How a 10-second pause can quiet the urge for more, why contentment comes through subtraction, not addition, and why a gratitude list alone can’t fix the feeling.
Vinny Ferraro has practiced insight meditation (vipassanā) since the mid-90s. He’s the Guiding Teacher of the Big Heart City Sangha in San Francisco and has led a weekly sitting group for almost two decades. As a fully empowered Dharma Teacher thru Spirit Rock/IMS, he has taught residential retreats at various centers and currently, leads Spirit Rock’s Year to Live course.
In this episode we talk about:
- Why no moment ever feels quite good enough
- Whether you actually need all that wanting to get things done
- How to tell healthy desire from the compulsive kind
- Why getting what you want so rarely delivers
- Why “why am I like this?” might be the wrong question
- How to stop turning other people’s joy into a story about you
- Why gratitude lists can still leave you reaching
- How to turn a wandering mind into a ticker tape parade
- Why we dodge the present moment like an old drug dealer
- The ten-second pause you can slip into almost anywhere
- The two-word rule for deciding what to say yes to
- A walking phrase that makes everything feel panoramic
