Mindful Mondays #8: Solstice Edition ❄️
Zen poetry, Slow Holidays, mindfulness for engineers, and lots of caffeine
Good morning and welcome to another edition of Mindful Mondays. This week I’m excited about the holiday season. Today is the first day of Hanukkah, and we also have the solstice, Yule, and Christmas this week. I honestly don’t know how I’m going to focus and get any work done—hopefully my mindfulness practice will help!
Chris’s Writing
I Can’t Stop Telling People About This Obscure Zen Poetry Book
Last week, the popular Twitter account @takezopure asked, “What’s the most underrated book you’ve ever read?”
His question received 194 replies, including some great recommendations such as Vagabonding by Rolf Potts and Stoner by John Williams. Predictably, plenty of people also replied with books that, while worthwhile, aren’t underrated at all, such as James Clear’s uber-bestseller Atomic Habits.
I responded with a true long shot: Crow with No Mouth, an obscure book of poems by the 15th century Zen master Ikkyū, in English versions by Stephen Berg.
Continue reading on Medium (Warning: some of Ikkyu’s poems are NSFW!)
Articles of Interest
The Slow Holidays Manifesto: I can’t believe it’s been 10 (11?) years now since I first wrote this manifesto while sitting in the Denver airport waiting for a delayed plane. While there might be certain details I would change today, I still stand by the values I expressed in this essay. If you’re looking for a more mindful approach to the holidays, give it a read and let me know what you think.
How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems: This article from the Harvard Business Review reports on two recent studies showing how mindfulness can help engineers improve divergent thinking and come up with more creative solutions. The authors suggest that mindfulness training should be incorporated into engineering education. (It’s already been adopted by several Fortune 100 companies).
Make Before You Manage: This blog post from Tim Ferriss is short but sweet. If you’re a creative person and you’re feeling overwhelmed this time of year, consider making something (even if it’s as simple as a doodle or a haiku) in the morning before you check your email or start putting out the fires of the day.
Podcast of the Week
Huberman Lab #101: Using Caffeine to Optimize Mental & Physical Performance: It’s no secret that I love my coffee and tea. Caffeinated beverages have many benefits, but they can also be a double-edged sword. 90% of adults drink caffeine—the question is, are you using it in a a way that supports your mental and physical health? This pod is a masterclass on how to use caffeine with intention.
Quote of the Week
Being busy or not isn’t a matter of how much you have to do. It depends on your view, your attitude. If you insist that time is a limited container that’s nearly full and now you are trying to stuff three or four more things into it, then yes, you are too busy. You become anxious. But if you recognize that time is life, then you just do whatever you are doing when you are doing it, and when it is finished, you do something else. Maybe you don’t complete all the tasks on your list. But nothing is ever complete! We will all die with unfinished business—and, at the same time, with everything complete.
—Norman Fischer and Susan Moon, What Is Zen?
That’s all for this week! Happy holidays to you, no matter which you celebrate.
As always, I appreciate your feedback on Mindful Mondays. What was your favorite feature this week? What did you find boring? Let me know by replying to this email, commenting on the Substack website, or hitting me up on Twitter.
Thanks,
Chris Cordry, LMFT
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So much value in this edition. I enjoyed the Slow Holiday Manifesto as well as the essay on Mindfulness for Engineers. Enjoy these quiet weeks.
Especially appreciated the Fischer/Moon quote on time, but I'm always rubbed the wrong way by utilitarian applications of mindfulness and studies and proof that mindfulness is good for something. It feels like that is missing the point somehow of the essence of mindfulness. It would be like someone discovering that spending more time looking at their children's artwork boosts their creativity and so they take their kids finger paintings to work and hang them up so they can produce up to 28% more creative ideas at the next marketing meeting. But it's also entirely possible I'm just a righteous prude. Wondering where you sit with the Mc-mindfulness movement?