The mind is restless, unsteady, hard to guard, hard to control. The wise one makes it straight, like a fletcher straightens an arrow.
How good it is to rein the mind, Which is unruly, capricious, rushing wherever it pleases. The mind so harnessed will bring one happiness.
Your worst enemy cannot harm you As much as your own unguarded thoughts. A well-directed mind creates more happiness Than even the loving actions of your parents.
- The Dhammapada
“April showers bring May flowers.” As I sit here at the end of April looking back at the last few weeks, this proverb comes up for me. Though I have to say that we had one of the most gorgeous Aprils ever! It almost felt like summer at times and nature just reveled in the warmth and sunshine. The reason why I thought of this proverb despite our incredible spring is because of a series of life experiences my family and I recently had, which really tested patience and morale: from having our bags stolen out of our car on a trip, to finding out that a close family member has some major health issues, to a tech meltdown of my work computer, to losing half a tooth just before delivering a webinar, and then being zoom-bombed during said webinar (yep, it’s a thing! Look it up. Very disturbing!), to just yesterday the death of a family friend…the list goes on. Life keeps doing this to us, doesn’t it? Throwing challenges at us while we’re busy doing other things. I know I have written about this topic here before. Maybe I’m bringing this on to myself because I chose to be “the challenge coach”? Truth be said, I think it’s actually just the human condition.
On the other hand, the last month also brought loads of incredibly wonderful moments! I already mentioned the weather and the beautiful spring – see for yourself:
There was also a best friend’s wedding, PEP’s (the organization I work for and which I discussed in this newsletter) 40th anniversary celebration bash, a trip to Boston to help a friend with a renovation project which gave me the opportunity to visit with family and dear old friends, both of my daughters getting job interviews as they are job searching … I was blessed with many positive, rich and life-giving moments as well.
Life is a roller coaster, and as the old Chinese parable of “the old man lost his horse” philosophically concludes:
"Who knows, what is good and what is bad?"
Shakespeare said it too:
“There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
What matters is not so much what happens to us, but how we react to it. We can either react poorly by getting angry, upset, hurt, anxious; feeling humiliated or ashamed; being afraid; feeling inferior and like a fraud; or even like a victim and becoming despondent – all of which lead to stress. That’s what I call being pummelled by the waves of our emotions.
Or we can learn to surf those emotional waves until they pass so that we can get back to cool, clear-headed, laser-focused, rational, and creative thinking. That’s where solutions to problems come from, and that is the place from which we can continue to productively live our lives.
At this point, you might be thinking: “easier said than done!”. And you would be correct. This “negative” reactivity is built into our brains since the beginning of time – and its function is nothing less than our survival. All those “negative” emotions are really the limbic part of our brain doing its job of trying to make sure that we make it through life. Those knee-jerk feelings that we get when someone cuts us off in traffic, yells at us, or steals something from us, are helpful in the moment, as they signal danger and help our body prep for “defense”. The question is – how long is it useful to actually feel those negative emotions for? When someone cuts us off in traffic for example, it’s useful to get shocked and angry for a second because that will allow our brain and body to go into instantaneous reactivity, which in turn will allow us to stabilize our car and not get into an accident. But carrying those feelings around for the rest of the day? Arriving all flustered and still angry at work? Letting it out on our co-workers? NOT helpful, and not productive.
That’s why learning how to “surf the waves” of our emotions when they arise is so important. Our emotional life in reaction to the daily onslaught of life events is clearly like an ocean: waves will keep coming, and when they do, there is no stopping them. It’s when they break on the shore that things become peaceful again and that we can continue walking down the path of life effectively and productively.
Learning to “surf the waves” is learning to manage our own brains: it starts with awareness that we are in reactive mode, then consciously deciding that we want and need to calm ourselves down from our emotional state, and choosing rationally what the best path forward is.
You guessed it: it’s all about mindfulness!
We can only be aware if we are mindful. We can only consciously decide to be and do otherwise if we are mindful. We can only choose a different path from a place of mindful awareness. And this, my friends, contrary to what most people think, is actually not that hard to learn. It’s really just a matter of wanting it and then doing it. As with most things in life!...
Read on if you would like to find out about a program that actually helps train your brain. It’s called Positive Intelligence, and it is … brain changing!
In mindfulness,
REWIRE YOUR BRAIN FOR SUCCESS!
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