Who Ate My Sandwich?: An emotionally intelligent, StreetSmart conversation with Dan Goleman My name is Steve Stein and amongst other things, I am interested in the intersection of mindfulness and the real world. A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend the incredibly relevant Mindfulness In America Summit. Hearing the name of the ‘Summit’ now, it sounds a bit pretentious, A Summit For Mindfulness? - “What the bleep does this have to do with, me, my family, the common Joe on the street, etc etc?” Turns out, the surprising answer is - a lot. Somehow I found myself at the summit, spending time with some of the presenters. So there I was on the streets of NYC walking back from lunch to the … [Read more...]
Meditation Is Not What You Think It Is with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Here’s an excerpt from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s newly released book Meditation Is Not What You Think. "The act of taking your seat in your own life, which could also be seen as taking a stand of a certain kind, on a regular basis, is in and of itself a profound expression of human intelligence. Ultimately it is a radical act of sanity and love—namely to stop all the doing that carries us through our moments without truly inhabiting them, and actually drop into being, even for one fleeting moment. That dropping in is the exceedingly simple, but at the same time, hugely radical act undergirding mindfulness as a meditation practice and as a way of being. It is easy to learn. It is easy to do. But it … [Read more...]
Who Ate My Sandwich?: A Conversation with Dan Goleman
Who Ate My Sandwich?: A StreetSmart conversation with Dan Goleman My name is Steve Stein and among other things, I am interested in the intersection of mindfulness and the real world. A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to attend the incredibly relevant Mindfulness In America Summit. Hearing the name of the ‘Summit’ now, it sounds pretentious, A Summit For Mindfulness? - My inner BS detector is silently going into the red zone - “what the bleep does this have to do with, me, my family, the common Joe on the street, yada yada?” Turns out, the surprising answer is - a lot. Somehow I found myself at the summit, spending time with some of the presenters. So there I was on the streets of NYC … [Read more...]
Remembering Dick Gregory
Early on in my career I had the good fortune to be a part of the expansion of the human potential movement. The human potential movement was really born out of the 60’s “getting back to the land,” healthy living and the civil rights movements. George Leonard, a profound author who wrote extensively about education and human potential, did early research that found that the average human realized only 10% of his potential. In the early 80’s there was an event that in many ways expanded the human potential movement, it was created by a west coast entrepreneur, Alan G, the first event was held in New York City. It was the Whole Live Expo. Right out of college I found myself cold-calling … [Read more...]
Pema Chodron on Overcoming Anger
Fear, anger, and hatred, while negative emotions, exist in order to teach us something. When we become aware of our various emotions, we learn why we feel the way we do. When we learn why we feel the way we do, our emotions become productive, rather than destructive forces. Anger usually appears when we fail to set healthy boundaries. If we don't recognize what our anger is trying to tell us (the wisdom of our anger), it soon descends into violence, hatred, fear, and destruction. In the lecture "Don't Bite The Hook," Tibetan-American Buddhist Pema Chodron teaches us how we can transform anger into compassion and love. … [Read more...]
His Holiness The Dalai Lama at Madison Square Garden
It was spring of 1990 and it was big news — His Holiness The Dalai Lama was coming to The Worlds’s Most Famous Arena. In those days the theater attached to MSG was called The Paramount Theater, before that it was called The Felt Forum, and these days it is called The Theater at MSG. It was an epic week, perhaps the most spiritually oriented, high profile event to happen in the Big Apple to this day. The Arena was packed, standing room only. The previous week, a first event of it’s kind took place across the street. The leaders or elders of all of the 5 Traditions of Tibetan Buddhism conducted whole day workshops. It was first time that the elders and leaders from each of the 5 Buddhist … [Read more...]
How Raisins Can Help You Become More Mindful
Mindfulness in Everyday Life: Jon Kabat-Zinn on Eating Raisins Mindfully We should be mindful in every single moment, no matter how trivial. In the lecture, Mindfulness Meditations in Everyday Life, Jon Kabat-Zinn, an influential mindfulness leader, discusses the importance of eating raisins consciously. Instead of pouring a bag of raisins down our throats, we should savior, enjoy, and eat each raisin one-by-one. Eating raisins in this mindful way allows us to fully appreciate the taste, origin, and texture of these dried grapes. We should then translate the mindfulness we bring to eating raisins to all other aspects of our lives. Here is an excerpt from his lecture, where he discusses … [Read more...]
Pitchers and Catchers, Spring Training, Baseball, and Your Own Personal World Series
Growing up in the 60’s and 70’s in the working class neighborhood that was Brighton Beach, we were poor, I had cardboard in my sneakers to patch the holes and blisters on the balls of my feet from when the cardboard wore out. I was too young to know how poor my family was. We didn’t have much, one thing we did have was sports, the fantasy that we could rise above…we had baseball! One of the rituals as a child that shines brightly in my mind’s eye, is that first baseball catch of the season with my next door neighbor - Bruce B. Me and Bruce grew up in one of the paths in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn USA. There were no cars on the alleyways where we grew up, so we played every sport imaginable … [Read more...]
Religion, Spirituality and The Other Six Days of Your Life
Religion, Spirituality and The Other Six Days of Your Life. It often occurs to me that organized religion is not all it is cracked up to be, “not that there is anything inherently wrong with it” either. Across the spectrum - from the blind devotion in a cult like organization, to the big 3, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, to the agnostic person that just does not “feel the love.” Most people want to believe in a bigger picture, some benevolent “higher power”, something more than the mundane “day to day” aspect of getting through the day. I remember growing up in Brooklyn, when I looked at life through the eyes of a child, I was a keen observer of “folks.” I would see people get dressed … [Read more...]
And The Winner Is…Undivided Attention: Mindfulness, Technology and The Oscars Mistake
"Let me have your undivided attention." Let's start by looking at the phrase “Undivided Attention.” In fact let's look at the phrase, but take a relaxing deep breath first…. So just this week my son, in 6th grade, was preparing for the science fair. About a week before the science fair I started to pepper my son with questions about the hypothesis of the project along with one of my favorites - “What does it mean for the real world?” In between the fidgeting, the distractions (in this case SnapChat) and his older brother in the other room, we focused in on the science project at hand. First we put the SnapChat machine (iPhone) to the side of the table we were sitting at and tried to … [Read more...]
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