Surviving Family Occasions with Tips From Google's Mindfulness Mentor

Among us people who meditate

there is a saying, you think you're enlightened,

go forth and believe your doing it

and see how enlighten you are [laughs].

When you go home for Thanksgiving and go home for Christmas

meeting your family, meeting your in-laws is stressful.

What do you do?

Well there's three things my friends.

The first is self-honesty, it is to acknowledge

to yourself that this is hard even for people

with 10,000 hours of meditation practice it is hard.

So knowing that, don't give yourself too much blame.

Second thing you do, something that is useful for me,

is loving-kindness,

which is looking at everybody in the room,

no matter how difficult and just think to yourself

I wish for this person to be happy.

I wish for my mom-in-law to be happy.

I wish for my brother-in-law to be happy.

Just by having that thought arises an aspiration,

an intention, and that intention cause us a certain warmth

of heart to arise and that goes a long way

to releasing the negativity and the stress.

Number three is awareness of mortality.

So imagine you're with a loved one who is difficult.

If mom were to die tomorrow, how would you feel?

You'd feel I want to spend all my time with mom today,

give her all my love today.

Then you begin to see this person differently,

you begin to see the situation differently

and most importantly you begin to feel different.

It's still hard but if you do these three things,

acknowledge it, so self-honesty,

loving-kindness and awareness of mortality,

family gatherings can be easier

and better still, it can be loving

and it can be joyful.