self-awareness – Grow Mindfulness

Time as Metaphor

George Lakoff and Mark Turner point out in their book, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor, that we “deal with time metaphorically”, just as we do with other abstract concepts such as life and death. In a previous post, I discussed how a metaphor itself shapes our perceptions and world view and how poetry can enable us to change metaphors and break frames. Time metaphors are pervasive in our everyday language and expose how we view time.

Time metaphors

In this current post, I discuss several time metaphors and explore ways to break free of the constraints in thinking and feeling that they elicit:

If only I had more time

The desire for “more time” is fraught with difficulty because “time” is finite in the sense that we only live one lifetime (normally, up to 100 years). The saying suggests that we could do “more of the same, without reflecting on how we use our time”. We need to review how we spend our time, e.g. in watching TV, sleeping, going to the movies, talking, spreading rumours, playing video games, engaging with social media, feasting on the news. We can treat time as an endless commodity to be drawn on at will or view it as something that is finite and valuable. We can waste time or fritter it away because we have not learned to value what time represents – our chance to learn, grow, contribute and support. There is more to time than meets the eye.

Killing time

This is a way of saying: I need to use time up because I have too much time. It suggests that we are bored, have nothing positive or productive to do. This is an opportunity to savour the freedom of boredom. We are consumed by the need to be doing things all the time, to fill in time with activity. The emphasis on “doing” instead of “being” creates its own stresses. Boredom can be freeing in that it motivates us to be more creative in how we spend our time – the work that we do, our leisure choices, our creative pursuits, developing relationships, our mindfulness practices. Arlie Russell Hochschild suggests that our need to be busy creates a Time Bind that means we are caught up in an obsessive need to fill in time with activity. In the workplace, we have to be seen to be busy – what Christine Jackman describes as “performative busyness”.

Running out of time

This expression often refers to an impending deadline, one that is externally imposed or self-created. We can review the external deadlines in terms of importance and necessity and, where possible, negotiate a change in timeline. Self-imposed timelines are time- traps of our own creation. We can review them and question why we have created them – are they the product of limiting self-beliefs, a need to please, or a need to achieve? In reviewing our self-imposed deadlines, we can ask ourselves, “How necessary are they?” “How could they be changed/adjusted?” By way of example, when I started out writing this blog, I set myself the goal of daily blog posts. This became unsustainable when I started co-facilitating manager-development programs across the State. On the advice of my mentor, I changed my goal to two or three posts a week. I have subsequently adjusted my timeline again to reflect my desire to write a series of e-books based on this blog. I now aim to write two 1,000 word posts per month, along with updating my archive page. Adjusting our self-imposed deadlines for changed circumstances becomes essential if we are to avoid creating unnecessary stress.

Wasting time

We often hear the expression, “That’s a waste of time” or “Stop wasting time”. The emphasis on waste is a recognition that time is a finite resource for our life here on earth. Unfortunately, we spend so much time either thinking about the past or worrying about the future – catalysts for depression and anxiety. Jake Bailey reminds us too that we can spend so much time on looking forward to tomorrow (and live in expectation of what it has to offer) that we lose sight of the present. Elisha Goldstein in his book, The Now Effect, reminds us that being mindful of the present moment can change our life. Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey reinforce this message in their book, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life. They maintain that we speed up our lives when we live in the past, engage in self-judging or become overly-analytical of our daily life and its related problems. They argue that the benefits of slowing down to the present moment (rather than racing ahead) include improving our health and relationships, enjoying more peace and equanimity, reducing our stress and strengthening our focus and capacity to be productive.

Time metaphors and chronic illness

Jennifer Crystal – writer, educator and author of One Tick Stopped the Clock – has written about the different perceptions of time and mindsets by people experiencing chronic illness and those close to people suffering from chronic illness. In a blog post, The Time-Warp of Tick-Borne Illness, she discusses time metaphors in the context of her own experience of tick-borne chronic Lyme Disease.

Jennifer points out that we typically have a different relationship to time (and different time metaphors) at the various stages of our life. As children, time does not move fast enough; as we become aged, we want time to slow down. When people experience chronic illness, different time metaphors come into play.

Jennifer notes that she lost so much time through illness which delayed her degree graduation, her relationships and job/life plans. For her during this period of chronic illness and a subsequent relapse, time moved too fast. She felt an urgency to catch up with time. However, her recovery depended on her slowing down and spending time on self-care. Despite the feeling of having a lot of catching up to do, Jennifer has had to move at her own pace to achieve her goals in her own time and to avoid further major relapses.

Jennifer noted that perceptions of time can be so very different for the well in comparison to the chronically ill. The former often wish for the free time that they see as the province of the chronically ill (time to lie around and read or watch TV). What they don’t realise is that the chronically ill person often does not have the energy or pain-free experience to enjoy these envied activities. Jennifer maintains that each side (the healthy and the chronically ill) need to develop an understanding of the perspective and experience of the other. Even the healthy person experiences stressors and pain in this fast-paced world.

Reflection

In this post, I have concentrated on several time metaphors that can constrain our perception and mindset. However, there are time metaphors that have positive connotations or that promote proactivity, such as a stitch in time saves nine.

In the March Creative Meetup, an online support group for writers-with-chronic-illness, Jennifer shared her blog post and offered two time-related writing prompts:

How has your relationship to time changed with your illness?
Imagine yourself springing forward or backward to a future or past moment in your life. Write a letter to your future or former self from your current self.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and other mindfulness practices, we can gain self-awareness about our own time metaphors and find creative ways to break the frames that constrain our thinking and mindset.

I developed the following poem while reflecting on time metaphors:

Time Metaphors

Time doesn’t wait,
it marches on.

We waste time when
killing time,
living for tomorrow,
buying our time,
waiting for the right time.

We express time regrets when we say
if only I had more time,
I have too much time on my hands,
time is going too fast,
if only I had my time over again.

We express frustration with time when we say
where has all the time gone?
I can’t wait till tomorrow comes,
I’ve run out of time,
I’m caught in the trap of time.

Time is restless, relentless, resilient, resourceful.

Time is opportunity
to learn, grow and create,
to care for self and others,
to be in the present moment,
to experience wonder and awe.

_______________________________________

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.

Poetry as Mindfulness

In the previous blog post, I discussed the mindfulness practices that Mary Fowler, international soccer star, uses to grow her resilience, support her mental health and develop calm and happiness. What I did not include in these discussions is the poetry that Mary writes and incorporates in the chapters of her memoir, Bloom: Creating a life I love.

Poetry can be a rich source of mindfulness, both when reading poems or writing them. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, author of Exploring Poetry of Presence 11: Prompts to Deepen Your Writing Practice, explains how writing poetry can be a mindfulness practice. Her book provides not only a guide to reading Poetry of Presence 11- More Mindfulness Poems, but also a stimulus to our own poetry writing. To achieve guidance for reading the focal book, Rosemerry draws on every poem in the book and uses them and other poems to stimulate our own writing of poetry.

Rosemerry co-hosts the podcast Emerging Form that discusses how to develop the creative process and provides examples. Her poetry is published widely and her anthologies include Hush (a winner of the Halcyon Prize), Naked for Tea, and All the Honey. She has written a poem daily since 2006 and these can be accessed by subscribing to her mailing list and/or by reading her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils. Rosemerry also produces an audio daily, The Poetic Path, which she describes as “an immersive daily experience of poetry and reflection”.

Writing poems as a mindfulness practice

Writing poems develops our capacity to be in the present moment, to be open to the richness of our daily experience and to engage more consciously with others and the world at large. Writing cultivates curiosity and acceptance of what is. It enables us “to show up in the moment”, if we arrive daily with a pen in our hand or a digital device for capturing our thoughts, observations and reflections in-the-moment.

Writing poems changes the way we engage with others, ourselves and our daily environment. It makes us more aware of, and open to, both our external and internal worlds and helps us to achieve an integration between them. When we are seeking to write poetry, we are on the lookout for inspiration and are more conscious of what is going on in our life, in our body and in our mind – it makes us so much more grounded in the reality of our everyday life.

Rosemerry maintains that we should not seek to write “good” poetry according to external standards or those of other people. She argues that this only taps into our negative self-thoughts and cultivates a mindset of criticism and can lead us to get stuck or frustrated. For her, this self-criticism is the opposite of being mindful – it is not accepting what is and how our writing reflects the vicissitudes of our daily life and our natural responses to how we experience our reality. She encourages us to write from our own truth – what is true for us in this moment of writing.

The outcomes of writing poems as a mindfulness practice

Rosemerry draws on her own poem-writing experience to provide a “caveat” for the readers of her book. She counsels us to be aware that not only will our writing change but a lot of other things in our life will change too in unpredictable ways. She explains that using writing as a mindfulness practice has made her more open to life, softened her perspective on many things and enabled her to be “more willing to be vulnerable”.

She found that through her poetry writing she became more honest and trusting. A key outcome of this mindfulness practice was her ability to meet “great loss”, in particular, when her son took his own life. Rosemerry contends that the mindfulness practice of writing poetry really matters when we are faced with “trauma, loss, fear and woundedness”. In her anthology of poems titled The Unfolding, written after the deaths of her son and father, she shares her aching heart while savouring beauty and wonder. Her poems in this collection convey contrasting states such as playful and sombre. They express a life lived fully, consciously and openly.

Despite her grief over her son’s death, Rosemerry experienced an ever-increasing capacity and desire to be open to the richness of life. In the process, she was able to love and connect even amidst “the tough stuff”. She attributes the mindfulness practice of writing poetry to her ability to avoid “shutting down” in the face of extraordinary pain. Having established a “practice of presence”, she was able to show up each day. Her daily stimulus for writing was a set of questions such as, (1) “What is here?” and (2) “What is true right now?”. We could add for our own writing practice the question, “How do I want to show up today?”.

Rosemerry contends that gaining these mindfulness outcomes does not depend on our talent, wisdom or skill level – all that is required is to “show up with a blank piece of paper and a pen”. She maintains that using other people’s poems as a guide can help us to write as well as drawing on the writing prompts she provides in her book or other books such as Exploring Poetry of Presence: A Companion Guide by Gloria Heffernan.

Writing prompts for poems

Throughout her book, Rosemerry provides a series of writing prompts to enable us to write our own poems if we need an external stimulus. Sometimes poems just come to us, catalyzed by significant events in our lives. The writing prompts she offers are an invitation to write our own poems and are an excellent stimulus for self-expression. An example of the prompts she provides includes the following prompt:

Paying attention – the challenge to be in the present moment, noticing the world around us and within us. We can view the world (and our writing) through our senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. Consciously noticing our outer world can lead to cognisance of our inner world – our thoughts, our feelings, our sense of wonder and awe. Rosemerry claims that writing poems mindfully can “build a bridge between these two worlds” – our outer and inner reality.

According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, meditation teacher and practitioner, paying attention is central to mindfulness and enables openness, curiosity and self-awareness (particularly of our negative self-talk). Rosemerry suggests that an easy way to start to pay attention and write is to create a list, e.g. of “what could be”, “what I sense in the moment” or “what I find interesting about the world”. She maintains that by “naming things outside the body” we are led to a “revelation inside the body”.

Reflection

I have found that writing a reflective poem has helped me to manage my frustration and pain associated with chronic illnesses. Writing poetry enables me to take a different perspective, explore the consequences of my own actions and often acts as a “bridge to action” when I am faced with inertia.

Writing poems has been particularly helpful for me to stay grounded during a recent family crisis where violence and injury, destruction and dissolution, were very real. Mindfulness heightened by poetry writing enabled me to reflect on what was occurring, explore alternatives and be conscious of my whole-body stress.

As we grow in mindfulness by poetry writing, we can tap into the power of being present, enhance our creativity and build our resilience in the face of “the tough stuff”. We can also develop self-care strategies that enable us to withstand the ever-occurring forces of overwhelm.

_______________________________________

Image by Janusz Walczak 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 Strength in Vulnerability

Kylie Orr in her novel, The Eleventh Floor, has her lead character, Gracie, comment after experiencing the impact of deceit in a relationship, “I was committed to loving up close, to being open, vulnerable”. While Gracie acknowledged that “there is danger in that”, she was willing to take the risk inherent in vulnerability because “a life held together by lies fell apart so easily”. Being vulnerable exposes us to the possibility of being harmed by someone else emotionally, intellectually or physically – it involves showing our true self with our emotional weaknesses, character faults and physical defects.

Vulnerability, however, is a source of strength. It underpins perseverance and resilience, facilitates sustainable relationships, enriches our contribution to community, and enables the writing of an entertaining and enlightening memoir. To access the strength in vulnerability we have to face up to being vulnerable – we need to name our feelings (e.g., fear of rejection) so that we can tame them.

Perseverance and resilience

Contrary to the Alpha Male depiction of power, dominance and the trappings of success, Lance Alfred (legally deaf NBA player) contends that perseverance and resilience in the face of adversity require a totally different orientation. He maintains that there is real strength in vulnerability – owning up to our feelings, being authentic, having self-awareness and self-intimacy (acknowledging our own thoughts, actions and consequences), forgiving others, moving beyond other people’s expectations to be our true self, accepting our inadequacies and mistakes and overcoming the fear of failure.

When we fear failure we can be trapped by inertia – unable to move forward beyond the current challenge. In her novel The Brightest Star, Gail Tsukiyama describes a time when Chinese-American actress, Anna May Wong, was making her stage debut In The Circle of Chalk and was terrified that her speaking voice and singing were not up to the expected standard (after spending so much time acting in silent movies). The critics were having a field day about her voice but she acknowledged this weakness and “went on the offensive”, hiring a voice coach. Despite the criticisms of the critics, the show had a “successful run”.

Sustainable intimate relationships

We can hide our fear of being vulnerable in a relationship in multiple ways including excessive criticism of the other person, aggression (anger), withdrawal (silent treatment), overcontrolling or projecting our own weaknesses or fears onto the other person. These defence mechanisms only serve to push the other person away, to wound them and disable them. While they provide protection for our ego and self-concept, they create a barrier to a sustainable intimate relationship.

Tara Brach provides a meditation which enables us to explore the ways that we create separation or distance in a relationship by resorting to defence mechanisms to ward off vulnerability. In the meditation, we are asked how we are impacting our relationships(s) by avoiding vulnerability. The challenging questions relate to self-protection, projection, judging, withholding, distrusting or engaging in “superior conceit”. Tara points out the power of being vulnerable (overcoming our natural defence mechanisms) in terms of building closeness and sustainable relationships.

Enriching our contribution to community

Tara tells a number of stories where being vulnerable led to someone else finding strength to manage a disturbing or embarrassing circumstance. One of the features of the Creative Meetups hosted by The Health Story Collaborative is the vulnerability shared by participants in the monthly, online meetings. Participants are people experiencing chronic illness or disability or are in a caring role. They willingly share their pain, difficulties in coping, inability to think clearly, physical weaknesses, anxiety or depression or lack of energy.

The level of openness and trust enables individuals to express their vulnerability without fear of being taken advantage of, or being consciously harmed by anyone else present. Vulnerability, enhanced by the culture of sharing and collaboration, builds closeness and healing. There is the implicit recognition that being vulnerable is integral to the human condition.

Developing a memorable memoir

In the Art of Memoir, Mary Karr, stresses the need for authenticity – revealing our real self, not the projected self or the deemed “virtuous self”. She highlights the importance of being vulnerable rather than self-protective. She sees the memoir as a personal unfolding that is sometimes painful – an honest exploration of our “inner landscape”, not just a recording of external events. Mary suggests that as we are developing our draft memoir with recalled stories “what burbles up onto the page is what is exclusively yours, both as a writer and a human being”. She maintains that we have to trust the power of truth enough to “keep unveiling yourself”, despite the shame in the revelations, and, in the process, the memoir will structure itself and you will show up ”warts and all” – leaving a memorable impression that highlights your contribution to relationships and community.

Reflection

Being vulnerable is difficult as self-protection is our natural fall-back position. As we grow in mindfulness through writing, reflection and meditation, we can begin to draw back the veil that hides our imperfections and inadequacies. With the inherent growth in self-awareness and self-intimacy, we can become more real and more invested in telling the truth about ourselves. This is a progressive inner journey – a slow unveiling of our true inner self. By letting go of shame and expectations (our own and that of others), we can develop authentic connections, friendships and intimate relationships.

I wrote the following poem as a reflection on the negative impact of defensiveness on relationships and the power of vulnerability to create intimacy by removing our constructed barriers.

Sustaining a Relationship

Deceit destroys a relationship.
Closeness is beyond us, as we retreat behind the wall.
Facing up to who we are can be painful.

Without vulnerability, our relationships are shallow.
We hide behind our self-projected mask.
We engage our defence mechanisms.
We fence off our inner landscape.

Sustainability lies in vulnerability.
Openness to ourselves and others.
No longer the frightened child.
Now exposed to risk and reward.
Intimacy is in our hands, if we reveal who we truly are.

___________________________________________

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 and the resources to support the blog.

How to Develop Positive Beliefs About Aging

Previously, I discussed the pervasive impact of negative beliefs about aging and the life-enhancing benefits of positive age beliefs. In those posts, I drew on the mind-opening research of Professor Becca Levy, author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will determine How Long and How Well You Live. In her book, Becca not only explores the potential negative or positive impacts of our beliefs about aging, she also offers multiple ways to develop a positive mindset that will enable us to live longer and with a better quality of life. She provides numerous examples of people in different fields who have achieved incredible things in their old age. Becca stresses the need for each of us to be proactive in building positive beliefs about aging to counteract the influence of ageism which is with us from the time we hear our earliest fairy tales until we experience palliative care.

The ABC approach to developing positive beliefs about aging

In her book, Becca introduces the ABC Method to liberate us from the socially-derived negative beliefs about aging and free our minds to realise the potential inherent in aging. Her ABC method incorporates three core elements – awareness, blame and challenge:

A – Awareness

Becca suggests that developing positive age beliefs begins with ourselves, increasing our awareness of our own thoughts and the way this impacts our words and actions. We can increasingly become conscious of how we speak to people in different age groups – how we positively recognise “age diversity” (rather than perpetuating “age blindness”). She recalls that on one occasion, she found herself talking in a childlike manner to older people (“elderspeak”) and immediately pulled herself up and changed the way she spoke to these people. Her newly adopted adult-to-adult communication was respectful of the wisdom and experience of the people she was addressing. This is an example of reflection-in-action, a skill we can develop by practising reflection on our actions as a habitual approach.

Our awareness can develop by building a “portfolio of positive images of aging”. We can do this by reading newspaper reports and articles about people who have excelled in various fields of endeavour. Another rich source of positive age images is memoirs written by people who describe their accomplishments in old age despite early childhood setbacks, including traumatic experiences. An incredible exemplar of this approach to developing positive beliefs is Maya Angelou. She not only broke new ground in writing memoirs but wrote her seventh memoir, Mom and Me and Mom, in her eighties. Her accomplishments in many fields such as poetry, writing, acting, film, singing and activism are memorialised in a website in her name. Becca cautions us, though, to avoid trying to model ourselves on a single, exceptional older person – she argues that a more attainable goal is to strengthen qualities in ourselves that “older role models” exhibit (such as Maya’s work ethic).

We only have to look around us for positive models of aging amongst our friends, relatives, colleagues, our medical carers and other professionals. This involves developing relationships with, and paying attention to, people who have aged and yet who continue to contribute positively to their career arena, the local community or society generally. We can also seek the company of elders. Nadine Cohen, author of the exquisite, debut novel, Everyone and Everything, actively seeks people of her mother’s and grandparents’ age and finds that she is “usually richer emotionally” because of their counsel and wisdom.

B – Blame

Becca argues that we should put the blame where it truly belongs – not our biology but the ageism that surrounds us in every facet of our life. This involves consciously developing awareness of our social environment in our everyday life. It means being able to identify “negative age stereotypes” perpetuated in education, the arts, medical professions, and in daily conversations with friends, colleagues and family members.

As we develop this external awareness, we can begin to identify the “upstream causes” impacting the health and wellness of the aged. Becca maintains that “age beliefs are an upstream predictor of health and well-being”. She contends that if we actively develop positive age beliefs we can change our health habits. This approach is in line with the research that shows that to create new behaviours, we need to challenge the assumptions that underlie old behaviours – it is not enough to practise new behaviours if we want sustainable change.

C- Challenge

Becca recommends challenging ageism in whatever form it takes. She points out the example of antiageism activist, Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, and the blog Yo, Is This Ageist? Ashton is actively and publicly challenging the hidden negative beliefs as they are reflected in newspaper articles, headlines, advertisements, and elsewhere and educating readers by responding to their questions about ageism. She also has a YouTube channel incorporating her Talk at Google and other presentations addressing ageism. In her Ted Talk, Let’s End Ageism, she points out that ageism is “a prejudice that pits us against our future selves – and each other”.

While people like Ashton and celebrities such as Madonna and Robert De Niro are speaking out publicly against ageism, Becca contends that we can help to overcome ageism in society if we “call it out” when we encounter any form of ageist remark in the relationship circles in which we move, Becca recounts her discussion over coffee with Irene Trenholme who at 99 years of age ran the Secondhand Prose bookstore which donated all it profits to the local St. Johnsbury library. Irene proved to be an exemplar for challenging ageism. Whenever she encountered an ageist remark or action, she would firmly indicate that this was inappropriate, including challenging her doctor who spoke too loudly to her (assuming that, because of her age, she was “hard of hearing”).

Becca challenges many myths that surround aging and encourages us to take up the task of questioning firmly-held beliefs that have no scientific foundation. She provides an Appendix in her book which she describes as “ammunition to debunk negative age stereotypes”. She lists common negative age stereotypes and offers facts (proven by research) that can be used to debunk these stereotypes, including “cognition inevitably declines in old age” and “older persons are technologically challenged”. In relation to the latter myth, Becca points out that Mildred Dresselhaus innovated the field of nanotechnology in her seventies.

Underlying the assumption that older people are technologically challenged is a foundational ageist myth that I call the “blank slate myth”. People often assume that those who are older lack any related knowledge, skill or experience in a particular area, e.g. technology. They forget that the technology they enjoy today was pioneered and developed commercially (long before some were born) by people who are now in their later years. I am now 77 years of age (2024), but I have a long history of involvement in the development and application of technology in education and the workplace in the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and early 2000’s:

National Project Team – the design and implementation of the first online, national, accounting and management information system in the Australian Taxation Office (1973 -1977);
National Project Team – the introduction of word processing and personal computers in the Australian Taxation Office;
Role of Director, Computer Operations, Australian Taxation Office, Queensland and the Northern Territory;
Sensitive National projects associated with physical computer security and deterrence and detection of computer fraud;
Role of National Change Manager for the implementation of online learning and teaching in the Technical and Further Education Institutes across Australia (2000-2004);
Role of a Leader in Squidoo – a social media platform developed by Seth Godin (2007-2014);
Creator of a 6-month, online Social Media Marketing Course – 24 weekly PDF’s (2010);
Creator of e-books on internet marketing, social media marketing and Squidoo marketing strategies (2009-2012);
Creator of blogs on affiliate marketing (2005-2012) and small business marketing (2011-2012);
Co-Creator with colleagues in Germany and America of the article-based, social media platform, Wizzley.com (2011);
Sole author of my current Grow Mindfulness blog (2016 – present; 745 posts).

I spend very little time on social media platforms these days, not because I’m “technologically challenged” but because I have other priorities. My priorities at the moment are to write my mindfulness blog (1,000 word post per week); co-author a book on “managing people”; and write a memoir.

The “blank slate myth” not only applies to technology but also many other areas of endeavour. I found that it applies even in social activities. I still play social tennis in my late seventies and I am often confronted with the manifestation of this myth in our social tennis games. For example, I recently played with a younger partner who shouted out to me not to hit a shot that was clearly going out (by at least 2 metres), assuming that, through lack of experience (or loss of memory/faculties), I had not been able to judge that the ball would be out. Having played more than 10,000 sets of tennis (including competitive tennis at an A-Grade level) over more than 60 years, I have a fairly advanced awareness of what shots are going to go out – it’s embedded in my body memory. I can, for instance, when lobbed by an opposition tennis player, chase down the tennis ball and hit it back over my head and land it in the court (the secret is to face parallel to the back fence of the court so your body knows where it is in relation to the court outline). To me, the “blank slate myth” defies logic and denies the richness of skills, intuition, insight and reflexes developed over many years.

Reflection

In thinking about the impact of negative and positive age beliefs, I became very conscious that, despite social conditioning, what we believe about aging is up to us – and our beliefs determine our actions. I incorporated this reflection in the following poem that I wrote recently;

The Choices You Make About Aging

If you are positive, you open up your potential –

life’s joys and pleasures are yours to gain.

If you look, you will see what is possible –

aging models of achievement are everywhere.

If you challenge the myths, your mind is freed,

you can pursue your goals without constraint.

If you remember what you have achieved

you can draw on your sense of agency.

If you exercise your mind and body

you can restore your acuity and strength.

As you grow in mindfulness

through reading, research and reflection,

you can become more self-aware

and free of stereotypes, assumptions and insipidness.

What you believe about aging

influences the choices you make.

____________________________________________

Image by GreenCardShow 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 and the resources to support the blog.

The Benefits of Positive Beliefs About Aging

In a previous post, I discussed the pervasive impact of negative beliefs about aging. Highlighted in that discussion is the research evidence that negative age beliefs can impact every aspect of our aging process and our quality of life. In that discussion, I drew on the work of Dr. Becca Levy, a pioneer in the area of successful aging and a world-renowned researcher and Yale Professor. In her book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will Determine How Long and Well You Live, she contends that it is critical that we address ageism in our society both as individuals and as a collective.

Becca has a section in the book where she identifies the widespread influence of ageism and calls for “an end to structural ageism” in education, Governmental systems, medicine, mental health, advertising and media, science and the arts. Ageism prevents people from effectively adapting to the aging process, from taking proactive action to maintain their quality of life, from achieving their potential both mentally and physically, and from realising the benefits that can accrue with age.

The benefits of positive beliefs about aging

In her book, Becca draws on her own research and that of researchers worldwide to demonstrate the numerous benefits of positive age beliefs and illustrates these benefits with stories of outstanding achievements by numerous people in multiple fields of endeavour. Ageism is based on the assumption that all people who are old experience decline in mental and physical capacity at the same rate and that this decline is inevitable. Becca’s research and stories of individual achievements demonstrate that each of us can arrest decline, or at least reduce the rate of decline, in our capabilities as we age. Our beliefs about aging are a key determinant of the choices we make and how long and well we live.

In providing research-based claims about the benefits of positive age beliefs, Becca identifies a number of findings that challenge prevailing myths about the aging process. Her research demonstrates the following benefits of this positivity:

Pattern recognition improves with age so much so that neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin, suggests that radiologists past 60-years old should be preferred to younger people for reading and interpreting X-Rays. Daniel is the author of the book, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives.
Indigenous knowledge and memories held by elders in Indigenous communities that have been passed down in communities around the world to ensure the health and continuity of these communities such as in the Indigenous Australian culture. This aspect of Indigenous aging was documented by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her book, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap.
Functional health is enhanced by positive aging beliefs. Becca demonstrates that her research and that of her colleagues disprove the assumption of the “stereotype of debility and decline” as the natural outcome of the aging process. She draws on the example of Sister Madonna Buder, who at the age of 52 undertook her first triathlon with borrowed running shoes – now, at over 90 years old, she continues to compete and has completed in excess of 350 triathlons. Sister Madonna’s view of aging is that it represents “wisdom and grace” and “opportunity”.
Irreplaceable knowledge and understanding can accrue to anyone in a specialised field with experience developed as they age. Becca illustrates this by discussing the experience of a 75-year-old paediatrician called Jonas who had retired from clinical practice “when he was most skilled”. A young colleague asked him for his opinion on what was ailing a baby because he could not work it out. Jonas figured it out “right away”. His young colleague had an instant insight and asked, “Teach me Doc, how’d you do that?” Jonas now teaches “medical diagnosis” at a university and participates in group diagnoses of patients in a teaching hospital. Jonas’s career transition highlights the opportunity for older people to make a significant contribution to society even after retirement – all that it requires is a positive view of aging and a willingness to make adaptions in their career role. Jonas has also acquired new interests and hobbies such as cultivating rare orchards, French cooking, close-up photography and amateur aviation.
Mental health growth – during a placement at a psychiatric hospital, Becca found (contrary to her expectations) that more younger, adult patients suffered from mental illness than older patients and that the latter “can be successfully treated”. Her own research, confirmed by others around the world, also showed that age beliefs heavily impact the nature and quantity of stressors experienced psychosomatically. She found that positive age beliefs helped to mitigate the impact of stressors (even in PTSD cases), while negative age beliefs acted as a “barrier to mental health”.
Longevity – in a significant research study, Becca found that participants who held positive age beliefs “lived an average of 7.5 years longer” than those who held negative age beliefs. ` Other research has demonstrated that non-biological factors such as age beliefs (and social/cultural environments) “determine as much as 75% of our longevity”.
Creativity – contrary to the prevailing stereotype, “creativity often continues and even increases in later life”. Throughout the book, Becca mentions people who achieved “their most creative work at an older age”, e.g., Matisse, Hitchcock, Einstein, Picasso, Bernstein, Lerman and Dickens. She also noted that 65 is the average age of a Nobel Prize winner. Becca also reported the comment of actress Doris Roberts that actresses/actors “get better and better in their craft as they get older”. Michael Caine CBE is just one example. Starring in 160 films over 8 decades, he produced an outstanding performance at age 90 in his last film before retirement, The Great Escaper.

In the above discussion of the benefits of positive beliefs about aging, I have only “scratched the surface” of Becca’s research and findings. However, it is very clear that positive age beliefs can impact us in multiple, beneficial ways – opening up opportunity and the realisation of our true potential.

Reflection

I can relate to Jonas’s experience (recounted above) when applied to a recreational context rather than a professional one. I have continued to play social tennis in my late seventies and recently I played a half-volley, drop shot that left my much younger partner “gobsmacked”. He responded, “Wow, how did you do that? Can you teach me to do that shot?” At the time, I just shrugged but felt like saying:

I can’t teach you as I have never learnt to do that shot – it was purely instinctive, as I was caught “in no man’s land”. When you have achieved in tennis what I have done – played 10,000 sets of tennis over more than 60 years, practised Tai Chi for years (for balance and coordination), and spent numerous hours doing tennis drills – you, too, will be able to do instinctive tennis shots that surprise others (as well as yourself).

Becca’s comment that creativity can increase in later years also resonates strongly with me. I started this blog in 2016 (at the age of 70) and have now written more than 740 posts on this blog alone (my fifth blog). I have reduced my output from three posts per week to one post to enable space and time to conduct manager development workshops (hybrid mode) and to co-author a book with my colleague of 16 years (as our legacy to younger managers and organisational consultants). I am finding that connections and patterns come to me more rapidly and profusely as I read and write and I now write an average of 1,000 words per post (compared to the 300 words per post, I started with in 2016).

In her book, Becca recounts the comments of 69 year old creative dancer Liz Lerman who observed that as we grow old we “don’t need to make major life change to activate creativity’. In her view, “expanding our connections to people” can create life changes for us and spark renewed creativity. I have certainly found this with my active participation in the Creative Meetups hosted by the Health Story Collaborative.

Additionally, I am finding (in terms of creativity) that, as I age and reflect, I am writing more poems that are longer and more complex in structure and scope. In three days, inspired by Kim Rosen’s book Saved by a Poem, I have written three poems – previously I wrote four short poems over five years. One of my recent poems relates to the theme of this blog post and its predecessor about negative age beliefs:

Beliefs About Aging

To be positive, is to see opportunities

To be negative, is to deny potentiality.

Positive age beliefs open new horizons

Negative beliefs hold us captive and inert.

Positivity is openness to reality

Negativity is a closed mindset.

In being positive

Our full potential is possible.

With a grateful heart

I live my positive beliefs.

Reflecting and writing poetry enables us to grow in mindfulness. We come to realise that negative beliefs hold us back. Through mindfulness practices, we can grow in self-awareness, concentration, creativity and resourcefulness – we can become increasingly aware of what is around us each day and what it is possible to achieve.

Photo Credit: The photo incorporated in this post was by Steve Buissinne, aged 74, from South Africa. He joined Pixabay in 2014 and has had 556 photos accepted, 148 of which have been singled out as “Editor’s Choice” – a sign of excellence. His photos have been viewed 32.83 million times, resulting in 19.39 million downloads. Steve’s comment on his Pixabay site demonstrates his mindful awareness of the beauty that surrounds us:

Everything has beauty – photography teaches you to see it

__________________________

Image by Steve Buissinne 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 and the resources to support the blog.

The Pervasive Impact of Negative Beliefs About Aging

Dr. Becca Levy, Yale professor and world leader in the psychology of aging successfully, has written a groundbreaking book that is brilliant in its conception and exhaustive in its research foundation. The book is titled Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will Determine How Long and Well You Live. Becca draws on global research, undertaken by herself and colleagues in the field, to demonstrate that our age beliefs impact positively or negatively not only our physiology but also our mental health. Negative age belief, perpetuated through the media and our social environment, can lead to mental and physical ill-health and a diminished quality of life. In contrast, positive age beliefs can enable us to transcend the limitations of aging in terms of mental acuity, physical strength, flexibility and longevity. Becca draws on numerous stories of people from all walks of life – artists, musicians, actors, athletes, carers, and health professionals – to illustrate the very real impact of beliefs about aging.

How our negative aging beliefs are formed

Becca demonstrates the impact of nursery rhymes and cartoons on the early formation of our age beliefs. These typically negative portrayals of aging are further reinforced by social media, films, newspapers and everyday social conversations. The pervasive marketing of a desirable body image and associated cosmetic propaganda (a Trillion-Dollar industry), have served to embed a negative image of aging in our psyche. We now have “age-defying” skin treatments that remove wrinkles and make our skin glow, along with a pervasive negative stereotyping of menopause (loss of youthfulness, sexual drive, physical prowess and energy).

The impacts of negative age beliefs on institutions and individuals

The resultant negative age beliefs underpin the growth of ageism – “discrimination against older people because of negative and inaccurate stereotypes”. This discrimination is reflected in institutional bias, in interpersonal communications and relationships, and self-talk/limiting behaviours. Becca gives examples of institutional discrimination in employment, the acting and legal professions and hospital protocols. She explains that her research confirms that many health professionals have negative age beliefs and act on them. Our language in conversations can betray an ageist mindset, for example, when we talk about “having a senior moment” (Becca devotes a chapter to this phenomenon and highlights the amazing memory of deaf people and the role of memory in the oral transmission of indigenous knowledge).

The last mentioned arena of negative age beliefs, the intrapersonal, is difficult for an individual to realise and acknowledge. Becca surprised herself by her ageist mindset when she suffered an injury while running in a charity event. Despite her professional knowledge of aging, she immediately attributed the injury to her middle-aged body “succumbing – all too early – to the ravages of age”. She assumed that her running days had come to a “premature end”. It was only when her husband, a doctor, explained that she only had a “badly pulled muscle” that she was able to recognise and acknowledge the personal impact of her negative mindset about aging. Like many people, Becca was shocked that ageism was influencing her own thinking.

I can relate to Becca’s personal injury story. I was diagnosed with multilevel spinal degeneration, in part, as a result of playing tennis for more than 60 years, including many years at a competitive level. My doctor told me that I would have to give up tennis because the injury was the result of “wear and tear”. Initially, I put the degeneration down to aging (I was 76 years old at the time) and decided that my body was no longer able to cope with the rigours of tennis. For some reason, unknown to me, I decided to seek a second opinion. The second medical practitioner gave me a referral to an exercise physiologist who provided me with a series of progressively more challenging exercises over a period of six weeks. By the end of this period, I was able to return to playing tennis and have been doing so for six months (I play social tennis weekly at night). This brought home to me that a negative mindset about aging can actually prevent us from exploring and undertaking remedies for health issues. We can adopt a helpless frame of mind that impedes our chances of improving our health, physically and/or mentally.

Reflection

Becca reveals through her research and storytelling that our negative age beliefs can influence our behaviours, our ability to recover from illness and injury, our quality of life, and life span. It behoves us to become aware of the influence of ageism on us, to become conscious of our negative thought patterns and to be aware of our resultant limiting behaviours (including our willingness to seek ways of healing).

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and mindfulness practices such as meditation, we can become more aware of our thought processes and their impact and develop increased self-awareness, including knowledge of our habituated behaviours. Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield teach us about The Power of Awareness developed through mindfulness meditation.

______________________________________

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 and the resources to support the blog.

A Mindful Approach to Memoir Writing

Hay House Publishing recently provided a Book Writer’s Bootcamp which was held over 4 days with two hour Zoom sessions each day conducted by Reid Tracy CEO and Kelly Notaras (a 20 year veteran of the publishing industry – including a role as VP and Editorial Director for Sounds True which specialises in spirituality publishing). Reid and Kelly covered a wide range of topics associated with book writing including identifying your audience, deciding the genre of your book, the “hook” for your book, basic research, developing an outline, the roles of editors, deciding your perspective (first, second or third person or a combination) and getting published.

Both Reid and Kelly make the point that once you get started as a writer, you never know where your writing will take you. Kelly is a very experienced editor and she eventually started her own business, KN Literary Arts, where she offers book coaching, writing support, editing and assisted self-publishing. Through her website and YouTube channel, she offers free, ongoing advice and encouragement for authors. Kelly is also the author of The Book You Were Born to Write: Everything You Need to (Finally) Get Your Wisdom onto the Page and into the World.

Adopting a mindful approach to writing your memoir

Memoir writing requires mindfulness – being conscious of what you are doing in the moment and why you are doing it. It entails dealing with your thoughts and feelings as they occur (rather than pushing them aside). You have to be mindful of your audience, understand their needs and distil the wisdom of your life for their benefit. Throughout, you need to be patient, be prepared to be immersed in your focus and allow time for the book to germinate (after developing fertile ground through mindfulness). Writing will demand openness to the lessons learned in your life and in the act of reflecting and writing. Below are some things you can do to develop a mindful approach to writing your memoir.

Dealing with your own negative messaging: Seth Godin, multi-award bestseller and expert marketer, reminds us that you have to quiet your lizard brain when attempting something new. You naturally tend (through fear) to identify all the objections and potential problems. You might think that “I am not good enough”, “I am going over old ground” or that “I am not good at writing”. Mindfulness practices can help us overcome negative thinking and remove this barrier to progress. Reid and Kelly remind you that no one has had your unique life experiences or been in your position to experiment with your insights or ideas. You can bring your own “mindset and methodology” to existing knowledge areas (such as raising children, handling grief, overcoming setbacks). In relation to writing skill, one of my Professors always said that to learn to write, you need to “write, write, write!” Writing begets writing skill and I have seen this in children in primary school – by beginning with something that is achievable in the first instance and then progressively expanding their capacity. In the early days (2016) of this particular blog with its special focus on mindfulness, I was struggling to write 300-word posts; now, after more than 700 posts, I have trouble restricting my writing to around 1,000 words (my desired length).

Identify your audience: It takes discipline and considerable thinking time to understand who specifically you are writing for. Kelly reminds us that writing a memoir is “80% thinking time” and the rest actually writing and doing related tasks. The more specific you can make your audience (even just focusing on someone you know or a particular small group you have had experiences with), the easier it will be to decide what to include or exclude. If you try to write “for everybody”, you will tend to ramble and this has no appeal for, or traction with, the reader. Kelly maintains that “the more niche, the greater the success” – the more you can target your message to a specific audience “who needs what you have to share”, the more likely you are to be successful.

Know your genre: According to Kelly and Reid, memoirs tend to fall into three categories – (1) Narrative Memoir, (2) Prescriptive Non-Fiction or (3) Teaching Memoir. A narrative memoir focuses on a particular period of your life (a story) and a related theme; prescriptive non-fiction focuses on “how-to-do” something, for example, writing, meditation, cooking or managing time; and the teaching memoir melds storytelling with “lessons” (e.g. through exercises or guides). Kelly helps you to delineate these different genres by providing a free download to subscribers in the form of Three Classic Book Outlines – outlines that cover each of the three types of memoirs mentioned above. An outline is critical for structuring your writing and determining your outline is typically an iterative process as you begin to write and understand your audience and your theme/focus. Kelly also talks about the differences between memoirs and autobiographies in one of her many YouTube videos.

Check whether your book has resonance with your audience: Both Hay House and KN Literary Arts focus on transformational non-fiction – this is where someone who has experienced some form of “transformation” wants to share their acquired insights and wisdom by writing a self-help book, an inspirational memoir, or focusing their book on personal growth or spiritual development. In one of her videos, Kelly provides the Three Keys for effectively undertaking transformational non-fiction. Besides focusing on your own wisdom (not that of someone else you admire), Kelly encourages you to take the time necessary to distil your wisdom from your own experience and to identify what will have resonance with your audience. She suggests “teaching before you write your book” is a good way to undertake what she calls “resonance and development” – through research, identifying more completely what your audience needs. Kelly argues that “books tend to germinate slowly” and will develop according to their own schedule, not yours. She maintains that you need to take the time necessary to build greater resonance with your audience and to develop the insight to discern the connections amongst seemingly discrete events/experiences. Too often, intending writers have failed to achieve the necessary immersion in their topic/theme to achieve the required level of clarity to facilitate effective writing. Lack of immersion will be reflected in “poor digestion” of the issues/problems being addressed and leave the reader confused and uncertain and unwilling to recommend your book.

Overcoming writer’s block: There are numerous suggestions on the Internet for overcoming writer’s block. Some people encourage mindful walking to clear your mind and develop self-awareness. Other suggestions include journalling (and naming your feelings about writing), speed writing or writing poetry. Nancy Levin, author of Writing for My Life…Reclaiming the Lost Pieces of Me: A Poetic Journey, offers insights into how to explore your own vulnerability and connect with others through poetry. Reading memoirs of others can also act as a stimulus to free up your thinking and writing (Kelly and Reid suggest that this reading research is a necessary component for effective memoir writing anyway).

Consciously overcoming the tendency to perfectionism: Both Reid and Kelly maintain that you should write your first draft of your book before you begin editing. This avoids the tendency to perfectionism – a tendency that can create a severe blockage in your writing. If you don’t hold off editing until you finish your first draft, you can end up in a process of continuous writing and rewriting without achieving any substantial progress on your manuscript. The same principle applies to your efforts to write a hook for your memoir or an initial outline. Start with a tentative hook and outline and refine them as you go – you will gain greater clarity for both as your write.

Reflection

What is very clear from the Hay House Bootcamp and related writing and videos is that in writing a memoir you are processing yourself as well as providing a resource for others. As Kelly points out, your book itself can actually be a milestone in your own learning (or spiritual) journey. Elsewhere, I have written about the Healing Power of Storytelling. Creating a reflective blog can also help you to discover your inner author and develop the mindfulness necessary to produce a successful memoir.

In participating in the Bootcamp, I became aware of a number of options that I have for advancing my own writing. One is a teaching memoir based on my varied life experiences as a contemplative monk, academic, consultant, manager, father and writer. The other is a form of prescriptive non-fiction focused on my action learning experiences. With the former, the teaching memoir, I need to do considerably more research to fill in the gaps in my life history and decide a particular focus or theme to write about (I view this as an iterative process). The prescriptive non-fiction option is something that I can start immediately because I have already completed the requisite “resonance and development” having conducted numerous workshops with my audience over more than a decade, undertaken PhD studies in the area, conducted participative presentations, written book chapters and articles on the topic and used this blog as a form of reflective journal. Reid and Kelly maintain that these kinds of activities along with the use of social media provide a “platform” for your book launch.

As I grow in mindfulness by adopting different mindfulness practices, I look forward to gaining greater self-awareness, consolidating my message (in both genres) and developing my concentration and writing processes. At the moment, I am exploring self-publishing options through the resources and guidance provided by Kelly’s KN Literary Arts and Balboa Press (a division of Hay House).

________________________________

Image by Anna 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 and the resources to support the blog.

Healing Through Creative Storytelling

I have previously written about the Health Story Collaborative created by Dr. Annie Brewster M.D. The Collaborative provides an online platform for individuals to share their story (through any medium) about their health challenges and their road to recovery. The stories provide healing for the storyteller and ongoing inspiration for others to overcome the challenge of ill-health in whatever form it takes. Annie Brewster is the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.

Creative Meetups

One of the programs offered by the Health Story Collaborative is Creative Meetups that are designed to cultivate “writing for expression and connection”. They are based on the firm belief that artistic expression of a person’s story can help them “find hope and healing”. These free workshops are offered every second Wednesday via the Zoom platform – they only require prior registration through the website.

The Creative Meetups are currently facilitated by Annie Robinson, who has completed a Masters in Narrative Medicine and is a qualified meditation, mindfulness and yoga teacher. In her private practice, Annie helps health professionals, including nurses and doctors, by training them in wellbeing, reflection and resilience. She also assists individuals in various life transitions and is co-curator of the podcast for health professionals, Thriving in Scrubs.

My experience of a Creative Meetup

I recently participated in my first Creative Meetup – initially with some uncertainty, not knowing what would be involved and how vulnerable I would feel. The Meetup facilitated by Annie had about 12 participants, both male and female. The process usually involves Annie providing some form of stimulus for reflection followed by a period for individual creative writing that can take any form a participant desires, e.g., a poem, picture, narrative or dot points.

Annie explained at the outset that she was departing from her usual practice of having two participants read out a piece of writing, e.g. a poem, that can act as a stimulus to reflection. On this occasion, she shared an abstract painting that featured a number of colours with a pattern that suggested “reflection” to me.

Our Meetup process involved an initial two minute writing task where we reflected on what the painting meant for us as individuals, there being “no right answer”. This was followed by a brief sharing by some people who wished to share with the larger group. We were then assigned the task of taking a sentence from our earlier reflection and expanding on this over a period of 20 minutes of individual creative writing (with no restrictions on form or length).

When we had completed our creative writing, Annie placed us into Zoom “rooms” of three or four people to share at another level. Participants were encouraged to share only what they felt comfortable sharing with no pressure for full disclosure. The small group environment enabled rapid rapport building and a degree of openness that was disarmingly honest (destroying any erroneous first impressions that may have been formed).

As one participant commented in the larger group, there was a common bond amongst participants in that we were all dealing with a health challenge (however varied in nature and complexity) and were seeking healing through writing and sharing. Reg Revans, the Father of Action Learning, would describe us as “Comrades in Adversity” (or as others put it, “Comrades in Opportunity”).

The environment created through the Creative Writeup process was one of trust that facilitated openness and vulnerability by participants. There was a shared sense of journeying towards healing with the aid of the understanding, empathy and mutual support offered by fellow participants. Annie’s low-key facilitation style and active listening modelled appropriate behaviour for participants.

I was blown away in the small group by the creative writing that was shared. In one case, this involved a poem that expressed the meaning for the participant of each of the colours in the painting – an insightful and revealing piece of writing that we asked the storyteller to read a second time because it was so rich. Another involved an allegorical story that was emotive and self-disclosing and left us all feeling loving kindness towards the person who shared so vulnerably.

One of the features of the small group was the way that one person’s shared reflection stimulated reflection by another person and achieved a deeper level of self-disclosure. Participants could relate to some aspect of a shared situation, response or recovery approach. We were each able to learn from the storytelling.

Reflection

During the small group sharing, I was able to share with others how expressing gratitude for what I am able to have and do was a recovery mechanism for me following my diagnosis of multi-level spinal degeneration. It also empowered me to seek alternative medical assistance in the form of an exercise physiologist who helped me return to tennis when my doctors told me that I would never play again.

The painting that Annie shared reminded me of the art of reflection – having spent most of my working life in studying, teaching and practicing action learning. Reflection underpinned the way I played tennis, conducted workshops, managed people and interacted with others.

More recently, through reflection, I came to understand that one of my personal barriers to active listening was my need to come from an “I know” perspective rather than what Frank Ostaseski recommends as a “don’t know mind”. The “don’t know” approach is foundational to action learning, so my listening behaviour was not congruent with what I espoused about action learning. Reg Revans reminds us that, ”If you think you fully understand something, you are not only going to get yourself in trouble but others as well.” Reg encourages us to “ask fresh questions” and to develop “questioning insight”. He frequently quoted Isaac Newton’s comment about studying some interesting shells and pebbles in his lifetime “whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me”.

At the time, I attributed this personal barrier to active listening to my many years as an academic. I realised, too, that the “I know” perspective accounts in part why I had so much resistance when trying to introduce action learning into my university. It also explains why in the first year of an action learning program that I was facilitating in another university, the hierarchy insisted on removing “become a learning organisation” from the vision statement for the program (they re-inserted it after their experience of the first year of the program and its outcomes).

As I grow in mindfulness through reflection and activities such as the Creative Meetups, I am better able to develop resilience to deal with life’s challenges, gain increased self-awareness and cultivate deep listening to enrich my relationships.

________________________________

Image by Peter H 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 and the resources to support the blog.

Living at the Edge: Empathy

Joan Halifax author, Buddhist teacher, anthropologist and Zen priest has written a profound book on what she calls the “Edge States” – “five internal and interpersonal states” that she maintains are the foundation of compassionate action and living a courageous life. They are described by her as “Edge States” because they can lead to positive living and constructive social contribution or become harmful and cause damage to others. Joan describes the Edge States in her book, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet. Her book covers each of the five edge states in detail – altruism, respect, integrity, engagement and empathy. In this blog post, I will address Joan’s views on empathy as an Edge State.

Empathy vs Compassion

Joan contends that empathy is not compassion. In her words, empathy is “feeling into” another – experiencing their pain and suffering. Compassion, on the other hand, is not only “feeling for” another but aspiring to take some form of action that will be of benefit to the person you are feeling for – this can be any form of compassionate action. Empathy underpins compassion and is a necessary internal state if we are to avoid becoming totally self-absorbed, small-minded or even narcissistic.

Three forms of empathy – somatic, emotional and cognitive

Joan describes three forms of empathy and illustrates them from her own life experience. The first of these is somatic empathy – where resonance with another’s suffering or pain is felt in some form of bodily manifestation. It can take the form of a strong physical sensation such as feeling punched in the stomach, feeling faint or being unsteady. Joan mentions that somatic empathy can occur on a regular basis between people who are close or in frequent contact. She mentions, for example, the uncanny ability of her mountain guide/minder in the Himalayas who became so “physically attuned” to her that he could sense if she was about to fall over and catch her to prevent it happening. Joan indicated that some people are hypersensitive to the somatic experience of others and she mentioned Dr. Joel Salinas who has what is called “mirror-touch synesthesia” – an extreme form of somatic identification that he has to consciously manage for his own preservation and the benefit of his patients.

Emotional empathy, the second form of empathy described by Joan, involves sharing the emotions being experienced by another person – becoming “inhabited by another’s feelings”. When emotional empathy is at a healthy level, it can help us to be more caring, more conscious of connectedness to others and more willing to take compassionate action. However, if we become too closely identified with the emotions of others we can tip over the edge into personal distress, burnout and “blunting” (a state where we no longer “feel for” others as a way to protect ourselves).

The third form of empathy described by Joan is cognitive empathy. This is explained in terms of “perspective taking” – in other words inhabiting the mindset or mind view of another, often described as “standing in another’s shoes”. Again this form of empathy can be enabling for ourselves as well as others or lead to our being captured by another’s way of seeing the world (as in cults or the experience of the German people at the time of Hitler). People’s propensity to adopt another’s world view can be used as a form of manipulation. However, when employed positively it involves attunement to another leading to a form of resonance. Joan illustrates this in describing an experience of being confronted by an angry Algerian soldier at the Algeria-Mali border when she was on an archaeological trip by herself. Her ability to take on his perspective, instead of “othering” him and viewing herself as a victim, enabled her to gain safe passage. Joan also recounts the story of Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and his instructions to his troops in Iraq near the holy Imam Ali Mosque to “take a knee” (and point their rifles to the ground) as a form of successful perspective taking that saved many lives when the troops were confronted by an angry crowd (who misunderstood the American’s intentions).

Over the edge – empathic distress

Empathic distress occurs when we become too identified – somatically, emotionally and/or cognitively – with another person’s suffering or pain. We lose the capacity to separate ourselves from the other person’s experience and in the process become disoriented and unbalanced. Joan describes a number of situations where she was on the edge of empathic distress but was able to recognise her response for what it was and pull back from the edge.

In one situation, involving a young girl with severe burns who had been carried by her father to the Upaya Nomads Medical Clinic in Nepal, Joan found that her own heart rate was racing and dropping, her breath was “shallow and rapid” and her skin became “cold and clammy”. She was momentarily overwhelmed with her perception of the little girl’s suffering and pain. Joan indicated that at the time her “hyper-attunement ” with the child was causing her to spiral out of control and into deep distress physically (almost fainting) and emotionally. Fortunately, through her social engagement activities (including being with the dying), she was able to draw on a process to help her restore her balance and control.

Moving away from the empathic edge – overcoming empathic distress

Joan was able to draw on a process she had developed to help people move from empathy to compassion, to move away from the edge represented by empathic distress. Her process involves the mnemonic, GRACE. This stands for:

G – gathering our attention by refocusing on our breath or our feet on the ground (restoring our groundedness)
R – recalling (bringing to mind again) our intention for being with the other person in their situation
A – attuning to ourself and the other – being fully aware of our own bodily sensations and what the other person is demonstrating (in the case of the little girl, this was resilience).
C – considering how we can serve in the situation without taking control over others or pursuing our own needs
E – engagement and disengagement –adopting an appropriate means of engagement (e.g. engaging in a loving-kindness meditation focused on the other’s wellbeing) and being able to end the interaction when desirable to do so.

Joan makes the point that if we learn to identify empathic distress, we will be better able to manage our responses and restore our balance instead of experiencing burnout, with its physical, emotional and moral degradation. She likens empathic distress to vicarious suffering and highlights the fact that people in the helping professions and caregivers are prone to experiencing this depleted state.

Developing empathy

Joan describes four practices that support the development of empathy – attuning to our bodily sensations, (e.g., body scan), deep listening, stewarding empathy and “rehumanization”. Her description of deep listening is especially insightful and demonstrates her willingness to be with another person fully. She maintains that “really hearing another person requires us to listen with body, heart and mind” while being aware of how our personal experiences and recollections can act as filters, thus distorting the message of the other person. By stewarding empathy, Joan means that we have to be able to cope with the dilemma of our life – that we are both connected to everyone and, at the same time, separate – we cannot become totally identified with the other or we lose ourselves in the process. This requires practice and the GRACE approach is one way to develop this capacity. Lastly, rehumanization according to the work of John Paul Lederach, involves adopting a moral stance “to see the other as a person first, to see ourselves in others, and to recognise our common humanity”.

Reflection

I have experienced empathic distress on a number of occasions. In one particular instance, I was driving across the Story Bridge in Brisbane when I heard a woman on the radio talking about her suffering and grief. I can’t recall the detail of the story but I became more and more strongly identified with her emotions. I can clearly recall my somatic empathy in the form of a sense of dizziness and disorientation while driving. Fortunately, I intuitively knew to turn off the radio and refocus my attention on the act of driving the car and paying attention to the road and traffic.

On other occasions, I have experienced hyper-attunement to someone who is suffering extreme stress from working for a narcissistic manager. Because I have been involved in directly helping a manager and their unit in such a situation, I have great difficulty stopping myself from taking on another’s distress and suffering when they are in a similar situation.

Joan’s GRACE model will be particularly helpful for me in the future. As I grow in mindfulness through mindfulness meditation, reflection and mantra meditations, I can increase my self-awareness of when I am experiencing empathic distress and have the insight and courage to adopt the GRACE model so that I do not fall over the empathic edge.

________________________________

Image by Mirosław i Joanna Bucholc 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 and the resources to support the blog.

Dealing with Loss and Grief

Previously I have written about the power of storytelling to manage grief. I drew on the writing of Dr. Annie Brewster and Nick Cave. Annie published her groundbreaking book, The Healing Power of Storytelling, to share her own story and that of others who have experienced loss, trauma or serious chronic illness.

In his book, Faith, Hope & Carnage, Nick demonstrates how his storytelling through his writing, documentary and his creative endeavours (songwriting, recording and performing) provided him with growth and transformation and enabled him to manage his grief with the loss of his 15 year old son, Arthur.

Even before his son’s death, Nick felt a strong need for social connection and so he created the website, Red Hand Files, to give his fans an avenue to communicate with him by asking questions of him. The resultant Red Hand Files moved from a superficial exchange re his songs and their origins to a deeply personal storytelling exchange that Nick described as an “exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency”.

Nick maintains that that through the Red Hand Files his past debilitating filters ‘have been dismantled over time” and wonder and awe have been restored in his life. He indicates that the experience of the Red Hand Files, involving mutual storytelling, has enabled him to slowly develop self-awareness and transparency by “prising” him open – moving him to progressively disclose himself and the depth of his feelings. He asserts that the process of such mutual vulnerability caused him to change as a person, songwriter and performer.

Nick’s interviewer for his book, Sean O’Hagan, comments that the letters people wrote to Nick as part of the Red Hand Files were very powerful in transforming people’s lives and served to fulfill their need for connection “by articulating their particular story for somebody else to hear”. The online files enabled people to reach out and find a way to voice their own grief. Tiffany Barton’s story is an illustration of the power of such sharing through storytelling.

Tiffany Barton’s story of loss and grief

Tiffany recently shared her story of loss and grief, and her healing interaction with Nick, in her story, “Into My Arms”, in The Weekend Australian Magazine, June 10-11 (pp.15-19). Tiffany lost her 22 year old, gifted son, Cosmo, through suicide. It is only after his death that she began to realise that Cosmo showed signs of being on the autism spectrum. For example, he had a phenomenal memory, being able to recite the 230 digits of Pi. He was also readily able to memorise Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn when learning music and performing.

Cosmo had a totally absorbing passion for the fortepiano, an instrument like a piano but based on instruments developed before 1930 (and differing from the modern piano in tone, touch and appearance). Cosmo was mesmerized by the fortepiano often talking passionately about its history, mechanics and technique and developing a unique skill in tuning the instrument. His passion led him to study the fortepiano at the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) where he hoped to eventually complete a PhD. His last performance on the fortepiano was described by Tiffany as “a stunning final concert at WAAPA”. Cosmo suffered terribly from sclerosis which led him to seek relief from a drug purchased online, that ultimately led to his death.

In her article, Tiffany describes her grief as being “like a mosquito smashed on the window of a ten-tonne truck”. She drew on Nick’s words to describe the “vastness” of grief, reducing us to “trembling clusters of atoms subsumed within grief’s awesome presence”. Tiffany became aware of Nick’s writings on grief through his Red Hand Files and was particularly moved by his “Letter to Cynthia” that he turned into a song. She wrote a poem “young death” about the night Cosmo died which helped her “purge some of the trauma and change” she carried.

Tiffany reached out to Nick by writing a letter to him and including her poem. Nick was incredibly moved by Tiffany’s courage and clarity in articulating her grief and asked her permission to publish her letter and poem in his Faith, Hope & Carnage book (which he duly did). He also asked her to record them for his audiobook.

Nick subsequently contacted Tiffany and spoke in his usual “patient” and “loving” way. Besides checking-in on her welfare, he inquired about her meditation practice. She explained that she uses meditation to communicate with Cosmo. In her discussion with Nick she spoke of Cosmo’s drug use and the impact of intergenerational trauma on her family. Tiffany explained that Nick’s ability to articulate his “grief, loss, love, art and spiritual awakening” in his book soothed her and “offered her respite from her horror”.

Reflection

Nick found that there was “freedom in grief” and indicated that the words of Kris Kristofferson song, Bobby McGee, resonated with him – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose”. Nick came to reconcile with the reality of the human condition and the “acute jeopardy of life”. He strongly urges us to appreciate all aspects of our life and savour “the time we have together in this world”.

It’s in facing our challenging emotions that we can break free of their hold over us and realise true freedom. Storytelling and sharing with others can open us up to the depths of our feelings and release us from the hold of our own expectations and those of others. As we grow in mindfulness through openness, curiosity and non-judgmental attention, we can deepen our self-awareness and develop the courage to share our story of loss and grief for our own healing and transformation.

________________________________

Image by Lars Barstad 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.