Gavril Nikolaev

I'm a freelance writer, mindfulness advocate, and editor of MindfulSpot.com. I began meditating in 2014, and in 2017 I launched this website to share what I learn.

Lao Tzu Said That ‘Beautiful Words Are Not Truthful,’ and That Made Me Think About How Much of My Writing Life I’ve Spent Focusing on Style Instead of Substance

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I was looking back at an older article I’d written about keeping busy to avoid dealing with sadness when I came across a sentence I’d later decided to simplify. The original read: “The bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging in it — that no longer threatened to bring everything down … Read more

Those Who Find Themselves Mechanically Changing the Music to Match an Unbroken Heaviness Are Often Practicing an Intuitive Form of Self-Awareness

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The afternoon was grey, the kind of Tuesday that seems to leach the color out of the walls before the sun has even begun to set. Jeremy sat on the edge of my corduroy sofa, his thumb performing a rhythmic dance over the screen of his phone. Every ninety seconds, the speaker in the corner … Read more

Wayne Dyer Quote: ‘Judgments Prevent Us from Seeing the Good That Lies Beyond Appearances.’

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How often do we slow down enough to let another person truly be seen? We talk about wanting authentic relationships, yet we habitually condense lives into surface evaluations. As Wayne Dyer noted, "Judgments prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances." When we react to someone’s outward presentation, we draw a curtain across … Read more

Thich Nhat Hanh Wrote That ‘Happiness Slips from Our Grasp As We Chase Other Things,’ and That Reminded Me of a Time When I Kept Buying More Stuff to Feel Alive Instead of Appreciating What I Already Had

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“Happiness slips from our grasp as we chase other things.” I was sitting at my kitchen table, holding a cup of coffee, when those words from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “Transformation and Healing” stopped me cold. At the time, my evenings followed a familiar ritual: sitting in the glow of my laptop screen, clicking “add … Read more

Those Who Find Themselves Trapped Within a Rigid Reality Tunnel Constructed by Chronic Worry Often Lose Their Sense of Agency — a Subtle Shift Where Survival Strategies Begin to Dictate the Terms of Living

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Years ago, I worked alongside a man named Patrick in the buzzing corridors of a wireless network operator’s customer service call center. Every morning, I would watch Patrick prepare his desk for the shift with a precise intensity. Before he even logged into his headset, he would sit beneath the fluorescent lights and methodically open … Read more