Practice makes progress

Through my dabbling in Buddhism a great love of the idea of practices and practicing emerged.

When I was first exposed to the idea of mind training as a “practice,” I was really opposed to it. It was a visceral reaction and when I explored it further, I realized that my aversion was stemming from an idea that the actions and behaviors that have become habitual for me were “natural.” I thought that practicing a different way of being, thinking, and behaving was going against what was “naturally Mary”.

Then I had to ask myself whether I loved all of my thoughts and behaviors and thought they were effective to achieve the ends I was seeking. You can probably guess what the answer was.

I decided to give some of the Buddhist practices a try. One simple, but nevertheless difficult to execute, practice was to not kill anything. I’m not a natural born killer by any means, but I was in the see-a-bug-and-stomp-on-it camp for a while. And, what’s worse, I did it totally unthinkingly. Especially if it was a spider. Get the shoe. You know what I mean?

But then I became one of those people who does spider and bug relocation. I don’t love spiders so it took some self-control to remain calm at first. I had to practice reacting in a new way. Now it’s second nature.

Relative to some other practices we can adopt, spider relocation is easy. Try practicing non-judgment or flipping negative thoughts in an effort to shift your perspective. Try practicing kindness.

Really. Try it. Since it’s a practice it is also:

a) experimental, b) set for a finite time, and c) allows for you to screw up over and over again. After all, you’re just practicing.

So you could feasible attempt to practice kindness for the next hour and never get it “right”, and still feel like you accomplished something. That something is awareness. Which is sort of like the Buddhist “get out of jail free” card. (I kid.)

It’s helpful if our practices are specific. So it would be even more feasible to practice smiling and maintaining eye contact in every interaction you have with a co-worker, family member or store cashier for the next hour.

It’s also helpful if our practices are framed as “do’s” instead of “don’ts” or “won’ts.” Because you can’t do a “don’t.”* If you say I won’t be mean, but you’re accustomed to being mean, what will you do instead? If it’s not already your established habit, you’ll reach for something in a good-faith effort to practice your practice, but you may not find anything if you didn’t establish possibilities for new behaviors when you set your intention. Thus, the suggestion to offer a smile and maintain eye contact, rather than saying, “don’t be such a jerk to cashiers, Mary!”

What are you (inspired to begin) practicing?

*Hat tip to Marshall Rosenburg for this idea.

Photo Credit: Bill Hails

Rearview Mirror Syndrome

“…(Marshall McLuhan) contends that most of us are incapable of understanding the impact of new media because we are like drivers whose gaze is fixed not on where we are going but on where we came from. It is not even a matter of seeing through the windshield but darkly. We are seeing clearly enough, but we are looking in the rearview mirror.”*

The usefulness and insight of this metaphor extends well beyond new media.

It is one of the ways we get stuck on the path to a more deliberate and happier life. We see ourselves and our corner of the world through the rearview mirror.

Looking through the rearview mirror, we see or create continuity in our lives, firming up a dynamic self often in ways that do not serve us. When we keep looking backward, it is easy to get stuck in who we’ve been, what we’ve done, and what we’ve had. We start to think this is who we are, what we’re capable of and what we deserve. Period.

What about looking forward through the windshield and imagining new possibilities for ourselves and our lives, challenging ourselves to be, do or have more than we have been, done or had in the past? Even in the absence of “evidence” from our lived experience that this is possible.  Though I assure you, if you go looking for it, you’ll find some “evidence” in your past to help support the future person you’d like to be. Evidence is often found in anything that disrupts the continuity of the story of who you are. I want to be X but I’m not a risk-taker. But there was that one time…

This is what I mean by human potential. We can’t see what we’re capable of or imagine a bigger, bolder, happier (insert your dream “-er” here) life for ourselves by looking backwards.

And we limit ourselves, too, when we look to past models about how to live and mistake them for the only options. When we overlay past models onto our paths we take a personal, winding road and turning it into a superhighway. A pre-mapped venture rather than the organic, wild adventure that will occur when we’re looking through the windshield and keep moving forward, no matter how far we can see or how clear the view.

* Marshall McLuhan’s “Rearview Mirror Syndrome” metaphor as described by Neil Postman in Teaching as a Subversive Activity (also in the running for one of my favorite books of all time).

Photo is from my personal vault.

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

(de)LIBERATE yourself.

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I’ve been thinking, writing and talking about some version of deliberate living for a while. Sometimes I call it choice-full living, conscious living, living on purpose, intentional living. I also love Chris Guillebeau’s conception of these similar ideas—he calls it the Art of Non-Conformity. It's true, living deliberately is a non-conformist act.

The main reason I chose to use the world deliberate is because of what is contained within it—deLIBERATE.

Living intentionally and being choice-full about our decisions, actions, and behaviors liberates us from the status quo and from acting in accordance with amorphous but well understood societal expectations we may or may not resonate with.

Being in touch with our deepest values, frees our mindspace from drama, worry, anxiety, confusion, and angst that are often brought on trying to “live up” to expectations that we ourselves never consciously chose for ourselves. These are replaced by a mindful awareness of what’s most important to us, which guides us along choice by choice, moment by moment, and which grows in parallel to our conviction to act in alignment with our beliefs.

Guided by an internal compass, we are free from trying to follow the single route on the societal map to success—a sadly one-size-fits-all formula for a population of wildly unique individuals.

 Photo Credit: Walt Stoneburner

That's what I want.

Where do you see yourself in one-year? Five-years? Thirty years? We are encouraged to think about these things, set goals, and create strategies (we usually call them “plans”) to achieve them. For me this is an anxiety provoking activity because it directs my thinking only to professional accomplishments (the career path) and to specific personal accomplishments that are linked to things (buying a house, buying a nice car, buying a boat) or to fulfilling cultural norms (getting married, taking sweet vacations, having kids, etc).

Though thinking about where we want our career and personal lives to go can certainly be useful, I wonder why we don’t spend time reflecting on who and how we want to be in addition to what we want to have.

Especially because when we think of what we want to have or accomplish, it points directly to how we want to be, what we need and value and, the big one, how we want to feel.

What we want is directly related to the feeling we believe we will experience when we get it.

Here’s a personal example:

When I was a student, I never wanted to cease being a student. I excelled in the academic environment and was rewarded with good grades. Naturally, I decided to extend my education, attend college and then graduate school. Being a professor, I thought, would be supremely awesome because I’d get paid to hang out forever in the academic world.

There was one problem though. I hated graduate school. It was a rude awakening for me about politics in academia. It wasn’t just about learning, researching, reading, and teaching. I slogged it out for two years enduring all kinds of physical ailments (a good indicator for me that I’m out of alignment with my values) and mental anguish. It was difficult, but I finally decided to leave.

This happened four years ago and it’s taken all four of those years (and the 23 before them) for me to understand that graduate school and academia was a strategy.

It wasn’t that I wanted the PhD or the career of a professor, per say. It was that I assumed that those things would give me: a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and contribution, meaning in my life, a constant well of creativity and stimulation in ways that mattered to me, and a whole host of other things that would meet needs that I have. And when those needs were met I’d be happy.

It was difficult and devastating to make the decision to leave graduate school and walk into the great Unknown because I was so attached to that strategy as “the one” that would lead to happiness.

What’s so expansive to realize now is that there are infinite strategies that can stimulate the feelings we want to be feeling and to contribute to the needs we are trying to meet. The key is to be in touch with what we want to be feeling and then to examine many elements of our lives and ask ourselves: Are these activities bringing me more into alignment with the feelings I want to feel, or less? And then, make changes accordingly.

How do you want to feel?