Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (28 page)

When you have your list in front of you, ask yourself these questions:

 

1. Of the things that you have written, which nourish you? What lifts your mood, energizes you, makes you feel calm and centered? What increases your sense of actually being alive and present, rather than merely existing? These are nourishing activities.
   
 

 

2. Of the things that you have written, which deplete you? What pulls you down, drains away your energy, makes you feel
   tense and fragmented? What decreases your sense of actually being alive and present, what makes you feel that you are merely existing, or worse? These are depleting activities.
   
 

Now, complete the exercise by putting an “N” for “nourishing” or a “D” for “depleting” on the right-hand side, corresponding to each activity. If an activity is both, put down your first reaction, or if you simply cannot choose, put N/D or D/N. You may find that you want to say, “It depends,” and, if so, it may be useful to notice what it depends on.

The aim of this exercise is not to shock or unsettle you, but to give you an idea of the balance in your life between the things that nourish you and those that deplete you. The balance does not have to be perfect, as one nourishing activity that you love might easily outweigh any number of depleting ones. Nevertheless, it is wise to have at least a handful of nourishing activities (and preferably do at least one each day) to balance the depleting ones. This may be as simple as taking a long bath, reading a book, going for a brisk walk or indulging in your favorite hobby. The old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” contains more than a grain of truth. Many other societies have similar homilies. And in some cultures, doctors don’t ask, “When did you start to feel depressed?” but, “When did you stop dancing?’

Understanding how much of your life is devoted to depleting activities is one thing, but it’s also important to take action to either spend less time doing them or to devote more effort to nourishing pastimes. A central focus of Week Seven of the
mindfulness course is devoted to taking action to redress the balance between the things that nourish you and those that deplete you.

Spend a few minutes reflecting on how you can begin to redress the balance between the nourishing and depleting activities that you listed in the table earlier. Perhaps you can do this together with someone with whom you share your life—a family member or trusted work colleague, for example?

There will be some aspects of your life that you simply cannot change for now. If, say, your job is the source of your difficulties, you might not have the luxury of being able to quit (even if you feel that this is the most appropriate solution). If you cannot fundamentally change a situation then you have two options. First, you can try, as best you can, to increase the time and gentle effort you devote to nourishing activities and to decrease the time and effort you give to depleting ones. Or second, you could try to approach the depleting ones in a different way, to practice being fully present with them, even if you find them boring or unpleasant. You could try to become fully mindful of them instead of judging them or wishing them away. By being present in more of your moments, and making mindful decisions about what you really want and need during those times, you can become progressively more accepting of the good and bad points of your day. You will also discover unexpected routes to happiness and fulfillment.

Take the case of Beth. She was a clerk in the back office of a major bank—always, as she said, run off her feet with one thing after another. There was no obvious time for her to relax, let alone meditate. After a few weeks of mindfulness practice at
home, she started to pay more attention to the busyness of her day. She noticed that tiny gaps opened up even at the most hectic times. For example, she realized she spent a lot of time trying to contact other parts of the company by phone or email to track down missing files. She’d often phone or email several times but get nowhere. This was one of the most annoying parts of her job—waiting for someone else to reply. She’d often find herself muttering angrily: “Why aren’t they at their desks—getting on with their jobs, like me!”

Then, she had a light bulb moment: here was time that she could reclaim for herself; a moment of silence that she could use to ground and reconnect with herself. She started to use these gaps to take mini breathing spaces, in which she could mentally step back from the hubbub. After a while, she started to notice many other times when she could step back from the melee—for example, when waiting for her computer to start up each morning, waiting for the drinks machine to deliver her drink, walking to meetings or standing in line for sandwiches at lunchtime. Before this, she’d thought that mindfulness practice was best done when taking a lunch break or nipping outside for a coffee. Now, she found she could look for gaps throughout the day, times that could be used to transform her thoughts, feelings and behavior. It wasn’t necessary for her to increase dramatically the time she devoted to nourishing activities, or to reduce the amount she spent on depleting ones—she simply altered her relationship to those unavoidable depleting ones. She had begun to discover that even in the busiest days, there were “cracks” in what seemed an impenetrable wall of work.

In her own way, Beth had found a way of “turning toward,” rather than escaping or avoiding her experiences. This is the mindfulness you have been learning too; to hold the difficult
aspects of your daily life, as well as your beliefs or expectations about them, and to move in closer to them. This is what you’ve been learning during the previous six weeks of practice by focusing on your bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts.

Now it’s time to draw up your own map that you can use to alter the balance between the depleting and nourishing things in your life. In the space on the following page, if you can, write down five ways in which you plan to alter the balance. Don’t worry if you can’t immediately think of five—just write in the extra ones when they occur to you later. Focus on the small things in life; this is a crucial part of the practice. Don’t write down “Give up work” or “Take up mountain climbing,” for example. Choose things that are easily achievable for you, such as “Take a coffee break every two hours,” “Walk the kids to school, rather than drive” or “Eat one less takeout meal each week and cook dinner instead.” You could try breaking down depleting things into smaller chunks as well. For example, clean a cupboard or tidy a corner of your desk for five minutes, rather than carrying on until it’s perfect. Or you might decide to finish work in a different way, turning off your computer a quarter of an hour earlier to give you time to consider what is on the agenda for tomorrow, rather than answering emails up to the last minute, then suddenly realizing you are late for whatever it is you planned to do after work. Note how sometimes it is possible to deal more skillfully with a depleting activity simply by leaving enough time to do it. See if it is possible to take a small pause before and after it, so it has its own space in your life. It also pays to bear in mind that what you find depleting is unique to you, so it is fine to focus on the things in your own life without comparing them to what others find nourishing or depleting.

I will alter the balance between nourishing and depleting activities by:

____________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________

____________________________________

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And most important of all: see if it’s possible to remain mindful when you’re carrying out both the nourishing and depleting activities—and especially when you are consciously shifting the balance between them. See if you can sense how even the tiniest—seemingly inconsequential—changes can alter how you think and feel, and how this affects your body.

You could refer back to the list often, perhaps weekly, and certainly if you feel your mood worsening. And remember, you don’t have to make major changes in direction: tiptoes are perfectly fine.

Many of us find numerous ways to avoid or put off altering the balance between nourishing and depleting activities in our lives; usually for very solid-sounding and altruistic reasons. Some may say, for example: “I’m balancing being a mom, a career woman, a wife and a homemaker. Where do I find the time for myself?” Others will point to the large projects at work or home, and say, “Not now, not yet; maybe some day—when this project is finished.”

On the surface, this approach seems reasonable; but try to see if it is possible to take the long view. In time, if we don’t rebalance our lives, we will become less effective at everything we do. We will become joyless, sleepless and witless. Here are other common reasons people have given for not rebalancing their lives:
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• There are things in life that I don’t have a choice over, like going to work.
  
 

 

• If I don’t keep up, I fall behind.
  
 

 

• It’s shameful to show weakness at work.
  
 

 

• I wasn’t raised to take time for myself.
  
 

 

• I can only do something that I enjoy once all my obligations to others, or to my work, have been completely satisfied.
  
 

 

• I have so many caring responsibilities. It would be wrong to put myself first.
  
 

If
any of these reasons, and countless others like them, sound familiar to you, then perhaps you are now in a position to see how many of them depend on old habits of black-and-white thinking in which there seems no middle way. Mindfulness helps you to get beyond the extremes, to see how you can find creative ways of helping to nourish yourself in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Like Beth, you might start finding gaps in your day. And, in the long run, it’s best foreveryone, including yourself, to find a balance between nourishing and depleting activities.

Seeing clearly the balance between the things that nourish
you and those that deplete you is important. But they also have a deeper underlying message too. First, they help you to explore the connections between your actions and your mood. Deep down, we all feel that when we’re unhappy, stressed or exhausted there’s nothing we can do about it. It feels like a set point. If you feel at your wits’ end through stress, then you feel helpless—you
are
stressed. Period. Likewise, if you feel exhausted, devoid of energy or lacking in vigor, you feel that “this is just the way things are” and “there’s nothing I can do to change it.”

Taking time to see how you can rebalance your daily life encourages you to see these thoughts as just thoughts—as “propaganda” that prevents you from even testing whether it is true or not.

Furthermore, if you can more easily sense a shift in the balance between the nourishing and the depleting, this can act as an early warning signal for worsening mood. It also acts as a route map back to a balanced and happy life. If you know which activities nourish you, you can do more of them should you start to feel unhappy or unduly stressed or tired. They also give you a menu of activities from which to choose should you feel your mood worsening. This map may prove to be of huge significance because chronic low-level unhappiness, stress and exhaustion sap your capacity to make decisions. If you have preplanned for such an eventuality, a minor dip in mood can become a springboard to greater happiness rather than a stepping-stone to misery. Depleting and negative thoughts are part of the territory of living in a frantic world, but that does not mean you have to buy into them.