Building a Baseline of Kindness for 2022
As we turn another annual page, we find ourselves stuck in a mental street fight brought on by uncertainty, dislocation, even fear. It’s a daunting task to find the balance and energy to reflect on what works and doesn’t work in our lives.
Join me this year in flipping the bird to a long list of self-improvement ideas?
You know, the ones that usually come on the heels of self-recrimination or criticism. After years of falling for lists of life hacks from “opinion leaders,” I now know the obvious: There is no such thing as a life hack. It just means stringing together a bunch of transactions and tasks while trying to protect yourself from stress or aimlessness or worry. Here’s a new list: Take a deep breath. Take another one. Notice what you notice. Respond to the intuition that comes from paying attention to your life. It will yield much more satisfaction and purpose that anyone ever achieved with a zero-inbox.
We’ll be taking lots of deep breaths during our 21-Day Mindfulness Challenge, which begins on January 10; we hope you’ll join us. Instead of ruminating on the outlandish possibility that the sky will actually fall, we’ll be turning our attention to the capacity we all have to generate feelings of good will, service, compassion, and kindness. For 10 minutes each day – clinically proven to be the minimum daily dosage for the maximum mental benefit – the guided practices will provide support and the encouragement to focus on the only lists that matter: Who you’re connected to; what you can do to make their way a bit easier; how – with practice in the mental fitness gym – we can all be a force for good, for ourselves and for each other.
Oliver Burkeman’s brilliant new book, “Four Thousand Weeks,” points out that the average human lifespan is “absurdly, insulting brief.” If we are lucky enough to reach 80, we live for just more than 4,000 weeks. If you’re like me (human), you’re now mentally time traveling, thinking of all the wasted weeks either wished away or spent worrying about worst-case scenarios, most of which never came to pass.
Your life, whether it lasts for 4,000 weeks or some other span, will ultimately be a collection of where your attention goes, with or without your intention. Whatever gets your attention gets your purpose, your promise, your talent.
It occurred to me for the first time this year that my quality of life totally changed once I began strengthening this attentional muscle. Now I rarely miss the forest for the trees, literally or metaphorically. I practice living a good life by noticing the actual trees, the snow around them, the crunching sound beneath my feet on the Hagen trail, the delightful play of my mismatched dogs, one a lumbering ebony lab mix, the other a frilly, loyal, ridiculous white fluff ball. People come alive right before my eyes when I intentionally notice their complexity, their uniqueness. The challenges and changes in my life, like many of yours, are actually more significant today than at any other time in memory, and yet I am less “undone” by this because I spend more time focusing on the beauty all around, the soothing balm of quiet, the sound of a friend’s laugh. My life has gotten harder in some list-making ways—I haven’t checked the boxes for bullet-proof retirement balance, body weight, perfect offspring — but the amount of time I spend worrying about those things has been outsized by the amount of time I am able to put my attention on the warmth of my son’s greeting or the first bite of a good meal prepared by friends.
I continue to practice mindfulness because it makes me more aware of what I’ve collected in my life, what makes me more resilient, more capable of showing up as I want to show up: clear-eyed, open-hearted, able to meet the moment and what lies in front of me.
Happy New Year.
Sara