This week we had a special event with my old friend Chade-Meng Tan visiting the University of Cambridge.

Meng joined us at Frankopan Hall, Jesus College co-hosted with the Intellectual Forum and University of Cambridge ThinkLab, “Search Inside Yourself: From Google to Mindfulness” and talked about his path to Google, mindfulness and Buddhism.

The entire discussion is well worth a watch, and here are a few helpful tips from Meng that you can build into your daily life right now:

6-Second Breath: Gentle, total attention on one in-breath and one out-breath.

If you’re interested in the mechanisms of the how and what of slow breathing, here is a good article to learn more (BBC: Why slowing your breathing helps you relax)

10-Second Kindness: Secretly wish two nearby people to be happy.

The world could use a little more kindness these days. This topic has fascinated me for awhile, and for those that are interested here is a study that has some compelling findings: Fredrickson, et al. (2008). Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources.

It was a heartfelt, graceful and uplifting talk — exactly the kind of moment that makes me grateful to be in a university environment that brings together so many unique perspectives to a wide audience. One of my favorite parts of the evening was seeing this class of visiting students from Abbey College (as well as the excellent questions from the students to Meng):

 

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I first met Meng during my time as part of the Authors@Google team. Along with being amongst the first 100 employees at Google, and a Jolly Good Fellow, Meng pioneered the emotional intelligence and mindfulness course at Google called Search Inside Yourself. and wrote his first book at the same time that I was beginning to bring mindfulness into my own daily life:

I’ve read a number of books on mindfulness over the years, and I especially appreciate the simple, relatable way that Meng approaches mindfulness: “There is nothing mysterious about meditation. It’s really just mental training.”

You can check out the event and discussion below: