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[post_content] => 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
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[post_content] => If you were birthed by Earth, then every pebble and plant is your sibling.
Last week I wrote about animism, the belief that all things possess a spirit. Animistic cultures are incredibly widespread – chances are, if you didn’t grow up in one, you’re descended from one. But these sensibilities have been largely supplanted by science. Science and spirituality are often at odds, and the science-oriented developed world generally disbelieves in spirituality – especially in a form so different from our monotheistic religions. This might not be a problem if a reductive, nonspiritual orientation met all our needs, but I believe we’ve lost something along the way.
Scientists and animists alike can agree that a rock isn’t biologically alive in quite the same way that, say, a bird is. But the scientist wouldn’t be scientific if they assumed that this means we can’t be in relationship with both. A person who believes a rock doesn’t possess a spirit has no understanding of what life would be like if they did.
The animistic perspective transforms a thing we use into someone we relate to. Our surroundings turn from scenery into family members. Just as it’s relatively easy to perceive the personality of a pet and recognize it as a member of the family, an animist would extend such personhood to all aspects of their world.
Could you be open to experiencing the personality of your favorite tree or stream or mountain? Have you ever felt inexplicably drawn to a certain place in your yard, your home, or the park? It’s where you feel naturally most comfortable, maybe also safer, more focused, even more powerful. What is it that your inner compass is tuning in to?
Beyond the ways in which such an orientation might enrich your subjective experience of your surroundings, there are potentially global repercussions to remembering and being reverent of the spirit of the world – even if we don’t fully embrace the animistic view.
Dr. John Reid of the Ngai Tahu Research Centre in New Zealand explains that when we mistreat the world through disregard for the spirit within, it becomes a vicious circle. Lacking a conscious relationship with nature, we take from pristine resources with no restraint, then we dump our waste back into them. This diminishes what the Maori call its mauri (lifeforce), and the reduction in its vitality makes it less supportive to humans. This willfully ignorant behavior and the hardship that results from it diminishes the mana (dignity / power / authority) of the humans involved.1 The weakened mana of the humans causes them to act in increasingly desperate and irreverent ways, and the cycle continues.
It's possible to transform this situation into a virtuous cycle, but it requires coming into right relationship with our planet. This means humbling ourselves and perhaps taking a cue from animistic cultures. If that sounds good to you, I encourage you to take another week to relate to your surroundings differently than usual.
What happens when you ask before taking? What happens when you give thanks to everything you encounter? What happens when you open yourself to the existence of a spiritual world? What happens when you feel into the dynamic between your body and the elements around you? What happens when you bring greater awareness to the act of consuming something? What happens if you do the same when throwing something away? What happens when you listen?
I believe that bringing consciousness to these relationships yields great benefits. Perhaps we stand to make our planet habitable by humans for longer, but for certain we enrich our mana as we re-weave ourselves into the living tapestry of this exceptional, gorgeous planet.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
1. Informative Maori dictionary here: https://maoridictionary.co.nz/
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[post_content] => In high school and college, I spent hours every day playing my guitars and writing songs. Music was the main outlet I had for the angst and depression I felt in my late teens and early twenties. In grad school, I began to emerge from those dark days, and as I increasingly found myself in the company of people who were really psychologically healthy, I noticed my music changing.
One day I was jamming with a good friend. He would play me one of his tunes and I’d improvise on that for a while, and then I’d show him one of mine and we’d play that for a bit. At some point, I started playing one of the old songs from my troubled period. The best I can remember is that the words had something to do with losing hope. He liked the tune, so I showed him the chords and taught him the words so we could sing it together. Only, as I started playing and singing it, he didn’t join in. He stopped me after a moment and said, “Sorry, man… I’m not singing that.”
I really didn’t understand it. “Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s all about losing hope and how life sucks. I don’t want to say that.”
“Oh,” I was a bit bewildered. “Okay, let’s try something else.” And we moved on. I was a little bit offended. I didn’t always relate to the subject matter of his songs, but I didn’t mind singing them. It wasn’t like you had to believe what you were saying – it was just a song. And what about all the popular songs that we sing along to because they’re catchy? Lots of them are about topics we might not care for, but they’re still good songs.
Well, I let it go and didn’t think about it again for a long time. But years later, I had become more acutely tuned in to my thoughts and words, and I had experienced in a more definite way the way my words affected my experience. One day, I remembered that event and thought, “Wow. Good for him.”
You Are What You “Eat”
Have you ever used an affirmation? The idea is that by repeating key words, we can reprogram our mind, shift our emotions, heal our body, and even change the circumstances of our life. When done right, they really can work. I wouldn’t place all my eggs in the affirmations basket when I want something in my life to be different, but they have their place. What’s arguably more valuable than the actual practice of repeating an affirmation is what they demonstrate: the thoughts we choose can have a huge impact on our life. Apart from whatever objective ways they might affect our lives, the subjective impact of our thoughts is that they color our experience – our internal environment and outlook – in a way that makes the objective circumstances almost irrelevant.
For instance, if you think life sucks, it doesn’t matter whether you have delicious food, warm clothes, people who love you, a winning lottery ticket, and blue skies – life still sucks. And if you think life is an utter gift, you could be in rags and have no limbs, and yet see beauty and grace in everything.
It’s difficult for most people to remember to repeat an affirmation all day long, or to choose to focus on a positive idea as often as possible. But it’s quite easy for us to sing a song in our head all day long … say, Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” or Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” (later covered by Johnny Cash). It’s easy to listen to ranting on talk radio. It’s easy to read a daily newspaper that’s filled with more negativity than positivity. And it’s easy to barely register that we are making choices that degrade our lives.
If we want our life to go a certain way – happy, healthy, long, etc. – we need to pay attention not only to what good things we’re doing to ensure this, but also to what destructive things we’re doing to sabotage it. We all know “you are what you eat” – that what you feed your body affects the quality of your health. In the same way, the thoughts we cultivate, the way we speak, the media we consume, the people and social institutions we associate with are all part of what we’re feeding our consciousness. So, it should be no surprise that they affect the quality of our experience.
When my friend refused to sing the depressing song I had written, it’s because he was tuned into – and respectful of – the effect our words (especially repeated ones) have on our consciousness. We can easily learn to perceive the qualitative differences between certain words, thoughts, songs, movies, and organizations. When we bring our awareness to their influence on us, it becomes clear that the majority of news articles, movies, radio shows, and television programs are relatively degrading to our consciousness (and, therefore, to our entire being). According to a study by the UCLA Center for Communications Policy, sixty-one percent of television programs contain some violence!
A common rationale we use for reading, listening to and repeating tragic stories is the necessity of staying informed. In actuality, there is very little utility in keeping up with misfortune and deadly events. This habit speaks more of our collective addiction to conflict and drama.
If our consumption of negative media and ideas is not purposeful, it is destructive. It is like eating a rich dessert (but considerably less satisfying): if we choose to consume it, we should stop the moment we have had enough. If we are five sentences into descriptions of dismembered bodies and we have pretty much gotten the picture, it’s time to put the article down. Usually the headlines are more than enough.
When we consume media with a violent or hopeless tone, its impact on us is determined partly by our perspective and our psychological health. Sometimes we resonate strongly and persistently with the pain we witness, and other times we are able to remain detached and let it pass through us without being excessively influenced by it. Until we develop our sensitivity, however, we usually can’t perceive how it hurts us. If we are interested in whole health, we need whole honesty with ourselves about our reasons for consuming unhealthy media and surrounding ourselves with people and organizations that propagate negativity.
As with diet, I’m not suggesting that we must always make the best possible choice; I’m only advising that we be as conscious and truthful with ourselves as we can be. More important that banishing any destructive influences from our lives is staying aware and honest about the nature of our relationship with these influences. In all cases, we’re better off fully experiencing the effect of a given influence rather than being unconscious of it. I recommend, in the presence of questionable media and conversation, you feel what happens in your body – as willingly and completely as possible. If you find yourself getting tense or tight, or feeling not at ease, listen to your body. Then let these feelings go, and consider altering your consumption.
Luckily, there is a world of beautiful, uplifting, positive, healthful stuff out there. Surround yourself with positive people, listen to music that makes you feel good, check out some beautiful art, read some lovely poetry. And notice how it changes your life.
Much love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => 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
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