Ten Best Life Hacks

Feeling lost and adrift? Out of sorts? Cut off from the things that used to bring you joy? Does it feel like a stranger has taken up residence in your own skin? Here are ten life hacks that will quickly get you back on track toward your own best life.

1.    Get up earlier

Instead of dreading the alarm clock and pushing it as late as you possibly can, try reclaiming the calm, quiet, sacred hours of the early morning. Stop intoning the lie that you are not a “morning person” as if that was even a thing. People are not cast in stone. They can change their patterns. Get up early and watch your happiness, self-esteem, productivity, and sense of calm increase.

2.    Turn ordinary activities into rituals

You’re already doing them every day anyway. You might as well turn them into meditative, conscious, reflective rituals. Grinding coffee with gratitude for the Central American farmers who lovingly tend their trees. Pouring that first cup with the focused intention of a monk in Japanese tea ceremony. Brushing your teeth, shaving, bathing, and dressing with deep appreciation for the magical mystery of the mind-body, and the creativity and ingenuity of those who design and make our clothing. This way, your very life becomes a temple, and everything holy.

3.    Move more

An unused door hinge rusts shut. An unexercised body closes down. You don’t have to do anything crazy. Just walk for an hour. Do yoga. Bicycle or swim. Take the stairs. Rake leaves. Whatever you have access to. For tens of thousands of years human beings walked for miles and miles every day. We were made to move. Not only will your body start functioning and feeling better, but your mind will too.

4.    Meditate

Finally commit to a real meditation routine. Not just a dabble here and there, but a commitment as consistent as eating and sleeping – because it’s damn near just as important. Meditation unlocks the mind-body’s hidden restorative powers. Wellness happens if you let it. And unburden your meditation practice of any silly and overblown expectations. Forget about enlightenment. Let the stillness and glow of meditation be its own reward. The rest happens by itself without your interference.

5.    Eat real food

Food guru Michael Pollan famously reduced all of his books down to one line: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” What he means is, eat real food – food as close to the source as possible. Ditch the margarine. Switch back to butter. Just eat less of it. And when you look down at your plate, it should be 75% plants, 12% protein, and 12% carbs. These aren’t hard numbers, but guidelines. Infuse your shopping, prepping, cooking, eating, and clean up with gratitude and presence. Let the miracle of food become a sacrament. Shifting your eating habits will awaken strength and restore equilibrium throughout your mind-body processes.

6.    Find some new music to fall in love with

Ludwig van Beethoven said that “Music is a higher truth than philosophy,” and he was right. If you’re not mindfully, deliberately, deeply, and consciously listening to music on a regular basis, you are at real risk of soul-starvation. Find new music. Ask around. Look up artists you like on YouTube and let the algorithms lead you to similar artists you’ve never heard. Indulge in satellite radio or commercial free streaming subscriptions. When you find artists you like buy their music so they can afford to keep making it.

7.    Fall in love

You can’t snap your fingers and make love happen. But it’s always hovering nearby waiting to be born. And let’s not limit this to romantic love exclusively. I’m talking about love in its broadest sense – that feeling of deep, liberating, exhilarating, and dizzying interconnection with everything. The way a bird loves the sky, a sailor loves the sea, or a singer loves a song. There’s an unbridled zeal within all of us longing to emerge. Don’t be coy. Get out of the way and let your love find its mark. To love is our deepest calling. Be still enough to hear it.

8.    Work in service, not self-interest

Sure we work to eat. We need money to live. That paycheck really matters. But there are deeper currents in motion. When we work we turn our time, talent, and energy into goods and services that help other people enrich their own lives. When we pull back and see the bigger picture, all work is service – an opportunity for us to participate directly in the healing of the world. When you begin to see your work in this light, everything shifts. Your self-esteem increases, your anxiety about outcomes abate, your depression reduces, and your enjoyment expands because you finally see your work for what it is – not a simple quid pro quo for money, but a tether that connects you to the tapestry of all energy, all matter, and all consciousness. It is through our work that we affirm our oneness. Our work is a ritual that sanctifies our life and the lives of all it touches.

9.    Mari Kondo your condo

Get rid of most of your stuff – you don’t really want it anyway, and mindlessly holding onto it is clogging up your life. Take a few days, empty every closet, hold each item in your hand and ask yourself, “Do I really love this, I mean really love this?” Kondo’s animistic Shinto spirituality asks us to feel the energy of each item. It will “tell” you if it should stay or go. If it vibrantly belongs in your life, keep it. If it doesn’t, say “Thank you” and graciously let it go. Place the items you are keeping back in your closets and drawers one piece at a time. Give the rest away. When you are done, your home will feel free, clear, and full of light. And so will your mind. Read Mari Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for guidance.

10. Ask for help

Maybe we don’t ask for help because we want to maintain the illusion of invincibility. We don’t want anyone to see how lost we are. I get that. But get over it. Ask for help. Delegate. There are people all around you who know way more than you do about just about everything. And they’re grateful to be useful. (They hunger for self-worth and validation just like you do.) When you ask for help you are giving them a gift – the opportunity to turn their work and their love into service. And you too are brought home to the truth that none of us does any of this alone. It’s a win-win.

            When you adopt these ten life hacks you’ll soon see changes happening within. You’ll see your old problems with new eyes, and feel reinvigorated enough to withstand them. You’ll shift from negativity to gratitude, from scarcity to abundance, and from fear to fullness. But don’t wait. Seeds don’t grow in a jar on the shelf. You have to plant them. Ideas alone don’t shift us, only actions do. Begin now. You do not have forever to begin living the life you were born to live.

Optimal Health

In our quest for optimal bodies, optimal skin, optimal hair, and optimal minds, we face a danger – the delusion that life is a consumer product and we the disgruntled customer. We believe that if things aren’t quite right, we’ll just keep shopping until they are. As soon as all my desires are met, we think, everything will be fine. But life is short, and death inevitable. We can’t shop our way out of that. Maybe it’s time to start thinking about health a little differently.

           Health is not mastery and control. Health is cooperation with the will of nature. Our best healthcare practices augment and amplify the restorative processes already underway. When we pray for healing we are not issuing marching orders to an otherwise indifferent supernatural entity. God, or nature, will not be coerced. True prayer is a sacred opportunity to abandon fear and come into accord with what is. “Prayer doesn’t change God,” said Soren Kierkegaard, “but it changes him who prays.”

           It’s a miracle that any of us are even alive. When you consider the baffling complexity of the human body-mind system it staggers the imagination. How on earth did such an intricate web of consciousness and matter ever arise, let alone survive? But it did. A round of applause, please, for Mother Nature.

           Optimal health is a noble pursuit. We have every right to feel good, be strong, and thrive. For Aristotle, this innate urge for optimization sets us on the path toward our best lives. It’s only natural that we put these big brains to work finding and perfecting ways to increase our well-being. Science has brought us a long way. We understand things we didn’t used to understand about the workings of the mind and body. But all our collective knowledge is still a façade, a veil behind which lays a vast and unknowable mystery – the namelessness of being.

           In Greek tragedy, the fatal flaw of the protagonist is called hubris, or excessive pride. Most of the time this malady manifests itself as thinking erroneously that we’re in control. It is the downfall of Oedipus, and it is our downfall too. Our medical and scientific prowess has spawned an illusion, namely, that we’re running the show. Again and again nature rears up to remind us of the folly of our collective hubris.

           There are three mistakes we make.

           First, we view death as a curable disease, an enemy to be vanquished with our cleverness. Instead, we must learn to see death as a part of the natural cycle, as beautiful and welcome as birth.

           Second, we view healthcare as overcoming nature, rather than cooperating with it. We falsely frame our efforts as combat – the war on cancer, the war on Alzheimer’s, the war on mental illness. Instead, we must frame our healthcare efforts as cooperation with natural processes already unfolding.

           Last, we mistake influence for control. Thanks to modern surgical practices, increasingly insightful therapeutic modalities, and modern pharmacology, we exert enormous influence over our mind-body systems. But we are still gnats flying in a hurricane – so much of what transpires is far outside our influence, let alone control.

           The bottom line: We are self-healing. It is the body’s nature to correct its imbalances, and to eventually wither and fail. At their best, our healing modalities are an effort to co-create the conditions in which the body can best heal itself, and when the time comes, let go and accept our impermanence. We are not in control. We never were. Health is not a consumer commodity to be purchased and possessed, any more than a beautiful sunset is. You can’t own the sky, and you don’t control the movements of the stars and planets. So too we don’t control our health. Health is not something you have – it’s something you are. The best and brightest healthcare professionals understand this. They see their role as optimizers, not controllers. They know what the rest of us are still learning – that health is our natural state, and it is more allowed than achieved. 

[This piece was originally published in my A to Zen column as "How to Thrive" in the November/December 2016 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here with permission.]

Losing Weight

         Losing weight is an American obsession. It fuels the publishing industry, drives reality TV and forms the bulk of our water cooler conversations. But how does it really work? What finally spurs us to action?

         Sometimes it’s a medical diagnosis – high cholesterol, high blood sugar and reduced kidney function. You’re tired all the time, a simmering anger and depression plagues your ever step, and you’re sick of it. Even some of your XXL shirts don’t fit anymore. You can’t breathe and cut your toe nails at the same time.  You stopped tucking in your shirts years ago. You spend as little time as possible naked. Then it hits you – you’ve got the American Disease. You’re fat.

         It takes years to get fat. You have to really work at it. First, stop moving. Then, eat way more than you need, and make sure the food you eat is composed of overly-processed fat, carbohydrates and sugar. When in doubt, deep fry.

         Then tell yourself that you prefer this kind of food. You need it. It makes you happy. And all other manner of lies.

         All this was happening to me. It was time to change. I’d tasted freedom before – in decades past I’d quit cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. I knew how to let things go. But my work wasn’t done. Food was my final frontier.

         My decision to lose weight was a child of many mothers. One was my doctor at Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Mikus. He watched me slip further and further away from the ideal. Like any good teacher, he matched the lesson to the student. He knew I’d take a rather intellectual approach to the whole thing so he suggested a couple of books by Michael Pollan, Food Rules and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Then I watched some documentaries, Food, Inc. and King Corn. My reeducation had begun. Like most Americans, I had no idea where my food came from or what it even was – and more importantly, why it was killing me. Dr. Mikus and Michael Pollan became my gurus. But I still wasn’t free.

         I’ve been a member of 24 Hour Fitness for fifteen years. I’d been a gym dabbler, going through periods of total commitment and even longer periods of total absence. Something was missing.

         The final straw was my nephrologist. I didn’t even know what a nephrologist was. Now I had one. There were sudden concerns about my kidney function.  After he read my labs he sent me an email. The subject header read, “Moderate Kidney Disease, Chronic.” He kept saying it’s not as bad as it sounds. Good, because it sounds terrible.

         The good news – it was reversible. All I had to do was, well, everything.

         I needed help. I needed structure. I needed a map. I needed a team. As with any recovery process, the fastest way to fail is to white knuckle it alone.  The wise words of my friend Anne Day kept sounding in my ear, “Allow it to be easy.”

         I Googled Medifast and made an appointment. I sat down with Coleen and Tran at the Mission Valley center. We did a thorough body analysis and wrote a plan – three months to lose twenty five pounds, then a year of follow-up counseling. Eating five small meals and drinking a half gallon of water a day. Making sure the nutritional balance was right, and geared toward fat burning. I don’t really understand it – it’s science. I’m more of an art guy. But I trusted my growing team of advisors and surrendered to their superior knowledge.

         The results have been startling. In the first three weeks I lost fifteen pounds, most of the way toward my goal. Suddenly I can breathe and cut my toenails at the same time again.

         Another important voice in my Greek chorus of cheerleaders was Louise Hay and her classic book You Can Heal Your Life. The undisputed queen of New Age optimism, Hay offers a compelling portrait of New Thought claims with deep roots in the world’s ancient wisdom traditions, namely, that our life is a product of our thoughts. I immediately typed several of her affirmations on a note in my iPhone and read them out loud every day. My favorite one is, “I nourish myself with spiritual food and I am satisfied and free.” When you say that to yourself everyday something weird happens – it becomes true. Now I can drive by In-N-Out and Chipotle without even a ripple of craving. Doughnuts have become invisible. The smell of pizza in the Costco Food Court no longer sends me on a downward spiral of longing and loathing.

         A few weeks ago I posted something on Facebook about an annoying moment at the gym. The woman on the elliptical machine next to me was talking so loud on her phone that I couldn’t focus on the music blaring out of my iPod’s ear buds. All I could hear was her. Tim Flannery, multiple World Series winning third base coach for the San Francisco Giants and musical friend, commented on my thread. “Turn off the music and concentrate on running and getting stronger.” I typed that into my iPhone too, immediately appointing Tim as my honorary personal trainer. When a world champion athlete and professional coach gives you free advice, you take it. For years my central focus at the gym was my iTunes playlist – Son Volt, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and the like. Now I leave my iPod at home. I run. I focus on my breathing. I feel myself getting stronger.

         Then other voices joined the chorus. Magazine articles from the New Yorker, Shambhala Sun and Unity Magazine crossed my path. It’s as if the universe were conspiring for my success. Wherever I turned I kept getting the message that weight loss fails if it comes from a place of self-loathing. The foundation of any successful health-restoration plan has to be a deep sense of self-respect and self-love. You can’t go to the gym thinking I’m mad at myself, I’ve got to lose weight, who I am now is wrong and bad and I have to change. You’ve got to go to the gym thinking, I’m so excited about the prospect of liberating the real me from years of neglect, I am willing to do whatever it takes to become who I really am by letting go of everything and anything that doesn’t serve my highest good. Real weight loss can never be grounded in a negative body image. Something far more primal and fundamental is at stake. Your body is a miracle of flesh, bone, muscle, sinew, ligament, fluid, chemicals, electricity and spirit. Your well-being depends on its optimal functioning. In my case, there is a lean, mean, vibrant, energetic man somewhere under this fat suit. And he wants to come out and play.

         They call it weight loss. But that’s just a by-product. What you’re really losing is a mistaken worldview, a battery of delusional notions that conspire against your highest good, a grim and toxic narrative that binds you to a slowly suicidal path. When you lose weight, what you’re really losing is a mistaken notion of where your joy lies. This is a story about mental emancipation, not physical transformation. When we re-invent and re-imagine our relationship with food and with our body, we are virtually reborn. Spiritual nourishment is so much more delicious than recreational eating. Food is medicine, a sacred connection to the embodied energy of the cosmos, not cheap entertainment. When you come to see food as it really is, you come to see yourself as you really are. Then your destructive habits drop away one by one and you begin to respect yourself. You experience an abundance of joy no plate could ever hold. And you come to rest in the knowledge that letting go is the only way to get everything you really want.