Brian Johnson (Optimize +1 series) summarizes and reflects on Sam Harris's message from Waking Up: the goal of meditation is to cultivate an "increasingly healthy mind" rather than instant, permanent imperturbability. He emphasizes that benefits of meditation and optimization appear long before mastery, encourages celebrating small gains, and prompts listeners to inventory one benefit they’ve experienced.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Sam Harris is a very smart and very wise man. As you may know, he's part neuroscientist, part philosopher and part mystic. In his great book Waking up, he makes a very important distinction I'd like to talk about today. He tells us, and I quote, the traditional goal of meditation is to arrive at a state of well being that is imperturbable or, if perturbed, easily regained. The French monk Matthieu Ricard describes such happiness as a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. He continues by saying, the purpose of meditation is to recognize that you already have such a mind, that discovery in turn helps you to cease doing the things that produce needless confusion and suffering for yourself and others. Of course, most people never truly master the practice and don't reach a condition of imperturbable happiness. The near goal, therefore, is to have an increasingly healthy mind that is to be moving one's mind in the right direction. End quote. I love that. As nice as it would be to experience a state of well being that is completely imperturbable, that state is just a little bit off in the future for most of us. So our goal is to practice regaining our state of well being when it is perturbed. And most importantly, our immediate goal is not to reach a state of perfect well being once and for all, but to get excited about creating an increasingly healthy mind. Sam also shares this genius gem. He says, I quote again, happily, the benefits of training and meditation arrive long before mastery does. Now, of course, we talk a lot about moving from theory to practice to mastery. But, and this is an important but, let's shine a very bright spotlight on the fact that the benefits of training and optimizing arrive long before mastery does. So let's not beat ourselves up for not being imperturbable levitating masters quite yet. Let's celebrate all the little benefits we're already experiencing. And that's today's plus one. Let's do a quick inventory. What's one benefit you've experienced as you practice your optimizing? Here's one little, or maybe big benefit. Fill in the blank. High fives. Big smiles. Let's keep doing this. Here's to an increasingly healthy mind and all the little benefits we're racking up as we practice optimizing in pursuit of mastery. One more time. Plus one plus one plus one.
