The Serenity Solution: How to Use Quiet Contemplation to Solve Life's Problems (10 page)

and observe them with detachment.

4. Pay broader attention to those around you. Observe them

without judgment. Listen not only to the words they say

but the way they say them. Notice their gestures. Avoid

interrupting until they are finished talking. Shift your

viewpoint and see things from their perspective. Imagine

what it would be like to see the world through their eyes.

Think how you would respond then.

The last part of this exercise I give to my couples in counseling in order to improve communication between them. We take turns listening to and imagining what a disagreement looks like from each partner’s viewpoint. Often, this perceptual repositioning not only decreases senseless bickering and increases mutual cooperation, but it offers something new that each partner did not know about the other.

By practicing these initial broadening exercises, you should be able to stop auto focusing (i.e. automatic targeting and reacting to things) and stay in calm observant focus for longer periods, thereby heightening your observation skills and awareness of inner and outer experiences and opportunities. Next, we explore how to use a broad focus to gather insight on a problem.

Exercise 4.4: Thought Streaming

A way to produce fluid insights is through a technique called thought streaming. In thought streaming, we pose a question and then release mental filtering to allow an uncensored influx of information from our inner mind.

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Choose a question you would like an answer to and then go into calm focus and pose the question to your inner mind. Afterwards, completely relax your mind and prepare to receive the answer. Maintain an expect-ant attitude and allow your thoughts to flow freely. Follow your thought stream wherever it may go. Don’t censor it.

Next, review your thoughts. Make them tangible. Write down the

thoughts that reoccurred, stirred up emotion, or drew your attention the most. Try to find the right words to capture those thoughts that stood out the most. Be succinct. Boil them down to one sentence; this is your answer.

Thoughts:

Summary Sentence:

Exercise 4.5: Identifying the Central Factor

Finally, in this last broadening exercise, we’re going to learn how to explore a current problem in our lives by calmly detaching and looking at the interrelationship of its factors and determining its central factor.

Recall that the central factor is the one factor among several that is having the most influence on a situation. It typically is the common underlying factor to several obvious complaints. For example, though a person may complain outwardly about how bad things are, being let down by others, and how nothing seems to work in his life, these may be peripheral symptoms of an underlying sense of helplessness.

To find the underlying, central factor, we have to search a little deeper and broader for the answer. Often, it is the answer your inner mind delivers to you when you take time to ask yourself: “What is really bothering me?” To answer the question, you typically don’t select every concern you
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have, but instead, have to search your mind for the one factor that is having the most effect on how you feel at the moment.

Using our earlier work-conflict example, let’s see how we might find the central factor (dominant theme) in the initial mental noise that accompanies such life difficulties:

Things are really bad lately … everything is going wrong … I’m stressed
all the time … I can’t sleep … keep fighting with my wife … my neck is
hurting from so much tension … my boss is always on my back … nothing
is ever good enough no matter how hard I try … can I pay the bills … I’m
never going to retire … should I go to night school … will I have the
time … losing my temper the other day wasn’t good … I don’t know what I
want anymore … things are confusing … I have so many problems … my
life’s unraveling … I’m really depressed … what’s wrong with me?

Whew! It seems in this example there are a number of factors this

person feels are affecting his present situation: feeling stressed, trouble sleeping, spousal arguments, body tension, work conflict, future security concerns, as well as concerns about his emotional state. These are the presenting complaints or problems.

Now, it is true that the person may be concerned by a number of these factors; but only one of them has the largest influence, and it is conflict and insecurity at work. It is the one factor most contributing to the other factors. If it were not for insecurity at work this person would most likely not be so stressed, short with his wife, losing sleep, feeling tense, questioning himself, or worried about his future and other means of income.

Although the central factor or dominant theme does not appear ex-

plicitly in the person’s frantic narrative, it can be deduced when we look at the complaints as a whole and tease out what is central from peripheral. A sentence like: “My insecurity at work is affecting my health, home life, fi-nancial outlook, and emotional state” fits perfectly as the dominant theme
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of this situation and is a concise problem definition. We can pretty much agree that this succinct statement increases our awareness of the real problem, whereas the undefined dialogue reveals much confusion that adds to the person’s suffering.

In the top line below, jot down your thoughts about an area of your life that is troubling you right now. Just as you did in the thought-streaming exercise, and as illustrated above with the work-conflict example, allow your thoughts to flow freely. Next, look at these thoughts as a whole. See if any of these thoughts are related. Do you notice a common connection among any of them? Try to identify the one underlying factor that might be influencing or explaining most or at least a majority of these thoughts.

Write this factor down in the second line.

Thoughts/Complaints:

Central Factor:

So how did you do? If you found this exercise a bit hard, don’t worry.

You’ll have enough practice at it in Part Three: Solution Targeting. For now, let’s take a look at the third problem-solving advantage of calm focus: concentrating awareness.

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Concentrating Awareness

(Up-Close

Immersed Mode)

“One can’t see the trees for the forest.”
—Reverse Proverb Finally, after learning how to shift and broaden our focus, we move into the third problem-solving advantage of calm focus: concentrating awareness or the up-close immersed mode.

Concentrated awareness is an active, directive state of mind where we closely examine an area selected from broad overview. Though it eliminates our ability to observe a situation from a distance, concentration can bring into sharper focus important actions we can take on a problem.

We typically employ concentration after we have broadened focus

and captured a problem’s central factor. This way, we’re sure of targeting
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our efforts in the most relevant area; namely, the area free of the major influence of the problem. Here, we examine the detailed actions or steps needed to free ourselves of this major influence and produce a solution.

We call concentration the up-close immersed mode because when we

are in it, we shift from a detached observer of a problem into an active player/experiencer of a solution. This involves mentally projecting ourselves into the problem scenario and playing out the best actions that will free us from a problem.

For example, let’s say we find that the major influence (i.e. central factor) in a problem is a lack of assertiveness. If so, we would then concentrate on the individual thoughts and actions that would produce assertiveness and thus rid ourselves of this central factor.

Immersion is the natural result of focusing on the details of something, especially a sequence of steps or actions. Moreover, mentally immersing in (i.e. vividly imagining) a sequence of actions, such as those actions that simulate solution performance, can actually produce physiological and neuromuscular responses; this is because the body does not discriminate much between actual performance and one vividly imagined.

It reacts similarly. As a result, we can mentally practice solution behaviors and “trick” the body into thinking it has actually done these behaviors (i.e.

imprint them onto our nervous system). This way, when we need them in the actual problem setting, these mentally-practiced actions will be more easily manifested.

Consider what happens when we immerse ourselves in a good movie

or book? We may laugh, cry, tense, relax, or quicken our pulse. These events are not real, but because we make them real in our mind, our body reacts as if they are real. In fact, immersion is the basis for visualization, hypnosis, and the placebo effect. These conditions are created when we focus exclusively on a mental idea to the exclusive of all other ideas.

We call eliciting mental and physical effects from immersion
evocation
.

Evocation was popularized by the innovate psychiatrist Milton Erickson,
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M.D. Erickson was best known for his indirect or naturalistic approach to hypnotic therapy. This form of therapy involved eliciting hypnotic effects—such as analgesia, amnesia, and age regression—by sharing detailed stories with clients and utilizing a client’s own experiences with such phenomenon. Erickson believed that it was best to utilize a client’s own experiences since such experiences were already well established in a client and could simply be reawakened as a resource.

For example, if the therapeutic objective was to produce a lessening of perceived pain, Erickson would evoke analgesia by eliciting a client’s memories of numbing coldness. In particular, Erickson would speak at length and in detail about common experiences a client might have had with exposure to cold temperatures and this then would evoke a present state of numbness in the client. Afterwards, the client would be offered suggestions to transfer this numbing experience to the painful body area.

Later, following in Erickson’s footsteps, hypnotherapists began using evocation to elicit all kinds of resourceful states—such as calmness, confidence, happiness, and body relaxation—all by simply reminding clients of their own detailed experiences in the past with such states.

In fact, evocation of mental and physical effects from mental im-

mersion has been used to successfully treat many conditions, most notably anxiety, depression, chronic pain, and stress-related disorders such as headaches, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and even cancer. For more information on the physical effects of mental immersion check out the section
Physiological Effects of Immersion
at the end of this chapter.

In the present context of problem-solving, we call resourceful states
solution states
since these states provide the state of mind and body needed to end a problem state.

As we have seen, what creates a resourceful or solution state is detail.

Each solution state is comprised of a sequence of individual thoughts and actions that when vividly played out trigger the mental and physical effects, which end a problem state. For example, the state of assertiveness
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may arise to overcome a problem state of fear when we mentally immerse ourselves in the following actions of monitoring our tension level, taking a few deep breaths, releasing body tension, and telling ourselves we are confident.

The more detail we can immerse ourselves in the more our mental

blueprint approximates the actual state or condition we are trying to produce and the more real it feels to our bodies. To find this detail, we must find the steps that will get us beyond the influence of the central factor.

We find these steps by asking ourselves: “What is needed most to overcome this factor? And what are the specific thoughts and actions that will produce this needed outcome?”

To experience the visceral effects of detailed immersion, compare the difference between the two following narratives:

Narrative One

I could feel the cold, autumn day as I walked along.

Narrative Two

As I moved briskly along the empty, winding path, short bursts of frosty air momentarily robbed me of my breath. The blast of wind both exhilarated me and chilled me to my bones. Though I knew my nose and ears were attached, I could no longer feel them. They had grown completely numb. All around me, I could see orange and brown leafs and smell the sharp scent of pine. The sky hung low, dark, and cloudy. Light snow-flakes had just begun to fall. As a walked, twigs crackled beneath my feet.

The thought then entered my mind: “Autumn is here.” I accepted it with peaceful resignation.

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As you can see, Narrative One is too general to produce a visceral reaction, whereas Narrative Two comes much closer to producing this type of reaction due to its greater descriptive detail.

To create the full effects of immersion, we must concentrate solely on the actions we want and no other thoughts and this requires effort and control. Often, though, when we first begin focusing on what we want, we start worrying about not getting it and actually end up focusing on what we don’t want instead. For example, when we start focusing on peace, our thoughts may stray to fear and tension, and end up inadvertently evoking the wrong state.

Obviously, we want to avoid immersion when we have a wrong or

negative focus, but we want to encourage it when we have the right one.

For this reason, we need to be observant of what we are focusing on and be sure we’re focusing on the right state. There’s no need to fret. If we find our focus has strayed, we simply return it back to our desired focus and keep it there.

The exercises on focus control presented earlier should help in this regard. Plus, there are several exercises at the end of this chapter which will help to improve your concentration skills.