The Tim Ferriss Show - #122: The Magic of Mindfulness: Complain Less, Appreciate More, and Live a Better Life

Episode Date: November 28, 2015

This is another special episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Usually, when I talk about strategies for living a better life, I focus on strategies for effectiveness and efficiency. That is, finding ways for you to be better without wasting time. Both of these are important, but fine-tuning those traits come naturally for me. Mindfulness is something that is difficult and usually overlooked by most people. So why is mindfulness essential? When it comes to achievement, most people just work harder. In reality, you want to first achieve more focus and clarity, which can help guide your effort. This is the real benefit of mindfulness. Once you incorporate it into your life, you complain less, appreciate more, react less, and fill your life with what's most important to you. More than anything, you'll learn how to be present and live in the moment. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. I have used them for years to create some amazing designs. When your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99Designs. I used them to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body, and I’ve also had them help with display advertising and illustrations. If you want a more personalized approach, I recommend their 1-on-1 service, which is non-spec. You get original designs from designers around the world. The best part? You provide your feedback, and then you end up with a product that you’re happy with or your money back. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run… This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. Mandatory disclaimer: Wealthfront Inc. is an SEC registered Investment Advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit Wealthfront dot com to read their full disclosure. ***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-between-isode. It's a short little morsel, a tidbit for your mind that will hopefully help you kick off a great weekend or week. If you want the longer interview format where I talk to people like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Josh Waitzkin, who's considered a chess prodigy, General Stanley McChrystal, et cetera, about their habits and routines,

then you can find all of those at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. But this is going to be a wee bit smaller, and it's going to discuss mindfulness. Much of what I usually talk about is effectiveness, doing the right things and then doing things rightly in that order. So effective and efficient. And we'll get into a bit of that, but we're going to talk about, like I mentioned, mindfulness and what that means is up for debate, depending on who you ask, but let's define it as a present state awareness that helps you to be non-reactive. And I'll get into why that's important. But before you even get into it, I will of course list out a number of tools that I've found very helpful. But the question is, why do I think it's important?

And that is because it doesn't come naturally to me. And that is a huge handicap in life for any type A personality or someone who is hardwired that way. Working on achievement is really easy, but we tend to do it of course, by working harder. And this isn't the first place we should focus as good old Abe Lincoln, who's misquoted on the internet everywhere, but I think this is a proper one has said, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I'll spend the first four sharpening the ax. So perhaps we should spend more time sharpening our ax, the most important ax, our mind before acting indiscriminately, which is of course a form of laziness. Mindfulness helps you to complain less,

appreciate more, react less, and ultimately do more of the important stuff. What's very fascinating though about mindfulness. So just being very focused on and aware of the present state moment, which includes your emotions, your reactions, et cetera, that it works in the opposite. In other words, if you complain less, you develop more mindfulness. If you appreciate more, you develop more mindfulness. So it is a two-way street and that gives you many more options for developing the skill that most people limit to say meditation, which the vast majority of people hate and feel like they fail at. So they don't do it. So let's get started. Some of these are macro, meaning I do them once a year or once a week, once a month, once a quarter. And some of them are daily. Uh, we'll start with a

really big one, the 21 day, no complaint experiment. This originally came across my purview because of Will Bowen, who at the time, at least, was a Kansas City minister who had recognized that word choice determines thought choice. Think about this for a second. It's very profound, but what he did is even more interesting. So word choice determines thought choice. And in fact, if there are people who believe that consciousness and conceptual thinking develop along with vocabulary, right? So if word choice determines thought choice, that therefore determines also emotions and actions. But it's not enough to just decide you're going to stop using certain words you might overuse, though. You need to be conditioned. So if you fix the words, you fix the thoughts. How did Will do this? Well, he created a purple bracelet.

It was a simple bracelet, kind of like the Livestrong bracelets that were yellow back in the day. And he would give these out to his congregation. Well, why did he do that? He would ask them to do a 21-day no-complaint experiment. So anytime they complained, they had to switch the bracelet to the other wrist and start the clock over. And this became hugely popular, spread via word of mouth. And at last count that I checked out, there were 6 million of these bracelets floating around because of, in part, his congregation. And then he wrote a book called the, I think it's the No Complaint World or a Complaint-Free World. That's it, which is worth reading. But what is a complaint? This was an issue that I had with some of his descriptions, uh, because with his rules, he will ask you to switch wrists whenever you gossip, criticize or complain. But again, the definitions can be a bit vague. He also requires you to switch wrists. for this or a bracelet. I defined complaining for myself as follows describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. who's incredible and is one of the people who's been interviewed on this podcast.

And what that means is if you say, I was standing in line at the post office and this fucking idiot took forever, that's a complaint. You start the clock over. In the other words, if you say I was at the post office, the guy in front of me took forever. and I learned and I decided that from now on, I'm not going to go to the post office unless it is between eight and nine 30 AM, something like that. Suggesting a fix that is a pass. It's not a deal, but it's a pass. All right. So the 21 day, no complaint experiment, this will change your life.

If you even attempt it, even if you get one week through, it will change your life. So try it out again. And this is using not complaining to become more mindful because it works both ways. All right. The next one is something that I try to do once a quarter or so, but even once a year is very, very helpful. And that is practice poverty for a week. And this comes from stoicism. And I'll have a lot more to say about stoicism and seneca in particular but practicing poverty poverty for a week i'm going to paraphrase here but in the words of seneca would effectively be limiting yourself to the cheapest of food the coarsest of dress the most meager of an existence for a week all the time asking yourself, is this the condition I so feared? And it teaches you to

value the things that you should value and to realize that the worst case scenario really isn't generally that bad. And this enables you and boldens you to take risks or things that you might previously consider risks like starting your own company, moonlighting, ending a relationship, starting a relationship, quitting your job, whatever it might be. If there's a financial component to it, you realize that the downside really isn't that bad. It's basically going back to college. And I think a lot of people in life spend their entire careers trying to get back to their quality of life that they had in college. So what does practicing poverty mean? It can mean many different things, but it means, for instance, for me, I would take one pair of jeans, wear those all week with like cheap pair of Vans shoes, maybe a white t-shirt, only white t simplicity as well. All right. So practice poverty for a week and a read up on Seneca. I will be a top secret. Don't tell anybody.

Uh, I have 27 hours of audio related to Seneca. I think it's 27 that is coming out very shortly. I'm super excited. So keep your ears peeled for that. The next one, the jar of awesome. Uh, this was not my idea. This was actually thanks to an ex-girlfriend who is a real sweetheart is, is I'm sure still a sweetheart. And she created something for me called the jar of awesome. And this is because I'm very good at achievement and not always very good at appreciation. And this was a Mason jar with jar of awesome, uh, in glitter, basically on the side. And anytime something really cool happened that I got excited about to avoid my forgetting it next to immediately, because I tend to celebrate very briefly, if at all, I should write it down on a slip of paper

and put it in the top of this mason jar. And, uh, it really had a tremendous impact. I kept it where I could see it. And it was a real mood elevator and emphasized the importance of appreciation if you want to have any real success. And I hate to use that word, but it's appropriate here. Because if you only have achievement and you never appreciate the small wins or the big things for that matter, and they have no duration, then it's a hollow victory if you could call it a victory at all. So if you don't want to have a jar with jar of awesome written on it, because you'll feel foolish, uh, you could

just take a huge exclamation point, like put an exclamation point on the side of a Mason jar or something like that, and then drop these things in. Uh, it's, it's an easy practice and a fun practice. And I think I don't have kids, but if I had kids, I would have them also put things into the jar of awesome. Next, this is a daily practice and I've spoken about it before. I talked about my morning routine, so I won't go into great depth here, but I meditate every morning and I failed in my mind at trying meditating for 10 years. Now try it for two or three days and get pissed off and quit. The method that worked for me was Transcendental Meditation, tm.org. You can check it out. There's things I don't like about their organization in

terms of how they make you look at a picture of an Indian guy with a beard and they give you the blah, blah, blah, and they charge a good amount of money. But it was worth it for me because there was accountability and it was very secular after the fact. Uh, and they focus on logistics and contingency plans a lot in the teaching, but something like Vipassana or otherwise could work very well. I meditate for 21 minutes each morning. I'm supposed to do it in the afternoon. I very rarely do. I do it right after getting up. And, uh, it's like a warm bath for your mind. People will get all woo-woo about meditation. This is where you're sharpening the ax. And what I find is that if I take the 20, and it's 21 minutes because I take 60 seconds just to fidget and be an idiot and get settled, and then I count the 20 as my session. If you take those 20 minutes,

you will get, I would say, and this is obviously just spitballing, but 20 to 30% more done that day of important things with 50% less stress. So it is a, it is a huge ROI on that time. Even if, as is common for me, and I have a, an episode with Rainn Wilson known as best known as Dwight from the office coming out soon, where we talk about meditation, even if you only focus on what you're focusing on your breath or whatever for 30 seconds, a minute in that 20 minute session, it is a successful session. Uh, if you want an easy way to get your foot in the door with this stuff, download one of the apps or both calm or headspace, and just start using guided meditations in the morning. And you don't have to start with 20 minutes, start with five minutes and do it consistently for five to seven days to establish the habit.

Then you can up the time. Okay, next morning pages or journaling in the morning. And when I get up, I won't go through the whole morning routine except done that elsewhere. But when I journal, which is very early in the morning after meditation, well, early in the morning,

meaning in my morning, I usually get up between 7.30 and 10.30. So not exactly Jocko Willink. Sorry, Jocko, I'm working on it. In any case, the five-minute journal, just buy one of these. Honestly, I have no financial stake in this, but you could certainly try to replicate it yourself.

But having it in one bound book is very helpful. In effect, what you're doing is five minutes in the morning, five minutes before you go to bed. And the AM piece is simply writing down three bullets for I am grateful for dot, dot, dot three things. What would make today great? One, two, three daily affirmations. I am blank, blank. And then at night before you go to bed, three amazing things that happened today. One, two, three, how could I have made today better? And I've had friends reach out to me who have, or fans for that matter, who have listened to everything that I've talked about for years. And they say, this is, this was the big game changer for them. Uh, now I have some recommendations because I found that I am grateful for dot, dot, dot, blank, blank, blank. You tend to use the same things over and over again. My healthy family or my wife or my kids, whatever it might be.

So I suggest that you write down a number of categories and that you insist that you have no two days where the items are exactly the same. And this is something I haven't talked about before, but I think this could be very helpful. So in the five minute journal or in your morning pages, if you use that type of approach and you can just search for a blog post called what my morning journal looks like Ferris, and you'll see what mine looks like for morning pages, a little bit different. When you were doing this list of items or things that you're grateful for. I would recommend four different categories. The first, uh, is a relationship, an old one that really helped you in some way or that you valued. Okay. Relationship is number one. Uh, and I tend to try to pick an old one because it forces you to go through the memory banks a bit. Number two is an opportunity you have today. And perhaps

that's just an opportunity to improve, an opportunity to go to work. It doesn't have to be something extremely unique, but an opportunity you have today that you're grateful for. Number three, something great that happened or that you saw yesterday. Okay. And number four is something simple near you. And this was actually a recommendation from Tony Robbins. And you can listen to my episode with him for a lot more on his habits. But in other words, they can't all be my career, the this, the that, these big abstractions or the gigantic items. You want to get good at appreciating the small things because the small things are the big things. And if you don't notice the small things, the tendency is also not to fully appreciate, uh, or be present with the large things. So, so something simple

near you or something simple, like the cloud outside the window, the coffee that you're drinking, uh, the pen that you have, whatever it might be something really small and simple, or I should say just simple. So I'll go through that again. Number one, when you're putting down your list of things you're grateful for, and even if you just did this instead of the five-minute journal thing, it'd be extremely valuable. So an old relationship that helped you a lot. Number two, an opportunity you have today. Number three, something great that happened yesterday or something good for something simple near you. Okay. That's it. And, uh, the next step, uh, which is part of this exercise for me. And I believe I also got this from the same, uh, ex-girlfriend and, uh, yeah, that's a longer story. I'm not going to get into right now, but she gave me a lot of

good advice. So this, and this next step was thank one person per day. So in this case, I have developed a habit of thinking of say, teachers who helped me in high school or friends who helped me when I was a kid or who were close to me and then reaching out to them, trying to track them down on Facebook or otherwise, send them an email, give them a call, leave a voicemail, just telling them how much you appreciate them or that you love them. If you really want to go for it, uh, that alone will improve your quality of life dramatically. And what I've found, and I'm not necessarily hardwired for what I would call happiness

or self-reported well-being, is if you don't know how to make yourself happy, make somebody else happy. And guess what? That will generally increase your self-reported level of happiness. Okay, three more and then we're out of here. The next one is something I started doing about two weeks ago that I found very helpful. I'd always been told, you know, if you're feeling anxious or you're feeling overwhelmed, just take 10 deep breaths. It sounds ridiculous, but 10 deep breaths is actually a fucking lot. And I started treating myself to three breath breaks. Okay. This sounds so fucking ridiculous until you try it.

If you're like me and you might find it useful or you'll just laugh at me and that's okay too. So if I find myself getting wound up in any way or anxious or projecting forward into the future about the what ififs, even if it's six hours later, I will take a three-breath break. Okay, that's it. You're just going to take three deep breaths, and that's it. And it is a fantastic pattern interrupt and anxiety reducer, at least in my experience. All right, the next one is a Chrome extension, actually, the Momentum Chrome extension. This is something Matt Mullenweg introduced me to, and it is a great way to prevent you from opening a million tabs on your browser and getting lost in the slipstream of noise on the internet, uh, or just scattered focus for that

matter. This helps you return to the most important thing that you're supposed to do that day, which you define each day when you open this, uh, when you open the browser or open a new tab and it will say, good morning, Tim, blah, blah, blah. There's a beautiful photograph. Then it asks you to type in your most important task or the thing you should focus on for that day. And, uh, you can check it out. And many of you have been a huge fan of that since I mentioned it sometime back, or when Matt mentioned it, the last one is a nightly review. And this comes back to the five minute journal. But what you could do is simply another list of things that you're grateful for. And this sounds so hokey and it sounds so cliched. And I am here to tell you, it is, it is very significant

and practicing gratitude, practicing compassion sounds so woo woo, California, San Francisco, put a crystal on my forehead. But if you look at neuroimaging studies that have looked at specifically compassion meditation, there's some very, very interesting findings. Some of them correlate psychedelic use in some ways, which is very cool. I'm going to talk about that in the Rain Wilson interview also, but this is the book ending of the evening. So, so I mentioned the five minute journal. You could just keep it simple and get one of these, honestly, go online and it'll save you a lot of time. Uh, or you can just do, as I mentioned in the beginning, the, the AM check-in and, uh, write those things down. And then the PM check-in now in the five minute journal, it's three amazing things that happened

today, dot, dot, dot one, two, three. And then how could I have made today better? You could just make that a list of two or three or four things that you're grateful for that happened that day, that you saw that day, that you experienced that day, that you had an opportunity to engage with in some way that day. And ladies and gents, those are some of the things that I use to cultivate mindfulness as a practical tactical tool for being more effective, more efficient, and more appreciative. And like I mentioned, uh, focusing on developing this present state awareness, which is done with conditioning, with practices, exercise,

like I mentioned, uh, the, some of those that I use regularly, And it helps you to complain less, appreciate more, react less, and ultimately do more of the important stuff and enjoy yourself while you're doing it. So I hope that is helpful. The show notes may not exist for this particular episode because I think it was pretty straightforward, but you can find show notes from all the other episodes

and so on at fourhourworkweek.com forward slash podcast, or just go to four hour workweek.com all spelled out and click on podcast. And of course, as always, thank you so, so much for listening. It means a lot to me and I love the feedback. So please let me know on Twitter or on Facebook, but Twitter is usually better at T Tferriss, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Mwah! Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday.

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