feelings – Page 3 – Grow Mindfulness

Turning Fear into Resilience in the Time of the Coronavirus

Rick Hanson recently produced a Being Well Podcast focused on Fear in the Time of the Coronavirus. He provided strategies to deal with fear (both rational and irrational) and to convert fear to resilience by drawing on our inner resources – determination, true grit, courage and creativity. Rick is the author of Resilient: Find your inner Strength and provides numerous resources on his website to help us develop resilience, wisdom, happiness and mindful relationships.

His emphasis is on building personal agency. With the Coronavirus impacting every facet of our lives and reducing our sense of control over our home and work environment, we are experiencing a loss of our “sense of agency”. We often try to redress this lack of a sense of agency by adopting ineffective ways to regain control over our environments, e.g. panic buying of water, toilet paper and sanitisers. We can feel helpless and, in consequence, resort to ways of coping that result in misplaced and unproductive effort.

Anxiety can operate on a number of dimensions – e.g. unhelpful or useful anxiety. At the extreme, we can be too anxious (disabled by our fear) which is unhelpful and harmful to our mental health, overall wellness and our relationships. Useful anxiety, the mind’s warning system, can create a sense of urgency/intense focus and stimulate constructive action and a strong sense of agency which, in turn, cultivates resilience. Alternatively, we can be consumed by our sense of helplessness and end up “marinating in it” – to the point where we experience depression and the associated inertia.

Turning fear into resilience

Rick suggest three processes you can adopt to move from helplessness to a sense of agency and personal resilience. The basic steps involve:

Being fully with your current experience – facing your difficult thoughts and emotions and the reality of the challenges both present and ahead. This means naming your feelings (such as anxiety, pain, fear, frustration) and being with them, not denying them out of a need to appear totally in control. It means not giving into your “shoulds” that come with your absolutes. It is human and normal to be anxious and fearful when confronted with the reality of the Coronavirus. The choice lies in deciding whether to maintain a sense of helplessness or to move towards a sense of agency and control.
Release thoughts and emotions that are harmful – This includes letting go of obsessive thinking and the endless cycle of “what if” (catastrophising). It means to treat our emotions as data informing us about a threat to our wellbeing. We are more than our thoughts and emotions. It means avoiding absorption with the latest media posts and news, when we cannot do anything about the reported information, or the situations involved. The reporting is typically sensationalist, alarmist and distorted and is designed to induce fear and dependence. Don’t sweat the news for your own personal welfare and mental health.
Shift your attention to what would be beneficial for you and others you interact with or service – this means focusing on what you can do in the situation, given all the constraints that you are experiencing. It means moving from inertness to being creative in the way you spend your time – finding things to focus on and do that are helpful to yourself, your family and those you interact with. This could involve rethinking your workday, using online communication technology (such as Zoom) or reengineering your business (adopting take-away options, providing delivery services, or switching manufacturing to a much-needed resource in the current crisis, e.g. rum and gin distilleries producing bottles of sanitisers). The oft-spoken saying – “necessity is the mother of invention” – is particularly true at this time. The opportunity exists to use this time of social isolation, social distancing and business lockdown to develop new horizons and new skills. Adopting activities that promote a positive mindset can be helpful here.

Tools to overcome unhelpful anxiety

Rick offered a range of suggestions that can enable you to overcome harmful anxiety and move to proactive action to do things that are beneficial for yourself and others.

Use your breathing to calm your body – Rick suggests taking three breaths (exhalation longer than inhalation, giving a resting state of the body). There are multiple ways you can use your breath to calm yourself and restore your equanimity, e.g. the somatic awareness approach recommended by Jill Satterfield or “breathing in time” suggested by Richard Wolf.
Tune into your inner strength – revisit your determination, courage, and resilience to strengthen your inner reserves. It can be helpful here to visualise success in your adaptive endeavours and/or reflect on past experiences where you have drawn on these personal strengths to overcome adversity or seemingly impossible challenges.
Social support – appreciating the care and support that others show towards you, including your partner, family, friends and colleagues. It also extends to caring for others and engaging others in the process of caring and providing social support to the less fortunate.
Plan and act – appraise the situation and plan some action, however small, that will move you forward. Rick reinforces the view that “action forces out anxiety”. Positive action can change our mental state.
When you feel okay, internalize the feeling – we tend to take it for granted that we will feel okay. However, in times of stress and uncertainty, it is important to notice when you are feeling okay and internalise this feeling of coping well to strengthen it. This positive self-feedback builds self-efficacy which means that you are building up your belief in your capacity to manage stressful situations.

Reflection

Fear can be disabling if we let it grow unabated. It is natural to feel anxiety and fear when things are so uncertain, and everything associated with our normal life seems out of our control. Fear, however, can be harmful unless we look at it fully in the face and understand what it is telling us about the situation we find ourselves in. There are ways to calm our mind, emotions and our body if we choose. There are also constructive things that we can do to manage our situation and our emotional response. As we grow in mindfulness and self-awareness, we can turn fear into resilience by being able to regulate our response and draw on our inner strength to meet the challenges with determination, courage and creativity.

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Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Maintaining a Positive Mindset in Periods of Uncertainty and Anxiety

The more uncertain the future, the more anxious we can become. Anxiety is exacerbated by the depression experienced through isolation (enforced or self-isolation), loss of a job or loss of connection with others. We can adopt mindfulness meditation to reduce our self-defeating narratives and undertake mindfulness practices to improve our mental health and wellbeing. We can supplement these meditations and practices with other activities that help to build and maintain a positive mindset and develop our personal resilience.

Activities to build and maintain a positive mindset

The essential element here is to engage in activities that you find enjoyable and inspiring – activities that tend to take you outside of yourself and away from self-absorption. Clearly, the choice of activities is influenced by personal preference. Here are some possible activities to choose from:

Listening to classical music: this type of music can be very calming. Listening to Mozart’s music, for example, can be relaxing and improve your concentration and brain power [I write my blog posts to the sound of Mozart playing in the background]. Many shared music platforms exist now, and in Australia we have the amazing ABC Classical radio station that among other things broadcasts superb live classical concerts from all around the world. Classical music can build the capacity for deep listening – a skill that enables you to be fully in the present moment and to build intimate and lasting relationships (a very rewarding fringe benefit and residual skill).
Listening to TED Talks© – these talks are on numerous subjects and number in the thousands. They are informative, uplifting and inspiring. Recently, because so many people are confined to their homes, TED has introduced what it calls TED Connects – free, daily conversational sessions which feature “experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time with a sense of responsibility, compassion and wisdom”. Susan David, Harvard University psychologist, presented the first of these virtual conversations on 23 March 2020 when she spoke about emotional agility, dealing with anxiety, talking to your children about their emotions, focusing during the current crisis and small acts of kindness, especially to those working on the front lines”. If you are a person who prefers auditory and visual formats over the written word, then this superb series may help you to build courage, joy and resilience in this challenging time of the Coronavirus.
Virtual tours of museums, zoos and theme parks – If you are visual person who enjoys “looking around” and viewing the antics of animals or appreciating fine art, then a virtual tour may be for you to help uplift your spirits. Some websites provide a list of virtual tours that you can enjoy. Other websites focus on one type of virtual tour such as online tours of art galleries or virtual tours of online zoos, some with presentations and talks to entertain your children stuck at home. Zoos Victoria in Australia are dedicated to fighting extinction of wildlife and provide a series of webcams from three zoos featuring various animals – you can take your pick of your favourite, e.g. the popular “penguin cam”.
Small acts of kindness – everyday you can read in the newspaper or hear on the news examples of small acts of kindness, people going out of their way to help someone else in need (even when they themselves are feeling the effects of various forms of deprivation and uncertainty at this time). Some websites are dedicated to sharing random acts of kindness to inspire and stimulate others to take compassionate action withing their arena of influence. A good place to start thinking about your own random acts of kindness is the kindness blog which is full of great ways to show kindness to family and friends, seniors and others.
Reading literature sourced online – besides accessing your own library of books and the novels/biographies you have never got around to reading because of your busyness, you can access heaps of resources online in terms of e-books, audiobooks and eMagazines. While many public libraries have closed their physical buildings to subscribers, they usually offer material that can be accessed online, including music and audios. The National Library of Australia, for example, offers free online access to e-books and other digitised material to Australian residents. Local councils typically provide free access to e-books, audiobooks and emagazines.
Writing songs or journals – these are mechanisms for expressing your feelings, being able to name your feelings to better deal with them. They can also serve to stimulate emotion in others and help them face up to what they are actually feeling, but not expressing.

Reflection

These are very uncertain times and uniquely demanding physically, emotionally, mentally and financially. Whatever we can do to build up our positive mindset will assist us to develop the resilience to meet these challenges. Creativity flourishes in times of necessity as does kindness. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, mindfulness practices and enjoyable/positive activities, we develop the capacity to find new ways to work and live in stringent conditions and resume our normal life with a strengthened resolve, increased gratitude and heightened adaptability once the Coronavirus is under control.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Overcome Self-Protection to Create Personal Behavioural Change

Tami Simon, in a recent interview podcast, spoke to Dr. Lisa Lahey about her co-authored book, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization. Lisa is also a member of the faculty for the Inner MBA, jointly conducted by Sounds True in partnership with New York University, Wisdom 2.0 and LinkedIn. In the interview, Lisa and Tami explore our self-protection mechanisms, the need for courage to overcome them and the importance of supportive challenge to sustain significant personal change.

Our self-protection mechanisms create an immunity to change

Our self-protection mechanisms are designed to protect our sense of self-worth and overall psychic health – they stop us from doing things that would be harmful to our psychic welfare. Research and experience demonstrate, however, that that many people in organisations find it difficult to make positive behavioural changes that would make them a better staff member or manager. For example, staff may not change inappropriate behaviour despite regular corrective feedback and a manager may not be able to delegate effectively despite their belief in the need for delegation.

Lisa maintains that the real barrier to these desirable behavioural changes is not a lack of procedural or technical knowledge but the need to change our “inner landscape” – made up of our beliefs, inner rules, feelings, self-stories and assumptions about our self, others, and our world. Many behavioural changes in an organisational setting require these “adaptive changes” – becoming aware of the specific, inner landscape barriers to a focal behavioural change and working consciously to remove them. This perspective advanced by Lisa lines up with our earlier discussion of “absolutes” and their impact on our thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Lisa likens our inner landscape to our immune system which is a self-protection mechanism designed to protect us against infection. Our immune system, however, can also work against our physical welfare. This can happen when it becomes hypersensitive to foods that would otherwise be good for us and creates inflammation in the form of rashes, hives, and other manifestations of food intolerance and allergies. Another example is when the immune system rejects a liver or heart after a transplant. Our inner landscape, just like the self-protective mechanism of our immune system, can work against making and sustaining desirable, personal behavioural change (whether within an organisational setting or in daily life with our family).

Making adaptive change through the “immunity change process”

In her Book, Immunity to Change, Lisa provides a detailed four-step process for making adaptive change which she calls “the immunity change process”. In the podcast interview, she offered a brief description of each step and these are illustrated below:

Have a clear goal in mind – Clarity around your behavioural change goal is critical because it enables a focused exploration of your “inner landscape”. Lisa gave the example of her gaol to overcome the fear of public speaking. Here I will focus on the goal of improving delegation as a manager, drawing on my experience working with managers over many years.
Honest exploration of your self-sabotaging behaviours: As a manager, you might work against the achievement of your delegation goal by constant interference/ checking in with the person to whom you have delegated work (the delegatee), expressing a lack of trust in the delegatee’s ability to complete the work successfully, showing increasing signs of nervousness, and/or being unclear in your instructions/requirements when establishing the delegated task. These behaviours can feed your anxiety cycle and thwart effective delegation to the delegatee and, at the same time, undermine their confidence so that they do not do the delegated job very well (an outcome that reinforces your belief system about the threats to your self-worth involved in delegating).
Honest exploration of your inner self-protective goals: These inner goals lie beneath your self-sabotaging behaviour and provide the unconscious rationale for behaving in a way that works against the achievement of your goal. These self-protective goals could include trying to avoid the embarrassment of staff making mistakes, ensuring the security of your own job, maintaining a sense of superior knowledge and skills (“better than”) or avoiding being seen as lazy.
Identifying and challenging the underlying assumptions that give rise to the self-protective goals: These could include the assumption that if the delegatee becomes really good at their work your job will be at risk, they will see any poor work that you have done in relation to the delegated task, they might do it the wrong way if you don’t constantly check on them, you will be seen as incompetent if they do the delegated task poorly or you will lose control of the task and the delegatee and reduce your influence. These assumptions are interrelated and self-reinforcing, reducing your capacity to see possibilities and explore creative options. Once these underlying assumptions have been surfaced, you can challenge them by exploring alternative assumptions. Lisa suggests, for example, in relation to delegation, that the process could be seen as adding real value to the organisation and the delegatee by enabling them to be the best they can be. This not only contributes more fully to the achievement of organisational goals but also builds staff motivation and mental health through providing a sense of agency. Also, as neuroscientist Tali Sharot explains, you grow your influence by letting go.

Reflection

Our inner landscape acts as both a self-protective mechanism building our self-esteem and a self-sabotaging system that comes into play when we perceive that our self-worth is under threat. As we grow in mindfulness through reflective processes such as the “immunity change process”, we can become more aware of our self-sabotaging behaviour, our unconscious self-protective goals and the underlying assumptions that hold them in place. As we challenge our assumptions and associated expectations, we can break free of their hold over us and be open to creative options that we can pursue with courage and persistence.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Reflection to Address Absolutes

In the previous post, I discussed the concept of absolutes advanced by Lance Allred. Absolutes are those firm, unshakeable beliefs we hold about our self, others or the world around us. They constrain our perspectives and influence our behaviour. They are relatively immoveable and do not dissolve in the face of rational argument. Absolutes shape our thoughts, feelings and reactions and impact our effectiveness and our relationships. They develop early in family life and are often reinforced culturally. The downside of absolutes is that they stop us from realising our full potential – they act like clots in our circulatory system, stemming the flow of creativity and responsiveness.

A reflection to surface and address an absolute

It seems to me that the starting point for addressing the absolutes in our life is to begin with developing self-awareness and move to identifying strategies to self-regulate our reactions. It is important to focus on one aspect of our present experience that we find unsatisfactory because of the negative thoughts and emotions that the experience elicits in us. We are complex beings, so beginning with one relatively small absolute can develop our self-awareness and improve our capacity to respond effectively without the baggage of our past.

There are several steps in the meditation:

Being grounded: It is important to become grounded so that you can achieve a sense of focus, balance and insight. Being conscious of your posture and breathing helps to ground you in the present.
Deciding on an anchor: Your anchor is designed to enable you to come back into the focus of your reflection whenever you become aware that you have become distracted or diverted in your thinking. The choice of anchors is a personal thing – I still like to feel the sensation of my fingers coming together.
Focus on an unsatisfactory experience: Decide what you are going to work on to unearth an absolute that is negatively impacting your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. It could be some recent interaction or activity that made you upset or threw you off balance. It does not have to be a major issue – in fact, initially it is better to start small. [I have started with the fact that I get upset and annoyed when I make a mistake at social tennis.]
Explore your emotions during the incident: What were you feeling? What was the intensity of those feelings? What was the catalyst for those feelings – what really happened? Who were your feelings directed at – yourself or another person? [In my case, with my tennis mistakes my feelings were annoyance, frustration, anger and shame.]
What thoughts were behind your emotions: Why did you experience those emotions? What was the incident triggering in you? What belief (absolute) about your self or the other person was driving your emotional response? Whenever your thoughts include a “must” or “should”, you are beginning to access an absolute that is locking you into a response that reduces your flexibility and constrains your perspective. [When I get upset with my tennis mistakes, my underlying thought or absolute is that “I must be seen to be competent at tennis.”]
Explore the nature of your identified “absolute”: Take a close look at your absolute. Is it a rational or realistic thought? What is its origin? Is it embedded in a childhood experience or something that happened in later life? Where did it come from and why is it persisting? What does it say about your sense of self-worth – is your sense of who you are dependent on what someone else thinks or says? [Tennis competence was a way to prove my worth – it generated respect and admiration. It made me feel good about myself. My identity is tied up with the self-perception that I am a very good tennis player.]
What strategies could you adopt to reduce the impact of your “absolute”: The starting point is to acknowledge your absolute and how it is playing out in your life and relationships. What could you do to reduce or avoid your negative, conditioned response? Are there ways to build in a gap between the stimulus (the catalyst) and your response to give you the time and freedom to respond differently? Are there other offsetting, positive thoughts that you could entertain instead of your “absolute”? [For my issue with tennis mistakes, one strategy has been to progressively loosen the relationship between my sense of self-worth and the outcome of the game – that is, not measuring my sense of self- worth on whether I won or not. This still leaves the issue of being upset with my tennis mistakes. A strategy I am trying here is to express gratitude that I am able to play, that I can run and hit the ball, that I can hit some really good shots – that is, appreciating what I have and not focusing on the negatives and lack of accomplishment.]

Reflection

Even relatively minor “absolutes” are very hard to dislodge. Using a reflection like the one described above can help to chip away at an absolute and reduce its hold on us by eroding our sense of certainty about the underlying belief, by seeing it for what it really is (e.g. illogical, unfounded or unnecessary) and developing alternative ways of thinking and feeling. As we grow in mindfulness and self-awareness, we can develop deeper personal insight, identify how absolutes play out in our life and develop more creative and positive ways to respond to negatively experienced stimuli that will inevitably recur in our daily lives.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness and the Art of Forgiveness

In a previous post, I highlighted the need for compassion and forgiveness to sustain a second marriage. However, forgiveness is a need in all facets of our relationships because we can experience a grievance or hurt wherever we are – at work, at home or in our daily activity outside these spheres. Dr. Fred Luskin, an international expert in forgiveness, explains that there are three main aspects of a grievance, wherever or whenever it is experienced:

Exaggerating the personal offense we experience
Blaming someone else for our negative feelings
Developing a grievance story.

In his book, Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for Healthy and Lasting Relationships, Fred draws on research to demonstrate that forgiveness leads to a sense of peace as well as physical and emotional welfare. In contrast, maintaining a grudge, grievance or anger results in illness, a loss of personal power (you become controlled by your emotions) and an inability to focus on the task at hand. The very words we use – such as “consumed by envy” – evoke the destructive power of grievances and sustained anger.

Developing the art of forgiveness through mindfulness

Fred points out that, contrary to popular belief, forgiveness is not about the other person by whom you feel aggrieved, it is about yourself – your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and consequent behaviour. He contends that the focus in forgiveness is self-awareness and self-regulation, not reconciliation. Some of the mindfulness practices that can help you develop the art of forgiveness include:

Mindful breathing: Fred offers a specific, brief practice here. He suggests that you take three deep breaths. When inhaling, you focus on the movement of your stomach as it fills with air. As you exhale, you concentrate on your stomach softening (and the sense of release). On your third deep breath, Fred suggests that you bring your focus to something or someone you love or a thing of beauty – filling your mind with something positive which can serve to displace negative thoughts and emotions.
Naming your feelings: Fred suggests that through reflection you seek to identify the catalyst for your grievance and name the feelings that you experienced. He argues that your past experiences may have influenced your feelings, but you experience them in the present and you are responsible for them (not the person you blame for those feelings). Once you name your feelings, you can take ownership of them and effectively tame them (you control them, they don’t control you). You can also identify how you have exaggerated the personal offense that you have experienced and what expectations or assumptions underlie that sense of being offended. Fred maintains that we each carry around in our head what he calls “unenforceable rules”.
Choosing your channel: Fred proposes that we learn to replace the “grievance channel” (where we repeat our “grievance story” to ourselves and others) with more positive channels such as those focused on gratitude, love and beauty (especially the beauty of nature). In his book, he offers multiple suggestions on how to switch “channels” throughout the day. If we achieve this switch on a regular basis, we naturally develop our “forgiveness channel” because appreciation, a sense of beauty and feelings of love displace negative feelings of hurt, anger and resentment. The art of forgiveness can be further developed by reading about, or listening to, stories of courageous acts of forgiveness by others.

Fred suggests that we need to become aware of the space in our minds that we are allocating to our grievance – how much of our time and energy are being consumed by accommodating and entertaining our grievances.

Reflection

To develop the art of forgiveness, we need to be conscious of the thoughts and emotions we are cultivating through the stories in our head – we become what we focus on, the choice is ours to be bitter or appreciative. As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more self-aware of our “unenforceable rules” in the form of unrealistic expectations or unfounded assumptions, more readily name our feelings and learn to achieve self-regulation by consciously choosing to entertain positive thoughts and feelings of love and appreciation.

In reflecting on what unenforceable rules we carry in our head, I am reminded of an observation by Michelle De Kretser in her book, The Life to Come, when talking about Pippa’s reflections about her family friend Rashida (a Muslim born in India):

There was a whisper in Pippa’s brain, like a subdued, left-hand accompaniment to her thoughts, and this whisper was of the opinion that Rashida should be grateful that white people overlooked the double handicap of her religion and race. [p. 221, emphasis added]

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Self-Praise for Health and Wellness and to Make a Difference

In a recent email newsletter, Leo Babauta reminded us of the need to “train your mind with praise”. So often we beat up on ourselves for falling short, for failure to perform to expectations (ours and others) or for an oversight or omission. Our negative self-stories take over and cause us to procrastinate and avoid pursuing what is really meaningful in our life. Leo argues that “shame is a bad teacher” – praise for our self serves to reinforce positive thoughts, emotions and behaviour and leads to good outcomes for others. Leo readily shared how he uses self-praise to strengthen the good habits in his life. Elsewhere he freely shared what enabled him to change his life when he was in a bad place.

Christine Wesson reminds us that the benefits of self-praise include growth of self-confidence. She highlights the fact that what we focus on develops and grows (whether positive or negative) and that, if we appreciate ourselves, others take their cue from our demeanour and appreciate us as well.

What can you praise yourself for today?

You can praise yourself for the numerous positive, small things you do in your day such as:

Stopping what you were doing and attentively listening to your child or partner
Being fully present when you give your partner a “good morning” kiss
Writing that piece for your blog or newsletter or service provider
Reading something about an act of kindness
Expressing genuine appreciation to someone – your partner, child, waiter/waitress, taxi driver
Responding promptly to an enquiry from a friend, relative, client or customer
Genuinely sharing your feelings with someone close to you
Making time to be with a friend
Offering to give someone a lift
Letting someone into the traffic line who was obviously at a disadvantage
Making good use of waiting time to focus on awareness (and not your phone)
Stopping to appreciate the beauty of nature – the ocean, sunset, sunrise, trees, flowers or birds
Helping someone in need
Expressing loving kindness towards someone or a group in your meditation
Taking time to exercise – Tai Chi, walking, gym work, playing tennis, going for a run
Resisting the temptation to do something else while taking a phone call – being fully present to the speaker.

Really, the list is endless – there is so much that you do during any one day that is praiseworthy – that makes life better for yourself or someone else. You do not have to realise major accomplishments to make a difference in the world – it is the small things that add up to significant positive outcomes for yourself (and your capacity to be kind to others), your mood (which is contagious), your interactions with others and your close relationships.

Just as it is important to give ourselves praise, it is also vital to provide positive feedback to others in the form of genuine appreciation that is timely and specific – you can make their day with a simple act of praise.

Reflection

It seems to be anti-cultural to praise ourselves – it is a lot easier to be “down on our self”. Self-praise builds self-confidence and helps to reinforce our positive thinking and behaviour. It serves to push aside our negative self-stories. As we grow in mindfulness, we can learn to appreciate and praise what we do that is healthy for our self and makes a difference (however small) in the lives of people we interact with. It does not take a lot of time to praise our self, but the effect is cumulative and flows over to all the arenas of our life (whether home, work or sports activity).

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

What Does Love Mean?

In a previous post I explored ways to sustain an intimate relationship. But what does love mean? We use the word so loosely – referring to everything from a dessert to a location to an intimate friend. Mitra Manesh explores this question in her guided meditation podcast, Meaning of Love – one of the many weekly meditation podcasts from MARC, UCLA. Mitra is a mindfulness teacher with MARC, creator of the Inner Map app and provider of mindfulness teaching through her short videos on Vimeo©. She has worked extensively to bring mindfulness to the corporate world, combining Eastern and Western perspectives.

Guided meditation on the meaning of love

Mitra begins her guided meditation by suggesting that you first become grounded by using your hands as the anchor. She suggests that you can focus on the pressure of your hands on your lap, the touching of your fingers together or the up and down movement of your hands on your stomach as you breath in and out. Whatever hand anchor you choose, the idea is to gently bring your mind back to this anchor whenever your mind wanders.

Once you have become grounded, you can explore “love as connection”. Mitra’s guided meditation is based on the idea that the connection underpinning love occurs at four levels – the physical, intellectual, emotional and universal levels. The meditation follows a progression from a focus on the physical to universal connectedness and incorporates connection to self (experiencing self-love):

Physical connection – here the initial focus is on a pleasant body sensation such as the warmth of your fingers touching, the softness of the palm of your hand or the firmness of your feet on the floor. Once you have experienced this pleasant bodily sensation, you can extend your focus to the recollection of the pleasantness of a physical connection to another person such as a hug or a kiss. When you have achieved awareness of physical connection and experienced pleasant recollections, you can gently move on.
Intellectual connection – firstly focus on connecting to your own mind – what is going on in your head. Mitra suggests that you envisage your thoughts as clouds coming and going, merging and dissipating – blown by the winds of change. This is a pleasant change from other forms of meditation where you are discouraged from being distracted by your thoughts. Here the idea is to notice what is going on in the process of your thinking – how one idea leads to another, how ideas connect you to past experiences and how ideas flow through you endlessly. You can expand this intellectual focus to recollecting a recent experience where you felt a strong intellectual connection to a colleague, a family member or an intimate partner. You can then move on to the next level of connection.
Emotional connection – this is the level we often associate with love, but genuine love operates at all levels. Here you first focus on a pleasant emotion that you may be experiencing at this moment – enjoying the contentment, pleasure or happiness that arises through this mindful awareness. If your current emotion is experienced as unpleasant, Mitra suggests that you look inside yourself to see what unfilled need is giving rise to this negative experience. Again, if you wish to extend your sense of emotional connection to another person you can recollect a time when you were with someone, a friend or partner, where you had a real sense of emotional connection – whether the experience was one of joy, peace, safety, comfort or other positive feeling.
Universal or spiritual connection – this is not an aspect that Mitra dwells on in her guided meditation. However, we can focus on human connectedness and our connectedness to nature to gain a sense of the universality of our connection.

Tara Brach, in her brief talk on the meaning of love, discusses the “aliveness of connection” and the translation of this universal connection into compassionate action. To illustrate this connection to all living things, she tells the story of a prisoner who saved a pigeon from stoning by another prisoner by saying simply. “Don’t do that – that bird has my wings.” Tara argues that radical compassion has all the elements of love including caring, forgiving and appreciating. She illustrates the multiple meanings given to “love” by sharing stories of how 8 year old children described love. One child, for example, had this to say on the meaning of love:

When you tell someone something bad about yourself and you are frightened that they won’t love you anymore, but then you are surprised that they love you even more!

Reflection

Love has multiple levels and is expressed in many different ways. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection and compassionate action, we can learn to appreciate self-love and love for others that we experience at all levels – the physical, intellectual, emotional and universal levels. The essence of love is connection and mindfulness practices can help us to better understand and enhance these connections.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Being Joyful for the Joy of Other People in Your Life

In a previous post I explored ways to cultivate joy in your life and provided a guided meditation on this practice. The foundation for letting joy into your life is gratitude and the associated savouring of what is good in your life such as your achievements, friendships or your child’s development. Genuine appreciation and gratitude displace the tendency to be envious of others’ success and joy. However, we can work positively towards valuing and rejoicing in the good fortune of others, which in turn increases our own joy in life.

Diana Winston offers a meditation podcast, Taking Joy in Others’ Joy, designed to help us to be joyful for the joy of other people in our life. This guided meditation is offered as one of the many weekly podcasts provided by MARC at UCLA and available through their online archive.

Barriers to being joyful for others

Diana points out that it is natural to experience barriers to being joyful for others. These may take the form of feeling envious of their success, coveting what they have (whether a possession or a person) or feeling an inexplicable sadness when we become aware of another’s joy. One way to address these blockages is to identify what we are feeling and to name the feeling so that we can control it. What we will often find is that our sense of shame (for experiencing strong negative feelings) will cause us to hide these feeling from our self (not own up to them) and/or to camouflage them when interacting with others.

Michelle De Kretser, in her book The Life to Come, gives a very good illustration of this camouflaging of feelings of envy. Michelle, when discussing the relationship between Cassie (a creative writing student) and her friend, Pippa (a successful, published novelist), highlighted how we can avoid confronting the unwelcome feeling of envy:

Cassie had hit on the strategy of dousing the envy that flickered up in her around Pippa with a stream of (fabricated) compliments.

While this approach may hide our true feelings from others, it does not address the underlying barrier to being joyful for the joy of other people in our life. Being honest with our self about our true feelings, naming them and understanding how they reflect in our behaviour can help us to reduce the barrier. Diana offers a supportive approach in her guided meditation podcast mentioned above.

A guided meditation on empathetic joy

In addition to addressing negative feelings that act as barriers to being joyful for others, it can be helpful for us to take a constructive approach through regular meditations designed to develop empathetic joy – appreciating the joy of others resulting from a specific accomplishment or the experience of good fortune. The joy of others may arise through their concerted efforts to develop a skill, overcome a difficulty or achieve something that is important to them.

The starting point of this meditation is to become grounded through your posture, mental focus and the process of using an anchor to maintain your attention and relaxed state of mind and body. Once you have achieved this groundedness for a reasonably sustained period (e.g. 10 minutes), you can shift your focus to cultivating empathetic joy.

Firstly, you focus on the good fortune or enjoyment of someone who is close to you, with whom you have a strong relationship. You can then picture their joy or enjoyment over a specific accomplishment or piece of good fortune and extend the desire for their joy to be increased and sustained, e.g. “May you continue to be happy and joyful and experience further success and happiness in your life.”

The next focus in your meditation is on a person with whom you experience some degree of discomfort over their success (avoid focusing on someone whom you are totally envious about) – you might have a twinge of envy that you do not entertain or dwell on to any significant degree. In your meditation, you then apply a similar expression of good will towards this other person, moving beyond negative thoughts or feelings (as you bring them into focus), to a genuine expression of good will – wishing them increased, sustained joy and happiness.

Reflection

Being joyful for the joy of other people in your life, can be very challenging in some situations. Where we have strong negative feelings towards them (e.g. envy or covetousness), we will experience barriers to rejoicing in another’s joy. Being honest with our self about these feelings, their origin and strength, will help to remove these barriers. The regular practice of the empathetic joy meditation can serve as a supportive practice to cultivate the capacity to be joyful for the joy of others and to experience vicarious joy. As we grow in mindfulness through these types of loving kindness meditations and reflection on our behaviour, we can increase our self-awareness; develop self-regulation of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour; and build our connectedness to others around us.

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Image by Johannes Plenio from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Build Leadership Agility

Ginny Whitelaw maintains that there are four energy patterns that leaders can adopt that enable them to achieve organisational change and influence outcomes. She explains that the four patterns operate not just at a behavioural level but are reflected in thoughts, emotions, movement and the nervous system. While the patterns identified reflect the four key factors in other forms of psychometric assessment, what is different in this approach is a whole-body orientation that acknowledges the mind-body connection and moves beyond self-awareness to self-regulation. Ginny has jointly developed an instrument, the FEBI (Focus Energy Balance Indicator), which enables a leader to assess their preferred pattern of behaviour. She offers a free mini-FEBI survey on her website as well as in her book.

The four energy patterns

The four energy patterns described in her book The Zen Leader are identified as Driver, Organizer, Collaborator and Visionary. The Driver is characterised by intensity and an unerring focus on outcomes; the Organizer is contained, orderly and disciplined; the Collaborator emphasises connection, fun and free movement; and the Visionary is the big picture person who readily sees patterns and takes quantum leaps in imagination. Ginny provides a detailed explanation of each pattern in her book and gives examples of how they operate in practice for a leader.

Ginny maintains that we each have a preferred energy pattern that reflects our personality and that represents our comfort zone, an energy pattern in which we have acquired a level of unconscious competence. Therein lies the problem – much of this patterned thinking, feeling, movement and behaviour operate at a sub-conscious level. Our strengths can become our “derailers” in times of stress or new role demands. Ginny maintains that to achieve leadership effectiveness and to lead fearlessly, we need to develop agility in our capacity to choose an energy pattern that is appropriate to the situation, e.g. in a CEO role we need to be able to adopt the energy pattern of the visionary.

How to build leadership agility

Ginny argues in her book that as a leader you need to flip “from playing to your strengths to strengthening your play”. She uses the analogy of a team to represent the agility involved and suggests that you need to “build your bench” – have the full range of skill sets at your disposal so that you can lead effectively in any situation. This means progressively developing energy patterns that are different to your preferred pattern. She provides a simple exercise to help you identify your strengths as well as “one thing that you often wish you were better at” – a potential starting point for building a new energy pattern beyond your preferred mode (p.110).

In a previous post we discussed the importance of leadership agility on one dimension, namely emotional agility. Ginny’s whole-body approach, reflected in the four energy patterns and measured by the FEBI instrument, offers a multi-faceted way to develop leadership agility. In her book (pp.122-123), she offers many examples of three key areas that can be worked on to develop any of the four energy patterns:

Work Behaviours – recognises that energy patterns are manifested in workplace behaviours; examples for developing a particular energy pattern include identify top 3 priorities (Driver); set aside time for planning (Organizer); build your network (Collaborator); make time for reflection (Visionary).
Physical Activities – the four energy patterns also have physical manifestations that can be cultivated as a way to develop patterns other than your preferred pattern, e.g. using the pushing motion and focus of “hard and fast” bicycling (Driver); adopting the movement of shaping and structuring through organizing a space (Organizer); using the rhythmic movement of ballroom dancing (Collaborator); engaging the expansive movement of Tai Chi (Visionary). Ginny contends that different physical behaviours can lead to “different patterns of energy” and she illustrates this in her video explanation of the FEBI assessment.
Sensory Support – the energy patterns find expression in the things that we value, that create a positive feeling in us and that build our energy; examples of ways to develop a particular pattern using sensory support can involve office design – stark and sparse (Driver); neat and tidy (Organizer); fun and colourful (Collaborator); harmonious with nature (Visionary). It is relatively easy to conceive how pictures or images could help to develop sensory support for an energy pattern that you are attempting to develop to increase your leadership agility.

Ginny also suggests that another way to reinforce the development of a new energy pattern is to use a symbol that could be placed on your desk. For example, she used a playdoh figure to remind her to move beyond her preferred Driver orientation to the playful energy of the Collaborator. Others have used crystals, pictures, sculptures or a poem to serve as a reminder of a focus for personal development.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can increase our self-awareness by understanding our preferred energy pattern and its many manifestations in our daily life. We can also adopt Ginny’s suggestions re self-regulation through the development of new energy patterns.

I completed the min-FEBI survey in her book and found that my dominant energy pattern was “Visionary” which was supported by three less-developed (but relatively equal) patterns of Driver, Organizer and Collaborator. This result aligned with my personal knowledge and experience. I have frequently chosen leadership roles requiring visionary energy over other roles. I have also been able to partially develop the other three energy patterns through the variety of roles, physical activities and workplace behaviours I have undertaken over the many years of my working life.

On reflection, I realised too that I am developing my Driver energy pattern by maintaining my focus when writing and by setting myself the task of completing three or four blog posts per week. However, I have come to realise that pursuing this relentlessly to a set time deadline (a Driver pattern) has limited my time for other physical activities that build alternative energy patterns (Tai Chi for my visionary energy; meditation and walking for my Organizer energy). The key seems to be to find the right balance between these energy patterns as well as to be able to use the right pattern at the right time (or to adjust if a pattern is not working in a leadership situation).

I have also realised that my lack of Organizer energy is reflected in my untidy and messy office. While this office “design” (many stacks of paper making it difficult to find things) manifests my Visionary energy orientation, it makes it difficult for me to function efficiently. So, this is an area that I must work on for this year (it will take that long to get organised!!). I will also need to seriously adopt the Bullet Diary Method (of course, I have the resources for this already). I can console myself that I am building towards increased Organizer energy by listening to Mozart while I write this blog (as it helps me to organise my thoughts and writing). P.S. I have not been able to readily see my reminder symbol, a symmetrical crystal, because of my messy office – there is a lesson here!

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Image by mediamonk from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Go Beyond Just Coping as a Leader

Ginny Whitelaw published a book on The Zen Leader in which she integrates her experience as a senior manager at NASA, a Zen Master and martial arts expert as well as her doctoral study of biophysics and personal experience of life’s challenges and difficulties, including divorce. She draws heavily on the mind-body connection to provide a pathway for leaders to “lead fearlessly” and in a way that integrates mind, body and spirit. Her pathway is presented in the form of 10 “flips” which she describes as inverting old ways of thinking through processes of reframing “your sense of self and the world” [imagine “flipping over” an omelette when cooking breakfast!]. Throughout the book, Ginny provides insights, practices, exercises and “takeaways” to help us embed Zen Leadership into our words and actions as a leader.

From just coping to transforming self and others

The first of the “flips” Ginny introduces is flipping from “coping to transforming”. For her, coping is reflected in blaming behaviour (blaming others, the system and anything external to oneself), denial or being blind to the reality of a situation and your part in it. She notes that this unproductive and energy sapping behaviour often has its origins in adverse childhood experiences. To reinforce this message, Ginny provides an example of a leader who refused to accept performance feedback in coaching sessions but was subsequently able to link his obstructive stance to a childhood trauma.

Ginny explains that the real breakthrough came with acceptance – acknowledging that the feedback was true, rather than trying to fend it off or rationalise it. I had a similar experience with a leader that I was coaching who refused to accept the fact that he was defensive, until the fifth coaching session when he acknowledged his counter-productive behaviour flowing from adverse childhood experiences. He unwittingly reinforced the concept of the mind-body connection when he stated that the insight was like a “blow to his stomach”. As Ginny points out, acceptance replaces anger with joy, “being stuck” with creativity and debilitation with enthusiastic pursuit of solutions to problems and difficulties that previously appeared insurmountable.

Finding the energy to transform self and others

Much of Ginny’s approach is presented within a framework of energy obstruction and release. For her, leadership is about achieving resonance, both internally and externally. She provides a simple practice to enable energy release and focus when confronted with a problematic or challenging situation. The practice entails three steps – relax, enter and add value. The core process is “enter” which draws heavily on Ginny’s deep recognition of the mind-body connection. Entering entails fully immersing yourself in the situation, including its impact on your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. She describes this process as “entering the eye of the storm” and encourages this approach because from there the only path for your energy is “out” – towards transformation of self, others and the situation.

This transformative approach of “relax, enter and add value” is in line with many mindfulness practices that involve relaxation and grounding, noticing and accepting what is personally experienced and changing the way you think, feel and act in line with the resultant insights. To strengthen the ability to move beyond just coping to transforming, Ginny provides a further in-depth exercise that enables you to move from problem thinking to opportunity perception and creative resolution. She also offers an online course titled Lead with Purpose to enable you to realise your best self as a leader and add real value to the world.

Reflection

As Ginny points out, much of the issue of just coping comes from our habituated, unproductive behaviours that flow from our early life experiences. Entering fully into the problem situation, instead of blocking the realisation of our part in it, creates the possibility for transformation of our self, others and the situation. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, mindfulness practices, insight exercises and reflection, we can come to accept our personal blockages to energy release and free up avenues for creative resolution.

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Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.