Tag: narratives

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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Image by skeeze 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.

Expose Self-Stories Through Awareness Raising

Tara Brach in her course on negative beliefs and thoughts highlights the fact that as humans we have a “storytelling mind”. We develop “self-stories” that influence the way we view ourselves, perceive others and relate to the world at large. These self-stories evolve over time and exist below our level of consciousness. Tara maintains that we can overcome the limitations of these stories about our self by “shining a light” on them through awareness raising – achieved through mindfulness practices.

Our storytelling mind

Archaeologists, through the discovery of drawings and fossils, argue that humans developed the capacity for abstract thought more than 100,000 years ago. This enabled humans to think about things beyond their immediate observations – to envision, engage in symbolic thinking and develop language.

The capacity for abstract thinking underlies our innate preoccupation with developing stories, especially self-stories. Many of our self-stories, however, are fear-based Joseph Campbell described this propensity for fear as the “survival brain”. We fear physical and or psychological harm because of our human origins. Jacob Ham contrasts the survival brain with what he calls the “learning brain”. The former is totally focused on potential threats and is fearful about new situations and ambiguity, whereas the latter is open to new experiences and the challenges inherent in ambiguity – it is not preoccupied with avoiding mistakes.

Self-stories are unconscious – beyond awareness

Our self-stories develop through parental influences, social factors and our own life experiences. The messages we receive from our parents and society at large, influence the formation of our self-stories which, in turn, impact our relationships and our endeavours. Jon Kabat-Zinn describes these stories as “narratives” that can control our thinking, emotions and behaviour.

While self-stories influence our perception of threats and drive our behaviour, they are below conscious awareness. Joseph Campbell highlights this aspect with his concept of the “Circle of Awareness“. He suggests that we can think of our “self” or “psyche” as illustrated by a circle with a line through it – above the line represents conscious awareness and below the line represents our unconscious. We can increase our conscious awareness (above the line segment) by accessing our unconscious awareness through mindfulness.

As humans we have what scientists describe as meta-cognition – the ability to “think about thinking”. In other, words we have the capacity to access our thoughts, our stories and our internal representations of external reality. This meta-cognitive ability enables us to access our unconscious stories through awareness-raising processes designed to expose these self-stories.

Exposing our self-stories through awareness raising

Tara offers a very simple way to access your self-stories that may be locking you into ways of feeling and behaving. This mindfulness practice can be undertaken once you have grounded yourself through conscious bodily awareness and mindful breathing.

The practice entails picturing a time and place where you were with your parents as a child – e.g. the dinner table, the card table, on the sofa watching TV or lying on the floor with the pet dog. Now you turn your attention to your parents and how they are viewing and interacting with you – are they making eye contact at all, asking your views, listening to you mindfully or are they communicating with you without eye contact, ignoring your presence or talking over the top of you all the time. What messages are you receiving from this “interaction”?

In various, subtle ways, often below their level of consciousness, your parents are communicating messages to you and about you. These messages and others you receive, can shape your self-stories, e.g.

  • I need to go out of my way to attract attention, so that people will acknowledge me and value my opinion
  • I need to be nice and constantly meet other’s needs to be sure that I can be loved and valued (a self-story that can lead to “the disease to please“)
  • I should be “seen and not heard”
  • I will only be accepted when I am successful with everything I do
  • I cannot make a mistake, otherwise I will be rejected
  • Risk is to be avoided at all costs
  • I have to show people how intelligent, capable and accomplished I am before people will listen to me and take me seriously.

Tara argues that when you can name your self-stories, they lose their power to control you – to influence your thoughts, emotions and behaviour.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can expose our self-stories, increase our awareness of how they impact our lives and relationships and reduce their (unconscious) hold over us.

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Image source: courtesy of johnhain 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.