I'm in my early thirties, dad of a 2 year old, and I want to start really shifting my habits to establish a real enduring sense of contentment, happiness, health, agency and the like to define the rest of my thirties. What physical and mental activities are worth pursuing, what to purchase or do to pursue those things against an NYC upper-middle class budget? I'd like to explore outside of the baseline of diet and exercise as those are no-brainers.
I've spent some time over the past couple months getting back into meditation (after fizzling out with TMI-based meditation, which I think is honestly poor instruction for westerners in retrospect), particularly into the development of the brahmaviharas (this lesswrong post really convinced me of the power of these efforts: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BfTW9jmDzujYkhjAb/you-are-probably-underestimating-how-good-self-love-can-be)
Loving kindness
Compassion
Empathetic joy
Equanimity
I've been doing a couple meditations a day, one walking and one formal sit, alongside some more casual attempts at cultivation of brahmavihara cofactors. I just sort of say the phrases internally with some kind of intention, and I've coalesced around something like:
May I be truly happy and peaceful.
May I embrace myself and others with acceptance and care.
May I rejoice in the joys and beautiful qualities of all beings.
May I meet life's challenges with grace and equanimity.
... these have been generally good, though I'm setting a very light intention when internally saying the phrases, as overefforting was a big problem in the past. I do not concern myself with whether any feelings arise, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
I'm looking to really pile onto this and my exercise habits with a bunch else to make my life fuller, richer, more mystical, to make time move slower, to increase my perceptive skills patience and kindness, and prevent health issues from developing as best as I can.
I realize I'm being a bit vague here, and that's partially on purpose: I want to discover what I can do for myself to make life better if I'm willing to put in time and money and effort to do so.
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I'm in my early thirties, dad of a 2 year old, and I want to start really shifting my habits to establish a real enduring sense of contentment, happiness, health, agency and the like to define the rest of my thirties. What physical and mental activities are worth pursuing, what to purchase or do to pursue those things against an NYC upper-middle class budget? I'd like to explore outside of the baseline of diet and exercise as those are no-brainers.
I've spent some time over the past couple months getting back into meditation (after fizzling out with TMI-based meditation, which I think is honestly poor instruction for westerners in retrospect), particularly into the development of the brahmaviharas (this lesswrong post really convinced me of the power of these efforts: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BfTW9jmDzujYkhjAb/you-are-probably-underestimating-how-good-self-love-can-be)
I've been doing a couple meditations a day, one walking and one formal sit, alongside some more casual attempts at cultivation of brahmavihara cofactors. I just sort of say the phrases internally with some kind of intention, and I've coalesced around something like:
... these have been generally good, though I'm setting a very light intention when internally saying the phrases, as overefforting was a big problem in the past. I do not concern myself with whether any feelings arise, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't.
I'm looking to really pile onto this and my exercise habits with a bunch else to make my life fuller, richer, more mystical, to make time move slower, to increase my perceptive skills patience and kindness, and prevent health issues from developing as best as I can.
I realize I'm being a bit vague here, and that's partially on purpose: I want to discover what I can do for myself to make life better if I'm willing to put in time and money and effort to do so.
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