[Book review] Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace)

In order to improve my concentration and productivity, I wanted to try the mindfulness meditation. In order to know the specific way of the mediation, I was looking for the best book. Recently mindfulness meditation is mainstream and big companies provide the mindfulness training as the benefit. Google too. Then my Kindle suggested to me the book "Search Inside Yourself" so I tried to buy it.



As my conclusion, this book says why and how mindfulness is good from the scientific viewpoint so the main contents are theoretical. So I thought it's not optimum for the beginner of meditation who wants to know the specific way. Eventually, I learned mainly from Youtube :)

Benefits of SIY

Search Inside Yourself (SIY) is the training course of EQ (Emotional Intelligence) developed by Google. By training EQ you can use mindfulness meditation for your business. Concretely, you can improve these abilities.

• Good job performance
• Outstanding Leadership
• Ability to make happiness

In the engineering department, 6 factors to show the higher performance than average staffs are:

1. Strong willingness to achieve and high success criteria
2. Ability to influence
3. Abstract thinking ability
4. Analytical capacity
5. Initiative to take on the challenges
6. Confidence

The pure intelligence is only No.3 and 4, and the other 4 factors are emotional abilities. If we can improve EQ, even engineers can improve the performance.

As more specific effects that we can expect, this book introduces like this.

• Self-discovery
• Control of undesirable emotions
• You can train resilience (ability to overcome obstacles waiting for yourself)
• We will find the similarity to others and will be able to reach out the gentleness
• You will be able to do sympathetic listening
• You can increase the goodness

State of mindfulness

This book shows 2 quotes about the definition of mindfulness. But these are philosophical and poetic so it was a little difficult for me to understand intuitively.

As far as I understand, mindfulness is paying attention to me and now consciously.

Mindful state

• During the conversation, I turned my body to the other person, listened attentively to each topic with interest from the bottom of my heart, and occasionally asked questions and talked.
• In a relaxed state, the field of view is wide, so you can be aware of the circumstances sensitively and you can objectify yourself.
• The time axis is now this moment.

Not mindful state

• During the conversation, while turning my eyes towards the material at hand, the conversation ended somewhat while making an ambiguous reply to the other's story.
• With the immersed state, the field of view is narrowing, I can not notice the circumstances and concentrate only on things in front of my eyes.
• The time axis is the past or the future.

It doesn't say "mindful state is better". The important point is that we become to be able to switch "mindful" state and "not mindful" state.

Basic ways of mindfulness meditation

This book introduces 2 ways, "easy way" and "very easy way".
The easy way is "to pay attention to our breath".
The very easy way is "to keep sitting for 2 minutes".

Honestly, I don't understand with this explanation...

For me, the most practical and useful thing was this video (in Japanese).

Overview of this video

1. Choose the stable posture. If it's stable for you, there is no specific posture.
2. Slow down breathing: Over 10 secs are optimum psychologically so 4 secs for breathing in and 6 secs for breathing out.
3. Controle the attention: Focus on breathing. When breathing in, air enters the lungs, and conscious that the diaphragm is moving. 
4. If attention deviates to another thing, it is important to return it to breathing again. If you repeat it, your brain will be trained.
5. You repeat from No2 to 4 for at least 3 minutes.

Best time of mindfulness meditation

Anytime.
For me, I want to take advantage of the meditation so I'm doing it in every morning and after lunch.
But it's also good to do it before sleeping because it can make us relaxed.

Summary

Personally, I've not felt the effect of mediation so I want to continue more.

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About Tomohide Kakeya

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