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.

Interpreting our way to greater happiness

      Some situations in life aren’t taught to us, and yet when faced with them, we assume we should somehow know how to deal with them.  How do you handle the situations in your life?  How many shoulds, coulds, woulds do you impose on yourself?  And how much of the interpretations of “should have done”, or “would have to do,” influence how you feel about yourself and the situation you are facing?  

The interpretation we ascribe to situations directly contributes to how much or little stress we’ll consequently feel.  We can ask ourselves: “are my interpretations of occurrences in my life beneficial or harmful to me?  Do they ease or burden my life? 

  All of us had to, at some point, learn to walk, drive, interview for a job, cross the street, answer a research question – we weren’t born knowing these.  In the same way, we also have to acquire and practise skills for many other common occurrences.   

For example, do we understand the crucial difference between taking offense versus being harmed?  An incident, from many years ago, made this clear to me, and it also awoke my inner critic “how could you have not known this before?”  One day, a friend said to me: “you take things too personally.”  I immediately defended my position, but later on I pondered her odd remark. Even though, I reacted by righteously defending my interpretation of the situation, I will always be grateful to her for that comment.  Her remark showed me -- another interpretation or response was possible.  I hadn’t known this.

Reactivity by nature doesn’t allow room for any other perspective to emerge – the unconscious instantaneous birth of reactivity automatically swallows up the gap of space to breathe, be present and reflect on what’s occurring.  Reactivity shuts down possibilities. 

So let’s return to the difference between being offended and being harmed. According to Lou Marinoff in his book, “Plato, Not Prozac,” the difference is essentially one of interpretation.  He explains it this way.  If someone slaps you in the face, then this is being harmed.  There’s only one interpretation possible.  If, however, someone said you were lazy and useless, here there is more than one possible interpretation.  You will have to do some self reflection and then determine how close to true the remark is or isn’t.  In this instance, you CHOOSE whether to be offended or to shrug off the remark.  The latter is largely dependent on your interpretation of the accuracy of the remark, whereas the former is determined by the physical pain you experience, which isn’t subject to interpretation.

While this lesson may have been self evident to many of you, it wasn’t for me.  When we approach situations with the attitude we should know how to deal with whatever is going on, then we are setting ourselves up for high stress.  

The disadvantages of applying the “should know” interpretation is that we –

·         fail to appreciate and tap into the essential experience of the moment,

·         expect perfection from ourselves,

·         become combative with and judgmental of ourselves

·         don’t learn from the situation or about our coping ability,

·         don’t allow all possibilities to come to bear in the situation.

My friend’s comment helped me see an option existed to respond in ways that would benefit me and possibly others.  Reactivity is so primal that it functions at a binary level of survive or die.  Because it occurs in an environment where we coexist with others, it can cause us to become competitive rather than cooperative.  And competition doesn’t allow for compassion and consideration of self or others. 

With mindfulness, we use ourselves as the ground to practise kindness to self first; we begin with learning to accept ourselves, as we are.  The training is to remain aware and open and not to react.  Over time, this grows our ability to be more mindful and less reactive in life.  When we are able to acknowledge and accept all aspects of ourselves, we enter the path of compassion. And self-compassion is a stepping stone to being a happy human being in the world.  And happy people make a happy world.

      May you, too, benefit from this reminder. 

If you'd like to learn techniques for being mindful in your work, relationships and life, I have a workshop coming up this weekend (20-21 April) and another one on (18-19 May).  These are weekend intensive workshops on "Mindfulness:Strategies for Daily Living to Reduce Stress".  Please email Casey at acceptancehealing@gmail.com for more info.   Or check out the link (top right) on Upcoming Workshops.