space – Grow Mindfulness

Clear the Clutter, Make Room for Love in Your Life

I woke up this morning with this blog title in my head but I am not sure where it came from. I have not been reading about clutter lately– maybe, it is an unconscious realisation that the time has come to attack my home office clutter again. My wife and I made a concerted effort to clear clutter in my home office a few months ago in one of our recreational breaks. We achieved clearing some paper clutter, re-organising books and bookshelves, and rearranging some furniture. It created a sense of space and some degree of control. One of the drivers for the change was Zoom meetings and conferences – the need to replace the creamy blank wall behind me with something a bit more engaging.

Behind me, I now have a tidy bookcase with some books thematically arranged (not alphabetically, that would be going too far!). So, I have groupings of books on mindfulness and self-development; action learning and action research; and manager & organisational development. These are three core areas I work in. One of the immediate benefits for me is that I can now readily find book references when I am writing my blog or preparing a manager development session.

I suspect that part of the reason for thinking about this topic again is that with the pandemic challenges and restrictions we will not be going overseas or interstate this year. This means that our Christmas break will provide some time to clean up, renovate and generally tidy up the house.

Clutter takes up space physically and mentally

Many of us lead busy lives with little time for cleaning up behind us as we rush through the commitments of each day. Clutter not only takes up physical space but it is also ever-present, sapping our energy. We waste time trying to find things that should be ready to hand (I have been as guilty of this as anyone).

I have recently created some piles of “stuff to file” in a fit of clearing clutter. One of my difficulties is throwing away papers/articles that “I might need later”. The reality is that I rarely get to use any of them and, besides, I often have electronic copies or links to their location online – I really do not need the hard copies. However, there is also an emotional attachment to some papers or articles – they are mementos of conquests, achievements, struggles, written work, or moments of joy. Sorting out “need” from emotional attachment can be very difficult. In the meantime, the piles of stuff (not only papers) create an energy drag because they always appear on my mental to-do list (I don’t record them on my written to-do list – I might have to do something about them if I did!).

Make room for love in your life

Clutter experts tell us that clearing clutter enables us to “reclaim our life”, and can make a “huge difference to our happiness and productivity”. Clutter represents stored energy. Clearing clutter can improve our lifestyle and help us to restore our priorities, such as making room and time for those we love.

Marie Kondo argues that it is all a matter of mindset and the development of the habit of tidying once a major clean-up is undertaken. She also suggests that you should clear things up by theme (e.g. books, clothes) rather than by rooms or locations within the house. However, we may not have time to clear our clutter on a large scale or the commitment to undertake the level of disciplined rigour that Marie suggests. To me, making progress in clearing clutter does provide, as Marie suggests, a sense of achievement and motivation to develop and sustain the habit of tidying up. Marie’s philosophy is that big wins early on, provide the fuel for sustaining the effort of clutter clearing.

Reflection

The title of this post and subsequent discussion suggest that there is an opportunity cost to clutter. One aspect of that cost is losing time and energy for those we love. Clutter, too, can be one of the blockages to finding stillness and silence in our life and the opportunity to grow in mindfulness. Christine Jackman, in her book Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World, maintains that our busyness and cluttered lives stop us from really listening to those we love and hearing the important stories in our daily life, e.g. stories from partners and children. She argues that listening for understanding “is as simple as pausing in silence and opening our hearts”.

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Image by Andreas Lischka 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 Equanimity through Meditating on the Elements of Nature

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

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

Equanimity through five elements of nature

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

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

Reflection

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

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

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Image by enriquelopezgarre 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.

Developing Kindness through Meditation

Neuroscientists tell us that we become what we focus on because the act of focusing and paying attention creates new or deepened neural pathways in our brain. So if we are constantly obsessed with criticism – finding fault – then this stance begins to pervade our whole life, and nothing will ever satisfy us. So too if we develop kindness through meditation, our thoughts and actions become kinder towards ourselves and others.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA, offers a specific guided meditation designed to develop kindness. This meditation podcast is one of the weekly podcasts offered by Diana or one of her colleagues on a weekly basis through MARC – drawing on personal experience, dedicated research and the wisdom of the global mindfulness community. The kindness meditation as with most MARC meditations begins with being grounded and then moves to offering kindness to ourselves followed by kindness to others.

Becoming grounded in meditation

There are multiple ways to become grounded – becoming focused, still and fully present. Often, we can start with deep breathing to enable our body and mind to relax and increase awareness of our bodily sensations. This enables our focus to move inwards and away from the distractions and intensity of the day – away from the anxiety, negative thoughts and worries associated with meeting deadlines, doing presentations, dealing with conflict or challenging interactions with colleagues or salespeople in stores and supermarkets.

Once we gain some sense of balance and ease with deep breathing, we can move on to undertake a body scan. This entails progressively noticing the various parts of our body and related bodily sensations, releasing any tension and tightness as we progress. We can observe the firmness of our feet on the floor, straightness of our back, weight of our thighs on the seat, the pressure on our back from the chair and the tingling and warmth from energy flow in our fingers. Observation will lead to awareness of tension which we can release as we go – tautness in our shoulders and arms, rigidity in our stomach, stiffness in our neck or tightness in our jaw, forehead or around the eyes. It is important to focus on tension release and not seek to work out why we are so uptight or tense or, even more importantly, to avoid “beating up” on ourselves or being unkind towards our self because of the “failing” or deficiency” represented by our tension.

Finding our anchor in meditation

The next stage of the meditation is to find an anchor that we can continuously return to in the event of distractions or loss of focus – an anchor to stop us from being carried away by the tide of our thoughts or emotions. An anchor is a personal choice – what works for one person, may not work for another. Typically people choose their breath, sounds in the room or some physical contact point.

You can focus in on your breath – bringing your attention to where you most readily experience breathing – in your chest, through your nose or in your abdomen. For instance, you can increase your awareness of the rise and fall of your abdomen with each breath and choose to rest in the space between your in-breath and out-breath.

Another possible anchor is listening to the sounds in your room – listening without interpreting, not trying to identify the nature or source of a sound and avoiding assigning a feeling, positive or negative, to the sound. You can develop a personal preference for using your “room tone” as your anchor.

Choosing a physical contact point in your body is a useful anchor because it enables you to ground yourself wherever you happen to be – whether at work or home or travelling. It can help you to turn to awareness rather than your phone whenever you have waiting time. An example is to focus on the firmness of your feet on the ground, the floor of your room or the floor of your car (when it is not moving!). My personal preference is to anchor myself by joining my fingers together and feeling the sensations of warmth, energy and strength that course through the points of contact of the fingers.

Whatever you choose as an anchor, the purpose is to be enable you to return your attention to the focus of your meditation and, in the process, build your awareness muscle. As Diana reminds us, “minds do wander” – we can become “lost in thought”, distracted by what’s happening around us, planning our day, worrying about an important meeting, thinking of the next meal, analysing a political situation or indulging in any one of numerous ways that we “live in our minds”.

Throughout the process of grounding, it is important to be kind to our self – not berating our self for inattention or loss of focus, not assigning negative labels to our self, such as “weak”, “distractible”, or any other derogatory term.

Kindness meditation

The kindness meditation begins with focusing on someone who is dear to us – our life partner, a family member, a work colleague or a close friend. Once you have brought the person into focus, the aim is to extend kind intentions to them – you might wish them peace and tranquillity, protection and safety, good health and strength, happiness and equanimity, the ease of wellness or a combination of these desirable states.

You can now envisage yourself receiving similar or different expressions of kind intentions from the same person. This can be difficult to do – so we need to be patient with this step and allow our self to be unsuccessful at the start (without self-criticism or unkindness towards our self). We can try to become absorbed in, and fully present to, the positive feeling of being appreciated and loved. Drawing on our memories of past expressions of kindness by the focal person towards us, can help us overcome the barriers to self-kindness.

You can extend your meditation by focusing your loving kindness meditation on others, particularly those people you have difficulty with or are constantly in conflict with. We can also extend our kindness meditation by forgiving our self and others for hurt that has been caused.

Reflection

Kindness meditation helps us to grow in mindfulness – to become more aware of others, the ways we tend to diminish our self, our bodily sensations and our thoughts and feelings. It assists us to develop self-regulation – learning to maintain focus and attention, controlling our anger and criticism (of our self and others) and being open to opportunities and possibilities. Through the focus on kindness, we can become kinder to our self and others (even those we have difficulty with).

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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.

Doing That Meaningful Work You Have Been Avoiding

Leo Babauta, creator of the blog Zen Habits, reminds us that we each invariably have one meaningful task, endeavour or initiative that we keep putting off. We find excuses, maintain our busyness, visit the fridge, go out for coffee or adopt any number of tactics to avoid facing up to the challenge of doing the one meaningful thing that we know we ought to do. Leo describes this process of procrastination as our “habituated avoidance.”

What meaningful work are you avoiding?

Your avoidance may relate to developing a solution to a seemingly intractable problem; doing that significant blog post about a controversial topic; engaging with a particular ethnic group; volunteering your services to a charity; offering a special service to a group in need; joining a Men’s Shed; or undertaking any other meaningful work.

Factors that could contribute to your habituated avoidance of the meaningful work can be many and varied, e.g. the work takes you out of your comfort zone; there is a chance you could be embarrassed; you may “fail” in what you are setting out to do; it could require significant courage to undertake the work; you could be perceived to be an “upstart”; or you might be challenged because you lack specific professional qualifications.

One of the things that I have been putting off that would fall into this category of meaningful work is the development and conduct of guided meditations via an online conference platform. The reality is that through this blog (with over 350 posts) and its numerous hyperlinks to resources, I have what I need to create these guided meditations. I also have experience conducting online conferences and have access to an online conference platform. But what is stopping me from developing these valuable events? I know that part of the reason is my uncertainty about the reliability of the online conference platform (or is this just an excuse?). I find that even in the downtime between meetings with clients, planning training activities, facilitating workshops and writing this blog, I do not embrace the challenge of creating these online guided meditations – even when I have surplus time in my life. To me, an important first step is to revisit the reason why the avoided “work” is significant or meaningful.

Revisiting your intention

Why is the work/task/endeavour meaningful? What group or individual (family member, friend or work colleague) will benefit from your undertaking this work? What are their needs that you can meet or partially address? In what way would your activity make a difference or improve the quality of their life?

For example, The process of online guided meditations would enable me to help people who are experiencing anxiety or depression, mental health conditions that have reached epidemic proportions. It would provide a way for them to connect with other people, use mindfulness to address some aspect of their adverse mental health condition, become aware of resources and support that are available to them and learn techniques and mindfulness practices that they can use outside the guided meditation experience.

Revisiting your intention in doing the meaningful work is important to tap into the motivation and energy needed to take the necessary steps to make that meaningful endeavour happen. Spending time meditating on this intention can help to energise you to take action – and overcome the internal objections, self-doubts and excuses for inaction. Leo offers three easy ways to translate this intention into action.

A simple Three-Step Method for getting your meaningful work done

Leo offers a 3-step method that is simple, time efficient and workable (he uses it himself with great effect! – you don’t create a blog with 2 million readers without successfully pushing through the inertia or the procrastination barrier).

Create a space (a brief period that you can free up) – Leo suggests that this can even be 15 minutes, but it is important to start now (or very soon so you don’t put it off).
Meditate on meaning and feelings – tap back into your intention and what gives the planned work meaning or significance. Having captured this meaning in your mind, do a body scan to tap into any fear, resistance, tension, anxiety or worry that you may be experiencing as the meaningful work comes clearer into focus – in the process release the tightness, pain or soreness. Then really focus your attention on the people you will be helping – tap into your feelings, sense of loving-kindness, towards them (and experience your own positive emotions that accompany compassionate action).
Do the smallest next step – do something that will progress your meaningful work, no matter how small it seems to you. Translating intention into action, however small, sets your momentum in the right direction. Small actions build to larger steps which, in turn, increase energy; provide reinforcement; develop motivation; and offer personal reward.

As you adopt these techniques for advancing your meaningful work, you will grow in mindfulness (internal and external awareness) and build your capacity to pursue creative endeavours to make a real difference for individuals or a group. The insights gained will help you overcome inertia in relation to other things that you need to get done and the experience of overcoming procrastination in relation to your meaningful work, will flow into other arenas of your life.

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Image by Anemone123 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.

Savor The Space Of Being Alone

People who experience loneliness as a constant state are prone to all kinds of issues such as disinterest, disengagement and depression as well as physical illness. The feeling of loneliness is a serious issue today, not only for older people but also the young, including school children.

People can feel lonely even in a crowd or large group if they feel they do not belong, especially if no one reaches out to them with compassion to draw them into the wider circle. The UK Government is so concerned about the impact of loneliness on people’s health and welfare that they have appointed a Minister of Loneliness.

Gretchen Rubin points out, however, that being alone is not the same as loneliness which feels draining, distracting, and upsetting. In her view, being alone or experiencing solitude can be peaceful, creative and restorative – it all depends on how you use the time when alone. Gretchen is the author of The Happiness Project.

Introverts may crave time alone after suffering extended periods of exposure to others; extroverts, on the other hand, may crave the company of friends because they derive their energy from social interaction.

Whether we are introverts or extroverts, we can have the tendency to use alone-time to occupy ourselves rather than confront ourselves. We may experience boredom and look for ways to allay this feeling rather than savor the opportunity and freedom it presents.

Being alone creates the space and opportunity to attend to our own internal and external environment. We can get in touch with our own feelings, rather than ignore them; we can question who we are and what we stand for, rather than hiding from ourselves. This exploration of our internal landscape may turn up some unpleasant findings, but we are then in a position to deal with the issues involved.

We can also really take notice of our external environment – getting in touch with all our senses in a peaceful and calming way. Haruki Murakami, author of Norwegian Wood, gives a wonderful illustration of focus on the sense of sight when one of his characters describes what he sees:

Every now and then, red birds with tufts on their heads would flit across our path, brilliant against the blue sky. The fields around us were filled with white and blue and yellow flowers, and bees buzzed everywhere. Moving ahead, one step at a time, I thought of nothing but the scene passing before my eyes. (p.180)

You can sense the contentment expressed here – something that we can experience in our time alone.

The 5 minute gratitude practice advanced by Elaine Smookler enables us to use our outer landscape to explore our inner world of feelings, especially of appreciation. This is an excellent way to use the space in our lives provided by being alone.

Being alone frees us from the need to talk, to engage with others, or to follow the conversation. It provides the opportunity to explore within and without.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation we will be better able to savour being alone and the opportunity it provides to explore our inner and outer landscape. This can be a source of self-awareness and other-awareness, of contentment and of appreciation and gratitude.

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

Image source: courtesy of pixel2013 on Pixabay

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