Tag: perceptions

New Perspectives on Aging

Day 1 of the Radically Reframing Aging Summit brought to light many new perspectives on aging, and work, home and city environments that are conducive to a meaningful and enriching life for people as they age.  The four presenters represented people drawn from the fields of academic research and the performing arts.   They were Professor Laura Carstensen, Dan Buettner, Jamie Lee Curtis and Vanessa Williams.   Drawing on their research and personal anecdotes, they strongly reinforced the view expressed by the Convenor, Maria Shriver, that we need to urgently reframe aging because the mainstream view of aging is disabling, denigrating and debilitating.

Laura is professor of Psychology and Public Policy at Stanford University.  She is the author of A Long Bright Future in which she challenges current perceptions of aging and promotes practices and approaches conducive to a long and fulfilling life.  She argues that ageism is everywhere and particularly in the workplace.  She proposes that organisations should readily embrace “age diversity” for the rich mix of talents and experience that it can afford and the demonstrated productivity benefits that ensue.  Laura is the founding Director of the Stanford Center for Longevity which has established The New Map of Life initiative which aims to enable people to live century-long lives that are characterised by cognitive, physical and financial wellbeing and enriched by a strong sense of self-worth, purpose and connectedness while contributing to the greater good of society through their wisdom and experience.

Dan Buettner is a multi-faceted individual, who epitomises the capacity and contribution of people as they age.  He is a producer, author, explorer, award-winning endurance cyclist, journalist, National Geographic Fellow and sought-after public speaker.  He is especially known for his research into super-aging published in his book, The Blue Zones: 9 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest (2nd edition).  Dan is the Founder of Blue Zones, LLC where he shares his knowledge, research, and lessons learned with individuals, organisations and communities.  His community transformation projects have led to the development of communities across America that enjoy higher productivity, lower healthcare costs and recognition as a great location for living, working and playing. 

In his summit presentation, Dan stressed the importance of a social network as a key element in achieving a long and fulfilling life.  This theme is further developed in a chapter dedicated to this topic in his recent book, The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World’s Happiest People.  In that chapter, he identifies the desired characteristics of a social network (three or more people)and suggests that a key task in aging is to “curate a social network of healthy, happy friends who care about you.”  He draws on the seminal work of Nicholas A. Christakis to demonstrate the positive contagion that can occur within a social network if the chosen participants support your desired lifestyle as you age.

In the Summit, Jamie Lee Curtis and Vanessa Williams were introduced as “groundbreaking public figures”.  Their achievements as performing artists and authors alone are mind-boggling.  Both have expanded into new arenas in pursuit of creativity and collaboration.  They highlighted the fact that ageing brings with it the potential for freedom and the opportunity to do what you want, unconstrained by other people’s perception of who you are or what you are capable of. They were able to bounce off each other’s ideas as they shared the energy and joy that comes with age, experience, personal strength and a positive vision of what is possible.

Reflection

The Summit provided the opportunity to reflect on what is possible to achieve once you move beyond the debilitating mainstream perception of what aging entails.  The emphasis on freedom and creativity was exhilarating and energising.  Each of the presenters reflected in their own lives and their choices the unlimited potential of aging.

As we grow in mindfulness and develop increasing self-awareness and insight, we can begin to realise the potential of aging and to have the courage to move beyond our own limiting expectations and assumptions and those of others.  

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Image by 愚木混株 Cdd20 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.

Welcoming the Richness of Our Life

Allyson Pimentel, psychologist and meditation teacher, often focuses on connection to overcome a sense of separation.   In her recent meditation podcast, her topic was Sit So You Can Stand – suggesting that through meditation we are better able to deal with life vicissitudes.  Her underlying theme was welcoming everything into your life – accepting “what is” with openness and curiosity.  Through openness and freedom from assumptions and stereotypes , we can truly appreciate the richness of our lives.

The richness of our life

There are so many things that we take for granted in our life.  Gratitude meditation and the mindfulness practice of savouring what we have, can enrich our life, develop positive mental health, and reduce negative feelings associated with envy or resentment. In the introduction to her meditation podcast, Allyson takes these considerations one step further.  She focuses on the richness and diversity of the people with whom we connect and, in particular, with those engaged in the virtual meditation practice that she was facilitating.

Allyson read a short anonymous piece called, Radical Welcome.  The text highlights the process of welcoming everyone and acknowledging the diversity and richness of all who are present – welcoming those who are child carers/elder carers/ mental health supporters; those who have a fast internet connection/ slow connection/ disrupted connection; those who bring greater diversity to the meditation through differences in ethnicity, race, or ancestral origin; those who are experiencing the ease of wellness together with those who are suffering from chronic illness.  The welcoming process was inclusive of gender and religious differences; of the young and not so young; of those who educate and those who are learning; of the doubts, questions, uncertainty and searching of people present; of the hearts, minds, and bodies of all who form part of the common endeavour.

To give some practical application of the welcoming process, Allyson encouraged everyone to look at the “gallery view” of those who were present and to wave to acknowledge others.  Looking at everybody opens our eyes and minds to the diversity of those present and this is enhanced if people have previously identified their location in the text box.  These practices in a virtual meditation environment help to make us more aware of the richness and diversity of people we interact with a on a daily basis – we are often too preoccupied with ourselves, our stories, our needs and our perceptions to appreciate what others bring to our lives.  To reinforce this connectedness, Allyson began the podcast meditation with an invitation to take a collective, deep breath while noticing the infusion of energy on the in-breath and the release of tension on the out-breath.

Guided meditation

 In the guided meditation, Allyson encouraged us to feel the support of the chair and the earth, to tap into our natural breathing process, and to progressively focus on the noises in the room – including their coming and going and the silences in between.  She stressed the importance of choosing an anchor that we can return to if we are distracted by our thoughts, e.g., by worries, negative self-evaluations, or planning our day. 

Most of the meditation was undertaken in silence – with a focus on the sense of connection with everyone  present, while acknowledging the richness of diversity.  

Reflection

Allyson’s podcast meditation offers us an opportunity to call to mind the differences we encounter in people we interact with on a daily basis.  As we grow in mindfulness through meditations such as this podcast, we can become more conscious of the differences in the people we encounter and the potential richness of the interaction.  Mindfulness also makes us more aware of our own perceptions, biases and assumptions that could act as barriers to truly acknowledging others, mindfully listening to them, and valuing their differences.   Creativity and innovation lie within diversity if we adopt openness and curiosity to learn about, and understand, differences.

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Image by Gerd Altmann 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.

Identifying Our Assumptions through Mindfulness

One of the aspects of self-awareness that is important to master is the assumptions we carry with us that impact our thoughts, perceptions, interpretations, emotions and behaviour.  We can be aware of the negative impact on us of the assumptions of other people but be blind to our own assumptions and their negative impact on others.

Earlier I wrote about the impact for me of my social tennis partners making assumptions about my capacity to play tennis, given my age.  Last week I fell into the same trap through my assumptions about another player.

I was playing social tennis with three other players, one of whom was a woman.  She offered to play with the weaker player and I found this hard to accept initially because I assumed that she would be a weaker player, despite her size.  This proved to be a false assumption as the woman player turned out to be the best player of the four of us.

The woman player had a particular style of hitting her ground strokes which meant that the ball levelled out when it hit the ground, making it very difficult to get a racquet under the ball.  I spent most of the social game reframing my assumptions about the woman player and trying to counter her game.

The moral of the story is that assumptions can blind us to possibilities and reduce our capacity to cope with reality.  Assumptions are like tunnels – they can distort our perception of others and of everyday occurrences.

Incorrect assumptions are often the cause of conflict in relationships because we tend to make assumptions about the motivation of the other person.  They, in turn, make assumptions about our motivation and act on their own erroneous assumptions.  We respond having confirmed in our own mind that our assumption about them were correct (confirmatory bias).  And so a conflict spiral is created built on increasingly entrenched, but inaccurate assumptions.

As we grow in mindfulness we become aware of the assumptions we hold, how they play out in our thoughts and emotions and how they are manifest in our behaviour.  Through mindfulness we can increase our self-awareness in this area, better deal with the challenges of our life, enrich our relationships and develop our creativity.

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

Image source: courtesy of Wokandapix 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.

The Power of Awareness

In an interview with Tami Simon, Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach share their insights on The Power of Awareness to Change Your Life.   In exploring these ideas, I will be building on my previous post based on Albert Flynn DeSilver’s ideas about developing mindfulness and awakening through writing.

Jack & Tara have developed together an online course on The Power of Awareness Mindfulness Training.   They each bring to the training discussion and resources, more than 40 years of experience in mindfulness and awareness practice and training .

The first question that exercises your mind when you hear about what Jack and Tara offer is, “What is awareness?”  It is not something that can be accessed by definition or thought alone, because it is an experience of a stillness within, a quiet place that precedes thought and sensation.  It’s that realisation that you, the whole person – not a part of you – is aware of your thoughts and sensations as you are experiencing them.  As Tara explains:

Awareness is the silence that’s listening to the thoughts or listening to the sound; it’s more prior to any of the felt experience through our senses…And you can begin to intuit that there is a space of knowing that is always here and that we are not always aware of it, but it’s here.

That is why The Awareness Training is highly experiential with guided exercises and personal journaling to make explicit the learning and develop deeper insights.

In summarising the ideas presented in this interview, I have identified two key areas that manifest the power of awareness.

Sense of self – changing the narrative

Both Jack and Tara shared what was happening for them prior to awareness training.  They discussed their negative thoughts and the stories they told themselves which served to diminish who they actually were and what they were capable of.   They spoke of the constraints of their own narrative and the expectation entrapment that locked them into particular patterns of thinking and behaviour.

They see awareness as creating freedom from habituated denigration of self and the realisation of a real sense of self and creative capacity.   They maintain that through developing awareness, we can change our self-deprecating narrative, as we step back from our thoughts and perceptions and allow our true selves to emerge.

Relationship building

As we grow in mindfulness and awareness, we are better able to identify and manage the space between stimulus and response.  We gain a deep insight into what we bring to a relationship and the associated conflicts – we become more aware of our habituated responses in a conflict situation.  We gain a clearer realisation of our self-talk, our tendency to defensiveness, our self-protection born of childhood experiences and our inattentiveness when experiencing conflicted emotions.

Added to this self-awareness, is a clarity about our projections and assumptions about the other person and their behaviour, increased capacity to pay attention to the other person and an openness to their needs and perceptions.

Awareness enables us to deepen our relationships, as it frees us from habituated thoughts and responses and opens up the capacity to listen empathetically and respond creatively.

So, as we grow in mindfulness and awareness, we discover our true self and its potentiality and are able to deepen our relationships through a stronger sense of self and a heightened sensitivity towards the other person in the relationship.

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

Image source: courtesy of  johnhain on Pixabay

Mountains and Water: Source of Meditation

I took the photo above when returning at dusk from a boat trip on Lake Como as the mist descended on the mountains and water.

When viewing this scene as it appears,  you could focus on what you can see.  You could look at the shapes, the trees, the contrast of light and dark, the colours and the sun reflecting on the rippling water.  Alternatively, you could focus on any one of the other four senses – taste, touch, hearing or smell.

We are reminded by Buddhism that there is also a sixth sense, the mind.  It influences our perceptions through our thoughts, emotions and mental images. (China Buddhism Encyclopedia)  So when actually experiencing this scene, you could experience peace, tranquility or even anxiety.

As we have mentioned previously, what you see is not what I see because of our different experiences and our interpretation of those experiences. Our minds, like our other senses, are continuously free roaming – they are not in our direct control unless we reign them in as we grow in mindfulness.

It is interesting that mountains and water featured very prominently in Chinese landscape painting over the centuries and in different traditions.  Mountains and water had different meanings within the various traditions of Chinese landscape art. For some, it evoked a sense of freedom, for others, the perfect balance between Yin and Yang energy. (Karen Albert, Mountains and Water in Chinese Art).

Shan shui (literally, “mountain-water”) landscape painting, for instance, sought to give expression to the artist’s inner landscape – thoughts and feelings generated by nature – rather than provide an accurate representation of reality. (“Shan shui”, Wikipedia.org)

As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to appreciate the beauty and grandeur of nature and to use mountains and water as a source of meditation – opening up the possibility of exploring our own internal landscape.

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