naming feelings – Grow Mindfulness

Facing Up to Vulnerability

I am not a Buddhist. However, I readily acknowledge that in the area of mindfulness I can learn from the oral tradition of the Buddha that has been passed down over more than 2,500 years through teachings and stories. Tara Brach, practising Buddhist and international mindfulness teacher, shares one such story related to vulnerability, “I See You, Mara”. Tara recounts that the Buddha when travelling and teaching often encountered a sense of vulnerability experienced as “fear of loss or rejection”. His way to manage this fear was to name it and face it – he called the fear Mara (“the god of darkness”). So, whenever he encountered such fear and sense of being vulnerable, he would say, “I See You, Mara”.

Facing up to vulnerability and naming our feelings

There are times when we feel intuitively that we should do something that would be helpful to others, but we become fearful and give into our sense of vulnerability. For the Buddha, “Mara” epitomised this fear and vulnerability. We could find our own name for this darkness that can overwhelm us and impede our ability to be intimate, creative or compassionate. Whatever way we choose, the basic process involves naming our feelings when we feel blocked by a sense of vulnerability. In this way, we can tame our feelings, draw on our strengths and reduce the inhibiting influence of feeling vulnerable

In a previous post, I discussed the genesis of our sense of vulnerability and offered a short meditation that Tara teaches to help us to open to our vulnerability in our everyday life. However, we may be faced with a specific challenge represented by an opportunity to do something worthwhile for others and, despite the value of the proposed action, we find ourselves procrastinating out of fear of some adverse outcome. On these occasions, we can face up to our procrastination self-stories and bring them above-the-line.

What can be helpful, too, is to explore whether there is an underlying adverse event (or series of events) that gave rise to our personal sense of vulnerability. Have we experienced an occasion when we were deeply embarrassed, totally rejected or attacked for our ideas or efforts? How is such an event playing out in our lives now? In this reflection, we can relate our sense of vulnerability to its origins and our deeply held belief (however false), that a similar outcome will be experienced again if we challenge the “status quo” or advance ideas that are different to mainstream thinking. This deeply held belief about adverse outcomes can immobilise us if it remains hidden and not exposed to the light of observation and reflection.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can become increasingly aware of the impact of our past experience on our sense of vulnerability, begin to name our underlying feelings and access ways to face up to being vulnerable. In this way, we can progressively release our capacity for intimacy, creativity and compassionate action.

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Image by Quinn Kampschroer 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.

Finding the Well of Ease in Times of Anxiety

Diana Winston, in a guided meditation on anxiety provides a way to tap into the well of ease and peace that lies within each of us. Her meditation is titled Leaving Anxiety Street because we often feel at home in our anxiety – we tend to see anxiety as our residence, our natural habitat, and become blind to the ease of wellness within us that we can access at any time. Diana suggests that we can become lost in our own life dramas, our narratives and anticipations that feed our anxiety. The meditation she offers enables us to locate a new home that is built on the ease of wellness.

The well of ease

We have a natural tendency to a negative bias and often “fear the worst”, rather than anticipate the best. This bias serves to ingrain our anxiety so that we become stuck in the groove of negativity. However, deep within us lies the well of ease that we can access, a stillness and peace that is deep and boundless.

Diana likens this well of ease to the stillness and calm that lies deep below the turbulence of the waves. We can access this ease by looking below the surface of the waves that create turbulence in our lives. She suggests that the deeper you go, the vaster and more peaceful is the place that you will find. The more frequently you visit the well of ease through meditation, the more it will feel like home, and anxiety will begin to feel like a foreign place.

Accessing the well of ease and peace through meditation

Diana’s guided meditation for finding ease and peace involves a number of steps that progressively move us deeper into the well of ease:

As usual the meditation begins with becoming physically grounded, beginning with a number of deep, conscious breaths. This is followed by adopting a posture that is supportive and upright on the chair, with your feet flat on the surface of the floor. Closing your eyes and placing your hands on your lap can facilitate focus on the meditation.
Once grounded physically, the next step is a progressive body scan, moving from the feet to the jaw and forehead, at each point releasing the tension and softening the focal part of the body. This releases the bodily tension that accompanies anxiety – reflected in the tightness in your calves, the frown on your forehead, the stiff shoulders, the tight stomach muscles, the grinding of teeth and/or the soreness in your neck.
As you relax and soften the muscles in your body, you can begin to focus on your breath wherever you experience the sensation of breathing – the rise and fall of your stomach, the flow of air in and out through your nose or the lift and fall of your chest. This process involves noticing your breath, not attempting to control it – letting go just like you need to do with the grip of your anxiety.
You will invariably experience distractions as your memories and stories begin to play again, dragging your attention away from your breath. The process here involves sitting with and naming your feelings, not denying them because you should not be experiencing negative emotions such as sadness or resentment. Even anger can be a “powerful and healthy force in your life”, if you manage it rather than let it control you. Naming your feelings and experiencing their intensity can help you tame them.
After you have accepted what is, your feelings and their intensity, you can move your focus back to your breath and the calmness that resides there, including the space between breaths.
Next shift your focus to the sounds around you – sounds coming and going such as that of the birds or the wind. You might even be conscious of the stillness and silence that surrounds you wherever you are. This process of focusing on sounds can intensify your physical and mental grounding and create its own form of peace.
Recall a time when you experienced a deep sense ease and peace and capture what it felt like – experience the sensations again as well as the calmness and sense of wellbeing you achieved.
You can then repeat a desire such as, “May I continue to experience deep peace, joy and ease”.

Repetition deepens the well of ease

The more often you can repeat this meditation, the deeper will be the well of ease that you experience. You can use an anchor to access this well by having some physical action such as joining your fingers together and feeling the tingling, warmth and energy that courses through them. It is important to choose your own anchor but incorporate it as often as possible in your meditation practice – in this way, employing the anchor outside the meditation practice will more readily enable you to recapture the sense of ease and peace.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, our inner awareness increases, and we are able to access the deep well of ease that lies within each of us. Sustaining the practice of meditation will deepen the well which can be readily accessed through our personal anchor when we are not engaged in meditation.

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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 Meditation Practice for Taming Feelings of Shame

Meditation can help us tame our strong emotions by helping us to isolate the source of the related feelings and identify our automatic response, which is often inappropriate or unhelpful. Shame is one such emotion that generates strong feelings that can lead to anger, envy, devaluing self, depression, passivity or inability to cope.

Mary C. Lamia, a clinical psychologist, explains that shame occurs when we perceive ourselves to be inadequate, unworthy, dishonourable or failing to live up to our own or other’s expectations. For example, shame experienced in not living up to the expectations of others as a new or accomplished author, is a central theme of John Boyne’s book, A Ladder to the Sky. His book also starkly illustrates Mary Lamia’s description of shame as a “concealed, contagious and dangerous emotion“. Mary’s in-depth discussion of shame and how it manifests is illuminating and helps us to understand how shame can induce our own dysfunctional behaviour and that of bullies and narcissistic people.

A meditation to tame feelings of shame

Patricia Rockman provides a meditation designed to tame feelings of shame. Her 10-minute, guided meditation podcast provides a way to uncover this often-concealed emotion, explore its manifestation in bodily sensations and denigrating thoughts, and eventually to get in touch with how we contaminate our relationships through feelings of shame.

The starting point for the meditation is to clearly form the intention to address the feelings of shame, rather than push them away or hide from them. This may take a concerted effort over time with repetition of this guided meditation. Feelings of shame may be deeply embedded in our bodies and minds and we can feel resistance to dealing with these uncomfortable emotions and feelings. Over time, we may have become practised at concealing shame or projecting our sense of shame onto others.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditating on our feelings of shame
we can learn to tame our shame and its impact by naming our feelings and facing the discomfort that shame elicits in us bodily and mentally. This growth in self-awareness, a progressive unveiling of ourselves, can replace shame with kind attention, and build resilience.

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Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on 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.

Why is it so Difficult to Serve-for-the-Match in Tennis?

I have been watching the live TV broadcast of the 2019 Australian Open. It is surprising how many players – great champions among them – who have great difficulty serving-for-the-match. The more they desire the win, the more often they fail at the final hurdle. There seems to be a number of contributing factors related to mindfulness that are behind this widespread difficulty – (1) anticipating the result, (2) negative self-evaluation for making mistakes and (3) fear of failure.

Living in the future: anticipating the result

Many players when they are so close to winning begin to think about what it would be like to win the prize money, hold the trophy aloft, receive the accolades of the crowd at the end of tennis tournament and gain new sponsorships. They lose focus on playing the game and instead begin to play the result in their head. The legends of tennis and other great players such as Sarina Williams emphasise the need to stay-in-the-moment and play each point as it comes, ignoring the score. Mindfulness training can help here because it builds that capacity to be in the moment and to stay focused.

Many quality tennis players develop their own anchors to remind themselves to stay calm and in-the-moment. The anchor could be a couple of deep breaths, mindful walking, stopping to focus on their breath for a few seconds or a speedy body scan and stress release, especially of the tension in their arms and shoulders. These anchors can be developed through mindfulness practice.

Living in the past: negative self-evaluation for making mistakes

So often even top players will make a double fault on their serve when serving-for-the-match. I have even seen both Nadal and Federer do this. The tension and stress of the moment can result in muscle tightness and weakness in the arms.

Mistakes at the final, critical stage can become more momentous in our eyes because of the potential consequences of these mistakes. So, the tendency to negative self-evaluation is heightened. This self-criticism can become self-defeating as it negatively impacts our self-confidence and self-esteem. The negative thoughts can swirl around in our heads at this time like a whirlpool -“Why did I do such a low percentage shot at this time?”; “What a stupid time to play a drop shot!”; or “Why did I go down the line when the whole court was open?”.

Under stress our judgement suffers, unless we have learned to manage the stress through mindfulness. If we continue with our negative self-evaluation, then we are sabotaging our winning position, as so often happens in tennis matches.

Fear of failure

Ivan Lendl is famous not only for his amazing achievements in tennis but also for his early failures in closing out matches when he was serving-for-the-match. He kept losing finals in major tournaments, but his real breakthrough came when he beat John McEnroe in the 1985 US Open final. He went from not being able to win a final to rarely losing one.

In reporting on Lendl’s 1985 US Open win, John Feinstein had this to say of the fear demons that had beset Ivan:

The demons have chased him around the world. From Paris to Sydney, from London to New York. Everywhere Ivan Lendl has gone, the fear has chased him. Burdened by his talent and penchant for failure when the pressure was greatest, he suffered with the knowledge that people respected his skills and questioned his courage.

Fear of failure can cause us to freeze, to intensify our negative self-evaluation and self-criticism for making mistakes. We can get into another negative spiral of thinking which is even more difficult to control – “What will people think/say about my failure?”; “I am letting down so many people who have helped me!; “What will my coach say?” or “So many people who have come to see the match will be disappointed (particularly likely if you are playing on your home turf)”.

Lendl overcame his fear, born of past failures to win major finals, and went on to win 8 major titles in all, and a total of 94 singles titles, achieving a match winning percentage of over 90% in five different years. Some commentators consider him to be the greatest tennis player to ever play the game

After his historic victory, Lendl commented about the destructive effect of fear in the closing stages of a tennis match:

The worst thing you can do is be afraid of something.

As I have discussed previously naming your feelings, e.g. fear of failure, can help you tame these emotions. The R.A.I.N. meditation is a specific meditation for addressing fear and overcoming the disabling effects that fear can have on you.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop anchors to help us stay in the moment at times of stress, to minimise our negative self-evaluation and face our fears so they do not disable us.

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

Image source: courtesy of mohamed_hassan on Pixabay

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 for Overcoming Resentment

Resentment towards another person, organisation or group can hold us captive and lead us to give away control of our emotions to others. It also has the ability to linger and smoulder long after the initial catalyst has passed or even been forgotten.

Our resentment may flow from someone or a group that has frustrated our expectations or impeded our goals or done something that we experienced as harmful to us personally. Unless we let it go and dissolve its power, resentment can eat away at us and negatively impact our quality of life and the quality of our relationships.

Overcoming resentment through mindfulness

There are several mindfulness practices that can help us to let go of resentment. Here are three processes:

Forgiveness Meditation

Forgiveness meditation is one way to use mindfulness to overcome resentment towards a person and has proven to build understanding and empathy. It is designed to replace resentment with thoughtfulness and loving kindness

Dealing with conflict

During a two-day course on mindful leadership conducted by the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, I learned a process that related to conflict resolution but was also designed to build understanding and tolerance of others and to dissolve the blocking effects of resentment. As part of the process, you had to reflect on the conflict incident and put yourself in the place of the other person with whom you had a conflict and towards whom you felt some resentment.

The conflict process acknowledges that for both parties in a conflict there are three levels of issues at play – (1) content, (2) feelings & (3) identity. So when you begin to reflect mindfully on what is happening for the other person, you ask the following questions from their perspective:

Content (What happened from their perspective?)
Feelings (How do I think they felt?)
Identity (What might have been at stake for them in terms of their sense of competence, their thoughts about their own goodness and lovability?)

By reflecting mindfully about what was going on for the person in the conflict that we felt some resentment towards, we can experience the resentment dissolving and empathy replacing it. As we ask ourselves the same questions, we can begin to realise that we are all very human and that we misunderstand each other and make mistakes which we may later regret.

Being mindful of the potential damaging effects of resentment

If we are able to get in touch with our feelings at a point in time and name our feelings as resentment, we can reflect on what that feeling is doing to us both bodily and emotionally. If we focus on these damaging effects and project them into the long-term, we will come to realise that we have to let the resentment go and move on, just as Khaled Hosseini described.

Khaled, in his book A Thousand Splendid Suns, has one of his lead characters, Laila, refuse to give into resentment:

But Laila has decided she will not be crippled by resentment. Mariam wouldn’t want it that way. What’s the sense? she would say, with a smile both innocent and wise. What good is it, Laila Jo? And so Laila has resigned herself to moving on. (p.399)

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we come to realise the damaging power and hold of resentment and to learn ways to overcome it. In the process, we can develop understanding of, and empathy for, others.

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

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The Problem with Identification

I was reflecting recently about why I get upset and disappointed when my sporting team loses a match. I become annoyed when I perceive that the refereeing is biased (of course, this perception is strongly influenced by my own bias).

In part, I think that my emotional state is influenced by my expectations about how my team will, or should, perform. I do like to be on the winning side in sport!

On further reflection, I have come to think that the basic problem is one of identification – identifying closely with the team involved. So, their successes are my successes, their losses are mine also. I have a sense of pride when they win and a sense of embarrassment when they lose badly.

In some sense then, I am giving over control of my emotions to the vicissitudes and uncertainty of a sporting outcome over which I have no control. In other words, I am giving control of my emotions to some external event, rather than retaining my own inner, emotional control.

What I find is that through this strong identification, and the strong associated feelings, my calmness is replaced by agitation. Instead of enjoying the sport as a form of entertainment and relaxation, I become stressed and annoyed.

However, the path to real happiness lies in self-awareness and self-management, not abrogating responsibility for self-control to some external event or the performance of a sporting team.

Reducing identification and loss of control over emotions

How do you reduce the identification with a sporting team if this identification often leaves you upset or, occasionally, on a high? To me, the starting point is to recognise the level of identification involved and what “rewards” come with this identification. It means naming the feelings involved and choosing to take back control by reducing my level of identification with the team.

Sometimes, it is as if identification with a sporting team is a way to fill an emotional void – to attempt to replace disappointment and frustration with elation and happiness. However, the reverse can happen so that disappointment and frustration only deepen in the event of a loss by the team.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation on our emotional responses in these situations, we can gain the necessary insight and self-awareness to reduce the power of identification and take back control of our emotions through self-management.

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

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Emotional Self-Awareness

Daniel Goleman, in his interview for the online Mindfulness at Work Summit in June 2018, introduced what he calls the 12 competencies of emotional intelligence. He has recently rethought the emotional intelligence framework and now has four main groups of competencies (instead of the original five) – (1) self-awareness, (2) self-management, (3) social awareness and (4) relationship management – and 12 competencies that sit under the various groupings. Emotional self-awareness is the sole competency listed under the first grouping.

Understanding “emotional intelligence”

In the interview with Mo Edjlali, President of Mindful Leader, Daniel explained that the term, “emotional intelligence”, challenges people to think about dealing with emotions intelligently, not being under their control nor ignoring them. He maintained that emotions are “part and parcel” of life and that whatever we do, even if we think we are being rational or analytical, emotions underpin our choices – our thoughts and actions.

This was brought home to me in a recent conversation with a colleague who was describing a number of actions she had taken to help a homeless person she met when interstate. She had spoken to this person and got to know their domestic violence situation and decided to provide the person with a meal. This led to helping her in other ways including providing a particular style of footwear required for a job the person was applying for. After sharing the story, my colleague then identified the emotions she was feeling as a result of her decision and her compassionate actions. She was asking herself, “For whose benefit am I doing this?”(uncertainty), “Am I doing this because it makes me feel good?”(doubt), and “What expectations am I creating in this person and can I meet them?”(fear/anxiety).

So, to achieve anything, whether improved productivity or compassionate action, we need to be able to intelligently manage the emotions involved. Daniel mentioned that in recent workshops in Nashville and Romania, different organisations and different countries, participants realised that when they talk about the characteristics of their best and worst bosses, they are talking about dimensions of emotional intelligence. My colleague and I have undertaken this exercise with over two thousand managers over more than a decade in our Confident People Management Program, and we have found that people intuitively know what are the characteristics of the best and worst managers and can identify their own feelings when working for either category of manager. There is remarkable unanimity across multiple groups in multiple locations. The characteristics could be readily matched to Daniel’s 4 groupings and the 12 competencies of emotional intelligence. Emotional self-awareness is the first and foundational competency described by him.

What is “emotional self-awareness”?

If you have “emotional self-awareness” you have developed awareness about some personal aspects such as:

what you do well and what you do not do well
what you are feeling and why you are feeling that way
how your feelings impact your thoughts
how your feelings and thoughts impact your performance
why you are doing what you are doing or being able to answer, what am I doing this for? – your purpose/meaning.

Emotional self-awareness underpins everything because it is the gateway to self-improvement – in all its mutliple aspects, including acquiring the other emotional intelligence competencies.

Daniel suggests that you may not achieve complete emotional self-awareness if you rely on mindfulness alone. He argues that because of the internal and individual focus of mindfulness, you may be unaware of blind spots. He suggests that mindfulness in combination with 360-degree feedback can help you to identify and act on these blind spots or hidden gaps in emotional intelligence competencies. He has developed, with his colleague Richard Boyatzis, an Emotional and Social Competence Inventory (ESCI 360) as a 360-degree feedback instrument to measure the twelve emotional intelligence competencies and to enable identification of blind spots in relation to the competencies.

As Daniel acknowledges, a competent coach can also help in this area of developing accurate emotional self-awareness. I recall coaching a manager where his blind spot was defensiveness and it was only after providing persistent and constant feedback over a few months that he finally accepted that he was being defensive. He was then able to demonstrate emotional self-awareness by pulling himself up whenever he started to get defensive and, in the process, name his feelings. Mindfulness can also help us to accept feedback that is uncomfortable but accurate.

Another route to developing emotional self-awareness and overcoming blind spots is participation in an action learning group where the group norm is “supportive challenge” and feedback is designed to help you be the best you can be and to achieve the best outcomes for your project and yourself. The action learning set may be less contaminated by political considerations (such as fear of repercussions) or revengeful action, than a 360-degree feedback process. The honesty norm underpinning action learning may also help to ensure that the feedback is uncontaminated.

As we grow in mindfulness and engage with others through feedback we can develop increased emotional self-awareness and be able to act on the feedback given.

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

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Barriers Experienced During Walking Meditation

Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, in the Power of Awareness Meditation Training Course, identified a number of barriers that you could experience during a walking meditation. These relate to your internal thoughts and feelings and your physical balance.

I discuss three of these barriers below and offer some suggested strategies to overcome them:

Loss of balance – you can experience a loss of balance because of the unusual slowness of the practice of walking meditation. The way around this barrier is to go a little faster until you find a speed that enables you to walk with ease and maintain your balance. Over time and with further practice, you will be able to walk more slowly without losing your balance.
Invading thoughts – despite your intention to still your mind and the incessant internal chatter, you may find that, since you have stopped rushing to go somewhere, your mind will become hyper-active. You could be invaded with all kinds of thoughts, e.g. thoughts related to planning, negative self-evaluation, problem solving, or anticipation of a future event. The secret here is not to entertain these thoughts but let them float by and bring yourself back to your focus on your bodily sensations. This serves as good training for any form of meditation. In terms of negative self-evaluation, it is important to remember that there is no right way as far as walking meditation goes. You have to find the approach and location to suit yourself. The main thing to achieve is slowing down with a focus on bodily sensations.
Strong emotions – sometimes when you slow down your pace of life through a walking meditation, some deep feelings emerge. They could be feelings of anger, grief, disgust or any other strong feeling. It is as if the hectic pace of life has enabled you to hide away from these feelings and avoid noticing them and naming your feelings. The feelings refuse to stay submerged when your focus turns from rushing to meet external expectations to focusing on you internal state, both physical and emotional. In this scenario, it is possible to stop walking and begin a standing meditation where you pay attention to the strong feeling, accept its existence, investigate its impact on your body and nurture yourself by drawing on your internal resources – a process we discussed as R.A.I.N meditation. When you have the strong feelings under control, you can resume your walking meditation.

As you grow in mindfulness through standing and walking meditations, you will develop strategies to overcome the barriers to your focus and, in the process, acquire a core skill that will positively impact other forms of meditation and your daily life. Focus is the foundation for awareness, productivity, creativity and social skills.

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

Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

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.

Coping with Trauma by Re-Connecting

In the previous discussion, I identified ways to access your inner resources to cope with trauma. The problem with trauma, as Tara Brach points out, is that we become cut off from our brain and from our relationships.

This separation from ourselves and others impedes our ability to access our inner resources. There are a number of things that we can do to move past these blockages and find some peace.

Connecting with the present moment

One of the issues with trauma is that we can keep visiting the traumatic event(s) and the associated feelings, so we are re-living the past. Resourcing begins with being in the present – being able to focus on the positives in our life including our achievements. For example, we can connect with nature through open awareness – listening to the birds, smelling the flowers and trees, feeling the breeze on our face, observing the sky and clouds and touching the fibrous stems of a plant.

Connecting with our anxiety and aversion

When we find that every fibre of our body resists delving into the depths of our pain and grief, we can make the anxiety or aversion the focus of our meditation. This involves being open to the anxiety involved and, instead of pushing it down deeper, we can establish a relationship with the feeling of aversion. One way to do this is to explore the relationship that is demanded by the aversion – what is it asking of us? Another way is to disarm it by picturing an image of the aversion- a cartoon character, an archetype (e.g. a witch) or a monster – and giving it a name such as “Mister Magoo”. When the anxiety, fear or aversion rears its ugly head, we can then say – “So, Mister Magoo, I see you are back, what do you want this time?”

Connecting to daily practice

Sometimes, we find that we cannot maintain a daily practice of meditation – we may lack the discipline or motivation. If we are driven by “shoulds”, we will be unable to sustain the habit of meditation. However, if we revisit our intention – purpose for engaging in meditation – we can find the necessary discipline and motivation to restore our meditation practice. Affirming to ourselves the benefits we seek, will help us to keep on track and overcome minor deviations from daily practice. Sitting in the place we always sit for meditation can help, even if we can only do it briefly. Journaling about the resistance we are feeling and recording how long we practised, can bring to light a pattern in our thinking and behaviour. Also, by naming the resistance, we can tame it.

Connecting with our body

Sometimes we cannot feel an emotion in our body – we can become numb to our feelings. We may feel, as a result, that we lack something that others possess when they can describe the impact of a feeling in their body in terms of colour, shape, intensity or location. Again, practice helps. When we feel a strong emotion such as kindness or disgust during our daily activity, we can try to notice our bodily reaction, exploring what is happening in our body no matter how minor or weak the impact. Regular practice of this noticing will heighten our awareness and open us up to sensing our body’s reaction to particular emotions. At first, it may be just a general sensation, but over time the features of the sensation will come into clearer focus.

Connecting to the community of suffering and love

The reality is that at any one time, most people are experiencing some form of suffering, whether physical, mental or a combination – suffering is a part of the human condition. If we can move beyond our own suffering and its intensity we can connect to others who are experiencing similar suffering or something different and more intense – compassion for others can take us outside of ourselves. There is also the wider “field of love” that we can tap into – be it from our friends, family or the community generally. There is a sea of kindness everywhere, if we only look for it.

Connecting to a source of wisdom

We can imagine a wise person besides us as we try to make decisions that affect our life and wellbeing. This can be a religious figure or someone who has taught or mentored us in life. We can envisage talking to them about our issue and the decision we need to make. This is a way to tap into universal wisdom. We might raise our aversion, anxiety or resistance as a topic of conversation and the focus of a decision.

Through these means of connection, we can realise that we are not alone, that we do not need to be “cut off”. We can feel the strength of everything and everyone around us and rest in that awareness. As we grow in mindfulness through connection practices, we can break free of the sense of separateness, numbness and overwhelm and feel energised to deal with our deeper feelings generated by the experience of trauma.

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

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Overcoming Nervousness through Mindfulness

Everyone experiences nervousness at some time. It is part of the human condition. However, it can be debilitating if you let it control you. If you use it to your advantage and get in touch with the associated feelings, you can actually come out stronger and perform better.

I want to talk about two things that you can do to get nervousness under control – naming the feelings involved and developing a success anchor.

Naming your feelings

In a previous post, we discussed naming feelings as a way to gain control over them – you may recall Dan Siegel’s dictum, Name It to Tame It. Nervousness will affect your thinking – your ability to concentrate and your clarity. It can be felt in the body as agitation, tenseness, shaking, pacing sweating , a dry mouth, shallow breathing or any multitude of other bodily manifestations.

Nervousness can severely impact your performance. I recall chairing one job interview panel for a managerial position and one of the applicants was so nervous that he had difficulty breathing. I spontaneously started breathing slowly and heavily and he began to pace me with his own breathing and regained control so that the interview could proceed.

Behind the nervousness can be any number of feelings or a group of feelings, such as hesitant, anxious, doubtful, wary, fearful, uncertain, unsure or uneasy. There are also expectations by others and our own expectations that can intensify our nervousness and our associated feelings.

Ariarne Titmus, 17-year-old Australian winner of the 400 metres freestyle swimming race at the 2018 Commonwealth Games (Gold Coast, Australia), in a Commonwealth Games record, said that she was nervous before the 800 metres race. When asked why she had been nervous, she said that it was because of the expectations she placed on herself about the result. She went on to win by a large margin and broke the Commonwealth Games record again. So, no one escapes nerves, no matter how good they are. If you care about how you will perform, whether in a sporting event, job interview or presentation, you will be nervous. The challenge is to use the energy of nervousness in a positive way to perform to your best, rather than be crippled by it.

I discussed a meditation on emotions practice in the previous post on naming your feelings. This can help you manage your nervousness. The initial mindful breathing step slows down your body and reduces your bodily reaction to nervousness. The second step of body scan helps you identify and release points of tension in your body. The third step of naming each feeling helps you to get in touch with each feeling and the expectation set that is influencing your nervousness. Once you name the feelings that give rise to your nervousness, you will be better able to control them and to keep the impact of your nervousness under control. You can access the list of feelings to help you name your feelings.

Developing a success anchor

One way to help manage nervousness is to recall when you were successful with a similar event that you are nervous about (or even some other successful activity). Picture yourself experiencing the success event and the positive feelings associated with this success – confident, delighted, thankful, relaxed, energetic, reassured – and absorb those feelings. Now recall what you did to make it a success – planning, practice, deep breathing, consultation or another precursor activity.

This anchoring process helps you to move to a more positive mindset, and to remind yourself that you were nervous the last time and that you successfully overcame those nerves. It also helps you to get in touch with the success strategies you used previously, because when we are nervous we sometimes have difficulty accessing these past successful strategies – we are too tense, agitated or anxious to be able to focus properly on what is required. Revisiting the positive feelings of success reassures you, too, that you can be successful.

As you grow in mindfulness, you develop self-awareness and are better able to name and tame the feelings giving rise to your nervousness and you can more easily access prior successful experiences and strategies. This, in turn, builds your self-management capacity.

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

Image source: courtesy of LoganArt on Pixabay

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