just buy one of these. Honestly I have no financial stake in this but you could certainly try to replicate it yourself. But having it in one bound book is very helpful. In effect what you're doing is five minutes in the morning, five minutes before you go to bed. The AM piece is simply writing down three bullets for I am grateful for three things what would make today great. One, two, three. Daily affirmations I am blank, blank. And then at night, before you go to bed, three amazing things that happened today. One, two, three. How could I have made today better? And I have had friends reach out to me who have, or fans for that matter, who have listened to everything that I've talked about for years and they say this was the big game changer for them. Now I have some recommendations because I found that I am grateful for Blank, blank, blank. You tend to use the same things over and over again. My healthy family or my wife or my kids, whatever it might be. So I suggest that you write down a number of categories and that you insist that you have no two days where the items are exactly the same. And this is something I haven't talked about before, but I think this could be very helpful. So in the five Minute journal or in your morning pages, if you use that type of approach and you can just search for a blog post called what My Morning Journal Looks Like Ferris and you'll see what mine looks like for morning pages a little bit different. When you are doing this list of items or things that you're grateful for, I would recommend four different categories. The first is a relationship, an old one that really helped you in some way or that you valued. Relationship is number one. And I tend to try to pick an old one because it forces you to go through the memory banks a bit. Number two is an opportunity you have today, and perhaps that's just an opportunity to improve. Opportunity to go to work doesn't have to be something extremely unique, but an opportunity you have today that you're grateful for. Number three, something great that happened or that you saw yesterday. Okay. And number four is something simple near you. And this was actually a recommendation from Tony Robbins and you can listen to my episode with him for a lot more on his habits. But in other words, they can't all be my career, the this, the that, these big abstractions or the gigantic items. You want to get good at appreciating the small things because the small things are the big. And if you don't notice the small things, the tendency is also not to fully appreciate or be present with the large things. So something simple near you. Or something simple like the cloud outside the window, the coffee that you're drinking, the pen that you have, whatever it might be, something really small and simple, or I should say just simple. So I'll go through that again. Number one, when you're putting down your list of things you're grateful for, and even if you just did this instead of the Five minute journal. I think it would be extremely valuable. So an old relationship that helped you a lot. Number two, an opportunity you today. Number three, something great that happened yesterday or something good. Four, something simple near you. Okay, that's it. The next step, which is part of this exercise for me and I believe I also got this from the same ex girlfriend. And yeah, that's a longer story I'm not going to get into right now, but she gave me a lot of good advice and this next step was thank one person per day in this case. I have developed a habit of thinking of say teachers who helped me in high school, or friends who helped me when I was a kid or who were close to me and then reaching out to them, trying to track them down on Facebook or otherwise. Send them an email, give them a call, leave a voicemail, just telling them how much you appreciate them or that you love them. If you really want to go for it, that alone will improve your quality of life dramatically. And what I found, and I'm not necessarily hardwired for what I would call happiness or self reported well being, is if you don't know how to make yourself happy, make somebody else happy. And guess what? That will generally increase your self reported level of happiness. Okay, three more and then we're out of here. The next one is something I started doing about two weeks ago that I found very helpful. I'd always been told if you're feeling anxious or you're feeling overwhelmed, just take 10 deep breaths. Sounds ridiculous, but 10 deep breaths is actually a fucking lot. And I started treating myself to three breath breaks. Okay, this sounds so fucking ridiculous until you try it. If you're like me and you might find it useful or you'll just laugh at me and that's okay too. So if I find myself getting wound up in any way or anxious or projecting forward into the future about the what ifs, even if it's six hours later, I will take a three breath break. Okay, that's it. You're just gonna take three deep breaths and that's it. And it is a fantastic pattern interrupt and anxiety reducer, at least in my experience. Alright, the next one is a chrome extension. Actually the moment Chrome extension. This is something Matt Mullenweg introduced me to and it is a great way to prevent you from opening a million tabs on your browser and getting lost in the slipstream of noise on the Internet or just scattered focus for that matter. This helps you return to the most important thing that you're supposed to do that day. Which you define each day when you open this, when you open the browser or open a new tab and it will say good morning Tim, blah blah blah, there's a beautiful photograph. Then it asks you to type in your most important task or the thing you should focus on for that and you can check it out. Many of you have been a huge fan of that since I mentioned it some time back or when Matt mentioned it. The last one is a nightly review and this comes back to the five minute Journal. But what you could do is simply another list of things that you are grateful for. And this sounds so hokey and it sounds so cliched and I am here to tell you it is very significant. And practicing gratitude, practicing compassion sounds so woo woo. California, San Francisco Put a crystal on my forehead. But if you look at neuroimaging studies that have looked at specifically compassion meditation, there's some very, very interesting findings. Some of them correlate to psychedelic use in some ways, which is very cool. I'm going to talk about that in the Rainn Wilson interview also. But this is the bookending of the evening. I mentioned the five minute journal. You could just keep it simple and get one of these. Honestly go online and it'll save you a lot of time. Or you can just it do as I mentioned in the beginning, the AM check in and write those things down and then the PM check in. Now in the five minute journal, it's three amazing things that happened today. 1, 2, 3 and then how could I have made today better? You could just make that a list of two or three or four things that you're grateful for that happened that day, that you saw that day, that you experienced that day, that you had an opportunity to engage with in some way that day. And ladies and gents, those are some of the things that I use to cultivate mindfulness as a practical tactical tool for being more effective, more efficient and more appreciative. And like I mentioned, focusing on developing this present state awareness which is done with conditioning, with practices, exercise. Like I mentioned, some of those that I use regularly and it helps you to complain less, appreciate more, react less, and ultimately do more of the important stuff and enjoy yourself while you are doing it. So I hope that is helpful. The show notes may not exist for this particular episode because I think it was pretty straightforward. But you can find show notes from all the other episodes and so on@fourhourworkweek.com podcast or just go to fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and click on podcast and of course. As always, thank you so so much for listening. Means a lot to me and I love the feedback. So please let me know on Twitter or on Facebook. But Twitter is usually betterris. T F E R R I S S. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. 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