An article in Business Insider gives 13 tips for creating a recharging weekend. Some of my favorites that you can apply this weekend are:

• Make appointments with yourself: setting specific hours or minutes aside for activities YOU want to do
• Planning actually makes weekends happier: “looking forward” to things, being in anticipation of joy, gives us moments of joy now.
• Plan 3 – 5 “anchor” events: You don’t have to plan the entire weekend, but having 3 clear events on your calendar, and doing them, can create a memorable weekend, rather than an unfulfilling & unmemorable weekend.

One of the other tips Vanderkam shares is to write a list of 100 things you dream of doing so you can discover things you can do right now. When we rise above the mammalian obsession with food, sex, and comfort on the weekend, we can find a couple hours to put into our dreams.

Making and keeping an appointment with YOU is especially important for the exhausted parents out there! Your children deserve to learn how to pursue their interests every weekend rather than see a sacrificial parent teaching them that “dreams are not important”.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you about how you used one of the 13 tips this weekend.

Pay attention to the sensation of being alive today. But only today. We wouldn’t want you to find peace every day of your life, would we?

Yes, we all wear masks. When we are young, we wear a mask to cover our insecurities and get approval from our tribe. We keep wearing those masks our entire life. Inside, honestly, probably every single human is insecure. Even the Dalai Lama wears a mask, if you think about it. When millions of Tibetans are killed while you are the leader, it still hurts, but showing that all the time serves no one.

Advertisers recruit the top young psychologists to tap our deepest human fears and needs so they can show their product as the answer to fill the hole. It’s funny I’m doing this mask work and I just saw this new commercial, released March 7th, which shows a young man wearing his mask. His mask gets him the money and the sex! The mask covers that inner Gremlin’s voice of doubt, which we get to hear. We laugh because it’s uncomfortable to look at the truth of our experience in the mirror.

Of course, advertisers attempt to condition us to believe that buying their product will improve our mask. That makes for a very frail mask that’s always in need of another product, which is great for consumption, but lousy for the human. This is an outside-in approach to building our mask. We can call this outside-in approach “personality”.

What we want is an inside-out approach to building our mask. This could be called “character”. It’s kind of like the evolution of acting. Actors stopped “putting on” a mask and have been progressively learning to build the quality inside and have it come out in the “character” they portray. It makes for a more authentic performance. And in real life, it makes for a more authentic, integrated, and joyful human when the great inside comes out perfected in the mask. The mask is no longer a cover but instead becomes a laser of focused light. My best quality magnified.

How do you build this inside-out mask? I’m glad you asked! You could spend years studying on your own and trying to do it in a closet. But the best way to build your mask is with others! Work with people that can give you real feedback and tools to build your inner world so it comes out. With this  inside-out approach, the gap closes between your mask (who you desire to be) and how you feel inside. You move through the game of life because you’ve built the right equipment for the game. Like an American football player charging to the goal line because he’s got the right equipment and training to use it.

Click on to the comments and let’s hear your thoughts about the mask.

Just pay attention for the rest of the day to how much your mind compares everything. It just can’t stop judging everything. Especially notice how that inner ego voice is comparing YOU to everyone else. It’s obsessed with Inferior, Superior, and Equal comparisons. Are you smarter, dumber, thinner, fatter, taller, shorter, richer, poorer, and on and on. It’s exhausting, right?

Want to be happier right now? Stop comparing! You can’t fight it. You can only drop it, like dropping a pencil on a table. Notice when your mind is comparing and LET GO. Feel the thought in your head and let go of it, like releasing your grip to let go of a pencil. Instead, focus on your breath coming in and out and how amazing that is. Every breath is totally unique. No two the same.

Do this practice for a week, seven days. Just notice when you don’t feel that great. Your mind is probably comparing something, like maybe how you looked when you were young and how you look now, or how much money you have compared to someone else. Notice, then just STOP. Now pay attention to how UNIQUE you are. There never was or will be anyone like you. Nothing is better or worse, only unique in its qualities. Only the ego compares because it is as simple-minded as a squirrel. It can’t tell all the subtleties of existence. It just gathers nuts. Stop being nuts. Stop comparing!

This week, notice if you have genuine compassion. The true state of love, of happiness, is this deep compassion. And notice, this compassion includes you. Others share in your happiness.

Do you think that compassion is increasing in the world today or decreasing? Post a note on the blog.