Mindfulness (5 page)
Authors: Gill Hasson
3
Mindful Thinking and Feeling
“Begin your own mindful meditation practice. Find a quiet place and then focus your mind on the present moment. Don't think of other things, but sit in silence. Be aware of your thoughts, but be willing to release them and stop thinking about or focusing on them. Begin with ten minutes and meditate daily.”
Ten minutes? Seriously?
If you've ever tried to meditate you might feel that that you'll be no good at mindfulness because you cannot “empty” your mind. It feels as though your mind is jumping all over the place and you are constantly having to refocus. Your mind can behave like a new puppy. You tell your puppy to sit and stay, but your puppy immediately runs away, rummages through the kitchen bin, chews up your new shoes, and wees on the carpet.
Your mind is its own entity. It cannot be easily controlled. It's like a television that keeps hopping about or getting stuck between channels. You can't find the remote control so like the TV channel, your mind keeps playing the same scenes over and over again or spends a short time on one thing before jumping to another issue.
If you can focus your mind, then you've found the remote control, trained the puppy.
Your mind
will
wander however. That's its nature. It will fall into traps that take it from being completely in the present; mind traps lure you into the future or trap you in the past.
“What a liberation to realize that the âvoice in my head' is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that”.
Eckhart Tolle
You've already read in
Chapter 2
that just being
aware
of mind traps is being mindful. The next step is to break free from mind traps.
Try to be patient through this process and not judge yourself if you find mind traps arising.
Talking recently to a friend about mindfulness, she told me “I've learned to accept that there are occasions when my mind is more susceptible to wandering or getting trapped compared to others. On those occasions, when I catch my mind wandering, I simply bring it back to what's happening now. I realise that these are the occasions when I have the opportunity to practise pausing and being present amidst what's going on around me.”
“Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.”
Maori proverb
All mind traps â blaming others, jumping to conclusions, tunnel thinking etc. â come with emotions attached to them; emotions such as worry, anxiety anger, guilt, fear etc.
How are emotions linked to being mindful? First, let's identify what emotions are. Most people would say that emotions and feelings are the same thing. In fact, feelings are just one aspect of an emotion. An emotion, any emotion, has three aspects: thoughts, behaviour and feelings. These thoughts, behaviours and physical feelings
interact
with each other to create an emotion.
Behavioural aspect
: This part of an emotion is the external expression of emotion; the things you do or don't do when you experience an emotion. If, for example, you are feeling worried about losing your job, the action you take might be to consult your trade union, or, you might begin to make plans to start your own business. On the other hand, the worry might paralyze you to the extent that you do not do anything!
Cognitive aspect
: This aspect of an emotion involves your thoughts. It is the internal part of an emotion â the conscious, subjective aspect of an emotion. If you were worried about losing your job, your thoughts might be along the lines of “I'll never get another job”. Or they might be “Great, I'll retrain and do something completely different”.
Physical aspect
: This part of an emotion is the physical change that occurs in your body when you experience an emotion. When you are anxious, worried or excited, for example, your body releases adrenaline. When you are relaxed and happy, your body releases serotonin. So, depending on your thoughts about the possibility of losing your job, your body will experience a different physical reaction.
There is no specific order in which the aspects of an emotion occur, but any one aspect can affect the others. For example, what you think can affect your physical response. It can also alter how you behave. But it's also the case that how you behave can influence what you think, which, in turn, can affect a physical response.
Next time you experience an emotion â for example anger, joy, guilt, pride â try to identify all the different parts of it.
You can start by being aware of any physical signs or sensations: where does the feeling seem to be located? Increased heart rate, a hot flush, sweating, tension in muscles, knots in your stomach, a shiver; these changes intensify the emotion. With a little practice, you can learn to be aware of these signs.
Next, observe your thoughts. When you are feeling guilty, for example, what are you thinking? When you are feeling grateful, what are your thoughts?
Finally, be aware of how you behave. What don't you do? What do you do? What actions do you take?
Just doing this exercise in itself is being mindful. Not only does it help you be more aware of your emotions, it can help you to see how the different parts of emotions are connected, how they interact, and help you understand how they affect you.
The more you are aware of your emotions, the more you can move out of mind traps: those responses that have become a habit and a default position.
It's easy to think of emotions in terms of being either positive or negative. In fact,
all
emotions have a positive intent that serves physical and social purposes.
Physical safety value of emotions
: Firstly, emotions protect you and help keep you safe. Emotions enable you to react quickly in situations where rational thinking is too slow. In a potentially dangerous situation, you need to react quickly and emotions like fear and surprise help you do just that.
Social value of emotions
: Social emotions like trust, gratitude and love enable you to feel emotionally connected and attached to others;
to feel
that you are accepted, appreciated, needed and cared for and that you belong. To feel understood, respected, supported and, where it's relevant, forgiven.
Emotions such as guilt, shame, embarrassment and pride help you to reflect on and adapt the way you behave and relate to others. Trust, for example, leads to sharing and cooperating. Guilt prompts you to put right something you should or shouldn't have done.
As well as having a protective and social value, emotions serve your creative needs. Emotions can broaden or narrow experience; provide focus and variety.
There is a close link between emotional experience and creativity. Art, music and literature, for example, can all provoke and inspire emotions and create an emotional connection between the art, music or literature and the viewer, listener or reader. Think, for example, of the way music is used in films to help inspire joy and triumph, sadness and fear.
Often, it can be difficult to be mindful of some emotions because you have learnt to regard them as negative; to be avoided, ignored, dismissed etc. But when you have a clearer understanding of emotions â what they are, why we have them and where they come from â it can be easier to manage them in a mindful way; to allow emotions to
inform
you.
“The past is such a big place.”
Neil Young
Another way to understand emotions is to know that emotions are responses to something that happened in the past, is happening in the present, or might happen in the future.
For example, disgust can be a response to something that is happening right now.
Gratitude, although experienced in the present, is a response to something that happened in the past; something that happened an hour ago, a day, a week or even years ago. Guilt, regret and embarrassment are also responses to past events. They can all influence and inform how you think and behave in the present.
In contrast, hope, optimism and excitement are emotions that are experienced in the present but are related to something that is going to happen in the future: tomorrow, next week and next month. Anxiety, fear and vengeance are also responses to future possibilities. Just like emotions that arise from past events, emotions that arise from possible future events also influence how you think and act in the present.
The moment you begin to reflect on an experience you move out of the present and into the past. It is the same when you think of something in the future. Emotions, then, can be seen as movements out of the present, although they are always
experienced
in the present.
Emotions are temporary and short lived. When you are aware of an emotion and what it is telling you, you are being mindful. But too often we get caught up in our emotions, and instead of allowing them to inform and direct us we allow them to overwhelm us and drag us into the past or pull us into the future.
Sadness, for example, is an internalized expression of emotion characterized by feelings of loss and helplessness. The positive intent of sadness is to help a person slow down and adjust to loss. But sadness is a problem when you become trapped in a downward spiral that can lead to depression.
Fear helps you to deal with threatening situations that you suddenly find yourself in â flight or fight. But fear is a problem when you are
trapped
in fear; in a constant state of preparing to fight or flee; stressed and anxious.
Guilt occurs as a result of realizing you've done or are doing something wrong and should prompt you to take action to put things right straight away. Guilt is a problem when you can only keep going back over in your mind, what you did or failed to do; you are trapped in the past.
So, emotions are intended to be quick short messages that motivate you to respond in a way that is helpful. But, when emotions dominate your mind they trap you in the past or future.
How can you stop being trapped in the past or future by your emotions? You start by accepting your emotions.
Accepting your emotions does not require you to analyze what, how and why you feel like you do. It means simply understanding that you do feel like you do, whatever the reason.
Suppose, for example, you've just been let down â a friend cancels at the last moment (again). You feel resentful; you're frustrated and feel taken for granted. You are annoyed that she's “made” you feel like this.
Instead of blaming your friend for how you feel, do yourself a favour by accepting your feelings and saying to yourself, “I've just been let down. Being disappointed and frustrated is normal and natural. It's OK for me to feel this way.” Just being aware and observing an emotion can help prevent you from being overwhelmed by it.
To avoid being pulled back and forth, be mindful; by being aware and accepting the thoughts and feelings, you are anchoring yourself back into the present moment.
Accepting an emotion simply means letting the emotion be there; without trying to change the feeling, the experience or the event that prompted it. Whatever you're feeling, acceptance relieves you of needless extra suffering.
It is what it is.
I often use this analogy to help explain the concept of acceptance.
Imagine this: you lose your keys and your mobile phone. You are sure that they must be somewhere in the house, so you start searching. No luck. You try the car; perhaps they fell out of your bag and fell under the seat. They are not there. You are getting increasingly frustrated. You cannot believe you could have mislaid them.
You call your partner. Have they seen your keys and mobile phone? No. You set off for work, feeling annoyed and confused.
You just cannot accept you could have lost both your keys and your phone. How? Where? Maybe they were stolen? To make matters worse, this is the second mobile phone you've lost in the space of a few months.
Later that evening you search endlessly but with no success. How much is a new phone going to cost? Where is the nearest place to get new keys cut?
The next day you stop dwelling on what could have happened and instead, focus your attention on what to do now. You go and get new keys cut and buy a new phone, thinking, “Well there's one good thing: I got an upgrade on my phone!”
Notice how, in this example, acceptance began once you took action in the present moment. Once you got new keys cut and bought a new phone you were managing the situation â you were moving towards acceptance.
Acceptance can be difficult if you are constantly dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. But the past is gone; the future is not yet here. What exists between past and future is the present moment and it is in the present that acceptance occurs.
When you begin to accept the way things are right now, you can open up new possibilities that didn't appear to exist before.
Acceptance doesn't mean you have to like what's happenÂing. Acceptance requires a sense of realism, an ability to acknowledge the situation and your circumstances as they are actually are right now, rather than how you wish they would be or wish they had been.
What happens next, what you choose to do, has to come out of your understanding of this moment. When you begin to accept the way things are right now, you can open up new possibilities that didn't appear to exist before.
Next time a situation occurs that provokes an emotion, try to identify the emotion you are having. Can you give the emotion you are experiencing a name? Frustration? Jealousy? Shame? Instead of thinking, for example, “It's not fair”, a mindful observation might be “Hmm, I am feeling frustration and resentment”.' Or, “I'm feeling excluded”.
See the emotion for what it is without judging it or attempting to get rid of it.
Rather than judging your emotions as good or bad, (another mind trap) simply feel them and observe them. This is different from denying the emotion or trying to control it and stop feeling like you do; it's simply stepping back for a moment and seeing your emotion from a distance, seeing the emotion as a separate entity.
Accepting your emotions will help you to see the difference between neutral observation and emotional involvement; you simply understand that you do feel this way; this emotion
has
surfaced.
The less you resist what is happening within you emotionally, the more opportunity you have to be present for the experience and see what might be below the surface. You observe and then respond to the message the emotion is sending you in a more mindful way.
Accepting an emotion makes it more likely that you will begin to understand the intention of emotion. Mindfulness helps you to be attuned and responsive to the messages that emotions communicate. Being aware and accepting how you feel and think about a particular situation can help you respond in a mindful way.
It's important to know, though, that whether it takes a day or two to get over losing your keys and phone, or months to get over something more serious, acceptance cannot be rushed. It is part of a process that may involve feelings such as denial, refusal, opposition, fear, regret and guilt.
So remember,
all
emotions have a positive intent; they are quick short messages that motivate you to respond in a way that is helpful.
This is particularly pertinent to the concept of intuition â the insight that comes from the instant understanding of something that is happening right now, at this moment.