Tag: body

Finding Your Best Starting Point: A Simple Guide to Personal Growth

~ cafebedouin

The Big Idea

Instead of asking “What’s wrong with me?” ask “Where should I start today?”

This guide helps you pick the best place to focus your energy so you can grow and feel better.

Step 1: Look at Four Areas of Your Life

Think about these four parts of yourself:

Your Body

  • How tense or relaxed do you feel?
  • How is your breathing?
  • Do you have energy or feel tired?
  • How does your body want to move?

Your Emotions

  • Can you feel your emotions clearly?
  • Are your feelings strong or weak right now?
  • Can you share your feelings with others?

Your Mind

  • Are your thoughts clear or foggy?
  • Can you focus on what matters?
  • What patterns do you notice in your thinking?

Your World Around You

  • How are your relationships with family and friends?
  • How do you feel about work or school?
  • Does your home feel good to you?

Step 2: Pick Your Approach

Choose one of these three ways to decide where to start:

The Smart Move
Ask: “What one change could help everything else get better?”
This is about being efficient and making progress.

The Fun Way
Ask: “What sounds interesting or exciting to explore right now?”
This is about enjoying the process and discovering new things.

The Hard Thing
Ask: “What do I keep avoiding that keeps asking for my attention?”
This is about facing the stuff you don’t want to deal with.

Note: Sometimes the thing you’re avoiding IS the smart move to make.

Step 3: Try Something Small

  1. Pick one area (body, emotions, mind, or world around you)
  2. Choose something small to try – don’t go big right away
  3. Think of it as a test, not something that has to fix everything
  4. After you try it, ask yourself:
  • Did this help me feel more open?
  • Did anything shift in how I feel?
  • What should I try next?

Examples to Get You Started

If you picked your body and want to try the smart move:
Take 5 deep breaths when you feel stressed

If you picked emotions and want to try the fun way:
Write down 3 things that made you smile today

If you picked your mind and want to try the hard thing:
Spend 5 minutes thinking about something you’ve been avoiding

If you picked your world and want to try the smart move:
Send one text to someone you care about

Remember This

  • Small changes can lead to big results
  • You can’t always guess what will help the most
  • Sometimes the fun, easy thing works better than the serious, hard thing
  • You’re not broken – you’re just choosing where to put your attention
  • If something doesn’t work, try a different area or approach

The goal isn’t to fix yourself. The goal is to find the best place to put your energy so good things can happen naturally.

Commonalities of Buddhism & Weightlifting

~ cafebedouin

I have been reading Jack Kornfield’s book about spirituality and Buddhism A Path With Heart. As a short summary of Part 1: The Fundamentals, he starts with basic questions.

What is your goal? He suggests a path with heart is the goal of spiritual practice. Are we in touch with our fundamental goodness? Are we loving well? Have we learned to forgive and live from the spirit of love rather than from a spirit of judgment?

Cultivating goodness and love means stopping the war within ourselves, which leads to wars with others. Stopping the war means “taking the one seat”, finding a single spiritual tradition and following it through the pain and conflict. We can use this to make our mind, body and heart healthier, which allows us to progress spiritually.

Going through, I keep being reminded of how much this is exactly like weightlifting. What is your goal? Get strong. To get strong, you have to be open to pain. The war within is our desire and tendency to avoid pain. This is impossible when lifting weights. No pain, no gain.

What about taking the one seat? There are many different ways to train, and which is best depends on your goals. If your goal is to get strong, as opposed to say aesthetics, there are established methods, such as Starting Strength. Adopt one, stick to it, and you will see progress, often quick progress. The key is consistency. Do one practice. Do it several times a week for an hour or more, and you will improve.

What is true of the body in weightlifting is also true of the mind and heart. If we train our mind with a standard practice, like focused meditation on the breath, do it consistently, daily, we train our mind to be focused. It develops insight into the workings of the mind and leads to greater concentration.

But, perhaps most important, at least in my case, is development of heart, connecting to feelings of love and remaining, open, vulnerable to the world. Maitrī, or loving-kindness, can be developed, like a muscle. We start with the loving-kindness we already have for those closest to us, and through meditating on others try to expand this feeling from our close circle to the entire universe.

I was once at a Quaker Meeting, where someone said, “When learning to love, don’t start with Hitler.” Strangely, some people find it hard to love themselves, believe that they are bad, Hitler-adjacent. But, if we are unable to love ourselves, with all of our intimate knowledge of our failings, we will find it difficult to learn to love others, without making idealized, fictionized versions of them, which is not real love.

In summary, weightlifting provides an interesting parallel to Buddhism. Training the mind and heart is no different than training the body, receptive to the same techniques. A well-rounded person needs to train mind, heart and body — all three.