In contrast, mindless planning is a waste of time and energy, also taking you out of the present.

Sometimes it is hard to know the difference between mindful and mindless planning.  In general, mindful planning is pragmatic or practical while mindless planning is fanciful.  The good news is that as long as the mindless planning is isolated and does not give rise to other types of thinking, the cost of it is usually limited to wasted time and energy.

It is worth noting that many people are good at avoiding mindless planning in one or more life activities but not in others.  For example, many are mindful planners when at work, particularly if undertaking a specific task, but not when socializing, parenting, vacationing, or relaxing.

Avoiding mindlessness planning and, indeed, mindlessness in any form is a prescription that covers all of the thinking you do, a 24/7 proposition.

To build a foundation for this section, it is important to define what exactly is meant by the term “thinking”.

Thinking is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary¹ as “thought, cognition, meditation, mental action or activity, etc.” Please note, the term thought is interchangeable with the term thinking.

For the purposes of this section, the term thinking refers to both visual and verbal mental activity. Visual mental activity is sometimes referred to as visualization and verbal mental activity is synonymous with “internal dialog”. Both forms of mental activity can be associated with the past, present, or future. The vast majority of people seem to think using an internal dialog rather than using visualization so there is a bias toward using the phrase internal dialog. If you thinking is predominantly visual, substitute visualization for internal dialog. Thinking is specifically distinguished from both memories and feelings.

Awareness of your thinking or internal dialog is a prerequisite for changing it. As noted in the discussion about “awareness”, it is important to be aware of both spontaneous thoughts and thoughts triggered by sensory information. You can direct your thoughts but it is near impossible to direct your feelings or memories without first directing your thoughts.

It bears repeating that when you learned to speak and direct your thinking, you simultaneously created the potential for undirected or mindless thinking. It could not be otherwise. The overarching goals of the prescribed “thinking to avoid” are (1) to be AWARE when your thoughts change from being directed to undirected, (2) to STOP the undirected thoughts, and (3) to RESUME directed thinking OR to OBSERVE the present (your own sensations, others around you, or your surroundings).

This prescription applies to all mindless thoughts. It allows for directed thinking that may arise spontaneously. These thoughts can be a source of creative ideas and solutions. Because of the potential for creativity, there is an allowance for spontaneous thinking, particularly mindful spontaneous thinking.

If you achieve the three goals listed above, you will (1) have more TIME for directed thinking, observation, and being “present”, (2) have more ENERGY for directed thinking, directed activities, observation, and being present, and (3) avoid the specific ills associated with different types of undirected thinking as described below.

¹Shorter Oxford English Dictionary – Sixth Edition

Stress has been associated with many chronic physical and emotional illnesses. In addition, high levels of stress have been linked to impaired performance of the immune system and decreased rates of healing from acute injuries and illness. In other words, lowering your level of stress may be the single most important thing you can do to stay physically and emotionally healthy as well as to quickly recover from illness and injury if and when they occur.

Want some data to support these claims? In the book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: A Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping, author Robert M. Sapolsky reports on studies that link stress to: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, gastrointestinal disease, inhibited growth and recovery, infertility, impotence, and depressed immune system performance. Depressed immune system performance has, in turn, been linked to disorders such as multiple sclerosis, respiratory infections, and cancer. Indeed, there are studies that find that “stress, including social stress, will cause tumors to grow faster in laboratory rodents, and render the rodents’ bodies less capable of rejecting a tumor.”

In the book, Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome, author James L. Wilson points out that the primary function of the adrenal glands is to help you cope with stress. He further notes that the adrenal glands secrete hormones in response to physical, emotional, and environmental stress and that if stress is chronic, the adrenal glands cannot keep up with the demand for the stress response hormones. Think of demand for something being greater than the supply – sooner or later, you run out.

The failure of the adrenal glands to keep up with the body’s demand for stress hormones produces a variety of physical and emotional ailments. In addition to the disorders listed by Sapolsky, Wilson, refers to Addison’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, and erratic or abnormal blood sugar levels. He also relates chronic stress and the related scarcity of stress hormones to an increased likelihood of experiencing allergies, arthritic pain, anxiety, depression, mental confusion, impaired attention and memory, fibromyalgia, and auto-immune disorders.

Stress impairs your ability to maintain or achieve physical and emotional health. Achieving peace of mind goes a long way toward ending chronic stress and putting stress back in its place as an intermittent but manageable condition.

The second category of rewards or benefits from achieving ataraxis come from the energy and time freed up by being less stressed. It may be obvious that if you are able to reduce the time and energy being expended in stress, you will have more time and energy for directed thinking, directed action, and for being at peace.

For most people, the most dramatic example of decreased stress and the liberating feeling associated with it takes place immediately after they have met an important deadline. Prior to meeting the deadline, stress builds both within and outside a person’s awareness. Once the project is complete (within or after the deadline), the burden created by the project and the associated stress ends. Most people will feel a palpable sense of relief and may find they are spending less time and energy worrying or “stressing” about the project.

If you are able to achieve ataraxis, it does not mean that you will never work under the pressure of a deadline or never take on an important project. It does mean that when you take on a project with or without a deadline, you will work toward completion of the project free of the burden of stress, comfortable with your efforts and able to tap energy and time that is not spent worrying or “stressing”. As a result, you will not experience a palpable sense of relief because you will not have taken on the burden of stress. But, you will have worked in a mindful and efficient way toward completing your project.

Some will object that only deadlines get them moving or that they would not get anything done without the pressure of a deadline. While common, this objection represents thinking that takes you away from ataraxis and toward mindlessness and stress. Furthermore, this objection represents thinking that fails to set or balance priorities, a type of mindless thinking. It is not as exciting (stressful) but working in a consistent, relaxed, and efficient manner toward a reasonable goal (with a reasonable deadline) achieves the rewards of ataraxis as well as any rewards associated with the project itself.

This section on the benefits of achieving ataraxis would not be complete without mentioning the mystical rewards that are often associated with being at peace with ones self. As noted before, peace of mind or serenity is viewed as a prerequisite for being connected to your spirit or “soul”. Achieving peace of mind is thought to open “space” or room for a connection to your spirit and powers outside of your awareness and greater (or higher) than you or anyone else can imagine (for example, God, Alla, etc.).

Although my observation is that achieving the state of ataraxis is a gateway to feeling in harmony with others and nature, I find that the full meaning of the feeling of being in harmony is inexpressible without limiting it through the mechanism of a belief system. It is not my intention to limit your experience of harmony with your self, with others, and with nature, by defining it. It is my intention that you experience it for what it is. I will hastily add that feeling in harmony has one benefit that I am comfortable defining. That is, feeling in harmony means NOT being in disharmony with your self, others, and your surroundings – a clear benefit all by itself.

Also, it is my hope that you will take note of the fact that all of the belief systems that attempt to define the experience of being in harmony and “connected” as well as to describe its benefits, are the work of other human beings. So, no matter how comprehensive and elegant and inspiring a belief system is, it is still the creation of a human being or beings and, as such is an interpretation of what is likely beyond anyone’s full understanding.

Some belief systems seem pure and universally life affirming. Others, seem to have an expressed bias against “nonbelievers”. Be open to any belief system and what it has to offer but be alert for mindlessness and the beliefs mindlessness generate.

With the rewards and benefits outlined, it is time to move into the prescribed thinking….

“God is in the details.”
Gustave Flaubert (1821-80)

The Details of Achieving Ataraxis

Details are important when trying to get anything right. It does not matter whether you are trying to perceive reality accurately and objectively or if you are trying to achieve ataraxis. Attending to details, as difficult as it can be, often makes a huge difference.

What follows includes a section on (1) thinking to avoid and (2) thinking to cultivate. The section on thinking to avoid includes prescribed thought patterns to avoid as well as a discussion on feelings. The section on thinking to cultivate includes prescribed thinking to cultivate and a discussion on staying in the present.

The prescriptions that follow are the core of guiding you toward ataraxis. Practicing them takes discipline and persistence. Whether you find this practice easy or hard is foremost a function of your perspective. You can view it as a challenge, a burden, an opportunity, or as a combination of all three. It is up to you. In the hope of enticing you to do the work, we start with a description of the benefits of achieving peace of mind.

For example, someone may say to you that you are being rude. Instead of looking at this as a possibility that you should examine objectively, your psychological defense mechanism kicks in causing you to ignore the comment or blame someone else or circumstances for the other person’s perception that you are rude. So, you might think, “I’m not being rude, he/she is overly sensitive” or “Anyone who has had the kind of day that I have had, is entitled to be a little abrupt and arrogant”.

This example is a only a hint of the potential for a psychological defense mechanism to preserve a sense of psychological comfort. Numerous specific defense mechanisms have been described by various authors and a variety of ills, from minor to severe, have been attributed to overusing these defense mechanisms.

Leaving the term psychological defense mechanism aside, my observation is that most people preserve their own psychological comfort by not attending to thoughts or sensory information that is disquieting to them. This is often called “denial”. To accomplish this task they must keep these thoughts outside of their awareness. They must disassociate from their thinking and feeling. This, of course, is done at the expense of objective reality (a reality that is as close to reality as any one person can come).

Sometimes this disassociation from reality is used to ignore physical pain or other physical or psychological symptoms that produce disquiet. Sometimes this dissociation is used to remain comfortable in the presence of risk (take a close look at the risk associated with driving a car to appreciate the role of disassociation in this regard). Frequently this disassociation is used to preserve a sense of self that is objectively different from reality. For example, a person may think of him or her self as generous (or attractive or healthy) when in reality, he or she is not perceived by others as being generous (or attractive or healthy).

There will be more complete treatment of what “sense of self” means in the pages that follow. The warning to be emphasized here is to be alert for your own tendency to dissociate from disquieting feelings – to keep them or push them away from your awareness. In other words, practice awareness of objective reality even if it causes discomfort. Following this warning will make it possible for you to accelerate your journey toward ataraxis because you will be closer to perceiving reality accurately and better positioned to make appropriate changes.

For example, if you accept the feedback that you are being rude, you can start to explore how your interaction with others hints at frustrated wants or disapproval or some other state that is inconsistent with ataraxis. Accepting legitimate feedback provides an opportunity for growth that dissociating from the feedback does not. This is yet another benefit of practicing the skill of awareness.

After all, you can do things like exercising or listening to music to make yourself feel better.  You can change take medicine or drugs or certain foods to improve your feelings.  You cannot direct yourself to feel better without first thinking, however.  

Finally, at the risk of stating the obvious, thoughts can generate feelings and feelings can generate thoughts in an unending cycle.  This cycle can become self-perpetuating, particularly when mindlessness is at work.  Indeed, it may be impossible to separate thoughts and feelings if someone is profoundly unaware of the causal relationship they have.  In any event, thoughts and feelings are intertwined, even though the discussion below focuses on thoughts alone to start.

The Buddhist definition is close to the definition for ataraxis (the absence of stress or anxiety; serenity) but implies more than just serenity or peace of mind (perhaps even a mystical “blessed” state). In addition, the existence of the other subordinate definitions of enlightenment create more confusion about exactly what is meant than the relatively simple term ataraxis. 

Also for clarity, I have chosen to avoid using conscious/unconscious and have stayed with aware/mindful and unaware/mindless. While the terms conscious, aware, and mindful are synonyms, conscious has multiple meanings (a kind definition “baggage” I would prefer to avoid). This becomes important when trying to distinguish between being aware or mindful and being unaware or mindless. After all being unconscious can mean being asleep or “out” – something quite different than being unaware or unmindful.

Finally, I use the phrases “staying in the present” or just “the present” repeatedly. In each case and perhaps obviously, the “present” is what is happening “now” not what will happen or what has happened.

The primary advantage of “staying in the present” is staying aware of what is happening. Staying aware allows you to observe as much as possible of what is occurring “now” within and to you, within and to others, and in your surroundings. Your observations are the feedback you need to make decisions about what about you needs improvement and what is fine. For example, if you put a “spin” on some information you have, how does distorting the information make you feel and what do you notice about the reaction of others? You may need to process or “digest” your observations during a moment to come but without observations in the “present”, you will not have answers to the questions.

In addition, staying “present” opens the way for you to redirect your actions as they happen – it is where (and when) the action is. After all, you cannot change what is in the past and you only can change the future by acting in the present. You may rehearse your future actions but you can only act in the present. The importance of staying “present” is hard to overvalue.

The second key skill to master when seeking a state of ataraxis is faith.  Most people do not think of faith as a skill even though they may refer to practicing it.  To avoid a semantic discussion, grant me the license to state that faith is a skill and you must work at it to get better at having it.  Perhaps the faithful are born but they can also be made.

Why is faith important in the journey toward ataraxis?  Because it is a challenging journey full of uncertainty.  Faith is the only antidote to the doubt that is bound to arise.  Faith is a key skill to practice and master.

You practice faith by repeating to yourself, as often as necessary, the script:  (1) the goal is worthwhile, (2) I am doing my best at all times (under my particular circumstances), (3) the challenges I face make me stronger and better able to continue, and (4) the universe (or a greater power than you of your choosing) is life affirming.

The linchpin of this script is the life affirming nature of the universe.  If you believe it, everything else falls into place – it becomes obvious that you are meant to do your best as a human being including working toward achieving the goal of ataraxis.

If you do not believe that the universe is life affirming, please consider this observation:  all living things affirm living.  In the right environment, any living thing will flourish and attempt to maximize its potential.  If the environment is not “right”, any living thing will attempt to adapt so that it may achieve a state of affirming life.  It could not be otherwise for living things to have come as far as they have on this planet or in this universe.

Affirming life and maximizing potential are the organizing principles of living things.  It does not take any thought or intelligence for an organism to possess this capacity – it is “built in” to all living things from the least to the most complex life forms.  You can count on a life affirming quality being built into you and that this quality drives you toward maximizing your potential as a human being including your potential to achieve peace of mind or ataraxis.

You may ask, if a life affirming quality is built into all living things, including human beings, then why do non-life affirming things happen (like illness or accidents or natural disasters) or why do I or other people do non-life affirming things (like wage war or destroy the environment or steal from a neighbor)?

The answers are:  (1) because we are not able to control all events and (2) many individuals are disconnected from themselves, others, and their surroundings, particularly if the others and their surroundings are not “in their own backyard”.

The non-life affirming events outside your control, like illness and accidents, are unfortunate but also have the potential to make you stronger, wiser, and better at affirming life, even as the same events can bring great suffering and/or an end to life for some.  You can choose to see these non-life affirming events as opportunities to improve, to reaffirm living.  That’s what most do automatically (rallying against illness or injury without having to think about it).  Or, you can give up and succumb–as long as you are willing to work at giving up, because it is against your life-affirming nature to do so–it can be done but it is not easy.

The acts of others or groups of others that are non-life affirming seem to be part of the process of evolving as humans, mistakes that future humans might avoid out of respect for themselves, each other, and their surroundings, including the natural world.

At the current level of evolution, most people seem limited in their respect of others and nature.  Any respect they have decreases as time and distance away from others and surroundings increases.  In other words, their disconnection from others increases with time and distance.   Most would never do to them selves, their family members, or personal property, what they do or sanction being done to others, the property of others, or the natural world from a distance.

It was not always the case that human beings respected their immediate vicinity and neighbors.  Human beings have had to learn not to engage in warfare with their close neighbors or to not to pollute their own backyard to avoid the negative consequences to themselves of such actions.  We have yet to learn these lessons on a global level, however, even though we are starting to see global consequences of our collective actions.  The effects of air pollution and toxic waste, armed conflict, deforestation, global warming and the consequences for life as we know it, are all not so subtle hints that we are a global community and have the potential to bring about our own destruction if we do not evolve to the point of respecting all others and the natural world.

The fact that there are worldwide efforts to reduce the harm we do to others and the natural world is further evidence of the life affirming quality that is built into all of us.  Even if it is only starting to apply itself on a global scale.

Be confident that human beings will learn to better respect others and the natural world or cease to exist in the process, only to be replaced by another iteration of intelligent life that will learn from our mistakes.  More importantly, have confidence in your own life-affirming quality and its role in striving for ataraxis.

The secret to success in acquiring any ability is to allow for it to build gradually. Expect periods of rapid progress followed by relatively long periods when there is no progress. This is the nature of true growth. Be gentle with yourself along the way, not frustrated by times when you do not seem to be moving forward.

Key Skill – Awareness

There are several key skills to master while seeking a state of ataraxis. The first of these is awareness.

Awareness here refers, in part, to noticing how what you see and hear (and even feel, smell, and taste) influences your thinking.

If we could map the process of generating thoughts, one path would show sensory information (what you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste) entering your nervous system through your sensory organs (eyes, ears, etc.). This sensory information generates a thought (if it is deemed noteworthy by a system that controls your attention).

The fact that a thought or a combination of thoughts, might trigger the release of neurochemicals is an important part of the phenomena but even more important for this discussion is the fact that much of this happens outside of awareness – with the goal being to bring it totally into awareness.

To understand this process better, think of an alarm sounding. An infant who has no experience with alarms might react to the shrillness and intensity of the sound but will stop there and not generate further thoughts of alarm and/or feelings of fear. The infant’s thoughts (if any) will not be linked to experiences or stories about alarms and the danger they potentially represent: injury or death.

In comparison, the unaware adult links the alarm sound to thoughts of danger (of injury or death) without being aware of the association or connections being made. He or she associates the alarm sound with experiences or stories of injury or death outside of awareness and generates feelings of fear out of proportion with what is actually happening. Such an adult “panics” and may be “frozen by fear”.

On the other hand, the aware adult sees the situation as unique and stops short of making an association between an alarm sounding and stories of injury or death. The aware adult attends to the sensory information (the alarm sounding) and directs his or her thinking to the actual situation – remaining alert for more information but stopping short of mindlessly generating thoughts and feelings associated with different situations, including those that have been experienced before, in the news, or shared by a friend.

Specifically, an individual who is actively aware, hears the alarm sound and generates thoughts about what the sound’s source is, whether it signals danger or not, what action can be taken if any to prevent injury, how to help others in the situation, etc.

s might be obvious from this example, the sound of the alarm being heard almost instantaneously generates a thought. To be fully aware means to be mindful during the generation of thought, rather than after the thought and feelings have occurred. This requires constant awareness or “mindfulness”and the requirement of mindfulness is one of the reasons ataraxis is a difficult state of being to achieve.

The other part of awareness, as it is used here, is noticing when thoughts occur spontaneously or spring forth from another thought or a feeling or a memory, through association – a second path for generating thoughts.

For example, you may spontaneously think of a favorite place and that thought might generate feelings about and memories of friends that have been there with you. These thoughts or others like them, whether occurring spontaneously or through association, take your focus from the what is happening around you (the “present”) and frequently produce additional thoughts that become an “internal dialog”. This internal dialog may (1) concern plans, (2) be a rehearsal of dialog, or (3) be grist for a judgment of self, others, or circumstances.

Being aware of spontaneous thoughts and thoughts generated through association, gives you the opportunity to direct or end any ensuing dialog. The aware individual will be able to track the thoughts that arise spontaneously or through association as well as those thoughts that follow.

In contrast, the individual who has not yet fully aware, will be unable or uninterested in tracking his or her thoughts and will allow them to continue in a nonstop and typically mindless or aimless journey, interrupted only by an endless supply of emerging thoughts (occurring spontaneously, through associations, or because of new sensory information).

It is worth noting that before you learned to speak, you did not have the capacity for mindless thinking. As an infant, your attention was directed either inward to the sensations of your body or outward toward your experiences and the sensory information the experiences provided.

When you started to learn to speak, you acquired the ability to communicate along with the ability to think using words, that is, to have thoughts. The ability to communicate had benefits for you and others, including your getting your needs met more precisely through verbal communication. The ability to think using words opened the door to directed or mindful thinking. It also opened to door for undirected or mindless thinking.

In keeping with the dual nature of things, directed or mindful thinking could not exist without the potential for undirected or mindless thinking. The goal here is to maximize mindful thinking, including productive thinking that arises spontaneously (the source of creativity).

Mindful thoughts that plan for the future, rehearse conversation, and analyze and judge the past and present are not the problem, mindless plans, mindless rehearsed conversation, and mindless judgments are the problem. Practicing awareness allows you to stop mindless thinking and the unease that it frequently creates. In other words, practicing awareness paves the way to ataraxis.

If you have any doubt of your potential to think mindlessly, sit quietly and “empty” or clear your mind. Notice the internal dialog that starts almost immediately and how it generates mindless thoughts. Alternatively, observe children who are able to speak but haven’t learned to keep their dialog to themselves. You will hear how the dialog starts and meanders on, seemingly endlessly.

In summary, being aware of your internal dialog gives you the option of directing it. If you are unaware of it, it will direct itself, producing a endless stream of thoughts and associated feelings that sooner than later take on a life of their own and are incompatible with peace of mind.

It is certainly not a given that achieving peace of mind or ataraxis will be a goal in your life. Perhaps you will be blessed with unusual peace of mind and rarely feel the pull of anger or sadness or worry.

On the other hand, if you are like most, you will have had moments when you tremble with anger or feel the burden of sadness and worry. Hopefully these moments and the associated feelings will be manageable and not debilitating. Even if they are manageable and infrequent, it is still in your best interest, in my opinion, to learn how to achieve ataraxis.

The benefits of ataraxis are numerous, even without the mystical payoffs described by some authors. In addition to implied emotional serenity and all its rewards, achieving ataraxis promises physical health, vitality, and the quality of being at peace with most others you meet. Not bad when compared to the average grumpy middle aged or older man (or woman).

It is because of these benefits, that I am writing this book (and blog). My plan is to convince you of the benefits of ataraxis and then to layout a path for you to follow. I have done my best to give you ample reason for the journey and some counsel on the path to take. My hope is that my efforts accelerate your journey – sooner than later in your life.

In the pages (and posts) that follow, I will describe and prescribe strategies for achieving and maintaining ataraxis, followed by strategies for maximizing physical and emotional health.

The strategies for maximizing physical and emotional health are not afterthoughts. They are components of a holistic approach that encompasses all aspects of being human including the spiritual self, the physical self, and the emotional self.

Being physically healthy and emotionally happy are interrelated with each other as well as with the spiritual aspects of achieving ataraxis. They all influence each other synergistically.

Finally, I will address the implications of ataraxis for being in relationships with others, for being a parent, for being at work, and for being a leader.

Before closing, it is worth noting, that peace of mind or serenity is typically viewed as a prerequisite for connecting with your spirit or your “soul”. In some views, achieving peace of mind opens “space” or room for a connection to your spirit as well as to powers greater (or higher) than you or anyone else can fathom (for example, God or Allah).

This book is not primarily about the spiritual connection you might establish with a higher power or a universal energy, however. Although my observation is that achieving the state of ataraxis is a gateway to feeling in harmony with self, others, and your surroundings, I find that the full meaning of the feeling of being in harmony is inexpressible without limiting it through the mechanism of a belief system.

So, I will describe strategies for achieving peace of mind or ataraxis but I will not describe the more spiritual or mystical elements of the experience.

This does not mean that I do not think of the spiritual or mystical elements of the experience as being important. Indeed, I think of attending to your spiritual self and your spiritual connections to a higher power as being critically important. I just cannot describe the details of spiritual connections without expressing a belief system that you are better off exploring for your self, after learning how to achieve peace of mind.

Certainly there are plenty of belief systems to choose from, including those inherent in all forms of religion and those expressed by individuals, examples of which include authors such as Dan Millman (for example, Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior), Eckhart Tolle (for example, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment), and Alberto Villoldo (for example, The Four Insights: Wisdom, Power, and Grace of the Earthkeepers)–to name but a few. The point is, there are plenty of belief systems out there–all sharing some themes while being unique in other ways.

A word of caution, belief systems, no matter how comprehensive and elegant and inspiring, are still creations of human beings. Explore them, but keep in mind that they are all interpretations of what is likely beyond anyone’s full understanding.

Finally, my hope is that you will ask questions about what you read here. So don’t be afraid to take me to task. I’m sure it will help both you and me, deepen our understanding.

With Best Regard,

R. Brad Lebo, Ph. D.