Category: Wisdom

Doing vs. Being

Making time to do nothing is important for our mental health and happiness.

“The impulse frequently arises in me to squeeze another this or another that into this moment. I have learned to identify this impulse and mistrust it. I work hard at saying no to it. It conspires with my mind to keep me unconscious. It has me unavailable to others at those times, missing the play of light on the table, the smells in the room.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of “Wherever You Go, There You Are“

We appear to be a society of pathological DOERS whose every waking moment needs to be filled to the brim with some form of activity or attentional diversion.  

How ridiculously pathetic is it that even I, now a carefree retiree, often find myself questioning moments of inactivity, wondering if such idle time wouldn’t be better spent DOING something!  

I notice that a measure of guilt and low-grade agitation tend to accompany such moments as I catch myself mentally cycling through a list of potential activities that could help fill the void. 

At such times it actually takes effort to spurn such thoughts and just settle back into doing absolutely nothing of note or import. 

Of course, it doesn’t help that there’s always that question: “So, Rob, now that you’re retired, what are you DOING?”  How silly is it that part of me feels pressured – almost obligated – to come up with an interesting response! 

I don’t recall my father or grandfather having to face this issue.  In their day there was no expectation of exotic travel or absorbing hobbies or humanitarian volunteering or any other keep-yourself-interestingly-busy undertakings – they simply retired – and the basic flow of their lives just continued. 

It is surely telling that homes back then routinely came equipped with generous porches – a place of rest specifically designed to accommodate idleness; a spot to just sit, pass the time, and watch the world go by.  In other words, to just be.

And what have we managed to turn that pleasingly sedate world into?  A place where the act of doing nothing actually requires effort and willpower!

“The meaning of life is just to be alive.  It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.  And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

Alan Watts, British writer and philosopher (1915 -1973)

This Isn’t to Say That Doing Is Always Bad  

Now don’t get me wrong, societal progress and its betterment – poverty reduction, improved health and safety, a better-educated populace, to say nothing of the greater wealth necessary to fund such initiatives – all require “doing”.

No, what I’m talking about isn’t the evil of doing but, rather, the lack of balance between doing and simply “being” that is in evidence today. 

Some examples come to mind: 

  • Cell phone addiction – while of unquestionable benefit to society, in far too many instances these wonderful devices appear to function mainly as adult pacifiers, sparing the user from having to otherwise engage with their environment.
  • Structured-play addiction – back in my day my only structured play was baseball in the summer, to which I cycled to get to the games.  In winter, I and the neighborhood kids played road hockey in front of my folks’ house (an activity now sadly banned in a number of Canadian cities).  During high school I spent many an evening simply hanging out with friends on a street corner about three blocks away from our home.  To my knowledge, despite this slow-paced existence, all of us turned out to be productive, law-abiding, contributing citizens.  Fast forward to today and it is not unusual for a child to be enrolled in multiple structured activities, most of which necessitate being driven somewhere.  I’ll leave it to you to assess which approach to life best fosters mindfulness. 
  • Work addiction – my dad was a machinist for Ontario Hydro for over forty years.  He would start at 7:30am sharp and religiously finish at 4pm, leaving more than enough time for a periodic round of golf in the summer and bowling league in the winter.  I too experienced this same certainty in my first job as a mining engineer – day’s end meant day’s end – none of today’s norm for working late or taking work home or working on weekends or while on vacation or over holidays.  And there was no checking of email at all hours of the day (we’ll politely skim over the fact that email didn’t yet exist at the time I landed my first full-time job!  Nonetheless, society somehow managed to function without it – go figure)!

“Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time.”
Excerpt from, “The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure” by Juliet Schor

Why Too Much Doing and Not Enough Being is a Problem

I, for one, find this societal change to be both sad and tragic.  Why so? For two reasons:

  • First, because minds never at rest are, by default, minds never at ease, and this contributes to the chronic anxiety and unconscious mindlessness prevalent in today’s society.   
  • Second, under pressure to always be ‘doing’ we lose the ability to pause, take note of our surroundings, and appreciate the simple joys of life – a newly-opened flower, bird song, passing clouds, the warm glow of dusk and dawn– small but important joys only experienced while simply ‘being’.

“All over the world, people are so caught up in running that they forget to take advantage of the beauty around them. We become so accustomed to speeding ahead that we rob ourselves of these moments of joy.

Being able to appreciate, being able to look closely, being able to open our minds, this is the key.”

Pema Chodron, Buddhist nun and author of, “When Things Fall Apart“

THE WONDERFUL LIGHTNESS OF BEING

Perhaps I’m guilty of nostalgia for times past, but it strikes me as tragic that the act of simply ‘being’, while once the norm in pre-industrial times, is today rarely considered a valuable use of one’s time.

And what do I mean by being?  Here are some examples:

  • While out hiking in the woods, stopping periodically to just listen – to the silence; to the breeze through the leaves; to the birds; to the distant buzz of civilization.   
  • On a rainy day, just sitting and listening to the ping of the drops against the window; watching the waves of water ripple downward.
  • While waiting in a lineup or for a bus or plane or cab, putting away your cellphone, turning off your music, putting down your book and simply cycling through your five senses – hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, and tasting – actively engaging with your surroundings and simply noticing.

“To be mindful is to be in the present, noticing all the wonders that we didn’t realize were right in front of us.”

Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University and author of “Mindfulness“

The Payoff 

Why is it beneficial to seek out moments of just ‘being’? 

Because the focused attention it entails is naturally calming; it slows down our breathing and quiets our useless mind-chatter.   

By bringing us back into the present moment, the radical act of choosing to do nothing melts away our anxiety and induces a profound sense of well-being.

In short, routinely taking time to just ‘be’ provides us with true happiness; a happiness not contingent on our circumstances; a happiness we all seek but, in our unthinking busyness and haste, only rarely get to experience.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

 
 

 

 

Why Compassion Always? – Part 1

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.  If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Dalai Lama XIV

The six essays on “Compassion” (i.e. this one as well as this, this, this, this, and this) all advance the same important argument – that society’s response to harmful behaviour, no matter how egregious that behaviour may be, should always be one of compassion, concern, caring, and understanding, not anger, hate, and judgment. 

In short, society’s assumption that we are responsible for our own behaviour is simply wrong, and these six essays lay out exactly why.

Here are the basic arguments that will be fleshed out:

  • Human behaviour is impacted by innumerable factors we neither choose nor control.
  • These factors are totally unique to each and every one of us, guaranteeing widely varying behaviour – none of them being right or wrong, simply different.
  • We don’t get to choose our behaviour, because we can’t – it’s physically impossible.

The material that follows directly challenges many of our deeply-held beliefs about blame, responsibility, retribution, and behavioural choice.  I ask only that you maintain an open mind.  After all, it is only by subjecting our collective assumptions to ongoing assessment that we can ever hope to build a more just, compassionate society.

Why forgive and forget needs to replace judgment and anger

We look out at the world and what do we see? We see people doing things and saying things that we would never do and never say – puzzling things, often infuriating things – behavior that is simply inexplicable – to us.

And what do we do when we don’t understand someone else’s “wayward” behavior?

  1. We assume we know why they behaved as they did.
  2. We take that assumption as reality.
  3. We sit in judgment of that person based on our assumption.
  4. We find them guilty as charged.
  5. And then we get angry with them.
  • “Look at how he’s driving! He’s obviously an ignorant, self-centered jerk!” (or, maybe he’s a dad with a sick child in the back seat, and he’s racing, scared as hell, to the hospital)
  • “She didn’t even come to the party! She’s so stuck-up and anti-social!” (or, maybe she’s an introvert and finds noisy social events draining)
  • “Look at how he’s treating his son – he’s such a terrible father!” (or, maybe he was treated that way by his own dad and that’s the best parenting he’s capable of at that moment)

While we judge our own actions and our own words by our known motives, known intentions, known mitigating factors, and known extenuating circumstances, we typically judge others based solely on their external actions.

And then, in our ignorance, we assign malign motives to those actions.

As covered in this post, this is not our fault. Our evolutionary inheritance biases us towards the use of aggression because millennia ago such behavior kept us alive – better to act aggressively and be wrong than to act compassionately and be killed.

But we no longer need to act aggressively to stay alive. By assigning malign intent to others’ behavior, we create needless conflict and discord through our ignorance, and this has serious ramifications:

  • We upset ourselves (which is terrible for our mental and physical well-being ) and we upset those around us.
  • We add to the aggression of the world rather than to its peace. In so doing, we create the world we don’t want to live in rather than the world we do.

Aware of this human bias, we can start to do better; we can choose the path of compassion over aggression and the path of wisdom over ignorance.

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change”
Michael Jackson, “Man In the Mirror“

WHY COMPASSION?

This post argues that whenever we encounter upsetting behavior in others we should meet it with compassion and caring rather than judgment and anger.

This is not to say that we don’t take the necessary steps to prevent them from doing further harm, but we do so with respect and caring. 

But why should we do this?  Three reasons come to mind:

  1. We can never know why others behave as they do. As documented in this post, human behavior is impacted by innumerable factors, almost all of which are outside of our control and outside of our conscious awareness.  It is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that what goes on in our brain is nothing more than  biochemical reactions following the laws of physics. Mess with the physics and unfortunate consequences result – consequences that we then mistake as purposely-bad behavior, with no context or mitigating circumstances whatsoever.
  2. None of us signed up for these factors – they were simply doled out randomly to each of us as part of life, luck of the draw.
  3. Most people remain ignorant of mindfulness – they know of only one way to get through life – habitually and, therefore, mindlessly.  We don’t get angry with people who, through lack of training, don’t know how to read, write, or do math. Why, then, should we get angry with those who have received zero training in mindfulness and who, as a result, and through no fault of their own, act in a mindless manner?

“I began to wonder whether people were thinking at all. Decades of research later, I have found the answer is a resounding ‘no’ – mindlessness is pervasive. In fact, I believe virtually all of our problems; personal, interpersonal, professional, and societal; either directly or indirectly, stem from mindlessness.”

Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University

Simply put, it is wrongheaded for us to sit in judgement of others when ignorance of mindfulness remains the norm, and when factors that we had no role in choosing, and with which we have no conscious acquaintance, drive our behavior, particularly our worst behavior.

“Most of what we do and think and feel is not
under our conscious control”
David Eagleman, neuroscientist and adjunct professor, Stanford University and author of “Incognito – The Secret Lives of the Brain“


FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE HUMAN BEHAVIOR

So, the next time you find yourself negatively judging someone’s behavior, stop and ask yourself if you know whether their actions may have been influenced by any of the factors laid out below.

Then ask yourself if compassion and understanding is not a wiser way forward – a better way forward – than getting angry and consigning that individual to your “bad person” column:

Sex

The vast majority of criminals are male (e.g. FBI data show that males make up 90% of those arrested for murder, 88% for robbery, 83% for arson, 82% for vandalism, 82% for car theft, and 80% for offences against family and children).

Under-developed prefrontal cortex (PFC)

A study of men with Antisocial Personality Disorder found that their prefrontal cortex was at least 10% smaller than average.  This compromises impulse control, emotional control, and the ability to judge the consequences of one’s actions.

Abnormal dopamine sensitivity

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps regulate attention, learning, and emotional responses as well as acting on our brain’s pleasure centers. Affected individuals tend to be impulsive and have a reduced ability to delay gratification. 

Adolescence

The last brain region to fully mature is the prefrontal cortex (PFC), not fully functional until our mid-twenties. Given that the PFC is the locus of our executive functioning – impulse control, emotional control, and creativity – it should come as no surprise that adolescents tend to exhibit ill-judged behavior and exaggerated emotions.

Stress
Stress impairs our judgment, makes us impulsive, reactionary, aggressive, emotional, as well as more fearful.  Stress also biases us toward selfishness.

Abnormal serotonin levels
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in our feelings of happiness and well-being. Low levels of serotonin have been associated with impulsive aggression.

Testosterone

Testosterone has been found to boost impulsivity and risk-taking while making those already prone to aggression even more aggressive.  Conversely, men with below-average levels of testosterone have been found to be rated as better parents.

Physical pain

An individual predisposed to aggression becomes even more so when in pain. In addition, those in pain often exhibit self-centered behavior with reduced empathy for others.

Hunger

When people are hungry they become more aggressive and less charitable. In one study, judges who had recently eaten granted parole in 60% of their cases whereas judges who were hungry granted almost no parole.

Social environment

In the presence of women, men become more aggressive, more risk-taking, and more impulsive – unless the setting happens to dictate that status is enhanced by being sociable, in which case they exhibit more emollient behavior.

It has been found that sustained inter-group contact generally decreases prejudice. This is supported by the observation that those states in the U.S. with the fewest immigrants as a percentage of the population tend to have the most anti-immigrant views – a prime example of ignorance breeding fear.

Neighborhood

The presence of litter, graffiti, broken windows, and public drunkenness in a neighborhood leads to increased crime as it signals that people there don’t care. 

The state of a neighborhood also communicates cultural norms to children, thus exacerbating bad behavior in bad neighborhoods and instilling good behavior in good neighborhoods.

Climate

Hot temperatures have been found to lead to higher rates of violence. 

Culture

Collectivist cultures (e.g. China, Japan) emphasize interdependence, harmony, conformity, and the needs and responsibilities of the group over those of the individual. In contrast, individualist cultures (e.g. Canada, U.S.A.) value independence, competition, personal achievement, uniqueness, and the needs and rights of the individual.

Cultures with greater income inequality have been found to have less social capital (i.e. less trust, less cooperation, less generosity, and less inclination to come to another’s aid).

Socio-Economic Status

A child born to a family of low socio-economic status is at risk of being overly reactive to stress. They are also at risk of having stunted brain development leading to poor working memory, poor emotional control, and impulsive behavior.

It has been found that rich people tend to be less kind and to demonstrate less empathy and compassion. 

Abnormal Oxytocin Sensitivity or Amount

An abnormally high level of the hormone oxytocin is associated with being more pro-social toward those similar to you and more antisocial toward those who are different from you.

Menstruation

As many as three of every four women experience some form of Perimenstrual Syndrome (PMS) whose behavioral symptoms include anxiety, depression, mood swings, irritability, food cravings, insomnia, poor concentration, and social withdrawal.

Menopause

Roughly 80% of menopausal women experience symptoms that include depression, insomnia, anxiety, and memory loss.  In one British study, nearly half of affected women said it negatively impacted their work.

Economic Factors

Economic downturns increase the occurrence of spousal and child abuse.

Judgment Biases

Attractive people are generally judged to have better personalities and higher moral standards, to be kinder, more honest, friendlier, and more trustworthy than those rated as less attractive. They are more likely to be hired and to receive a higher salary. When accused of a crime, they are less likely to be convicted.  These biases have been shown to exist in children as young as five.

Cognitive Load

A heavy cognitive load makes people more conservative, more likely to lie, less charitable, and less willing to help someone in need. 

Lack of Sleep

Symptoms of sleep deprivation include irritability, a depressed mood, difficulty paying attention, poor memory, and a tendency to be more conservative than normal.

Genes

Pedophilia and sociopathy tend to run in families, suggesting a genetic component.

Studies have found that there is a genetic component to addiction, estimated to explain about half the likelihood of becoming addicted.

“Studies on twins suggest that mathematical ability is about 60% heritable. Now research in the journal, PLOS Biology, has mapped exactly how tiny changes in DNA bless some with mathematical wizardry and condemn others to relative innumeracy.”

Economist magazine, October 2020

Pre-Natal Conditions

There is evidence that pedophilia is associated with pre-natal endocrine abnormalities.

High maternal stress can stunt fetal brain development and make the child more prone to anxiety and depression.

Maternal malnutrition, as well as drug and alcohol abuse, can impair fetal brain development.

Brain Damage

Those with damage to their prefrontal cortex tend to see moral dilemmas in very pragmatic, even cold-hearted terms. 

Those with a damaged amygdala tend to be more accepting of unkind behavior.

A large percentage of death row inmates have a history of damage to their frontal cortex, particularly in childhood before the brain is fully developed.

One thing that adult pedophiles have in common is a greater incidence of having suffered from brain injuries during childhood.

Damage to the frontal cortex can lead to socially inappropriate behavior, apathy, hyper-sexuality, bursts of compulsive gambling, stealing, and aggressiveness. Such individuals often show poor judgment in choosing friends and partners and don’t learn from past bad experience.

Those suffering from frontal cortex dementia often become disinhibited and exhibit socially-inappropriate behavior.

“Criminals do have broken brains, brains that are physically different from those of the rest of us.”

Dr. Adrian Raine, “The Anatomy of Violence“

Brain Differences

Studies of the brains of transgender individuals show that they more closely resemble the sex they feel themselves to be rather than their biological sex.

Psychopaths’ amygdalae have been found to be smaller than normal.  Such individuals are also less reactive to pain. Further, they have been found to have decreased activity in their frontal cortex and less coupling of their prefrontal cortex (the wise part of our brain) to other brain regions.

A four-year-old’s openness to new toys has been found to predict how open they’ll be as an adult to novelty and social change.

Of those on Death Row in the U.S., by some measures all of them suffer from some form of disability, and many have a low IQ.

People scoring high in conscientiousness have been found to have more brain matter in the part of the brain responsible for planning for the future and making decisions.

People scoring high in agreeableness have been found to have less brain matter in a part of the brain responsible for processing emotions and making decisions.

“Many of us like to think that all adults possess the same capacity to make sound choices. It’s a nice idea, but it’s wrong. So, when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path.”
David Eagleman

Sexual Orientation

Why are gay men attracted to men? Why are lesbian women attracted to women? Why are heterosexuals attracted to members of the opposite sex? Science clearly indicates that choice has nothing to do with it.  Instead, factors such as genetics, prenatal hormone levels, brain structure, and birth order all play potential roles. For example, it has been found that the chance of male homosexuality increases for the last-born son.

Upbringing

Risk factors for developing sociopathic behavior include physical or mental abuse as a child, parental neglect, family instability, witnessing violence, and growing up in general chaos. Sociopathic behavior includes having no regard for right or wrong, ignoring the feelings of others, lying, manipulative behavior, impulsiveness, hostility, abusive behavior, risky behavior, and being irresponsible. The prevalence of sociopathy is much higher among those in prison than the general population.

Studies find that children raised in dysfunctional families have a higher risk of substance abuse, impaired cognitive ability, impaired emotional and impulse control, and a higher risk of exhibiting antisocial, violent behavior. 

“While our decisions may seem like free choices, no good evidence exists that they actually are”
David Eagleman

Drug Use

Athletes abusing anabolic steroids often exhibit increased irritability, aggression, anger, and anxiety (“roid rage”).

Opioid abusers may experience confusion, disorientation, mood swings, anxiety, and a distorted perception of reality.

Loneliness

Loneliness is associated with an increase in the number of a type of immature immune cell known to trigger anxiety.  Feeling lonely also increases the level of a type of signalling molecule in the brain associated with social withdrawal, heightened suspicion of the outside world, and an increased tendency toward decisions that involve little risk.  Loneliness is also associated with increased irritability, self-centredness, and defensiveness.  

Sexual Arousal

Studies find that, when in a state of sexual arousal, our moral judgment becomes compromised.

“… it is neither biology alone nor environment alone that determines the final product of a personality. When it comes to the ‘nature versus nurture’ question, the answer almost always includes both. This is the reason people come to the table with quite different ways of seeing the world, dissimilar personalities, and varied capacities for decision making.”
David Eagleman


WHY COMPASSION, UNDERSTANDING, and FORGIVENESS SHOULD BE OUR DEFAULT APPROACH TO LIFE

So, someone does or says something to upset us, what do we do next?

In light of the multitude of factors outlined above, all of which have the potential to materially impact human behavior, is it not patently unfair and unjustified for us to react in anger, as is the current norm in our society?

Indeed, should you still feel justified reacting in anger, then reasonable responses to these three questions seem in order:

  1. What exactly are you getting angry at?
  2. Where do you draw the line for assessing if someone should be considered ‘responsible’ for their own behavior?
  3. What would such a line even mean?

Question #1: What Are You Getting Angry At?

If you’re going to get angry over what you perceive to be someone’s errant behavior, what exactly are you getting angry at?:

That person’s hormone levels? Their hunger? Their behavioral disorder? Their prenatal conditions? Their upbringing? Their socio-economic status? Their culture? Their brain structure? Their stress level? Their cognitive load? Their neighborhood? Their lack of positive role models? Their drug addiction? Their temperament? Their peers? Their age? Their illness? Their pain? Their genetic inheritance? The economy? Their lack of sleep? Their head injury from high school? The parenting style they were exposed to as a child? The physical and mental abuse their grandfather suffered as a child? …. and on, and on, and on.

Question #2: Where do you draw the line for assessing if someone is ‘responsible’ for their behavior?

In law, it is possible for a criminal to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. In the U.S. it is possible to be spared the death penalty by reason of insufficient mental capacity to understand right from wrong.

In other words, lines are drawn to separate those who are deemed “responsible” for their behavior and those who are not.

But where do we draw such a line, and how do we justify it? For example, in some U.S. states an IQ under 70 is deemed to be the cut-off line below which the death penalty cannot be applied. But why 70? Why not 62 or 83? Why not the average of five IQ tests over the span of a two-year period? 

With any fair assessment, it quickly becomes apparent that any such line is totally arbitrary, unfair, unjust, and without validity; there is no justifiable cut-off line for being considered responsible for one’s behaviour.

Question #3: What Would Such a Line Even Mean?

Lastly, even if a cut-off line was agreed upon to distinguish between someone responsible for their behavior and someone not, what exactly would such a cut-off line mean given how different we are from each other? What exactly would such a line mean given all the biological and environmental factors that can impact human behavior, and over which we have near-zero say or control?

In truth, such a line would be totally meaningless.

“Our worst behaviors, ones we condemn and punish, are the products of our biology.”

Dr. Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology and neurology, Stanford University and author of “Behave – The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst“

COMPASSION

Think of some of the most admired historical figures and the traits they hold in common – the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Each espoused compassion, understanding, forgiveness, patience, and eschewed aggression.

Given that these are some of the traits we most admire, and given the information presented herein, four things should by now be very clear:

  1. We need to substitute compassion for judgement and anger whenever we encounter others’ “wayward” behavior. 
  2. Each of us will take a turn exhibiting excruciatingly bad behavior due to factors over which we have no control and about which we have no conscious awareness.
  3. In such circumstances, each one of us would want to be shown compassion and understanding rather than anger and blame.
  4. It follows, then, that this same courtesy should be extended to everyone – sitting in judgment of others’ perceived wayward behavior simply has no justification.

At each fork in the road of life we get to choose the path of aggression or the path of compassion.

It is compassion, not anger, that is supported by the evidence.

It is compassion, not anger, that makes us better people.

And it is compassion, not anger, that makes our world a better place for us all.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

 

Keeping Life in Perspective

In the final years of my career as a personal financial advisor I had the good fortune to work on the seventh floor of an office tower that afforded expansive views in every direction. From my desk I could see the peak of the Peace Tower some eight kilometres away, such is the low-build nature of present-day Ottawa.

Passing by that building is the 417 Expressway connecting Orleans in the east to Kanata in the west, Ottawa proper being roughly equidistant between the two.

During my not-infrequent breaks to window-gaze, I would contemplate the mind-sets of all those thousands of commuters and truckers speeding by, each on their own little Mission Impossible.

And I would wonder to myself, do we not take our own little lives, our own little thoughts, and our own little spheres of personal life events far too seriously? Do we not tend to focus on the minutiae of life rather than taking an expansive view of its big picture?

I believe we very much do; which would be rather inconsequential were it not for the serious implications.

We appear to be making ourselves miserable and, as a direct consequence, mentally and physically ill with all the anxious rushing around we do to fulfill all those “important” items on our perpetually-refreshed to-do list.

To no surprise, two of the leading causes of lost time at work these days are stress and depression.

The message of this post is that, yes, we should take time to care for one another and contribute as best we can toward a well-functioning society.

But we should do so with an un-rushed ease of being and a deep humility born of knowing, fully and completely, that what we each do each day is, at once, both important and profoundly and singularly unimportant.

Understanding the seeming incompatibility of this duality requires but one thing: a broader perspective on life than we normally afford it.

So, in that vein, here are a few mind-and-perspective-altering thoughts to contemplate.

Our to-do list and “problems” from a universal perspective

If you could charter a spacecraft capable of traveling at the speed of light (~300,000 kilometres per second) you would be able to circumnavigate the earth at its equator (~40,000 kilometres) in about one-tenth of a second.

By way of comparison, a typical commercial jet flies at about 900 kph and so would need about 44 hours to complete that same journey.

So, wow, light is pretty darned fast! Yes, indeed it is. However, even if you were able to travel at the speed of light, in order to reach the outer edge of the observable universe you had better pack a good-sized lunch – because it’s going to take you roughly 47 BILLION YEARS.

But we’re only talking the observable universe here (i.e. the furthest light can have traveled since the time of the Big Bang, some 13.8 billion years ago).   Taking this limitation into account, scientists at Oxford University in Britain have estimated that the full scale of the universe is about 250 times larger than what we can currently observe.

So, that little trip of yours to the edge of the universe at the speed of light? Well, better get comfy because you’re in for a journey lasting, oh, about 12 TRILLION YEARS.

And then there’s our so-very-important to-do list. Hmmmmm.

And to think that blood is being tragically shed over specks of land that, from a universal perspective, aren’t even the size of sub-atomic particles.

And then, of course, there’s always that neighbour who gets upset because some of “your” fall leaves blew on to “his” side of the property line just after he had finished raking.

And on and on this silliness goes, due in large part to an utter lack of perspective.

Humbling Hubble

Here is a photograph taken by the Hubble space telescope. It shows a field of view roughly the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

Those dots of light? Well, they’re all galaxies – thousands of them – and each one has hundreds of billions of stars.

In the observable universe there are an estimated 100 BILLION GALAXIES.

This puts the number of stars in our known universe at roughly 1 BILLION TRILLION, also known as 1 SEXTILLION or, in scientific notation, 1 x 10 ^ 21 stars. Earth circles around exactly one of them, and a rather mundane one at that.

And then there’s us, rushing around frantically on the little speck of cosmic dust we call Earth attending to our very important issues. Hmmmmm.

“Time” to Regain Perspective

The universe is estimated to have come into existence at the time of the Big Bang, roughly 14 billion years ago.

Out of this cosmic soup, the Earth coalesced about 4.5 billion years ago.

It took about 500 million years for conditions to cool and change sufficiently to support Earth’s first life forms, this occurring about 3.5 billion years ago.

Dinosaurs appeared on the scene about 240 million years ago and stuck around for roughly 170 million years; until that unfortunate asteroid incident.

The first mammals made their appearance about 65 million years ago and eventually, out of this lineage, came us Homo Sapiens, roughly 200,000 years ago.

So, let’s put our species’ experience to date into some context:

  • In our total history as a species we have only been in existence for about 0.12% of the time that dinosaurs managed. Given our propensity for war and aggression, I’m thinking the dinosaurs have a lock on that record.
  • At an average adult stride it would take someone 66 million steps (and a formidable aptitude for holding their breath under water) to walk around the Earth at the equator. If we take this number of steps to represent the age of the universe, then a human living for 90 years is only on this Earth for 220 steps, or about 130 metres of the 40,000 kilometres it takes to make it around the Earth.
  • To put the previous point a different way, if the age of the universe were condensed down to one year, a human living for 90 years experiences their entire life passing by in roughly two-tenths of a second.

In other words, while our time on Earth may seem long from our tragically-limited perspective, on a cosmic scale it is but a blink of an eye – and then it’s over.

Given the fleeting nature of our existence, how wise is it to devote any of this precious time fussing over our oh-so-important “problems”?

Nothing New Under the Sun

Over the two-hundred millenia that humans have been around, roughly 108 billion of us have died.

This means that 108 billion of us have experienced the full suite of human sorrows – the loss of loved ones, sickness, injury, to say nothing of those sorrows brought on by human ignorance; hunger, thirst, war, physical and mental assault, forced displacement, subjugation, prejudice, injustice, intolerance, greed, and so on and so on.

As we learned in this post, such pains are simply a part of life; resist them and you will suffer. Seen from a broader perspective, it is rather clear that our personal “problems” are hardly the stuff of legend; nothing to get worked up over – simply to be dealt with, mindfully.

You – Miracle!

It may sound trite to describe life as a miracle.  Certainly on our most challenging days it feels more like a burden than a miracle.  

But it’s true – your mere existence, your coming into being, is indeed miraculous.  And here’s why.

Let’s take a look at just a small portion of the long chain of events that had to go exactly your way for you to come into being:

  • Your mom and dad had to live long enough to make it to their reproductive years.
  • Your mom had to meet your dad. Of all the men she could have met, what are the odds of meeting just the right guy to make you? 
  • Of course, meeting is one thing, but hitting it off sufficiently well to want to date each other? What are those odds?
  • Okay, your folks are dating, but now they’ve got to want to turn it into a long-term relationship. Odds?
  • So, they decide to stick together and manage to do so long enough to have a child – you.
  • But for you to come into existence, the exact sperm and exact egg had to meet and successfully link up. The odds of this? Given the sperm count of the average male, roughly 1 chance in ten to the power of seventeen. Let’s just say that if this were the odds of winning a door prize, you could be waiting a really long time!
  • Now extend this process out to take into account your grandparents and great grandparents and great-great grandparents, on and on back through every ancestor since the first human came into existence, some 10,000 generations ago.

Only this EXACT chain of events could lead to YOU!

In the fascinating article where I first encountered this analysis, the odds are put at one chance in 10 raised to the power of 2,685,000! That’s a one followed by 2,685,000 zeroes!

To put this crazy big number into perspective, it is estimated that the total number of atoms in the known universe is roughly 10 raised to the power of 80. So your odds of coming into being are way lower than having to pick the correct card from a deck consisting of 1 x 10 ^ 80 cards!

Put another way, your existence is the equivalent of 2 million people getting together, each given a trillion-sided die, and with one roll they all turn up the exact same number, say 550,343,279,001.

In other words, the probability of YOUR existence?   Essentially NIL. 

I like the way the article’s author puts it:

“A miracle is an event so unlikely as to be almost impossible.  By definition, each of you – and all living things – are miracles.  I think this is something to be grateful for.”

Sort of puts our oh-so-important to-do lists and “problems” in a different perspective, does it not?

Oh, What a Lucky Man He Was

In its 2022 Global Wealth Report, wealth manager Credit Suisse broke down the distribution of wealth among the world’s adults. Here is what they report:

  • 53% of adults have a net worth under $10,000 US dollars (USD).
  • 87% have a net worth under $100,000 USD. In other words, if you have a net worth greater than $100,000 USD, you stand among the richest 13% of all adults alive today.
  • If you are fortunate enough to have a net worth greater than $1 million USD, you have more personal wealth than 98.8% of all adults alive today.

In my home country of Canada, we are fortunate indeed; median wealth among adults comes in at $140,000 USD. In other words, more than half of Canadian adults can count themselves among the richest 13% of all adults in the entire world.

To put this into perspective, India, with some 1 billion adults, has median wealth of just $3,300 USD, while China, with some 1.1 billion adults, has median wealth of only $26,000 USD.

And the U.S. itself? Well, its median adult wealth is only about 66% of that of Canada’s, coming in at $93,000 USD.

So, if you’re a Canadian adult reading this post, it’s highly likely that you have much to be thankful for and precious little, if anything, to be fussed about.

Taking Things for Granted

If you, like me, happen to have had the great good fortune to be born into one of the Western democracies, it is all too easy to take our favored lot in life for granted. From our limited perspective it is easy for us to forget that our lives are not the norm; in fact, far from it.

Here’s a broader perspective:

  • % of the world living in an autocracy: 25%
  • % of the world who are malnourished: 11% (vs. 39% overweight)
  • % of the world with no electricity: 13%
  • % of the world with inadequate shelter: 20%
  • % of the world without safe water: 33%
  • % of the world without proper sanitation: 46%
  • % of the world living on <$1.90 USD/day: 9%

What message do we take from these statistics? That the next time we’re inclined to complain about some discomforting aspect of our lives, perhaps we should instead take a moment to reflect on just how truly lucky we are and how much we have to be grateful for.

Nothing Really Matters

Here I present two facts that, while depressing to contemplate, nonetheless help put our often-frantic lives and “problems” into perspective.

The Cemetery Perspective

Pass by any cemetery and ponder if there are any friends or relatives still alive to remember who these people were, let alone know the details of their lives.

For most of them, much beyond grandchildren is a stretch. In many instances great-great grandparents are little more than a footnote on a genealogy list, in the rare case that one even exists.

The point here is that, in a relatively short span of time, our perceived self-importance and rushing to achieve life’s goals and tasks amounts to absolutely nothing.

No one is going to remember or care that we put in crazy long overtime in our job. No one is going to remember or care that in 2016 we arrived at our folk’s place for Christmas at 2:13pm by dangerously speeding down the highway rather than doing the speed limit and arriving at 4:02pm.

At the time these would have seemed important to us and, in the absence of mindfulness, would likely have been accompanied by needless anxiety and frustration. But with the benefit of time, distance, and wisdom, we see our folly.

Much of life, if not all of it, follows this same pattern; seemingly so important at the time but, ultimately, amounting to pretty much nothing at all.

The Red Giant Perspective

In about five billion years or so our sun will have spent much of its nuclear fuel and begun its transition into a Red Giant, the dying phase of a star of its type.

One of the main features of a Red Giant is its massive expansion, growing some 100 to 1000 times in size, sufficiently large in the case of our sun as to likely engulf the Earth, thus destroying everything in its wake.

At that point, assuming the continued existence of our species and barring the invention of mega-scale inter-planetary travel, all of human history will be forever extinguished.  

What, then, to make of our “important” earthly tasks and “problems”? 

Life in perspective

The truth of our existence is this: that most, if not all, of what we perceive to be important or to be a “problem” is, in reality, little more than a triviality.

And the alternative? To just lighten up and stop taking ourselves, and life, so darned seriously.

As the 70’s band Trooper‘s lyrics put it, “We’re here for a good time, not a long time, so have a good time, the sun can’t shine every day”.

And how do we go about having this “good time” in the face of life’s difficulties and challenges?

Here, an invaluable trait to foster is the ability to laugh at oneself, to laugh at life’s inevitable trials and tribulations, and to smile inside whenever we come face-to-face with hardship and challenge.

Remember from this post that pain is non-negotiable, just a part of life, but adding suffering to that pain, well, that’s your choice.

If you actively nurture this mentality, the ability to laugh at and take lightly whatever life presents, you will find that your life magically smooths out, an ease of being sets in, and you will find yourself responding to life with your innate wisdom rather than unthinkingly reacting to it as is our near-universal habit.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life

P.S. Credit to my wonderful and talented friend Julie for the beautiful rose portion of this post’s featured image! Thank you Julie!!

Key Mindfulness Teachings

When I first started to explore the topic of mindfulness I found the process overwhelming and confusing.  There was just so much out there with much of it not geared to my then-novice level of understanding and experience.  

Fortunately, with time, practice, and much diligent study, I was able to tease out the core teachings.  I present them here, in plain English, to spare you from having to start from scratch like I did! 

Required:  Reflection, Contemplation, and Self-Discovery 

In my experience, fully grasping the wisdom behind spiritual teachings requires regular periods of quiet reflection and contemplation – it just does. 

And why this is true is that only in moments of stillness are we receptive to the deeper lessons that mere words struggle to convey.  Most, if not all, “Aha!  Now I get it!!!” moments are experienced when our minds are still. 

Of equal importance, you must personally put the teachings to the test and assess for yourself if the lessons presented ring true. 

Why? Because wisdom cannot be taught, only seen and experienced.  

“Such knowledge can’t be grasped intellectually.  It is something that has to be realized and uncovered from within your own consciousness.”

Sydney Banks, author of “The Enlightened Gardener” 

Ten Key Mindfulness Teachings

 #1:  Resisting reality leads to needless suffering 

American meditation teacher, Shinzen Young, is credited with coming up with this insightful equation:

Suffering = Pain x Resistance

Let’s look at each component to help clarify the important point being made:

Pain 

Here we are referring not just to physical pain but include other experiences such as:

  • losing something of importance to you.
  • the death of a loved one.
  • having your deeply-held opinions and beliefs challenged.  

So, a sore arm is pain, the death of a beloved pet is pain, the destruction of a treasured family heirloom is pain, the loss of a job is pain, and on and on.

What each of these have in common is twofold:  1) They have occurred – they are already reality.   2) They are an inextricable part of life that cannot be escaped.  

In short, everyone born into this world will experience pain and there is nothing that can be done about it – we all get sick, we all eventually die, and we all will experience loss of some kind.  

Resistance

We tend to cling to the parts of life we like, not wanting to see them end – a pleasant vacation, a close friendship,  a shiny new car, the way things used to be done at work before stupid changes by management, etc., etc., etc.

Conversely, we tend to feel aversion toward the parts of life we don’t like, wanting to escape from them as quickly as possible.

However, both clinging and aversion represent resistance – an unwillingness to face up to reality, to face up to what already IS. 

Pain is a reality of life.  It is non-negotiable, non-escapable and, therefore, futile to resist.  Yet we persist in trying, to our psychological detriment.

Suffering

Suffering is the consequence of resisting the reality of an unpleasant situation.  It is the mental anguish we experience when we try to resist pain, try to resist what IS, try to resist reality.  

As the equation shows, without resistance to pain, there is no suffering.  Yes, the pain will still be there, but you won’t add needless, pointless, psychological suffering to an already unpleasant situation. Resistance just makes matters worse.

The good news is that while pain is a fact of life, suffering is optional – it’s completely up to you.  

This is an uplifting, freeing observation because it means that your mental well-being is in your own hands – you get to choose peace of mind over mental anguish.

But, as pointed out above, don’t just take my word for it, test the truth of this for yourself.  The next time you get riled up or find yourself complaining about something, see if the essence of your upset is not, in fact, simply your resistance to reality.

So what’s the alternative then?  Acceptance!  

Pain is a reality of life.  Resist this reality and you will suffer! So the only sane way forward is to accept this reality, accept the fact that you are faced with an unpleasant situation, and then just deal with it.

In other words, you simply respond to a painful situation in a calm, collected, matter-of-fact manner, because getting upset adds nothing of value. 

Indeed, getting upset just makes an already unpleasant situation worse.  It drags you down as well as all those around you. 

But that’s not the end of it.  In an upset state you are not able to think clearly – your reactive amygdala has taken you over and your wise frontal cortex has gone off-line.  As a result, in a state of agitation, you are perfectly primed to say and do things that prove utterly regrettable.  In addition, with your creativity temporarily compromised, you will struggle to come up with solutions to whatever problematic issues you may be facing.

“Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment.  What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? 

Surrender to what is, say ‘yes’ to life and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.”

Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now“

The lesson here, then, is that there are no “problems”, simply situations to be dealt with.  Indeed, it has been said that life’s challenges are nothing more than glorious opportunities to put mindfulness into actual practice! 

And one final but important point; acceptance does not mean passivity – you can still stand up for yourself and take steps to better your situation – but you do so from a position of calm wisdom rather than habitual, unthinking reaction; the outcome will be all the better for it.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” 

Lao Tse – Chinese philosopher, circa 500 B.C.

#2:  Impermanence is a fact of life

Impermanence is a key component of reality.  It means that all things, all situations, everything, both good and bad, eventually come to an end; nothing stays the same forever.

When it comes to the things we enjoy in life we know that resisting their eventual loss will lead to needless suffering.

If you resist the truth of impermanence, you will be constantly mourning the loss of the things you enjoy and clamoring for new pleasantries to take their place – only to have these taken from you as well.  This is an obsessive, restless, anxiety-inducing cycle that has no end.

The alternative?  To simply enjoy the pleasant parts of life while they’re around but don’t cling to them.  When their time is up, have the wisdom to let them go.  

As for the unpleasant parts of life, simply accept them as inevitable and deal with them mindfully.  And take solace in the fact that, in due time, impermanence will take these from you as well.

“Time is a sort of river of passing events and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place; and this too will be swept away.”

Marcus Aurelius – Roman emperor, 161AD – 181AD

 

#3:  A mind focused on the past or the future is an anxious mind

As referenced in this post , we are happiest when our attention is focused on the present moment rather than dwelling on an unchangeable past or fretting about or rushing to get to the future.

If something can be done about a past event that will make things better in the present, then do it, because rumination just leads to needless stress. 

As for the future, it causes us angst in two ways:

  1. When we fixate on all the many things we have to do.
  2. When we rush to get somewhere or complete something.

In the first case, we can only think about and work on one thing at a time.  Trying to do otherwise just causes stress.  Better to just focus on each task in turn.  

And if they don’t all get done?  Well, the sun will still rise tomorrow, your family and friends will still love you, and the world will keep on turning.  In other words, we’ve got to keep life in perspective.  We’re just not that important. 

As for rushing, doing so implies that the future we’re fixated on is better than the present. 

But is it really?  And is it not true that as soon as we reach that frantically-sought-after future point, there’s always another one?  When do we actually get to live right now?

And always rushing to the future comes at a real cost:

  1. The small joys of life become invisible to us.   
  2.  Everything becomes an obstacle, one frustration after another.
  3. Rushing triggers our stress response because our mind thinks we’re in danger.  Under stress we’re anxious, unpleasant, and not thinking clearly.  And if we’re always rushing, chronic stress compromises our physical well-being. 

The better alternative?:

  • Stay focused on the present moment and just deal with whatever life presents in a calm, wise manner.  
  • Keep life in perspective.  Nothing is that important that it should be permitted to ruin even one moment of your life.

“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future and not enough presence.

Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

Eckhart Tolle

“Changing the filter, wiping noses, going to meetings, picking up around the house, washing dishes, checking the dipstick – don’t let yourself think that these are distracting you from your more serious pursuits. Such a round of chores is not a set of difficulties we hope to escape – it is our path.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of “Wherever You Go, There You Are“

#4:  External circumstances do not dictate our mood.  Rather, it is our thinking about those circumstances that does

How do we know this to be true?  After all, is it not obvious that an unpleasant situation puts us in a bad mood?  Well, no actually, and here’s why.

First, consider two people exposed to the exact same situation; they will experience it differently, sometimes materially differently.  For example, one person’s fear of public speaking is another person’s exciting opportunity – only their thinking differs.

Or consider this scenario.  You are driving to work when someone abruptly and dangerously cuts you off.  You feel a rush of anger and lay on the horn to express your feelings of outrage.  At the next red light you leer over at them in disgust. 

But then you realize – it’s your mother behind the wheel!

What happens to your anger and outrage?  It vanishes, and all that has changed are your thoughts about the situation.  

We’ve all experienced this.  You’re dealing with a difficult situation and are in a low mood.  The next day a caring friend calls on you to see how you’re feeling and you respond, “I’m in a better frame of mind today, thanks.  I’m doing fine.”  

Being in a “better frame of mind” isn’t the result of the situation changing. The only thing that has changed is your thinking about the situation.  With the benefit of time, distance, and a chance to calm an over-active mind, healthier thoughts displace unhelpful thinking. 

In her article titled, “Do You Ever Get Upset?“, Dr. Judy Sedgeman makes the point that negative feelings are simply the result of negative thoughts – nothing to get upset about or try to figure out.  If you let the negative thoughts flow on by and don’t latch on to them, wiser thoughts will soon take their place.

“So often times it happens, that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key.”

The Eagles from their 1974 hit song, “Already Gone“

So, the main lessons are this:  

  1. We are in control of our thoughts, our thoughts are not in control of us. We get to decide what to think about any given situation.  Change our thinking and we change our perception – it’s that simple.
  2. It’s all just thoughts, and thoughts can’t hurt us.  
  3. By letting our mind settle into a calm stillness, troubling thoughts are soon replaced by better, wiser, healthier thoughts.  

“External problems do not generally damage our bodies directly.  What harms us is our psychological response to those circumstances; not the state of our environment, but of our mind.  And that is something we can control.”

Jo Marchant from her book, “Cure – A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body”

Of course, none of this is actually simple because we’ve been conditioned by society to react habitually and unthinkingly to unpleasant situations.  Turn on any television drama and what do you encounter? People lashing out at each other in mindless anger.  

It takes mindfulness practice to undo this tired, stale, unhelpful way of dealing with life’s challenges and substitute in its place the ability to respond with a calm wisdom.  

Responding in this manner achieves a number of beneficial outcomes:  

  1. It helps us keep things in proper perspective.  
  2. It helps us preserve relationships rather than put them under severe strain.
  3. It helps us spread peace and goodwill rather than aggression.  

It’s our choice.

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”

Khalil Gibran – Lebanese poet, 1883 – 1931

#5:  When faced with an unpleasant situation we have three sane choices

In his book, “The Power of Now“, spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle lays out three sane choices when faced with an unpleasant situation:

  1. Change the situation (if you can and if this is the wisest way forward).
  2. Remove yourself from the situation (if you can and if this is the wisest way forward).
  3. If you can neither change the situation nor remove yourself from it, then accept it as if you had chosen it.

As he astutely puts it, “all else is madness”.

Why madness?  Because all other options entail resisting reality, resisting what IS, and this we know to be the path of needless suffering.  

What then is this madness?  Choosing to inflict suffering upon yourself!

“If there is no solution to the problem, then don’t waste time worrying about it.

If there is a solution to the problem, then don’t waste time worrying about it.”  

Dalai Lama XIV

#6:  A “brain on fire” yields no wisdom

By “brain on fire” (BOF) I mean an agitated state of mind brought on by situations we don’t like.  Here are some examples:

  • BOF = How you feel as you’re speeding in your car to get somewhere.
  • BOF = How you feel as you impatiently look at your watch, over and over again, while stuck in a long, slow-moving grocery line.
  • BOF = How you feel while having a spat with your spouse.
  • BOF = Dejectedly thinking about all the tasks that await you upon your return to work after a great vacation.

An agitated state of mind is brought on by the oldest part of our brain, the amygdala.  When alerted to danger, it is responsible for triggering our self-protection ‘fight-flight-freeze’ mechanism.

Unfortunately, it isn’t smart enough to be able to distinguish true danger from simple anger or frustration.

Awful physical health implications aside, this wouldn’t necessarily be a problem were it not for one thing – under the influence of our amygdala our wisdom goes off-line.  

By this I mean that the amygdala over-rides the wise part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), the locus of our executive functioning – emotional control, impulse control, and creativity.  

As a result, under the influence of our amygdala we become reactionary rather than wisely responsive.  

Why are we set up this way?  Because if we are in a true life-threatening situation we don’t have the luxury of wisely pondering our best course of action, we must react instinctively and unthinkingly.

However, in the absence of real danger, reacting unthinkingly when simply angered or frustrated serves only to make an already unpleasant situation worse. 

So what can we do about this?  Because our PFC is only accessible when we are calm we use mindfulness practice in two ways:

  1. To sensitize us to the first signs of mental upset – a flush of heat (as the blood flows to our muscles), a tightening of the jaw and muscles, a furrowing of the brow, an empty feeling in the pit of our stomach (as the blood flows away from your organs to your muscles), a dry mouth, rapid breathing, and a pounding heart.  These are the cues that our wisdom is about to go off-line.
  2. To immediately pause, breathe deeply and slowly, relax our muscles, and smile to regain perspective. 

Doing so slows down our thinking and re-accesses our PFC and its wisdom.  In a clearer state of mind we avoid the normal, but decidedly unhelpful, habitual, and unthinking reaction to life.  

In short, nothing good comes from reacting to life.  Much good comes from responding to it.

The corollary of this teaching is that whenever you find yourself embroiled in a situation with someone whose own brain is on fire, know fully that they are not in a state of mind to listen to reason.  

For example, a teenager throwing a tantrum has BOF and so is not able to listen to what you have to say because they are under the powerful influence of their amygdala.

So, in such a situation, it is best to give the other person time to calm down so they can re-access their PFC.  Only then will you be able to have an intelligent exchange of views about the situation at hand.

“It’s extremely important to widen the gap between impulse and action, and that’s exactly what mindfulness does … it gives us a moment or two …. where we can change our relationship to our experience, not be caught in it and swept away by impulse, but rather to see that there’s an opportunity here to make a different, better choice.”

Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence“

#7 – Don’t supply fuel to negative thoughts and they will dissipate of their own accord

A brain creates thoughts all on its own; it’s what it’s designed to do. And given our documented negativity-bias, many of those thoughts tend to be unhelpful and anxiety-inducing.

But you are not your brain, and you are not your thoughts.  Your conscious awareness is separate from both.  And because of this, with practice in mindful awareness, you can go from being the slave of your thoughts to simply being the observer of your thoughts. 

Here is an analogy often used to help clarify this point:

Your thoughts are like a waterfall and you are an observer safely standing behind it, just watching the water cascading in front of you.  As an observer, the waterfall can’t hurt you.  In the same way, your thoughts can’t hurt you either, provided you just observe them and don’t get caught up in their cascade.

Supplying fuel to a negative thought means to latch on to it and follow its story line wherever it leads you.  We’ve all experienced this – we make up lengthy conversations and stories, and all of it entirely in our own mind!  

So, when a negative thought occurs, try this:

  1. Call it out for what it is.  Say to yourself, “I’m feeling anxious” or “I’m feeling envious” or whatever negative feeling the thought has conjured up.   Alternatively, speak to the thought directly: “Hello anger, I see you’re back again.”  By calling such thoughts out and putting a name to them you are shining the light of conscious awareness on them, and they lose their hold on you.
  2. Let the negative thought go.  How?  By changing the focus of your attention using one of the informal mindfulness practices outlined in this post.  Studies find that if you don’t give attention to a thought for a few short moments, it will dissipate of its own accord.  In a calmer, wiser state of mind, healthier thoughts will take its place.  Alternatively, imagine the thought is inside a soap bubble floating at eye level.  In your mind’s eye watch it rise up, and up, and up and then – ‘pop’ – gone.  Then turn your mind to a healthier line of thinking.

And always remember that thoughts have no intrinsic existence – they are just ephemeral bio-chemical reactions going on inside your head – just a routine bodily process.

#8 – Making assumptions about other people’s behaviour is the path to needless personal upset and inter-personal conflict

When someone does something that upsets us we typically assume we know why they did it:

  • “because he’s lazy”
  • “because she’s stupid”
  • “because he’s selfish and only thinks about himself”
  • “because he doesn’t care about her welfare”
  • “because she thinks her time is more important than anyone else’s”

In doing so we are making these implicit assumptions:

  1. That our beliefs and world views are correct.
  2. That our beliefs and world views are universally held.
  3. That others should act in the same manner we would in that same situation.  Further, they should know better because we sure as heck would never do what they just did.

Of course, the critical flaw in this line of thinking is that we’re not all the same and, therefore, do not have the same beliefs or world views. 

Factors impacting human behaviour are innumerable, encompassing influences such as genes, genetic abnormalities, hormones, social environment, social standing, past traumas, cultural background, personal experiences, parental upbringing, age, sex, etc., etc.  Unique combinations of such factors guarantee unique behaviour from each of us.  No surprise then that we’re often baffled by others’ behaviour.

Another critical flaw in assuming we know why another person did something is that there is every chance that they don’t even know this themselves.

But how could this be?  Well, it appears to be the case that the left hemisphere of the brain serves as an interpreter of our actions; we act in some manner and then it makes up a story to help us make sense of what we just did.

In his fascinating book, “Incognito – The Secret Lives of the Brain“, neuroscientist David Eagleman offers these cautionary words for those who want to know the “why?” behind human behaviour:

“We have ways of retrospectively telling stories about our actions as though the actions were always our idea.  It has been concluded that the left hemisphere of the brain acts as an interpreter, watching the actions and behavior of the body and then assigning a coherent narrative to these events.  Hidden programs drive actions and the left hemisphere makes justifications.

It can be disquieting to consider the extent to which all of our actions are driven by hardwired systems while we overlay stories about our choices.”

As a result, while you may get an answer to “Why did you do that?“, don’t be surprised if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

So is there a wiser way forward?  Here are three approaches to consider:

Let It Go

If it’s just not that important – and most issues aren’t – just let it go. Life is way too short to be wasting any of it over trivialities.

Make a Better Assumption

If you’re capable of making a negative assumption, you’re also capable of making a positive assumption.  After all, they’re both just make-believe stuff you cobbled together in your head.

So, perhaps the young woman on the bus who appears to be willfully ignoring her wailing child is, in fact, grieving the loss of her spouse.  That may be unlikely, but it’s not impossible, so why not go with the latter assumption and save yourself needless agitation?  After all, it’s your choice what to think about any given situation.

Use Non-Violent Communication 

If the situation is important enough for you to take action, try this approach known as “Non-Violent Communication“, developed by the late Marshall Rosenberg, known for his work in international peace negotiations:

  1. In non-judgmental language, convey to the “offender” what action of theirs you have observed.
  2. Let them know how these actions make you feel.
  3. Let them know what specific needs of yours are not being met in relation to those actions that have led you to feel this way.
  4. Let them know what you are wanting from them to address this situation so that your needs may be met and if they could see their way to doing so.
  5. Ask them how they observe the situation, how they feel about it, and what their needs are.
  6. If there are conflicting needs, come to an agreeable compromise.  

What you don’t want to do is to ask the “Why?” question.  “So, Johnny, why did you leave your dirty hockey equipment in the hallway for everyone to trip over?”

This is the road to needless conflict because asking someone to explain their behaviour is accusatory, feels like an interrogation, and conveys a sense of fait accompli, that they’ve already been found guilty as charged.  

And what do accused people do?  They defend themselves or counter-attack, neither of which will prove helpful for resolving a conflict.

“Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.”

Don Miguel Ruiz, author of “The Four Agreements“

“One of the great misconceptions we often carry throughout our lives is that our perceptions of ourselves and the world are basically accurate and true, that they reflect some stable, ultimate reality.  This misconception leads to tremendous suffering, both globally and in our personal life situations.”

Joseph Goldstein, “Mindfulness – A Practical Guide to Awakening”

#9 – Taking things personally leads to needless conflict and self-inflicted hurt

What someone else says about you or thinks about you, positively or negatively, is all about them, not about you; it is about your behaviour filtered through their belief system – their “shoulds”, “ought tos”, and “musts”.

How do we know this?  Because two different people sizing you up as a person can come up with two very different opinions, one good and one bad – and both can’t be true.

Former U.S. President, Donald Trump, is a prime example of this.  Some voters wanted him impeached while others idolized him.  But he’s just one person and those two opinions are not compatible. So, it’s not about Donald Trump, it’s about each voter’s personal belief system.

So, don’t get upset over nasty things others say to you or about you because it’s got nothing to do with you, but everything to do with them.  

By the same token, don’t get your chest all puffed out when people say nice things about you – because that’s all about them too (and not everyone agrees with them)!

“There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.”

Don Miguel Ruiz 

#10 – Your happiness is 100% your own responsibility and comes from within

This is a corollary of #4, this being that it is not external circumstances that dictate whether we’re happy or sad, rather, it is our thinking about those circumstances that does.

If your happiness depends on what other people think of you then you’ve got a miserable life ahead of you because you’ve just made yourself into a helpless victim – your happiness is dependent on factors outside of your control.

Similarly, if your happiness is contingent on being immersed in pleasant circumstances – enjoying a vacation, buying things, taking in a movie – then you’re guaranteed repeated episodes of abject unhappiness because life isn’t an unbroken string of pleasantries.  No, life also includes the mundane and the unpleasant – doing the laundry, getting stuck in traffic, shoveling the driveway, nursing a cold, and going to the dentist.

True happiness is independent of external circumstances and comes from being mindful – living fully in the present moment and taking joy from life’s simplest moments – even doing the laundry!  

It all boils down to what we choose to think about our circumstances. Happiness is a choice – and so is suffering.

It follows from all of this that it is not the responsibility of your spouse, or your parents, siblings, friends, or co-workers to make you happy – that’s totally up to you.  

By the same token, you are not, and cannot be, responsible for others’ happiness – that is totally up to them.

Warmest wishes,

Rob @ Living a Mindful Life