I am a husband, writer, and teacher exploring what it means to cultivate mental silence.

Can you measure how calm you are?

Can you measure how calm you are?Heart Watch is an amazing app! It’s helping me track how calm I am throughout the day. Let me explain.It measures your regular heartbeat, your walking heartbeat, your sedentary heartbeat. I use it in conjunction with my Apple Watch. One of the things I like about it is that it can show you how things are going during the week. Like this week my average was 84 on Monday, 75 on Tuesday, 78 on Wednesday, and today...as I write 88. I use these numbers to measure how calm I am during the day. I do not consider an average regular heartbeat in the 80’s to be good for me. Anything in the 70’s or 60’s and I know I’m calm. I have a daily question that I ask myself at the end of the day related to how calm I am.I rank these questions on a scale of 1-10 with 1=I’m dead, 2-3=call 911, 4-5=bad, 6-7=getting bad, 8-9=good and 10=great. If my average regular heartbeat is below 70, I rank myself a 10, in the low to mid 70’s I give myself a 9. Upper 70’s get an 8. Low to mid 80’s gets a 6 or 7. Upper 80’s into the 90’s gets a 5. Over 99...which never happens...I’d have to consider what to give it. This is far from scientific but it gives me a way of thinking about it quantitatively.

(Not so) Random thoughts...

Hi Future Self, it’s me!