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#123: Moving from habitual internal stories to deliberate metaphors

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first one of this series here)

Stories are how we metabolize life situations. When we try to understand why something happened, the first thing that sprouts inside our head is an internal talk track. One internal story layers on top of another and—over time—they crystalize into mental models, or the default lens with which we view the world. Our brains are designed for survival and favor efficiency, so this process of solidifying repetitive thoughts into permanent shorthands is simply what our brains do. That’s how we learn and file away events for future reference.

Sometimes these stories and mental models can be adaptive and make us more resilient, but they can also be maladaptive and create psychological burdens that get in the way of thriving. Either way, all internal stories and mental models are subjective and never the complete picture.

Why habitual internal stories get in the way
It’s hard to know when our mind has become littered with maladaptive stories. We face three big challenges in clear seeing:

  • We don’t realize we have a talk track. Because we’re so used to living with this incessant sound, it camouflages as if it’s a part of our insides.
  • We wholeheartedly believe our stories. They are ever-present inside our head and we mistake this presence as the truth. 
  • Our stories act as psychological balms in our time of loss, so it’s even harder to disassociate from them when we’re in pain.

How metaphors can assist
Metaphors are when we refer to one thing by painting a picture of another. They help us bypass the habitual internal chatter and stories because:

  • Image first, words later. With metaphors, we don’t get lost in words right away. We experience the experience we’re having in that moment and then create a mental image to capture how we feel. Only after we have an image, we use words.
  • Words describe the image and not the event. When we finally use words, we describe the image of our experience and not the potentially charged event we’re dealing with.
  • Nuanced, yet not exhaustive. Metaphors don’t try to slice, dice and explain every little thing. They can help us zoom in or out and extract a key flavor of the situation without getting lost in unhelpful details or spurring rumination. We try to get to the core of “what is” going on inside us. Also, we can be more nuanced with images because sometimes words fail us.
  • The process is deliberate. The metaphorical images we create are deliberate (vs. habitual internal thoughts) and if one metaphor doesn’t resonate, we can adjust it till it does. This process itself offers clarity because we try to accurately see the experience we’re having.

My metaphor during this last round of injury was an ant working at the base of a massive tree, and believing that the world was entirely made of dirt. Through this metaphor I realized that there’s a lot I can’t know and will never know, so my stories and judgments about why I was dealt this blow will always be incomplete. There was comfort in simply letting go of the need to know definitively. Paradoxically, reminding myself of my profound smallness helped me move through this harsh experience faster. 

I know I’ll keep using stories as healing balms to adapt to a new realities. I also know that I’ll keep another eye on the imperfection of those stories, and use deliberate metaphors to hold complexity and nuance, and pierce through my internal chatter.

“Yoga teaches us to cure what need not be endured and endure what cannot be cured.”— B.K.S. Iyengar, Yoga pioneer and teacher

#103: To be proximal and yet love (India Diaries)

I started getting hives out of the blue a few years ago. It wasn’t clear what I was reacting to so the doctor recommended a food allergy test. The cause ended up being something else but the food test stayed with me. It’s not a yes/no result and there are gradients of reactions one can have―from itching, nasal congestion, and hives to anaphylaxis, which is the most severe reaction and is life threatening. I’m vegetarian and it was interesting that I had zero reactivity to meats and seafood, even the most inflammatory ones like shellfish. I was sensitive to things like beans (which is common) and basil (felt random and unexpected).

As I dug into the results, I realized that I was reacting mainly to foods I ate the most. Some foods might have been unsuited to my digestive system anyway but the frequency of consumption led to outsized reactions. Did I need a small pause? This is actually the wisdom behind detoxification diets. We limit exposure to inflammatory foods and then start adding them back bit by bit to see how the body does. A severe reaction means permanent avoidance, a minor discomfort means the need to be mindful while eating.

I wonder if this logic holds for the people in our life. Just like I wasn’t allergic to what I didn’t eat, I don’t have reactions to those I don’t engage with. I react only when there is interaction and, more importantly, relationship. The people I live with or interact with the most are likely the ones that trigger me the most, and I have an outsized ability to irritate them back. Our body carries the imprint of past interactions and reactions. If we’ve reacted in the past, we’re more likely to react again.

Our psyche stays on guard just the way our white blood cells do. Whether we realize it or not, our minds automatically filter current experiences as they are unfolding using the lens of our past, predict what will happen and behave accordingly. And like our overactive immune systems that might see basil as a threat, our mental predictions aren’t always accurate. We’re often unable to see what’s actually going on in our closest relationships and frequent interactions.

Could a relational detox help? Where we pay attention to who triggers us, whom we trigger, and then most importantly, cultivate the skill to see below our mutual masks of irritation to the underlying vulnerability in ourselves and others. Where we actively work on not getting triggered so kind and clear communication can flow.

Those we share the most time, space and life with are the ones we exchange our deepest imperfections with. A loving relationship with them needs a non-judgmental open heart and compassionate will. To be proximal and yet love is an unending practice.

“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…

We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
― Tara Brach: psychologist, author and Buddhist meditation teacher

#91: Dressing for the weather

I recently went for a walk with a friend. We live about 2 miles apart and planned to meet midway and continue together. It was a bit cold and windy so I wore a full-sleeved top and grabbed an extra layer. When I bumped into my friend though, she was in shorts and a sleeveless tank top. She said it felt warm and windless in her neighborhood. Even though we’re geographically close, it sometimes seems we live in different microclimates. I’ve noticed on prior walks how spring and summer flowers in her less-shaded neighborhood seem to open ahead of the ones in our shaded backyard. She also lives in a south-facing home that traps heat and keeps her warm.

Even metaphorically, we dress for the weather outside our front door. Our day-to-day circumstances being the weather we plan for and our thoughts, emotions and actions being the metaphorical dress. How we “dress” is also based on the data points we’ve lived through. We assess our current circumstances but then call upon our personal histories while making decisions on how to behave. The unseen assumption is that our data points are complete and accurate, and our responses are based on the full picture. It’s easy to forget that our history determines what data we collect, and that our current reality is often different from another’s. 

Going back to the metaphor of clothing—we clothe ourselves based on context and when the context changes, we alter our outfit. It gets hot on a hike, we take off that extra jacket. It gets cold, we pull out our gloves and scarves. We don’t waste energy or get attached to the way we were dressed 30 minutes ago. We don’t question our actions or berate ourselves incessantly. We respond to the changing weather without attaching our identity to the artifacts of clothing. The response feels seamless.

Obviously it’s hard to be so detached from the trifecta of our thoughts, emotions and actions. But understanding the current and historical “weather” we or another human has lived through creates an awareness about the context within which they have had to operate. It creates flexibility, and is the first step towards relational ease and eventually shared sense making. It helps us know why they came to the walk in a tank top while we showed up in long sleeves.

“Perception precedes reality.” — Andy Warhol, artist, film-director

#75: What is attention?

Is it intense pin-pointed focus on something or is it open awareness of the present, regardless of the object?

Does it come and go or is there an attentive part of us always waiting to be called upon?

Does it live in the body, like in the case of professional dancers or athletes? Where, over time, it takes the shape of muscle memory and mental interruptions are the last thing we need. Or does it live in the mind, like that of a scientist or a writer, deep in focus?

Is it in the achievement of the flow-state, where attention just courses through us without any sense of time? Or is it in the attentive preparation and effort that enables the sought-after flow state?

Is it better for attention to be unmediated by technology, like when we stare at the night sky and dream? Or can technology help us see what we couldn’t without, like a telescope that helps us see the contours of the night sky?

Do we create the world with our attention or is what we give attention to defined by the world we live in?

Is attention scarce or do we have enough of it and the struggle is really about where to apply this attention?

Could all of this be true?

“Before our minds create our world, the world creates our minds.” — Gabor Mate,  Hungarian-Canadian physician and author specializing in treatment of addiction

#70: Thresholds and pauses

There seem to be two ways of orienting to any new task. The first way is to jump in head-first without a pause and the second is to pause and understand the structure of the task, and our role and skills in relation to it. The pause-less action may be because of well-earned confidence or lack of awareness. If we take a pause, it may be short or long, noticeable or invisible even to us.

Like everyone else I’ve followed both approaches at different times but I’ve never really reflected on this because my approach to a task wasn’t the noteworthy part, the task was. I’ve recently experienced the comfort of doing something hard without thinking much and the discomfort of feeling unprepared and stuck mid-task. I’ve had to perch above my shoulders as I worked to observe what I was doing and what needed to change. I’ve had to pause and reflect on whether I had the tools, skills, information, context and mindset that I needed.

How do we know that a pause is in order and how can we make this process instinctive without overthinking? Two tell-tales have been helpful to me:

  1. Is the next task sufficiently different from what I’m doing or anything I’ve ever done? In other words, am I crossing a threshold? 
  2. Am I stuck spinning my wheels?

“People who wonder whether the glass is half empty or half full miss the point. The glass is refillable.”— Simon Sinek, author