Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t look around once in a while, you could miss it.
—Ferris Bueller
There’s so much going on. My kids are growing up so fast, and I’m desperately trying to keep up with the whirlwind of changes in the world, especially with AI. Like many people, I feel this constant temptation to do more, more, more—thinking that if I can just be a little more productive, I can get ahead of all of this change and find happiness.
In the past, I’ve looked at best practices to find happiness. I even took Yale’s Happiness Class, the school’s most popular class ever, online. You can too. It’s free for auditing on Coursera.
But this year, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to dig deep into one specific form of self improvement.
This year, I spent the year living mindfully.
I’ve been meditating for decades, off and on. But in the past year, I committed to a new routine: using the Headspace app for 15 minutes each morning, right after I got up. This lets me start the day with a settled head and mindfully and intentionally start the day.
But I wanted to take this one step further. Mindfulness lets me ground myself, but it also provides a solid foundation for growth.
I found the work of Ronald Siegel, a Harvard Psychology professor, especially helpful here. His book, The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary: Finding Happiness Right Where You Are, and his course, The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being, provided me with a solid roadmap for mindful growth.
Living mindfully has taught me that self-improvement isn’t about reaching some perfect version of myself—it’s an ongoing journey. It’s not about “fixing” who I am or avoiding life’s challenges. Instead, it’s about embracing my flaws, approaching each moment with curiosity, and uncovering the beauty in everyday life.
I wanted to share 4 key things that I’ve learned.
1. There is a Space Between Stimulus and Response.
Something happens, and I respond—that’s the natural way the world works. Early psychologists like B.F. Skinner viewed behavior the same way, believing that our actions were automatic responses to external events, reflexes shaped by our environment.
But then Viktor Frankl came along and flipped that idea on its head. In Man’s Search for Meaning, written after surviving the horrors of the Holocaust, he showed that even in the worst possible circumstances, people still have a choice. He put it this way: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing—the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
In the concentration camps, the Nazis treated prisoners like garbage, barely keeping them alive with rations of slop. And yet, even there, some people chose to rise above. They shared their tiny scraps of food with others, acts of kindness in the face of unimaginable cruelty. Frankl saw that no matter what happens to us, we still have the power to choose how we respond.
If dehumanized prisoners can find ways to choose their response, surely I could.
2. Changing My Response is Painful
But when I tried to capture that moment between stimulus and response, I found it far more difficult. I was able to see it sitting there but only after I’d acted. I’d say, “I really shouldn’t yell at—” only to see the words come out of my mouth. That moment was incredibly hard to grasp, like trying to catch on to a wisp of smoke.
It turns out that tapping into that space takes more than willpower. It means pushing back against old patterns—patterns so ingrained they feel like part of who I am. When I try to grow, whether it’s practicing patience or breaking an old habit, my brain fights back. It’s as if it’s saying, “Whoa, hold on. Why are you doing this? This isn’t who we are!”
This is hard. Really hard. It feels like I’m trying to turn into someone I’m not, like holding my breath underwater. Every part of me is screaming to come up for air. But I’m starting to see this discomfort for what it really is. It’s the same kind of pain I feel when I’m exercising—when my muscles are begging me to quit, to just stay the same. And just like with exercise, mindfulness has taught me to sit with it, to recognize it as a sign that I’m growing.
3. See the World for What It Is
Mindfulness has given me a way to see the world more clearly. It’s so easy to get stuck in the stories we tell ourselves—like assuming a coworker’s curt email was meant as an insult, or spiraling into worst-case scenarios about things that haven’t happened. But mindfulness helps me take a step back and see things for what they really are, not what my emotions or assumptions want me to believe.
One of my favorite tools for this is my Bullet Journal. At the end of each day, I jot down lessons I’ve learned or patterns I’ve noticed. There’s something about putting pen to paper that combines mindfulness with reflection—it’s become this little ritual of clarity for me. It’s my chance to step out of the emotional fog and reset.
Writing things down helps me untangle what actually happened from how I felt about it. Capturing both the events and my emotions gives me a clearer perspective. Once it’s on paper, I can sit and reflect on it. Then I can set my intentions for the next day from a more solid place.
Whether it’s through journaling, pausing to breathe, or simply observing, I’ve learned that clarity doesn’t come from doing more but from slowing down. When I can see things as they are, I can respond more thoughtfully and stay grounded in the moment.
4. Focus on other people more than yourself.
As I dove deeper into mindfulness, one name kept coming up: the Dalai Lama, the world champion of mindfulness. He seems like one of the happiest people on earth—always smiling, always patient. Despite losing his homeland when Tibet was invaded by China and spending most of his life in exile, he radiates joy. How? Compassion. As he famously says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”
But his compassion isn’t just talk. He even refers to those who have oppressed his people as “my friend the enemy.” There’s a story about one of his followers, who had been imprisoned by the Chinese for decades. When asked if he had ever been afraid during his imprisonment, the follower replied, “Yes. I was afraid.” But his fear wasn’t what you’d think. His greatest fear was losing compassion for his captors. Imagine that—after years of suffering, his biggest worry wasn’t revenge or bitterness; it was losing the ability to feel compassion.
Inspired by this, I began exploring how to practice compassion myself and discovered a meditation technique called tonglen, or “giving and taking.” The concept is simple yet profound: you breathe in the pain or suffering of others, imagine it being cleansed and transformed, and then exhale kindness, warmth, and relief back into the world.
At first, the idea sounded terrible. Why would I willingly take in someone else’s suffering? Why would I breathe in their “toxins”? But then it clicked—tonglen is the essence of selfless giving. It’s about offering a part of myself to make the world just a little bit better.
Mindfulness has taught me that life is not a race to achieve perfection but a journey of awareness and connection. It’s about recognizing the space between stimulus and response, embracing the discomfort of growth, seeing the world clearly without the distortions of assumptions, and practicing compassion that extends beyond myself. These lessons have helped me slow down, be present, and find joy in the ordinary moments that make life extraordinary.
Life moves pretty fast, but if I take the time to look around, I realize happiness is already here.