Fear at Game Time

"Imagine that you're a team coach and you're giving your emotions a pep talk before the game. 'So how's everyone feeling about the game?' you shout.

Enthusiasm shouts back, 'I am stoked! Can't wait to get on the field!' and pumps the air with his fists, smiling, looking to everyone to smile. Anxiety is pacing in the back of the room, in his own world, and looks up briefly to say, 'I am so scared I could puke,' and keeps on pacing. Abandonment Issues says, 'Look, if we don't score in the first quarter, we should take the ball and go home-- end it before they do, you know. But, hey, I'm in!' As the coach, you're nodding, listening to each player intently, and assessing which players to put in the lead for your best chances of victory.

Fear stands up. 'Are y'all crazy? If I lose this game, I'll never play in this town again.' And then Fear starts picking on the other players. 'Enthusiasm, it just ain't natural to be that happy; you gotta get real. And anxiety! Shit, if you get on the field and have a freeze attack, we all go down.'

Finally you step in, 'All right, McFearstein, we appreciate your point of view, and you've got some good points. Now let's listen to the others.' Just like all of your emotions, Fear just wants to be seen and heard.

Confidence (who is also the team captain) says, 'I'm feeling steady. If we stay focused, this win is ours. And when we win, the offers will start pouring in.' Insecurity says, 'If you want me on the bench, I, I understand, Coach.' Well, if that's where you want to be, then that's where you'll be, you think to yourself.

Pragmatic shrugs and nods at the same time: 'Odds are stacked in our favor. Anything could happen.' Love raises her hand, 'Listen you're all fucking amazing! And I believe in every single one of you!' Woot.

Time to drop some truth bombs Coach. Time to lead, not accommodate. You can't let Fear steal more air time. And Anxiety is hanging out on the edge distracting everyone. Here's how it's got to go down: 'I echo what Love said. You're all amazing. We're contenders. Enthusiasm, you're in front; Confidence and Pragmatic have got your back. Abandonment Issues, your job is to trust your instincts. You will know when it's right to pass the ball-- we trust you. Anxiety, you're alert, and we need that on the team. You need to stay close to Confidence. The important thing to do is just stay in the game-- keep playing.

'Fear, thanks for looking out for us. Yep, we could fail, it's possible. This is risky. But we'll come out on top no matter what, because that's who we are. You've done your job, and now you'll be playing from the bench.'

When you can see fear as just an emotion that's hanging out with all of your other emotions, you gain some clearer perspective. It's not superior, and it's not even inferior. It's just an emotion that you can choose to focus on or not."

This is an excerpt from Danielle LaPorte's Fire Starter Sessions. It's one of the best things I've read about dealing with fear. Plus I was cracking up as I read it. Good information, inspiration, and humor. Can't beat that.

Showing up.

Perhaps as a symptom of my perfectionism (which I didn’t know I had until I read Brene Brown's Daring Greatly), I thought I had to, or at the very least could, fix transform my habits and traits before I went out and interacted with the dynamic world as a me I was really happy with.

But the past four years of adventuring and consistently disturbing the bounds of my comfort zone revealed a different strategy to me.

I’ve stepped into dynamic situations which called upon certain traits in me, at whatever level of development—highly polished to seriously scraggly—and revealed an even greater capacity— to be flexible, kind, strong— than I thought I had.

I’ve started to see myself as less fixed and more dynamic. Traits were called up like numbers in a Bingo game and, much to my surprise, they responded.

For example, imagine: You are alone, it’s dark and your hotel room is ½  a mile away. The only way to get there is on a dirt path through the woods by foot (no motorized transport on this island). Oh, and you’re freaked.out.scared. That was a situation I created for myself by meeting a friend for a piña colada at a restaurant half way in between where each of us was staying on Little Corn Island in Nicaragua.

Courage was called up like B7 and I was like BINGO. Yes I felt fear and for a moment it felt all encompassing, but then courage arose. Right on cue.

After the situation was over and I was safe, I got to add to my courage bank. The accumulation of these kinds of experiences (where courage or any other given quality is called upon) helps me to think of myself as more courageous.

I don’t have to will myself to be something I feel I’m not; I just show up to my life willingly, see what it asks of me, and notice what rises up in response. 

To enhance this process, I’ve been working on noticing when I have a fixed view of myself which isn’t serving me: Mary is like this, therefore she doesn’t/won’t/can’t do that. Then I actively call up exceptions in my mind. We can usually think of at least one exception which means we have some currency in the bank of the traits we want to build on.

p.s. On Little Corn Island I ran the whole way back, figuring any crazy animals or persons hiding in the woods would think I was even crazier. I highly recommend this technique for women feeling scared in foreign countries. I should also say that Little Corn is very safe because the economy is entirely dependent on tourism. My fear, like my courage, was self-created.

Photo credit: bridges&balloons

Super hero mind powers. Or, What's the best that could happen?

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

Sometimes we ask folks this in an attempt to help them see that some situation won’t be that bad. What’s the worst that could happen? You’re not going to die.

The problem with this question, is that we start thinking about the worst that could happen. All our mental energy goes to creating a list (no matter how outrageous) of terrifying possibilities. And we make it easy for ourselves to get stuck right here.

I could die. I probably won’t but I could. Or I might embarrass myself and just want to die. I could lose my job, not be able to provide for my family and…yada yada yada.

I’ve gotta give it to us, we are skilled in the art of possibility creation.

Some folks call this imagination. It’s one of our super-hero mind powers.

And taking a cue from all the good super heroes, we ought to use it for good, not evil. Use your super-hero mind power to fight the crime in your mind.

Ok, so it’s not a crime to think up terrifying possibilities, but it is a darn shame given that we can use the same incredible power to think up exciting, motivating, and inspiring possibilities.

Instead ask, “What’s the best that could happen?” 

Photo Credit: >Rooners

The Connection Manifesto.

This is the first post in a series designed to bridge the gap between ideas and action. I love the world of ideas, but the fact remains that lack of information is not the problem in our culture. There's plenty of good information, readily available. We have an action problem.

These practices and exercises will ask you to do something if you feel compelled. (Often we do feel compelled to try things out, but we stop ourselves and excuses ourselves. Not everything I post will call to you, but when one does, go!)

The first exercise asks us to examine how we want to be in our relationships and interactions. We spend a lot of time in our culture thinking of how we are (as if our identities are fixed) or how we were (in the past). We spend less time pondering how we'd like to be. In the ideal.

Living deliberately (which I wrote about here), with integrity, means we have to know what we stand for and the kind of person we want to be.

This exercise, from The Buddha's Brain by Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, guides us in this endeavor:

 

"Now write your personal code of unilateral relationship virtues. This could be a handful of words. Or more extensive dos and don’ts. Whatever its form, aim for language that is powerful and motivating, that makes sense to your heard and touches your heart. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be useful, and you can always revise it later."

"Personal code of unilateral relationship virtures" sounds a little, ummm, stiff to me. So I call my list The Connection Manifesto. (I like manifestos, maybe you've noticed?) Here it is:

Keep empathy at the forefront my awareness.

Listen attentively.

Whenever possible, leave it (mood, energy level/quality, level of inspiration) better than you found it.

At the very least: Do no harm

If you fail to meet this guideline, reach out later and make a repair.

Speak honestly to support living with integrity.

Remember: Human beings are complex creatures. Everyone is acting and speaking in an attempt to meet their needs. You don't have to understand why people do what they do to be kind. When people are rude, mean, or snarky, it's not about you, it's about them. 

I'm learning to apply the same rules in my interactions with myself as I stumble along trying again and again to put this into action. I aim to review my manifesto as often as possible (at least once per day) to help keep the guidelines in my awareness. As the guidelines are more and more in my awareness, so is my awareness of every violation. But, like I said, human beings are complex; I am not exempt. And I don't even have to understand my own self to be kind to myself as I practice.

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

Take it away Rilke!

For the next 10 days, I'll be at a Vipassana Meditation retreat. I will be meditating silently and surely encountering limits I've never know I had as I explore my mind. This is part of my goal to do one thing every month in 2013 that challenges me and allows me to point to my comfort zone from well outside of it. There you are comfort zone.

I have some posts lined up for while I'm away since I'll also be away from the interwebs. 
Stay tuned.


Today I thought I'd let Ranier Maria Rilke do the talking. These excerpts are from Letters to a Young Poet which is in the running for my favorite book of all time.

"But the fear of the inexplicable has not only impoverished the reality of the individual; it has also narrowed the relationship between one human being and another, which has as it were been lifted out of the riverbed of infinite possibilities and set down in a fallow place on the bank, where nothing happens. For it is not only indolence that causes human relationships to be repeated from case to case with such unspeakable monotony and boredom; it is timidity before any new, inconceivable experience, which we don’t think we can deal with. But only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the more incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths."

"For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and fourth. In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity the drives those prisoners in Poe’s stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us. We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us."
 

You can('t) teach an old brain new tricks.

 

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

It’d be a slightly less catchy, but still very cultural relevant to say “you can’t teach an old brain new tricks.” Lots of us hope hard that things can be different for us, but our habits are so engrained that it feels impossible to make a change. And young folks aren’t exempt. As a late-twenties gal, I’ve heard this sentiment echoed by my peers. That’s just the way I am, we say.

But it’s not the way you have to be.

This is what we're learning from the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). I love IPNB because it appeals to the badass-nerdy-scholar in me through its exploration how our brains and minds (inextricable linked) are shaped and reshaped by our own thoughts and by cultural influences. 

And guess what? This “shaping” never stops. Ever. You can teach an old brain (or any brain) new tricks.We are capable of making new neural connections whether we’re 8 or 80.

Brains are awesome.

And the extent to which this is true is, well, mind blowing.

“The number of possible combinations of 100 billion neurons (the number in your brain) firing or not is approximately 10 to the millionth power, or 1 followed by a million zeros, in principle; this is the number of possible states of your brain. To put this quantity in perspective, the number of atoms in the universe is estimated to be “only” about 10 to the eightieth power.”

You don’t have to be a brain scientist to recognize that’s a lot of opportunity.

Given this, you might be wondering why we end up acting in habitual ways when so many other possibilities abound. Or how we got like we are in the first place given the intricacies of the brain. Good wonderings. I'll explore IPNB and it’s relationship to human potential, personal growth, and living more deliberately in coming posts.

And if you just can’t wait, I highly recommend reading The Buddha’s Brain:The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom by Dr’s. Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius which is also the source of the quote above.

Photo Credit: hawkexpress