A Mindful Nation: How a Simple Practice Can Help us Reduce Stress, Improve Performance, and Recapture the American Spirit by Tim Ryan.

4/5 rating. 231 pages.

Book #76 of 2020. Read October 21, 2020.

In here, Tim makes a powerful case for implementing mindfulness practice into every aspect of our daily lives – personally, in business, and in government – in order to create a better, and more compassionate country.

“A Mindful Nation” was really a book that I needed to read at this moment. I’ve always prided myself in believing the best in everyone, but as we have gotten closer to the election, the vitriol, the complete disregard for other human life, and the hate that I see has really made it hard for me to continue with my cheery and optimistic outlook. Tim does a great job of showing both where mindfulness practices have been making a difference, and where and how, it could easily improve our interactions in the future.

While you will have to read other books to understand more about the actual practices, Tim’s arguments for implementing them in practically every aspect of our lives is impossible to dismiss. This has definitely sparked my push to pick back up my lapsed meditations and I hope will push people much more connected and in more powerful positions than mine to start being more mindful in their personal lives and their businesses.

“We need everyone committed to growing and developing themselves to their full potential. Much of our talent in this country goes untapped and undeveloped. It sits on the sidelines, or is pushed there, because of fear, doubt, and suffering.”

“We intuitively know that if we are going to recapture the American spirit, it will be because millions of our citizens will begin to see the power of being connected and moving in the same basic direction, regardless of our inevitable and necessary differences.”

“We need to raise our children in a nation that teaches them to be mindful, that teaches them about the importance of kindness and being connected to their fellow human beings and the environment that sustains them. A nation that teaches them to appreciate their basic human goodness and see that goodness in others.”

Quotes:

“Put simply, mindfulness is about finding ways to slow down and pay attention to the present moment – which improves performance and reduces stress. It’s about having the time and space to attend to what’s right in front of us, even though many other forces are trying to keep us stuck in the past or are inviting us to fantasize or worry about the future.”

“Our natural compassion and kindness was meant to be shared to help make the world a better place.”

“In the late 1970s the top one percent accounted for 9 percent of real income in the country. Today, they account for 24 percent.”

“We’ve also become a more wasteful country. Only a hundred years ago, we produced barely any garbage. We were frugal and squeezed whatever we could out of whatever we had. Now it has been estimated that 40 percent of all edible food we produce ends up in a landfill – and the energy expended in growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, and refrigerating goes along with it, increasing our production of greenhouse gases and exacerbating our energy dependence. More than a quarter of the freshwater we use goes to produce food that no one will ever eat.”

“We are fundamentally good. Our basic nature is not unadulterated self-indulgence and consumption. Our spirit is not violent. Our soul does not desire that we get rich by any means necessary. The deepest part of who we are is not at peace with all the suffering in the world and the systems that perpetuate it. We all wince when we see someone suffering in our midst or even on the computer or television screen.”

“In the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ‘The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.’”

“‘[B]egin by looking inward – by examining [our] own attitude toward the possibilities of peace.’ The self-examination President Kennedy spoke of is a call to develop our inner resources – to develop skills that increase our awareness and understanding of our own thoughts, feelings, attitudes, fears, and beliefs.”

“Obsessing about the future and worrying about the past rips us out of the only place where we can find true happiness: the present moment.”

“Mindfulness itself is not a religion. Practicing it does not require giving up religious faith, or adopting a ‘foreign’ faith, or becoming religious if you are not so inclined. But if you already embrace a religious practice, mindfulness can support you in deepening it.”

“Our society suffers, I think, from an overemphasis on the intellect and an aversion to matters of the heart – as if they were somehow un-American.”

“Perfectly composed music or art, the wonders of nature, even our own ability to breathe, are all miracles. To feel that, we have to stop living only in our heads and also live in our hearts.”

“It seems to me it would do us all good to act from our heart more often. We’ll be surprised how small acts of attention and kindness can release the energy, enthusiasm, and imagination bottled up in our overstressed minds and bodies. We have tried a million times to think our way to a better society. But our thinking doesn’t work so well if it’s not aligned with what we feel deep in our hearts, our inspirations and aspirations, our innermost desire.”

“As I’ve pointed out, we have lots of problems in our country. But I’ve come to believe that a key element in taking on these challenges effectively is our own inner strength, resiliency, and awareness of who we really are. We need to believe we have the capacity to transform our own lives, to innovate with our own mind and body. And that transformation will change the world. Maybe not in a monumental way at first, but if we’re patient changes will occur. A building is constructed one brick at a time.”

“Most of us get thrown out of balance because we are not physically or mentally equipped to handle all of the negativity happening around the world 24 hours a day. We are not wired to deal with a bombardment of perceived stressors on a consistent basis.”

“We’ve been led to believe that getting more and greater stuff and territory will make us truly happy. What we are learning from the scientific research on mindfulness and well-being affirms the age-old wisdom that true happiness lies in the strength we have within, not what we collect and acquire.”

“As human beings, we are looking for happiness that won’t be so vulnerable to changing conditions, that is sustainable. That’s real happiness. And we find it by cultivating our inner resources and skills.” – Sharon Salzberg

“Developing an awareness of what is happening in our bodies in the present moment yields obvious benefits also in the form of helping us become part of the early-detection system, Susan says. We become more aware of what condition our body is in from moment to moment. We become more in tune with feelings and sensations happening in our body. Our body is always talking to us, but we don’t always listen.”

“People who work with mindfulness tend to report higher states of well-being, peacefulness, and resiliency as they cultivate certain qualities of mind like kindness, compassion, strength, equanimity, and joy. As people practice mindfulness, they are literally creating patterns within the brain and mind that can lead toward a happier, healthier life.”

“The Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito worked with eight hospitals to see if comprehensive lifestyle changes could provide a safe, effective alternative to cardiac bypass or angioplasty. After one year, almost 80 percent of participants avoided these surgeries, at a savings of almost $30,000 per patient.”

“A study of diabetes (a lifestyle-related epidemic in our nation) published in the Journal of Internal Medicine showed that lifestyle-change programs achieved the same beneficial result as drug treatment at a cost of $8,800 versus $29,900 – a 70 percent reduction.”

“Cultivating our mindfulness is simple, but it is not easy. It takes time and work. But the results are worth it.”

“Medicine should focus on health, not just health care. Health care alone may often come too late, for our citizens and our service members. Health care tends to be a temporary bandage, whereas health is an ongoing state of well-being.” – Mylene Huynh

“With malice toward none, and charity toward all,” – Abraham Lincoln

“We need to join together and update our economic and governmental systems. The industrial model, which has resulted in large, overly bureaucratic organizations that don’t communicate well with each other and lose touch with events on the ground, is an outdated method for organizing and governing our society. We need new ways of thinking and new ways of mobilizing ourselves. We need to reinvest in the people of our country so that we can tap into their deep capacity for innovation to help us craft a new model to organize our society. We need systems that support our citizens to creatively participate in helping us meet these challenges.”

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred…but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another.”

“Debate – which was invented as a means to find the truth and the best way forward rather than to polarize – should sharpen these points and help each side see its perspective in a new way.”

“Many of our citizens are realizing that going faster and faster to solve our problems has not worked, and neither has waiting for our outer circumstances to change on their own – through the invisible hand of the market or pure luck. We intuitively know that if we are going to recapture the American spirit, it will be because millions of our citizens will begin to see the power of being connected and moving in the same basic direction, regardless of our inevitable and necessary differences. That’s why it says on the seal of the United States: E Pluribus Unum, ‘Out of the many, one.’”

“We need to raise our children in a nation that teaches them to be mindful, that teaches them about the importance of kindness and being connected to their fellow human beings and the environment that sustains them. A nation that teaches them to appreciate their basic human goodness and see that goodness in others.”

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