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.

Why I Meditate

I meditate because it frees me from the tyranny of my to-do list.

I meditate because twenty minutes on the cushion adds inestimable time and space to my day.

I meditate because when I honor my deepest calling, I feel every fiber of my being aligning into integrated harmony, a state I cannot create any other way.

I meditate because when I do I fall in love with the world and everything in it all over again.

I meditate because meditation is the great homecoming, the return to our authentic nature.

I meditate because in the stillness all of our interlocking systems -- intellect, emotion, energy, body, spirit -- return to their natural set-point and are restored to their ideal interrelationship.

I meditate because I'm a hedonist at core -- I'm drawn to the higher pleasures and the joy they afford.

I meditate because life is short and none of us has that much more time, and I might as well actually be here now instead of running madly through the echo chamber and hall of mirrors of my own conceptual madhouse.

I meditate because the world deserves the best possible version of myself; at core, all spiritual practice is world service.

I meditate because my greatest single contribution to world peace and enlightenment is to show up as awakened as possible.

I meditate because freedom, real freedom, is freedom from the tyranny of the thought stream.

I meditate because I'm drawn to the real, and find it every time in the silent boundless spaciousness beneath and between my thoughts.

I meditate because of the way love wells up through the cracks of my suffering when I hold still long enough to allow it.

I meditate because it is beautiful and subtle and profound.

I meditate because something deep within me asks me to.

I meditate because there is great and tremendous freedom in the word "yes."

I meditate because I can feel the darkness and fear dissipating when I do.

I meditate because. Just because.

The Ordinary Miracle of Meditation

There’s an inherent paradox in meditation: it is at the same time easy and hard. It’s hard because ever since birth we’ve falsely identified with our thoughts and that’s a hard habit to break. But meditation’s easy because once you learn a few simple techniques you’re able to slip beneath the thought-stream into an indefinable depth. And then you realize – you are that depth, beyond all concepts and boundaries. This is less an achievement and more a discovery. In the crudest sense, meditation isn’t something you do, it’s something you allow. It’s as natural as breathing. But it helps to have a teacher.

            On the third session of my most recent six-week meditation workshop, a man I’ll call Richard raised his hand – it was clear he was very eager to share. Richard was a confident, accomplished man in his late sixties with a firm handshake and a resolute eye. He was the perfect combination of focus, fearlessness, willingness, and wonder – the ideal meditation student.

           “You know Peter,” he began, “I just really want to thank you for what you’ve taught us. I’ve never meditated before in my life. I didn’t know the first thing about any of this stuff, and it’s been amazing.”

“I’ve spent my whole life getting things done and being very successful. I’ve led companies, I’ve built things, and I’ve traveled all over the world. By most measures, I’ve been very successful. But now I know something was missing. Ever since the first session of this meditation workshop there’s been a shift. I was always really good at playing a role, but I didn’t know who I was. I never even thought about it. But now that I’m meditating every day, I’m coming to know someone I’ve never even considered – the real me.”

            Everyone in the room leaned in.

            “Let me tell you just one story about a meeting I had. I met this man through a mutual friend. He’s a very wealthy, very powerful guy. In the past, I would have been a little intimidated, but for some reason, I wasn’t. We got to talking about a business idea I had, and he was interested. So he invited me up to his Orange County office to discuss it. When I drove up there, before I went in, I sat in my car and meditated – you know – like you taught us, the body scan, the deepening, slipping beneath the thought-stream and shifting our identification to the inner witness, the whole thing. And it was amazing. Our meeting was scheduled for thirty minutes, and we talked for two and half hours.”

            “How did it feel?” I asked.

            “I was so calm, so peaceful,” he said. “Free.”

            “How would you have conducted the meeting before you’d learned how to meditate?”

            “The old me would’ve run that meeting very differently. I wouldn’t have had any of that stillness inside. I would have pushed my ideas on him, hard. I wouldn’t have heard a word he said. I would have been racing inside, and scheming and planning. It would’ve been about closing the deal, no matter what. But instead, I saw him as a person, and we connected on a very human level, and from that relationship all of the details just fell into place. Instead of the heavy burden of having to force everything, I trusted the stillness. Suddenly, everything became effortless and easy. Creativity was happening without my interference. Instead of making it happen, I was watching it happen.”

            You could’ve heard a pin drop in that room. Everyone knew exactly what he was talking about – the mysterious way that meditation leads you to a place where solutions and connections rise freely on their own out of the depths of your own experience, solutions and connections that your surface consciousness simply cannot muster on their own. Some call it intuition. Others call it divine intervention. And others call it spiritual realization. Whatever you call it, it works.

            A week later I was having lunch with my friend Swami Harinamananda, the resident monk at the San Diego Vedanta Monastery. Hari is young, warm, kind, brilliant, and movie star handsome. We were swapping origin stories about how we’d found ourselves in these curious lives, he a celibate Hindu renunciant and I a married householder, writer, and teacher. We’d ended up in such different places, but in many ways our paths were the same. We were both first-generation Americans – his parents were from India, mine from the Netherlands. From the outside we had been reasonably accomplished and competent young men, but inside was a different story. We’d learned how to play the game, how to fit in. But behind the mask swirled a sea of doubt and tempestuous emptiness. I sought refuge in grad school to become a philosophy professor. After he finished grad school and spent some years in the professional world, he sought refuge in a monastic order.

One day he went to see his swami at the Vedanta Society in Hollywood.

            “I had known the swami my whole life,” he said. “He had always been such a kind and loving teacher. There was just something about him. When he walked into the room, you could feel his presence. I was about to pour out all of my questions, my doubts, my confusion. But he just looked at me, and instead of solving my questions he dissolved them.”

            Hari paused. The other patrons in the mostly empty Thai restaurant receded into the distance. The air carried a faint electric charge. The colors got brighter, deeper.  

            That’s it, I thought. Not solved, but dissolved.

            The Katha Upanishad calls it “spiritual osmosis.” When wisdom simply becomes you. Not as conceptual thought, but as wordless awareness. It feels like it comes from outside of you, from another person, and in some ways it does, but really, it rises up from the one ground of being which we all are. Plato was right. Wisdom is recollection. But sometimes it takes a meaningful encounter with another to shake us awake to our essential nature.

            This is why guided meditation is so important. Of all the spiritual and philosophical practices in the world's wisdom traditions, meditation cuts through illusion the quickest. Study is wonderful, devotion powerful, and selfless service essential. But meditation, even in the early stages of practice, parts the curtain that hides us from our essential authenticity. Meditation doesn't deliver you to exotic modes of transcendent consciousness. If anything meditation leads you around and back to the miraculous ordinariness of your own life. Through tears of recognition you realize that this is what you've been longing for – to feel finally at home in your own skin and in the heart of this beautiful world.