Never certainly in my lifetime has mindfulness been more important. The pandemic can run you or you can back up, take stock and get clearer yourself in your own mind about what this means to you. Finding meaning is vital as we look at the immense stress our families are under at this moment.
There are a number of techniques to center yourself when this much is going on ALL AT ONCE. It all starts with observing. I ask clients when they come see me for the first time to entertain only one thing. “Can you be curious?” is my question. It is indeed my only core request of their effort in therapy. I say it is time to become a friend to yourself. What a poor friend any of us would be if we were not curious about any friend. That is true for any relationship – and it is certainly true for the relationship you have with yourself.
A crisis like this forces to ask… have I been living the wrong way? Am I striving for the wrong thing?
Please friends, be curious. Neuroscientists have estimated the average person has 60,000 thoughts a day. The pandemic might mean for many of us – a lot more thoughts than that. We are too often engaged in a frenzy of panic and anxiety. Imagine a car, paralyzed in park, revving its engine. That is what happens when we ruminate. So, let’s instead observe. Let’s observe that we’re not getting anywhere if we continue with the car in park. Let’s observe we’re using energy wastefully. Let’s observe that this causing wear and potentially catastrophic failure on the machine racing. Likewise it is no use in beating on ourselves, causing anxiety; thinking what ifs and what then. I will write in a future post the savage cost this sort of unchecked anxiety makes on our physical health. It is very clear – our bodies do keep score.
Let’s stop, observe and take stock of what we CAN control. Let’s think about what is positive in this situation. I hear you say “positive?!?!?” Clearly the circumstances here in late March of 2020 would have us believe it is overwhelming negative? I surely can not dispute that on the surface. But let’s take stock and observe how this will shift humanity please. The pandemic does force us to slow down and watch. It forces us to watch our own habits, distancing socially, our hygiene, our diet (not just of food but of optimism, or media or exercise). It forces us for the first time in a long time to bow down to loss of civil liberties. It forces us to SLOW DOWN.
I have had to repeatedly give up as a process of the past four weeks on old thinking… old plans… old ways of being. It is a process of winnowing and I’ve actually reacquainted myself with the word jettison. What are you prepared to give up; given that the world is in fact wildly different. For me this process is a coming to grips with grief too. What are you prepared to shed? Surely it is not a time for accumulation right? Native Americans felt that if some one accumulated more than they needed that this was a sign of mental illness. Jettison.
Surely we are all, for the most part, guilty of this understanding that more and more is better. More things, more profit, more more. The environment, humankind now, has paid an immense price for “optimization”. Globalization doesn’t seem to be optimal right now does it? I would ask you to consider please where you place compassion in your life now? What efforts can you take to help those less fortunate? What is actually our role when things come apart like this?
Let us through the next few months embark on a mindfulness journey and re-task our hearts to meet the new challenge. Let us be curious together please about what new space we can claim in our consciousness that will accommodate peace and compassion. I welcome your comments and thoughts.