Pavlov's Rings and Pings

       About three weeks ago, I got my first ever smartphone!  One day while scrolling through the many available screens, I saw a couple of friends had left me voicemails.  Here’s the thing:  I had been checking texts, emails and WhatsApp, but hadn’t realized there was a separate voicemail feature from the phone feature.

      There had been all these pings, bells, and tinkling sounds, but I didn’t know what those sounds were signaling.  So I would hear them, and then simply return to whatever I had been doing before I got distracted by the sound.  When I mentioned to Stephen that I didn’t know people had left me voicemail messages, he teased me that the Pavlovian conditioning hadn’t yet kicked in for me.  I laughed with him.

       The things is I can’t say I was being truly mindful by not reacting to the sounds.  I heard them and knew they were summoning me, but I didn't know where to look.  After a while I just heard the sounds and ignored them because they made no sense to me.  I began thinking of them as arising phenomena, which I noticed and then dazedly ignored. 

       Now that I know what these sounds mean, how will I respond?  Or will I react?

       Will I give in to the conditioning that every time there’s a tinkle or bleep, I’ll drop whatever it is I’m doing, and move my attention to its summons?

       This is how habits are formed.  The association of one thing with another, and the automatic repetition of an action.  In this case, sound with the shifting of attention and the body towards the sound.  The actual hearing of the sound is a moment of mindfulness, as it is an arising phenomenon in the moment; i.e. something has altered or changed the environment around us and we notice this change.  The reacting would be to stop what you are doing because you are compelled by habit, curiosity, worry, or fear to immediately find out what is summoning you. 

        With mindful awareness, you can sit with the thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations that arise when you hear the sound, but don’t immediately get up to attend to it.  This trains you to notice the cascade of reactions that happens as a result of one stimulus occurring.  A sound happens, your ears hear it, there’s an associated thought and a bodily feeling, and then you act. Every time you do this, you strengthen the habit.

       When we pay attention to what’s happening in our internal and external environments, we grow knowledge about how we are influenced by our thoughts, feelings, emotions and sensations, and by other people, situations or relationships.  This knowing grows our emotional intelligence.

       Emotional intelligence is knowing our inner and outer worlds and what affects us, and managing our behavior or actions accordingly.  After recognizing what’s happening in and for us, we will become attuned to recognizing similar feelings, thoughts, and impulses in others.  In this way, we begin with ourselves and then the practice of being attentive, responsive, and compassionate spreads to our relationships with coworkers, partners, children, and parents. This is how we improve both our inner and outer relationships.

       Getting back to the phone: obviously you need to do what you need to do.  But the next time your phone beckons you with a ring, song, chirp, or bell --  take a breath and observe what's happening in you.  At the very least, by breathing or waiting a moment you can lessen the habit of reacting.

      Life is a series of moments – moments of choice to respond or react.

      Which one will you choose when your phone next calls out to you?

If you are interested:  there are mindfulness apps for your phones; see the links tab on my website!!

 May you meet this moment consciously.