Inner Balance Makes Life Joyful
If your mind is not in a good place, it will not be able to accept the gifts that life is trying to give you.
My New Book Arrives Tomorrow
How to Love Better comes out tomorrow! It is temporarily 33% off on Amazon. This is a preorder sale, after the release the sale will likely change.
“The guide we deeply need as we navigate life and love.” — Jillian Turecki
Last day to get your free companion workbook: If you already preordered, make sure to get your workbook about handling breakups, addressing your past, recovering from heartbreak, and understanding what you want in a relationship.
Join my ask me anything special event so we can go over my new book together!
Inner Balance Makes Life Joyful
Changing your external environment, such as removing yourself from toxic situations or switching jobs or cities, can be really helpful, but nothing can deliver as great an impact in your life as changing the internal environment of your mind and heart.
You have to remind yourself of this truth repeatedly on your journey because the mind does not like taking responsibility for itself, it is inclined to see all problems as external. If you take on the goal of building peace within yourself, that means you will need to focus on building three essential qualities: self-awareness, non-reactiveness, and compassion.
Self-awareness is needed to stay attuned to the way your emotions change and to not allow the narratives that are built around tension to take control. Non- reactiveness helps you slow down during difficult moments so you can ask yourself how you genuinely want to show up instead of just reacting defensively. Compassion is necessary so that you can be gentler with yourself and others. Strengthening these internal qualities will help you more smoothly ride the ups and downs of life.
After a certain amount of reflection, the insight arises that happiness is not about what you can get, it’s an internally cultivated mindset. By examining your own past, you see that the distance between you and happiness has been created by the intensity of your reactions and the turbulence in your mind, both of which are internal dynamics that can shatter your enjoyment of good things that are trying to come your way or even of the things that are right in front of you.
If your mind is not in a good place, it will not be able to accept the gifts that life is trying to give you.
To build a mindset that allows happiness in, you need to develop the quality of non-reactiveness. Life is generally uncontrollable, and it is not possible to live without challenges, so eventually unwanted things and tough situations will appear.
Being able to create space in your mind where you can recognize something as undesirable without reacting to it intensely or suppressing it not only helps you deal with it better, but it also keeps you connected to your peace. Not blindly reacting literally allows peace space to exist in your mind. The less you react, the more peace you have.
Similarly, for joy to exist, you need to cultivate your sense of presence. If you are disconnected from what is happening within you and from what is right in front of you, then it will not be possible to experience the true depths of joy. Being able to spend more time in the present moment and give those you are interacting with more of your genuine attention opens the possibility for more joy to arise within you.
Both peace and joy and their counterparts, non-reactiveness and present moment awareness, all stem from a particular quality of mind, equanimity.
When the mind is balanced and steady, when it is taking in the world without clinging to it, when it is simply observing without judging, the mind is in a state of equanimity. The door to access the full beauty of life and the wisdom of the universe is opened by equanimity.
This is an excerpt from How to Love Better. 33% off (preorder sale).
Last Tickets Available for my Tour
See you tonight Boston!
Boston March 10th - In conversation with Kristen Holmes, Principal Scientist at WHOOP. Click here for tickets. (very few tickets left)
New York City March 11th - In conversation with Lindsey Simcik, host of the Almost 30 podcast. Click here for tickets. (very few tickets left)
San Francisco March 14th - In conversation with Jillian Turecki, New York Times bestselling author of It Begins With You. Click here for tickets. (very few tickets left)
Boulder March 18th - In conversation with Nicole Behnam, host of Beyond the Interview. Click here for tickets. (very few tickets left)
Austin March 20th - In conversation with Adriene Mishler, founder of Yoga with Adriene. SOLD OUT
London March 29th - In conversation with Poppy Jamie, founder of Cuddle Sleep Health. Click here for tickets. (very few tickets left)
Audiobook:
I just finished recording the audiobook of How to Love Better! To make it special, my wife was kind enough to join me for a conversation that is only available at the end of the audiobook. Because a lot of the lessons in this book come from the experiences in our relationship, it felt important for my wife to join me for the first time and for us to speak about what we learned together. We go deeper into personal stories that I share in the book and I asked her about the most important things she has learned from meditating more than 13,000 hours. I feel really grateful that she decided to share her wisdom.
You can preorder the audiobook by clicking here.
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