To start off, I want to recognize that I have neglected to post for a few months. My last challenge of drinking tea mindfully ended 2 months ago. Very briefly, what did I learn from this challenge:

• I enjoy the idea of drinking tea much more than the actual practice – This is something I subconsciously already knew, but became readily apparent about a week or so into the challenge. Don’t get me wrong; I do enjoy having tea, but I much more enjoy thinking of myself as a tea drinker. Why this is the case I am not entirely sure, but I think it probably has a lot to do with my correlation of tea drinking to mindfulness.
• I would like to use this as a way to have new sensory experiences – This is definitely true. I get very excited whenever I hear about a type of tea I haven’t had previously. If I’m being honest, my genuine attraction to tea is sensorial. With this in mind, I would like to focus more on experimenting with different types as a way to incorporate new sensory experiences in my life rather than using it as a mindfulness practice.
• If I really want to practice drinking tea mindfully, I need to use a much smaller mug – There are many times I like having a large mug of tea. Peppermint is one of my favorites for this purpose. However, as a mindfulness exercise, having a much smaller cup that I sip out of instead of drink would be preferable.
• I miss tea houses – I did not go to them very often when I lived in Houston, but I liked having them around and the atmosphere they provided. Where I live now, it is only about coffee. There are even tea rooms I looked up that don’t have any type of tea listed on the menu!

For this month, I am going to do something simple and straightforward, yet at the same time something that requires discipline and reflection. I have had passing thoughts of keeping a journal on multiple occasions in the last couple of years. Most prominently, I contemplated starting a chronic pain diary and/or depression/anxiety diary. More recently, however, I decided what would be most helpful for me is to have a motivation journal. The biggest challenge I face today is dealing with my chronic low motivation level, so this will be the primary focus of the journal I am starting.

Here are the details of this month’s challenge:

• Have at least 5 minutes of reflection on my motivation level sometime during each day. This could happen during my morning communion run or check-in, at the end of the day before retiring to bed, or while I am journaling. Basically, I want to make sure that I am reflecting on my motivation level regularly. I would like this practice to continue whether or not I stick with journaling.
• Write something down each day. It can be as little as 3 sentences. I downloaded the desktop application ‘Digital Diary’ yesterday to have a simple program I can use to record my journal entries. I can use my keyboard or my computer microphone to input my thoughts. When I have journaled in the past, the hardest part was just deciding to sit down and write something. Once I did that, I generally would have to stop myself from writing a novel. So the focus is not on amount, but consistency.
• Put up a blog post once a week to share with the world. I have been desirous of increasing my blog posts from once or twice a month to weekly for some time. This will be a perfect opportunity to start reaching this goal without having to put much more time or effort into it, since I will simply be sharing some of my journal thoughts from the week.

I am greatly looking forward to this monthly challenge. If this or any of my monthly challenges inspires any of my readers to do something similar, I would love to hear back from you and to know if there is any way I can support you.

Namaste.

This monthly challenge is inspired by a blog post I read years ago by Leo Babauta. I could not find the original article, but please check out his blog. It was one of my biggest motivations to starting this blog.

This month I would like to up my tea drinkage, but more importantly cultivate an activity to practice mindfulness each day. Ever since I began my health journey and especially when mindful living became a major part of that journey, I have felt a sense of power and peace at the mental image of drinking a cup of tea. This image and the feelings it evoked have remained constant regardless of whether or not I actually consume tea on a regular basis or even at all.

I would like to experience the full breadth of feelings that can come from mindfully drinking tea. At this point, making tea still seems like a minor chore sometimes. Therefore, I would like this challenge to shift my experience of making tea from a deliberate action to an automatic one, and possibly become part of the baseline routine of my life. Whether that ends up being the case depends of course on how the month goes.

Here are the details:

• Choose a mug before the first day of the challenge – This will be my special tea-drinking mug for the month. I want to choose one that vibes fullness and equanimity AND that is the appropriate size – not too big nor too small. I purpose to treat the mug with the same reverence that I want to experience while drinking from it. Once I finish a cup and wash up, I will store the mug in a special place.
• Make a mug of tea each day of the challenge – This is pretty straightforward. Sometime between when I wake up and go to sleep each day, I want to prepare a mug of tea. The most likely time candidates are first thing in the morning and last thing before getting in bed. Another possibility is after a meal, especially one I am eating alone. However, any time is fine as long as I make at least one mug per day.
• It’s about drinking tea, not preparing it – I have researched and experimented with tea meditation previously. Usually this involves mindfully doing every activity from the intent to prepare the tea all the way through to the washing and putting away of the tea mug. The goal is to make the entire experience a space to practice and enjoy being fully in each moment. My challenge does not concern the tea preparation or cleanup. I am primarily focused on the tea itself and cultivating the ability to savor the sensory experience.
• Do the act mindfully, but not necessarily meditatively – I absolutely love Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness: awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. This is a mindset we can have regardless of what we are physically doing. Meditation, on the other hand, is an exercise designed to help us reach a state of pure awareness, where we remove ourselves from being caught up in our emotions and thoughts and simply observe them from a 3rd-person perspective. I practice meditation at least once a day both formally and informally. This challenge, however, is about cultivating a spirit of mindfulness that I can carry with me through the rest of my life. It is perfectly okay to follow and explore whatever thoughts or emotions arise in this scenario, or to just BE if that feels right.

I will conclude this post with this quote by English essayist Thomas De Quincey:                                     “Tea… will always be the favorite beverage of the intellectual.”

Namaste.

A couple of weeks ago I ended my monthly challenge of daily gratitude and no gossip. I use the word ended instead of completed or finished for a reason. While I learned a lot from the month, in no way did I conquer or fulfill the challenge. A big part of the problem was my screen addiction reasserting itself after my 30-day long hiatus the month before last. Some part of me felt I had ‘broken’ my addiction and while still considering it an issue, thought it was on the way out. I couldn’t have been more wrong; in retrospect this seems obvious. However, other problems aside, let’s discuss my successes, struggles, and observations from this previous month.

Daily Gratitude – For this portion of the challenge, I had created 4 specific objectives, which you can review here. The first week of the challenge I happened to be residing at my brother Brian’s house in Bryan, TX. I had intended to just spend the weekend, but Snowvid had other plans. The environment this created (no power, unable to travel, surrounded by kids) was coincidentally perfect for cultivating gratitude. I specifically remember one morning going for a walk and to meditate. On the way back to the house, I became enraptured with a feeling of connectedness. Reflecting on the experience later, I realized that the several inches of snow on the ground completely erased the normal boundaries that existed – between road and field, between field and yard, between forest and clearing – everything was connected on one huge white landscape. It was breathtakingly beautiful and evoked natural vibes of lovingkindness.

This first week was overwhelmingly successful. I expressed gratitude to various members of the group I was interacting with for that week, as well as texting and calling other family members to express gratitude. I loved using the gratitude app I had installed before the challenge and posted several pictures alongside my entries. I was grateful to Nia (my sister-in-law’s lab) for being my walking and meditation partner, I was grateful to Eden for being my yoga partner, and I was grateful to myself – a practice made easier by the introduction of lovingkindness meditation.

However, as all things eventually do, this week ended, the snow cleared, and life returned to pre-snowvid normal. I found myself much less naturally disposed to gratitude, and the renewed use of technology combined with my recently ended ban on screens, reignited my screen addiction.  If there is one thing screens seem to be very effective at for me, it is zapping my instinct or desire to be grateful. I’m not sure why this is, but I definitely notice the more I am around screens (whether productively or destructively) the less prone to gratefulness I am.

For the last 2 weeks of the challenge, my commitment remained very low. I would think about gratitude usually several times a day, but actually using my gratitude app or sending a thank you text to someone or just noticing and appreciating beauty in my life was a huge struggle. When I did push through the resistance, I experienced great rewards, namely an enhanced sense of well-being and a feeling of connectedness with not just the person or object of my gratitude but people and objects in general.

No Gossip – This part of the challenge I was much more successful at fulfilling. Because it involved a negative action rather than a positive one, it proved less difficult to maintain in my more depressed state of mind. The gist of this part of the challenge was to not talk about people who were not present in the conversation. I was mostly going for avoiding rumors that cast those discussed in a negative light, but was more broadly trying to make conversations exclusively about the people involved, not random third-parties.

The biggest lesson I learned about gossip is that it takes the focus off of enjoying conversation with another human being and converts it into a festival of judging and flattering. I noticed that whenever I felt the urge to gossip, it was usually because I was uncomfortable, bored, or empty and wanted a quick fix for that. Generally, however, my previous feelings would simply be converted into self-righteousness, frustration, or pity. To use Buddhist language, I had moved from aversive energies to explosive energies. Neither are optimal.

What am I going to continue moving forward?

• Gratitude app – I plan on continuing to use my gratitude app on a daily basis. I am also exploring some of the other features on the app – affirmations, daily zen, and vision board.
• Gratitude days – Once a month, I would like to have a ‘gratitude day.’ During the course of the day I will purpose to have a grateful mindset and express gratitude to as many people and in as many ways as possible.
• News only on Philosophical Appointed Times (PATs) – I definitely found being more disconnected to news and politics seemed to correlate with increased gratitude and less negativity. While I like staying up on current events, I think I can adequately do so even if I just follow or listen to news on weekends.
• Limiting “positive” gossip – Only positively speak about other people not present in the conversation once per day
• Justifying “negative” gossip – Never negatively speak about other people not present in the conversation unless absolutely necessary and ultimately for the purpose of edification

May my life be filled with gratitude. May I live in peace with others.

Namaste.

It has been ages since I last posted anything on here. I’d like to start up again now that I’ve settled in to medical school. Something I have wanted to post about for a long time but was never sure how is the subject of spirituality. Obviously this is a word than might have as many different meanings as there are people.

I feel a useful definition is “a belief in something supernatural that forms the core of a person’s psychology.” I realize this definition might raise more problems than it solves by introducing the word ‘supernatural.’ However, I don’t think writing a treatise on what is supernatural is necessary in understanding my definition of spirituality.

Whether your understanding of supernatural is cosmic energy, a Creator, nirvana, or any number of other concepts, the root of spirituality remains the same. It is a belief in this idea, God, or meta-narrative that a person uses to fundamentally define who they are.

I also believe spirituality can be charted on a spectrum, with pure spirituality on one side and pure religion on the other. Pure spirituality is a belief in something supernatural that while forming the basis of a person’s psychology has no direct influence on their interactions with other people. That is, this person could potentially have the same lifestyle and actions as someone that did not hold this belief at all.

I feel that pure spirituality is fairly rare; usually it is mixed with some degree of religion. Religion is the actions a person takes as a result of their belief in something supernatural.

Pure religion then would be a set of actions inherited from a religious system or spiritual understanding that a person practices without any regard for the original belief that generated these actions. That is, a person who practices pure religion could have a totally separate psychology and belief system which has nothing to do with their actions. They inherited a list of rules and practices that they follow rigidly without any supernatural belief for doing so.

Now the reason I am defining these terms and introducing these concepts is to be able to elucidate my journey out of spirituality. Don’t get me wrong. It is not that I journeyed to a different point in the specturm; rather, I left it altogether.

I have the deepest respect for the psychologies that people use to define themselves. One of the unique aspects of the human species is the psychological need for ‘meaning,’ as vague or arbitrary as this may be. I am no different from any one else I know in this regard.

However, what I have discovered through my own experiences and reflections, is that I find meaning and base my psychology on certain principles and beliefs that are not supernatural in origin. One does not leave or enter spirituality lightly; and my journey out of it is a very long story.

What I want to accomplish in this post, however, is not to explain what I have left but what I have entered. I titled this post ‘apatheism’ because if asked about what my position on God, spirituality, or the supernatural is, I would say I am an apatheist. I like this somewhat colloquial defintion I found for apatheism:

At some point something happened and somehow something or someone was created and somehow I, a bunch of other people, and a lot of other animals got here. I can live with that.

What this means is that I just don’t think about these subjects that much anymore. If I find someone that is fulfilled with their life and points to some type of spirituality or religion as the reason why, I think that is awesome, as long as their actions don’t harm or infringe on other people’s freedom. If someone finds fulfillment with their life and points to something non-spiritual as the reason why, I think that is also awesome, again as long as their actions don’t harm or infringe on other people’s freedom.

I will admit I don’t have that much love for people who make it their life’s work to attack religion and spirituality. I also don’t have much love for people who use their combination of religion and spirituality to impose restrictions and judge people who aren’t where they are. But at the end of the day, I find it much more beneficial and interesting for me to talk about the values I choose to live by and always be learning and adjusting these values based on my interactions and experiences with people, whether spiritual or not, that I have the pleasure of getting to know.

Since I have already used up more space than I like in a blog post, I will outline my current beliefs and values without much description, with the expectation of elaborating more in future posts.

People I talk to generally find my philosophical underpinnings rather boring, which I get – it can be a heavy subject. So, let’s skip right to the important stuff. Put simply, I find meaning in health. I divide health into three tiers:

Tier 1

• Physical: diet, exercise
• Mental: meditation, weekly paradigm
• Career: study, documentation of my involvement in some type of leadership role, community service, shadowing, research, and other education

Tier 2

• Emotional: long-term goals (MedVoices.net and popular opinion yearly updated dictionary), monthly challenges (planning on getting back to these next month)
• Relationship: keeping up with family and friends, dating
• Social: Toastmasters, miscellaneous weekly events
• Medical: yearly checkups, dental work, pill schedule, occasional massage or other therapy
• Service: at least a once a month event (looking into joining a group helping the homeless)

Tier 3

• Societal/Political: Wolf-Pac, voting
• Environmental: practicing daily conservation in the ways I can

I hope my readers take away something positive from this post. As always, comments are welcome. Peace and love.

What is forgiveness? According to the American Psychological Association,

Forgiveness is a process (or the result of a process) that involves a change in emotion and attitude regarding an offender. Most scholars view this an intentional and voluntary process, driven by a deliberate decision to forgive.

I’ve tried this process many times when dealing with situations in which others hurt me or I hurt myself. I suppose I have succeeded according to the above definition, because I did undergo a change in emotion and attitude regarding the offender, whether myself or another person. However, what I rarely, if ever, achieved was complete release from the situation. As much as I wanted to or tried, I simply could not erase the consequences the offense generated in my life, whether big or small.

Recently, I have adopted a different strategy. Some may view this new perspective as wishful thinking or cheating, but hey, for me it works beautifully.

Several science fiction movies I have watched recently contain time travel. In some of these, the “same” person was actually a different person (i.e. a person traveled back in time to interact with their former self). These two “people” while linked through consequences, were nonetheless distinct.

How does this relate to forgiveness? Well, suppose someone wronged “you” a year ago. Under this model, they didn’t actually wrong you, they wronged the you that existed (or exists) a year ago. Also, the offender is not the person you know now, but rather their former self that existed a year ago. What this means is that neither the person that committed the offense, nor the one offended even exist now. Forgiveness then is just to realize this and the negative energy and emotions fade away almost magically.

It may sound weird, but I can testify that it is better than any other process of forgiveness I have tried. So, the next time you do something stupid and are beating yourself up over it or someone slights you and you can’t get over the negative feelings you have for them, give this process of forgiveness a whirl and then share with me the results.

It has been a while since I posted a blog. The last few weeks have been incredibly busy and tiring. However, this is a good problem, because it is due to all the interviews for medical school I have received. I interviewed at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX on October 16; at the Texas A&M College of Medicine in Temple, TX on October 22; at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX on October 23; and at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, TX on October 30. I have two more interviews scheduled at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX on November 7 and at the Texas Tech School of Medicine in Lubbock, TX on November 20.

All the driving has made me tired all the time and has convinced me that I definitely don’t want a job that requires a lot of traveling. Each interview process has been a lot of fun as well as very informative. Of the schools I have interviewed at so far, Baylor is my top pick, followed by either UTMB Galveston or UT Houston. The interview at the A&M school in Temple was fine but the town seemed rather boring and I did not like how they split up their student body after the first year and a half at Brian-College Station.

Of the two interviews I have yet to attend, I expect that UT Southwestern will be comparable to Baylor, and Lubbock comparable to A&M. However, that being said, I have received good vibes from every school I have visited, so it will be a tough choice deciding where I want to spend four years. The way the system works is that I will rate the Texas public schools which I have received interviews at from first choice to last by January 21 on my application at the TMDSAS website. If I have already received a pre-match offer from my top choice school, then that is where I will go (unless I also receive an offer from Baylor, which is a private school and not in the Texas medical school system, and decide to attend there).

If I have not received a pre-match offer, I will go through match where my preferences will be combined with the preferences that each school has put out and will be waitlisted if I am not offered an acceptance at my top choice based on the algorithm that is used. I have until sometime in June to either accept one of my other offers or hold out to see if a spot opens at my top school (which would not be a very wise decision).

At this point, I will more than likely either be living in Dallas or Houston for the next four years starting in August of 2016. I am currently comparing what I believe to be the pros and cons between Baylor and Southwestern. If any of my readers live in either of these cities or used to do so and want to chime in on what they did or did not like about them, please do so. I have a feeling this is not going to be an easy decision. However, that being said, this is definitely a great problem for me to have!

People I have talked with say it is good to stand out from the other interviewers so you will be better remembered. Well, there are two aspects about me that definitely set me apart. First, I was the only music major at my interviews (as far as I know). Also, I was the only bald person among the interviewees, although I did meet one bald medical student or with whom I got along great.

I purchased a new medium-gray suit which fits me very well at a reasonable price about a month ago that I have used on my interviews. It was fun making a pocket square (or rather trying to make one and being helped out by Mom – I suck at sewing) which made the suit look snazzy. I am also trying to wear ties based on the colors of the medical school at which I am interviewing.

All in all, the application and interview process has been exciting if also somewhat stressful. It definitely costs money and takes time but I feel incredibly honored to be able to attend medical school and look forward eagerly to a fulfilling career in medicine. The field I am currently most interested in pursuing is Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. However, we will see if this holds once I start doing clinical rotations!

Now that I have another website that I am working on developing (medvoices.net), I don’t have as much time to devote to my blogging here. This, in addition to a recent shift of interests, has prompted me to redesign this website to be more specifically focused on personal development and self concept. These can include a whole litany of different topics, but I think these fall roughly into three main categories:

1. Personal Health. I have particular health problems that I work on alleviating while practicing acceptance. In addition, there are the proactive choices I make to cultivate a healthy lifestyle and mindset.
2. Body Image. This includes everything from clothing to grooming to mannerisms. It also involves learning to deal with any thoughts of inferiority that arise for whatever reason.
3. Practical Philosophy. A large part of health and body image is the way we think about it. For this reason, the ideas we have about these topics are extremely important and not something to be glossed over.

With these thoughts in mind, I will be creating different categories to focus on and writing specifically about those topics. I plan on keeping up my monthly challenges and evaluations as well as a mid-month post. However, I will be adding in posts that basically chronicle my struggles and successes in the above-mentioned areas. I believe this will be incredibly beneficial for my personal development and self concept and hopefully will be a source of enlightenment to those who read as well.

The way I try to prioritize my life at this point is as follows (an ultra-simplified description; it goes without saying that there are certain things that don’t need to be prioritized because I instinctively view them as urgent and important):

1. Always complete daily base exercise plan and eat full healthy meals. If I do nothing else in a day, I should do this. This provides the physical energy and mental motivation for everything else. If I ever start skipping exercise or eating skimpy meals, then everything else is going to be negatively affected. This has to always be the top priority.
2. Do semi-urgent and important tasks. These are the things on the to-do list which may not have to be done right this minute, but will catch up with me later and cause headaches if I procrastinate in doing them. There shouldn’t be a lot of these if I am following this prioritization scheme.
3. Deal with pain, inferiority, or confusion. These each relate to one of the categories mentioned above, respectively. There are two ways to address any of these symptoms. The first involves conscious action, such as stretching to reduce pain, blogging to work through thoughts of inferiority, or writing down areas of confusion so they can be diagnosed later at a predetermined time. The second way to address these symptoms is the same regardless of what the symptom is: meditation. Clear the mind, focus on your breath, and let the pain, inferiority, or confusion wash away.

There are many other activities I schedule in my day, but as long as I maintain the three priorities above, everything else will work out just fine. I invite you to practice the art of living with me as you read these posts.

So I finally got a picture uploaded. Not the best picture, but I’m not a very good photographer, especially of myself!