In my last post, I wrote about the fear response – the way our mind can fixate on fear in an unhealthy way. And how fear relies on uncertainty for its power. Fear is hardly ever about something that’s already happened.
So with a new year coming into focus, I want to think about how we can use a mindfulness practice to retool our thinking about the coming weeks and months.
We’re in the thick of it now. Delta and Omicron are converging in a soup of dysfunction. If you step back to examine your life, or the world, you may want to turn away. It’s not a pretty place. But that doesn’t mean you have to eat the ugly. You might have to hold it in your hands and whisper some comforting words to it, but you can do that.
How?
I want to turn to Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning. You may have heard this quote:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Let’s imagine COVID and its aftershocks are the stimulus. If you’d like, you can even hone in on something specific: remote work, a lost opportunity, teenage mental health, the global supply chain, the politicalization of health and safety, lockdowns, or some variation. Just pick one.
And let’s imagine that 2022 is our response.
Which means that right now – the moment you’re reading this – is your space.
The COVID soup has sapped the emotional stamina we need to handle life’s obstacles with grace. It has made us more reactive, less patient, less empathetic. It’s basically squashing that space. We’re in survival mode, reacting on instinct. So we rumble through, hoping it’s enough. But remember: how we choose our response will determine our growth and freedom.
So let’s slow it down. How? Drop into your breathing, or your body, regularly, and it becomes a refuge you can go to, even during times like this. It becomes the space between stimulus and response. It allows you, ultimately, to outlast the ugly.
That might seem scary. For some people, slowing down might open a space for the ugly to get in. Dropping into our breath means confronting the dysfunction that’s all around us. And that’s ok. I’m not saying it’s comfortable, but it’s ok. It’s your spirit’s way of starting the healing process. You may have to wade through some muck before you get to a place of clarity. If you’re patient and allow that feeling to move through you, you’ll notice that it’s not the only thing that’s there. I’ve been practicing for over 20 years, and I can assure you that not every practice will lead to peace and calm. But if we do a little every day – even five or ten minutes – we start to carve out a space where they can emerge.
And if you’ve developed a practice, you’ll notice that the habits there start to leak out into your daily life. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed, you might feel yourself involuntarily take a deep breath. And that’s where your freedom starts to grow. Instead of being ruled by reactivity, you create a space where you can choose your course of action.
There will be failures. Many of them. You will react, reflect, and curse yourself for not doing better. For getting angry when you should have remained calm. Yesterday, when my kids were complaining as we walked around the Sagrada Familia (we’re in Barcelona for the holidays), I may have lost it a little and yelled at them. This church literally restored my faith in creativity and originality when I first saw it about ten years ago. It reinforced the idea that humans are capable of something extraordinary. Being here was a gift we were giving them for the holidays. How could they not be in awe?! Is their failure to be amazed a reflection of my failure as a parent?
Moments like this are the seeds of growth. The more you fail, the more likely it is that next time, you won’t. Instead of showing my anger, how could I have responded differently? If we’re willing to reflect on our failure, there is room for growth, room for that space to open.
Mindfulness isn’t so much a thing you do, but rather a way you are. It may have its foundation on a cushion, or a chair, but those habits start to filter out into your everyday interactions.
This guided practice will help to lay those foundations, carve out that space.
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