Tag: Pema Chodron

Being vulnerable, Embrace the present moment

Stay. Stay. Stay.

The amygdala is sometimes known as the “lizard brain.” It’s more or less a holdover from prehistoric times and its role is to activate our primal survival instincts such as aggression and fear. When we are faced with a perceived threat, it can reflexively kick us into “fight or flight” mode. Sometimes–typically when we get overwhelmed and flooded with stress hormones–we can bounce back and forth from attacker to avoider, from villain to victim. Or we can shut down entirely.

At work, the lizard brain can keep us from trying new stuff despite knowing we need to innovate. It can cause us to push back hard on challengers to the status quo because we fear being wrong or looking stupid. Or we can just get stuck, paralyzed into inaction.

In personal relationships, those of us who fear intimacy can push away those whom we love, despite our desire to be more deeply connected. Or we can bolt for the door just as we get closer to what we so strongly desire.

The Resistance is real. So is self-sabotage. But as Pema Chodron reminds us, “fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Clearly some situations are untenable and they deserve to be run from and put well behind us. Frankly, quitting is often under-rated.

Other circumstances require us to stand up and fight and say “enough is enough.” No one should endure tantrums or constant boundary violations or harassment or far worse.

Discerning the situations where we need to get in and rumble and get messy and walk through our fear is not easy. It takes real courage to remain in the arena when everything tells us to to flee. To engage when the fear comes up. To do the hard, uncomfortable work. To be neither victim, nor persecutor, nor rescuer, but an accountable adult, fully present, living in reality and owning our truth.

Our restlessness is part of the human condition. And the lizard brain can be easily activated–even more so if we have a history of trauma.

But like a dog being trained, we can learn to stay. Stay engaged. Stay focused. Stay patient. Stay accountable.

We can do the work.

The challenges are great, but so too can be the reward.

 

This post was also published at http://www.stevenpdennis.com

Do the work, Letting go of ego, Radical acceptance

They’ll see it eventually. Or not.

When we believe another person is unable to see the harsh reality of their words or actions it can particularly frustrating. When those words or actions affect us directly by activating our own worry, shame, sadness or pain, it can be especially difficult. Even traumatic.

Maybe we want to change their perception of past events.

But then again “truth” is a relative concept, often simply held in the eyes of the beholder.

Perhaps they can’t let go of a something we’ve done in our history together.

Yet the idea that we can magically make their feelings go away by our well reasoned arguments is a fool’s errand.

Maybe we don’t like their choice of friend, lover, job, outfit, hair style, the book they are reading and on and on.

But it’s probably worth remembering that it’s their life and most of the time their decisions have little or nothing to do with us. It’s also worth reminding ourselves that much of the time we rarely have the full picture anyway.

Maybe we want them to see us fundamentally in a different light, to focus only on our good parts, or forgive us for past ills we’d prefer they ignore, or just simply extend us more grace and compassion.

Yet their journey is their journey. And our is ours.

Things will unfold in their own time, despite our attempts to jam the accelerator to the floor.

Hope is not a workable strategy. Acceptance is.

In the absence of a fully functioning time machine (which, by the way, I HAVE added to my Christmas list) we can only start where we are.  And we can only work on what is within our control and, whether we like it or not, that’s our stuff, not theirs.

It may well be that the other person is in denial, or using poor judgment, or making a terrible mistake. It turns out this is what we humans do.

And eventually they’ll see it. Or not.

Either way, OUR work is the same.

The longer we stay in judgment, blame or resentment toward the other person, the longer we make ourselves miserable.

 

Letting go of ego, Smile at fear

Punished by anger

“You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.”

–  Buddhist Proverb

There is nothing inherently wrong with feeling anger from time to time. Frustration and anger are perfectly normal human responses to perceived threats, unfair circumstances, unkind words and even the ebb and flow of daily annoyances, like being cut off in traffic or making a simple mistake. Yet it is how we understand our anger and what we do with it that is the problem that ultimately leads to suffering.

Clearly there are vast injustices and truly awful persistent situations that my cause us to stay in anger beyond an initial reaction. But for most of us, it is an underlying fear or painful experience that causes us to “bite the hook”, ramp up our defenses, escalate our aggression and stay stuck in our anger beyond the momentary trigger.

If you are anything like me, trapped in habit, you often latch on to a story that we are being attacked by an outside force, when in fact what is really going on is, deep down, some fear or wound within us is being poked and uncovered. And when we layer on a dose of shame, unresolved hatred or long simmering aversion, we are quickly lost, making matters far worse. Now, if we’ve played out an angry dance with someone we care about, we’ve made ourselves miserable, broken connection in an intimate relationship and likely pushed our friend or loved one away–perhaps forever.

Been there, done that.

How does this serve us or support how we wish to show up in the world? Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron offers sound advice on this topic in her talk The Freedom to Choose Something Different.  She suggests that we must embrace three difficult practices.

First, we must notice when we start to bite the hook, that is, when we begin getting caught in habitual patterns that cause us to suffer. We must learn that getting hooked is a natural, spontaneous reaction. There is no suffering in the hooking itself, only in how we respond to it.

Second, and far more challenging, is actually doing something different, or as Pema calls it, “choosing a fresh alternative.” We must practice changing the negative momentum we are so familiar with and learn to avoid speaking and acting in ways that only serve to strengthen our habits of resentment, anger, blaming others and other patterns that entrench us (and those around us) in becoming more and more unhappy.

Third, is to make this difficult practice a way of life. One or two “good” reactions does not change our negative habitual ways. It is impossible to avoid challenging circumstances and we will be faced with many opportunities to bite the hook. Learning to avoid getting stuck there is the real opportunity and what ultimately sets us on a path to freedom.

Deciding not to punish ourselves is, in fact, a choice and a habit well worth breaking.

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Being vulnerable, Embrace the present moment, Fail better, Smile at fear, Start, Unleashing potential

Holy stuckosity Batman!

“Stuckosity” isn’t a real word. It can’t even be found at Urban Dictionary. Well, at least not yet.

But certainly most of us are familiar with the quality of being stuck. Perhaps you’re feeling it right now.

We get stuck telling the same old stories about ourselves that are familiar, but serve no useful purpose.

We get stuck trying to solve problems with the same level of thinking that got us into trouble in the first place.

We get stuck defending the status quo, even when we know it’s not working.

We get stuck in self-righteousness, which almost never changes the other person’s mind or behavior, but frustrates us to no end.

We get stuck fighting reality, re-litigating the past, trying vainly to predict the future.

We get stuck striving for perfection, when perfect is both impossible and, ultimately, only a recipe for suffering.

We get stuck waiting for precisely the right time and to be fully ready, failing to see that those exact conditions will never ever come.

We get stuck in relationships because we fail to speak our truth and ask for what we want and need.

We get stuck unleashing our full potential because we wonder how other folks will judge us if we were to go out on a limb.

And on and on and on.

The key to getting unstuck is to first see it for what it is. And most of the time our stuckness is merely our habitual reaction to an irrational fear; to a fundamental misunderstanding of risk.

Once we become aware that staying in our fear–and being unwilling to let go of our story, our need for control and our desire to be right–is actually the most risky thing we can do, the door is cracked open to change.

Once we we accept that our behavior is simply habit, the debilitating result of a lifetime of bad conditioning, we can work to establish new, more healthy and useful ones.

Once we are committed to take action, we are finally free. Free to start before we are ready. Free to embrace failure as a natural outcome of growth. Free to be okay with our imperfection.

And that’s good thinking Robin.

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This post also appeared on my business blog at http://www.stevenpdennis.com