The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World by Haemin Sunim
Impressions:
Cool book cover and deep book title- ‘ The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down ‘. I can finish the book within two or three days. That was my first impression. But when I start reading the first chapter which is ‘Rest’, the first line is - ‘ When everything around me is moving so fast, I stop and ask, “Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?”.
I stop reading and ask myself the same question. Is the world moving fast or is it our mind ! That night I didn’t continue reading .
The next day I continue reading and realized this is not a fast reading book. The book can be called as mind healing book. When you feel depressed, when you’re feeling down, continue the book. This book will heal your mind. Read the book slowly and deeply. This book is a wonderful philosophy to help us navigate through the struggles we all face, at work, at home, in love, in rejection. Overall this is a wonderful book I would definitely say.
Favorite Lines and Quotes:
Chapter 1: Rest
- When everything around me is moving so fast, I stop and ask, “Is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?”
- There is a famous Buddhist saying that everyone appears as buddhas in the eyes of the Buddha and everyone appears as pigs in the eyes of a pig.
- When your mind rests, the world also rests.
- We feel unhappy not just because something bad has happened, but also because of the swirling thoughts about what happened.
- Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky, but they can never pollute it. Negative emotions come and go like clouds, but the wide-open sky remains.
- Think of the people whom you are grateful to, or the times you helped others and felt good about yourself. It will warm your heart, gifting you with more peaceful sleep.
- When trust is shattered, when hopes are dashed, when a loved one
- leaves you, before doing anything, just pause your life and rest a moment.
- Having critics means what you’re doing is getting people’s attention.
- Do you feel unsettled or depressed? Then look at a child’s sleeping face for one minute. You will soon feel ripples of peace.
Chapter 2: Mindfulness
- It is difficult to quickly control a strong negative emotion; the more we try to control it, the more it becomes agitated and resurfaces.
- If you want revenge because your feelings are hurt, all you can see is your own suffering. But if you calm yourself and look more deeply, you will see that the person who hurt you is suffering, too.
- change is inevitable. Embrace and welcome it.
- Feelings are often born from a matrix of conditions beyond your
control. Just like you can’t control the weather, or your boss’s mood,
you can’t control the feelings in your body. They are just passing
through, like clouds in the sky. They, too, dissipate on their own.
- People ask: “How can I clear my head when I meditate?
The more I try, the more my thoughts seem to arise.”
This is completely natural—because trying to clear your head is also a
thought.
- Bring your mind to the present, and your thoughts will rest.
- Everything in this universe is evanescent.
Because it is evanescent, it is also precious.
Spend this precious moment wisely and beautifully.
- Our consciousness often does not know what our subconscious wants.
We think we want something, but when we get it, we realize we wanted
something else.
- Our consciousness may desire money, power, and prestige,
but our subconscious desires selfless love,
harmony, humor, beauty, sacredness, peace, and acceptance.
- Life is like theater. You are assigned a role.
If you don’t like the role,
keep in mind that you have the power to re-create the role you want.
Chapter 3: Passion
- When hiring, look beyond skills and experience
to see if the candidate knows how to enjoy her job.
People who enjoy their work are usually more successful than those who
don’t.
- When you are making a decision, try to assess how many people it will
benefit.
- Maturity comes with experience. One lesson of maturity is that we
should not take our thoughts too seriously, and must learn to curb our
Ego and see the bigger picture.
- Instead of being the smartest person in the room, quick to critique others,
be the warmhearted friend, bringing people together and sharing things.
Be the sensitive neighbor, capable of feeling the suffering of others.
- Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic’s ego.
- If the people around you always agree with you,
they are probably opportunists, not loyalists.
- If someone looks perfect,
then that is because you don’t know the person very well.
Chapter 4: Relationships
- the art of maintaining a good
relationship can be compared to sitting by a fireplace. If we sit too close for
too long, we become hot and possibly burned. If we sit too far away, we
cannot feel the warmth. Similarly, no matter how well we get along with
someone, if we stick too close without building in some personal space, we
soon feel trapped and burned out;
- Politicians always say what sounds good.
But what they say does not always resonate with us—
because their words are coming from their head, not from their heart.
Speak from your heart, which is tender, simple, and true.
People will understand you, and like you.
- The best way to get even with someone who has left you
is to meet someone new and become happy again.
- Even the most beautiful music gets tiresome if I listen to it constantly. But if I listen to it after some time away, it becomes wonderful again.
- Humans are like mirrors:
We reflect each other.
- No one is inherently good or bad.
Only the circumstance in which we encounter each other is good or bad.
A criminal who happens to stop a car from running over me
is an angel sent by God.
- happiness can be assessed with two simple questions.
First, do you find meaning in your work?
Second, do you have good relationships with those around you?
Chapter 5: Love
- When love finds you, it consumes you; everything else becomes unimportant.
- Love is like an uninvited guest.
Love will come when it wants to.
Love will leave when you ask more of it.
- To build a lasting relationship,
you need time for trust to develop.
- The heart is slower than the mind.
- Pain caused by one person can be healed by another.
But before you go out to meet someone new,
make sure to give yourself time to be whole again.
Otherwise you may end up using the new person you meet.
- Love comes naturally and effortlessly.
If you try to love someone, then it is not real until you stop trying.
Chapter 6: Life
- Life is like a slice of pizza.
It looks delicious in an advertisement,
but when we actually have it, it is not as good as we imagined.
- When you concentrate, even a phone book can be interesting.
If you are bored, maybe you are not concentrating.
- Three Liberating Insights
- First, people are not as interested in me as I had always believed.
- Second, not everyone has to like me.
iii. Third, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, most things we do for
others are in fact for ourselves.
- First learn to be good at one. You will soon be able to do two or three.
- Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words.
Keep your words positive, because your words become your behavior.
- Knowledge wants to talk.
Wisdom wants to listen.
Chapter 7: The Future
- Live your life not to satisfy others, but to fulfill what your heart desires.
- When you look for a job,
try to find out how long a company’s employees stay at the company.
This is more important than the size of the company or the salary offered.
If people keep leaving, then that says a lot.
- Overthinking produces only anxiety and doubt.Stop shouting, “What if?” and just take a leap of faith.
Chapter 8: Spirituality
- “The purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others.
How much am I doing about my anger, attachment, hatred, pride, and
jealousy?
These are the things we must check in our daily lives.”
- We must cultivate all three intelligences for our overall health:
critical intelligence, emotional intelligence, and spiritual intelligence.
- If you do not know how to solve a problem in your life, give prayer a try.
- It is a sign of great spiritual strength
to keep someone else’s secret.
Epilogue:
- slow down, even if only
for a moment. Bring all of your awareness into the present and take a
deep breath.
- Wisdom is not something we have to strive to acquire. Rather, it
arises naturally as we slow down and notice what is already there.
