Minds are funny things, aren't they?

They think they know what the world should look like, what other people should do and how everything should happen.

And yet it doesn't.

Reality has its own rules, its own way of playing and its own ideas about what needs to happen next. And it doesn't care what we think about it.

The question then for us as humans is whether we should keep lecturing reality, arguing with what is and fighting for what the voice in our heads says 'should' be happening, or whether we are better served by noticing the truth of what is here now and working with it in the best way we can.

In today's class we apply practical tools to this very human problem and find the best way forward for each of us.

Living this instant means living instinctively, responding to the moment as it arises, free of fear and desire.

This is easy to say, but harder to do, and in this live class Oli shares his best tips and tools for coming back into alignment with your inner intuition.

A mindfulness practice to take you into the heart of awareness, to a place that is not disturbed, even in an ocean of thoughts.

How can we deal with pain mindfully? It seems so all consuming, so awful and so hard to cope with, so how can we stay present and peaceful in the midst of that? Last week, Muriel, one of our lovely listeners, asked this: 

"I totally get that experiencing the present moment gives you the real chance to be happy and to live life.  I am making progress into not getting caught up in stories that built up from my thinking. But how do you deal with pain?"

Today, I invite you to explore the worst physical situation possible, and to get curious about whether peace is possible in the middle of that.

The answer to this question might seem obvious... until someone questions your beliefs or actions. It might appear crystal clear that happines is what you want, until you find yourself angrily defending a mental position.

As it turns out, lots of us humans pick being right (or fighting for it anyway) much of the time, and it always costs us our happiness.

What would your life be like if you never needed to change anyone's mind or control how they see you, ever again?

The Integrated Mindful Relationship:

After yesterday's class on the end of approval seeking, a friend of mine emailed me a brilliant question:

"Im scared of the consequences of 'just listening' to someone, because it is not this 'seeking approval' that has allowed me to be well-liked and have a wide circle of friends? Isn't it my charm, humour, mannerisms, personality traits that have allowed me to nourish and create new relationships?

I remember a time when I thought that what you thought about me was VERY importent. In fact, it was life or death. I spent every moment checking on you, making you laugh, wondering what you thought about what I just said or did, and if I thought you liked it, I was excited, but if I thought you didn't, I felt depressed.

One day, when I sat still for long enough (I'm rather a slow learner), I realised that you don't exist, at least not in the way I thought. I also figured out that I can never know what you think, and I don't so much care anymore either.

Amazingly, when I stopped caring what you thought, I was free to care about you. And when I realised that I can never know your inner world, I turned my interest to mine.

And this is what led me to the happiness I thought I wanted YOU to provide. Delightful. 

I had a big realisation a little while back, one that is taking some digesting. I was watching a talk by Eckhart Tolle, who said that, in essence, my whole life is happening inside my head. As he put it, "We believe there is something going on outside, but maybe that's just our imagination!"

Now, I had heard this idea before, but I never really grasped it as anything more than an intellectual concept. But this time it hit me right between the eyes; everything I call 'my life', every so called experience, every posession, even every person I only experience in my own head.

This is mind-blowing, and I wanted to spend some time on it today, I hope you enjoy...

Every ounce of pain in your life arises not because life is misbehaving, but because your mind is misbehaving! You see, minds love nothing more than putting conditions on our happiness, telling the world what it 'should' be doing and pointing out the flaws of those around us.

When it comes to our children, these expectations can be particularly strong, and if you're not careful, those thoughts will bring frustration, then trick you into believing that your children caused it!

Today, I want to introduce you to the wonderful world without expectations of anyone else.

If you want to really connect with your children, your parents or anybody close to you, you must do one important thing:

Leave the future alone!

Warning! Today's class may be controversial as I explore the question:

Is your child's behaviour any of your business?

If you're a parent, you have tantrums, (sorry but it's true)!

Here is a simple guide to dealing with them!

Welcome to week of mindful parenting this week at A Little Peace and Quiet!

If you don't have kids, this week is still for you, because our thoughts are our children too, right? They infuriate us, make us feel all warm and fuzzy, distract us and talk us into spending our money on things we shouldn't but. What's the difference really?

All this week we will explore how we deal with these children, and ourselves, with compassion, mindfulness and good humour. I hope you find these simple classes useful.

Today, I invite you to make a simple, radical attitude shift that brings instant relief from frustration at other people.

Once upon a time I thought I could cling to moments of peace, that passing joy could be made to last forever.

But true peace doesn't come from anything that's passing, it's in you, now and forever.

Today, come find it.

Once I thought mindfulness meant blocking all thought, silencing the mind, and this led to predictable consequences. I felt sluggish and strained and when thought came back it came hard!

Luckily, someone told me the secret - just watch those thoughts, don't block, don't get lost, just watch!

Learn this, and life is a breeze.

There was a time when I hid from life in books about meditation, in silent contemplation and by sitting staring at the wall. I wasn't really connecting with the present moment, but I thought I was progressing.

In truth, I was opting out, and my practice lacked a connection with my day to day life. I was hiding in a cave, without bringing that practice back to the world.

True practice is ordinary, grounded and deeply connected with daily life, but if you have ever used it as an escape, you might enjoy today's exploration of this common trap, and of how to untangle yourself.

I'm sitting here listening to you, watching you, but mostly I'm judging you. I can see by the faraway look in your eyes that you're lost in the future, and I can hear from your voice that you don't get it, that you need my help...

Welcome to the mind of the judge, the character I became when I memorised some Hindu quotes, digested the ideas of the Dalai Lama and learned to talk about meditation. I thought I had it figured out, and that was the problem...

You see, figuring it out has nothing to do with mindfulness, in fact it gets in the way! But when I was on my early journey, I believed that I had it all figured out and now I was going to tell you all about it! 

The lesson I learned from this was simple: forget about everyone else, and focus on your practice this instant. I hope this simple shift helps you tap into peace right now.

Welcome to another week here at A Little Peace and Quiet.com!

All this week I am sharing some of my biggest struggles, hurdles and challenges when I was learning how to meditate. I hope that by sharing these, I might make your path a little smoother!

When I first sat down to meditate, I had already set up massive expectations for the future, like "When I'm enlightened, my life will be like this..." I had goals, I had ways to measure progress and I completely ruined it!

The result? I felt like a failure, I wanted to quit (I did several times actually) and the story that I wasn't good enough found its way into meditation too.

If I had realised what to do with all those expectations, beliefs and goals, things might have been a little simpler, and so I offer you today's class.

I hope it brings out a little more of the peace that's already inside, right now.

Enjoy!

Oli Doyle

"Throw away holiness and wisdom, and people will be a hundred times happier." Lao Tzu

When I set out on the path of mindfulness, feeling that I was a good person was very important to me. 

Now, I don't much care about holiness nor wisdom, but my actions are much kinder and wiser.

Today I would like to share how this transformation came about.

Today I was inspired by Byron Katie's work over at www.thework.com, and I wanted to share something profoundly simple (or simply profound):

Your relationship with us mirrors your relationship with your thoughts. Make peace with thought, and world peace is inevitable.

Have fun!

A mindful stop is a powerful way to step out of anxious, stressful stories and into peace and tranquility.

Thinking is a choice, and today I will show you how to stop.

Come for an adventure in the present moment today, as we journey into that quiet place within.

Over the next 13 minutes, I invite you to change the way you see the entire world.

Most of us prioritise instants. It sounds a bit funny written down like that, but the job interview is more important than brushing your teeth, your wedding day is more important than last Wednesday.

Certain instants matter more than others, which leads to two things:

1) Important moments become anxious, stressful and nerve wracking and

2) Other moments you can stay on autopilot, just awake enough to avoid accidental death.

So we stress, and we daydream, neither of which is much fun.

What is a lot of fun, as it turns out, is treating every instant with respect, paying careful attention no matter what you are doing.

Treasure every instant, and you will be able to relax through the important ones and thoroughly enjoy the rest!

Another 13 minutes of present moment adventures from Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

"Peace and Harmony are naturally occuring, they happen without our efforts." Oli Doyle, Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

Because our inner state seems so turbulent, us humans tend to think that peace is something to aim at, not something we have available now. But underneath that turbulence, there is harmony right now, the only question is whether we notice it or not.

And of course, the difference between noticing peace or being lost in turbulence, is our relationship to those thoughts that keep coming and going.

Today, come join me in the inner peace that has always been there.

"Unconditional happiness means exactly what it says, no longer putting conditions on our happiness. It also means opening our minds to the possibility that we can be happy now, without anything in our lives needing to change." Oli Doyle, Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

What are you putting in the way of your happiness right now?

"The essence of mindfulness is to be totally in the moment with openness and interest instead of getting lost in the judgements of the mind. Living in the present brings freedom from pain through freedom from time, as suffering cannot be created without referring to the past and the future." Oli Doyle, Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

You can find this peace this instant, simply by looking at the world a little differently.

Today, as we continue our series based on my book Mindfulness Plain & Simple, we begin to explore mindfulness in action by asking the question:

"What is life like when you don't believe what you think?"

Join me today for 15 minutes of peaceful, joyful mindfulness practice, starting with the breath and journeying through this wonderful moment.

When I was 5 years old, I discovered a brilliant solution to the problem of emotions; just block out the ones you don't like.

This worked, except when it didn't. And when it didn't, the results were pretty poor. Lost tempers, broken windows and embarrassing outbursts were a sure sign that what goes down must come up!

17 years later, I discovered a new way; make friends with what arises, even if you don't like it. This was tough to start with (but only for the first 3 years or so!), but after that, emotions became my friends, and now they rarely create problems in my life.

Today I would like to take you through the process I used to get there.

What role do thoughts play in your life?

"Thoughts come up one after another until we are exhausted and we need to sleep. Then, when we wake up, the running commentary picks right up where it left off. This is why we can't seem to 'get away from it all' when we go on holiday because we are actually taking 'it' with us!" Oli Doyle

It's like this for most people; thought after thought from dawn 'till dusk. Watch their faces as they walk down he street and it's clear; they are not there, they're somewhere else, stressed out about what was or what might be when they could be enjoying the sunshine.

So what are these things we call 'thoughts' and how should we deal with them? In today's podcast we explore how thinking too much blocks happiness, and more importantly, what you can do about it.

Welcome to the second part of this special series based on my book, Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

Self Image:

Right now, my mind is telling a story, and if I trace them back, every story is connected to what I think about myself.

Once upon a time, I spent much energy and effort trying to make them good stories, trying to reframe the bad ones, and trying to affirmation myself to a positive self image. It was exhausting.

There are 2 problems with trying to cultivate good self-esteem:

1) It's a lot of work.

2) It's completely unnecessary.

Today, come and explore the alternative - living free of thinking in the present moment.

Welcome to this 10 part series based on my book Mindfulness Plain & Simple.

Over the next 10 days we will explore why human beings have so much trouble being happy, as well as discovering how to untangle this suffering and find peace right now.

Let's begin with a quote from chapter 1:

"It is not what happens to us that causes our suffering. Our suffering is caused by believing the stories our minds tell us about what happens to us."

Indeed, the only suffering comes from inside, as does peace and happiness. The mind is so hypnotic that it seems as if the outside world dictates our inner experience, but in reality the reverse is true. 

When you learn to step from the world of thinking to the here and now, life becomes free and easy, today I invite you to begin this journey.

Life is a mirror, reflecting your inner world back at you. If you're lost in anger, the world will show you anger. If you're caught up in judgement, the world will give you these back too.

So when something seems to push your buttons, this is a very good thing. It is an opportunity to discover who you are.

It is rare that Hollywood is enlightening, but this line from one of Jack Nicholson's great roles speaks to the paradox of human existence; We live as if the future will be better than now, but no-one has ever been there.

Watch the news tonight and you will hear it, see it, feel it, we are waiting. We are anticipating. We are planning ahead. It might be more beneficial for us and the planet if we stopped asking "What will the future be like?" and instead considered this question:

"If today was humanity's last day, how would we treat this moment?" 

How would you answer?

Today is a story day at my house. At times like these, we all get caught up (at least a bit), in those stressful stories spun so exquisitely by the mind. I can see it happening in others, and I feel it happening in me; the mind is in charge a little more than usual.

I know this, because my friend stress tells me so, and the mind has a story about that too. This story says "Stress is bad, you should be present so the stress goes away."

What I notice is that, when I follow this story, I resist what is (stress) and I feel the normal effects of that resistance (more stress). I try to get rid of it and the old 'What you resist persists' law seems to kick in. 

But luckily, a few years back, I discovered an alternative. I noticed that, when I allow the feeling, embrace it even, I come straight back to the present. The stress then becomes just another part of now, like the breath, or the birds singing. 

Treat stress like a friend and it becomes one. And today I wanted to share this simple but powerful way to make stress a force for good in your life.

Knowledge has the power to improve our lives incredibly. Equally it can kill the mystery of life by reducing this unpredictable world to a series of quantifiable parts.

Or so it seems. 

In reality, you NEVER know what will happen next, and you can never explain anything. You can tell a story about it, but there is no concrete truth.

There are two choices once you understand this; you can hide from the mystery, or you can embrace it. Today the choice is yours.

Listening to the radio today I was struck by a feature of the human mind; the search for the new and familiar. This sounds like a paradox, but in fact we tend to seek experiences that feel new and exciting, within the realm of the familiar.

Just like the 'new' pop songs that sound familiar enough that millions love them straight away, in life we humans want to be stimulated, but safe.

In the practice of mindfulness, this has a couple of implications: first, it is easy to ignore the familiar, to zone out in everyday life. Second, it can lead us to lose our curiosity, our freshness for the new.

In the life of a mindfulness student, every breath is different. Every day is completely unlike any other. And time is a practicality, not a reality.

Join me today on a mind-ending journey and you might come to see the beauty, the excitement and the joy contained in every ordinary instant.

Picture a wild, heaving nightclub in Brazil. The music is electrifying, the mood is intense and the dancefloor is heaving. And you? Why you're standing against the wall.

You see, you are much too busy thinking to dance, there is too much to figure out. Why is the music so loud? What if there is a fire? And what will everyone think of me if I don't dance just right?

Life is a wild, crazy nightclub, and most people are holding the wall. If you want to get in the mix, today's class is for you.

Life energy is pulsing through all of us all the time, but the mind numbs our awareness. 

Today, I will show you how to listen to your body from the inside, boost your immune system and sharpen your present moment awareness.

When I was a kid, everyone told me to think about my future. They convinced me (for a while), that this was the way to be happy: plan ahead, work hard, succeed, feel good.

And so we have the 5 year plan, the 10 year blueprint, which is completely upside down. It's a trade off: forgo happiness now, and you can have it later, but what if you don't survive until later?

Today is all about flipping the usual approach on its head and doing something radically different: thinking about how you want to live today and trusting that the future will take care of itself.

This approach is radical, freeing, and it might just save the human race.

Today I feel tension in my jaw, my thoughts are running a little bit faster and I know who's to blame. It's their fault.

You know them right? They do things that are unfair, unjust and illogical. They are selfish, irrational and stupid. And they're everywhere!

Luckily, my happiness is no-one else's business (although I forget this sometimes!) My peace is mine to enjoy or ignore, and today I choose to return there.

Join me for a simple practice that will refocus your attention, from the uncontrollable outer to the already peaceful inner. Maybe a billion people doing this, and I think we'll have world peace.

At the airport yesterday, I noticed something odd; everyone stood there, waiting in line, before the gate was even open...

Humans seem to have an in-built urge to "get there". Spend a few minutes watching people waiting in line and you can see it. Watch how we shuffle a few inches forward to get closer to the front, even though we know this shuffling makes no difference. Watch people driving faster to get to their holiday destination 5 minutes quicker, and listen to the language of progress and growth that dominates our economic culture.

Even better, take a look inside and notice what you are rushing toward, and see how this rushing decreses your quality of life.

Today's class is all about what happens when you focus on the journey and let the destination take care of itself.

In the old days, miners didn't have any way to know what gases were in the shaft. Potentially deadly chemicals might be silently drifting through the air, bringing about certain death without you even noticing. That's why they had a canary.

A canary would detect something that might be killing you and send you a signal (it would get sick). Similarly, your body reflects back the stress arising from your resistance to the present moment, it alerts you when it's time to get out of that pit.

Resistance is the cause of all stress, all worry, all anxiety, but often it is sneaky, it hides in the background, almost undetectable. Luckily, work can bring resistance to the surface, as it brings us challenges, difficult situations and people we might normally avoid. Resistance and work are often good friends.

And when resistance arises, we have a wonderful opportunity. We can use this state of unease to bring us back to alertness, awareness and our natural inner joy.

Today, I will walk you through a simple way to do this, from Eckhart Tolle's wonderful book Practicing the Power of Now.

Enjoy. 

Sitting at my desk I hear the clatter of cutlery from the staff kitchen. It sounds like a toddler looking for their special spoon, banging and scraping away in a mad rush to get to the bottom of the drawer. But I know that's not it. It's just Jill (name changed), unstacking the dishwasher. Well maybe 20% of her attention is on the dishwasher. My guess is that the other 80% is working through her list.

They say a rushed job takes twice as long, and today I would like to invite you into the quiet, peaceful world of being precise and focused.

Learn how to sharpen your attention and return to now, and you will experience peace and clarity every moment of the day. 

Let's get started.

The day begins, and it's one thing after another, one appointment to the next, one meeting to the next as your to-do list grows (along with your stress). Arriving home at night, did you even remember to breathe? Did you really live that day, or were you somewhere else, drifting through thought?

Join me today as we explore the power of stopping and learn how to use body awareness to pause, recharge and reset in the midst of this busy world.