Accept the Limits of Your Influence

Practice of the Week
Accept the Limits of Your Influence

Category: SLOGANS THAT HELP: Advertisers know that slogans work! So let's put them to a positive use. Adopting these slogans as your personal guides and reminders will help bring more peace and more joy into your life. Journaling about how you're trying to implement a given slogan will help integrate it.

“You've got to know when to hold,
Know when to fold 'em." --Kenny Rogers

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

An earlier "Practice of the Week" was "Do What You Can (Unlearn Helplessness)." This week's practice is the flip side of that: Don't do (and stop trying to do and worrying about) what you can't.

Each one of us is very limited in what we can do or change. You can't change the past, or even this present moment. We can only affect the future -- and our influence there is very limited. You have little influence over other people, including their thoughts, actions, or suffering. And even less influence over the economy, government policies, or international affairs. Things happen due to causes — and of the ten thousand causes upstream of this moment, most of them are out of your control.

You don't have the power to make something happen if the prerequisites aren't present. For example, you can't grow roses without good soil and water.

If you've been pounding your head against a wall for a while, it's time to stop, accept the way it is, and move on. As I sometimes tell myself: Don't try to grow roses in a parking lot.

How

In general, when faced with some fact you can't change — like you're stuck in traffic, or you feel sad, or your young daughter has just poured milk on the floor (speaking of some of my own experiences) — ask yourself, Can I accept that this is the way it is, whether I like it or not?

Understand that acceptance does not mean approval, acquiescence, overlooking, or forgiveness. You are simply facing the facts, including the fact of your limited influence.

Notice the good feelings that come with acceptance, even if there are also painful feelings about various facts. Notice that acceptance usually brings you more resources for dealing with life's difficulties.

If you cannot accept a fact — that it exists, that it has happened, whatever your preferences may be — then see if you can accept the fact that you cannot accept the fact!

More specifically, consider these reflections:

• Review a life event that has troubled you. See if you can accept it as something that happened, like it or not — and as truly just a part of a much larger and probably mainly positive whole.
• Consider an aspect of your body or personality that you don't like. Tell the truth to yourself about the extent to which you can change it and make a clear choice as to what you will actually do. Then see if you can accept whatever remains as just the way it is — and as only a small part of the much larger and generally positive whole that is you.
• Bring to mind a key person in your life. Have there been any ways that you've been trying to affect or change this person that are just not working? What limits to your influence here do you need to accept?
• Consider something you've wanted to happen but been frustrated, about — perhaps a career shift, or a certain school working out for your child, or a sale to a new customer. Are the necessary supporting conditions truly present? If they are, then maybe stick with it and be patient. But if they are not present — if you're trying to grow roses in a parking lot — consider shifting your hopes and efforts in another direction.

For Journaling

Consider and journal your thoughts about one or more of the four bullet points above.

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Do What You Can (Unlearn Helplessness)

Practice of the Week
Do What You Can (Unlearn Helplessness)

Category: SLOGANS THAT HELP: Advertisers know that slogans work! So let's put them to a positive use. Adopting these slogans as your personal guides and reminders will help bring more peace and more joy into your life. Journaling about how you're trying to implement a given slogan will help integrate it into your life.

“Do all you can, with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are." (Nkosi Johnson)

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing:

The elephant is restrained not by the puny rope
but by learned helplessness

Researchers have shown that it is remarkably easy to produce "learned helplessness" in dogs, whose neural circuitry for motivation and emotion is quite similar to ours. Then it takes much, much more training to get the dogs to unlearn their helpless passivity (Seligman 1972).

People are much the same. We, too, can be easily trained in learned helplessness, which can be tough to undo. Think about some of the ways you've felt pushed around by external forces, and how that's affected you. Learned helplessness fosters depression, anxiety, pessimism, low self-worth, and less effort toward goals.

As a human being like any other, your biological vulnerability to learned helplessness makes it very important that you recognize where you do in fact have some power, and that you take the actions that are available to you — even if they must be only inside your own head.

How

Begin by considering a useful idea from Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Imagine a circle containing the things you have influence over, and another circle containing the things you're concerned about. Where those circles overlap is the sweet spot where you can actually make a difference in the things that matter to you.

To be sure, sometimes there are things we care about but can't change personally, like people going hungry. I'm not saying just ignore those things or be indifferent to them. We should focus on what we can do, such as bearing witness to the suffering of others and letting it move our hearts, staying informed, and looking for opportunities to make a material difference, such as helping at a homeless shelter.

But trying to control things that are out of your hands will plant seeds of helplessness, make you suffer, and undermine your capacity to exercise the influence you do have.

Ask yourself: How could I pull my time, money, energy, attention, or worry away from stones that will never give blood or houses built on sand — and instead, shift these resources to where they will actually make a difference?

Then take an inventory of the key strengths and other resources you do have. Your circle of influence is probably a lot bigger than you think it is!

Consider how you could draw on some of those resources to take beneficial actions in ways you haven't ever done, or have never sustained.

Challenge assumptions, like: "Oh, I just couldn't do that" Are you sure? Bring to mind someone you know who is very self-confident, and then ask yourself: "If I were that confident, what new things would I do?"

In particular, think about actions you could take inside your own mind. Compared to trying to change the world or your body, usually your mind is where you have the most influence, where the results are most enduring and consequential, and where you have the greatest opportunity for a sense of efficacy and a chance to undo feelings of helplessness. For example, how could you nudge your emotional reactions in a better direction over time, or develop more mindfulness or warm-heartedness? These are all within your reach.

When I don't know what to do about some difficulty, sometimes I think of a saying from a boy named Nkosi Johnson, who lived in South Africa. Like many children there, Nkosi was born with HIV, and he died when he was twelve. Before that happened, he became a nationally known advocate for people with AIDS. His "mantra," as he called it, always touches my heart: "Do all you can, with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are."

That's all anyone can ever do.

For Journaling

Reflect on the question: How could you nudge your emotional reactions in a better direction over time, or develop more mindfulness or warm-heartedness? In what ways would you like your emotional reactions to move in a better direction? How can you make that happen? Remember, forming a resolve is a good start -- but resolve fades. How can you train yourself to develop new habits of emotional reaction? Any ideas? What would you suggest for yourself?

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Lance Luria on learned helplessness vs. learned optimism:

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Aspire Without Attachment

Practice of the Week
Aspire Without Attachment

Category: SLOGANS THAT HELP: Advertisers know that slogans work! So let's put them to a positive use. Adopting these slogans as your personal guides and reminders will help bring more peace and more joy into your life. Journaling about how you're trying to implement a given slogan will help integrate it into your life.

'I once heard Thich Nhat Hanh described as “a cloud, a butterfly, and a bulldozer.” Hearing him speak I couldn’t agree more. He is so soft, gentle, and egoless, yet surprisingly powerful.' (Kozo Hattori)

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

To live is to pursue goals. Out of healthy self-interest and kindness to yourself, it's natural and fine to seek security, success, comfort, enjoyment, creative expression, physical and mental health, connection, respect, love, self-actualization, and spiritual development.

But is your pursuit of your goals driven and stressed? Or do you pursue goals with outer effort and inner peacefulness? If your pursuit is driven and stressed, then you are attached to an outcome. If, however, you are rewarded by the journey itself no matter the destination, then your pursuit is one of aspiration without attachment.

The difference between attachment and aspiration got really clear for me one time in Boulder, Colorado, where I'd gone with my old friend Bob for a week of rock climbing. Our guide, Dave, asked us what our goals were, and I said I wanted to climb 5.11 (a stiff grade) by the end of the week; at that point I could barely climb 5.8. Bob stared at me and then said this was crazy, that I'd only get frustrated and disappointed (Bob's pretty driven, and doesn't like falling short). I said no, that it would be a win for me either way: my goal was so ambitious that if I failed to reach it there'd be no shame, and if I did manage to fulfill it, wow, that would be a ton of fun. So I kept banging away, getting steadily better: 5.8, 5.9, easy 5.10, hard 5.10 ... and then on the last day, I followed Dave without a fall on solid 5.11. Yay!

At the heart of attachment is craving -- broadly defined -- which contains and leads to many kinds of suffering (from subtle to intense). And while it may be an effective goad for a while -- the stick that whips the horse into a lather -- in the long run it is counterproductive, when that horse keels over. On the other hand, aspiration -- working hard toward your goals without getting hung up on the results -- feels good, plus it helps you stretch and grow without worrying about looking bad.

Paradoxically, holding your goals lightly increases the chance of attaining them, while being attached -- and thus fearing failure -- gets in the way of peak performance.

If you sit on the couch your whole life and never take care of or go after anything important, you can avoid the pitfalls of attachment. But if you have a job, intimate relationship, family, service, art, or spiritual calling, the challenge is to stay firm in your course, with dedication and discipline, centered in aspiration.

How

Aspiration is about liking, while attachment is about wanting -- and these involve separate systems in your brain (Berridge and Robinson 1998; Pecina, Smith, and Berridge 2006). Liking what is pleasant and disliking what is unpleasant are normal and not a problem. Trouble comes when we tip into the craving and strain inherent in wanting, wanting, wanting what's pleasant to continue and what's unpleasant to end. So learn to recognize the differences between liking and wanting in your body, emotions, attitudes, and thoughts. I think you'll find that liking feels open, relaxed, and flexible while wanting feels tight, pressed, contracted, and fixated.

Then, see if you can stay with liking without slipping into wanting:

• Help little alarm bells to go off in your mind -- Alert! Caution! -- when you get that familiar feeling of wanting/craving, especially when it's subtle and floating around in the back of your mind.
• Relax any sense of "gotta have it." Feel into the ways your life is and will be basically all right even if you don't attain a particular goal. Seek results from a place of fullness, not scarcity or lack.
• Try to remain relatively peaceful -- even in the midst of passionate activity -- since intensity, tension, fear, and anger all fuel strong wanting.
• Release any fixation on a certain outcome. Recognize that all you can do is tend to the causes, but you can't force the results.
• Keep the sense of "me" to a minimum. Success or failure will come from dozens of factors, only a few of which are under your control. Win or lose, don't take it personally.

Along the way, watch out for the widespread belief that if you're not fiercely driven toward your goals, you're kind of a wimp. Remember that you can have strong effort toward your aims without falling into attachment to the results. Consider the description I once heard of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who has accomplished many things as a peace advocate and teacher:

A cloud, a butterfly, and a bulldozer.

For Journaling

How do you understand aspiration without attachment? Write out how you would explain it to someone else.

The distinction between aspiration and attachment parallels the distinction between request and demand: If the answer is "no," then the degree to which you are bothered or upset is the degree to which you were demanding/attached rather than requesting/aspiring. In your journal one morning make a list of all the things that you would like to achieve or have happen in the day ahead. List 10-20 things. Then put a rating beside each item on your list, from 0 (you won't be upset at all if that doesn't happen) to 10 (you'll be very upset/bothered/disappointed/despondent if that doesn't happen). Reflect on your list and the ratings you gave. Using the tips above in the "How" section, can you lower your "upsetness" ratings?

Spiritual Practice Directory

Risk the Dreaded Experience

Practice of the Week
Risk the Dreaded Experience

See also: "Succeed at Rejection", which was also about taking the risk to face a dreaded experience. 

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

When things happened to you as a child -- or you saw them happening to others -- you naturally formed expectations about what you'd likely feel in similar situations in the future. Based on these expectations, you developed responses: do this to get pleasure, do that to avoid pain. Then experiences in adulthood added additional, related expectations and responses.

Consequently, the following sequence routinely happens inside you, me, and everyone else many times a day -- usually within a few seconds and often unconsciously:

1. A feeling or desire emerges in the mind, seeking expression.
2. This activates an associated expectation of emotional pain (from subtle unease to extreme trauma) if the feeling or desire is expressed; this pain is the "dreaded experience."
3. This expectation triggers an inhibition of the original feeling or desire in order to avoid risking the dreaded experience.

For example, (1) you'd like more caring from someone, but (2) but your childhood has led you to be cautious about revealing those vulnerable longings, so (3) you play it safe and don't ask for anything.

Take a moment to find one or more ways that this sequence -- (1) an emerging self-expression leads to (2) an associated expectation, which leads to (3) an inhibiting response -- unfolds in your mind. Here are some examples:

• (1) You want to get closer (e.g., emotionally, physically) to someone, but (2) moving closer exposes you to the risk of rejection, so (3) you do something that is distancing.
• (1) A feeling comes up (e.g., sadness, anger) but (2) expressing this feeling (or feelings in general) was discouraged in your childhood, so (3) you change the subject, make a joke, or otherwise move away from the emotion.
• (1) A desire arises to make something happen (e.g., aim for a new goal at work, write a song, plant a garden), but (2) you fear being unsuccessful, unsupported, scorned, or thwarted if you stick your neck out, so (3) you set aside your dream one more day.

Sometimes this is reasonable. For instance, (1) the urge to tell your boss to stuff it (2) prompts an expectation of big trouble if you do, (3) so you keep quiet.

But if you're like me and most people, your expectations of pain are often unreasonable. The negativity bias of the brain makes you overestimate both the likelihood of a bad outcome from self-expression and the amount of pain you'll feel if something bad actually happens. Further, the deep-down expectations that most shape self-expression developed when you were a child, so it is normal for them to be:

• Concrete, simplistic, and rigid -- even though now you can think in more abstract, complex, and flexible ways
• Based on a time when you (a) were stuck with certain people (e.g., family members, peers), (b) had few resources, and (c) felt pain keenly -- even though now you have much more (a) choice in your relationships, (b) assertiveness, money, and other resources, and (c) capacity to cope with pain.

These unreasonable expectations lead to responses that are needlessly pinched and cramped: we numb out internally, muzzle ourselves, stay safe and distant in relationships, and shrink our dreams. The experiences we dread hem us in, like taboo lands surrounding a shrinking little pasture, controlling us, telling us: "Don't chance that, live smaller." And most of the time, we suffer these costs without even realizing it.

What's the alternative?

It's to risk the dreaded experience -- and reap the rewards that result. For example:

• (1) Wishing for something from an intimate partner, (2) you feel nervous about saying it, yet you know it's likely to be well-received and that you'll be fundamentally all right if it's not, so (3) you decide to speak up and risk feeling let down -- and with some zigs and zags, it works out pretty well.
• (1) You don't feel your boss fully appreciates your abilities, but (2) he reminds you of your critical father and you dread those old feelings of hurt and low worth if you ask for more challenging (and interesting) assignments. So you plan carefully and identify a project he'll probably support, and you bring to mind, again and again, positive experiences of feeling seen and valued by others to help you cope if he is dismissive of you. (3) Having done your homework, you approach your boss with strength and clarity, which increases your odds of success.
• (1) You want to start a business. (2) Even though you worry about looking like a fool if it fails, you remind yourself that most people respect those who stick their necks out and have an entrepreneurial spirit. (3) So you start that business and do your best, at peace with whatever may happen.

How

Start by observing how this sequence proceeds in your mind:

(1) self-expression --> (2) expectation of pain --> (3) inhibition.

This is the most important step (which is why the explanation above is longer than usual). You'll frequently see it in retrospect, when you replay a response you had in a situation -- a (3) -- and realize that its function was to shut down your self-expression. At bottom, many of our reactions are strategies (often unconscious ones) for avoiding a dreaded experience.

Next, challenge your expectations. Are they really true? Help yourself appreciate the fact that expressing your emotions and wants -- in reasonably skillful ways -- will usually lead to good results. Speak to yourself like a wise, firm, and encouraging swim coach talking you through the first time you dove into a pool, with lines like Other people have done this; it turned out okay for them and it can be the same for you. You have the abilities to make this work. Yes, it won't be perfect and might be uncomfortable, but you will be all right. I believe in you. Believe in yourself.

Then, move out of your comfort zone by taking calculated risks. Start with easy situations in which the odds of self-expression causing a bad result are small -- and even if the bad result were to occur, it would be only mildly uncomfortable for you. Then work your way up the ladder of increasingly vulnerable and high-stakes self-expression. A wonderful freedom grows in the heart as you do this; you're less cowed by dreaded experiences and not clipping your wings to avoid them. If a particular self-expression does lead to a painful result for you, notice that you can cope with this pain and that it soon comes to an end, and absorb the reasonable lessons (e.g., it's not wise to confide in a certain friend). Overall, you could well decide that it's worth occasionally feeling some pain in order to gain the much greater pleasures of fuller self-expression.

Last, take it in when you risk self-expression and it turns out fine (as it usually does). Really highlight it in your mind when pessimistic expectations don't come true, or when feared events do occur but they're not all that upset¬ting. Open to the satisfaction of expressing yourself, and let it sink in. Feel the healthy pride and self-respect earned by being brave enough to dive in.


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For list of all weekly practices: "Spiritual Practice Directory"

Take Refuge

Practice of the Week
Take Refuge

I take refuge in the Buddha, the one who shows me the way in life.
I take refuge in the Dharma, the path of understanding and love.
I take refuge in the Sangha, the community that lives in harmony and awareness.

-The Three Refuges (Buddhism)

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

In Hawaii one time, my wife Jan and I visited a "place of refuge." People fleeing for their lives could come there and be sheltered. Related customs exist around the world; for example, in medieval Europe, a person could take refuge in a church and be protected there.

Less formally, we all need everyday refuges from challenges, sorrows, and the occasional sheer craziness of the world. Otherwise, you get too exposed to the cold winds of life, and too drained by the daily round. Without refuge, after awhile you can feel like you're running on empty.

Refuges include people, places, memories, and ideas -- anyone or anything that provides reliable sanctuary and protection, that's reassuring, comforting, and supportive, so you can let down your guard and gather strength and wisdom.

A refuge could be:

• curling up in bed with a good book, 
• having a meal with friends, 
• making a To Do list to organize your day,
• remembering your grandmother, 
• feeling strength in your body, 
• trusting the findings of science, 
• talking with a trusted friend or counselor, 
• having faith, or 
• reminding yourself that although you're not rich, you're financially okay.

The world's religions also have refuges that may speak to you, such as:

• sacred settings, 
• texts, 
• individuals, 
• teachings, 
• rituals, 
• objects, and 
• congregations. 

Personally, one of my favorite refuges is practice itself. It makes me feel good to trust that if I keep plugging away, then I can gradually become happier and more loving.

What gives you a sense of refuge?

How

Make a written or mental list of at least a few things that are refuges for you. And if you can, take a moment each day to consciously take refuge in those things. You can "take refuge" in several ways:

• Go to a refuge
• Come from a refuge
• Abide as a refuge
• Sense a refuge at work in your life

Personally, it's been a breakthrough to imagine that my refuges already exist inside me, that I can live from them, as an expression of them in this life. When you take refuge in this way, you are giving yourself over to wholesome forces, and letting them work through you and carry you along.

You can take refuge explicitly, with words, by saying things in your mind like:

• I take refuge in __________. Or 
• I abide as __________. Or 
• __________ flows through me.

Or just sense the refuge without words: feel what it is like for you to be in it, safe and supported, home.

Then repeat your way of taking refuge for each of your refuges. Try to do this every day, as soon as you remember to do so. It only takes a few minutes or less. And you can even do it in the middle of traffic or a meeting.

Once you have finished taking refuge, sense the good feelings and thoughts sinking deeply into you, filling you up, and weaving themselves into your being -- a resource and inner light that you'll take with you wherever you go.

For Journaling

• How would you fill in each of the following blanks? "I take refuge in _________." "I abide as __________." "_________ flows through me." Record how various terms in the blanks feel for you.
• Write about events in the last couple days when it was (or might have been) particularly helpful to take a moment for taking refuge. 

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For list of all weekly practices: "Spiritual Practice Directory"

Use Your Will

Practice of the Week
Use Your Will

diligence (n.) mid-14c., from Old French diligence "attention, care; haste, speed," from Latin diligentia "attentiveness, carefulness," from diligentem (nominative diligens) "attentive, assiduous, careful," originally present participle of diligere "single out, value highly, esteem, prize, love; aspire to, be content with, appreciate," originally "to pick out, select," from dis- "apart" + legere "choose, gather." Sense evolved from "love" through "attentiveness" to "carefulness" to "steady effort."

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

Life has challenges. To meet them, you need to be able to push through difficulties, stretch for other people, restrain problematic desires while pursuing wholesome ones, and do the hard thing when you must.

This means using your will.

We commonly equate will with willpower -- the deliberate application of vigorous effort, such as lifting the last, strenuous rep of weight in a gym.

But will is a larger matter: it's a context of commitment, as for a mother devoted to the care of her family. Will is giving yourself over to your highest purposes, which lift you and carry you along. This kind of will feels like being pulled by inspiration rather than pushed by stubbornness. Surrendered rather than driven.

How

What does it actually mean, to make your highest purposes the engine of your life? As a framework for the answer, I'd like to draw on four qualities of a strongly dedicated person identified by the Buddha which have meant a lot to me personally: ardent, resolute, diligent, and mindful Please consider how each of these could help you be more willful in one or more key areas, such as being braver in intimate relationships, completing your education, doing your fair share of housework, or sticking with a diet.

Ardent (a variation on ardor) means wholehearted, enthusiastic, and eager. Not dry, mechanical, or merely dogged. For example, why do you care about what happens in this aspect of your life, why does it matter? Let yourself be heartfelt and passionate about your aims and activities here.

Resolute means you are wholly committed and unwavering. Bring to mind an experience of absolute determination, such as a time you protected a loved one. You may feel a firming in the chest, a sense of every bit of you pulling for the same thing. Explore this feeling as it might apply to a particular part of your life. Imagine yourself staying resolute here as you face temptations -- saying no, for example, to the donuts offered in a meeting -- and take in the ways this would feel good to you. Get in touch with your resolve each morning, surrender to it, and let it guide you through the day.

Diligent means you are conscientious and thorough. Not as a grind, not from guilt or compulsion, but because -- from the Latin root for "diligence" -- you "love, take delight in" the stepping stones toward your higher purposes. This is where ardency and resolution often break down, so to help yourself:

• Keep in mind the reasons for your efforts; open to and try to feel their rewards, such as knowing that you are doing the best you can in the service of a good cause and deserve what's called "the bliss of blamelessness."
• Translate big purposes into small, doable daily actions. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed.
• Find the structures, routines, and allies that help you keep going.
• Tell the truth to yourself about what's actually happening. Are you doing what you had intended to do? If you're not, admit it to yourself. Then start over: re-find your wholehearted commitment, see what there is to do, and do it.

Mindful means that you know if you're being willful or lackadaisical. You're aware of your inner world, of the mental factors that block the will (e.g., self-doubt, lethargy, distractibility) and those that fuel it (e.g., enthusiasm, strength, grit, tenacity). You recognize if you've grown willful to a fault, caught up in purposes that are outdated or not worth their cost. You're able to make skillful course corrections that keep you aligned with your highest purposes.

Last, enjoy your will. Exercising it can get kind of grim if you're not careful. But actually, a person can be both lighthearted and strong-willed. Take pleasure in the strength in your will, and the fruits it brings you.

For Journaling

• Will is giving yourself over to your highest purposes, which lift you and carry you along. Make a list of your highest purposes.
• Write about a time when you had strong determination. Where did it come from? What did you do? How did that feel?
• Morning journaling: What small, doable actions that reflect your highest purpose do you set for yourself today?
• Evening journaling: Realistically and honestly assess your day in terms whether you did what you intended.
• Write about what was enjoyable and felt good about giving yourself over to your highest purposes.

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"Spiritual Practice Directory"

Have Insight

Practice of the Week
Have Insight

adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

By insight, I mean understanding yourself, particularly how your mind constructs your reactions to things. Let's say I've just come home from a frazzling day of work, and my wife gives me a hug and then asks in passing, "Did you get any eggs?" (which we had not discussed; I hadn't known we needed any) -- and I get irritated, tense in my body, and a little sad. What's happening here?

Her casual, neutral question about the eggs -- the stimulus -- led to a response of irritation, tension, and sadness due to several factors at work in my mind: stress, a sensitivity to possible criticism (that I had forgotten the eggs) from growing up with a fault-finding (although very loving) mother, and my guilt about not doing enough housework. If those factors disappeared, so would my upset.

Recall a moderately irritating or worrying situation of your own: what were your reactions to it, and why were you reacting that way? Consider stress, fatigue, your temperament, how you interpret certain events, your history with the others involved, and the impact of your childhood.

As with everybody else, your reactions come from causes inside your mind. Therefore, if you can change the causes, you can change your reactions for the better:

• Seeing, in the moment, how your mind has colored your perceptions and turbocharged your emotions can transform your reactions -- sometimes rapidly and dramatically, like waking up from a bad dream.
• Over time, you can gradually alter or get better control over the mental factors that wear on your well-being, relationships, and effectiveness.

How

Begin by shifting attention away from the external causes of your reactions -- like what someone said to you -- and toward the causes inside your own mind, such as how you interpret what was said, attribute intentions to the speaker, or feel especially prickly because of your history with that person.

The mind is like a great mansion, with cozy dens, dusty closets, and dank cellars. Insight explores it, opening closed doors and making sense of what it finds: sometimes a treasure chest, sometimes smelly old shoes -- though truly, it's usually treasure, including your natural goodness, sincere efforts, and lovingkindness.

Nonetheless, it can feel scary to look around (especially in those cellars); these suggestions could help you keep going:

• Remember the benefits of insight. For example, I'm very independent, so I remind myself that the main forces controlling me are actually inside my own head (e.g., beliefs left over from childhood); understanding them reduces their power over me.
• Bring to mind the feeling of being with someone who cares about you -- like a friend walking with you down a dark street. As they say in AA: "The mind is a dangerous neighborhood; don't go in alone."
• Regard what you find without making it good or bad. It's not you. It's only a sensation, feeling, thought, or want arising in a room in your mind. Try to be accepting rather than self-critical, compassionate rather than shaming. Everybody, me included, has wild stuff in the mind; it's a jungle in there!

Drawing on the resources in the bullet points just above, look around inside your mind. Now sense beneath the surface and ask yourself one or more of these four questions:

1. What is softer -- such as hurt, sadness, or fear -- below hard and defended stuff like anger or justifications? What am I really wanting, deep down? What are the good desires underlying bad behaviors? Such as the normal desire for safety at the root of anxious rumination.
2. What material here is from a time when I was younger? (For example, because I was often excluded from groups in school, I still sometimes feel like an outsider in groups when I'm really not.)
3. What am I getting stuck on? Like fixating on a position or goal -- or even a word. What am I trying to control that's not controllable (e.g., whether someone loves me)?
4. How is my gender shaping my reactions? Or my temperament, cultural and ethnic background, or personality?

You can use these methods for insight on the fly, when things come up for you. And you can use them to drill down into a specific issue, such as sensitivity to criticism, longing for approval, tension with your parents, or efforts to get into a good relationship.

Whatever you find, try to relax and open to it. Helpful or unhelpful, it's just furniture in the mansion of your mind.

For Journaling

Write about a moment of reactivity that you had recently (irritation, annoyance, anger, frustration, blame). Describe what happened; describe the feeling and how it arose. Then explore your reaction by answering at least two of four questions listed above.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Spiritual Practices Directory"

Be Mindful

Practice of the Week
Be Mindful

Category: Supporting Practices: observances that support and expand developing spirituality.

"Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, nonjudgmentally." (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

"When we are mindful, deeply in touch with the present moment, our understanding of what is going on deepens, and we begin to be filled with acceptance, joy, peace, and love." (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Text below adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

The movements of information through your nervous system -- which is what I mean by "mental activity," most of which is unconscious -- can create lasting changes in brain structure:

"neurons that fire together, wire together."

In particular, this rewiring is accelerated for what's in the field of focused attention. In effect, attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: it illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain.

Since attention is largely under volitional control -- you can direct it with conscious effort -- you have an extraordinary tool at your disposal all day long to gradually sculpt your brain in positive ways. Unfortunately, most people do not have very good control of their attention: it's hard for them to rest it where they want and keep it there -- such as an important but boring meeting, or the sensations of one breath after another -- and hard to pull it away from things that aren't helpful, like senseless worry, self-critical rumination, or too much TV. The reasons include temperament (for example, anxious, spirited), personal history (for example, losses or traumas that keep them on edge), and our hyper-stimulating, ADD-ish culture.

Happily, attention is very trainable. You really can develop better control of your spotlight/vacuum cleaner. This is where mindfulness comes in—which simply means being steadily aware of something. As you practice being mindful, you will gain more control over your attention.

You could be mindful of what's around you -- perhaps key details at work, the deeper wants of your partner, flowers blooming and children smiling, or where you left the car keys. You could also be mindful of your inner world, such as soft feelings of hurt underneath brittle anger, your good intentions and basic decency, or unrealistic expectations that set you up for disappointment.

Mindfulness has lots of benefits. It brings important information about what's happening around you and inside you. It helps you witness your experience without being swept away by it, and to hold it in a larger context; as your mindful awareness increases, negative experiences have less impact on you. And the duration and intensity of what you are paying attention to tends to increase its traces in your brain. Consequently, mindfulness really helps you take in positive experiences.

To some extent, mindfulness has become associated with Buddhism, but all the world's religions and moral traditions value being mindful -- rather than mindless! Additionally, mindfulness is increasingly taught in secular settings such as hospitals, corporations, classrooms, professional sports, and military training.

Studies have shown that regular practices of mindfulness:

• Thicken cortical layers in regions of the brain that control attention (so you get better at atten-tion itself) (Lazar et al. 2005)
• Add neural connection in the insula, a part of the brain that supports both self-awareness and empathy for the emotions of others (Lazar et al. 2005)
• Increase the relative activation of the left pre¬frontal cortex (behind the left side of your fore-head), which helps control and reduce negative emotions (Davidson 2004)
• Strengthen your immune system (Davidson et al. 2003)
• Reduce the impact of pain and accelerate post¬surgical recovery (Kabat-Zinn 2003; Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, and Burney 1985)

Pretty great for a simple method—mindfulness—that you can use, privately and effectively, anywhere you go.

How

Mindfulness is natural. You are already mindful of many things each day. The problem is that most of us remain mindful for only a few seconds at a time. The trick is to have more "episodes" of mindfulness, and to lengthen and deepen them.

So, set aside a minute or more every day to be deliberately mindful -- focusing on a specific object of attention (e.g., the sensations of breathing) or opening wide to whatever moves through awareness. You could extend these moments of mindfulness into a longer period of meditation, letting your mind become increasingly clear and peaceful.

Then, throughout the day, add some additional times of mindfulness when you remain stably present with whatever is happening around you and inside you. If you like, use recurring events such as meals, a telephone ringing, or walking through a doorway as reminders to be mindful.

It will support and deepen your mindfulness to bring an attitude of curiosity, openness, non-judgmental acceptance, and even a kind of friendliness to the things you're aware of. Also try to develop a background awareness of how mindful you are being; in effect, you are paying attention...to attention, in order to get better at it.

These practices will gradually train your brain to be more mindful, which will bring you many rewards. For as William James -- the first major American psychologist -- wrote over a century ago (1890, p. 424):

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will...An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence."

Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness (72:04):

See also: "Practice of the Week: Cultivate Minfulness" and "Practice of the Week: Mindfulness"

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Pause

Practice of the Week
Pause

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

Doing therapy with a child who's learning better self-control, sometimes I'll ask if he or she would like to ride a bike with no brakes. The answer — even from the most spirited ones — is always no. They understand that no brakes mean either a boring ride or a crash; paradoxically, brakes let you go fast and have the most fun.

It's the same in life. Whether you're faced with criticism at work, a partner whose feelings are hurt, an internal urge to lash out verbally, or an opportunity for some gratification that will cost you later, you've got to be able to put on the brakes for a moment — to pause. Otherwise, you'll likely crash, one way or another.

Your brain works through a combination of excitation and inhibition: gas pedals and brakes. Only about 10 percent of its neurons are inhibitory, but without their vital influence, it's your brain that would crash. For example, individual neurons that are over-stimulated will die, and seizures involve runaway loops of excitation.

In daily life, pausing provides you with the gift of time. Time to let other people have their say without feeling interrupted. Time for you to find out what's really going on, calm down and get centered, sort out your priorities, and craft a good response. Time both to bring cool reason to hot feelings, and to enable wholeheartedness to soften hard-edged positions. Time for the "better angels of your nature" to take flight in your mind.

How

Let yourself not act. Sometimes we get so caught up in neverending doing that it becomes a habit. Make it okay with yourself to simply be from time to time.

A few times a day, stop for a few seconds and tune in to what's going on for you, especially beneath the surface. Use this pause to make space for your experience, like airing out a long-closed closet into a big room. Catch up with yourself.

Before beginning a routine activity, take a moment to become fully present. Try this with meals, starting the car, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, or answering the phone.

After someone finishes speaking to you, take a little longer than usual before you reply. Let the weight of the other person's words — and more importantly, the person's underlying wants and feelings — really sink in. Notice how this pause affects you — and affects the other person's response to you.

If an interaction is delicate or heated, slow it down. You can do this on your own even if the other person keeps rat-a-tat-tatting away. Without being deliberately annoying, you could allow a few seconds more silence (or even longer) before you respond, or speak in a more measured way.

If need be, pause the interaction altogether by suggesting you talk later, calling time out, or (last resort) telling the other person you're done for now and hanging up the phone. In most relationships, you do not need the permission of the other person to end an interaction! Of course, pausing a conversation (which may have become an argument) midstream is more likely to go well if you also propose another, realistic time to resume.

Before doing something that could be problematic — like getting high, putting a big purchase on a credit card, firing off an irritated e-mail, or talking about person A to person B — stop and forecast the consequences. Try to imagine them in living color: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then make your choice.

Last, for a minute or more each day, pause globally. Just sit, as a body relaxed and breathing. Letting thoughts and feelings come and go as they will, not chasing after them. Nowhere you need to go, nothing you need to do, no one you need to be. Paused from doing, sinking into being.

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For list of all weekly practices: "Spiritual Practice Directory"

Smile

Practice of the Week
Smile

Category: SLOGANS THAT HELP: Advertisers know that slogans work! So let's put them to a positive use. Adopting these slogans as your personal guides and reminders will help bring more peace and more joy into your life. Journaling about how you're trying to implement a given slogan will help integrate it into your life.

NOTE: Women, in particular, are often subjected to unwanted advice to "smile" -- which reinforces sexist societal expectations that women must serve and please men by, among other things, always appearing cheerful. While both men and women may benefit from smiling more, telling another individual to smile is not appropriate.

"A warm smile is the universal language of kindness." (William Arthur Ward)

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

Smiling has many benefits:

• Thinking of things that make you smile -- like people you love, silly moments, stupid pet tricks, funny movies -- helps you feel better right on the spot. Plus it calms down the stress response and releases wholesome neurochemicals like dopamine and natural opioids (e.g., endorphins).
• Researchers have found that the facial movements of smiling -- independent of what a person actually feels inside -- prompt the person to evaluate the world more positively (Niedenthal 2007).
• Smiling and the good feelings it encourages promote approach behaviors, a fancy term for paying more attention to the opportunities around you, going after your dreams with more confidence, and reaching out to others.
• Through what's called emotional contagion, when you smile and thus feel and act better, that influences others to feel and act better, too. Then nice positive cycles start rolling through a group -- perhaps a family, a team at work, or simply a bunch of friends -- in which your smile gets others to smile and be more positive, which snowballs into an even bigger grin for you.
• When you smile -- authentically, to be sure, not in a false or Dr. Evil sort of way -- that tells people you are not a threat, which calms the ancient, evolutionary tendency to be wary of others, and thus inclines them to be more open to you.

How

This is definitely not about putting a happy shiny face on depression, grief, fear, or anger. Smiling then would be phony, and would probably feel awful. But when you feel neutral or experience mild well-being, shifting into a small smile while thinking of good facts that make it real can naturally lift your mood and help you act more effectively.

So, in your mind or on paper, make a list of things that make you smile. Several times a day, look for moments to bring that list to mind...and a soft smile to your face.

Then notice the results, in how you feel inside, and in how you act toward others and how they respond to you Savor these good feelings and successes, taking them in.

Smiling a few more times each day may not seem like much, but it will send wonderful ripples through your brain, body, mind, and relationships.

Now, isn't that something to smile about?

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Find Strength

Practice of the Week
Find Strength

CATEGORY: SLOGANS THAT HELP. Advertisers know that slogans work! So let's put them to a positive use. Adopting these slogans as your personal guides and reminders will help bring more peace and more joy into your life. Journaling about how you're trying to implement a given slogan will help integrate it into your life.

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

To make your way in life -- to enjoy the beautiful things it offers, to steer clear of hazards and protect yourself and others, and find friendship and love -- you need strength. Not chest-thumping pushiness, but determination and grit.

Strength comes in many forms, including endurance, losing on the little things in order to win on the big ones, and restraint. For example, if you want to move a boat at the edge of a dock, don't run into it with a big smash; you'll just hurt yourself. Instead, stand on the edge of the dock, put your hand on the boat, and lean into it. Strength keeps leaning.

Inner strength is not all or nothing. You can build it, just like a muscle.

How

Mental strength draws on physical health, which is fueled by:

• eating protein at every meal;
• taking vitamin and mineral supplements daily;
• exercising several times a week;
• setting aside seven to nine hours a day for sleep;
• using intoxicants in moderation or not at all; and
• addressing and resolving chronic health problems, even seemingly mild ones.

If you are not doing these, how about starting today?

Make a list of your strengths, such as intelligence, honesty, bearing pain, natural talents, recognizing good in others, or just surviving. Be accurate -- not unfairly self-critical. Recognizing your strengths will help you feel stronger. If it's appropriate, ask someone what he or she thinks some of your strengths are.

Think about some of the good things you use your strengths for, such as earning a living, raising a family, growing as a person, or making our world better. Tell yourself, It is good for me to be strong. My strength helps good things happen. Good people want me to be strong; anyone who wants me to be weak is not on my side. Notice any beliefs that it is bad to be strong . . . and then turn your attention back to the good reasons for being strong.

To increase your sense of strength, recall times you felt strong. (For me, many of these have involved standing up for others, or physical activities like hiking in wilderness.) What did your body feel like then? What was your posture, point of view, or intention? Explore embodying strength right now: maybe lifting your chin, widening your stance, or breathing deeply. Take in these physical sensations and attitudes of strength so you can tap into them again.

Notice how good it feels to be strong. Feel the pleasure in your body, perhaps a quiet fierceness and resolve. Enjoy the confidence that strength brings, the sense of possibility. Appreciate how your strength empowers your caring, protectiveness, and love.

Tell yourself that you are strong. That you can endure, persist, cope, and prevail. That you are strong enough to hold your experience in awareness without being over¬whelmed. That the winds of life can blow, and blow hard, but you are a deeply rooted tree, and winds just make you even stronger.

And when they are done blowing, there you still stand. Offering shade and shelter, flowers and fruit. Strong and lasting.

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Also of interest: Tony Robbins on "Finding Inner Strength".
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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Get Excited

Practice of the Week
Get Excited

CATEGORY: SLOGANS TO LIVE BY: These are for everyone. Carry these reminders at all times. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time -- but they will slow you down a bit (and that's a good thing.) Resolve to get stronger at living by the maxims, day by day. Sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling.

ENTHUSIASM:
from Ancient Greek ἐνθουσιασμός (enthousiasmos),
from ἔνθεος (entheos, “possessed by a god”),
from ἐν (en, “in”) + θεός (theos, “god”).

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

Excitement is energy plus positive emotion, and it is part of joy, passion, and having fun. It may be mild -- but it still moves your needle. For example, on my personal 0-10 "thrillometer," seeing the stars on a clear night is about a 2 while the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series in 2010 was a 10.

When you consider excitement in this expanded way, what moves your own needle, even a little bit? How about the sound of bagpipes, a child's first steps, traveling someplace new, finishing a project that's gone well, dancing, laughing, finding something you've wanted on super-sale, or hearing a neat idea?

Of course it's hard, if not impossible, to feel excitement if you are ill or psychologically burdened. The inability to get excited is a sign that something's not right.

But under normal conditions, without excitement about something, life feels flat, bland, and inert. Passion helps ignite and sustain creativity, entrepreneurship, political action, and committed relationships. Getting excited about something together is bonding; shared enthusiasm makes a movie, concert, political rally, conversation, or lovemaking a lot more rewarding.

As you grew up, your natural liveliness may have been criticized, dampened, or squelched. In particular, passion is woven into both strong emotions and sex; if either of these has been shamed or numbed, so has excitement. Did any of this happen to you? If it did, then gradually making more room for passion in your life -- more room for delight, eagerness, and energy -- is a joyful way to express yourself more fully.

How

Find something that excites you, even just a bit. Feel the enjoyment in it. See if you can intensify the experience through a quick inhalation, a sense perhaps of energy ris¬ing in your body. Lift your chest and head, and let more aliveness come into your face. Register this feeling of excitement, and make room for it in your body. Then as you go through your day, notice what moves your own thrillometer, particularly in subtle ways. Look for things to get excited about!

Tell yourself that it's okay to get excited, thrilled, or aroused. Take a stand for a life that's got some juiciness in it. Reflect on your passions as a younger person: What's happened to them? Should you dust one of them off and recommit to it?

Pick a part of your life that's become static, perhaps stale -- such as cooking, a job, housework, repetitive parts of parenting, even sex—and really pursue ways to pep it up. Try new dishes, turn up the music, get goofy, dance with the baby, vary your routines, and so on.

Be aware of how you might be putting a damper on excitement, such as tightening your body, deadening your feelings, or murmuring thoughts like Don't stand out. . . Don't be "too much" for people... Don't be uncool. As you become more mindful of the wet blankets in your own mind, they'll dry out.

Consider some of the practices for raising energy from yoga, martial arts, or other forms of physical training. These include taking multiple deep breaths (not to the point of lightheadedness), sensing energy in the core of your body a few inches below the navel, jumping up and down a few times, making deep guttural sounds (don't try this at work!), or visualizing bright light.

Join with the excitement of others. Focus on something that lights up a friend or your partner, and look for things that could be fun, enlivening, or interesting about it for you. Don't fake anything, but nudge your own energy upwards; get more engaged with the other person's passion, which may ignite your own.

Don't rain on other people's parade—and don't let them rain on yours. Sure, if you're getting too revved up, read the social signals and either dial down your energy or take it elsewhere. But be aware that excitement makes some people uncomfortable—to keep their own passions bottled up, they put a lid on those of others—and honestly, that's their problem, not yours. With this sort of person, you may need to disengage, find others who share your interests, and walk to the beat of your own drummer.

For me, the essence of excitement is enthusiasm -- whose root meaning is quite profound: "moved by something extraordinary, even divine."

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SPIRITUAL PRACTICE DIRECTORY

Enjoy Your Hands

Practice of the Week
Enjoy Your Hands

Category: Slogans to Live By: Practices for everyone to keep in mind and pay attention to. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time. Just have the intention to grow stronger in each of these areas as you go about your day, and sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling. The titles of these practices are guiding slogans to live by.

"Studies suggest that knitting - and crafting in general - can actually act as a natural anti-depressant, as well as reduce stress and even protect your brain from aging." -- The UK Daily Mail, 2014 Mar

"The real action of compassion is touch. . . . Regrettably, we are a touch-deprived culture in the west." -- Dacher Keltner

"To touch is to give life." -- Michelangelo

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing.

Sometimes it's worth remembering the obvious: you engage the world with your body — often with your hands.

Human hands are unique in the animal kingdom in their dexterity and sensitivity. Their capacity for skilled action helped drive the evolution of the neural networks that handle sophisticated planning, decision-making, and self-control.

Your hands reach, touch, caress, hold, manipulate, and let go. They type, stir pots, brush hair, wash dishes, shift gears, scratch ears, open doors, throw stones, hold loved ones, and help you snuggle into bed. They may not be perfect, and with aging, they may sometimes be in pain, but they're always lovely and vital.

Appreciating your hands makes you appreciate living. Being mindful of them — paying attention to what they're feeling and doing — is a simple and available way to drop down into a more sensual, in-the-body connection with the world, including the people you touch.

How

Right now, take a moment to be aware of your hands. What are they doing? What are they touching? They are always touching something, if only the air. What are they sensing? Warm or cool? Hard or soft?

Move your fingertips. Notice how incredibly sensitive they are, with about 20,000 nerve endings per square inch. Play with the sensations of your fingers stroking your palm, your thumb touching each finger in turn, the fingers of one hand caressing the fingers of the other one.

Soak up the enjoyment your hands give you. Use your hands to draw you into pleasure such as the warmth of holding a cup of coffee, the relief of scratching an itchy head, or the satisfaction of getting a pesky button through its hole.

As appropriate, touch others more. Feel the grip of a handshake, a friend's shoulder, a lover's skin, a child's hair, a dog's or cat's fur.

Buddha Okays All Beings

Feel the skillfulness of your hands: steering a car, writing a note, replacing a lightbulb, sawing wood, planting bulbs, measuring garlic, peeling an onion. Feel their strength in holding a knife, making a fist, lugging a suitcase.

Watch your hands talk: pointing, rising and falling, opening and closing, thumbs-up, okay, waving hello and goodbye.

Many times a day, try to sink awareness into your hands.

Feel them feeling your life.

For Journaling

For your journaling today, copy this sentence into your journal: "Wow, my hand is amazing." As you copy it, pay close attention to how all the muscles of the hand coordinate their motion to allow you to write that sentence.

Make a list: "Things my hands did today that I wouldn't normally have paid any attention to at all."

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Dacher Keltner on touch:

Rick Hanson on enjoying your hands:

For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week"

Be Curious

Practice of the Week
Be Curious

Category: Slogans to Live By: Practices for everyone to keep in mind and pay attention to. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time. Just have the intention to grow stronger in each of these areas as you go about your day, and sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling. The titles of these practices are guiding slogans to live by.

Curious people are typically not self-centered. (Rick Hanson's daughter)

Cultivate "Don't Know Mind." When we think we know, we aren't curious. Peace, joy, and connection aren't about what you (think you) know. Rather, they come from shedding the need to know, letting go our attachment to security of knowledge, and always being open to the surprise of the this moment.

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing. [Order a copy for yourself: HERE]:

A couple years ago, my father and I were driving to the ocean, near where I live north of San Francisco. Born on a ranch in North Dakota in 1918, he's a retired zoologist who loves birds, and I wanted to show him some wetlands.

The twisting road was carved from the side of coastal hills plunging to the sea. After a while we paused at a pull-out for a pit stop. Returning from the bushes, I found my dad scrutinizing dried, scraggly grasses sticking out from the mini-cliff next to our car. "Look, Rick," he said excitedly, "see how the layers of dirt are different, so the plants growing in them are different, too!" He sounded like a little kid who'd discovered an elephant in his backyard.

But that's my dad: endlessly curious, never bored. I and ten thousand other drivers had sped around that turn seeing nothing but another meaningless road cut. But he had not taken the commonplace for granted. He wondered about what he saw and looked for connections, explanations. For him, the world wears a question mark.

This attitude of wonder, interest, and investigation brings many rewards. For example, engaging your mind actively as you age helps preserve the functioning of your brain. Use it or lose it!

Plus you' gather lots of useful information — about yourself, other people, the world — by looking around. You also see the larger context, and thus become less affected by any single thing itself: not so driven to get more of what you like, and not so stressed and unsettled by what you don't like.

As our daughter once pointed out, curious people are typically not self-centered. Sure, they are interested in the inner workings of their own psyche — curiosity is a great asset for healing, growth, and awakening — but they're also very engaged with the world and others. Maybe that's why we usually like curious people.

How

To begin with, curiosity requires a willingness to see whatever is under the rocks you turn over. Usually it's neutral or positive. But occasionally you find something that looks creepy or smells bad. Then you need courage, to face an uncomfortable aspect of yourself, other people, or the world. In this case, it helps to observe it from a distance, and try not to identify with it. Surround it with spaciousness, knowing that whatever you've found is just one part of a larger whole and (usually) a passing phenomenon.

With that willingness, curiosity expresses itself in action, through looking deeper and wider — and then looking again.

Much of what we're curious about is really neat, such as the development of children, the doings of friends, or the workings of a new computer. And sometimes it pays to be curious about some sort of issue. As an illustration, let's say you've been feeling irritable about a situation. (You also can apply the practices below to different aspects of your mind, or to other people or to situations in the world.)

Looking deeper means being interested in what's under the surface. For example, what previous situations does it remind you of — particularly ones when you were young and most affected by things?

Looking wider means broadening your view:

• What are other aspects of the situation, such as the good intentions of others, or your own responsibility for events?
• What factors could be at work in your mind? For example, have you worked too much lately, or felt underappreciated, or not eaten or slept well? Did you appraise the situation as a lot worse, or a lot rnore threatening, than it actually was? Did you take it personally?

Looking again means being active in your investigating. You keep unraveling the knot of whatever you're curious about, teasing apart the threads, opening them up and seeing what's what. You don't take the first explanation as the final one. There's an underlying attitude of wonder and fearlessness. Like a child, a cat, a scientist, a saint, or a poet, you see the world anew.

Again.

And again.

For Journaling

For your journaling today, here's an exercise for cultivating curiosity. Set a timer for 10 minutes. When the timer starts, start writing. Keep the pen moving without stopping to think until the 10 minutes are up. Here's the twist: Write nothing but questions. Write questions about what happened to you, what you saw, heard, experienced, felt in the last 24 hours. Don't answer any question. Just move immediately on to asking the next question.

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Rick Hanson on being curious:

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Keep Going

Practice of the Week
Keep Going

Category: Slogans to Live By: Practices for everyone to keep in mind and pay attention to. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time. Just have the intention to grow stronger in each of these areas as you go about your day, and sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling. The titles of these practices are guiding slogans to live by.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
- Winston Churchill

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing. [Order a copy for yourself: HERE]:

I once attended a workshop led by Joseph Goldstein, a Buddhist teacher. I had realized something about the lack of a fixed self, and shared the insight with him. He nodded and said, "Yes, right." I felt seen for taking a step forward. Then he smiled and added something I've never forgotten: "Keep going."

Of all the factors that lead to happiness and success -- such as class origins, intelligence, personality, character, looks, luck, race -- the one that typically makes the most difference over time is persistence. Knocked down ten times, you get up ten times.

If you keep going, you might not reach your goal -- but if you stop, you certainly won't reach it.
We respect people who persist. There's a magic in determination that draws others toward it and elicits their support.

And you just don't know when your day will finally come. There are so many stories of "overnight success" that actually arrived after many years of effort, often including some failures. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was an obscure colonel in 1939 -- and nearly forty-nine years old -- when Germany invaded Poland to begin World War II. Four years later he was in charge of all Allied forces in Europe; nine years after that he was elected president.

How

Make sure your goals are worthy of your perseverance. You can be determined to a fault. Don't "keep going" down a tunnel with no cheese. Consider the collateral damage: are you winning battles but losing the "war" of overall health, well-being, integrity, and welfare of others?

Know the feeling of tenacious persistence. It could be fierce, strong, stubborn, unyielding, clear, inspired, surrendered, on-mission, purposeful, focused, committed -- or all of these. Recall a time you had this feeling, and know it again in your body. Call it up whenever you need to draw on resources inside to keep going.

Take the step that's right in front of you -- one after another. I've taught many people to rock climb: Beginners will often have one foot down low and one foot at knee level, on solid placements, plus two good handholds, yet they can't find any new holds, so they feel stuck. But when they simply stand up on the higher foothold -- taking the step that's available -- that brings higher handholds and footholds within reach.

Find the pace you can sustain. Life's a marathon, not a sprint. For example, on my first Boy Scout backpack trip, I was a skinny, nerdy, unathletic kid. But I wanted to be the first to our campsite. We set out and the burly "alpha" boys raced ahead, while I kept up a slow-but-steady pace. After a few miles, I passed them sitting down on the side of the trail. They were startled to see me trucking along and soon got up and raced past me. But after another few miles, once again they were laid out by the side of the trail, this time really fried as 1 walked past them -- and I was very happy to get the first, really cool tent spot.

Keep going in your mind even if you can't make any headway in the world. Maybe you're truly stuck in some situation -- a job, an illness, a certain sort of marriage. But at least you can continue to reflect on what's happening, learn to cope with it better, and love the people around you. And over time maybe things will improve. As Winston Churchill said, "If you're going through hell, keep going."

Have faith that your efforts will pay off. You may have heard this teaching story: A bunch of frogs fell into a vat of cream. They couldn't jump out, and one after another drowned. But one frog refused to quit and kept swimming and staying alive, even after all the other frogs had died. Finally its movements churned the cream to solid butter -- and it hopped out to safety.

Keep churning!

For Journaling

1. Use your journal to take some take to review the last 5 or 10 years of your life through the lens of persistence. When have you most exemplified persistence? In what areas would you assess you didn't display as much persistence as you would have liked? Where did you exemplify persistence toward a goal of dubious worthiness?

2. What does persistence feel like? What bodily experience/sensation do you have when you're most exhibiting persistence?
(Writing it down will help you recall the feeling when you need to draw on it.)

3. What goal are you now persistently pursuing. Is that goal really worthy? If so, write about why you think so.

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Rick Hanson on keeping going:

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"

Don't Know

Practice of the Week
Don't Know

Category: Slogans to Live By: Practices for everyone to keep in mind and pay attention to. These practices don't require setting aside a separate substantial chunk of time. Just have the intention to grow stronger in each of these areas as you go about your day, and sometimes make one of them the focus of your daily journaling. The titles of these practices are guiding slogans to live by.

“Not-knowing does not mean you don’t know. Not-knowing means not being limited by what we know, holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for it to be different. Maybe things are this way. But maybe they are not." - Shunryu Suzuki

Adapted from Rick Hanson, Just One Thing

Once upon a time, a scholar and a saint lived on the same street, and they arranged to meet. The scholar asked the saint about the meaning of life. She said a few words about love and joy, then paused to reflect, and the scholar jumped in with a long discourse on Western and Eastern philosophy. When the scholar was finished, the saint proposed some tea, prepared it with care, and began pouring it slowly into the scholar's cup. Inch by inch the tea rose. It approached the lip of the cup, and she kept pouring. It ran over the top of the cup and onto the table, and she still kept pouring.

The scholar burst out: "What are you doing?! You can't put more into a cup that's already full!"

The saint set down the teapot and said, "Exactly."

A mind that's open and spacious can absorb lots of useful information. On the other hand, a mind that's already full—of assumptions, beliefs about the intentions of others, preconceived ideas—misses important details or contexts, jumps to conclusions, and has a hard time learning anything new.

For example, let's say a friend says something hurtful to you. What benefits would come from an initial attitude that's something like this: Hmm, what's this about? I'm not sure, don't entirely know.

• First, you'd buy yourself time to figure things out before putting your foot in your mouth. 
• Second, you'd naturally investigate and learn more: Did you hear correctly? Did you do something wrong you should apologize for? Is something bothering your friend unrelated to you? Did your friend simply misunderstand you? 
• Third, she'd probably be more open and less defensive with you; a know-it-all is pretty irritating.

The great child psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that there are essentially two kinds of learning:

• Assimilation — We incorporate new information into an existing belief system.
• Accommodation — We change a belief system based on new information.

Both are important, but accommodation is more fundamental and far-reaching. Nonetheless, it's harder to do, since abandoning or transforming long-held beliefs can feel dizzying, even frightening. That's why it's important to keep finding our way back to that wonderful openness a child has, seeing a cricket or toothbrush or mushroom for the very first time: child mind, beginner's mind... don't-know mind.

How

For a few minutes, or for a day, a week—or a lifetime—let yourself not know:

• Be especially skeptical of what you're sure is true. These are the beliefs that often get us in the most trouble.
• In conversation, don't assume you know where other people are headed. Don't worry about what you're going to say; you'll figure it out just fine when it's your turn. Remember how you feel when someone acts like they know what you're "really" thinking, feeling, or wanting.
• Let your eyes travel over familiar objects—like the stuff on a dinner table—and notice what it's like during that brief interval, maybe a second or so, after you've focused on an object but before the verbal label (e.g., "salt," "glass") has come into awareness.
• Or go for a walk. Notice how the mind tries to categorize and label—to know—the things around you, so it can solve problems and keep you alive. Appreciate your mind—"Good boy! Good girl!"—and then explore letting go of needing to know.
• Ask yourself if it's important to you to be a person with the right answers, the one who knows. What would it be like to lay down that burden?
• This may seem a little cosmic, but it's down-to-earth: Look at something and ask yourself if you know what it is. Suppose it's a cup. Do you really know what a "cup" is, deep down? You say it's made of atoms, of electrons, protons, quarks. But do you know what a quark is? You say it's energy, or space-time, or sparkling fairy dust beyond human ken, or whatever—but really, do you ever, can you ever, actually know what energy or space-time truly is?? We live our lives surrounded by objects that we navigate and manipulate—spoons, cars, skyscrapers—while never truly knowing what any of it actually is. And neither does anyone else, even the world's greatest scientists.
• Since you don't really know what a spoon is, do you even know what you are? Or what you are truly capable of? Or how high you could actually soar? Consider any limiting assumptions about your own life . . . how you've "known" that your ideas were not very good, that others would laugh (or that it would matter if they did), that no one would back you, that swinging for the fences just means striking out. What happens if you apply "don't know" to these assumptions?
• Notice how relaxing and good it feels to lighten up about needing to know. Take in those good feelings so you'll feel more comfortable hanging out in don't-know mind.

May you know less after this practice of not-knowing than when you began.

And therefore, know more than ever!

For Journaling

Questions to reflect on in your journal:
1. Can you identify some beliefs that you cling to more tightly than you need to?
2. When have you, in conversation, assumed too quickly that you knew where another person was headed?
3. What limiting assumptions about your life do you make?
4. How does it feel when you lighten up about needing to know?

Rick Hanson on not knowing:

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For list of all weekly practices: "Practices of the Week Index"