Addictive behaviors are universal. According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, one in eight Americans suffers with addictive behaviors regarding drugs or alcohol and it costs society approximately $250 billion per year.

In addition to addictive behaviors potentially having a strong genetic link, the increasing stress in our culture makes it obvious why so many of us are craving avoidance and escape.

How do we break free from that next fix?

Every moment of our lives our brains are rapidly taking in information and making snap judgments, interpretations and decisions based on what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Depending on how we’re feeling we’ll interpret it differently.

Even though we believe our thoughts represent reality, the truth is, our thoughts are not facts. A lot of us live without an awareness of this, operating mostly from a state of auto-pilot, sleepwalking through life.  The good news is we can train our minds to become more aware of this automaticity, get perspective and tune into what really matters.

Here’s an example I often do with my own patients to illustrate why we don’t need to believe everything we think:

Today I grab a quote from a man whose dream lifted millions of people and whose inspiration is felt all over the world today. Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

This reminds me of an earlier blog post I did which quoted Rumi saying:

“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

On August 28, 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on Washington to let us all know that he “had a dream.” In this dream he inspired hope, belief, and faith in millions of people.

Here’s what I’m thinking about when starting this next year of 2012:

“May we all recognize in this New Year that the moments of our lives are rare and precious. Open to them, Bask in them, We are alive.”

The reality is we often hold things that are rare in our world to be precious. These rare things are held to a high value, whether it’s gold, an unbroken sand dollar on a beach, or the short time that a baby is a baby before growing up.

If you peel the lens back for a moment you can see our lives in this very same way. We’re a blip in time in relation to the life of this planet we stand on and this Universe we live in.  All the moments of our lives are rare and precious and it’s incredibly important to bring that awareness back to our lives.

What happens when we start seeing our time on this planet as rare and precious?

With the moments of life seemingly becoming more fleeting, there’s never been a more important time to cultivate or become more aware of the meaning in our lives. Therese Borchard, author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, wrote a past post 7 Ways to Prevent Burnout. In this blog she summed up a book by one of her favorite authors, Robert Wicks, who laid out a path toward integrating spirituality into daily life in an effort to prevent stress and live the lives we want.  Definitely worth the read and if you have any aversion to the word “God” or “spirituality,” just replace that term with “higher self” and see how that works.

In 2005, I conducted a national study in an effort to see if people could in fact cultivate what I called “sacred moments” and see what effect that had on their stress and well-being. Lo and behold, in practicing 5 minutes a day for 5 days a week, for 3 weeks, there was a significant positive effect in stress reduction and well-being. What was so fascinating to me was that for many it allowed them to touch a sense of spirituality when they felt they had never been able to do this before.

A quote from one participant:

There is no doubt about it, today’s business is a round-the-clock atmosphere. We are hounded with external pressures, overwhelmed with information overload, asked to deliver more with less, work longer hours, and have less personal time for renewal activities. What is the result?

Self-inflicted attention deficit disorder, exhaustion, lack of focus, reduced health, and burnout. This leads to lower job satisfaction, morale, and productivity. Hardly the results we want.

Did you know that over 50% of the workforce in the US says Job Stress is a major problem in life? This is twice as much as ten years ago. We also have 50% greater healthcare expenditures and corporations are losing over $300 Billion annually because of work-related stress! What’s going on here?

In an age of so much distraction, the old approach of time management at work is being thrown out the window in favor of attention management.

Jack Kornfield stands alongside an esteemed group of elders such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Sharon Salzberg, Pema Chodron, and Joseph Goldstein in bringing mindfulness to the west. Not only that, he also holds his PhD in clinical Psycholog,y which makes him so relevant to the connection between mindfulness and psychotherapy.

He co-founded Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and is a founding teacher of the well known retreat center Spirit Rock, in Woodacre, Ca. He has taught in Centers and University settings worldwide with teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. He is also author of many widely popular books translated in over 20 languages, his most recent are Bringing Home the Dharma and A Lamp in the Darkness. Others include, A Path with Heart, The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry and his newest book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.

Today he talks with us about the connection between East and West psychology, his work with Dr. Dan Siegel, and how his own trauma in life has influenced his work with himself and others.