Think Like a Monk

by Jay Shetty

  Being present is the only way to live a truly rich and full life.

  LOCATION HAS ENERGY

  It is easier to see the value of being present throughout an ordinary day, and easier to be truly present if you understand and appreciate the benefits that routine has to offer. Routines aren’t just about actions; they’re also about the locations in which those actions take place. There’s a reason people study better in libraries and work better in offices. New York City imparts its hustle and bustle, while LA makes you feel laid back. Each environment—from the biggest city to the smallest corner of a room—has its own particular energy. Every location gives off a different feeling, and your dharma thrives—or falters—in specific environments.

  We are constantly experiencing a range of activities and environments, but we don’t pause to contemplate which ones most appeal to us. Do you thrive in busy environments or in solitude? Do you like the safety of cozy nooks or spacious libraries? Do you prefer to be surrounded by stimulating artwork and music, or does uncluttered simplicity help you concentrate? Do you like to bounce ideas off others or to get feedback after completing a job? Do you prefer familiarity or a change of scenery? Having this self-awareness serves your dharma. It means that when you step into a job interview, you have a better sense of how you will perform at this job and whether it’s a good match. It means that when you plan a date, you can choose a space where you will be most comfortable. When you imagine different careers within your skill set, you know which ones are best suited to your sensibilities.

  TRY THIS: ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS

  For every environment where you spend time this week, ask yourself the following questions. If possible, ask them right after the experience, then again at the end of the week.

  What were the key features of the space?

  Quiet or loud?

  Big or small?

  Vibrant or plain?

  In the center of an active space or removed?

  Close to other people or isolated?

  How did I feel in this space: productive? relaxed? distracted?

  Did the activity I was doing fit well with the place where I was doing it?

  Was I in the best mindset for what I set out to do?

  If not, is there another place where I am more comfortable accomplishing what I planned?

  The more your personal spaces are devoted to single, clear purposes, the better they will serve you, not just in the fulfillment of your dharma but in your mood and productivity. Just as the room where we monks slept was designed for nothing but sleep, so every place in the ashram was devoted to a single activity. We didn’t read or meditate where we slept. We didn’t work in the refectory.

  In the world outside an ashram, to watch Netflix and/or eat in your bedroom is to confuse the energy of that space. If you bring those energies to your bedroom, it becomes harder to sleep there. Even in the tiniest apartment, you can dedicate spaces to different activities. Every home should have a place to eat. A place to sleep. A sacred space that helps you feel calm and a space that feels comforting when you are angry. Create spaces that bring you the energy that matches your intention. A bedroom should have few distractions, calm colors, soft lighting. Ideally, it should not contain your workspace. Meanwhile, a workspace should be well lit, uncluttered, and functional, with art that inspires you.

  When you identify where you thrive, focus on expanding those opportunities. If you’re drawn to the energy of a nightclub in your leisure time, would you do better in a career that is equally vibrant? If you’re a rock musician but you thrive in quiet, then maybe you should be composing music instead of performing. If you have the “perfect job” working from home, but you prefer the activity of an office, look to move your work to a café or shared workspace. The point is to be aware about where you thrive, where you’re at your best, and to figure out how to spend the most time in that place.

  Of course, we are all obligated to do activities we don’t like in environments that aren’t ideal—especially work—and we’ve all experienced the negative energies that these activities generate. With elevated awareness, we understand what has made us impatient, stressed, or drained, and develop guidelines for what living in our dharma, in the right environment, with the right energy, would look like. This should be the long-term goal.

  Sound Design Your Life

  Your location and your senses speak to each other. This is most obvious when we think about the sounds that we encounter every day. In monk life the sounds we hear relate directly to what we are doing. We wake up to birds and winds. We hear chanting as we walk into a meditation. There is no painful noise.

  But the modern world is getting louder. Planes howl overhead, dogs bark, drills whine. We’re subjected to uncontrollable noise all day. We think we’re ignoring the honk and clatter of daily life, but all of it adds to our cognitive load. The brain processes sound even when we don’t consciously hear it. At home, many of us retreat to silence, so we live in the extremes of silence and noise.

  Instead of tuning out the noise in your life—sound design it. Start by picking the best alarm tone in the world. Begin the day with a song that makes you happy. On your way to work, listen to a beloved audiobook, a favorite podcast, or your go-to playlist. Choose sounds that make you feel happier and healthier, the better to replicate the highly curated life in an ashram.

  TIME HAS MEMORY

  When we tailor our locations for specific purposes, we’re better able to summon the right kind of energy and attention. The same is true for time. Doing something at the same time every day helps us remember to do it, commit to it, and do it with increasing skill and facility. If you’re accustomed to going to the gym every morning at the same time, try going in the evening for a change and you’ll see what a challenge it is. When we do something at the same time every day, that time keeps that memory for us. It holds the practice. It saves the space. When you want to incorporate a new habit into your routine, like meditating or reading, don’t make it more difficult by trying to do it whenever you have a free moment. Slot it into the same time every day. Even better, link the new practice to something that’s already a habit. A friend of mine wanted to incorporate daily yoga into her schedule so she laid a mat right next to her bed. She literally rolled out of bed and into her yoga practice. Marrying habits is a way of circumventing excuses.

  Location has energy; time has memory.

  If you do something at the same time every day, it becomes easier and natural.

  If you do something in the same space every day, it becomes easier and natural.

  SINGLE-TASKING

  Time and location help us maximize the moment, but there is one essential component to being wholly present in that moment: single-tasking. Studies have found that only 2 percent of us can multitask effectively; most of us are terrible at it, especially when one of those tasks requires a lot of focus. When we think we’re multitasking, what’s usually happening is that we’re shifting rapidly among several different things, or “serial tasking.” This fragmented attention actually erodes our ability to focus, so doing just one thing at a time without distraction becomes harder. Researchers from Stanford University took a group of students and divided them into two groups—those who frequently switch among multiple streams of media (checking email, social media, and headline news, for instance) and those who don’t. They put the groups through a series of attention and memory tasks, such as remembering sequences of letters and focusing on certain colored shapes while ignoring others, and the media multitaskers consistently performed poorly. They even did worse on a test of task-switching ability.

  To make single-tasking easier for myself, I have “no tech” zones and times. My wife and I don’t use tech in the bedroom or at the dining table, and try not to between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m. I try to practice single-tasking with mundane tasks in order to strengthen the habit. I used to brush my teeth without thought. They were white enough; they looked great. But then the dentist told me that I’d d
amaged my gums. Now I spend four seconds on each tooth. I count in my head, one, two, three, four, which gives me something to do. I’m still spending the same amount of time brushing my teeth, but I’m doing it in a more effective way. If I think about business when I’m brushing my teeth or in the shower, it doesn’t feel nourishing and energizing, and I don’t take care with my gums. When you’re brushing, just brush. When you’re showering, just shower.

  We don’t have to be focused like a laser beam on every task every time. It’s okay to listen to music while cleaning the bathroom or talk with your partner while eating together. Just as some instruments sound great together, certain habits complement each other. But single-tasking as much as possible keeps your brain in the habit of focusing on one thing at a time, and you should pick certain routines where you always single-task, like walking the dog, using your phone (one app at a time!), showering, or folding the laundry, in order to build the skill.

  GOING ALL THE WAY

  Routines become easier if you’ve done something immersively. If you want to bring a new skill into your life, I recommend that you kick it off with single-pointed focus for a short period of time. If I play Ping-Pong every day for an hour, I’m definitely going to be better at it. If you want to start a daily meditation, a weeklong meditation retreat will give you a strong base on which to build. Throughout this book I suggest many changes you can make to your life. But if you try to change everything at the same time, they will all become small, equal priorities. Change happens with small steps and big priorities. Pick one thing to change, make it your number one priority, and see it through before you move on to the next.

  Monks try to do everything immersively. Our lunches were silent. Our meditations were long. We didn’t do anything in just five minutes. (Except for showering. We weren’t showering immersively.) We had the luxury of time, and we used it to single-task for hours on end. That same level of immersion isn’t possible in the modern world, but the greater your investment, the greater your return. If something is important, it deserves to be experienced deeply. And everything is important.

  We all procrastinate and get distracted, even monks, but if you give yourself more time, then you can afford to get distracted and then refocus. In your morning routine, having limited time means that you’re one phone call or spilled coffee away from being late to work. If you’re frustrated with learning a new skill, understanding a concept, or assembling a piece of Ikea furniture, your instinct will be to pull away, but go all in and you’ll accomplish more than you thought possible. (Even the Hemnes dresser—allegedly Ikea’s most difficult build.)

  As it turns out, periods of deep focus are also good for your brain. When we switch tasks compulsively (like the multitaskers who showed poor memory and focus in the Stanford study), it erodes our ability to focus. We overstimulate the dopamine (reward) channel. That’s also the addiction pathway, so we are compelled to stimulate it more and more to get the same feel-good hit, and that leads to more and more distraction. But ultimately, ironically, the feel-good of dopamine bums us out—too much dopamine can keep our bodies from making and processing serotonin, the contentment chemical. If you’ve ever spent the day jumping on and off calls, in and out of meetings, ordering this book from Amazon and checking that thread on Snapchat, you know that feeling of exhaustion you have at the end of it all? It’s a dopamine hangover.

  When we allow ourselves to have immersive experiences—through meditation, focused periods of work, painting, doing a crossword puzzle, weeding a garden, and many other forms of contemplative single-tasking—we’re not only more productive, we actually feel better.

  There are plenty of magazine articles and phone apps that encourage you to meditate for five minutes a day. I’m not against that, but I’m also not surprised if it does nothing for you. In our culture, it is commonplace to devote five to ten minutes to one daily practice or another, but the truth is you achieve very little in five minutes. I’ve had more than one friend complain to me: “Jay, I’ve been meditating for five minutes a day for seven months and it’s not working.”

  Imagine you were told you could spend five minutes a day for a whole month with someone you were attracted to. At the end of the month you’d still barely know them. You definitely wouldn’t be in love. There’s a reason we want to talk to someone all night when we’re falling in love. Maybe sometimes it’s even the other way around: We fall in love because we talked to someone all night. The ocean is full of treasures, but if you swim on the surface, you won’t see them all. If you start a meditation practice with the idea that you can instantly clear your mind, you’ll soon learn that immersion takes time and practice.

  When I began to meditate, it took me a good fifteen minutes to settle physically and another fifteen to settle down the mental chatter. I’ve been meditating for one to two hours a day for thirteen years, and it still takes me ten minutes to switch off my mind. I’m not saying you have to meditate two hours a day for thirteen years to get the benefit. That’s not the point. I have confidence that any process can work if you do it immersively. After you break the barrier and commit yourself wholly, you start experiencing the benefits. You lose track of time. The feeling of being fully engaged is often so rewarding that when it’s time to stop, you want to return to the experience.

  I recommend using immersive experience as a kickoff or reinvigoration for a regular practice. To my friend who was frustrated with his five minutes-a-day meditation practice, I said, “I get it. Time is tough to find, but if you feel like you’re not getting enough from it, try taking an hour-long class. Then return to your ten-minute practice. You might find it has become more powerful. If you want, you could try a daylong retreat.” I talked to him about falling in love, how eventually you aren’t compelled to stay up all night anymore because you’ve gotten to know the person. Five minutes goes a lot further when you’re married. I told him, “Maybe you and meditation could use a romantic getaway.”

  * * *

  Routines are counterintuitive—instead of being boring and repetitive, doing the same tasks at the same time in the same place makes room for creativity. The consistent energy of location and memory of time help us be present in the moment, engaging deeply in tasks instead of getting distracted or frustrated. Build routines and train yourself as monks do, to find focus and achieve deep immersion.

  * * *

  Once we quell our external distractions, we can address the most subtle and powerful distractions of all, the voices inside our heads.

  SEVEN THE MIND

  The Charioteer’s Dilemma

  When the five senses and the mind are stilled, when the reasoning intellect rests in silence, then begins the highest path.

  —the Katha Upanishad

  It is raining. Though it’s September and monsoon season is over, it’s coming down hard. I really need a shower before morning meditation. About a hundred of my fellow monks and I arrived here in South India last night after a two-day train ride from Mumbai. We had the cheapest tickets available, of course, sleeping in close quarters with strangers, and the bathrooms were so foul that I decided to fast for the entire trip in order to avoid them. We are on a pilgrimage, staying in a warehouse-type building near the seashore. After morning meditation we will go straight to classes, so now is my best chance to shower.

  I ask for directions to the shower, and someone points to a wet, muddy dirt pathway through the low shrubs. “It’s about a twenty-minute walk,” he says.

  I look down at my flip-flops. Great. My feet will get even dirtier on the way to the shower than they are right now. What’s the point?

  Then another voice comes into my head: “Don’t be lazy. You have to get ready for morning meditation. Just go take the shower.”

  I duck my head and start down the path. Squelching through the mud, I try not to slip. Every step is unpleasant, not just because of the conditions but because the first voice in my head keeps discouraging me, saying “See? You’re getting muddy on your way
to the showers, and you’ll get dirty again on the way back.”

  The other voice urges me onward: “You are doing the right thing. Honor your commitment.”

  Finally, I reach the showers, a row of white stalls. I open the door to one and look up. Rain pours down from the still-dark sky. There is no roof. Seriously? I step into the stall and don’t even bother to turn on the faucet. We bathe in cold water anyway, and that’s exactly what the rain is delivering.

  Standing in the shower, I wonder what the hell I am doing here. In this miserable excuse for a shower, on that filthy train yesterday, on this trip, living this life. I could be dry and warm in a nice apartment in London right now, making fifty thousand pounds a year. Life could be so much easier.

  But as I walk back, the other voice returns with some interesting ideas about the value of what I’ve just accomplished. Going to the shower in the rain wasn’t a notable achievement. It didn’t require physical strength or bravery. But it tested my ability to tolerate external difficulties. It gave me an idea of how much frustration I could handle in one morning. It may not have cleansed or refreshed me, but it did something more valuable: It strengthened my resolve.

  THE MONKEY MIND

  In the Hitopadeśa, an ancient Indian text by Nārāyana, the mind is compared to a drunken monkey that’s been bitten by a scorpion and haunted by a ghost.

  We humans have roughly seventy thousand separate thoughts each day. Ernst Pöppel, a German psychologist and neuroscientist, has shown through his research that our minds are only in present time for about three seconds at a time. Other than that, our brains are thinking forward and backward, filling in ideas about present time based on what we’ve experienced in the past and anticipating what is to come. As Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions Are Made, describes it on a podcast, most of the time “your brain is not reacting to events in the world, it’s predicting… constantly guessing what’s going to happen next.” The Samyutta Nikaya describes each thought as a branch, and our minds as monkeys, swinging from one branch to the next, often aimlessly. This almost sounds like fun, but, as we all know, it is anything but. Usually those thoughts are fears, concerns, negativity, and stress. What will happen this week at work? What should I eat for dinner? Have I saved enough for a holiday this year? Why is my date five minutes late? Why am I here? These are all genuine questions that deserve answers, but none of them will be resolved while we swing from branch to branch, thought to thought. This is the jungle of the untrained mind.