The Making of a Mind Master

a silhouette of a bird flying over a palm tree.

In his bestselling book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, author Robin Sharma wisely states: “The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.” The simple wisdom of these words speaks to the heart of the human experience, for to be human is to be in constant thought. It is to live inside an endless loop of inner chitter chatter about everything that is, was, and ever could be. Without the light of our awareness and the spirit of our conscious intention, we are bound to be the servants of our minds. And most of us know what it feels like to live this way, at the mercy of our own thoughts, consumed by the contents of our minds. But through subtle shifts in attention and the implementation of simple practices, we can enter a new relationship with our minds, becoming their masters and wielding their greatest potential.

Our minds are remarkably powerful, and they’re particularly good at three specific things: storytelling, meaning making, and time traveling. As a therapist and coach, I know all too well how heavily these functions of mind can impact people’s lives. When the mind is the master, the stories it tells, the meanings it makes, and the places it goes can create tremendous suffering. But I also know that while these activities of the mind can be enslaving, they can also serve as the doorways for liberation; they present an opportunity to become the mind’s master.

As storytelling machines, our minds run an ongoing narrative of everything that happens in our lives. The stories they tell us are captivating and distracting, holding our attention and heavily influencing our experience. Our minds can keep us from connecting with the present moment, because instead of attending to what’s happening in that moment, we’re caught up in the stories they tell us—either about what’s happening, or about something else altogether. It’s easy to feel disconnected when the mind is in control; while life unfolds right in front of us, our stories keep us trapped and unable to make contact.

To move from servitude to mastery, we must heighten our awareness of the mind’s propensity for storytelling. Through the development of practices like mindfulness and meditation, we can learn to notice when the stories in our minds are pulling us away from the present moment. The quicker we notice, the quicker and more effectively we can bring our attention back to our experience in the here-and-now. Becoming the master in this way means being more grounded, connected, and present to life.

Our minds are not only great at storytelling, they’re also pretty magnificent meaning-making machines. They interpret everything, filtering information through our personal biases and beliefs, and influencing how we make sense of the world. When we are servants to our minds, the meanings they make can blind and constrict us, keeping us stuck and limiting our perspective. We hold these interpretations—the meaning our minds generate about our experiences—as truths, and we get completely caught up in them. A great example of how this operates is a former client of mine, who came to me after suffering for 30 years from a sense of unworthiness. He shared with me that when he was in the 3rd grade, a couple of boys in his class teased him about his haircut, and a few other kids within earshot laughed along with them. The meaning my client made of that experience was that he was an “unlovable reject,” and he carried that with him throughout the rest of his life, until the point that we met. This example is as common as it is painful; we all know what it’s like to believe what our minds make up about some event or experience, and we know how limiting and damaging that can be.

The shift from servitude to mastery with respect to meaning-making comes with identifying our core beliefs and recognizing the things our minds make up about what we encounter in life. Therapy and coaching are particularly effective ways to develop mind mastery in this area. The more aware we are of the interpretations our minds create—and, most importantly, the ways in which those interpretations affect us—the more we can distinguish the facts from the interpretations, and the less we suffer.

As I mentioned before, our minds are highly sophisticated time-travel machines. At any given moment, we can travel to the near or distant past, the anticipated or imagined future. And while this is, no doubt, a pretty cool thing, it can also get pretty ugly. Because the reality is, our minds let us travel to the past and future, but we have absolutely no control over either one of them. The past is gone, and the future hasn’t happened yet, so dwelling in either one can be an exercise in suffering. When the mind is the master, its time-traveling adventures can cause depression, by dwelling on what’s already happened, and anxiety, by agonizing about what could happen. And that’s not to mention the ways in which all that time-hopping robs us of our ability to be in the present, where life is happening. Many of my clients speak to me about how terrible it can feel when their minds take control and zap them back into an ugly past or zoom them forward into an uncertain future. There’s a reason the Buddha taught so much about being in the present moment; he was wise to the reality that the mind likes to travel, and when it takes us with it, we’re liable to suffer.

To become a master of the mind’s time-traveling nature is to acknowledge that there are some undeniable upsides to this capability. The past is full of rich material; it contains our memories, the lessons we’ve learned, and valuable information that can guide us through life. Thinking about the future can also be advantageous, as we can plan, get excited about upcoming events, and anticipate things on the horizon in order to prepare for them effectively. When we learn how to travel to the past and future with intention and be in the driver’s seat for the voyage, we can use this function of our minds to its greatest capacity and avoiding unnecessary suffering.

The human mind is magnificent. As John Milton so aptly put it, it can “make a heaven of hell, a heal of heaven.” To master the mind is to master life, so why not start moving toward mastery right here and now? As always, I wish you peace and love and am here to keep you company on your journey however it supports you.

If It Isn’t Yours, Don’t Take It

a purple flower with rain falling down on it.

You know that person at the office who’s always sick with whatever bug is going around and chooses to go to work anyway? No matter how hard you try to avoid making contact, you somehow always end up catching whatever he or she’s got. It’s unnerving, uncomfortable, and seemingly unavoidable. Unpleasant though it may be, it’s the nature of office culture and contagious illness: if someone catches something, everyone else is likely to catch it also.

But the common cold isn’t the only thing that gets spread this way. Emotions, moods, and attitudes are just as contagious. Whether it’s a negative person in the workplace or a family member who’s perpetually on edge, there’s always going to be someone whose energy can contaminate you—that is, until you learn to immunize yourself from it.

Years ago, one of my mentors shared something with me that forever changed the way I conduct therapy and relate to other people in my life. We were having a discussion about one of my clients and the particularly challenging family issue she was working through in our sessions together. Week after week, this client arrived to our sessions distraught, anxious, and desperate for things to be different. The 60 minutes we’d spend together every week—during which she’d spend most of the time complaining, and I’d spend most of the time shrinking into my chair—felt like torture for me; by the time each session ended, I’d be worked up and bent out of shape. Noticing this, my mentor said the following to me: “If you absorb the emotional energy she’s emitting, you’ll be in no position to support her. You have to keep your emotional and energetic space clear if you’re going to have a shot at helping her clear hers.” “That makes sense,” I told him. But how do I do that?” “It’s simple,” he answered. “Whenever you’re in her presence—or in the presence of anyone whose emotions are affecting you—ask yourself this question: Whose emotion is this?” Time stopped the moment I heard those words. The question struck me as so powerful, so profound in its simplicity, that I had to pause for a moment and center myself. What this question has yielded for me and the clients I’ve shared it with over the years has made all the difference in the world.

You see, human beings are wired for connection, and certain cells in our brains—known as mirror neurons—cause us to automatically react to other people’s emotions. It’s the reason we instinctively cringe when we see someone get injured; it’s why we cry when the protagonist in a film experiences something painful. We can’t help but be affected by each other; we’re contagious in this way. So it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish other people’s emotions from our own. But, thankfully, we have the ability to choose how much we want to be affected by the emotions we come in contact with in the course of our relationships with others. The more skillfully we can do this, the less susceptible we are to getting weighed down by other people’s emotional baggage.

Here are some tips for developing that skill:

  1. Practice mindfulness. The more grounded and centered you are in your own experience, the easier it will be for you to distinguish your emotions from those of other people. Practice checking in with yourself on a regular basis, noticing what you’re thinking, feeling, observing, and experiencing in the moment. The more familiar you get with what’s going on inside you, the more quickly you’ll notice when you’ve absorbed someone else’s stuff.
  1. Set clear boundaries. It’s possible to have empathy for people without burdening yourself with their emotions. This requires setting firm boundaries and maintaining a clear sense of where others end and you begin. Sometimes, of course, that’s much easier said than done. No doubt, some people will challenge your ability to keep your emotional space clear, but it’s your responsibility to keep the boundaries in place. If you notice yourself getting worked up on a phone call with a perpetually pissed off relative, it’s okay to lovingly end the call. If the coworker you have lunch with always spends the time complaining, and you find yourself returning to the office in a bad mood, it’s okay to tell her you won’t be joining her for a few days. Caring about others and being supportive doesn’t require you to take on their emotions. The clearer your boundaries are, the clearer that distinction will be.
  1. Practice the catch and release method. Sometimes it’s impossible to avoid catching emotions that didn’t originate from you. But the quicker you notice that it’s happened, the quicker you can do something about it. Whenever you see that you’ve been affected by another person’s energy/mood/vibe, inhale deeply, say to yourself, “I’ve picked up something that doesn’t belong to me,” and on the exhale, focus your attention on releasing it. The more regularly you do this, the better you’ll become at it. Before you know it, you’ll be letting other people’s emotional energy pass right through you without it getting stuck, and you’ll be in a much better position to stay in connection with them without being negatively affected.
  1. Make your emotional health a priority. When you commit to being emotionally well, you build your immunity from other people’s emotional junk. So make your wellbeing a priority. Take care of yourself, manage your stress level, keep company with people who make you feel good. The healthier you are, emotionally speaking, the less likely you’ll be to absorb other people’s emotions.

Vitamin C, rest, physical exercise, and a healthy diet will help you maintain your body’s immune system. To keep your emotional immune system healthy, mindfulness, self-care, and clear boundaries will do the trick. The next time you notice yourself picking up someone else’s emotional baggage, ask yourself “Whose emotion is this?” If the answer isn’t “Mine,” gently set it down. Because if it isn’t yours, why would you take it?

The Power of Now: Learning to Live Like You’re Dying

a person's hand reaching out towards the water.

A few nights ago I had a heart opening phone conversation with a dear friend as he spent time with his family following the death of his beloved grandmother. We spoke about death, grief, and the meaning of life. We connected and reflected, each of us sharing openly and vulnerably about our understanding of death and the meaning we make of it. At one point in the conversation, my friend asked me, “If you could find out the day you’re going to die, would you want to know?” Instinctively, I answered, “No way.” When I posed the same question to him, however, he quickly answered, “Absolutely.”  The conversation that followed made a big impact on me and inspired me to write this post.

Although my friend and I didn’t share the same view about being told when we’ll die, we did agree about something: We have a serious case of death denial. Most of us—unless we have a terminal illness and know that death is imminent—go through life without giving much thought to our mortality. And though that certainly keeps us from having to dwell in morbid territory, it also has potential to keep us from living as fully as we could be.

When you get down to it, the truth is that life is always now. What I mean is that the past is gone and the future hasn’t happened yet, so the present moment is the only place we can ever be. It’s the only time that matters. When we we take the present moment for granted, assuming there’s always tomorrow, we miss out on opportunities to live fully and freely.

The reason my friend would want to know when he’s going to die is that he believes it would help remind him to make the most of life. He put it to me this way: “You know, we say we’re afraid of death; but what we really seem to be afraid of is life!” He went on to explain that perhaps knowing how much time he had left would be an antidote to fear and an encouragement to just go for it, whatever it is, because life is short and time is precious. This was a perspective I hadn’t previously considered.

When I work with clients in therapy or coaching, I’m committed to helping them access their potential and use their inherent resources and strengths to resolve whatever challenges they’re encountering. My clients often share with me that the more they get in touch with their potential and purpose, the richer their lives become. They experience more clarity, more appreciation for their lives, and a deeper understanding of what’s important to them. Essentially, our work together supports them in breaking through everything keeping them from living life to the fullest. So when my friend said what he did about using awareness of death as a means of enriching life, I understood perfectly what he was saying—and I had to agree.

Most of us won’t find out in advance exactly when we’re going to die, but that doesn’t mean we can’t live with urgency, passion, commitment, and presence. If we abandon our death denial and choose, instead, to stay fully aware of the brevity of life, we create the potential to make each moment count. Because our time here is short, tomorrow’s never promised, and life is always NOW.

So what would happen if you replaced your death denial with death awareness? What would it inspire you to do that you haven’t been doing? What would it free you up to experience or express?

We don’t like to think about it, but it’s important that we face it: We’re all dying. Every last one of us. And we don’t know when our time will run out. Instead of resisting this realization, I say we embrace it. Because life gets much more meaningful, much more beautiful when we remember that it won’t last forever.  So today and every day, I invite you to seize the power of the present moment and live like you know you’re dying. Treat each moment as a gift, and laugh in the face of fear. All we’ve got is the dash between our date of birth and date of death; let’s make it count.

 

“So, think about this long and hard. Are there things you’d like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.”

– Linda Ellis, The Dash

How Doing Nothing Changes Everything

a close up of a bowl of water with a drop of water.

If you met me 10 years ago, you probably would have thought I was pretty scattered. You’d likely have noticed my fiery temper and the hurried, anxious way I’d do things. When spending time with me, you’d quickly pick up on the fact that I was never really present with you but distracted, instead, by my racing thoughts or the items in my mental to-do list. You might have—as many people in my life at that time did—described me as being “all over the place.” You would have seen that I didn’t know what I wanted and had no idea what I was doing with my life. If you were particularly intuitive, you would have recognized that I was lost and disconnected, functioning on autopilot most of the time. You would have known that I felt insecure and unfulfilled, completely uncertain about my future.

When I write about myself 10 years ago, it’s as if I’m writing about a total stranger. I no longer recognize or resemble that disconnected woman with her head in the clouds, rushing through life with no sense of direction. It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am for finding a path to clarity—a path that altered the course of my life completely. And when I think about what it took to get from where I was then to where I am now, I can’t help but smile at the simplicity of it.

What I learned back then that guided my journey from chaos to clarity was the practice of doing nothing. The formal term for this practice is zazen, the sitting meditation practice in Zen Buddhism. Through this practice I learned how to shift from a state of doing to a state of being, stilling my mind and grounding my awareness in the here-and-now. I learned how to extend my practice to all areas of my life by focusing my attention on the present moment and being with my experience as it unfolds. This simple practice of non-doing created a radical shift in my presence and personality. It also inspired me to become a therapist who incorporates Eastern principles and traditions into my work with clients.

As a mindfulness based psychotherapist and coach, I’m committed to supporting my clients in cultivating awareness and getting grounded in the present moment, the only place where life is happening. When my clients begin to adopt simple mindfulness practices into their lives—such as allowing themselves to experience emotion or paying attention to the small changes they’re making—they quickly begin to experience their lives differently. Their relationships with themselves and others begin to transform, and they get inspired to create solutions for the problems that brought them to my office.

I’m regularly stunned by how much becomes possible through the astonishingly simple practice of being still and doing nothing. I’m amazed by how much power there is in a single conscious breath. In my work and my life, I’m committed to exploring the potential of mindful awareness and sharing what I learn with others—including you!

If you’ve ever been disconnected or dissatisfied with your life and unsure what to do about it, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever struggled to concentrate or sit still, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever felt detached from yourself and the people around you, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever thought that life is moving too quickly and you don’t know how to slow it down, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to explore your potential and the possibilities that exist for your life, this practice is for you.

The most beautiful thing about mindfulness and meditation is that you can practice anytime, anywhere—and now is as good a time to start as any! So before you close this page, give yourself the gift of a mindful moment.

Focus your eyes on a nonmoving object (not on the phone or computer screen) or allow them to gently close. Begin to shift your awareness to your breath. Focus on the sensation of breathing, perhaps finding a spot in your body where you’re most aware of the breath—it might be your nostrils, or your belly, or your chest. Breathe for a couple of moments with your attention fixed in this way. Any time a thought comes in or something around you tries to pull your focus away, gently bring yourself back to your breath. Do this for a few inhales and exhales. Then set an intention to carry this practice with you throughout your day, coming back to it—if only for a few breaths—any time you want to get centered and connected again.

If you’re eager to discover where else this practice can take you, call me for your free 20-minute consultation (305-814-4863), and let’s start exploring what’s possible!

 

How the Small Stuff Can Make the Biggest Difference: A Lesson in the Paradox of Change

a couple of purple flowers sitting on top of a green lily pad.

I’m constantly amazed by how big a difference the little things in life can make. This morning I had the opportunity to catch up with a client whom I hadn’t spoken to in some time. When he called me last week to make the appointment, there was an unmistakable urgency in his voice. Though he didn’t seem to be distressed, I’d always known him to be the cool, calm, and collected type; so I found myself wondering about the nature of his call. He arrived to our session this morning right on time and practically sprinted into my office from the waiting room with a breathless, “Hey, Dr. D!” As soon as we sat down, he launched right into his explanation for the unexpected visit.  What he shared with me left me breathless.

To give you a sense of why his words had such an impact on me, I’ll need to share a bit of the backstory. You see, this client—whom I’ll refer to as Joshua for the purposes of this blog post—grew up in a wealthy family and was supported in adulthood by a considerable trust fund. Never needing to worry about earning an income or managing financial responsibilities, he was free to create his life however he pleased. The only problem was, he had no idea what he wanted. Session after session during the time we worked together, he bounced from one idea to the next, never showing much conviction about his latest life choice. One month he’d be backpacking through Southeast Asia and the next he’d be diligently researching real estate investments; none of it brought him any satisfaction. Joshua had all but resigned to the fact that he would spend his life searching for purpose and meaning but never finding it.

During our last session together a couple of years ago, Joshua told me he was moving to California to study dolphins. He seemed excited about it, and we both held on to hope that he would feel connected to this new interest in a way that would ignite his passion and bring him joy. I didn’t hear from him again after he left—that is, until he called me up last week. As it turns out, Joshua never ended up studying dolphins. Just a couple of days after arriving in California, he met a woman at a record store who stopped him in his tracks, and the two fell madly in love with each other. They decided to open a retail store together and, to Joshua’s great surprise, it went well. A year after meeting his girlfriend, both the relationship and the business were thriving. For the first time in his life, Joshua felt a sense of fulfillment. As he described it, “I started to understand the people who are excited to start their day in the morning. It was weird for me, but I liked it.”

About a year and a half into opening their business, Joshua and his girlfriend decided they were ready for a new adventure. They hired someone to run the store, put most of their belongings in storage, loaded up a plush RV, and set out to visit every national park in the U.S. “Drunk in love,” as Joshua put it, they traveled around from state to state, marveling at the natural beauty surrounding them. During a particularly magical hike through Zion National Park, Joshua proposed to his girlfriend, and she said yes. They decided to get married next year, in a simple ceremony at a vineyard near their home.

Joshua and his girlfriend, whom I’ll refer to here as Kay, have finished their national park tour and are presently spending time with Joshua’s family. What he came to tell me was that he’s finally discovered his purpose in life. But neither the purpose itself nor the means by which he found it are anything like what he imagined they’d be. He put it to me this way: “So, I realize now that I pretty much got connected to my purpose when I met Kay and opened the business. I’ve been spending all this time thinking that because I have the funds to do it, I need to live life on this crazy scale and do things other people don’t get a chance to do. But the simple things, like being in a committed relationship with someone I love and owning a humble business, made me happier than anything ever has. I don’t know if I realized that at the time, but I totally get that now.” Joshua went on to talk about the other discoveries he’s made while reflecting on the last few years of his life. He told me about how much he enjoys having a sense of passionate commitment and how happy it makes him to imagine being a father in the near future. And then he said something that went like this:

“Dr. D, this is the big thing I realized and the reason I called you. For as long as I can remember I’ve been struggling with myself and beating myself up for not knowing what I want in life. You know how hard it’s been for me to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I was constantly comparing myself to other people and feeling like a loser. But of course they couldn’t understand me; I didn’t understand myself! So here’s the thing: Kay is the first person in my life who was totally cool with me being exactly who I am. She didn’t judge me or label me a spoiled rich kid or tell me what a flake I am. She just accepted me for who I am, and that let me finally accept who I am. It’s the craziest thing in the world to me.”

The most profound part of what Joshua had to say was that as soon as he accepted his free-spirited nature and the lack of clarity he had about his purpose, he essentially settled down, got clarity, and found that purpose. That small shift, from resistance to acceptance, changed his life.

What Joshua discovered about himself moved me deeply—not only because of the beautiful way that it transformed his life, but also because of the applicability it has to all our lives. When we are willing to turn toward the things we’re initially inclined to reject, we create the potential for transformation. This is true for our stories about ourselves—as was the case for Joshua—and it’s also true for our emotions. Paradoxically, acceptance is the prerequisite for change. Once we can acknowledge something, make contact with it, and accept it as it is, we create the space for it to become something different.

This morning’s session was a beautiful reminder that the small and subtle things in life can have the most profound impact. It’s far too easy to get caught up in our assumptions about what our lives are supposed to look like, all the while missing what’s great about the lives we already have. When we acknowledge what’s going right, we open up the possibility to shift whatever’s going wrong. By appreciating things as they are, we become capable of creating something new. This is perhaps the greatest life hack out there; and I’m thrilled that Joshua figured it out.

Accept this as my formal invitation to start noticing the small things in life—the subtle shifts, the simple moments. Allow yourself to embrace your life with a full and grateful heart, and know that by doing so, you might just be laying the foundation for remarkable change. The small stuff matters, and so do you. May you always remain open to possibilities and aware of your vast potential to create them. Peace and love, today and all days.

How To Be At Peace When Everyone Says You Shouldn’t Be

a view of clouds from an airplane.

There’s no doubt 2016 has been a crazy year. We’ve seen more tragedies, tensions, and surprises than any of us can keep track of, and the hits just keep on coming. The events of this year have had many people glued to their televisions and sucked into the social media vortex, trying to keep up with the latest information about the most current major news item. But at the rate this information—both accurate and sensationalized—is pumped out by the media, it’s impossible to keep up.

The beautiful thing about having access to as much information as we do is that we’re able to maintain a sense of awareness about what’s going on in the world. Through this awareness, we can access our ability to speak up and take action wherever appropriate. We can hold our leaders accountable and be agents of change.  But of course, there’s also a down side to having a constant stream of information accessible around the clock. If we aren’t mindful and moderate about our news consumption, we’re likely to experience negative emotions and generate certain assumptions about the world.

We don’t need to try too hard to find reasons to be discouraged and disappointed about the state of things, and we’re persistently given reasons to feel anxious and afraid. For example, just a moment ago I received an email from a local publication with the subject: “Now that the election is over, here are some local issues for you to worry about.” If we allow the emotions stoked in us by the news to dictate the way we experience the world, it’s going to shape that experience in unhelpful ways. We’re likely to look around us with suspicion and judgment, seeing things that support and confirm a pessimistic perspective about our world and its future.

There’s a popular line of reasoning in our culture that suggests a person must be fully informed about everything going on in the world in order to be a good citizen. Now, I’m not opposing that view, as it’s certainly important to have some sense of what’s going on. But if getting informed means getting anxious, angry, guarded, hopeless, or overwhelmed, that’s pretty obviously counterproductive. So how can we remain peaceful and hopeful when everyone’s suggesting that we should be anything but that? Here are just a few ideas for creating that possibility:

  • Walk the middle path. As with just about everything in life, balance is key when it comes to consuming information about current events (and related projections for the future). Stay informed only to the extent that it allows you to direct your energy and efforts toward positive change. Anything more has the potential to perpetuate the problems at hand.
  • Be peace. Even when everything around you suggests otherwise, peace is always available to you. And you are powerful enough to create it. Be intentional about finding opportunities to generate a sense of peace and stillness within, and know that by radiating that peace outward to everyone around you, you’re making an invaluable contribution to the world.
  • Be daring enough to hope. It’s a radical act to be hopeful when there’s little evidence that the future is bright. But if you want to remain peaceful and be a source of change for the future, you must hold on to hope at all costs. And once you’ve got a firm grasp, start sharing that hope with others, getting them to see what you do.
  • Trust that everything has its purpose. It’s not easy to access trust when everything seems like it’s falling apart. And within the context of a cultural climate that is generally pessimistic, it’s even harder to be trusting. But when you can find the faith that everything occurring is part of a plan—perhaps serving as a painful yet necessary step toward true progress—you will find that peace is possible.

Now, more than ever, the world needs us to stay grounded, keep our hearts open, and be instruments of peace. It’s up to all of us to create the world we want to live in and leave behind. So as the spiritual teacher Mooji so beautifully said, “Don’t remind the world that it is sick and troubled. Remind it that it is beautiful and free.”

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Zen and Zoned Out Are Not The Same Thing

an image of a foggy forest.

 

As a spiritually minded psychotherapist, peace proponent, and student of Buddhism, I love watching the West wake up to the wisdom of ancient Eastern traditions.  It thrills me to know that people are getting intentional about creating more harmony and stillness in their lives, because I’m fully convinced that what the world needs now, above all else, is a more intentional, more finely attuned sense of awareness and presence among all human beings. When I see any indication that we’re moving in that direction, I feel gratified and hopeful. But here’s the thing: Owning a yoga mat doesn’t make you a yogi, telling people you meditate isn’t the same thing as meditating, and being Zen isn’t the same thing as saying you are. That might sound harsh, but I’m making this point for an important reason. In the instant-gratification-based culture we live in, it’s easy to confuse exposure with understanding. To truly understand something, you must immerse yourself in it, exploring it from multiple angles and seeking to gain as much knowledge about it as possible. And so it is with spiritual traditions and practices like Zen.

The most direct translation of the word Zen is meditation, but the true meaning of Zen can’t fully be expressed in words. Perhaps the closest we can come is to say that Zen is a state of being that involves a sense of connection to a power greater than oneself. It’s a way of living in the present moment and fully experiencing reality as it’s unfolding, with no preference for what happens. It means being aware of the interconnectedness of all living things, and flowing with the universe. Put simply, Zen is an orientation toward life that generates a sense of peace, equanimity, acceptance, and contentment. To be Zen is to be committed to maintaining clarity and remaining grounded in the present moment, no matter how challenging it is to do so.

In our culture, when people talk about “getting Zen” or “being Zen,” they’re usually referring to something along the lines of relaxing, reducing stress, slowing down, or finding peace. And that’s a wonderful thing. But calming down isn’t necessarily the same thing as finding Zen. The reason this distinction matters is that often, our efforts to relax and calm down involve checking out or numbing ourselves to what’s happening—and that isn’t Zen at all! To adopt a Zen mentality is to be at one with whatever we’re experiencing, without trying to manipulate or change it so we can feel better. When we experience Zen, we’re acknowledging and accepting what is, rather than attempting to make it something else.

Although there isn’t an explicit goal in Zen practice, the purpose is to generate greater awareness and appreciation for what’s happening in the present moment. When we confuse zoning out for Zen, we sell ourselves short of experiencing everything that can unfold and open up for us when we accept what we’re feeling instead of trying to OM it away. There’s a commonly used expression among therapists and healers that says, “The only way out is through.” This simple statement speaks to the difference between numbing out and knowing Zen. It’s easy to check out of the present moment by turning on a meditation CD or lighting some candles; but I challenge you to make your practice deeper than that. Don’t settle for artificial peace. Practice loving and staying present with whatever is occurring in the present moment—no matter how unpleasant it may be—and know that true peace awaits you on the other side.

You Are Not Who You Think You Are

a person standing on a beach with a surfboard.

One of my clients recently shared with me that he had a dream in which every mirror he looked into reflected back to him a terrifying, gruesome face that didn’t resemble his own. No matter how many mirrors he tried or how many attempts he made to find himself reflected clearly, all he could see was that hideous visage. Although my client was undoubtedly disturbed by his dream, we discovered together that it served as an important metaphor for something he was addressing in his work with me. Like the mirrors in his dreams that would only reflect back a warped, ugly image, my client’s sense of himself in real life was distorted in an equally disturbing way. And because he saw himself so poorly, he suffered greatly in every domain of his life. He believed he was ugly, so he avoided dating. He believed he was stupid (in spite of having an above average IQ), so he chose an unfulfilling career that wouldn’t present any intellectual challenges. He believed he wasn’t worthy of connection, so he limited his contact with others and felt deep pain because of it. This particular client’s situation might seem extreme, but on some level, most people can relate to it.

Human beings are meaning-making machines. Our brains take in information and create interpretations about it. These interpretations eventually become beliefs, and out of those beliefs sprout the thoughts that flow automatically through our minds as we navigate the world. Most of us identify so much with those thoughts that we have difficulty thinking something without becoming attached to it, accepting it as a statement of fact, and inferring from it things about ourselves. Over time it becomes so that our sense of self is, in large part, shaped by what we think. Our thoughts influence our emotions, our emotions drive our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our lifestyles, and our lifestyles dictate our destiny. If we aren’t careful, we become slaves to the content of our own minds. We create a false sense of self that negatively shapes our lives and limits our potential.

If you want to see yourself more clearly, like my client did, you have to start by examining and challenging the stuff inside your mind. It is fundamentally true that you are not your thoughts. Nor are you your beliefs, emotions, or events from your past. This might make sense to you, but give it a little more thought. Can you think of something you believe about yourself that influences how you feel and behave? Maybe you believe that you won’t enjoy life until retirement. Or perhaps you believe you won’t be happy until you lose 10 pounds. Somewhere inside of your mind are beliefs you picked up a long time ago, which heavily influence how you live your life. When you base your sense of self on what you believe, you limit what you can experience.

Challenging your beliefs is the first step to seeing yourself more clearly and freeing yourself of unnecessary, self-imposed limitations. Once you start abolishing the beliefs that no longer serve you, it’s time to give your thoughts a similar treatment. Like I tell my clients all the time, one of the best things you can do for yourself in life is recognize that most of your thoughts are bullshit. What I mean is that your thoughts are just thoughts. In the most literal sense, they’re electrical impulses in your brain that carry data in the form of language. That’s it. They aren’t facts, truths, or reflections of who you are. But if you aren’t paying attention, you’ll start believing them and making assumptions about who you are based on them. This is what makes most people suffer.

Practices like meditation, mindfulness, and journaling can help you begin observing your thoughts and beliefs, and therapy is a great way to take that practice to the next level. Getting into the habit of examining your beliefs, watching your thoughts, and soliciting the feedback of an unbiased outsider can put you on the path toward freeing yourself and gaining a clearer sense of who you are. The truth is, you have the opportunity to be different each and every moment of your life. Whether that difference comes through something like taking a breath instead of taking action or making a bold decision instead of playing small, you have the ability to create new experiences by varying the way you go through life. And it all starts with watching how you think and being wary of the lies you tell yourself.

Now, I’m not saying that you should do away with all ideas about who you are. I’m also not suggesting that you can ever have a totally clear sense of self. However, as recent neuroscience research suggests, the more flexible we are about our sense of self, the healthier we’ll be. So if you’ve been looking in the proverbial mirror and not liking what you see, start by considering what you’ve been telling yourself about yourself. And then get busy telling yourself a new story. Because you really aren’t who you think you are—you’re much, much greater.

 

The Inescapable Importance of Acceptance

a small church in the middle of a snowy field.

Penned by Rienhold Niebuhr and popularized by Alcoholics Anonyous and other 12-step programs, the Serenity Prayer has been guiding people for decades. The most commonly used version of it goes like this:  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

 The wisdom contained in this succinct but powerful invocation is timeless, and its central premise resonates with most everyone. On some level, we all know how important it is to accept the things we cannot change.  What the research shows and most of our experiences validate is that our willingness to accept the unchangeable has a great deal to do with our emotional and psychological wellbeing. Whether we’re talking about a financial crisis, a health diagnosis, the loss of an important relationship, or any other unanticipated, unpleasant event, fighting what is won’t make it not so. Instead, when we do battle with reality, we cripple our capacity to cope with the situation and manage all the emotions we experience in response to it.

A big part of healing and recovering from the painful parts of life is accepting what’s taken place. In order to move on, we must first acknowledge what’s happening now. But, as all of us know, this is much easier said than done. Despite being one of the most important life hacks any of us can master, the practice of acceptance is enduringly difficult.

Where many of us get stuck is that we start out with a warped understanding of what acceptance is and how it works. We think that accepting something means getting over it. But this isn’t the case. Being willing to accept that someone we love has died, for example, doesn’t mean skipping the grief process or seeking to place a silver lining on an obviously dark cloud. It doesn’t mean minimizing the significance of what happened or how you’re feeling about it. It simply means being willing to acknowledge what is, without resisting or denying it.

Another major source of confusion shows up when whatever we’re accepting involves somebody else. Let’s say, for instance, that your partner has a temperament that can be terrifying. He loses his cool easily and often, and you frequently end up being the target for his rage. You know from things his mother has shared with you that he’s always been this way, and his friends tell a similar story. Whenever you speak to him about it, he always seems to justify his behavior, saying, “That’s the way I’ve always been. It’s never going to change.” You know that what’s happening doesn’t feel right, but you keep convincing yourself to stick it out, hoping that things will change. Acceptance, in this example, would be a necessary step toward deciding whether or not this relationship is right for you. If you fail to accept this undesirable quality in your partner, you’ll suffer deeply every time it rears its ugly head. You’ll experience confusion, frustration, and anger, and your desire for things to be different will make it difficult for you to connect with what’s happening here and now.

Did the suggestion that you should accept a partner’s pattern of explosive episodes make you uncomfortable? If that’s the case, you might be confusing acceptance with approval. And, you see, the two are not the same. Acceptance is acknowledging what’s already happened; approval is consenting to more of it in the future. To accept that the person you’re in a committed relationship with has a side to him that causes harm to you doesn’t mean that you’re okay with it or want it to keep happening. It simply means that you’re facing reality as it’s being presented to you so you can make a decision about how to proceed.

Failing to accept reality creates suffering where there’s already pain. It creates confusion where there can be clarity, anguish where there can be peace. We don’t accept things in order to change what’s happening, nor do we do it in order to feel better about it. We accept because it’s the only logical thing to do. Whatever is happening is happening; whatever occurred already occurred. We embrace reality because it’s already here, right now, and resisting it won’t make it go away.

Learning acceptance is a lifelong process, and we’re guaranteed to be given plenty of opportunities to practice. With clarity about what it means to accept and what effect it has on our wellbeing, we can approach our experiences differently, perhaps experiencing different results. What becomes possible when you release your ideas about what should be and embrace what is instead? I invite you to explore what new and unexpected things happen when you start accepting reality on reality’s terms.

 

 

Fanning the Flames of Anger

She was mad. No, not just mad; she was enraged. She’d walked into my office for the first time just 20 minutes before, and shortly after launching into her story about why she’d sought therapy, her anger reached its boiling point. She was seething. After finishing a particularly pointed sentence about how furious she was over her husband’s “stupidity,” she looked up to find that I was sitting with my hands folded in my lap, breathing peacefully and looking at her with compassionate interest as she shared her story with me. Upon seeing my expression and posture, she became even more angered and said, quite passionately, “Ughhh! Seeing you sitting there so calm like that just pisses me off even more. It’s exactly what my husband does when I’m yelling at him. It’s like he doesn’t even care that he hurt me.” I gently stopped her then and asked if she could remember and repeat the last three words she’d just said.

“He hurt me.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, her eyes welled up with tears. Her rigid posture softened, and her once tense shoulders slumped down. She leaned forward with her hands in her lap and cried quietly, allowing herself to express the new set of emotions that my question had invited. Then, suddenly, she began to laugh. She looked at me with smiling eyes and tear-stained cheeks and said, “Damnit! It’s so much easier to be mad than sad.”

It is, isn’t it?

Anger is a normal human emotion. Like fear, it’s typically a response to some stimulus in the environment that activates our nervous system and triggers a fight or flight reaction. Whereas fear tends to invoke a flight response, anger gets us into fight mode. It creates a surge of activating energy that’s sometimes accompanied by a motivation to act out on the emotion and somehow discharge it. In this way, anger is energizing and emboldening.  In the English language, words such as “fiery,” “hot,” and “burning” are used to describe it, evoking a sensation of heat that is often associated with the emotion. If you’ve ever been overcome with anger—the way my client started out when she arrived to our first session—you know how intense the scorching flames can be.

Contrary to what some psychotherapists will tell you, anger is a legitimate emotion. It’s not, as some would argue, a cover-up for fear and sadness. It’s important to understand this distinction, because acknowledging what we’re feeling and accepting its legitimacy is an important part of managing, relieving, and overcoming it. I didn’t tell my client she shouldn’t be angry, nor did I ask her to tell me what was beneath or behind all that anger. Instead, I kept her company while the emotion surged through her, making space for it and remaining curious about her experience with it. That’s because I understand that as with any emotion, the first step to letting anger pass is acknowledging its presence.

According to the teaching of the Buddha, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” Because the heat of anger has such an activating effect on us, we can easily become consumed by it. It can erupt in an aggressive outburst or spawn a desire to get revenge. But as the Buddha so wisely pointed out, whenever we hold on to the emotion with the intent of using it to cause others pain, we’re the ones who wind up hurting the most.

The trouble with anger isn’t the anger itself; it’s the automatic assumption that just because we feel it, we have to do something about it. Simply allowing the emotion to pass through, without attaching to it or acting out because of it, gives way to a process that can teach us a lot about ourselves. You see, although anger is more than just a secondary emotion, it usually doesn’t operate alone. As my client discovered, anger is typically associated with other emotions. If we can sit with it long enough for the flames to die down, what we’ll likely discover is a host of accompanying emotions like sadness, frustration, humiliation, disappointment, and fear. What my client realized was that she wasn’t just angry at her husband; she was also feeling hurt by him. The anger, as she explained, was easier to feel. So long as she was charged up with rage, she didn’t have to experience the vulnerability that comes with feeling hurt. But once she made her way through the complex emotions she was experiencing, she was able to get some clarity about her situation. By the time she left my office, she had a better understanding of what happened in the encounter with her husband and what she wanted to do about it.

Anger can teach us a lot about ourselves. It can help us gain access to places inside of us where we otherwise might not travel. If my client had ignored her anger or simply acted upon the impulse to lash out at her husband, she likely wouldn’t have accessed the hurt and sadness underneath it. It was through the process of being with and peeling back the many layers of her emotional experience that she came to a sense of clarity and resolution. Had she dismissed her anger, this process would have been cut short, failing to yield any useful understanding or awareness; had she exploded because of it, she wouldn’t have learned much and might have acted in ways she’d later regret. If we let it, anger can become the source of deep self-awareness and exploration.

In his book entitled Anger, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers the following perspective: “Embrace your anger with a lot of tenderness. Your anger is not your enemy, your anger is your baby. It’s like your stomach or your lungs. Every time you have some trouble in your lungs or your stomach, you don’t think of throwing them away. The same is true with your anger. You accept your anger because you know you can take care of it; you can transform it into positive energy.”

Every emotion we feel is an opportunity to become better acquainted with our inner world. And it’s through this self-understanding that we learn how to navigate life’s challenges, guiding ourselves with the wisdom of our own experiences. What if the next time you felt angry you embraced it? What if instead of dismissing or discharging the anger you listened to it?  What might you learn about yourself? What might you discover?