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One of the best ways to keep the holidays from turning into a holidaze is by practicing mindfulness during this season. Not only will a mindfulness practice help you through many of the challenges of the season – like travel, family dynamics, and spending – it will take you into a richer, “realer” experience that’s satisfying, peaceful, and healing.
What is mindfulness? My favorite definitions of mindfulness come from Thich Nhat Hanh. He describes it as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality.” Essentially, this means being “all in” with whatever you’re engaged in, rather than going somewhere else in your mind. TNH also describes mindfulness as “taking hold of your own consciousness.” It’s a powerful choice, especially during difficult situations.
In practicing being alive to the present reality, there are some attitudes that help, explained thoroughly in Buddhist scriptures. Contemporary mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, emphasizes the following seven (which I’ll explain in my own words below): non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go.
Non-judging is a great place to start. Judging is something we do continuously, even when we’re not aware of it. We judge some things as good, others as bad, some as desirable, others as undesirable, and using judgment to categorize everything we come in contact with. The problem is that habitual judgment deprives us of the opportunity to engage with what’s present in a totally authentic, truthful way. Furthermore, judgment keeps us in polarized states, in continuous micro-conflicts.
Mindfulness and patience go hand-in-hand. A major trigger for departing from a mindful state is our desire to make something more interesting, intense, or productive happen right now. Staying with whatever’s at hand – say, filing your nails – can initially feel painfully bland. But it’s rewarding to feel your impatience. How does it feel in your body? How does it produce greater interest, intensity, or productivity by inducing you to leave the present reality? If you notice that you aren’t very patient, remember non-judgment.
Practitioners of mindfulness often speak of discovering a new depth in everyday activities, an unexpected richness – even in filing nails. This is facilitated in part by observing a beginner’s mind – experiencing reality as it actually is, rather than through the many lenses that produce preset expectations. I prefer the term innocence for this state – meeting each new moment with total innocence and wonder. It’s difficult for spiritual expansion (i.e., freedom) to occur without a willingness to relinquish what we think we know.
Trust helps keep us in the moment. When we pin our consciousness to the present, inevitably some squirming will start happening. The mind says, “I need to go somewhere else! I need to be entertained! I need to get stuff done! I need to get out of this discomfort! I’m claustrophobic!” When we trust that we’re in the right place (and, frankly, anything else is a lie) we root into the here-and-now. Trusting is an act of holding space for ourselves. And then, something does change – the claustrophobic feeling opens into a new spaciousness.
I mentioned that one of the hurdles to maintaining mindfulness is the mind’s desire to be productive – more productive, that is, than whatever we’re currently doing. The attitude of non-striving is meant to address this tendency. Non-striving means do this for the sake of doing it rather than for the outcome you hope it will achieve. This is especially important when practicing mindfulness in difficult family dynamics. If you’re hoping it’s going to fix something, you’re not going to be able to be truly mindful with whatever happens. Non-striving doesn’t mean we don’t do anything useful, we don’t do our best, or we don’t intend to improve ourselves. We simply trust that when we bring the full aliveness of our consciousness to whatever we’ve chosen for the present moment, this is enough.
Acceptance is the key to relinquishing striving. Jiddu Krishnamurti once disclosed the “secret” of his enlightenment to a group of eager students: “I don’t mind what happens.” Said another way, it’s total acceptance of the inevitable. In contrast, most of us spend considerable energy in resistance to what once happened, what’s currently happening, and what might happen. Mindfulness entails being with reality – which is always whatever is here and now – without judging, departing, resisting, or manipulating it. For most people, one of the biggest shifts involved in such a practice is feeling all the time. Rather than giving our consciousness away to a mind that is always one step removed from reality, this means fully welcoming the total experience of now, right as it happens.
Finally, letting go is essential to staying in the present and being free. Every thought can be let go. Every grievance can be let go. Every form of resistance can be let go. Every identity can be let go. And layer by layer by layer, we become freer to simply be with whatever comes up. In any moment, you can ask, “What can I let go of right now?” and there’s always something, if only the current moment itself. When we’re attached to anything – an old story, a desire for things to never change, the belief that we’re right – it limits our freedom and distorts the way we see the world.
Since there are seven practices and seven days in the week, I recommend you devote one day of each week to each practice. Write down the schedule for yourself on a piece of paper (or put it in your Dreambook). Don’t expect to remember all seven all the time – especially during a stressful moment in the holidays. Just trust that the one that’s most relevant to the nature of your challenge will come to mind.
Be well (and tell me what happens),
Peter
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It’s hard to quantify just how much humans have changed – how we relate to ourselves and our thoughts, how we get help, how we act in relationships, how we communicate, how we parent, how we educate, how we shop – because of the emergence of the modern field of psychology. Even if you don’t think much about psychology, you’ve been affected by it.
Common terms and concepts like ego, subconscious, projection, inferiority or superiority complex, anxiety, depression, in denial, being repressed, defense mechanism, introvert and extrovert, stress, antisocial, phobia, bipolar, sociopath, psychosomatic, and narcissist are woven into our vocabulary and culture because of psychology.
Did you notice that most of those terms describe pathological conditions? Like the field of medicine, psychology has focused mainly on disorders and how to treat them. Only in the past few decades has the subfield of positive psychology – the study of the strengths that enable individuals and communities to thrive – gained widespread attention and respect. Thanks to psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Martin Seligman, Dan Gilbert and many others, we’re setting our sights beyond treating pathology – to the ways we can support happiness, resilience, fulfillment, and higher purpose.
When it comes to adversity, positive psychology asks, “Can we do more than simply minimize the negative impact of this stress or trauma?” According to Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert, research suggests that even after a major trauma, within three months most people are about as happy as they were beforehand. But is it possible for a person to come out better through their response to adversity? The answer is yes.
After a negative event three possibilities can follow: (1) things can stay the same as the were (2) things can get worse (3) things can get better. As author Shawn Achor explains in The Happiness Advantage, most people only consider options 1 and 2. At best, they hope to simply “bounce back” from adversity. But some manage to bounce forward, regardless of the severity of the tragedy. They use the unexpected obstacle to catalyze a needed change, to gain insight, to firm their resolve, to clarify what’s most important to them, or to initiate a breakthrough.
When I meditated on the idea of turning a downward fall into an uprising, two images came to mind. In the first one, a person was falling like Alice down the rabbit hole. Suddenly the entire scene was rotated 180 degrees, and from this new perspective the person was falling up. What initiated the flip? A perspective change.
In the second image, the person was a ball that had been flung rapidly downward. Then the floor appeared, they bounced off it, and soared upward. What was the “floor” that made the bounce possible? Resolve. A choice to change direction.
Achor says, “The people who do the best with adversity define themselves not by what has happened to them but by what they have made from what has happened to them…. It's not that everything happens for the best, but that we can make the best of everything that happens.”
Every obstacle (especially the big ones) carries a certain energetic potential. If we see them as bitter injustices, our meetings with them are like hitting a brick wall at high speed. They wreck us.
If we see them as portals, the combination of our own momentum and the energy inherent in the “obstacle” combine to make our interaction something like crossing a trans-dimensional wormhole. Resolve and/or a change of perspective is often the key. We all have the ability to do this.
Furthermore, the faculties we access in order to turn obstacles into opportunities inform us deeply about our potential. Every time we do this we get a little more awake, and it becomes easier to recognize that our Highest Self is simply presenting us with the most potent ways to leap forward.
I’d love to hear about the times you’ve turned adversity into a positive experience.
Be well,
Peter
[post_title] => Learn to Bounce Forward from Adversity
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I believe we need about 364 more celebrations of Thanksgiving in a year, and not because we need more reasons to overeat and watch football. Giving thanks is good for us. Need some proven reasons? Here they are.
- It makes you happier. Numerous studies have shown that expressing gratitude, journaling about what we're grateful for, and paying attention to the good things in our lives makes us feel more happy.
- It improves your relationships. Being aware of what we’re thankful for makes us more helpful and understanding. People who express gratitude for their partner feel more positively about that person. They also tend to feel more comfortable about expressing relationship concerns (so they can get worked out!).
- It increases your self-esteem. A practice of feeling appreciative for our live circumstances tends to make us feel better about ourselves.
- It reduces depression and anxiety. Simply taking the time to write about what they were grateful for resulted in lower rates of depression and anxiety in study participants – even 12 weeks later.
- It enhances brain function. Gratitude exercises have been shown to cause a lasting activation of a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex, associated with higher thought and increased sensitivity.
- It makes you appear more trustworthy to others. When someone regularly expresses gratitude, others interpret this to indicate they are trustworthy and this strengthens social connections.
- It makes you more resilient. When we focus on what we’re thankful for, even during times of hardship, it reinforces feelings of self-trust and helps us to remember the blessings that can’t be lost or taken away.
- It expands the spiritual dimension of your life. Gratitude practices tend to strengthen our spiritual connection, probably because they prompt us to listen, look, and feel more deeply. They may attune us to a benevolent higher power that’s looking out for us, give us perspective of the path we’re on, and help us to see the goodness in what seems unfortunate on the surface.
- It makes you more generous. When we routinely express gratitude, we’re less self-centered and more giving.
- It lowers blood pressure, enhances your sleep, increases your likelihood of exercising, and improves overall health. Don’t put all your eggs in this basket, but regular expressions of gratitude support modest physical health gains.
- It diminishes the weight of your burdens. Focusing on what we appreciate has the simultaneous effect of lessening the intensity of whatever we’re struggling with.
Besides whatever special gains a gratitude practice may have, I feel there’s one main reason to do it, and that’s because life is a gift and each of us has the power to choose how we relate to it. Expressing gratitude is an act of cutting through the illusions that tell us otherwise. It’s about fiercely claiming this truth. It’s about claiming your light and shining it brightly.
Among many other things, I am grateful for all of you who have supported us. I’m grateful to have this forum to explore topics of depth in health, nature, and spirituality. And I’m grateful to be able to do my work in this way and have a positive impact on others’ lives.
Be well,
Peter
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One of the best ways to keep the holidays from turning into a holidaze is by practicing mindfulness during this season. Not only will a mindfulness practice help you through many of the challenges of the season – like travel, family dynamics, and spending – it will take you into a richer, “realer” experience that’s satisfying, peaceful, and healing.
What is mindfulness? My favorite definitions of mindfulness come from Thich Nhat Hanh. He describes it as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality.” Essentially, this means being “all in” with whatever you’re engaged in, rather than going somewhere else in your mind. TNH also describes mindfulness as “taking hold of your own consciousness.” It’s a powerful choice, especially during difficult situations.
In practicing being alive to the present reality, there are some attitudes that help, explained thoroughly in Buddhist scriptures. Contemporary mindfulness teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, emphasizes the following seven (which I’ll explain in my own words below): non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go.
Non-judging is a great place to start. Judging is something we do continuously, even when we’re not aware of it. We judge some things as good, others as bad, some as desirable, others as undesirable, and using judgment to categorize everything we come in contact with. The problem is that habitual judgment deprives us of the opportunity to engage with what’s present in a totally authentic, truthful way. Furthermore, judgment keeps us in polarized states, in continuous micro-conflicts.
Mindfulness and patience go hand-in-hand. A major trigger for departing from a mindful state is our desire to make something more interesting, intense, or productive happen right now. Staying with whatever’s at hand – say, filing your nails – can initially feel painfully bland. But it’s rewarding to feel your impatience. How does it feel in your body? How does it produce greater interest, intensity, or productivity by inducing you to leave the present reality? If you notice that you aren’t very patient, remember non-judgment.
Practitioners of mindfulness often speak of discovering a new depth in everyday activities, an unexpected richness – even in filing nails. This is facilitated in part by observing a beginner’s mind – experiencing reality as it actually is, rather than through the many lenses that produce preset expectations. I prefer the term innocence for this state – meeting each new moment with total innocence and wonder. It’s difficult for spiritual expansion (i.e., freedom) to occur without a willingness to relinquish what we think we know.
Trust helps keep us in the moment. When we pin our consciousness to the present, inevitably some squirming will start happening. The mind says, “I need to go somewhere else! I need to be entertained! I need to get stuff done! I need to get out of this discomfort! I’m claustrophobic!” When we trust that we’re in the right place (and, frankly, anything else is a lie) we root into the here-and-now. Trusting is an act of holding space for ourselves. And then, something does change – the claustrophobic feeling opens into a new spaciousness.
I mentioned that one of the hurdles to maintaining mindfulness is the mind’s desire to be productive – more productive, that is, than whatever we’re currently doing. The attitude of non-striving is meant to address this tendency. Non-striving means do this for the sake of doing it rather than for the outcome you hope it will achieve. This is especially important when practicing mindfulness in difficult family dynamics. If you’re hoping it’s going to fix something, you’re not going to be able to be truly mindful with whatever happens. Non-striving doesn’t mean we don’t do anything useful, we don’t do our best, or we don’t intend to improve ourselves. We simply trust that when we bring the full aliveness of our consciousness to whatever we’ve chosen for the present moment, this is enough.
Acceptance is the key to relinquishing striving. Jiddu Krishnamurti once disclosed the “secret” of his enlightenment to a group of eager students: “I don’t mind what happens.” Said another way, it’s total acceptance of the inevitable. In contrast, most of us spend considerable energy in resistance to what once happened, what’s currently happening, and what might happen. Mindfulness entails being with reality – which is always whatever is here and now – without judging, departing, resisting, or manipulating it. For most people, one of the biggest shifts involved in such a practice is feeling all the time. Rather than giving our consciousness away to a mind that is always one step removed from reality, this means fully welcoming the total experience of now, right as it happens.
Finally, letting go is essential to staying in the present and being free. Every thought can be let go. Every grievance can be let go. Every form of resistance can be let go. Every identity can be let go. And layer by layer by layer, we become freer to simply be with whatever comes up. In any moment, you can ask, “What can I let go of right now?” and there’s always something, if only the current moment itself. When we’re attached to anything – an old story, a desire for things to never change, the belief that we’re right – it limits our freedom and distorts the way we see the world.
Since there are seven practices and seven days in the week, I recommend you devote one day of each week to each practice. Write down the schedule for yourself on a piece of paper (or put it in your Dreambook). Don’t expect to remember all seven all the time – especially during a stressful moment in the holidays. Just trust that the one that’s most relevant to the nature of your challenge will come to mind.
Be well (and tell me what happens),
Peter
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