Working Meditation

Observations on Human Connection & Contribution

Home » Resilience

#130: The power of our “slogful” years

I’m in the middle of a multi-year slog and I can see that it is an endurance game. Working hard over a long period of time isn’t the same as working hard for an afternoon or a week. We often use the analogy of marathon vs. sprint to land this difference. The longer slog is less about a looming deadline and more about a vision that we are trying to bring closer with every step. There are a lot of steps on a “slogful” journey. There are also a lot of thoughts! Our personal state of mind is an ever present companion.

The brain is a three pound personal universe that processes 6,000 to 70,000 thoughts each day. Over 90% of our thoughts are repetitive and over 80% are negative*. So as we are slogging, we may appear silent on the outside but the inside is constantly chattering. Imagine trying to do something important while the brain is quietly whispering “trouble…fear…caution…pain ahead…trouble…fear…caution…pain ahead….” Most of this happens subconsciously.

All contemplative practices are designed to free us from this deeply encoded pattern, and you can find one that’s a fit for you. However, what I find most useful is first acknowledging that nothing is wrong with any of us. This pattern exists quite naturally in every single person. It’s just how our nervous systems are designed. The second thing that helps is to notice first-hand how our thoughts change our everyday experiences. For instance, we behave differently when thoughts of doom are replaced with curiosity before a meeting.

People who go through a long slog note that the journey changed them. Of course it did! Long-term intensity leaves a mark and the thoughts that kick around inside us have a big role in shaping us. The years of slog can be empowering when they become more than just about reaching that precious goal. They are a perfect training ground for the mind because hard times trigger even more negative thoughts.

Most of what happens inside our brain is subconscious but we do have agency. Life yanks us around during our slogful years. Not sure we can fully stop, but we can limit how much we yank ourselves from the inside. We can use the slog as a golden opportunity to become more aware internal observers.

This is important because while we are not our thoughts, in time we become our minds.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ― Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist

*  These numbers change depending on the study referenced but the point remains. We have a lot of thoughts and most of them are repetitive and negative.

Our negativity bias is a survival mechanism. Since the brain is designed to keep us alive, it over indexes on scanning for threats.

#126: Purring our way to strength

I woke up today in a deeply satisfying cat hug. My cat had installed herself on my pillow overnight, and I hugged her as I slept. As I woke up to this realization, I couldn’t help but move my hands through her silky smooth fur. Her softness is quite addictive and I have to make an effort to tone it down and not escalate the pressure, especially in response to that cute purring. So she purred and I cuddled…and the purrs became louder and consistent, like the engine of an idling SUV.

Then a forgotten fact popped into my head: cats purr for many reasons, including contentment, communication, and even to self-soothe during stressful moments. The frequencies at which they purr (25-150 hertz) are similar to the frequencies used to treat bone fractures, pain, and joint flexibility issues in humans. The thinking is that purring helps cats self-heal in similar ways.

So does this mean the more I love and cuddle with my cat, the better she can heal herself? My hugs, kisses, snuggles and squeezes make her stronger? It’s not so hard to believe, because it’s certainly true for humans.*

Another thing I notice with her: she only purrs when I give her high quality attention. It doesn’t happen when I’m multitasking. If I try to read or watch something while playing with her, her initial reactions are more muted and then she completely tunes me out. She only responds when my words, play and touch are in lockstep with her.

When I miss her subtle cues, she realizes that I’m not with her and in turn loses interest. Again, not so different from humans.

“Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.” ― Voltaire, French philosopher and writer

*People with healthy relationships and strong social connections tend to live longer and healthier lives; more here.

**Happy love day, to my Tim ― co-purrer, co-cuddler, and co-imagineer

#125: Subjective life experiences, and the value of listening

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first three in this series here: 1 , 2 and 3)

We may think that the person next to us, going through the same tumble in life at the same time as us, is having the exact same experience of ache as us. The reality is that our experiences can be similar but never exactly the same.

Our experience of ache or joy is unique, even when our day-to-day lives overlap significantly with another and we share deep emotional closeness. This holds true even when loss or reward come knocking at the exact same time for us. That’s because the moment-to-moment experience of a life lived is internal, silent, personal and subjective.

An 80-year old has lived 42 million minutes. We are shaped into unique entities over the course of these millions of moments through the constant interplay of what happens inside us (the me), what happens between us and others (the we) and what happens around us (the environment and context).

We meet the same life experience as different entities, with different histories and different patterns of sensemaking. Sure we can understand each other and empathize but the emotions and thoughts that rattle inside us, and shape-shift at a moment’s notice, carve and re-carve us differently. This is why problem-solving on behalf of another is rarely helpful but full-bodied listening is.

I used to think that listening was a passive act and I needed to come up with a helpful solution to “make their time worth it”. I thought problem-solving showed I cared. I didn’t realize that my solves might not fit them. I now see how good listening is a keystone behavior that exercises so many human virtues in a seemingly simple act.

Good listening, ultimately, is a tool for clear seeing. The listener provides attention with a beginners mind so the speaker can fully articulate. The listener brings non-judgmental curiosity that invites information and trust. The listener asks clarifying questions to gain as complete a picture as possible. The listener doesn’t add their own unnecessary color to the mix, since the goal is to uncover what’s going on inside the speaker. The listener serves as a reflection tool for the speaker so they may see more clearly inside themselves.

When we take turns doing this in the same interaction, it becomes a dialogue. An ideal dialogue is where each participant is in the service of clear seeing so that all perspectives can be understood. The conversation becomes a collective sensemaking tool.

A good conversation teaches us humility, patience, curiosity, and respect. It leaves us changed and is one of the highest uses of shared attention.

I know this is a gold-standard that we can’t always reach, and it feels even more removed from attentionally-deficient and emotionally-supercharged modern lives. But why would we strive for a standard if we don’t understand its full value?

The world each of us carries inside is singular and yet we crave to be known in that singularity, especially during our deepest aches and our highest joys. Offering the gift of listening to one another is the only way we can fulfill this craving to be known and matter. Good conversations leave both the speaker and the listener changed for the better. They are one of the most active things we can do with our attention, and a precursor to human connection.

Final note: We can only achieve something if we practice it consistently. Full-bodied listening is quite like deep abdominal strength. Just how a strong core feeds the integrity of every other physical movement, strong listening skills create integrity in every other psychological movement. And both strengths are developed through attention and repetition.

“Everyone’s music is made of their own life experiences.” ― Ilaiyaraaja: Indian musician, composer, and conductor

#124: Beating up on past self is easy, and unhelpful

Learnings from momentum, failure, and recovery
(Read the first two in this series here and here)

When we fail at something we care about, it’s easy to fall into a blame-vortex. We look for someone to cast doubt on. When this accusatory gaze turns inwards, we invariably blame our past self for messing things up. I certainly did when I failed recently; I blamed my past self from a decade ago. I’m noticing that I frequently do this. I am often frustrated with my past self, for not doing this or that thing when she could have. I constantly chide her for not having her shit together. Sometimes this past self is recent, from the month or week prior.

This time I also examined my current self and current life. The present-day self came across as a work-in-progress and the present-day life, a complex web of things. Always evolving, always in the process of becoming the next iteration, and never fully where I’d like it to be. I’d like to try some things out, and I know I will in the future when the time is right. So if life feels messy now and I’m not ready for some things, it was messy in the past too and I wasn’t ready to give certain things a shot because of valid reasons.

When I try something later in life than I or culture imagine, it’s because that is usually the first point in time I feel resourced enough to attempt this thing; given the unique way my life is unfolding. 

Then why does my mind keep harping about this magical past self? Who does it imagine her to be? There was no magical past self with all her ducks in a row.

With this honest realization, I see my psyche start loosening its grip on my throat and self-compassion flows. The focus shifts from blame to learning from this experience of failure. I scan my present to see what I might be holding back from trying right now, and whether this holding back is actually wise or fear based. With this knowledge, I can build capacity and skill to try what I want to try, and learn from what didn’t come to pass.

The longer I live, the more past selves there are to be frustrated at. But there is no pristine past life and no magical past self to blame. 

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”— Marcel Proust, French novelist

#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