self-forgiveness – Grow Mindfulness

Befriending Yourself and Others through Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel in a recent MARC weekly podcast spoke about the power of meditation to enable us to befriend ourselves and others. Her guided meditation is titled, Meditation as a Path of Friendship. The meditation does not focus on self-improvement per se but on how to improve our relationship with ourselves, a relationship which impacts on our interactions with others. If we are down on ourselves, for instance, it is difficult to be open and accepting of others. When we are not at ease with ourselves, it is easy to be envious of others and resentful towards them.

Befriending yourself in meditation

Being kind to yourself in meditation begins with such simple things as ensuring that you adopt a comfortable position during the meditation, whether lying down, sitting, or standing. It also involves undertaking a body scan to identify tense points in your body and to relax them.

Allyson suggests that you begin initially with a slow deep breath to help relax your body and open yourself to relaxing breath meditation. This form of meditation entails focusing on your in-breath and your out-breath without any attempt to control them – just letting them be, while observing how they feel in your body with the rise and fall of your abdomen or chest or the smooth passage of air in your nose. It involves appreciating that no matter what is going on around you or where you are, your breathing-on-auto is keeping you alive.

Jon Kabat-Zinn stresses the need to be non-judgmental when we are purposely in the present moment while meditating. He suggests that self-acceptance begins with acknowledging that as human beings, we are constantly engaged in thinking – whether planning, analysing, criticising, judging, or evaluating. The act of thinking is perfectly human, and we can befriend ourselves by accepting that we will have distracting thoughts when we are trying to focus during meditation. However, by constantly returning to our meditation focus, our anchor, we can progressively build up our attention muscle.

This refocusing requires us to notice that we are planning or evaluating, to name what is happening (“I’m evaluating again”) and to observe our thoughts as passing clouds, not entertaining them or dwelling on them. This simple process of refocusing (that is hard to do) is a way to befriend ourselves through self-acceptance, to value ourselves enough to want to increase our capacity to pay attention and concentrate (to activate our highest potential) and to free ourselves from negative self-judgment.

Allyson suggests that you can befriend yourself by choosing an anchor that is comfortable for you and that does not trigger any negative physical or emotional reactions. Each one of us has our own preference for an anchor – whether it is our breathing; sounds within our room or externally; or some form of bodily sensation such as the sensation of warmth and tingling as our fingers are touching or the feeling of being supported as our feet are firmly on the ground or floor.

Our anchor helps us to develop the capacity to be in the present moment, appreciate what is good in our life and grow in mindfulness – being increasingly self-aware, better able to manage our difficult emotions, becoming more patient and tolerant, and learning to accept what is. As we develop self-forgiveness and self-care, we can experience ease and tranquillity and become more sensitive to the needs of others.

Befriending others

The more we can befriend ourselves through meditation, the better we are able to befriend others. We will be more aware of our own limitations and more accepting of those of other people, better able to control our reactions to the words and actions of others, more willing to listen and build relationships and more able to find joy in the achievement of others (rather than envy).

Through meditation we develop a deeper sense of our connectedness, of our common humanity. We also begin to appreciate the importance of connectedness for our mental health and wellbeing, as well as for that of others. We can see in others what we value in ourselves – including our common appreciation of nature and all it has to offer for our well-being.

Reflection

As we develop self-compassion, our compassion for others also grows and we become more willing to take compassionate action, including deep listening in times of another’s need. Self-understanding and self-acceptance, developed through meditation and other mindfulness practices, are foundational to befriending ourselves and others.

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Image by Michael Gaida 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.

Self-Forgiveness and Self-Care for Health and Happiness

There is a growing consensus around what we need for self-healing and this convergence is supported by neuroscience and scientific research into the process of aging. In a recent HEAL Summit, international holistic health expert Danette May presented her insights gained through her traumatic life experiences and her journey to international success – a journey she has mapped through her book, The Rise: An Unforgettable Journey of Self-Love, Forgiveness and Transformation.

The HEAL Summit is produced by Hay House and the free presentations and resources are offered over one week by more than 30 experts in holistic health. The presentation by Danette May covered the topic, Self-Love Rituals to be Happier and Healthier Now. Her recipe for success in life involves healing foods, healing movements and a healing mindset. Fundamentally, it entails self-love expressed through self-caring activities undertaken regularly to achieve wellness.

The rise from depression

Danette suffered severe depression and grief following her failed marriage and the death of her infant son. Her story is one of achieving transformation in mind, body, and heart. She became a best-selling author, leading expert in developing a healthy lifestyle, creator of a highly successful international business and a significant influencer through her social media presence and speaker engagements. She was featured in the life-affirming documentary, WeRiseUP, which exhorts people to connect and take action to make a difference in their sphere of influence, whether in education, work, or the community. Danette’s suggested approach represents an integrated, holistic way to achieve self-healing.

Healing foods

One of the world’s leading experts on aging and healthy living, David Sinclair, who is author of Lifespan, confirms through his research and that of his colleagues that what we eat, as well as how much we eat, has a major influence on our quality of life and longevity. Danette contends that if we remove certain foods from our diet and include other more beneficial foods, the “wiring in our brain will change”.

Danette’s recommendations re healing foods include the following things to avoid:

White sugar – because of its toxicity for mind and body.
Gluten – causes inflammation in the whole-body system, including the brain (individuals may have more visible symptoms than others from these inflammatory effects, e.g., skin problems, headaches and/or digestive issues).
Oils such as canola or vegetable oils (olive oil is widely recommended as a substitute).

Her recommendations re what to eat include:

Avocados – identified by the Mayo Clinic as the superfood of the month.
Blueberries
Leafy green vegetables
Fish
Nuts

It is interesting that these latter foods are among the 10 superfoods identified by the Harvard Medical School as sources of a healthy diet. Danette elaborates on her healing foods recommendations in her abovementioned book. She has also published another book focused on recipes that are gluten-free and vegan friendly and provide a welcome resource for those who are trying to move away from mainstream consumption to a more healthy diet. In essence, she encourages us to be more mindful of what we eat and knowledgeable about its effects on our body and mind.

Healing movements

Danette identified inertia as one of the problems associated with depression and grief. She strongly encourages movement particularly walking and maintains that movement is the quickest way to change your mental state. Walking releases emotions and assists clarity in your thinking. Danette especially advocates walking bare feet in nat u re as this enables you to become grounded.

Healing mindset

Neuroscience research supports the view that positive thinking leads to better health outcomes, both bodily and mentally. In line with her philosophy of small movements towards a goal, Danette recommends the use of personally appropriate affirmations for thirty seconds to one minute, at least each day. Affirmations reinforce what is good in ourselves and helps to supplant “unconscious negative beliefs”. What we focus on mentally becomes our new reality, our new mindset and perspective on the world.

Daily rituals of self-love and self-care

Danette suggested a wide range of daily practices that if maintained can create a ritual – a regular practice of a particular group of activities . Here are some of them:

Spend time in nature
Write a gratitude journal – writing can release self-limiting beliefs/negative self-stories, increase our self-awareness, and build a positive outlook through appreciating what we have. You can reflect on where you are with your partner, family, career, life purpose or finances and appreciate the positive influences and influencers in your life.
Eat something green and leafy
Practise meditation, however briefly – even, for example, taking a few mindful, deep breaths.
Read inspiring success stories that provide the motivation to realise, and exercise, your own power to make a difference in your arena of influence.
Walk for health and wellness.

Overcoming procrastination

We can be full of good intentions to develop a daily ritual or to undertake something significant. If we delay through procrastination, we enable our negatively biased brain to think up all the reasons why we should not proceed. Danette suggests that we have 17 seconds to take action before our self-sabotaging thoughts take over. Like Seth Godin, she suggests that you start small – begin with some step towards your goal, however small.

Self-forgiveness and forgiving others

Anger and resentment over our sense of personal hurt by another can only consume us and damage us physically, mentally, and emotionally – we can experience physical pain, unhealthy self-absorption, and emotional stunting. Danette suggests that self-forgiveness and forgiving others is like “cutting the rope” – releasing yourself from negative emotions that hold you back. She herself had developed a daily ritual of saying, “I forgive you, I love you”, to overcome her resentment towards her former partner – the process took five years! Louise Hay offers a very pertinent affirmation for forgiveness, “As I forgive myself, it becomes easier to forgive others”.

Professional support

Sometimes our self-sabotaging behaviour becomes entrenched and difficult to shift. It is times like these that professional help can provide the impetus to move forward. Danette provides a range of services to assist anyone to make the necessary shift to achieve overall wellness and happiness:

3-day emotional detox – to work with people where they are currently at.
30 days challenge
6 weeks premium coaching to identify self-sabotaging behaviour, develop a positive mindset and take the first steps towards personal recovery and making a difference in the world.

Reflection

There can be a lot of things and experiences holding us back from realising our true potential. The starting point is awareness – followed by deciding what we want to be different in our lives. Daily rituals including meditation can help us to move forward and actively engage with what is holding us back. As we grow in mindfulness through our rituals and daily mindfulness practices, we can develop profound self-awareness, a strong motivation to make a shift and the courage and creativity to realise 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.

Insights Into Meditation Practice

Tami Simon from Sounds True interviewed world-renowned meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, about the nature of meditation. The interview podcast titled, Beginning Anew, provided some valuable insights into meditation practice and its outcomes. By way of illustration of the many applications of meditation, Sharon spoke of her meditation work with the Garrison Institute helping to develop a “culture of wellness” amongst domestic violence health care workers. She also mentioned her meditation work with nurses and international refugee workers who experience vicarious trauma because of the trauma of others that they experience every day and feel isolated because of their inability to talk about the truly disturbing things they encounter. Some of the insights into meditation practice from her interview are summarised below.

Insights into how we can become renewed through meditation practice

Sharon’s interview podcast provided considerable insight into the nature of meditation and its personal impacts – the longer and more consistently we practise meditation, the more profoundly we will experience these impacts:

Seeing possibilities – when we are caught up in our difficult emotions and seemingly trapped, we tend to experience “tunnel vision”. In the face of disruptive change, which is ever-present, we tend to focus on the “endings” rather than the “new beginnings”. We can also become obsessed with projecting an adverse future onto our mind’s screen. We become locked in, unable to see possibilities and the potential for new beginnings – the ability to “begin anew”. Meditation stills the mind and enables us to identify creative options – it releases our creativity in times of change and challenge.
Gaining understanding – Sharon highlights this dimensionof meditationby focusing on the difference between guilt and remorse. Guilt in her words is a form of “lacerating self-hatred” where we beat up on ourselves for our mistakes, deficiencies and harmful behaviour. We convince ourselves that we will never change but will continue to be hurtful towards others. Remorse, on the other hand, is genuine sorrow for causing hurt to others together with the ability for self-forgiveness. Understanding, developed through meditation, releases us from being “mired in the pain and exhaustion of guilt” and enables us to have the energy, motivation and will to change. Sharon describes understanding as “a tremendous tool”.
Changing our perspective – if we focus only on the things that are wrong or missing in our lives, we will miss the things in front of us that generate well-being and possibilities. If we get locked into a pattern of negativity, we will lack the ability to “see clearly” – we will not be in a position to “serve ourselves or others”. Research at the HeartMath® Institute demonstrates that negative emotions creates chaos in our nervous system while positive emotions “can increase the brain’s ability to make good decisions”. Sharon points out that focusing on the negative in any situation disables us while insight gained through meditation can “create change and the context for change”.

Reflection

We can become trapped in a created, negative reality with the perception of no way forward, and become trapped in guilt about our past words and actions. Sharon maintains that as we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can open our eyes to possibilities, gain a real understanding of the difference between disabling guilt and enabling remorse and develop a perspective on change that enables us to move from negativity to positivity and sound decision making. Sharon’s Insight Meditation Kit, developed with Joseph Goldstein, provides the tools and resources to help us remove hindrances to personal growth and develop the energy for personal change.

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Image by Ioannis Ioannidis 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.

Dealing with the Inner Critic through Self-Compassion

Clare Bowditch – singer, storyteller and actor – recently released a biography titled, Your Own Kind of Girl. In the book, which she had been attempting to write since she was 21, Clare discusses how she dealt with her inner critic which was all encompassing and destructive. Clare writes that the book is “about the stories we tell ourselves, and what happens when we believe them”. She lived in hope that someone would tell her that she was “more than” her grief, her failures and the negative stories about herself that she constantly carried in her head. Clare explained that the title of the book is drawn from a song she wrote in 2008 and, to this day, she is immensely moved by the lyrics in the second verse, including the words, “You are fine, you’re more than enough”. The book is about her painful journey to come to this realisation – a journey that is a common story for many people, particularly women.

The debilitating effects of the inner critic

In an earlier blog post, I spoke about the negative self-stories that we perpetuate, partly because our brain has a negative bias but also because of social pressures and the materialistic values that are propagated on an hourly basis through intrusive advertising and image making in videos and films. Our self-stories can undermine our self-esteem, entrap us in a sense of helplessness and create a negative spiral leading to anxiety and depression. These stories, often based on irrational fears, can become deeply ingrained and extremely difficult to shift. They can blind us to creative options, block the realisation of our potential and harm our interpersonal relations.

Self-compassion to overcome the inner critic and negative self-stories

Tara Brach recently released a book titled Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and the World with the practice of R.A.I.N. This meditation practice involves four basic steps – recognise, accept, investigate and nurture. Tara provides a brief example of this process in a 9-minute, guided meditation, Reflection: Healing Self-Blame. Below are some of the key points in this meditation that is based on the R.A.I.N. approach:

The starting point is to recognise some aspect of your life where your inner critic is active. It does not have to be a major example of self-denigration – it could be some relatively minor self-critique, e.g. focusing on your failure sometimes to really listen to someone or diverting a conversation to establish your credentials. The important thing is to have a focus for this meditation. More complete self-awareness can grow out of recognising even a small aspect of the inner critic in our life – this can puncture a hole in the wall of self-protection that blocks our self-realisation.
As we progress in the meditation, we come to a point of self-acceptance. This involves acknowledging what we say and do but also accepting that we have an innate goodness and that we are not defined by our thoughts – that we are “more than” our negative self-evaluation. In Clare’s words, “You are fine, you’re more than enough”.
Our investigation of the impacts of our inner critic extends to recognising bodily sensations as well as feelings that flow from the inroads that negative self-stories make on our sense of self-worth. We can experience tension in our muscles, pain (e.g. in our arms, neck and back), headaches or a nervous twitch when our inner critic is running rampant in our thoughts. A body scan and progressive tension release can help here. The key thing is to experience the impact of our negative self-story in a holistic way – this builds awareness and increases our understanding of the negative impacts of our inner critic.
Lastly, we reach the stage of self-nurturing in the meditation process. This can be expressed physically by placing your hand on your heart or mentally through naming the self-criticism and countering with expression of self-forgiveness, acknowledgement of your positive contributions and achievements and gratitude for all that you have in life – opening yourself to what is good in you and what is wonderful in the world around you.

Reflection

Our inner critic is deeply entrenched and can be very damaging to our self personally, and to our relations, both at work and at home. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and especially the R.A.I.N. meditation, we can become more aware of our inner critic (negative self-stories), understand its impacts physically and mentally and develop strategies to counter its inroads into our sense of self-worth. As both Clare and Tara point out, dealing with the inner critic can create a new sense of freedom and realisation of our true potential.

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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.

A Guided Meditation on Self-Compassion

Diana Winston provides a guided meditation on self-compassion as part of the weekly offerings of meditation podcasts from the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA. These weekly podcasts are also available via the UCLA Mindful App.

Diana explains that the tendency to be self-critical – to disown parts of ourselves that we don’t like – is universal, not the province of a single age group, gender or ethnic group. We can hear our own voice telling us that we are “stupid” “undeserving”, “inconsiderate” or some other self-demeaning term. These inner voices focus on our flaws and not our essential goodness or kindness.

In line with the research and philosophy of Kristin Neff, Diana encourages us through self-compassion meditation to accept ourselves as we are with all our warts and flaws and to recognise that in common with the rest of humanity we make mistakes, make poor decisions and say or do things that we later regret.

A guided self-compassion meditation

In her introduction to a guided meditation on self-compassion, Diana leads us through a basic process for becoming grounded – adopting a comfortable position, taking a couple of deep breaths and engaging in a body scan to release points of tension to enable us to become focused on the task at hand. Diana then takes us through three basic steps of a self-compassion meditation:

1. Mindful awareness of our negative “voices” – getting in touch with the self-criticism in our heads and being able to accept ourselves as we are, with all our faults, failings and mistakes. This does not mean engaging with the voices but noticing what they are saying and accepting that we are not perfect.
2. Recognising that flaws are an integral part of our shared humanity – acknowledging that this is part of the human condition. No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes – we have this in common with the rest of humanity. We can then offer self-forgiveness and kindness to ourselves.
3. Extending kindness to others – when we recognise that we share a flawed existence with the rest of humanity, we are better able to offer kindness towards others. We can start by expressing gratitude to the people we admire and acknowledging how they enrich our lives. We can then extend this kindness to wishing them and others safety, health, happiness and the ease of wellness.

As we grow in mindfulness through awareness of our negative voices and our inherent flaws, we can learn to accept ourselves as we are, acknowledge our shared humanity and extend self-compassion to ourselves and kindness to others.

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Image by Ioannis Ioannidis 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.

A Brief Meditation for Anxiety

In an earlier post, I discussed Tara Brach’s explanation of how anxiety-producing self-stories are maintained and the importance of meditation incorporating self-compassion and self-forgiveness to break the cycle of anxiety-producing thoughts. I have also discussed different approaches to anxiety meditation. In my last post, I explained Bob Stahl’s 30-minute meditation to reduce fear and anxiety that incorporates a comprehensive body scan and compassionate curiosity towards yourself and others. This approach could be preceded by reflective writing, an approach Bob recommends for focusing on a single anxiety-producing experience which is explored in terms of its bodily, mental and emotional impact. An alternative resource is the 30-minute meditation podcast provided by Diana Winston that seeks to deepen the well of ease, leading us to greater self-awareness and consciousness of the depth of our inner resources.

However, you may not have the time required to do these kinds of meditations or reflections. If you are time-poor, you could practice a brief, three-minute anxiety meditation provided by Zindel Segal, co-developer of MBCT and co-author of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy [MBCT] for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse. This resource book for clinicians provides an in-depth explanation of the benefits and process of the three-minute meditation discussed in this blog post.

The Three-Minute Breathing Space

This meditation exercise is incorporated in the 8-week MBCT program and involves a process of awareness raising by assisting you to shift attention, to check-in on yourself and moved on beyond anxiety-producing thoughts. The Three-Minute Breathing Space meditation incorporates three core steps that are each of one-minute duration:

1. Inner awareness of what is happening for you – exploring what is in your mind. This involves getting in touch with, but not changing, the thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations that you are experiencing at this moment. The first step thus involves shifting your attention to inner awareness of “what is”. This is a passive activity – just watching what is happening for you, as if it is appearing on a “widescreen”.
2. Creating a breathing space – moving away from the focus on your thoughts to a complete, undivided focus on your breath. This grounding approach involves checking-in on the sensations of your body as you breath in and out. You could concentrate on the rise and fall of your stomach as you take a breath and release it. This calming breathing activity enables you to move away from whatever anxiety-provoking thoughts are preoccupying you and creating a “breathing space” to enable you to move on. The secret is to give your mind a single thing to do – focus on your breath.
3. Expanding awareness – incorporating inner and outer awareness. The first step at this stage is to widen your awareness to your whole body – the sensation of sitting and its impact on every part of your body, your body on-the-chair. Next you move your attention beyond your body to what is immediately impacting on it – the air flow on your body, the sounds reaching your ears. Finally, you move your attention to the room encasing your body. You can then gradually return to full awareness by taking a few deep breaths and opening your eyes (if you have closed them to focus better).

As we grow in mindfulness through various forms of anxiety meditation, whether brief or extended, we can build the capacity to manage our anxiety-provoking thoughts and achieve a level of calm and equanimity that creates a sense of ease amongst the (sometimes turbulent) waves of 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.

A Reflection: Seeing Our Self in Our Children

In our leadership/management development workshops, my colleague and I often have participants identify what their staff say or do that annoys them. Then we ask them to think about what they say and do that would annoy their boss. They are frequently surprised that their staff’s words and actions often reflect their own annoying habits. They are surprised too that this process of using their staff as a mirror opens up the possibility of their being honest with themselves. So too, we can use our children as a mirror into our own behaviour.

Seeing our self in our children

When we look at our son or daughter, we might acknowledge that they regularly withhold information or only provide information that puts them in a good light – and we might think of them as deceitful. They might regularly lie to us or mislead us – and we might think of them as dishonest. They might never clean their room or leave things lying around the house for us to trip over – and we might think of them as thoughtless. They might throw tantrums or angry fits when they don’t get their way – we might think of them as manipulative. They might be self-absorbed, ignoring your needs at any point in time – we might think of them as inconsiderate. They might carry grudges or disappointment for a very long time – we might think of them as resentful. They might accuse us of something they do themselves – we might think of them as incongruous.

Whatever negative characteristics we attribute to our children can serve as a mirror into our own words and behaviour – as reflecting who we really are. Often our self-reflection is full of “shoulds” and self-deception as we hide our real self behind a mask. Again, we may judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions, rather than by what we say and do.

It is a revealing and challenging reflection to apply the negative attributes that we ascribe to our children to our own self. We could ask our self for instance, “In what way do my words and behaviour in my relationships show that I am deceitful, dishonest, thoughtless, manipulative, inconsiderate, resentful or incongruous?” The adjectives themselves carry such negative connotations that we are reluctant to ascribe them to ourselves, yet we might ascribe them to our children. Facing up to the reality of ourselves as both meeting our own expectations and falling short is very challenging – but it is the road to an open heart and all the happiness and effectiveness that this portends.

Extending the reflection – looking deeper into the mirror

It is challenging enough to acknowledge our own negative attributes; it is even more challenging to extend the reflection to look at how our words and actions impact or shape the words and behaviour of our children. We can readily deny that we have influence, either directly or indirectly, on what they say or do, but we are part of their learning environment – an influential force in shaping their character for life. Owning up to this impact takes considerable courage, insight and self-awareness.

However, whatever negative traits we attribute to our self through this reflective exercise does not define who we are – we are much more than the sum of these negative attributes. We have to move beyond the shame we feel (with the self-realisation from this reflection), to the genuine exploration of our inner depth and extend self-forgiveness and loving kindness to our self as we move forward.

As we grow in mindfulness, through meditation and reflection on seeing our self in our children, we can progressively overcome our self-deception, develop inner awareness, build understanding and tolerance and develop an open heart. We need to nurture ourselves through self-forgiveness and loving kindness if we are going to be able to deal with the emerging self-awareness.

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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.

Reduce Resentment through Reflection

In previous posts I provided meditations to deal with the thoughts and judgments associated with resentment and the feelings precipitated by the words and actions that you are resentful about. Sometimes resentment runs so deep and is aggravated by other intense emotions and/or related events, that it is difficult to sustain your focus during a meditation. Some relatively isolated event could even surface resentment that has lain dormant for many years. You might find that your emotions are so stirred up and your related thoughts so rapid or random, that meditation is extremely difficult.

One way to overcome these difficulties is to combine reflection with journalling – in other words, writing or keying responses to a series of reflective questions. The very act of writing down or keying up your responses to these questions enables you to get your thoughts “out of your head”, understand what you are thinking and why, name your feelings and begin to view the conflicted situation from the perspective of the other person. There is nothing like empathy, putting yourself in the other person’s shoes, to dissipate resentment.

In the following sections I offer a series of reflective questions covering a range of topic areas related to unearthing and reducing resentment. If a question or series of questions do not resonate with you at this point in time, do not worry about it or try to force a response – just move on. Sometimes it takes only one question to break down the wall of resentment.

Reflections about events that resurface your resentment

What was the catalyst for the re-emergence of your resentment? Was it a specific event, news report, social media comment or interaction with, or sighting of, the other person involved?
What was your behaviour when the catalyst occurred? Did you spend your time talking to others, recalling the precipitating event from the past and intensifying your agitation by re-telling the story? If it was an interaction or sighting, did you express your anger, act curtly towards the other person or avoid them entirely for fear that either you or they would act inappropriately?
Are there other external events or interactions that reinforce or intensify your feelings? For example, the precipitating event in the past may have involved misrepresentation of facts and/or false accusations. Untruths or misrepresentations reported in the press or false accusations made about another person on social media, may intensify your feelings of resentment (even though the misrepresentation or false accusation reported may have limited direct impact on you).
Do you experience a desire for revenge – wishing some misfortune for the other person?

Reflections about the initial, precipitating event or interaction

What was the initial precipitating event or interaction? What actually happened? Sometimes just recalling the situation may diffuse your resentment because, in the light of hindsight, the issue may seem so trivial now. Alternatively, being accurate about what actually happened, not your interpretation of the event or interaction (nor your assumptions about the other person’s motivation), can help you become more clearly focused on your thoughts, judgments and residual feelings.
What was the impact of the initial event/interaction for you? What happened as a result? How did you feel at the time – embarrassed, angry, defensive, distracted, antagonistic? Did you have a strong sense of injustice, unfairness or dishonesty? Did insensitivity from the other person compound your feelings of hurt and resentment?
What identity issues were playing out for you? Was your integrity unfairly challenged? Was there a baseless claim that created a situation where you had to publicly defend yourself? What impact did the event/interaction have on your personal and/or professional reputation? How did it impact your sense of self and achievement of your purpose in life?

What sensitivity on your part was aroused by the precipitating event/interaction?

Is there anything in your early family experience that made you particularly sensitive about what happened during the precipitating event/interaction? Did you feel abandoned, criticised unjustly, neglected (your needs not being met), isolated, unsupported or abused? How did these feelings tap into any prior experience? Did the event/interaction uncover what was a “blind spot” for you?
Were your words and actions at the time disproportionate to what the other person said or did? Did your response highlight a particular personal sensitivity?
What judgments have you formed about the other person? Do you consider the other person thoughtless, lazy, dishonest, ungrateful, mean, disrespectful or revengeful? Do you believe that they would lie under any circumstance or that they believe “the end justifies the means”? Do you think they are a freeloader or that they trade on their family/business name? What do these thoughts/judgments say about your own values?
What assumptions have you made about their motivation? What is the basis for these assumptions? What do these assumptions say about you and your goals? Are you a competitive person?

Reflections from the perspective of the other person

There are several ways to explore the perspective of the other person. Here are three areas for reflection to gain a better understanding of what it all meant for them.

How they experienced the precipitating event/interaction – their concerns, feelings and identity issues

What happened for the other person in the initial interaction/event? Did they consider themselves exposed, threatened, embarrassed or under attack? Were their words and actions designed to achieve self-protection? What potential loss could they have faced in the situation? Were they trying to “save face”? [Tim Dalmau, when explaining the perspective of NLP, stated that the starting point for understanding others is to realise that “their behaviour, however self-defeating, is self-caring”]
How do you think the other person felt? They may have felt locked in, unable to think of another way out of their dilemma. They could have felt vulnerable, insecure or exposed. They may have felt that they had failed in some respect. They could have been experiencing non-specific anger and lashed out at the first person they interacted with. They could have been depressed, anxious and wary. What feelings do you think could have been at play for them?
What identity issues were involved for the other person? How were they trying to protect their sense of self-worth? What was at stake for them in terms of their sense of competency, their perception of their own goodness and self-assessment of their lovability?

Pressures and stresses experienced by the other person

What kind of stress was the other person experiencing? Did they have marital/relationship problems, financial difficulties, job insecurity, illness in the family or personal ill-health? Did they have a carer role?
Were there parental pressures, peer perceptions or social/work expectations at play for them? Were they just modelling the behaviour of their hierarchy? Was parental acceptance and financial support dependent on their achieving “success”? – a conditional parental love? What would happen to them if they were cut adrift by their parents and/or left without social support? How would they cope mentally if their external source of self-definition was removed? Did they grow up in a family where there was no moral compass or a morality dependent on what was needed to achieve a desired outcome?

Putting yourself in their place – empathy and forgiveness

In what way were their words and actions designed to be “self-caring”?
Have you ever engaged in the same behaviours that you ascribe to the other person? Empathy and compassion flow from honesty with yourself – if you maintain the “moral high ground”, despite evidence to the contrary, then you will have real difficulty in being empathetic towards another person.
Can you forgive yourself for your own behaviour during the precipitating event and, subsequently, when you have “maintained the rage” and indulged in resentment? Self-forgiveness may take a long time to achieve and repeated attempts at a forgiveness meditation.
Are you able to forgive the other person? Forgiveness is easier when you have built up your understanding of the other person and their actions.

Turning intention into action

You might intend to be less resentful, but how are you going to put this intention into action? There are four questions that can help you in this process of translating intention into action:

What are you going to do more of? – e.g. reflecting on what it meant for the other person and what are their driving forces/influences (trying to understand their perspective in all its elements – thoughts, feelings, consequences, identity issues).
What are you going to do less of? – e.g. this could be less re-visiting of the precipitating situation and/or less negative judging of the other person’s behaviour.
What are you going to stop doing? – e.g. telling other people your side of the story and/or “bad mouthing” the other person (elicits support and sympathy for your perspective and reinforces your resentment).
What are you going to start doing? – e.g. approach the other person with an open mind and heart.

I am not suggesting that overcoming resentment is easy – but reducing resentment is possible with persistent effort, e.g through the suggested meditations and reflections. Resentment is typically a very strong emotion that is deeply rooted in our psyche and held in place by our assumptions. Unless resentment is tackled, it can eat away at you and lead to physical and psychological health problems. It is important to chip away at resentment, to dig up its roots and to break down the walls that it creates. Persistent personal work will lead to lasting results.

As we grow in mindfulness (particularly inner awareness) through meditation and reflection we can gradually reduce our resentment and develop self-forgiveness and forgiveness for others. Compassion grows out of a deepening understanding of the other person.

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Image by FarfOuille 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.

Forgiveness: Forgiving Our Self and Others

Forgiveness is challenging because it is not a one-off event. We are continually hurt by others and hurt them, often unconsciously. It is one thing to forgive others for words and/or actions that are hurtful and another thing to forgive ourselves for the hurt we cause. According to recent research, mindfulness can improve our tendency to forgiveness and our willingness to forgive a past offense, according to

Developing a tendency to forgive others

If we are able to develop a mindful disposition – consciously monitoring our physical, mental and emotional health – we are better able to reduce our negativity and improve our likelihood to forgive. When we feel hurt by someone, we can harbour the negative emotions of anger and resentment – feelings that become compounded by the re-telling of the story of the hurtful action to others. We can become obsessed with our rightfulness in the situation and elaborate on how much we have been wronged, entrenching our feelings of hurt and anger.

Mindfulness can help us to name these negative feelings and learn to tame them. It can give us insight into our own sensitivities and the pattern of our own emotional responses. In a conflict situation, it can also help us to understand the perspective of the other person who has, consciously or unconsciously, hurt us. In the process, it can assist us to develop a tendency to forgive others.

Forgiving our self: a lifelong process

It is one thing to forgive others for the hurt they cause us; it is another task – often more challenging – to forgive our self for the hurt we cause others. For one thing, we tend to be blind to the way we hurt others – we often will not let our recollection of these events reach conscious awareness because they are perceived as damaging to our self-esteem – our sense of our own (superior) worthiness.

There is also the difficulty of dealing with the very strong negative emotions of guilt and shame, once we have surfaced our recollection of our own hurtful words and actions. These emotions are hard to deal with and require a concerted, conscious effort to overcome them – a process involving lifelong learning and reflection.

Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection, offers a forgiveness meditation in her article, Practise Self-Compassion with Forgiveness. The meditation begins with focusing on forgiveness towards others and then our attention is directed to forgiveness of ourselves.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop a mindful disposition, an understanding of the perspective and hurt of others and awareness of our ingrained feelings of hurt (and related sensitivities). We can gradually, with concerted effort, develop the tendency to forgive others (for present and past hurts) and, at the same time, slowly develop self-forgiveness for the hurt we have caused others.

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Image by Alexas_Fotos 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.

Our Self-Stories Perpetuate Anxiety

We live in an anxious world where the prevalence of anxiety disorder has reached epidemic proportions in Australia, even in primary school children. This increasing level of anxiety disorder is mirrored in the reported experience in America. Underlying this growth in anxiety are self-stories that have a significant, negative impact on relationships. A core problem encountered when trying to eliminate these negative self-stories is the range of forces that keep them in place and cement their hold over us.

Tara Brach, in her course on overcoming negative beliefs and patterns of thought, argues that fear-based stories dominate our mental maps. In respect to our relationships, these stories suggest what we should be and what others should be – an impossible realisation that generates anxiety because of the gap between our self-perception/ perception of others and some idealised reality.

How self-stories are maintained

Tara argues that there are three factors that sustain our self-stories and perpetuate our anxiety:

Our self-stories involve “deep groves in the psyche” – we continuously repeat an inner dialogue that creates neural pathways that deepen over time as the cycle of thought- fear-manifestation becomes more deeply embedded through repetition. Fear generates a biochemical reaction which becomes an automated response and maintains the experience of anxiety as a persistent state.
We are reticent to share our self-stories that betray our uncertainty, anxiety and inability to cope. We keep them to ourselves and, because we do not expose them to the “light of day” by sharing them with others, we become more and more captured by them and identified with them over time.
We cling to these negative self-stories because they give us a semblance of control which is illusory. We maintain these stories because they are reinforced by our distorted perception of our past experience. As Tara points out, we prefer to have “a deficient map rather than no map at all” – even though this gives us a false sense of security. The “disease to please” is one such deficient map.

Breaking the cycle of anxiety-producing self-stories

Tara maintains that it takes a lot of courage, persistence and self-compassion to break down the anxiety-inducing, negative self-stories. The more difficult self-stories to counter are those that are based on a perception that our life situation will only worsen not get better – a precursor to depression.

It takes courage to face up to the self-stories that negatively impact our relationships and to look beyond the stories to what underlies them, e.g. fear of rejection. It takes persistence to continue this self-exploration despite relapses brought on by self-recrimination over beliefs such as “this should not be happening to me” or “I should not be like this”. In the final analysis, it requires self-compassion and self-forgiveness to break out of the vicious cycle of self-talk that perpetuates anxiety.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection and other mindfulness practices, we can throw some light on our self-stories that negatively impact our relationships. With courage and persistence, we can break the anxiety-producing cycle of these stories by accessing self-compassion and self-forgiveness.

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Image by skeeze on Pixabay

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

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.