What Happiness at Work Looks Like, According to Airbnb’s First Global Head of Employee Experience

With so much of our daily lives and, often times our sense of purpose, attached to our careers, work has to be a place where we can be happy. Luckily, workplace well-being is now a badge of honor for companies around the world, with LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Fortune creating annual lists of the best and happiest places to work. 

One company that frequently shows up on these lists is Airbnb. With everything from email efficiency workshops to the company’s annual $2,000 employee travel stipend, it’s no wonder Airbnb ranked #11 on LinkedIn’s top 50 companies to work for in 2017. 

The wellness programs at Airbnb can be attributed to their Employee Experience team, a division is devoted to the health and happiness of Airbnb employees. 

To learn more about Airbnb's work culture, we emailed the man who started and now serves as the Global Head of Airbnb’s Employee Experience team, Mark Levy. With over 20 years of experience in human resources at companies like Gap and BestBuy, he’s learned that an inspired and engaged company culture is a crucial element of success. Here’s what he shared with us.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Thrive Global: Of all the wellness programs and facilities at Airbnb, which ones have had the greatest impact? 

Mark Levy: A few things are really important for Airbnb:
1. Our offices are designed with our employees; we leverage our employees to provide input on how they want to work (sit versus stand, desk versus other options) and we provide our employees the opportunity to design some of our meeting rooms. They choose the Airbnb home or apartment that inspires them and then bring it to life with a defined budget. The spaces are meant to be welcoming so we feel like we belong, like we are at home. They’re inspired by travel, and our meeting rooms are replicas of Airbnb listings from around the world, so we remember that it is our hosts and their homes who deliver on our mission of belonging. We also work in an environment where we can belong anywhere—most offices don’t even have an assigned desk, just neighborhoods by function or outcome, and we move freely through the space from the dining room table, to the living room to kitchen counter.

2. At the end of each year, we have, for the most part, given everyone a longer break, adding on to the statutory holidays additional time off to be with their families and friends, travel to faraway places and recharge. When we work as hard as we do, it’s such a nice gift at the end of the year to be able to have a time when no one (except those that are customer facing or closing the year) is working—no emails, no obligations. This has been invaluable. 

TG: What’s been the biggest challenge in helping employees prioritize their health and happiness?

ML: Scaling. When we were smaller, everyone was able to feel more connected—to the mission, to the founders, to each other. As we have grown, it becomes harder for a purpose-driven company to find ways to ensure everyone has a voice, feels they are contributing, feels they are recognized and most importantly feels they are growing. 

TG: Airbnb’s Sustainable Performance initiative, which launched just over a year ago, proactively addresses stress and burnout by helping employees work smarter rather than longer. What kinds of things does this initiative include? 

ML: We’ve focused on two things:
1. Ensuring that we support an integrated life for our employees. This includes offering things like Headspace, Life Dojo, or yoga, and revisiting our time-off policies to ensure that we were supporting parents or longer-tenured employees who need a break.

2. Testing new ways of working like no-meeting Wednesdays so people have think time, training people on email and meeting efficiency so that these time-consuming activities are more thoughtful and productive. Now we’re addressing decision rights so that we make faster and better decisions that are not revisited. 

TG: Can you share any tips from the trainings?

ML: Every email and meeting should have a purpose and outcome. The distribution or attendees should only be those that need to know or have a role in the topic. And make sure there’s an ask or clear next steps.

TG: What's your best advice for college kids entering the workforce? How can they find the jobs that make them happy and support their well-being? 

ML: Simple: do what you love and love what you do. Spend time thinking through what you are good at, what inspires you and where you can best make a difference. Then find a way to pursue a career and/or a company that brings your best self to work. 

Mark is a seasoned globally minded HR Leader who has chosen to work for big hearted companies and focus on how he and his team can unleash the talents and interests of a company’s employees. He has worked with the likes of Levi Strauss & Company and Gap Inc. partnering with business leaders to support their HR needs including innovative ways to create a learning organization and ensure integration between work and life. Mark also spent two years living and working in Paris France for Thomson/Technicolor. 

Mark, who is currently leading the Employee Experience of a recent acquisition, Luxury Retreats, was the pioneer of creating the Employee Experience team at Airbnb, which has created significant changes in the way organizations globally are looking at broadening the HR function. This group includes traditional HR functions in addition to broader areas focused on culture and workplace. Mark’s current areas of responsibility are Recruiting, Diversity & Belonging, Workplace (Food, Facilities, Safety & Security, and Environments), Learning and Development, as well as Ground Control, a team which is responsible for curating the culture. Airbnb’s mission is to create a world where you can belong anywhere, and the employee experience mission is to ensure employees feel they belong here at Airbnb. “It is a privilege, a ton of fun and a lot of work to scale the organization while ensuring we don’t F#@k up the culture.”

Mark has his JD/MBA from the University of Colorado after four formative years at Colorado College. Mark chose to leave the practice of law after one year to focus his career on helping organizations do the right thing and to attract, develop, engage and retain creative and diverse talent to drive business results, curate the culture and create community connections.

In addition, Mark has been actively involved in helping organizations enable their employees to help those less fortunate through volunteering programs and community involvement, and is currently on the Board of First Graduate, a non profit which helps those who are first in their family to attend college.

Why We’re Launching Finding Happiness

What does it mean to be happy? It’s a loaded question, and the answer is ever-changing—especially in today’s world. In the last few decades, positive psychologists have revived age-old debates surrounding what it means to live a happy and fulfilled life, but they’re not the only ones investigating the topic. 

In this editorial package, we’re exploring happiness to understand the leading theories on how to actually find it and see how those theories align with what society thinks happiness looks like. We delve into the pursuit of happiness and how our definition of happiness has evolved. We explore the science of what makes us happy (and what doesn’t). We discuss why meditators are so happy, and we investigate happiness both at work and on vacation. Plus, we have a series of leaders and happiness experts sharing what happiness means to them.

Stories thus far: 

Here's Why Happiness Always Feels Just Out of Reach

Dan Harris Explains How Meditation Changes Your Happiness Set Point

What Happiness At Work Looks Like, According to Airbnb’s Global Head of Employee Experience

Adam Grant: 'Chasing Happiness Can Chase it Away'

This Former Googler Says The Secret to Happiness is 'An Exceptionally Healthy Mind'

A Happiness Historian Explains Why Even Happy Lives Involve Pain

Why Eric Ripert Says Finding Inner Happiness is The Key to Life

7 Science-Backed Ways to Boost Your Happiness

What We're All Getting Wrong About Vacation, According to a Happiness Researcher

Dan Harris Explains How Meditation Changes Your Happiness Set Point

We’ve all heard that meditation will make us happier, and people who meditate do seem to be pretty happy. After all, the Dalai Lama wrote The Art of Happiness, meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg wrote Real Happiness and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard wrote a book simply titled Happiness. 

But when you’re sitting on a cushion you pulled off the couch with your eyes closed waiting for happiness to hit you while your inbox fills up and your stress levels rise, the connection between the means and the end can seem frustratingly murky. 

To connect the dots, we spoke to someone who's experienced his own happiness boost since he started meditating more than 10 years ago. Dan Harris, Nightlineanchor and bestselling author, decided to take up meditation after having a panic attack on national television in 2004. He then went on to publish 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story. (He now has a podcast and meditation app of the same name and is releasing a book next year exploring the common obstacles to meditation and how to overcome them.) 

In an interview with Thrive Global, he recalls a conversation he had with his friend, Buddhist psychiatrist Dr. Mark Epstein. Having asked many friends about happiness and it’s connection to meditation, Harris found Epstein’s explanation to be the most helpful. 

“Happiness is more of the good stuff and less of the bad,” Epstein told him. Basically, we all have a happiness set point and when good or bad things happen, our happiness rises or falls in tandem. With a steady meditation practice, we start to have higher highs and shallower lows. 

Meditation makes the peaks higher and longer for two reasons, Harris explains. First, “you're actually awake and aware enough to enjoy the good things as they're happening, and you're not leaping so quickly onto the next hit of dopamine.” 

Plus, you’re calmer, he says. But meditation doesn’t relax you the way people often think it does. “It's not because you throw yourself into a cross-legged position that all the sudden you're super calm,” says Harris. It’s because, through awareness, you become less distracted and less emotionally reactive (rather than bristling when your boss gives you tough feedback, you’re able to learn from the conversation and move on, for example) which in turn chills you out a bit. 

The happiness valleys also become shorter and shallower because when you’re mindful, your emotions don’t yank you around as much and it’s more obvious when you’re giving too much power to unproductive feelings. “Stress is useful until it's not,” Harris says, “and having a kind of self-awareness generated through meditation can help you see when you're engaged in the kind of worrying and hand-wringing that’s just a waste of your time and energy.” 

And when the highs are higher and the lows aren’t as low, Harris says an interesting thing happens: “Your set point goes up...your overall level of personal satisfaction is higher.”

Here's Why Happiness Always Feels Just Out of Reach

Meet Matt. A former engineering and economics student, Matt entered the business world as a manager at a software company, where his job was to help other companies figure out what exactly they were trying to accomplish and how they could get there—their fundamental goal, if you will. Unsurprisingly, that goal was often revenue. 

A few years of focusing on this line of thinking brought Matt to a pretty lofty question: what’s the fundamental goal of a human life? What are we really working toward? Almost every goal we set for ourselves, he realized, is a secondary goal—something we pursue not for its own sake, but in service of some higher, bigger-picture aim. This ultimate objective, Matt concluded, must be happiness. “Most human activity is difficult to justify with any other goal,” he told Thrive Global. 

We make a lot of sacrifices in the name of things we expect will bring us happiness, like promotions, bigger paychecks and corner offices. But research suggests that this way of living might be making us miserable. It’s not the pursuit of happiness itself that’s turning us into anxious messes, though. The reason we’re so bad at feeling good is that, according to the leading minds in happiness research, we as a culture fundamentally misunderstand what happiness is and how it should be pursued. Luckily, science is slowly discovering how to change this.

Let’s the start with the current state of happiness in the U.S. Despite the fact that we live in a nation where the right to pursue happiness is right up there with our right to live and be free, research suggests that we’re not a particularly happy bunch. 

In May of this year, the Harris Poll Happiness Index, which measured contentment and life satisfaction in more than 2,000 adults, found that a mere 33 percent of Americans describe themselves as happy. 

Even more disheartening is that happiness in the U.S. is on the decline, according to the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, which measures social progress through reported happiness. Over the last ten years we’ve fallen from number 3 to number 14 out of 155 countries. The report itself summed up the phenomenon like this: “The USA is a story of reduced happiness.” (Norway, Denmark and Iceland consistently rank at or near the top of the list, in case you’re wondering where the happier folks can be found.) 

According to Darrin McMahon, PhD, a history professor at Dartmouth College and author of Happiness: A History, the reason Americans can’t seem to get happy is because we’re defining happiness wrong. And of course, that means we’re pursuing it wrong, too.

For most of recorded human history, happiness meant a full and meaningful life, reserved for only the most noble and moral among us—the “happy few,” as Aristotle called them. But the Age of Enlightenment brought with it a new vision of happiness ruled by pleasure, excitement and materialism (often called hedonia). 

McMahon calls this shift “the revolution in human expectation” where happiness became something we could find exclusively through money, status and success. Almost 300 years later, we still define it the same way. Case in point: if you look up synonyms for happiness in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, the first word you find is pleasure. 

The problem with confusing pleasure and genuine happiness is that when pleasure is the goal, humans are never satisfied. When we finally get the thing we’re chasing—the promotion, the house, the acceptance letter—it either doesn’t feel as good as we think it will or it doesn’t last as long as we hope it will. (We've all experienced this, but there's plenty of research to support it, too.) So we set our sights on something new, always moving the goalpost of success and delaying our elusive joy. 

This tendency to never be satisfied and always want more is what evolutionary psychologists call the hedonic treadmill. It means that whatever level of material goods (or what often passes for happiness in the U.S.) we gain, we’ll adapt to it, stop being happy about it and start wanting more. It’s in our nature to always look ahead, says McMahon, pursuing things that disappear each time we think we’ve captured them. 

The hedonic treadmill is particularly evident in our pursuit of wealth. So much of our time and energy goes into making money, but researchers have found that income doesn’t predict our happiness very well. In a famous 2010 study, Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman, PhD, and Angus Deaton, PhD, found that happiness increases with income, but only up to about $75,000 a year. Beyond that point, a bigger paycheck doesn’t mean more happiness. Plenty of other researchers have reached similar conclusions; according to research by Tim Kasser, PhD, professor of psychology at Knox College, the U.S. is twice as wealthy as it was 50 years ago, but happiness levels haven’t increased to match. 

There’s another approach to happiness that our culture seems to have forgotten though, one that pays greater dividends than our current, misguided path. Sometimes seen as the counterpart to hedonia, eudaimonia refers to the happiness that comes from a life of meaning and purpose and the fulfillment of working towards your potential. And the research suggests that when we prioritize purpose over pleasure, we’re much more likely to find the happiness we’re looking for. 

This brings us back to our old friend Matt, the ex-software manager. His full name is Matt Killingsworth, PhD, and his credentials are more impressive now; after applying to Harvard’s PhD program in psychology, he worked alongside Harvard psychologist and author of Stumbling On Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, PhD to investigate the conditions that lead to a happy life.

Together, they found that people are substantially happier when they’re engaged in the present moment instead of lost in their own thoughts. Our minds essentially toggle between two channels: an internal channel, where our thoughts wander to our last conversation, an upcoming project, our next meal, etc; and an external channel, where we’re focused on the external world and the moment we’re in right now. We spend a great deal of time tuned into the internal channel (46.9 percent of our time, according to the duo’s research), but Killingsworth and Gilbert found that this is when we’re actually the least happy. 

“The more we're able to engage with the present moment and the reality around us,” Killingsworth told Thrive Global, “the happier we tend to be. We're also more productive and more connected to other people. In fact, just about every outcome I've studied looks more favorable when we spend less time inside our own heads." 

Based on their data from more than 5,000 people across 83 countries and 83 occupations, Killingsworth proposed a simple conclusion about what activities bring us the most happiness. Contrary to the idea that pleasure and purpose are on opposite ends of the spectrum, he suggests that we might actually experience the most moment-by-moment pleasure when we engage in activities with meaningful goals, like building relationships, helping others and pursuing personal growth.

“It turns out, when we look at the reality of what actually makes people happy, it's not superficial pleasures,” Killingsworth told Thrive Global. “In fact, very often it’s making meaningful progress on long term goals. It’s building stronger connections with other people. It ties back to all of these deeper human needs that we have.” 

Consider this a classic case of science proving what history, philosophy and religion have been telling us for centuries: if we want to be happy, we should focus on adding more meaning to our lives. We don’t find sustained happiness in our achievements or materialism because, as we now know, that sort of pleasure fades fast. Instead, it’s the activities we do in service of meaningful goals that bring us the most joy. 

Twentieth century French philosopher Alain Badiou observed, “A man is occupied by that from which he expects to gain happiness, but his greatest happiness is the fact that he is occupied." What we’re discovering now is that just being occupied doesn’t make us happy. We have to be occupied by the right kind of goal. 

This Museum Wants to Help You Find Calm Before the Workday Starts

“Look slowly. Clear your head. Silence your phone. Get inspired.” These were the instructions handed to me on a green piece of paper as I entered New York City’s Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. this week. 

On the first Wednesday of every month, “Quiet Mornings” at the MoMA gives New Yorkers a chance to start their day with a little tranquility. From 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., visitors can explore selected galleries in silence and then join a 30-minute guided meditation in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. 

As I made my way through the museum it was clear that the meditation started before the crowd gathered in the sculpture garden. I watched as people roamed around the galleries, carefully and slowly appreciating each piece of art. It was a rare chance, especially at the MoMA, to connect with another person’s creation without any interjections or distractions. 

The formal meditation began at 8:30 a.m. and was led by this month’s teacher, Sah D’Simone. Sah guided our breath and within a few seconds, 50 strangers were breathing in perfect unison. 

Featured from left to right: Ruslan Tovbulatov, Thrive's Director of Client Services and Corporate Marketing; Kate Palmer, Thrive Intern; Agapi Stassinopoulos, Thrive's Facilitator and Meditation Coach; and Gigi Falk (me), Thrive Intern.

Meditation is a practice of observing and accepting whatever’s happening at the moment, but that’s easy to forget when you’re hearing sirens and construction rather than running rivers and bird songs. Bringing the sounds and energy of New York into my meditation reminded me that it’s possible to find stillness in the middle of chaos. Whenever sounds or activity interrupted my meditation, I had the choice either to get frustrated or to be curious about the experience—what exactly is bothering me? How do I know it’s bothering me? What does it feel like? When we choose to be curious, we don’t actually have to block out the crowds and the noise to center ourselves.

After a morning like this, I went into my day feeling a little more grounded and connected to the city and people around me. My rush hour commute to work didn’t bother me and by the time I got to the office I felt focused and energized. 

I could feel my sense of calm dwindle as the day went on, so I made an effort to regain it whenever I could. Devoting my full attention to a few sips of tea or my walk to the bathroom or my food at lunch was enough to help me recognize and appreciate the moment I was in. Starting my morning with a bit of gratitude and mindfulness helped me approach my day with a little more purpose and poise.  

A Buddhist Psychiatrist Explains Why Meditation Isn't About Relaxing

"Try a little experiment. Close your eyes and say to yourself: 'I wonder what my next thought is going to be.' Then become very alert and wait for the next thought. Be like a cat watching a mouse hole. What thought is going to come out of the mouse hole? Try it now." 

Eckhart Tolle offers these meditation instructions in his book The Power of Now. His guidelines lay out in simple terms what it feels like to meditate. But still, so many people think of meditation as an opportunity to practice some breathing, count to 100 or bore themselves to death. 

An ancient practice of understanding the self and recognizing the reality of life in the present moment somehow got muddled down to a boring breathing exercise in our culture. But in the below interview, Jeff Brantley, MD, a psychiatrist, Buddhist practitioner and one of the founders of Duke Integrative Medicine, addresses this common misconception, offering a unique perspective on what it means to study our own minds through mindfulness meditation. 

The first time I sat down with Brantley, I was beginning my sophomore year of college and had just recently discovered meditation. About 100 questions and two hours later, I knew I’d stumbled upon a completely different way of living and being. 

Our conversations prompted me to spend last summer at a Buddhist monastery, go on my first silent retreat and ultimately accrue about 250 hours of meditation. Brantley has shown me how to investigate the most complicated and subtle parts of myself and how to understand an incredibly rich practice that has taken on a new life in our modern world. In the below interview, he shares some of this wisdom. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Thrive Global: How would you describe mindfulness in just one sentence? 

Dr. Jeff Brantley: Mindfulness is about directing attention in a particular way for a particular purpose. 

TG: When you practice mindfulness, what should be going on in your mind?

JB: Mindfulness is an ability simply to notice what’s happening. And the paradox with mindfulness is that we don’t really do it. We say that as a function of our language, but really mindfulness is about being and not doing. Mindfulness really means to pay attention in a way that is simply noticing what’s here, inside the skin and outside, in a way that is not trying to fix it or change it or judge it, but simply to notice sensations, sounds, thoughts, tastes, whatever might be coming into awareness. 

TG: Our culture’s interest in mindfulness has exploded in the last few decades, with everyone from psychologists to business leaders practicing mindfulness. Why do you think that is? 

JB: It’s an ancient human tendency to be curious and to have this capacity to be present. But what really propelled mindfulness forward was the emerging ability to study brain and genomic activity. Instead of just doing simple psychological tests, researchers could actually observe the changing function of the brain and, in some cases, gene expression in those meditating. So there was real evidence linking the physiology, neuroscience and gene expression with meditation and attention. But at the same time, people were experiencing firsthand the benefits of being present and being mindful. One of the main motivators is the actual shift in awareness and the shift in perspective that people who practice mindfulness have experienced. 

TG: What do you think most people misunderstand about mindfulness?

JB: Lots of people think being relaxed and being mindful are the same thing. The goal in mindfulness is awareness, not relaxation. People need to stop judging how aware they are by how relaxed they feel, but rather by how closely they notice what’s actually happening. If you understand that mindfulness is about letting things be as they are and making peace with the conditions of the moment, then you just rest with awareness of that. 

Something else to note is that when you’re practicing mindfulness, you already have all you need. So that moment when you notice you’re sleepy or agitated, just learn to trust the noticing before you get lost in thoughts. Then you cultivate the ability to rest in that noticing more often through different methods of practice. 

TG: Do you need to have a goal when you’re practicing mindfulness? 

JB: I think the goal is to observe the way things are. To notice what’s here and what can be known. To put down the busyness and the activity in order to look more deeply. Another way of putting it is that the goal is to understand what it means to be human. That sounds kind of trite, but we’re understanding our humanity by sitting with it and watching it with awareness. Ask yourself, “what happens if I simply pause and systematically investigate through awareness?”

TG: When I tell people that I meditate, they often respond that they don’t do it because they’re worried they won’t be able to quiet their mind. What advice would you give them?

JB: Well, we’re not trying to quiet the mind, actually. It’s a paradox. We don’t have to make the thoughts go away. We are just seeking to notice when the thoughts are there and when they are not and what they are. But the paradox is, when we stop interfering with our thoughts by creating more thoughts, like judgments or ideas, the mind at some point will find its own way and we might actually experience moments when there’s awareness but there’s no thinking. 

Then we can experience the very significant truth that we are not our thoughts. So many people have spent so much of their lives living in their thoughts that they’ve really lost connection with the experience of being in their body. So once we realize that our thoughts can be listened to without being believed, then the power of our thoughts to dominate us or misinform us or hijack us or stress us out diminishes a lot. And then we’re a lot freer from the tyranny of our own thought patterns. 

TG: How can mindfulness help us avoid the stress and burnout epidemic that so many people are experiencing? 

JB: People are more isolated, more distracted and more frightened by the news and everything that’s out there today. So to remember that they have a capacity to touch a part of themselves that is not disturbed, that is at ease and peaceful, to remember that and to explore that is a huge gift to the world. 

TG: What advice would you give someone who’s never practiced mindfulness meditation before and wants to start today? 

JB: Remember that you’re there to explore and discover. Drop all the ideas you have about yourself and about meditation and simply pay attention. You could sit in a chair and just notice your body sitting there. When you notice your mind gets impatient, rather than giving up, just notice that that’s impatience and impatient thinking. Bring your attention to here and now and simply notice. And if the mind is really busy, you could focus your attention on a sound or on the breath sensation or some sort of anchor. But really it’s about taking the position of awareness and letting the experience of being in your body and in this life and in this moment come to you, without trying to change any of it, for even five minutes. 

An easy way would be to pause as you go through your day and let yourself feel your breath or hear the sounds or smell the smells. Just come back to the present moment. Notice what’s happening, even for a breath or two. It begins to take on a life of its own after a while. 

TG: In your book Daily Meditations for Calming Your Anxious Mind, you say “The way of awareness thrives upon a great curiosity about what life is really about.” How do you cultivate that curiosity in your daily life? 

JB: Curiosity is an energizing factor. When we get curious about something, we tend to find some energy and some interest in what we’re doing. First of all, it’s important to just value curiosity. What if we shifted at any moment and became curious about things? 

What I find to be a helpful device in nurturing my curiosity in any activity or moment is to actually lay that out as an intention. I ask myself, “what if I were more curious right now?” And I’ll just think of a few questions about what’s going on that helps me pay closer attention, and then see what might be revealed about the moment. It can be the most ordinary things that can lead us to some remarkable experiences. The present moment is vast if we just start looking around. 

Dr. Jeff Brantley is a psychiatrist and a mindfulness instructor. He is the author of Calming Your Anxious Mind: How mindfulness and compassion can free you from anxiety, fear, and panic and is the co-author, with Wendy Millstine, of the Five Good Minutes series. He’s meditated for 30 years with some of the world’s most well-respected meditation and Buddhist teachers, including Thich Nhat Hanh, Larry Rosenberg, Christina Feldman, and Jon Kabat-Zinn. He is also also one of the founding faculty members of Duke Integrative Medicine where he helped launch Duke’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. 

Why I Spent A Week Without My Phone

This post is part of Thrive’s “We Tried It” series, where Thrive employees experiment with strategies to improve their work and home lives, perform better and boost their well-being. Up this week: a five-day phone cleanse. 

Working at a company like Thrive that encourages a healthy relationship with technology, I’ve become particularly aware of the amount of time, energy, and attention I devote to my phone. Every day I read an article or research study commenting on our culture's electronic addictions, and the conversations around how technology hijacks our minds or how checking likes is the new smoking never become less jarring.

My phone habits are, I’d like to think, better than most. I seldom take my phone out in company and it’s a rare site to see me scrolling through social media. But when I’m walking to or from work, standing in an elevator, or eating by myself, I’ll often be checking emails, texting friends, or reading articles. Sometimes it feels more productive than the alternative of just waiting around, but I think the real reason I do it is because the habit of being constantly stimulated is a hard one to break. It’s a dangerous game when our brains grow accustomed to unhealthy habits. Neuroscientists are beginning to understand that when our brains get used to something—whether cigarettes or likes—they start expecting the next hit. We can get stuck in those habits for years unless we actively pursue change. 

With all the research I've been reading on what our phones are doing to our mental health, I’ve begun to resent the time I spend with my clingy handheld friend. So I decided to leave my phone at home for a week when I went off to work. I know your chest is probably tightening with anxiety just imagining this. And so was mine, but that’s why I needed to do it. 

The rules were straightforward: I would leave my phone at home when I went to the office in the morning, and whenever I got home I was free to use it or take it with me. 

Here’s a recap of my days: 

Monday, June 26

I won’t lie. I was pretty apprehensive walking out the door without my phone this morning. The night before, I texted my family and my three closest friends to inform them of my impending phonelessness, so at least no one would be worried. But what if someone needs me or I miss out on plans? Do I have alarms or meetings set that I’ll forget about without my phone? What if I get hopelessly lost on my way to work? 

During my walk to work I usually listen to music or a podcast, so the commute was a bit different. I decided to use the 30 minute trip to practice a little informal walking meditation. It wasn't as enjoyable as EDM in the morning (thank you, Steve James) or learning the secrets of the universe (thank you, On Being), but it was a great opportunity to "choose mindfulness," as my teacher puts it. Just noticing the feeling of my body—that constant tingling we often tune out—and where I was moving in relation to the buildings around me allowed me to tune into my senses. I could feel the gravity of the present moment just a little more as I noticed the colors, the movement, the stillness around me. For a few seconds, I was walking through “the country of the present moment,” as Thich Nhat Hanh puts it. 

Throughout the day I experienced phantom buzzes, and when I heard someone’s phone beep, I would instinctively reach for mine. I had the urge to check my phone a couple times, but just noticing where and when that impulse surfaced was illuminating. 

I was a little anxious during the day. More shocking, though, was the massive shift in my state of mind when I was back with my phone that night. Feeling much more distracted and less productive, I decided to maintain the phone cleanse to the best of my ability when I was home. Most of my phone time consisted of responding to texts, but I realized that a quicker alternative was calling or using audio message, so I opted for one of those most of the week.

Tuesday, June 27th

Already feeling the attentional burden of my phone after a night and morning back together, I was excited to leave it behind today, although still slightly uneasy about it. The commute to work was a bit boring, but I practiced walking meditation again. It’s not an easy practice to keep up, but seeing the subtle shift in all my senses when I tap into observation mode never really gets old. 

My work day was more productive than normal. Without my attention being pulled away by my phone every few minutes, I was much more focused on whatever was in front of me. I also felt particularly centered and energized. I guess what they say about multitasking is true.

After work I went for drinks with two friends (who met me at my office so I wouldn’t get lost). The three of us watched the sun set over the Manhattan skyline from a rooftop in Brooklyn. It was a stunning sight. With no choice but to take in the scene, I enjoyed a rare moment of pure presence. It’s not often we stare at something beautiful with no attempt to hold onto it, share it, or even say a word about it. Highly recommended.

Wednesday, June 28th

Getting into the rhythm now: happily left the phone at home, then did the same walking meditation on my walking commute. While I had the occasional urge to check my phone throughout the day, I was getting used to being phoneless. My day felt longer and fuller.

The following evening was an exciting test of my phoneless survival skills. I navigated the subway, gripping the directions I’d scribbled down before leaving work, and met my mom uptown for a dinner party. Finding the event and my mom was surprisingly easy and I was quite proud of myself by the time I got there. I sat through a long speech, and there were points where I would have appreciated a digital distraction. Weirdly, it was a little refreshing to feel bored. 

Thursday June 29th

I left my phone on my kitchen counter, meditated to work, and spent the day generally focused and productive. I was really comfortable without my phone. By this point, anyone that I didn’t inform about my experiment was accustomed to my late responses, and I was accustomed to the peace and quiet of being off the smartphone grid. 

Friday, June 30th

This morning I met a coworker for breakfast. He was a couple minutes late, and rather than checking my phone I just sat, waited and focused on being present. Perched outside under the shade of an umbrella, I watched the morning light fill the buildings, witnessing the subtleties of New York that are so often left unnoticed.  It’s not often we see someone just sitting and doing nothing. I might be making this up, but I do think I got a few weird looks for just sitting there, doing nothing in particular. 

By then, the withdrawal symptoms were gone. No more phantom buzzes, no strong urge to check any notifications or texts. As the little discomforts of being phoneless fell away towards the end of the week, I realized that I felt calmer and more centered than I have in long time. 

All these peaceful moments in my day seemed to emerge out of nowhere. Just by using the in-between moments—the elevator rides, the red lights, the many little moments of waiting throughout the day—to take a breath and look around rather than check my phone, I could experience a sense of presence that normally feels so out of reach in the busyness of daily life. There are a million little opportunities throughout the day where we can appreciate our lives— “Wow, I’m young still,” “It’s summer,” “I’m healthy,” “I don’t have anything to worry about this second.” Not looking at my phone—and instead paying attention to New York as it unfolded around me—allowed me to pull off a bit of a magic trick: just like that, summertime stretched out a little more. 

I tried it. Should you?

Realizing how much happier and calmer I was all week, I’ve made a serious effort to maintain a healthy relationship with my phone. I’ve been much more conscious of when and where I take it. I try to be even more careful about keeping it out of sight when I’m in conversation. I never have it out during meals, even if I’m eating alone. When I’m waiting for someone or something I actively choose to just wait rather than scroll. I also leave my phone on silent pretty much all the time and I keep it out of sight as often as I can. These are little things any of us can try. 

Maybe it’s not practical to leave your phone at home all week, but creating a little distance is definitely doable. To start, you could choose three activities a day that will be phoneless: three small moments of boredom or waiting where it’s all too easy to reach for your phone, like in the elevator, in line, or at alone at a meal. See what happens when you don’t. There’s a whole world that we forget to experience when we delve into our phones at the first sign of having nothing to do. In the busyness of our daily lives, we’re already stripped of so many opportunities to appreciate what’s around us, but there’s so much to gain back in few quiet moments with our phones in our pockets. 

Why It’s Important to Learn to Stop

I studied in Denmark this fall, and on my way home from class each day I biked over the Langebro Bridge across the inner harbor of Copenhagen. Over charming canals I pedaled past stunning sunsets, only drawing my eyes from the water when my bike began to swerve from lack of attention. A quiet voice yearned to remain on the bridge, watching the colors of the city fade into darkness. But a louder voice was uninterested in sparing five minutes, just wanting to get home before six and get ready for dinner.

This seemed to be a theme during my time in Copenhagen. I had the quiet desire to take everything in and rest in the glorious presence of each moment. But the city’s energy and the long list of places and activities to check off my abroad bucket list swept me up into a whirlwind of constant movement and planning.

Each time I crossed that bridge, I noticed a gentle longing. Until one day, I felt myself come to a halt, barely recognizing the hand clasping the brake. Something in me needed to be on that bridge longer than the time it took to bike over it.

Pulling my bike off the road and leaning over the bridge’s metal railing, I watched as the sun danced rainbows on the water and the sky took on a misty gold quality. I felt a softening in my eyes and my chest that I hadn’t experienced since the summer. And for the first time since arriving in that city, I experienced the true richness of where I was. When darkness replaced the sunset sky, I drew my eyes from the horizon and noticed that six other bikers had stopped along the bridge.

Maybe the fault lies in our habits or maybe in our social norms. We are in the habit of existing in the future while our souls yearn to exist right now. But those instances of aware connectedness with a moment and place, with no thoughts of the past or future, are truly what give life its beauty and meaning.

Simply listening to the quiet voice that longs for presence and fulfillment has the power to transform the quality of a life. It might even make that voice in others just loud enough to do the same.

The Importance of Living an Authentic Life

You have thirty days to live and you’re mapping out exactly how to spend these last few weeks. What would you prioritize? Where would you find meaning? Is the life you imagine in your last thirty days drastically different from the one you live now?

Only when faced with our own mortality do we truly consider what exactly it is that we want out of life. When we don’t take the time to contemplate our truest intentions, we let days, weeks, and years slip by on autopilot, waiting for the happy days ahead that always rest mockingly just over the horizon. Of course, many have the courage to escape this fate, but when a palliative nurse named Bronnie Ware recorded the top five regrets of the dying, she found that the most common regret was not having the courage to live an authentic life, true to ones values and desires rather than guided by others’ expectations.

In his book, Happiness, Matthieu Ricard recounts a conversation he had with a young man working in the Hong Kong stock exchange. His life was devoted to work, and he often slept in the office, so that he could access his computer just before the New York stock exchange closed. Once or twice a year he would travel to the beach, and while admiring the beauty and serenity of the ocean, would think, “What a strange life I lead. And yet I’ll start all over again come Monday morning.”

Is it a lack of priorities or of courage that keep some of us from making change in our lives? We stand at the brink of endless possibilities in our one precious life, so why do so many of us yearn for the serenity of the ocean, but remain in our office buildings? Like a bird that is freed from its cage only to return back to captivity, overwhelmed with the vastness of the world, we find comfort in familiarity and fear the unknown consequences of pursing the less traveled path of passion and authenticity. So we leave the expansive tranquility of the beach and return to the office.

The man-made box of modern life is only as confining as our perception of it. We underestimate our agency to create the life we want to lead, and rather than taking the time to uncover our most fundamental values and desires, and devise an existence that compliments those intentions, we fall victim to what Ware calls, “the treadmill of a work existence.” We work with the ultimate intention of finding happiness, but all too often, the means contradict the end. Balance and flourishing, however, are attainable by keeping our fundamental intentions in mind and redefining our vision of success.

Monastery Lessons on Caffeine, Pain and Liberation

It was about noon and my third day without caffeine in at least six months. With long days and little sleep, I spent my first two weeks at the monastery drowning myself in British black tea to feign energy between the hours of 4:30am and 11pm. But as I attuned to the subtleties of my energy levels, I sensed the erraticism of a body relying on caffeine. My days were filled with moments of blind exhaustion followed by energetic oblivion with little time for vigilant stillness, an essential quality for fruitful meditation. I succumbed to delirium and fatigue in those first two days of abstinence, but eventually the turbulence of a caffeinated mind was replaced by a trustworthy energy. Much lighter and freer was this self-induced flame.

Glowing with a natural vitality on my third day sans caffeine, I relaxed into my meditation cushion and began to eat when I noticed a gentle presence next to me, an older Scottish man whose poise and posture suggested years of dedicated meditative practice. It was a Saturday and visitors traveled from miles away for the weekly meditation class. We watched together as throngs of men and women rushed into the temple with a determination more fit for a courtroom than a meditation hall, their forceful footsteps in jarring contrast to the peaceful ground they treaded on. “All of these people hurrying up to slow down,” he noted.

As a jazz guitarist, Neil often drew parallels between music and meditation. His eyes twinkled as he described the silence just before the first note of a song. Glorious anticipation. Then the silence following the final note. Chilling emptiness. This silence, he explained, is there the whole time, gently resting behind the melody, equally as poignant and beautiful.

And just like the silence behind the music, there is a subtle omnipresent silence within each of us, behind whatever emotion, thought, or drama is played in the forefront. It simply observes when we are anxious, in love, brokenhearted, inspired, bored. Dharma teacher Catherine Ingram eloquently describes this as a sanctuary “not in the circumstances of the world but in the recognition of the silence that contains it.”

To connect with the silence behind my melodies, I began practicing strong determination sits, a form of insight meditation taught by the venerated Burmese meditation teacher S. N. Goenka. During these one-hour sits I refrain from any movement whatsoever. Head, back, arms, and legs remain stone-like, and small nuisances, such as itches, are quickly overshadowed by throbbing pain invading my crisscrossed legs. Within thirty minutes my feet are no longer my own. I am unable to sense their contact with the ground and powerless in even moving a toe. After forty-five minutes the numbing pain crawls up my thighs, and as everything below my hips vibrates with agony, my entire body responds to the perceived threat. Heart pounding, eyes tearing, breath shortening. In the midst of internal chaos and external stillness I am forced to overcome my blind aversion and quietly observe the series of sensations in my body. And through a perspective that generates acceptance of life’s conditions, I notice an emerging capability to peacefully experience both pleasure and pain.

Our natural reaction to pain is panic. But a survival instinct that has served us well throughout evolution causes more harm than good in the relative safety of the modern world. Whether our chests are constricting as we cram for an exam or our stomachs are growling because our schedule excludes an opportunity for lunch, our bodies respond to small struggles as major threats that we reject and futilely attempt to evade. But this rejection, rather than the discomfort itself, is the greater component of distress and anxiety. If we just notice the stress or the hunger rather than fruitlessly fight it, we settle into silence, and our emotional reactivity dissolves.

How liberating it is to view emotional or physical pain as an opportunity to transcend our instinctive conditioned aversions. Behind the melody of frustration in traffic or of boredom in class, we can practice noticing the silence that nonjudgmentally observes and accepts both the conditions of life in that moment and our internal reactions. As the American meditation teacher Shinzen Young describes, each time we rest in silent observation, we are overcoming our emotional conditioning and “are moment by moment tasting purification.”

Crucial Lessons From My Time In A Monastery

I have focused my meditation in these past days on the art of breathing, as I use my breath to draw every corner of my wandering, sleepy, or agitated mind back into my current moment of existence. By continuously drawing my attention to nothing but the rising and falling of my chest, I train my mind to notice the subtlety of every passing moment, building an association between my breath and the feeling of present moment awareness. Basic classical conditioning. Then, as I walk the monastery grounds, my breath gently guides my entire being into the calm, spacious energy of bare awareness. My heartbeat slows as my eyes soften, and I settle into greater recognition of the space around me. Through an inextricable entanglement of each of my senses, my mind and body absorb every bit of information that each moment has to offer. 

In this state of awareness, I peer past the doors of standard perceptions, as the overlooked intricacies of our world expose themselves to me. I don’t just see a tree to my right, as I walk from the meditation hall back to my room at 6 a.m. I see sinuous roots erupting from the ground and soaring dozens of feet above me. Part of the earth and part of the sky. The animated patterns of bark climbing the trunk are only put to shame by the sudden dispersion of branches that scatter like repelling magnets over my head. And as the branches taper, the sun and wind mingle to illuminate the flurry of dancing green leaves, imbuing the structure with a sense of life and breath. 

Utter beauty can arise from meditation, but often times the seated practice itself is a frustrating confrontation with the depths of my own mind, as I fight the urge to entertain myself with stories of the past or future. Recognizing this urge is a benchmark in my meditative practice, as I become able to watch these tendencies from a distance, simply noticing my mind’s desires to entertain itself. I am no longer fighting. If I am aware enough to detect the fullest and emptiest feelings of my lungs, then I am devoting enough attention to my breath, and the thoughts that enter my mind during this time are received with a sense of distance and acceptance. 

Eventually, with gentle focus on my breath I calm the chatter in my head. I am no longer retelling stories from the past or planning for the future, and I softly release everything but the moment I find myself in. In these scarce moments, I relinquish my entire world. As I sit alone in silence with closed eyes, nothing exists outside of my own mind. And when I am no longer lost in mental titillations, I am left in a moment with absolutely nothing but the filling and emptying of my lungs. As I renounce thought, I let go of everything that existed before that moment and everything that exists after it, completely detaching from my past and my future. I see their intrinsic insubstantiality, and with this comes a strong desire to live wholeheartedly in the moment I am in. 

As I witness the seamless flow of each moment into the next, I develop an eerie sense that nothing outside of the present truly exists. The passing of time is a strange phenomenon. We are all strapped into a train that never stops or turns back, staring out the window at an ever-changing scene. What we see and experience through the window changes ceaselessly, leaving the last scene to our memory and the next one to our imagination. Most of us desperately fight this fate, peering ahead to predict the next turn or staring back helplessly as the train distances from our object of focus. The scene right in front of us is all that truly exists, but something that transforms every moment is incredibly difficult to trust, so we dwell in the past or the future, which paradoxically feels more substantial. But if we simply look straight out the window and practice seeing only what is in front of us, we can take each moment in stride, loving it, letting it go, and welcoming the next one.

With just over a week of focused contemplative practice, I settle into a new perspective, as I attempt to understand my existence as a succession of singular events that appear and disappear endlessly. With greater clarity I recognize that to experience a life where I feel sincerely alive, I must learn to exist in the fluidity of the moment I am in. Letting go of thoughts from other times or places, even for just an hour, gives me a taste of what it’s like to be alive right now. Learning to live mindfully is truly just learning to live.

I’m Spending My Summer Vacation In A Monastery

At 4:30 a.m. I awake to the sound of my alarm. My weariness dissipates as I walk to the meditation hall, cool English air permeating my cotton pants and t-shirt. Crossed-legged with a small brown book in hand, I join in fifteen minutes of Buddhist chants before the ringing of a standing bell invites all the women of the monastery to begin our first hour of meditation. 

Chores begin at 6:30 a.m. With my hair pulled back and thick yellow gloves on, I spend the next forty-five minutes cleaning our living space. Bathrooms, shower, windows, floor. My routine has become systematic, and in the ease of simple regimen, I find myself unbothered by the tasks, able to enjoy the modest pleasures of cleanliness. 

At 7:15 we meet in the sala for a reliable breakfast of fruit and oatmeal, lovingly called gruel. Propped up on a meditation cushion, I notice the consistency and flavor of my food, a fairly easy task when you haven’t eaten since noon the previous day. The next few hours are spent in the kitchen, preparing lunch for the monastics and visitors. 

While each of the monks and nuns fills their alms bowls and migrates to their private quarters, I sit in meditation, observing the feelings of hunger and impatience. Finally, seated on the floor with my back resting against the wall, I indulge in my last meal of the day. 

Afternoons are unscheduled, and guests generally pass the time in the meditation hall or library, but I often find myself following sheep through hilly wheat fields or trees through canopying forests. Tea at 5 p.m. brings the community together once again before our evening meeting in the temple at 7:30. In this final gathering of the day, we sit for a period of chanting before the standing bell propels my mind into its familiar meditative state. Here it will rest for one hour before being released by the same sound. 

Contemplative practice had fallen into my lap last year when I enrolled in a course on the history and psychology of Buddhist meditation. Something about these teachings made perfect sense to me, addressing the most fundamental questions that had subtly woven through my life for as long as I can remember.

In the months following this discovery, as I developed a modest meditative practice and rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism, an unshakeable curiosity was planted within me. A deep sense of something greater. Eventually this calling led me to a number of individuals that were able to guide me, and after dozens of emails, phone calls, and lunches, I mapped out a summer that I hoped would satiate my longing curiosity. At first, the idea of spending my summer at a Buddhist monastery was just a passing thought, a sort of joke or dream. But each time the thought crossed my mind, the possibility become slightly more feasible. 

Now as I write from the small library of Amaravati Monastery, surrounded by the aroma of old books, I am unable to imagine spending these summer months any other way. Situated about an hour north of London, Amaravati has been my home for the past ten days, where I have been given a bed and food in exchange for daily chores and adherence to the contemplative practices of each day. And with countless resources and ample time for meditation, I am able to delve deeper and more fully into a world previously unknown to me.

3 Lessons From My Spiritual Pursuit

As my first blog post began to disseminate through the news feeds of my friends, family, and beyond, I was soon met with eager responses from a range of individuals, each with a unique story and a distinct way of connecting with my message of mindfulness. I was elated and humbled by the opportunity to discuss a topic so close to my heart with those that shared my feelings of dissatisfaction with. and curiosity about, the world we live in. But more importantly, through this dialogue, I am beginning to better understand why our culture is in such desperate need of contemplative practice and why we have not already adopted such philosophies. 

When I reflect on how my understanding of the world developed to where it is now, to where I have decided to devote my summer to spiritual pursuit and personal growth, I realize that over the past few years I have had the unbelievable fortune of happening upon a very specific series of documentaries, books, and individuals that profoundly impacted the way I view myself and the world. 

Following my discovery of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I stumbled upon a documentary called I Am that dared me to question Western materialism, helping me recognize the overwhelming difference between the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of capital. Around the same time, I read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, which provided me with my first glimpse of spirituality and an unorthodox view of creating fulfillment and joy. Next, I found David Brook’s The Road to Character, which reaffirmed my intuitions and gave me the confidence to embrace and cultivate values greater than those on our resumes. And Chade-Meng Tan’s Search Inside Yourself tactfully integrated emotional intelligence with meditative practice, all imbued with the science-based research and pragmatism of a Google engineer. This series of books and films eventually inspired me to enroll in a course at Duke on the history and psychology of Buddhist mediation, which infused my passion in this field with widespread literary, historic, and scientific knowledge. While this collection of material explores highly disparate topics, ranging from neuroscience to ethical inquiry, their combined message afforded me a fuller understanding of the human experience and the pursuit of our noblest intentions.

I will be forever grateful for the course of events that slowly opened my mind in this way, but I recognize that most people won’t have the luck or the time to happen upon the knowledge that transformed my thinking. And while there is no magic formula for transcending the personal beliefs that have guided our behavior and defined our concept of the self, the powerful voices and opinions I have heard in this field over the past two years profoundly influenced my idea of how my own life should be lived. For those that resonate with the doubts and fears addressed in my first post and that are searching for remedy or change, I have attempted here to explore the three greatest lessons that influenced me the most in the past few years. 

First, I have come to realize the overwhelming importance and power of my thoughts. In a world that encourages infinite to-do lists and unrelenting working habits, we are rarely given the opportunity or the encouragement to simply reflect. Most of us grew up with grades, awards, and praise serving as concrete proof of our achievements and efforts, causing us to undervalue actions that don’t provide us with immediate and tangible results, such as our own thoughts, opinions, hopes, and fears. 

But, by paying attention to our thoughts, we may come to recognize that they are not as grounded in reality as we once believed. By acknowledging our opinions, we might realize that they are not totally our own. By contemplating our hopes, we may come to better understand our true aspirations. And by recognizing our fears, we may be able to accept them rather than suppress them. The first greatest lesson I have learned this year is that thoughts should be valued above all else because our thoughts define and create our reality. 

The remarkable and exquisite consequence of nurturing an appreciation for our thoughts is that we naturally begin to reflect on them. The second greatest lesson I learned, which grew out of the first, is the importance of self-reflection. Examining our lives gives us the gift of lucidity, helping us see with clear eyes rather than through a lens of past experiences and exposures. With this, we are able to cultivate the clarity to identify and the confidence to pursue paths that inspire and energize us, while letting go of futures that no longer suit our intentions. As Socrates declared, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

By examining my own life, I have begun to refine and redefine my values in a way that deeply aligns with my personal vision of success, as opposed to my parents’ or culture’s. I recognize now that it is incredibly easy to go through life following a path of others’ expectations, but deceivingly difficult to establish our own standards of success. To me, a successful day is not one spent tirelessly working from morning until evening, even if I finish my most challenging assignment. It is one in which I feel a sense of inspiration from, and pride for, my work. It is one where I am present enough to enjoy the warmth and comfort of my morning cup of tea. It is one where I have time to practice yoga in the evening and appreciate the endless flow of conversation with my sister over dinner. Thus, the third greatest lesson I would like to share is that a truly successful day is one infused with the joys that make us human and that make life worth living, not one with the most checks off of a to-do list. 

We must honor our thoughts. We must continuously examine our lives as they are now and as we want them to be. And we must define success for ourselves and have the audacity to believe in our definition. At first, it takes courage to shift our priorities in what initially feels unorthodox and even wrong. In our culture, it sounds foolish, or even lazy, to prioritize a yoga class over an extra hour of studying. But just a few steps back and a bit of confidence can help us realize that our existence is greater than the assignments, deadlines, and expectations that we agonize over and sacrifice our daily lives for. Through evaluating our motives and seeking to redefine our priorities, we can slowly become the people that we want to be, living the lives that we truly want to live.
 

How Mindfulness Gives My Life Meaning

Inundated with all the stress of being a high school junior, I found myself at age seventeen feeling deeply unfulfilled in my daily life. I was constantly in a state of urgency and anxiety, and never felt like there was enough time in the day to appreciate or enjoy life. With all of my attention and energy devoted to schoolwork and ultimately college acceptance, it seemed like I was forced to sacrifice my daily happiness for distant goals. While I spent day after day going through the motions of a hardworking high school student, there seemed to be something more profound and meaningful in my life that was missing. I was constantly haunted by a fear that if I died one of those nights, I would know that I never really lived. 

My perceived necessity to constantly prioritize my goals and prospective happiness at the expense of my present happiness confused and saddened me. However, towards the end of my junior year I discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson, a nineteenth century American philosopher whose beliefs uniquely diverged from his contemporaries. I was inspired by how he saw the world, and the feelings of helplessness that had troubled me for so long began to dissipate. After reading one of his most famous essays, “Nature,” I opened up to the idea that happiness was attainable by appreciating the ordinary pleasures that surrounded me, like the sound of my mom’s voice waking me up in the morning, or the thin streak of light that illuminates my favorite study spot at 5 p.m. every afternoon. 

In “Nature,” Emerson writes, “I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.” Because our minds are always filled with cultural and societal impressions, we are never truly alone with our thoughts. But if we are dedicated and determined enough to attempt to free ourselves from such a mental burden, we can experience a profound stillness and appreciation for just existing in the world we live in.  

I was amazed by the sense of wonder and joy possible through just paying attention to and deeply appreciating the unexceptional everyday events in our lives. And, while not much changed in terms of school and commitments, I became increasingly aware of the small pleasures that always surrounded me, and the joy that I gained from this discovery allowed me to go to sleep every night feeling like I had lived.

What I wasn’t aware of at seventeen was that this way of thinking, or way of life rather, has a name. It’s called mindfulness, and there is an entire movement around it. Mindfulness is defined as a non-judgmental state of heightened awareness of thoughts, emotions, and experiences on a moment-by-moment basis. From experience, I can tell you that this definition becomes more and more meaningful as you develop a meditative practice and study the philosophy that led to such a definition. 

During my time at Duke, I have learned about mindfulness and meditation, as well as contemplative neuroscience, an area of study that integrates western knowledge of the brain with Buddhist practices such as meditation, and in the past month, I have created my own major, titled Cognitive Neuroscience. My intention in creating this major, which centers around neuroplasticity, brain activation, and the relationship between behavior and the brain, is to combine this knowledge with my personal exploration of Buddhism and meditation in order to develop a deeper appreciation for contemplative science and the neurological and psychological underpinnings of mindfulness and happiness. 

While I have integrated the practice and philosophy of meditation into my academics and my daily life at Duke, I have only begun to scratch the surface of the teachings in this field. This summer will be a chance for me to explore this area in a much more profound way. In June, I will attend the Mind and Life Summer Research Conference, which brings together top researchers in neuroscience, psychology, meditation, and Buddhism to foster an interdisciplinary exploration of the mind. I’ll fly directly from this conference to Amaravati, the first Theravada Buddhist monastery in England, where I will spend one month living as a monastic and studying Buddhist meditation and texts. I know that my experiences this summer will be transformative, and I look forward to documenting them here for myself and for you.