Joy and Balance

If the Buddha Got Fat: A Mindful Path to Weight Loss and Abundant Health

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

In the West, we have adopted a feast (literally) or famine mentality to health.  We seem to either eat whatever we want to, whenever we want to or we starve ourselves to lose it all.   After experiencing both the life of luxury in his father’s palace and then the life of an ascetic starving himself away, Buddha came to what he called the Middle Way.   No where is a middle way more needed than in our relationship to diet and health.

As a life coach, I am very familiar with helping people make change in their lives.  And I know that the feast or famine approach doesn’t work.  Neither does relying on the authority of whatever latest health guru has published a diet suggesting you eat nothing but watermelon or everything but bacon.   As Dr. Dean Ornish has found repeatedly in studies funded by the National Institute of Health, Mutual of Omaha Insurance and other scientific bodies, we can decrease our weight and increase our health so that we feel more energetic, more flexible and stronger when we have the right tools and support.

Being the Change You Wish to See in the World: A Different Kind of Resolution

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

Making radical changes in our lives often come from seemingly small places.  In a call catching up with a good friend the other day she told me that this year she was creating the possibility for herself to be joy.   She had shifted her thinking around joy from something to be acquired (outside herself) to something to be lived (always accessible).  This small change in thinking embodies the words of Gandhi when he said “to be the change you want to see in the world” and it provides a powerful example to us all.  Changing our perspective can change our lives overnight.

Choosing Hope in the New Year: Acting "As If"

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

 I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any particularly strong psychic powers.  I don’t know what the New Year will bring.  In fact, I don’t know what the new day will bring.  What I do know is that when I have strong expectations then I often see the things that confirm them.   Acknowledging this, every day before I get out of bed I say a prayer of thanks (to any and all those who are listening including my dog) for another day and set my intention for it to be filled with learning and joy.   And most of the time that works pretty well.   When it doesn’t I rely on a concept that psychologists sometimes call “Acting As If.”    This is the basic notion that when we act “as if” something is so then we often create the circumstances for that to happen.   As we approach the New Year, even on those days that we have listened to one too many economists (whose powers of prognostication have seemed pretty limited lately as well), we can choose hope and possibility if we choose to act “as if” they are already here!

Making Change Last: Addressing Deep Patterns and Finding Peace

Scott Mills, Ph.D

    No matter what we are trying to create in our lives, when we change directions it is important to ask whether there are some deeper patterns that are affecting our progress.   These are places where we leak our power and potential and end up feeling frustrated in the process.  It’s a bit like trying to fill up a bucket that has a hole in it.   No matter how hard you try, your efforts won’t have the affect you want until you fix the hole.  There are three main holes that are worth your attention as you fill your life full of your dreams.

The Poetry of Purpose and the Juiciness of Waking Up!

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

 As I was reflecting on how I work with people to help them see their sense of purpose, a dear friend sent the following poem from David Whyte.  It reminded me that finding our sense of purpose is a lot like waking up.  So many of us have been asleep to who we are and what we are all about.  The only option is to wake up. 

    It is not, however, just to wake up to the mundane, to the ordinary, to the shrill cry of our alarm signaling another empty day but rather to the fullness of life.  We wake up to our full potential when we claim our purpose and our place in the human family!

A Big Enough Vision to Succeed!

“Learn to recognize the counterfit coins          
 That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
 But then drag you for days
 Like a broken man
 Behind a farting camel.” Hafiz

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

For many of us, our world has become quite small. In the midst of the great global information highway and multinational corporations, the possibility of eating foods from around the world in our own backyard, and instant news casts telling us of the latest from the smallest corners of the globe, we have gotten lost. It isn’t hard to feel powerless and nearly invisible in this world. What can you do that really matters? So we go about living small lives and hope someone else will do something to save us. Margaret Mead is famous for saying, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” We still have the power to change the world even if only one person at a time. Having a big enough vision for ourselves creates the space to do that.

Paying Attention to Life: Exercising Awareness and Changing Our Lives

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

Our lives are busy, busy, busy.  There’s little time to slow down and pay attention.  We are too busy getting where we are going to even notice that we aren’t sure where that is.  Winston Churchill once said, “Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”  Our efforts to create change in our lives are often just another thing to add to the list of busyness.  But what if their was another way?  What if we slowed down long enough to see what we really wanted in our lives, to decide that much of our busyness is unnecessary and we took the time to really make the choices that would make us happy?  This article offers a simple set of steps to bring you back to yourself long enough to see if you are really going the direction you want to.

First, breathe! 

This may seem like a strange thing to ask you to do.  If you weren’t breathing you would be passed out or worse yet, dead.  But when we don’t pay attention to life we are walking dead on autopilot with our lives completely out of our control.  We have given up the power to make choices and let our old patterns carry us along like the  currents of a river.  If you can stop for a moment and just pay attention to your breath, the breath going in and filling your lungs and out back to where it came, a little different as it has taken on a part of you and you have taken in a part of it, you can begin to come back to life.  Try this now for at least a minute, five if you can.  Don’t worry.  I’ll wait.

New Year's Resolutions Don't Work: A Mindful Approach to Change

Scott Mills, Ph.D.

What would happen if you made a list of all the New Year’s Resolutions that you have ever made and then checked off all that you have actually achieved?  If you are like most people, you would find that not much had been checked off.  That’s because New Year’s Resolutions don’t work.  According to some experts up to 97% of New Year's resolutions aren't kept every year.  They rarely have the thought and energy behind them to allow for real change to happen in our lives.  The good news is that adopting a mindful approach to change, we can move our lives towards greater joy and balance while achieving our goals.  

This article covers six principles derived from Buddhist teachings that can help us create change in our lives.   This is only a beginning.  I will continue to post on this topic throughout the year but for now, these six principles will help you move into the life you want to create.