Calm the Mind, Change the World
Michael Acton Smith
Do you ever...Take a walk with nowhere to go? Turn off
your phone for more than five minutes? Savor a chocolate on the tip of your
tongue? There has never been a more important time to stop, recharge, and join
the
Calm revolution.
Be calm. Be free. Be yourself.
In
Calm,
Michael Acton Smith combines fascinating neurological research, ancient wisdom,
and real-life experiences to demystify meditation and show you the many simple
ways to be mindful everyday. Crafted to resemble a journal, filled with
beautiful and inspiring artwork, and divided into eight life-balancing
sections—Nature, Work, Creativity, Children, Travel, Relationships, Food, and
Sleep—Calm
can help you change your perspective and rediscover the pleasures of the world.
Each section blends fascinating research, creative prompts, activities,
instructions, and insights that will stimulate your senses and inspire you.
Calm can be
used multiple times a day or whenever you need it to find a little peace. Take a
walk without a fixed destination, savor a piece of chocolate on the tip of your
tongue, plant a seed, doodle aimlessly, turn off your mobile phone for five
short minutes. Smile, breathe, and go slowly. Calm your mind—and change your
world.
If you wish to explore the iPhone app that helps you get into Calm, go see calm.com
To explore this book on Amazon.com, click here!
Michael writes*:
For many
of us, the stress and anxiety we experience seems to be greater than ever
before. Our days are spent racing the clock. We rarely pull away from our
digital devices, and end up feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated. We're so
focused on "the next thing" that we regularly miss what’s happening in front of
us. We fall into bed exhausted, waiting for weekends to come around, and when
they do, we spend them worrying about what we didn’t achieve or thinking about
what's next on our plate.
The
natural question is, what's the solution?
The
answer is
Calm. The foundation of a calm attitude is mindfulness, a practice that
offers us the ability to wake up and become present in our everyday lives.
Mindfulness training isn’t about zoning out, or withdrawing from the world. It’s
about deepening awareness in your everyday life so that calm, clear thinking
replaces habitual reactive practices. It’s an amazing practice that can
transform your perspective on life, and we teach the basics in the
Calm app with a variety of guided meditations.
The new
year is a perfect time to resolve to be more mindful, to reduce the stress that
we all feel in our daily lives. In my new book,
Calm, I outline eight different areas of life where we could all benefit
from achieving a bit of calm. Here are eight tips--one from each section of the
book--for attainable habits you can resolve to seek out in the new year.
Nature:
Go cloud-gazing. Stop for a
moment. Look up. When you’re feeling hemmed in by life, a spot of cloud-gazing
is an unbeatable way to restore serenity. Projecting your own terrestrial shapes
(a top hat here, a sleigh there) onto nature’s ultimate big screen is a form of
hallucinatory doodling, a fail-safe way to throw open your sense of possibility,
invite a little whimsy into your day and regain a perspective on your place in
the world.
Sleep:
Impose a tech curfew. This is one
of my 5 Rules of Sound Sleep--the light radiating from television, smartphone
and computer screens has been found to interfere with the body's circadian
rhythm. Turn off devices and TVs at least an hour before you plan to go to
sleep. Read a book, and if you use an e-book reader, download a blue-light
filter app for it.
Travel:
Next time you find your blood pressure spiking on your commute, try distracting
yourself by focusing on the sounds around you. Try to hear them simply as
"noises." Notice any thoughts that come into your mind, but let them pass by.
Keep bringing your focus back to the sounds all around you: voices, traffic,
birdsong, or the tinny tsss tsss of
someone else’s Spotify playlist. When you’re engaging in deep focus in this way,
your usual irritation response won’t get a look-in.
Relationships:
Make a list of the ten people who make you feel happiest in your life. This list
could be anyone from friends to writers or thinkers who inspire you. Look at it
regularly (why not take a snap on your phone to keep it on hand?), and whenever
you feel stress kick in, pick up your phone and call one, or open a book to
absorb their wisdom.
Work: Find your flow. When was the last time you lost yourself in a task? One moment you had just sat down, and the next, hours had blown by, barely noticed. Whatever it was that you were engaged in--cooking a complicated meal, or focusing on an absorbing creative task--you will have been in that sweet spot where the challenge you were faced with was being met with the best of your abilities and imagination. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the founding figures of positive psychology describes flow as feeling "strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious and at the peak of [your] abilities."
Children:
Doodle. Doodling is something children do all the time and is actually great for
calming down, whatever your age. Do some scribbling on your own or with a
chil--there’s a thumbprint gallery in
Calm if you’re looking for a
starting point—and see how many characters you can create.
Creativity:
Color. Coloring in, once strictly
a children-only activity, has undergone a sophisticated rebrand in recent years.
You can find a range of intricate coloring books aimed at adults, designed to
provide hours of absorbing, calm activity. And
Calm has a two-page spread of a Tibetan Buddhist mandala for you to
color in.
Food:
Savor a calming food, like
chicken noodle soup. A steaming bowl of chicken broth is a powerful thing. The
flavors are simple yet deep and savory, warming and comforting but never stodgy.
Use a classing recipe as a base for whatever foods inspire you most--add ginger,
chili, and soy for an Asian twist or try chopped tomatoes, shaved Parmesan and a
dash of cream for a Mediterranean feel.