Little Buddha says, “Chill out.”

In my About section, I mentioned that experimentation is important to the spirit of Raptitude.  From the start, this blog has been about improving humanity through improving yourself, and improving yourself primarily by developing mental skills.  Most of the skills I’ve talked about already, namely  keeping life fresh, investing your attention on purpose, and enjoying the mundane moments are contingent upon one’s ability to direct their attention to where they want it.  I am conducting Raptitude’s first public experiment to help to develop my ability to do that.

I exercise mindfulness in my actions every day, but I’m much less consistent with sitting meditation.  These days I never really sit down to actively practice the deliberate rendering of attention, whether it’s onto my breath, my body or some other foci.

If I were to define meditation I would call it “the art of directing one’s attention.”  The human mind is so flighty and fickle it’s actually hilarious how difficult it can be to keep it in one place.  Civilization does a good job at distracting us 24-7.  As I type this I’ve got four Firefox tabs open, TweetDeck keeps popping up, and I’ve already answered two phonecalls.  Shutting them all out seems like the most obvious response, and I will do some of that (ok TweetDeck is closed.)  But I am more interested in improving the other end of the equation: me.  Read More