"An inner voice always used to be an outer voice. We absorb the tone of others. A harassed or angry parent. The menacing threats of an elder sibling keen to put us down. The words of a schoolyard bully or teacher who seemed impossible to please. We internalize the unhelpful voices, because at certain key moments in the past, they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodge in our own way of thinking."

~ The School of Life

Cinematic Attention for a High-Def Life

Any perception you can observe directly in real time can be used to train a variety of attention-related skills.

I like to make a game out of turning ordinary activities into opportunities for practice.

There are a number of exercises I use when watching a film — whether it’s one I enjoy, dislike, or have seen before.

See Out, Hear Out, Feel In, Concentration, Clarity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJanuary 31, 2016film, craft, mindfulness, seeing, hearing, feeling, story, storytellingComment

Focus on Emotionally Neutral Spots

"Although emotional sensations can arise anywhere in the body, they are much more likely to arise in the belly, chest, throat, or face. These are the emotional hotspots in the body, the regions where emotional sensations can get huge. That means that other areas are much less likely to host gigantic emotional sensations, which turns out to be a useful and convenient thing."

~ Michael Taft

Tired of Yourself

"A lot of the poetic discipline boils down to getting tired of yourself, and I really believe that. When you get tired of yourself, then you change."

~ David Whyte

Feel In, Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 21, 2015David Whyte, freedom, poets, poetry, writing, thinking, feeling, suffering, confusion, Mark Levy, creativity, selfComment

Bless with Attention

"Whatever is newly born needs a name and when we are more and more welcomed by the silence, naming becomes our job. We have to notice, to bless with attention the beasts before us, both the rough and the smooth."

~ John Tarrant

Clarity, Equanimity, Feel In, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 4, 2015John Tarrant, feeling, emotions, emotional intelligence, identity, attentionComment

This Primal Commitment

What happens when, just for a moment, we stay with our pain, our fear, our doubt, our discomfort, our grief, our broken heart, even our numbness, without trying to change it, or fix it, or numb ourselves to it, or get rid of it in any way? What happens when, even when we feel like leaving, abandoning the moment for the promise of a future salvation, we stay, sitting with the raw, unfiltered, boundlessly alive life-energy that is simply trying to express right now?

~ Jeff Foster

Feel In, Clarity, Equanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonNovember 18, 2014Jeff Foster, suffering, emotions, feeling, life, resistance, uncertainty, grief, death, doubt, discomfortComment

Reservoir of Beauty inside You

"What I find very strange is this. That I think what's magnificent about Bach is that when you listen to this music, and it moves you so much, I mean, it's just a bunch of sound waves crashing into your ear, and you have to contain — you see this emotion bubbling up, you start seeing, like, tearing up, and saying, well, what's going on? These are just sounds crashing into my — what's going on in here?"

~ Bernard Chazelle

Hear Out, Feel InDaron LarsonNovember 16, 2014On Being, Bernard Chazelle, music, Bach, beauty, truth, feeling, emotion, narrative, soundsComment

A Way to Get (10%) Happier

"Nightline anchor Dan Harris embarks on an unexpected, hilarious, and deeply skeptical odyssey through the strange worlds of spirituality and self-help, and discovers a way to get happier that is truly achievable."