Peace in the crazy season

Christmas, supposedly a time of peace on earth, is more often a frenetic rush to achieve. End of year work deadlines, social events, school productions and prizegivings; lists of presents, decorations and food; relationship stress and money worries – often leave us filled with anything but peace and goodwill.

One tool to help us through this is a daily 10-15 minute practice of meditation. This practice comes in many forms, but at its core is the intention to bring peace to the mind and body, and increase consciousness and awareness.

Research has shown that among the benefits of a regular meditation practice are:

– a reduction in stress and anxiety

– increased clarity of thought and less mental clutter

– increased mental and emotional resilience

– improved sleep.

Basic mindfulness meditation

• Sit comfortably. No special posture required, just stay relaxed but alert, with your spine straight.
• Feel your breath. Choose a point where you feel your breath – through your nose, belly, or chest. Gently focus your attention on the in-breath and the out-breath flowing through you.
• Return to the breath. You will get distracted. This is how it works. Don’t beat yourself up, don’t think you’ve got it wrong, don’t make it into a big deal. You haven’t – this is the process: focus on the breath, get distracted, gently come back to the breath. It’s an active process of training your mind – beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to be overcome.

It can be useful to start with five minutes a day – everyone can find five minutes in their day – and gradually build the time up if and when you are ready. Regularity is more important than duration. Even a short daily meditation practice will increase your focus and allow you to be more productive with the time you are given – and help you stay calm during the crazy busy season.

a bajillion possibilities

One of the useful superpowers a coach needs in their toolbox is the ability to see options when the client can see none. This is known, in technical terms, as seeing “a bajillion options” or “a bazillion possibilities” (or, since my youngest daughter misheard me, “a brazillian options”).

This is useful when, as happens to all of us, we get trapped in a particular way of thinking that narrows our alternatives to a few barren, unappealing choices. In this situation the ability to get creative broadens the scope of options available into a rich and fertile continuum of possibilities.

For simplicity’s sake, I sometimes group these options into the following six categories of alternatives we have in responding within any given situation.

1            Do nothing.

Again there are a bajillion ways of doing nothing. Denial is a favourite, working on the basis that if we refuse to acknowledge a situation it doesn’t exist. We could also consciously choose to let things play out and see what happens.

2            Change the situation.

This is where we tend to spend most of our energy, attempting to change what’s going on out there. And often this works well, depending on our level of control or influence over the circumstances we find ourselves in.

3            Change ourselves.

Adapt or in some way adjust ourselves to the current state of affairs. We can reframe the situation, focus on an aspect that benefits us. We can change our beliefs about our ability to cope, learn from the position we find ourselves in, lean in, or adopt any kind of new behaviour, belief or perspective that helps us work it through.

4            Run away.

Another favourite. We can leave the job, get a divorce, or in any other way simply leave the problem behind. Which tends to work only if we don’t carry aspects of the issue along with us when we leave.

5            Radical acceptance.

This is the challenging one.  To learn to radically accept the pain and difficulty of the current situation and find a way to live with it. This is, as I understand it, the basis of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Basically, “ok, this sucks, and there’s not much I can do about it. Now what do I want to do in the face of that?”

Or, in the words of one of my favourite poems:

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

(Raymond Carver)

6            Make it worse.

Sometimes, just for the fun of it, it helps to recognise that we always have the option of doing something that would make it even worse. It reminds us that we always have freedom in any given situation.

Often the process of listing the potential options under these headings makes it easier to tease out the possibilities available, giving us a sense of the scope of alternatives that lie within our control.  And out of these bajillion possibilities there is at least one which will enable us to get what we wanted from the situation.  Even so.

 

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a place to stand

 

A few days ago I was having coffee with a colleague, who happens to be a psychic medium, and she mentioned that she sensed that I was a very grounded person. This surprised me, since I work primarily with ideas, possibilities and change, which seem to me to be very ephemeral, and anything but grounded.

So I went home and thought about it. My home, which I chose by myself after my first marriage ended, and paid for by myself, and own by myself, and has been the only home that my children have ever known. It has been the safest place I have ever known, and in many significant ways it is the only home I have ever had.

There is a Māori word, tūrangawaewae, which means “a place to stand” (literally tūranga (standing place), and waewae (feet)). Tūrangawaewae are places where we feel especially empowered and connected. They are our foundation, our place in the world, our home. They are places where we have rights of residence and belonging.

In a previous post on a safe place for the heart, I wrote about the necessity of having solid ground to launch from, a safe haven we know we can come back to during times of change or transition. In the concept of tūrangawaewae, the external world is a reflection of an inner sense of security and foundation, and we need these places to stand on when everything else falls apart. Sometimes we find them, we stumble across them through luck and good fortune, by accident. Most times we create them through our own love and hard work.

In her book, “Women Who Run with the Wolves”, Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks of the ‘hand made life’, the life that we craft for ourselves. It may not be elaborate, but it is ours, and we must protect it from the dangers of being seduced away by something that may be more shiny and alluring. These people and places that entice us to sell out on the life we have fashioned from our own love and labour, for something more glamorous that may trap us and starve our soul, these are not safe places to stand. They can be traded and sold out from under us in a way that our hand made life cannot.

My home, this small piece of land, has been my home and the home of my children for 15 years. I have knelt on the ground and dug my hands into the earth. I have weeded and pruned and planted. I know what vegetables grow here, I know where the sun rises over the mountains in summer and in winter, and I know what months of the year it is pointless to hang out washing.

Outside my front door is the place where my husband proposed. The lounge is where my daughter was born. I know the tree I planted on the anniversary of my mother’s death, I know where my daughter’s placenta is buried under the magnolia, I know that the wisteria is planted around the wedding arch my husband and I were married under, and I know how the stone carvings I have made have weathered over the years.

I know this place. We have a slow, ongoing dialogue, this small piece of land and I. It is my ground, and I have earned the right to stand here. We all need places like this, our tūrangawaewae, whether they are internal or external. We need our own place to stand.

10 lessons learnt from being a people pleaser

1)            people don’t know what they want.

2)            doing and becoming what other people say they want, in order to be accepted and loved, does not work (because, 1. people don’t know what they want).

3)            people DO know what they want, but often only in secret hidden places within themselves.

4)            people generally hide (from themselves and others) what they actually do want because somewhere they have learnt that what they want is too much / too hard / aberrant / unachievable / they are not good enough / they are unworthy of it … (take your pick).

5)            since most people have learnt that what they want is for some reason unacceptable/unachievable, but everyone still wants to survive, achieve, be loved and belong, most people have developed their own false ways of doing and becoming what they feel IS acceptable/achievable.

6)            mostly life is about people doing what they don’t want to do in order to fit in with what they believe are other people’s rules of what is acceptable/achievable.

7)            this does not make people happy.

8)            suggest to people that they might be happier doing what they want to do, and you are facing an uphill battle. Expect a backlash from the energy used to suppress genuine dreams and passions.

9)            in order to cope, people will often tinker around the (perceived as acceptable) edges of what they do want.

10)          do what you want. Do what matters most to you, what lights you up. Life is too short to play around the edges of your passion.

the transtheoretical model of change

 

So here’s the thing. You’re contemplating a life change, or it’s been thrust upon you. You know what must be done, so you just have to knuckle down and, like the Nike phrase, you Just Do It, right?

So, here’s the problem with that approach – it usually fails.

The problem with the whole ‘leaping straight into action’ thing is that, if we haven’t dealt with the tricky emotional and mental resistance aspects of the contemplated change, then we are just headed straight into sabotage strategies. This is where our head and iron willpower are clearly aligned in one direction, and our innermost fears, desires and just basic inertia are resisting the change every step of the way.

This is where, again, some knowledge of how the process of change works will help us work through any resistance, so we don’t end up fighting ourselves rather than using the energy to implement change.

The Transtheoretical Model of Change (love that name), developed by Prochaska and DiClemente, has five stages: precontemplation (“I have no desire to change”); contemplation (“maybe some change would be good”); preparation (“I’m getting everything ready so I can change”); action (“I’m making the change”) and maintenance (“I’ve made the change and holding steady”).

(Some versions of this model have two further stages: relapse (“uh oh, I slipped up”), and termination (“the change has been successfully implemented and there’s nothing more to do”)).

These stages are particularly useful in coaching – often you can talk until you’re blue in the face but if someone is in precontemplation you’re usually wasting your time (although there are strategies to assist someone to move from precontemplation into contemplation). And it helps to know when supporting someone who is in the contemplation stage that dealing with ambivalence and resistance is perfectly normal, and is, in fact, the main work of this stage.

Until we are able to work through the (often subconscious) fears, beliefs and resistance that block the change we are seeking to make, then implementing change will be an uphill battle. It also helps to know that this process can take some time, but once we’ve aligned our hearts with our heads, we are in position to start rearranging our lives to prepare for the change.

This preparation stage is mostly about accessing the resources we need, and laying the groundwork to be able to leverage the power of habit. Once we are able to set up the new change in the form of a habit (and that is an art in itself, using the habit rules of proximity, baby steps, repetition and rewards), and with everything on hand we need to make the change, then 80% of the work is done, and the habit carries us through the action stage.

Which is where we do, in fact, Just Do It, but with the obstacles cleared out of the way and the foundation laid in the contemplation and preparation stages, we have a much lower chance of relapse and a much higher chance of successfully maintaining the changes we’ve made.

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and for the dark times …

When we are in the death and rebirth stage of the change cycle, sometimes we need to remember that bearing the grief and loss is an activity in itself, that survival may be all that is required of us.

“all I can do

is bear it

 

all I can do is

remember that bearing

can carry the gifts

of wisdom and witness

 

that bearing can give its strength

to the first air-filled breath

of a child”

Sometimes that act of bare survival takes more courage than we think we have. Survival, bearing what seems unbearable, is the art and science of finding the strength to simply keep breathing, keep moving.

And its ok to only be able to focus on the next tiny step. Sometimes, when nothing makes sense, and it’s facile to say that this too shall pass – because we know that it never will, that this will be endless and far too heavy to ever move – it’s only the rhythm of school lunches and taking the rubbish out and bedtimes that gets us through. Sometimes it’s hard enough just to remember to breathe.

The bare act of survival, of taking that next step, one baby step at a time. Of simply remembering to breathe, one breath at a time. Sometimes that’s all we can do, and all we need to do.

change is constant

Like death and taxes, change in life is certain. So why do struggle with something as common and everyday as change? We seem to hope that the things we love will stay exactly the same for as long as we want them to, just because we love them.

The cycles of change we are most comfortable with are the cycles we work within everyday – the cycles of night and day, spring giving way to summer, the out-breath following the in-breath. These we can handle. But the changes that come from the four in the morning call, the best friend’s affair with your husband, the unexpected redundancy notice, the doctor’s call with your child’s test results – these we struggle with.

Understanding how change works goes a long way to ease the uncertainty and the pain of loss. It is easier to bear difficult situations when we know that yes, this too shall pass.

There are many theories of change, and how we process change. One of the most well known is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Another approach, taken by life coach Marth Beck, is to see change as a form of metamorphosis.

Martha and the change cycle

The first part of the metamorphosis is the dissolution of the old life. This is the painful part, the part we wish wouldn’t happen. Then after everything has fallen apart (despite our desperate, doomed, efforts to pull everything back together again), there is emptiness. Out of this emptiness we start to imagine fresh possibilities, and gradually we re-form into a new way of being.

Or, to put it another way, this passage of transitioning through change has four distinct phases.

The first phase of dissolving, or death and rebirth, is the scariest, the one we resist the most. It’s where we lose our current identity. It can feel like everything is falling apart and everyone is falling away. And here’s a hint: there’s nothing we can do about it. Fighting won’t change the process; we’re better off cocooning ourselves, taking whatever baby steps we can in order to get through, and allowing ourselves to grieve whatever is lost.

It also helps to know that it is the nature of this stage to feel as though it will never end. Others may have gone through this and found the light at the end of the tunnel, but we won’t. However, if we manage to stay calm – and even if we don’t – we will find ourselves being inexorably drawn through to the next phase.

The second phase of imagining (or dreaming and scheming), begins when we start to imagine there could be a new life for us after all. Small hints will start to appear to us about how our old identity could be reformed into something altogether different.

This is where we start to imagine new directions and daydream about new possibilities. We try out imaginary scenarios, gather information, and set new goals.

Once we feel the impulse to move from dreaming into scheming, we’re ready for phase three – re-forming (or the hero’s saga). This is where we go beyond imagining and into implementing our new plans. And, as Martha says …. we will fail. Repeatedly.

And that’s ok.

This is the hero’s saga, and no hero worth her salt accomplishes anything without challenges and failures from which to learn. Inevitably we’ll come up against problems we didn’t expect. Stay calm, expect things to go wrong, and when they do, start over. Go back to dreaming and scheming and come up with a brilliant new plan. Which will possibly also fail. But just keep going.

Eventually we’ll hit on something that will work for us, and then we’re into phase four, flying (aka the promised land). This is the payoff for all that pain and hard work. We’ve rescued our brand new beautiful life from the ashes of dissolution and we deserve to enjoy it.  Until the next time.

And that’s it, that’s the change cycle. We’ll go through this process repeatedly in life, and again each time it will feel like the end of the world. And it is.

But the new world is waiting for us just on the other side.

 

(For anyone wanting more information on how to negotiate this cycle of change, I can highly recommend Martha Beck’s book “Finding your own North Star”)

a safe place for the heart

So here we are, wanting to transform our lives and follow our bliss – where do we start?

Counter-intuitively, it seems that before we start any journey or transition we need to be sure we have solid ground to launch from, a safe haven we know we can come back to if we need to. Many of us spend much of our lives looking for a safe place – a place we can believe in, have faith in, something we can trust to stay put when we look away.

Buddhists call this ground. Attachment theorists call it a ‘safe base’. I call it a safe place for our heart.

We generally start this search within our family, and if that’s not a safe place, we look elsewhere. When I was at school I thought for a while that science might be something to hold on to, something that would stay universally true. Until I read Karl Popper, and found that science is simply a journey of serial approximations of the truth.

Then I thought mathematics was the universal language. Until I went to university and came across Gödel’s theory that a mathematical system can either be complete, or consistent, but not both. And I learned that even logic itself was simply a sausage factory – feed in false axioms, and out came false conclusions.

Then, I tried love.

Then I tried love again.

And again.

“I thought love was a talisman, wrap it around you and it kept you safe. Imagine my surprise.”

So I kept looking.

John Bowlby, a psychiatrist and psychologist, believed that we need what he called a secure base. If our parents are ‘good enough’ parents, if they are reasonably attentive and responsive to our needs, they form a safe base for us to explore from. If our parents wonder off, or are unresponsive to our needs, we are constantly looking over our shoulder to check they are still there, we have to run back to find them again, and we learn it is unsafe to go off by ourselves. We cannot safely explore our world unless we feel we have a safe place to come back to in times of need.

For Buddhists, temporary ground can be found by taking refuge in what is called the three jewels – the Buddha (or the possibility of enlightenment), the dharma (the Buddha’s teachings), and the sangha (the fellowship of those who are on the same journey).

(Personally, I have found this to be my safe – or safe enough – place, though there are many others to be found. Recently I heard a Buddhist teacher say that it is more important to love – to focus on giving love to others, and to ourselves – than it is to focus on whether we are, or are not, loveable by others. It may be that this is as good a ground as any to stand on.)

Whatever safe place we choose, we need ground to stand on. We need something to trust in order to offset the risks we need to take on the path. We need a safe place for the heart.

take heart …