Think of at least 3 solutions before deciding anything.
And take deep breaths, of course!
Calming the Mind
Make no decisions when you’re afraid
Mortal fear shifts us into a neurological state commonly called ‘fight, flight or freeze’. The autonomic nervous system takes over in milliseconds making significant bio-chemical shifts (dumping out cortisol, adrenaline, changing systemic blood flows, etc.) one of which is preferring the hind brain for instant decision making… this mental speed comes at the cost of complexity as it’s largely binary. It’s as intelligent as yes/no or more likely run/fight. This is perfect if the danger is an incoming train or a burning house, but not great for complex social, economic or political decisions.
Continue readingAre you bigger than your mind?
I know that you are, but how can YOU know whether that’s true if it isn’t your current experience?
Most modern humans only experience themselves as their mind (including emotions). Anyone telling them they they’re bigger than that just sounds like a crazy person!
Or at best like they are having a really different experience than you are… which isn’t so helpful.
Continue readingHow to Ditch the Blues
Ever felt a bit lost or lonely or depressed?
(Ah, welcome to humanity circa… modern times.)
What about those times when you go into a spiral of lost, lonely or depressed that you can’t seem to get out of? Yuck!
That happened to me a few weeks ago, and I want to share with you how I got out of it!
Continue readingThe Utility of Honest Friendships
Do you have a friend that you can be honest with? That you feel safe enough with that you can give and receive truth from, even when it’s not so comfortable?
Most relationships are more surface, which is usually a good thing.
Most of us aren’t equipped to hear what everyone really thinks, and most of us think so many goofy things, that it’s not great to be sharing all that silliness anyway. Certainly my inner critic does not need to be given free rein to speak her mind to everyone all the time!
The Biggest Challenge Is Your Own Mind (Enlightenment Not Necessary!)
The biggest challenge to realizing that you’re more than your thoughts (as well as creating the new habit of thinking with more than your current limited set) – is NOT becoming enlightened, needing to sit in a cave, or clean yourself up.
Nope. None of that is necessary.
Actually, it’s your tricky mind that you need to work with. None of that other stuff is necessary. Whatever it is that you think you need to do, or be, or fix, or clean, or, or, or… Not necessary.
Really.
Continue readingThe Two Fundamental Things I Did to Get Out of My Head
When I was stuck in the “trap” of my mind, there were two things that got me out.
- Training my ability to focus my mind – which eventually leads to being able to focus on my “larger” mind (the rest of me).
- And training being aware of myself, or noticing that I’m (here in this body-mind) focusing – which naturally leads to an awareness of my “larger” self (the rest of me).
Why You Don’t Believe You’re Bigger Than Your Thoughts
I know, for most of us the idea that we’re not our thoughts, emotions and sensations sounds ludicrous at best.
Someone telling you that is either insane or trying to sell you something. Or maybe trying to get you to join something (which is the same thing really).
I mean, for most of us we are our thoughts! That is completely our experience. And saying it’s not is irrational – it’s denying reality!
It’s nuts!
Except that it’s crazy-making, all this stuff in your head, and you want out. Maybe they know something you don’t?
Continue readingTip for Calming Your Mind During Mindfulness
Thinking about something else during your practice? Maybe you were lost in thought the whole time until your timer went off and reminded you you were supposed to be practicing? That totally happens to me sometimes! Like this whole week! Yikes!
One way to deal with this is to give your mind something else to focus on. That will help keep it interested in the practice you’re doing.
Mindfulness Can Be Boring!
A big problem that most of us have is that our breath is totally boring! After a few seconds our mind goes, “Man! Where are problems to solve? The videos and movies to watch? What fun is this? I want something to do! I know! I’ll think about this…” and you’re off, lost in thought, totally oblivious to your breath.
Most of the time, I just tell myself (and you) to return to your breath. To come back to noticing your breath whenever you notice that you’re lost in thought. For many of us that’s when we complete the thought, solve the problem or finish the story. At that moment you can rejoice that suddenly you’re aware of yourself (the point of practicing mindfulness! Yay!).
And what happens if you’re so lost in thought that you spend the entire practice thinking about something else?! This whole week, I’ve been coming to at the end of my practice and realizing that I’ve been lost the entire time! Yikes!
Giving Your Mind Something Else to Do
What’s a meditator to do? After a whole week of this, I realized that I needed to change something! So I remembered a trick I used to use when I first started meditating. This worked really well for me then and it’s working well now, too.
Here’s what I do: I slightly shift my focus to give my mind something slightly new to do. It’s like having a new problem to solve. It works especially well if there’s something to count or quantify. Here are some examples.
Practices To Play With
If you’re focusing on your breath, change from say noticing the qualities of your breath (depth, speed, sensation, etc) to counting your breath. My mind goes, “Oh! You want me to count! Ok! This is something to do! Great!” You can go the other way too. If counting is boring you, change to noticing the qualities. Notice things like how deep or shallow you’re breathing. Or how fast or slow. Or what sensations you can feel. Or the sounds of breathing. Here’s a free guided breathing practice for noticing general qualities (vs counting).
Another example would be if you’re working with your eyes open, you can go from a specific focus, say on the candle in front of you, to soft eyes or noticing your whole field of vision (soften your gaze so that you’re not looking at anything in particular and notice everything in your peripheral vision). Or the other way round, going from soft to specific. You can follow a free guided meditation for having your eyes open here.
In the video I talk about changing up a sound practice if you’d like to try that (also free).
Contra Indications – Things to keep in mind.
Of course, you can also plow through, don’t change your practice at all and know that at some point you will be able to focus again. Someday your mind will settle down and you will be able to focus on your breath during your practice.
In general that’s good advice, especially since the object is to learn to focus and tricking yourself into focusing will only work for so long or so well…
Ultimately you can’t use your mind to meditate. You want to use that larger part of yourself, that part that you naturally access when you’re noticing yourself. This part, when you’re observing, witnessing or noticing yourself, is “larger” than your mind, and that’s really what you want to access. Changing up your practice to help your mind focus is really just a way to get your mind to calm down a bit so that you can notice yourself.
Keeping the Ultimate Goal In Mind
If it helps you be less frustrated when you practice, then play with slightly changing your focus. Keep in mind that when you change your focus, you want to be aware of yourself focusing, à la, “I’m here counting my breath.” or “I’m here looking at this candle.” and you’ll be accessing that larger part of you. You’ll be observing or noticing yourself. Awesome. You’re mindful.
I hope that helps you! Now I just have to follow my own advice! It worked earlier this week, and then I just got excited about the problems I was solving and left my practice in the dust… Ah, the life of a meditator! Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s fun to see what crazy things we get up to, hey?
Enjoy!
The Gift of Thinking During Mindfulness Practice
When you’re practicing mindfulness, inevitably you start thinking about something… that thing that happened yesterday, what you want to happen tomorrow, what you think about sitting here, etc.
This is actually a good thing… It means you’re alive and you’re not brain dead. (Congratulations!) Just like your heart beating, as long as you’re alive, your brain is going to be active and your mind is going to think. This is natural and normal and an important part of being alive: it’s how you’re able to understand yourself and your environment (on a mental level).
Distracted By Thoughts
The only issue is that it’s easy to get distracted by our thoughts to the point that we’re no longer noticing that we’re practicing. For example, if we’re sitting in our room, practicing being aware of our breath (which is a fancy way of saying that we’re noticing ourself inhale and exhale), it’s easy to get so caught up in our thoughts about that super annoying guy and that ridiculous thing he said at work yesterday, that we completely forget that we’re actually sitting here breathing. We lose touch with our physical bodies, and transport ourselves in time and space to work, yesterday! Mentally, we’re totally unaware of the room we’re sitting in – we’re at work!
We do this all of the time. We’re physically in one place and yet totally unaware of it, because mentally we’re thinking about being in another place. This is a classic example of being “lost in thought.” This doesn’t bother most people too much. You may only really notice it when you’re practicing. You complete your thought (“Next time he says that, I’m gonna say this!”), your mind returns to you sitting here, and “Oops! I’m thinking about something else and I’m supposed to be watching my breath!”
Immediately, you (likely) think that you’re not practicing well. You’ve been told to notice your breath, and you just caught yourself doing something else! Oops. Bad.
Aware of Thoughts
Well, actually, not bad. Good! Here’s a secret: if you’re practicing mindfulness because you want to be more aware of yourself, more present throughout your day, that means that you need to build the muscle of being aware of yourself even when you’re thinking. Functionally, that means that you stay aware of yourself sitting in the room while you’re thinking about work. Your thought process works something like this, “I’m sitting here watching my breath AND I notice that I’m also thinking about work.” In other words, you’re thinking about work while still aware that you’re sitting there.
You can do this now, by reading the next sentence while being aware that you’re sitting there reading it. Notice that your body is in whatever space you’re in (or how your feet feel on the floor) while you read this.
Even simpler, look around you right now and be aware of your body sitting here while you do it. Think/be aware that, “I’m sitting here in this place looking around.” Easy. (Please do it if you haven’t. Otherwise, you might have no idea what I’m talking about, and that experience is really important to understanding the next sentence.)
How does it work?
This is exactly what you do with awareness of thoughts. You just stay aware of yourself (your body if you like) while you’re thinking. Basically, “I’m (sitting) here, thinking this thought.” That’s exactly what you did above when you were aware of yourself while reading.
It’s pretty easy to be aware of ourselves while looking around (seeing what’s in front of us). It’s much harder to stay aware of ourselves while we’re thinking (for very long). This is because we’re so used to distracting ourselves (from where we are physically) with our thoughts. You start thinking about work, and you totally ignore where your body is. It’s habit. We’re incredibly good at distracting ourselves with our thoughts. Even if someone is talking directly to you, you can go off in your head, thinking about something else, and completely miss a whole paragraph of what the person is saying to you. Distraction is a strong muscle. We exercise it a lot.
And if there is any problem with thinking during practice, this is it. It’s that we get distracted from noticing (ourselves). We stop being aware and we start being distracted.
So how is thinking during practice good?
Well, that moment that you notice, “Hey, I’m supposed to be noticing my breath, but instead I’m thinking about something else,” is a moment of perfect awareness. You’ve just accomplished the difficult task of being aware of yourself while you’re thinking! Super!
The secret is that every time you do that, you’ve just exercised a new muscle. The muscle of awareness while thinking. And as you exercise this new muscle, the muscle of distraction will naturally get weaker.
Being aware of ourselves (sitting here) while we’re thinking, is really tough, so every time you get distracted and come back and notice that you’re thinking, you’ve just won the jackpot! Every time this happens you can celebrate! This is a challenging muscle to build, so every time you do it is a gift of pure gold…
So, next time you practice, if you get distracted a million times, realize that you’ve just given yourself a million times to experience mental awareness! Wow! Such riches!
Next time your mind is going crazy, be grateful. Every time you come back and realize that you’re thinking about something else, you’ve won the lottery. You’re giving yourself the gift of strengthening this new muscle of awareness.
You’re a powerhouse. Awesome.
Enjoy it.