A number of years ago a story came out of renowned national violinist Joshua Bell playing in a DC Metro stop during rush hour. By the end of his playing a few people were there standing around but everyone else was rushing by.
Watch this 2-minute video and then we can look at how our brains are wired to miss the wonders of our lives that could very well be the secret to happiness and resiliency.
I often write about the demanding and criticizing voices in our heads because they are so amazingly prevalent and I figure just about anyone can identify with that and almost all of us need support with them. Every day these voices arise out of habit, telling us “I can’t do that right,” “I’m never going to achieve that,” or “I’m not good enough.”
More often than not we indulge and get overwhelmed by these limiting beliefs or as Thich Nhat Hanh says,” we water the seeds of our own suffering.” The end result is we end up hating ourselves. But what if these voices were trying to help us in some way?
That may sound crazy, but really, consider it for a moment. What if these negative and limiting voices were looking after our best interest?
A while back I wrote the blog Neuroplasticity, Gratitude, and Your Mental Health: Food for Thought and thousands of people viewed it and were reminded of the really powerful effects of counting blessings over burdens.
This made me think of two critical elements that can help shape our happiness and success.The first is proactively looking at what it is we actually want in life. The second is looking at a key element that can help prime our minds toward the happiness and success we are looking for.
At this point the mental health benefits of a mindfulness practice are fairly well established. However, cultivating a more mindful life isn’t often easy – there are many obstacles at play.
The places we work and the people we surround ourselves with are likely not trying to put mindfulness at the forefront of their lives. We’re also looking for that perfect quiet time to sit, stand or lie down and practice intentionally, paying attention to the present moment with fresh eyes. Sometimes we get restless, agitated, bored or begin to doubt ourselves that we can ever truly be mindful and so we reactively avoid it.
The following is a quote by the 15th century Indian poet Kabir that I love to bring up again and again because it gets underneath these obstacles and drops us into mindfulness.
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the term “Mindful Recovery?”
Is it Addiction? Trauma? Depression? Or maybe something else?
Maybe it’s all of those things, but I’m going to pose this moment to be a time to look back on the last year and ask yourself, “What afflictions have I suffered this year that I am in recovery for?” Maybe this last year you let stress get the best of you? Maybe your relationship slipped this past year as you got roped into more television programs or Facebook addictions. Maybe you did slip into abuse with drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or overly accommodating people in life who abuse you.
What’s going to be different in the coming hours, days, weeks and months ahead?
Perhaps the simplest path is to make the intention an awareness of the moments you get sucked into these destructive behaviors that you want to change. In this space of awareness we draw a second intention which is to get curious about what the feeling is that you’re trying to escape from.
I think where we make our greatest error is when we make those resolutions that say, “I’m going to go the gym more, meditate more, start playing guitar or bring the romance back.” This jumps the gun. There are so many steps that occur before taking action with any of these things. There’s already a built up resistance to them and to skip over that is a recipe for failure.
What if these changes you wanted to make were couched in less immediacy? It’s helpful to actually understand what going on with the auto-pilot that lives within each one of us.
Here’s 7 steps to get underneath the hood and give yourself the change of making real change last:
A couple weeks ago I highlighted a therapist in Los Angeles named Stan Friedman who had a story of how he broke free from the auto-pilot of negative thinking and into a space of choice and possibility. I want to open this up as an opportunity for people to send me stories of mindfulness that can show the rest of us how it has had a practical impact on a particular event or their lives.
I will choose from them from time to time to post on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy to help give insight to the rest of us of how mindfulness can be practically applied for our health and well-being.
Of course those that get chosen can also send me a link that I’ll include in the post where people can learn more about them.
We spend a lot of our attention day in and day out, knowingly and unknowingly trying to be somewhere else than where we are. You may have had this thought before, but still the same process continues. It’s as if our mind is in the business of constantly trying to evade life as it is.
On the subtle end it’s when we’re in the shower and planning what needs to get done at work, on the more blatant end it’s when we have a fear of heights and we stay away from getting on anything that’s taller than us. What would life be like in the days, weeks and months ahead if you truly believed the following thought?
There’s no denying it, inherent in our human make-up is the need to judge and criticize. Some of us are more naturally talented at this than others. It’s worth getting curious about how the act of criticizing or judging others affects us. The truth is it rarely – if ever – has any lasting effects of helping us feel better. In fact, it usually has the opposite, like a slow leaking toxin in our minds and bodies. So here’s a practice for today.
Part of the process of healing from our various mental and physical afflictions is learning how to do a 180 degree shift from self-avoidance to self-inquiry. Self-inquiry is a simple process, but at times not easy.
It’s also not as easy to explain the process of self-inquiry because there is a certain feeling to it as you begin to practice. Learning how to get curious about yourself when there’s been a lifetime of habitual disconnection can seem strange at first, but the journey is incredibly rewarding. In A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Bob Stahl and I point out the process of self-inquiry.
“Mindful self-inquiry is an investigation into the nature of one’s own mind and being. In the context of this book, that inquiry looks into physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts that may be contributing to stress and anxiety. In your daily life, you may be so busy doing that you feel you have little or no time for self-reflection. Yet this exploration is extremely worthwhile, as fears often lie beneath the surface of awareness.
I was recently at a conference introducing Jon Kabat-Zinn and the beginning of the talk focused around my experience when I read page 14 of his book Wherever You Go, There You Are
Later on that day I stood looking at the Golden Gate Bridge in awe at the beauty of San Francisco and the headlands and the phrase naturally arose in my mind, “this is it.” What a wonderful moment.
That phrase has since traveled with me as a friend reminding me to accept the reality of each moment as it is. When I was sad, this is it! When I was joyful, this is it! When I was anxious, frustrated, or bored, this is it!
Learning how to accept the moment as it was opened my eyes to so much more.
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Site last updated: 24 May 2013
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