Practicing for a Good Life
A. Lad Burgin

© Copyright A. Lad Burgin, 2017. All rights reserved.


Each of us is faced with the question: How shall I live my life?  As a fellow human being, it is my hope that you will have a good life.  Having passed the 71st year on my path through life, I have some thoughts to share on this subject.

My strongest thought is that the path to achieving and sustaining a good life involves a practice of thinking, feeling and acting on a daily basis. What then is a “Good Life” and how does a person approach living a good life? In the story that follows, I will share my answers to these questions.

Life’s Journey

Life is full of joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, and problems and challenges.  If you live a long life, there may even be one, or more catastrophes along the way.  Life is a journey that happens and is revealed to us one day at a time.  Today may be joyful and tomorrow dreadful.  This is the reality of the world in which we live.

At the end of the journey, the quality of life will be defined by thousands of decisions and actions taken on a daily basis.  Each of us compiles a body of work over our lifetime.  The greatest asset we can have in building our life’s body of work is mindfulness.

Mindfulness

To be mindful is to be aware of thoughts, feelings and actions in the situations in which we find ourselves.  Mindfulness of our actions and their impact on our-selves and others is of particular importance.  When we are mindful, we are aware of what we are doing and open to information from others’ about the results of our actions.  Mindfulness allows us to be aware of whether our actions are harmful or helpful to ourselves and others.  To me, the fundamental measures of a good life are harm and help.

Harm and Help

How much harm have I done to myself and others through my daily actions? It is difficult, if not impossible, to go through life without causing some harm.  However, approaching each situation in each day with the intention of not doing harm puts us squarely on the path to a good life.  Mindfulness allows us to be aware when we are engaging in thoughts, feelings and actions that are harmful to ourselves or others.  It allows us to cease harmful ways and make amends for harm we have caused.  Being mindful about harm allows us to build a body of life’s work in which we have minimized the harm we have done.  First, do no harm!

How much help have I provided to myself and others through my daily actions?  For me, the second and perhaps most important measure of a life’s body of work is the amount of help that one has given to one’s-self and others.  I include one’s-self because our relationship to ourselves is a major contributor to the quality of our lives.  If I am helpful to myself, I treat myself with respect and care for my mental, emotional and physical well-being.  If I am helpful to others, I treat them with respect and care for their well-being.  In summing up a life’s body of work in terms of both intention and result, does the help given outweigh the harm done.  To build a body of life’s work in which you help when and if you can and do no harm, requires a mindful approach to daily living.  It requires a practice.

Practice

A practice is a set of activities that a person does repeatedly to attain and sustain proficiency at something.  A good life unfolds one day at a time through mindful, thinking, feeling and acting.  Achieving and sustaining a good life requires a daily, good life practice. The key aspects of my practice include:

  •  Intention and action
  •  Meditation
  •  Exercise, nutrition and sleep
  •  Gratitude
  •  Relationships
  •  Adventure

Intention and action are starting points for daily practice.  Starting the day with a clear intention as to how we would like it to be and following through with appropriate action is at the heart of practice.  In fashioning a good life practice, we must come to grips with the question:  How do I want my life to be?  There are many choices.  Life can be exciting, tranquil, busy, calm and so on.  With so many people in the World, there will be many, specific answers to this question.

For me, a good life embodies mindful, daily thinking, feeling and acting in accordance with some basic precepts:

  •  Balance in my daily activities among work, family, friends, personal time and
     recreation.
  • Harmony in my relationships with myself and others.
  •  Compassion for others and their life situations and challenges.
  •  Joy and gratitude for the many good things in my life.
  •  Calm in approaching the trials and challenges of daily life.
  •  Love for the people in my life.
  •  Kindness to the people with whom I interact.

Starting each day with the intention to implement these things sets the stage for a “good day”.  When I finish the day having engaged in them, I find that I am pleased with the day even if it has been difficult and I am not satisfied by all that has taken place.

Meditation is the key to a calm mind.  At some point in my journey, I discovered that life is much more satisfying when it is encountered with a calm mind.  In my work and in my personal life, I have experienced many times that things just work better when my mind is calm and I am centered.  I find that daily meditation allows me to remain calm and centered when working through whatever comes up during the day.  Therefore, I have incorporated a 20 minute meditation into my practice.  My intention is to meditate every day and my action is to do it most days.  If I can’t manage 20 minutes, 10 minutes is still significant.  I have found that there are many times during a day when one can use an otherwise idle time to meditate, such as when stuck in traffic.

Exercise, nutrition and sleep are essential to maintaining personal well-being.  Living a good life takes alertness and energy.  By adopting and acting on an intention of eating a good diet, getting regular, aerobic exercise and sleeping for at least eight hours each night, we are able to be at, or near, our best each day.  We have the energy to meet life’s challenges and opportunities.

Good nutrition involves not only eating a good diet, but avoiding over indulgence in alcohol and caffeine, and not using drugs.  Aerobic exercise can range from walking, to bicycling, to running, or my favorite an orbital cross trainer.  Regular exercise several times a week is what is important. Getting a good night’s sleep is essential to being able to function well physically, emotionally and mentally. In my experience, a person who is operating with serious sleep deprivation lacks the capacity to be mindful and calm.

Gratitude is the engine of emotional well-being. Gratitude is the awareness and appreciation of the good people and things in our lives. We all visit two different emotional realms.  There is the Realm of Positive Emotions, such as joy, love, awe and enthusiasm.  And, there is the Realm of Negative Emotions, such as envy, hate, fear, anger, frustration and sadness.  Every day, we each make a choice of which emotional realm we will visit.  If we consistently visit the same realm we eventually become a resident there. 

It is hard for me to conceive of living a good life while residing in the Realm of Negative Emotions.  The people I know who live there are unhappy, depressed and not pleasant to be around.  The Realm of Positive Emotions is where a good life can be lived.  This is where gratitude comes in.  When we stop and think about, or write down things for which we are grateful, we take ourselves to the Realm of Positive Emotions and we strengthen the positive circuits in our brains.  When we dwell on the things and people we don’t like, the things we don’t have and the troubles we face, we visit the Negative Realm and strengthen these circuits in our brains.

Putting gratitude into our daily practice keeps us resident in the Realm of Positive Emotions.  We may be drawn to the negative from time to time, but gratitude will bring us back to the positive.

Relationships appear to be what matters most as we look at our lives. Deep satisfaction comes from being in meaningful relationships with family and friends.  Loneliness and isolation accrue those who are disconnected from others.  When George Vaillant, the curator of the Grant long-term Study of Harvard Men(1), was asked to sum-up what he had learned about satisfaction with life from following the Study Participants, he answered:


“The only thing that really matters in life is your relationships to other people”.


In my work as a business advisor to senior executives, I have had the opportunity to talk with many executives as they approached the end of their carriers.  Their biggest regret has consistently been that they put too much time and effort into their work and not enough time and effort into their relationships with spouses, children and friends.

Relationships don’t just happen.  They require time and energy and attention.  As with the other aspects of a good life, building and maintaining meaningful relationships takes both intention and action.

Adventure adds spice to life.  A sense of adventure, what in Aikido is called the “mind of the beginner”, allows us to see the opportunities which surround us.  It opens us up to new experiences.  It generates enthusiasm and zest for life.

I have found that cultivating and incorporating a sense of adventure into my practice is a great source of pleasure and satisfaction.  To help me focus my intention and action, I begin each day by reading a poem that I wrote which was inspired by Mary Oliver’s “Messenger”(2):


Awakening

Today I awakened to the opportunity of a new day.
My life is an adventure.
I journey mindfully.
What astonishing things will I encounter today?

 

The Value of Practice

My “Good Life Practice” has become an integral part of my daily life.  It keeps me calm, centered, focused and balanced.  It helps me to enjoy each day.  Its value became particularly clear to me in September of 2010 when my oldest son died suddenly and unexpectedly.  My practice helped me navigate the grief and sadness.  It enabled me to hold on to and appreciate the many blessings in my life.  It helped me to heal.

We practice every day to sustain a good life.  When tragedy strikes, our practice allows us to lean into it and move through it.  It allows us to endure great pain without suffering.

I hope you find this helpful as you think about your own life and develop your own practice.

What astonishing things will you encounter today?

Resources

Here are some resources which I have found to be useful in creating my own practice:
1. Achor, Shawn (2011) “The Happy Secret to Better Work,” http://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work.html
2. H.H. the Dali Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (2002). How to Practice: The Way to a meaningful Life. Translated and Edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, Ph.D. New York: Atria.
3. Kabat-Zinn, Jon (2002). Guided Mindfulness Meditation. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.
4. The Living a Good Life Seminar. Center for Leadership Renewal, http://www.leadrenewal.com.
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1 “What Makes Us Happy?,” by Joshua Wolf Shenk, 2009, The Atlantic Online, June 2009
2 Thirst: Poems, Beacon (Boston, MA), 2006.

© Copyright A. Lad Burgin, 2017. All rights reserved.