podcast – Page 13 – Grow Mindfulness

Developing an Anchor for Your Meditation

A meditation anchor serves to stabilise your thoughts when your mind starts to wander during a meditation exercise. It is a way to secure your focus and restore your attention when you are invariably beset by distracting thoughts – a common occurrence for both experienced and inexperienced meditators. An anchor is a personal choice and what works at one time may not work in another situation. Diana Winston in her meditation podcast, Alternatives to Breath Awareness, highlights the difficulties that people are experiencing with breath as an anchor while wild fires are raging in California. People who suffer from respiratory problems, either chronically or intermittently, may also find that breathing is a difficult anchor to use during meditation. Diana suggests bodily sensations or sounds as alternatives to breath awareness that can serve as an anchor during meditation.

Bodily sensations as an anchor during meditation

Often guided meditations begin with a focus on bodily sensations, e.g. feeling the firmness of the floor or ground beneath your feet. This focus can be expanded to noticing the warmth or energy flow through your fingers when they are touching. You might alternatively focus on the breeze on your face, the sensation of uprightness in your chair, the support beneath your body from the ground or the sense of strength in your core. Personal preference plays a big part in choosing a bodily sensation as an anchor during meditation. It is important that it is emotionally neutral and does not evoke either strong emotions or racing thoughts. The anchor is designed to bring stability when everything around you is constantly changing, including your thoughts and emotions.

Sound as an anchor during meditation

Diana frequently recommends sounds as an anchor for meditation during her MARC meditation podcasts. The challenge here is to avoid evaluating the sound (e.g. in terms of whether it is good or annoying) or analyzing it (e.g. trying to identify the source of the sound). Evaluation or analysis can take you away from your meditation focus and set in train a whole new line of thinking. The sounds you choose can be anything that is relatively neutral. Every room has its own room tone, and this can be an anchor. If you tune into sounds, it can be useful to listen for the hardest to hear sound which intensifies your attention on listening. When engaging in mindful walking in the outdoors, it can be very rewarding to use the sound of birds surrounding you as an anchor.

Reflection

I recall that when we had the bushfires in Queensland, I found it very difficult to use breath as a meditation anchor because of the amount of smoke and ash in the air. I resorted to using the bodily sensation of fingers touching each other as an alternative. This has served me well ever since as I use this anchor during waiting time to increase my awareness.

The main point is to choose something as an anchor that works for you (this may require some experimentation) and being able to adapt as your circumstances change. What works at one time, may not work at another time. As we grow in mindfulness through different forms of meditation and developing our awareness muscle through effective meditation anchors, we will be better able to ride the waves of daily life and the challenges they present.

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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.

Developing Intentional Imagination

Mitra Manesh introduced the concept and practice of intentional imagination in a guided meditation podcast produced by MARC, UCLA. Mitra has been practising and teaching meditation for 35 years and combines Eastern and Western approaches to meditation particularly for application within the corporate world. She has developed the Inner Map app to enable people in the workplace and elsewhere to readily access and practise meditation and mindfulness. Mitra also provides mindfulness approaches in her brief videos on Vimeo©. In an earlier podcast, she provided an insightful meditation on the meaning of love.

Mitra points out at the outset that we all have and use imagination all the time. The very act of worrying involves imagining an undesirable future. In our dreams, our imagination holds sway and is not censored by the light of day. Everything that we see around us – the buildings, bridges, tables, computers – were firstly imagined by somebody. Imagination is what exists beyond our senses and yet it can create the reality that we see, feel, taste, hear and smell. The power of imagination, then, is that it can make things happen. As Napoleon Hill is quoted as saying, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. Intention, focus, and imagination together can create a new reality in your life.

Intentional imagination meditation

Mitra introduces her intentional imagination meditation by combining sensation with imagination. After becoming grounded you are encouraged to feel the sensation of your feet on the floor or ground and then imagine drawing the energy of earth up through your feet, through your legs to your belly. While resting in this sensation of strength, you can engage in conscious breathing, noticing the movement in and out as your belly expands and contracts with each breath. You can return to your feet again at any time, imaging that you are drawing up more energy into your belly and drawing on the connection and support that surround you.

After a period of silent and restful meditation, Mitra encourages you to envisage some current difficulty (that is relatively small) that you have in your life. You then imagine placing it in the corner of a very large room – thus reinforcing your perception of it as small and insignificant. Now imagine moving to another spacious corner and sensing the feeling of resolution of that difficulty. You can even smile if that helps you to tap into the sensation of resolution, success and achievement.

Imagination can free us from false beliefs, enable us to see possibilities and enhance the power of mindfulness practices such as Tai Chi. We can integrate imagination in many forms of meditation, e.g. in mantra meditations. Imagination can take us outside of ourselves and help us to develop loving kindness and compassionate abiding.

Reflection

We so often overlook the power of imagination to create a better life – we let it control our thoughts by imagining a harmful future. Particularly in these challenging times, we need to draw on our imagination to create new possibilities that are adaptive and life-enriching. As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, intentional imagination meditation and reflection, we can access our creativity and build a better future for ourselves and those we interact with.

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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.

Tuning into our Sense of Well-Being

Diana Winston in a guided meditation podcast from the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center focuses on Accessing Our Fundamental Well-Being. She likens this process to tuning into a wellness radio station that is always there. In these challenging times, however, we are often tuned into the “station” that evokes anxiety, fear, distress and unease. Diana points out that much of what is happening in the world around us is outside our control – by focusing on the “station” that generates challenging emotions, we are moving further and further away from our fundamental well-being. She offers a mindfulness process to enable us to tune into our sense of well-being that is always accessible to us, if only we would open our awareness to what resides within us – a process she calls natural awareness.

Guided meditation on accessing our sense of well-being

Diana guides us through this meditation by offering a series of steps:

Grounding: beginning with a few deep breaths and sensing the in-breath and out-breath, you can move your attention to the rest of your body. Here the focus is on the sensation of your body touching parts of your chair and the floor.
Embracing feelings of warmth: instead of paying attention to tension points, in this exercise you focus on the parts of your body where the sensation is one of warmth and feeling good, e.g. the tingling in your hands or fingers or the solidity of your feet on the floor. The idea here is to soak up the sense of well-being that these bodily sensations generate.
Choosing an anchor: you will find that your attention wanders from time to time, e.g. planning your day instead of being in the moment. You can choose an anchor such as your breath, the sensation of your fingers touching each other or the surrounding sounds to bring your attention back to the present moment experience of well-being. If you have experienced trauma or had an adverse childhood experience, then it pays to be very conscious of the anchor you choose – you need to avoid an anchor that will act as a trigger to relive a traumatic event.
Revisiting an experience of well-being: once you have chosen an anchor and absorbed a present moment experience of well-being, you can recall a past experience of well-being. It could be walking along a bayside esplanade in the early hours of the morning, an enjoyable meal with friends, an experience of being-in-the-zone in a sporting activity or listening to classical music or recorded sounds of nature. Whatever the well-being experience, try to recall as much of the detail as possible – the bodily sensations and positive emotions you experienced – and become absorbed in your sense of well-being.

Reflection

We can experience many instances of well-being throughout our day or over a week. However, we are often not consciously aware of the positive feelings, strength and equanimity that these experiences generate. One strategy to capture the moment and the well-being feeling is to express gratitude for all the elements that make up your experience – e.g. if you are having a bayside walk, you can be grateful for the cool breeze, the reflections in the water, the bird life surrounding you, the enjoyable company and the beauty of the sunrise. As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to consciously absorb the profound sense of well-being at the centre of our being and draw strength and resilience from this source. Diana reminds us to let joy and wellness into our life.

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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.

Finding Equanimity through Meditating on the Elements of Nature

Allyson Pimentel offers a guided meditation podcast focusing on five elements of nature – earth, water, fire, air and space. Her meditation, The Elemental Nature of Equanimity, is available through the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) where she is a meditation teacher. In her guided meditations, Allyson highlights equanimity and a strong sense of connection as key benefits of mindfulness, whether focusing on the elements, our breath or our body. In the elemental meditation she grounds us in the present moment through nature. She speaks of equanimity as “the steadiness and responsivity of a mind that is settled”.

Allyson states that equanimity provides us with balance when encountering the waves of life, however turbulent. Being connected to the elements of nature calms us and gives us access to creative resolution of our problems and issues. She refers, for example, to Ruth King, author of Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, who in a recently published article emphasised the power of meditating on nature to develop equanimity in a “racialized world”.

Equanimity through five elements of nature

There are many ways to connect with nature. However, Allyson’s approach can be followed anywhere. You do not have to go for a bush walk or visit the ocean, you let your mind and body embrace the elements wherever you are. By reflecting on the elements of nature, you can sense their “strength, fluidity, heat and softness”. Her process involves a number of steps that move you deeper into connection with nature and a sense of equilibrium:

Grounding – Allyson begins by encouraging you to become grounded through your breath (a few, conscious deep breaths) and your body (sensing your body on your chair).
Connecting with the element of earth: this element can be experienced inside and outside your body. You can sense the solidity of your body an its integrated form, the sensation of pressure at different points on your chair and the sensation of your fingers resting on your lap or touching each other, providing a conduit for heat and energy. Moving your awareness to the earthiness outside your body, you can sense the form and strength of the earth – the mountains, trees and ground.
Connecting with the element of water: again, water can be experienced within and without your body. So much of the composition of your body is water and other fluids such as blood coursing through your veins. You can move your attention to water existing outside your body – the trickle of a stream over rocks, the power and incessant energy of waves crashing on the beach or the majesty of a waterfall. You can sense the fluidity of water both within and without, encompassing you in the flow of energy and care.
Connecting with the element of fire: you can start by sensing the heat in your body – the warmth in your hands and feet, your out-breath warming your in-breath, inner “combustion on a cellular level” and your whole body radiating the energy of heat. You can think of your passions in life and how they ignite the heat in your body and generate the propensity to act, change and transform the external world. Switching your attention to outside your body, you can marvel at the life-sustaining heat of the sun – radiating light, warmth and energy.
Connecting with the element of air: this brings us the full cycle to your breath – your in-breath and out-breath. You can immerse yourself in the connectedness of the reciprocal exchange of air between your body and your external environment, “offering and receiving”.
Connecting with the element of space: You can sense the space between your in-breath and out-breath and rest in this space. You can immerse yourself in the limitless spaciousness that surrounds you.
Being absorbed in your connection: Allyson suggests that the last 10 minutes of your meditation could involve revisiting one or more sources of connection with the elements of nature and absorbing the deep sense of connection, tranquillity and equanimity that arises through this awareness and absorption.

Reflection

This elemental meditation induces a sense of calm and connection with everything around us. It reinforces how little we observe about ourselves and nature that surrounds us. It brings into sharper relief the energy, tranquillity and equanimity that is readily accessible to us if we slow down to fully experience the present moment. An alternative version of this form of meditation is available from Ayya Khema’s article, The Elemental Self: Connecting with earth, fire, water and air within us, connects us with all of existence.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation on the elements of nature, we can more readily access the balance of equanimity, the energy within and without and our creativity to accept “what is” – whatever form it takes, including the grief, pain, anxiety and anger brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic.

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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-acceptance and Overcoming Negative Thoughts

Tami Simon of Sounds True interviewed Professor Steven Hayes co-founder of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). In the interview podcast, Steven focused on Self-Acceptance and Perspective-Taking. Fundamental to the ACT approach is the capacity to “step Back” from the inner critic, notice the negative thoughts that are being generated and listening to those thoughts with a sense of curiosity to understand what is going on. It involves being vulnerable to, rather than hiding away from, the hurt entailed in negative self-evaluation. Added to this facing up to the inner critic are defusion techniques, such as perspective-taking, designed to create distance from the thoughts by seeing that they are not facts, only “streams of words” or momentary sensations.

Acceptance of thoughts and sensations

Steven explains that “acceptance” in the context of ACT involves acknowledging these negative thoughts as a gift to be explored, not something to be accepted passively or tolerated as if they were true and readily verifiable. It involves recognising the wisdom embedded in our difficult emotions because they serve to illuminate something that we care about deeply.

This involves the flexibility to acknowledge the gap between our thoughts and our inner awareness of them and the capacity to take what is useful in those thoughts to motive us to act on them to achieve a positive outcome that we value. It is about regaining control over our inner world so that we can live our life “with meaning and purpose” – the core theme of Steven’s latest book, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Towards What Really Matters.

Steven illustrates this acceptance approach by discussing negativity around body image and how to turn this into effective problem solving – rather than being trapped in the unfounded message of the inner critic that relates body weight to ugliness or lack of attractiveness. He suggests as a starting point to revisit your past to see where the mental connection between body weight and ugliness originated, e.g. it might have had its origins in bullying at school by other students who were jealous of your academic or sporting success. Following this exploration, you can use one of the many defusion strategies in ACT that can take away the power of this autosuggestion. Russ Harris, ACT practitioner, provides a great set of defusion strategies in his humorous, illustrated book, The Happiness Trap Pocketbook – a very readable and accessible guidebook for personal change.

Perspective-taking: a defusion strategy to create space and disempower the inner critic

Steven highly recommends “perspective-taking” as a defusion strategy to enable you to step back from negative thoughts and create enough space to disempower them. There are many ways to undertake perspective-taking. Steven describes one process in his interview podcast that he asserts will work even when you lack knowledge of mindfulness, ACT or any other related modality. The steps he describes are as follows:

Picture yourself struggling with the negative critic you are confronting (with your eyes closed or looking downwards to reduce distractions)
Notice that it is a part of you that is noticing your struggle
Now take that part of yourself that is noticing and tune into your body seeing yourself watching the struggle (you can even tune into the earliest occurrence of these negative thoughts) – in the process show self-compassion towards yourself
Then ask yourself, “Is this person loveable, wholesome or empathetic?’
Picture yourself sitting there observing this loveable, wholesome person from a short distance – as in a movie
Imagine remembering 10 years from now how you looked as you struggled with the inner critic – picture yourself sitting in a chair or on the floor still struggling the same way
You can ask yourself then, if you were observing this struggle in this future time, “What words of wisdom would you offer yourself?”
Then bring yourself back to the present by grounding yourself in your body.

In this interaction, your wisdom will emerge, and you can offer yourself encouraging words such as “you can move on”. According to Steven, research shows that “human intelligence in inherently self-compassionate” – the thought processes above enable you to tap that self-compassion. He maintains that this form of perspective-taking is itself “very healing”.

Reflection

We can become overwhelmed by our inner critic if we give it free play, without challenge. So often, we avoid facing up to what is painful. The Inner MBA, developed by Tami Simon and colleagues, provides one avenue to explore our inner landscape, and defusing strategies offer many ways to break the hold of our inner critic. Mindfulness practices provide a further avenue for facing up to our negative thoughts and related disabling beliefs.

As we grow in mindfulness through these processes, we can break the hold of the inner critic, gain a truer self-awareness, embrace self-compassion and emerge with a sense of freedom and alignment with our life purpose.

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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.

Bringing Consciousness to Marketing

Richard Taubinger, CEO of Conscious Marketer, recently presented a video on the concept of the Conscious Marketing Code. Richard is one of the 30+ world-class faculty engaged for the Inner MBA to be launched in September, 2020. The program has been developed by Tami Simon and her team at Sounds True in collaboration with a number of other organisations including LinkedIn and New York University. The 9-month program will be provided online on a global basis and incorporates monthly video/audio training, facilitated online learning pods, a virtual curriculum for at-home learning and modelling of “practice skills”, including mindfulness.

Richard emphasised the need to bring consciousness to marketing. So much of what goes on in marketing is “product push”, not customer focused. He suggests that you have to bring full awareness to what you are marketing, who you are marketing to, why you are marketing and how you are going about the marketing process.

Awareness of what you are marketing and who you are marketing to

Richard maintains that the real breakthroughs in marketing occur when you are able to position yourself on an existing demand wave. He gave the example of Elon Musk who realised there was pent-up demand for an electric truck – truck sales were rising; electric car sales were increasing exponentially; but no one had put these two elements of the demand wave together. Musk made a presentation of his concept of an electric truck for two hours at an international conference and within 24 hours had received 250,000 pre-orders.

Richard pointed out that Toyota, on the other hand, had developed the requisite technology in their Prius hybrid car and were a top seller of trucks but failed to see, or respond to, the incredible growth in the demand for an electric truck. At this stage of the discussion, we could ask, “What is your “electric truck”? – “What pent-up demand, that you could service, are you overlooking?”

It requires a lot of thinking time, collaborative endeavour (two brains are better than one) and persistence to identify a demand wave that you can tap into. Laurence Boldt in his book, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, draws on Plato’s saying to emphasise the importance of the beginning of an endeavour, “The beginning is the most important part of the work”.

Richard points out that you should not be discouraged by the fact that a lot of other people are providing products and services to meet the needs reflected in a demand wave. He argues that this only confirms that there is real demand there. Richard encourages you to “find your place in the wave”, or the next wave following the first. He maintains that “demand waves come in sets” and it is possible to position yourself in front of the wave based on your unique set of experience, knowledge, skills and level of consciousness.

Richard points to two other examples of people positioning themselves and riding a demand wave. Tami Simon with her collaboratively developed Inner MBA, has positioned this program to meet the global wave of mindfulness and increased consciousness in business. The program addresses the gap in development of the “inner landscape” left unaddressed by traditional MBA’s.

Thomas Hübl, author of Healing Collective Trauma, realised that many people were addressing individual trauma, but the other side of this demand wave was the existence of collective trauma (which has now been compounded by the global pandemic). He developed a Collective Trauma Online Summit with the help of Richard’s team and attracted 52,000 people in 176 countries. Like Tami, he was able to find his own place in a wave and ride the wave to success. Awareness of what you are marketing is not unlike developing the skills of surfing – being able to read a wave, position yourself to catch its peak and successfully maintain your balance as you enjoy the ride.

Awareness of why you are marketing

Richard suggests that to tap into your “why” of marketing (and overcome internal resistance or fear), you can envisage yourself as a doctor or healer. Effective marketing is offering solution-based products and services to address a real need or hurt currently experienced by potential customers. He argues that if you have a “cure” or a solution to people’s pain, suffering or significant need, you have a moral obligation to make it available to them.

It takes a lot of sensitivity and strength to face up to the marketing challenges inherent in your life purpose if you are going to make a real difference in the world, drawing on your unique combination of experience, knowledge, skills and insight. Sometimes, it requires a progressive re-framing of what you are offering and why, to achieve a real alignment between your marketing and your life purpose.

I can offer here a personal example of reframing to achieve a better alignment with purpose. My colleague and I have been jointly facilitating a longitudinal action learning program for managers, called Confident People Management (CPM), for over 12 years. When I first joined my colleague in conducting the program, it was offered as a series of discrete principles, processes and practices designed to help managers develop a team that was “businesslike and professional”. Over time, we were able to reframe the program as offering a way to create “a mentally healthy and productive workplace” and developed an integrated, cultural model to reflect this reframing. In more recent times, riding the wave of mindfulness, we have been able to offer the program as a form of “consciousness raising” for managers who are attempting to achieve committed engagement of their staff (and their boss).

Awareness of how you are marketing

There is an established saying that “the medium is the message”. Richard points out that what is important is to decide on a “primary medium and platform” and maintain your focus on these to achieve a consistent and continuous message about what you are offering. He points out, for example, that you cannot be effective trying to market meditation through visuals and written content that generate fear.

Awareness of how you are marketing involves understanding the need for alignment amongst your offering, your unique skill set and your medium/platform. For example, if you are person who enjoys writing and are good at it, you might choose to write your own blog and/or produce books, booklets or magazines. If you are good at interviewing or presenting, like Tami Simon, you might develop a series of podcasts like Tami’s Insights at the Edge podcast series. If you are good at creating visuals and are comfortable being on video, you might develop a video podcast series. The primary platform you choose should then be aligned to your purpose and medium (oral, written or visual) – e.g. you could choose a media platform such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Zoom.

A key point that Richard makes is that you are very much a part of the message – and this takes both congruence (alignment of words and actions) and a preparedness to “stand in front of your brand”. This visibility on behalf of your brand is critical for success in conscious marketing. The way you achieve personal visibility has to be something that you are comfortable with – a medium/platform where you can share your purpose, values, “backstory” and fundamental marketing message. It could even take the form of introducing one of your consultants and explaining the background to their presentation at a breakfast seminar or personally making presentations at a conference.

Another aspect of personal visibility is supporting a cause that is close to you, consistent with your offerings and is a real focus of your energy and endeavours. McKinsey & Co., sharing their research and insights in a paper, Reimagining marketing in the next normal, maintain that one of the current trends is a growth in “social consciousness values” (accentuated by the global spread of the pandemic and the understanding that “we are all in this together”). They maintain that marketers must communicate a “strong sense of a brand’s purpose” and one way to do this is to promote a cause that the brand stands for and is seeking to make a difference in relation to that cause, e.g. mental health in the workplace. They stress that integrity is critical here – no posing but real action, projects and commitment, otherwise you undo all the conscious work and effort you have put into developing your marketing.

As a final point, I want to stress the need for persistence and discipline inherent in Richard’s message. He suggests that a conscious marketer develops content and publishes on a consistent basis. Consistent content creation and publishing reinforces your message about your products and services and keeps your offering in people’s sight (remember, “out of sight, out of mind”). He maintains that you need to also constantly (at least once a week) build your email list and/or subscriber list to expand your marketing reach.

Reflection

It is so easy to continue to do what we always did in marketing. Research and reflection enable us to keep abreast of the demand wave and anticipate the next wave. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection, mindfulness practices and active listening, we can increase our inner and outer awareness, achieve alignment with our life purpose, tap into our creativity and consciously develop our products/services and a congruent marketing strategy.

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Image by Kanenori 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.

Strength and Sensitivity to Pursue Your Life Purpose

In a recent podcast interview, Tami Simon, founder of Sounds True and Sibyl Chavis, her Chief Business Officer (B2C Division), discussed Combining Strength and Sensitivity to become a sustainable force for good in the world. The interview was conducted by Richard Taubinger, CEO of Conscious Marketer.

The conversation focused on finding your purpose in life through intuitive sensing of the needs of others and the emergent energy for change, and aligning the pursuit of that purpose with your unique life experience, skill set and ever-deepening and expanding knowledge base. The pursuit of your life purpose is then undertaken with “deep care” (sensitivity) and the strength of a resilience that can overcome obstacles and adapt to a constantly changing environment. Tami spoke for instance of her skill in asking questions which has led to Insights at the Edge podcast series – interviews with the world’s leading teachers including mindfulness expert, Jon Kabat-Zinn. A recent addition to the podcasts is a 3-Part Series titled, Healing Racism, with Dr. Tiffany Jana.

To enable others to pursue their life purpose with strength and sensitivity, Tami and her team, in collaboration with her global network of experts, has developed the Inner MBA – a nine-month intensive program with more than 30 world leaders (including experienced and successful CEOs and experts in neuroscience, mindfulness, conscious marketing and practices for gaining insight and wisdom).

The Inner MBA program incorporates monthly video/audio training, facilitated online learning pods, a virtual curriculum for at-home learning and modelling of “practice skills”. This is a crowning achievement built in collaboration with LinkedIn, Wisdom2.0©, and New York University and addresses the gap in traditional MBAs by focusing on inner development as well as the knowledge and skills to succeed in business in today’s turbulent world.

Finding your true purpose in life

During the interview podcast, both Tami and Sibyl shared their life experiences and the influences that brought clarity about their life purpose and led them to the roles they play today in bringing conscious living and mindfulness to the world at large. Tami contrasted what is available through the Inner MBA with the lack of mentors when she established Sounds True in 1985 in her early 20’s. There were very few business founders/CEOs who were genuinely socially conscious and spirituality oriented, and of those that were, women were very much in the minority.

Tami had to forge her own way without today’s mentors and to learn “to listen, attune and lead” to create the global, multimedia company that is Sounds True today – bringing mindfulness and spirituality to businesses and the lives of millions of people. She pointed out that developing the requisite sensitivity and strength required a lot of “inner work” and the willingness to explore the depths of her heart and mind.

Sibyl’s career started as a corporate attorney, a profession she had in common with her husband, until one day they asked themselves “Is there more to life than what we have here?” A catalyst for changing Sibyl’s career and life direction was a sign in a hotel which read, “Life is about creating yourself”. Both she and her husband quit their jobs on the same day. Her husband became a film director and TV writer and Sibyl established Ripple Agency, “a full service digital marketing and creative agency”, and became a writer through her blog, The Possibility of Today. Ripple strives to assist businesses to “engage in purpose driven initiatives to give back to their target customer’s communities”. The Possibility of Today blog aims to help people overcome their negative self-stories, pay attention to the potentiality of the present moment, find more clarity about their life purpose and “to take action on things they always wanted to do” – thus transforming their lives.

Sibyl had developed her digital marketing skills through her experience in corporate America and had been a consumer of the digital products produced by Sounds True. Her journey to find her true home as Chief Business Officer for Sounds True required persistent self-questioning and tapping into her intuition through mindfulness practices. She came to realise that her knowledge base, skill set, work experience and life orientation were very much in alignment with the mission of Sounds True.

Sibyl’s life journey reinforces the fact that the inner journey creates the outer reality – persistence and tuning into intuition are necessary ingredients. The self-exploration is necessary to unearth our self-protection mechanisms and self-sabotaging behaviours.

Reflection

Unearthing our life purpose and having the courage to bring our work and life into alignment with it, require persistence and resilience and the pursuit of congruence (alignment of words and actions). Meditation, reflection and self-questioning can help us to grow in mindfulness and build our self-awareness, self-regulation and connection to our intuition and creative capacities.

Too often we become discouraged with our lack of progress in identifying our life goal and how to achieve alignment. We can easily give up and settle for something that is less than the best we can be. Mindfulness practices can help us maintain our pursuit and overcome the obstacles we encounter on the way. For example, Lulu & Mischka through their mantra meditation, Jaya Ganesha, can help us to appreciate the mystery and potentiality of each day.

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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.

Forgiveness: A Reflection

In a previous post I discussed an important topic, Don’t Wait to Forgive, based on the book by Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations. Forgiveness is something that we tend to put off because it is too self-revealing and painful. Frank suggests that we have to face up to who we really are and not who we project ourselves to be. We have to look in the mirror, not into an internally fabricated image that shows ourselves in the best possible light. The honesty required is disarming and can be disturbing. Experience and research suggest that some principles can help us along the way:

Be grounded and relaxed – Forgiveness is a difficult pursuit at the best of times. However, if you are agitated or highly distracted, it is extremely difficult to focus on forgiving yourself or someone else. The starting point is to become grounded and relaxed. Grounding in the present moment can involve tapping into your breath, your bodily sensations or the sounds around you. I find sometimes that sounds can themselves be distracting because I am always trying to interpret them. I like using a particular body sensation as a means of grounding, e.g. the sensation of fingers on both hands touching. I find that I can use this practice anywhere, whether waiting for something or someone, or beginning a meditation. It can quickly induce relaxation and focus for me. Each person will have their preferred approach to grounding and relaxation – for some people, it may involve a full body scan to identify and release tension.
Manage distractions – Distractions are a natural, human frailty – they pull us away from our focus. However, they can be more persistent and intensive when we are trying to focus on forgiveness because of the level of discomfort that we may feel when dealing with our shame. Having a “home” or anchor such as our breath can enable us to restore our focus. Persistence in returning to our focus builds our “attention muscle” over time – a necessary strength if we are to progress in our goal of developing forgiveness.
Start small – Self-intimacy around our need for forgiveness (for the multiple ways in which we have hurt others) can be overwhelming if we take on too much at once. When you think about it, our need for forgiveness can be pervasive – impacting every facet of our interactions in close relationships, with work colleagues or with strangers in the street or shops. We can think of times when we have interrupted someone, ignored people, been harsh towards them or spoken ill of them. There are times when we have taken out our frustration or anger on someone who is not the trigger for our difficult emotions. We can begin by focusing on a small, recent incident where we have caused hurt or harm to someone and gradually build to more confronting issues, situations or emotions. Mitra Manesh in her guided meditation podcast on forgiveness suggests that a simple way to start might be to bring a particular person to mind and mentally say, “For all the pain and suffering I may have caused you, I ask for your forgiveness”. This kind of catch-all statement avoids going into all the detail of an interaction. Sometimes we can become distracted by what Diana Winston describes as “being lost in the story” – we can end up recalling blow by blow what happened, indulging in blame and self-righteousness. Forgiveness is not a process of justifying our words or actions.
Forgiveness is healing for ourselves – We have to bring loving kindness to our forgiveness practice whatever form it takes – loving kindness for our self as well as for the person we are forgiving. The process is not designed to “beat up on” our self but to face up to the reality of what we have said or done or omitted to do that has been hurtful for someone else. It’s releasing that negative, built-up energy that is stored in difficult emotions and is physically, mentally and emotionally harmful to our self. It is recognising that holding onto regret, anger, resentment or guilt can be toxic to our overall wellness. However, like giving up smoking, it takes time, persistence and frequent revisiting of our motivation.

As we grow in mindfulness and self-awareness through meditation, reflection and daily mindfulness practices, we can learn to face up to our real self and our past and seek forgiveness. However challenging this may be, we need to begin the journey for our own welfare and that of others we interact with. Diana Winston in her forgiveness meditation podcast reminds us that mindfulness involves “being in the present moment with openness and curiosity” together with a “willingness to be with what is” – it entails honest self-exploration. She cites Lily Tomlin who maintains that forgiveness involves “giving up all hope for a better past” – seeing our past with clear sight and honesty.

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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.

Moving from Separation to Connection

Allyson Pimentel, a teacher at the Mindful Awareness Research Centre (MARC), provided a guided meditation podcast on the theme, From Separation to Connection, Silence to Speaking Truth, Stillness to Action. Allyson’s emphasis was on the power of meditation to increase our sense of connection, build our capacity to speak truthfully with courage and to take compassionate action. Her meditation focus was on developing groundedness and stability through breath and formed part of the weekly, mindfulness awareness podcasts provided by MARC, UCLA.

Allyson explained that we are all connected in so many ways. This sense of connection is heightened by the global pandemic and global social activity to redress injustice and inequality, epitomised by the Black Lives Matter movement. This movement against violence towards black people has reverberated around the world with protest marches in many countries to show solidarity with those fighting against injustice.

Sports teams are conducting public rituals to show solidarity and those who continue to promote hate and racism are being excluded from media forums that would otherwise give voice to their divisive comments. Allyson noted that division and violence on racial grounds derives from a distorted sense of “separateness”, not recognizing our underlying connection to all other humans. A focus on separateness can breed “superior conceit”, a need to demonstrate that someone is “better than” another person.

Allyson’s professional work is focused on bringing mindfulness to bear on mental health issues and treatment. She discussed mindfulness as paying attention to the present moment with kindness, curiosity and a sense of connection. She stressed that breath meditation can help us to develop a strong sense of stability, self-compassion and compassion towards others. She encouraged people participating in her presentation on Zoom to focus on one other individual participating in the global mindfulness awareness meditation and notice their face, their name, and their “place” and wish them protection, safety from harm, wellness and ease. This process can deepen our sense of connection.

A breath meditation

During her Zoom drop-in session, Allyson offered a 20 minute breath meditation. Her process involved a strong focus on our in-breath and out-breath and the space in between. Allyson began the meditation by having all participants take a deep in-breath and let out an elongated out-breath while picturing their connection with others in the session doing the same thing – to create a sense of connection by breathing “as one”. She suggested that people view the in-breath as self-compassion and the out-breath as compassion towards others, alternating between receiving and giving.

After this initial exercise during the guided meditation, Allyson encouraged participants to focus on their bodily sensations to become grounded fully in the moment – sensing their feet on the floor or ground and feeling the pressure of their body against their chair. She suggested that if mental or emotional distractions intervened, returning to our bodily sensations is a way to refocus back on the breath. A way to regain focus is to feel the breath moving the body (e.g. the in and out sensation of the diaphragm) and to feel the breath moving through the body – while recognising that many people around the world are experiencing constricted breathing through illness and/or inequity.

Allyson maintains that breath meditation and entering into silence fortifies us, provides stability and groundedness and enables us “to act for the good of others and to speak truth from our power”. She suggests that meditation practice builds the personal resources to “speak wisely, truly and compassionately” in the face of unconscionable inequity.

Reflection

During the meditation session, Allyson quoted the One Breath poem written by Mark Arthur – a very moving reflection on connectedness and “collective social suffering”. Mark exhorts us not to turn away but to turn towards the “deep, deep wound” as a way to express self-compassion. Then with loving kindness, “speak and act from the heart” with awareness that there is no separation between them and us, only connection through birth, breathing, living and death.

The space that lies between our in-breath and out-breath can be a place of rest and tranquillity and a source of spaciousness. As we grow in mindfulness through breath meditation and exploring our connectedness to all human beings, we can access this spaciousness and learn to extend our thoughts and actions compassionately towards others.

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Image by John Hain 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.

The Impermanence of Everything and the Preciousness of Life

In Part 1 of his book, The Five Invitations, Frank Ostaseski discusses his first invitation and principle for living, “Don’t Wait”. Frank, as founder of a hospice and end-of-life carer, has cared for more than a thousand patients during their dying process and death. In this first part of his book, he highlights the impermanence of everything and the preciousness of each moment of living.

Frank has been a companion to the deepest grief of friends and relatives of the dying and experienced a depth of vicarious grief that is difficult to conceive – it’s as if the collective grief of others had beset him and brought him to his knees, both physically and metaphorically. Fortuitously, he was a colleague and friend of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross at the time who supported him in his grief and his work as an end-of-life carer. Elizabeth developed the classic concept of the five stages of dealing with death and loss in her book On Death and Dying and was also the author of Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss.

The impermanence of everything

If nothing else, the Coronavirus reinforces the impermanence of everything through its pervasive impact on every facet of our daily lives – our home, work location, transportation, schooling and education, shopping, spending, entertainment, health, finances, sport and our very daily interactions and movements. The on-off nature and varying intensity of imposed restrictions serve to reinforce this message of the changeability of everything. In these challenging times, we are called to adapt to the unpredictability of our work, our changing home arrangements, the extreme challenge to our health and welfare, and the uncertainty of our income and overall finances.

Without the pandemic, we can still become aware of impermanence – the birth and death cycle for humans, animals and nature. Relationships end, animals are killed and eaten by other animals in the endless pursuit of food and survival and leaves fall off trees to become life-giving compost for new plant growth.

The impermanence of everything was brought home to me by two recent incidents. The first was the disturbing story of a nurse killed suddenly in our city while cycling to work. Her husband indicated that their day started as normal with a coffee and breakfast together but ended tragically when the nurse was only metres away from her work at the hospital.

The second experience of impermanence occurred when I was walking along the foreshore of Moreton Bay near our home. I was watching the small fish full of life darting back and forth in the marina when a fast-moving bird dived into the water and retrieved one of the fish for its food – only to be followed by other birds dive-bombing the school of little fish.

The preciousness of life

Frank describes the process of dying as a “stripping away” of everything including our sense of “self” – our sense of who we think we are and should be, all our roles such as husband/wife, partner, parent, neighbour. We lose our professional identity, our personal orientation, e.g. as a “people person” and our comparative self-assessment such as well-off or impoverished and successful or an abject failure. Frank reinforces his view of the inadequacy of the medical model to explain the breadth and depth of the “stripping away” at death. He maintains that in dying everything is released/dissolved – “the gross physical elements of the body, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, conditioning all dissolving”. Frank asserts that what is left to discover is “something more elemental and connective” that constitutes the real essence of human nature.

Our awareness of impermanence, accentuated by illness, can lead to anxiety or a readiness to appreciate and savour the preciousness of life, of our relationships and of nature. Through appreciating the pervasiveness of impermanence, we can more readily accept change and more willingly give up our attachments – the things that we hold onto to define our self and our worth. This is where meditation can help us both in fully living and preparing for dying and death.

The “Don’t Wait” principle reminds us of the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the timing of our death – that it will happen, but we don’t know when or how. This principle encourages us to value every moment we are alive and to savour what we have in life and the experiences of living. Frank’s heart attack reinforced this message for him – his sense of self and perception of himself as the “strong one” helping everyone else in need was completely undone. He encourages us to be curious about ourselves and our preferences/attitudes/ biases and to work at letting go of the identities that we have become attached to.

Frank maintains that “softening around these identities, we will feel less constraint, more immediacy and presence”. I am learning the profound truth of this statement through softening my identification with being a “good” tennis player who never or rarely makes mistakes. Instead of wallowing in negative self-evaluation, I am beginning to enjoy the freedom of progressively loosening this unsustainable identification as I grow older and less physically able.

Reflection

Frank’s book would have to be the easiest and most-engrossing personal development book I have had the privilege to read, and, at the same time, the most profound. As someone who has had a deep interest in, and knowledge of, his subject, he can communicate his ideas in simple language and practical illustrations. Each paragraph contains exquisite morsels of wisdom and the book is replete with moving but brief stories that impress indelibly – so, even if you don’t remember the exact wording of his principles, you certainly remember the stories that illustrate them. Frank’s writing reflects the calmness, humility and depth of insight and wisdom that is evident in his many conversations and podcast interviews about the process of dying and “The Five Invitations”.

“Don’t Wait” is a challenging principle but Coronavirus has forced us to stop, reassess and protect ourselves and others. It has been the catalyst for incredible acts of courage and kindness – by our health professionals and people from all walks of life. The Pandemic Kindness group on Facebook©, with over half a million members, is but one of many efforts to encourage and support random acts of kindness in these challenging times.

The “Don’t Wait” principle incorporates many invitations to create change in our lives. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can become increasingly aware of our attachments (including to harmful self-narratives) and progressively develop the discipline and self-regulation to create real change in our lives to live with more appreciation, thoughtfulness, kindness and compassion. We can learn to savour every moment of our life and everything that it entails.

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Image by christels 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.