On Work

In the context of how I am thinking about the nature of work, regardless of our age, state of health, employment status, or stage of life we are all involved in it, simply for the fact that we are alive and breathing. There’s the work of household upkeep, whether we live solo or with others. The work of education. The work we do for money. The work we do on the daily to keep our self fed. The work of caretaking for others and for our self.

Applying mindfulness practice to the field and realm of work is what I consider to be advanced, next-level practice. By which I mean, tough stuff.

The question is, how do we apply our practice to our work? With whatever kind of work we do, job related or otherwise, how do we integrate our practice into it; how do we actively enable our work to be an extension of our practice?

When it comes to working for pay, I’m hard-pressed to think of a job that isn’t taxing, at least once-in-a-while. Whether we interact with other people all day or with a computer; whether we do manual labor or are sedentary, each and every job has its hardships and stresses. Its petty annoyances and large frustrations. Its routine complications and unscheduled upsets.

In the office-type job I do remotely, when I’m hip deep in emails that need responding to, a sea of phone calls that need returning, and a host of computer-based tasks that need my attention; when there’s loads to do and only so much time in the day, developing creative ways to apply my practice to my work is not only what helps to keep me grounded, but is fundamentally necessary to keep me sane.

The Trouble With Spontaneous Living

I think many of us spend a fair amount of our time waiting, myself for sure included. Waiting for the sun to shine so we can be outside. Waiting for something uplifting to happen to elevate our mood. Waiting for a friend to reach out to make plans to get together. Waiting to run into the right person at the right time for the purposes of connection. Waiting for joy to find us; for happiness to fall into our lap; for the stars to align in the creation of the perfect day; for the weekend to do X, Y, Z; for whatever current upswell of frantic activity we presently have to be over and done with. I think many of us are hoping that we can just sort of spontaneously fall into a good life.

I don’t think it’s a conscious undertaking. I think many of us operate this way without knowing it. It’s a learned pattern of behavior, instilled in us on the sly by our collective culture. Intentional, purposeful, choiceful living is a worthwhile endeavor to put our time, energy, and effort into. Because the thing about routinely waiting around for something good to happen or someone good to text us is our well-being is not in our own hands. The quality of our day – of our life – is out of our control, and we’re at the mercy of whatever just happens to happen, or doesn’t.

I’m not at all suggesting that spontaneous living or spontaneous joy isn’t a thing. Of course it totally is. What I am saying is maybe it’s worth considering actively investing in the things and people that are most important to us. Maybe it’s worth figuring out what our biggest values center around and what our highest priorities are, in order to make conscious decisions about how we live our life. Maybe it’s worth making a few more plans about how we will actualize what we really want in life.

When Sadness Attends the Dinner Party

Just as one would be hard-pressed to know I have a nerve condition called CRPS for which I am on disability for simply by looking at me, folks are unlikely to know my husband Mike lives with depression. I suspect that even those who have heard him share openly about it, which he often does, might still have a hard time thinking it affects him (or me) very much, based on how open, engaged, and warm-hearted he is when they see him. All of which he truly is, by the way. Alongside his friendliness and care and powerhouse presence geared towards others, however, is the fluctuating but constant companion of depression. 

Mike, by his own admission, has 2 primary modes of operation: on and off. When folks see him, he’s in the on position. The majority of the time I spend with him, however, is when he is switched off. Another way of saying it would be Mike is on when he’s in work-mode and off when he’s in home-mode. His capacity for being on when he’s not working is limited. Despite the beneficial growth-work he’s done and continues to do around allowing himself the space and grace to find acceptance for his depression while simultaneously not sinking into its depths (which has been incredibly valuable), it casts a long shadow on his spirit. 

When I first thought about turning the above two paragraphs that I penned in my paper journal into a blog post, I wondered what my angle would be. The answer arose pretty readily. Sadness. On board for me right now is the feeling of sadness. (PSA: Sadness and depression are not two different words that mean the same thing. It’s really important to understand the difference.) I’m sad he lives with this affliction of mind, heart, and body. I’m sad that even though he can touch into feelings of happiness, the ability he has to do so is incredibly compromised. Depression nearly always has the upper hand. I’m sad that depression robs him of so much energy and joy and the capacity to function in healthy ways. I’m sad that such a kind and wonderful man has to live with such a hard plight of the soul. 

I also feel sadness for some of the concessions I need to make, in order to partner with a man who lives with depression. While I have learned how to adapt to it in ways I deem are genuinely skillful and beneficial (both to him and to me), there are times when it’s a strain and feels like a burden. The ways in which I negotiate around and with his depression doesn’t eclipse my great love for him, but it does at times grow tiresome. I experience bouts of weariness with it. Bouts of sadness. 

I don’t mind telling you I far prefer feelings of anger than feelings of sadness. Anger has also been easier for me to work with in terms of holding, investigating, and unfurling it. Anger is a flash feeling, whereas sadness lingers. Anger also carries a certain sense of empowerment and agency, whereas sadness makes me feel vulnerable and shaky. (I’m not at all stating this is how these emotions are, but simply how they are, in general, for me.) Anger gives me the illusion of control. With sadness, the illusion is stripped away. I’m also able to give myself more grace when it comes to experiencing feelings of anger. With sadness, while intellectually I know it’s an emotion that is part of what it means to be human, when it’s activated in my mind/body system, there is an internal program running that says sadness means something is wrong and in need of fixing. For me, sadness is much more uncomfortable than anger. 

Musings on Joy

Joy is a topic I return to often here on my blog. When it comes to cultivating and strengthening my own spiritual practice, Joy is one of my top 5 favorite hits. 

Partly because I am currently participating in a free online summit entitled Living A Joyful Life, and partly because investing in joy as an active, intentional practice is a mainstay thread in my life, here I am yet again to wax on about my current musings. 

At the surface, joy is simply a fleeting feeling of pleasure. The feeling rises and falls and that’s that. It comes and it goes. At first inspection, it’s easy to regard joy as trivial, trite, maybe even juvenile. In any case, it’s not important enough to put on our regular to-do list. From a Buddhist lens, we may be tempted to see joy as akin to grasping temporary highs or chasing sensual desires, which untether us from being present in the here and now. And many of us see joy as being the mark of an unserious, unconcerned, under-developed individual. Since joy can get a bad rap, and be subject to rudimentary understanding, I enjoy the task of re-branding what it is and has the potential to become. 

Joy is a fleeting feeling. Yes, absolutely. However, when the feeling of joy is nourished & developed, it has the capacity to grow into a foundational quality of being. While I’m hesitant to share the following progression, because I don’t want to give the impression that the process of cultivating joy is necessarily this linear, it was what I personally experienced on my path of cultivating joy. 

On Individuality & Community

I recently gave a talk to a room of fellow lay practitioners during which I referenced our western culture’s dominant messaging that centers around individuality. While it was not my central focus of the talk, I posited that individuality – as a way of life – has both assets and detriments. And it is this particular topic on which I would like to further elaborate my way of thinking. Ya know, just for the fun & challenge of it. 

The ways in which our western culture promotes, and I would say glorifies, individuality is often not in good service or aid to generating a genuine, balanced felt-sense of well-being. The type of individuality that gets touted and celebrated tends to have a consumeristic quality built in, a certain buy this product to validate or improve your self-worth situation. It also tends to have an element of needing to prove something to someone, which also means it is steeped in playing the dreadful comparison game. A game based on pitting us against one another; of constantly weighing who’s better and who’s worse. A game, by the way, that no one wins at. 

Some of us may be tempted to counteract this unhealthy form of individuality by then swinging all the way over into the realm of community. In my view, this too can be unhealthy. Doing so, we lose sight of the healthy, helpful ways in which individuality can be of benefit and service to us. 

It’s important to investigate and understand the distinctions between what healthy individualism is and looks like and what unhealthy individualism is and looks like; and what healthy community involvement is and looks like and what unhealthy community involvement is and looks like. 

For me, it’s important to have a balance and blend of both healthy individualism and healthy community involvement. 

Here’s how I’m thinking about things right now:

Unhealthy individualism involves:

• Lone wolfing it 
• Abiding by the motto that “hell is other people”
• Having something to prove 
• Seeing ourself as a separate self-entity 
• Thinking we don’t need other people
• Perpetually playing the comparison game (superiority/inferiority complex)

My Practice for 2024

At the start of January, for the past number of years, I pick up and start a new mindfulness related practice, with the aim of carrying it with me through the year. I then set down that practice at the end of December, in order to pick up a new one. (To read about the practice I did through 2023, please click here.)

For the past couple of months, I’ve been percolating on what my practice in 2024 will be. One idea was to follow a practice that I recently read about in a great book I just finished by the late great Zen teacher Bernie Glassman called Bearing Witness. In the book, he shared about a practice that he did for many years. It involved stopping every day at noon for 1-minute to meditate for world peace. While the world peace angle didn’t personally grab me, I figured I could modify it to fit my own proclivities. 

Another idea was to follow a practice that my friend Ashly told me about. There is a small movement centered around developing a complaint free world, which is now apparently a trademarked thing: A Complaint Free World™. There are purple rubber bracelets associated with said movement – which she generously gifted me with – and the mission, should one choose to accept it, is to wear it and move it to the other wrist whenever we complain, whether inwardly in thought or outwardly in words spoken or written. When I looked up this movement online, I read on their website that the challenge is to go 21-days without needing to move the bracelet. In other words, 21-days in a row without complaining. 

Practicing at the Post Office

Yesterday, I went to the post office not thinking at all about the approaching Christmas holiday. It was a Saturday as well, to add further insult to injury. The length of the line was such that when I first joined, I had to stand outside. I did a rough count and determined the line was around 30 people deep. I estimated that it might take me an hour to reach the counter, especially considering we were all being helped by only one postal clerk on duty.

I took a few moments and considered my options, then consciously chose to stay put and commit myself to upping my mindfulness practice energy. Not only did I make this choice in order to support the quality of my own experience, but I also wanted to be a good member of my new waiting-in-line sangha. One that could perhaps energetically transmit friendliness and ease. Or at the very least, not add more gas to the fire. 

It’s worth mentioning here that I really dislike standing in lines. Just, like, in general. Not only is standing physically difficult for me, due to a chronic nerve condition I live with, but it is mentally difficult as well. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I’m really not a big fan. I think it has something to do with the speed and efficiency I like to have when doing errands. Lines are the killjoy to my preferred rate of getting things done. While I have a lot of patience for certain things, I have very little when it comes to standing in line. 

The Worst Thing to Say to Someone

Whenever I hear someone tell someone else, or make a general open call declaration to Let it go, or worse Just let it go, I cringe. Even if it would be a top notch idea to do so, it feels trite and dismissive to me in the context in which it commonly gets used. It is my firm belief that even when we have the very best of intentions (and we always do), instructing someone else to Just let it go is not only not helpful, but oftentimes actively causes harm. 

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe that the practice of letting go is a thing that makes good sense. I also believe that there’s room for us to utilize the words “let it go” when engaging in dialog with our own self. But I do not think it’s any sort of good idea to direct these words to anyone else (unless maybe you’re super close to them and there’s trust established and you can deliver these words with tender care and deep understanding). 

When I say there’s room for us to use these words with our own self, that means there’s a possibility that it’s not a good idea, too. If we bark this in command to ourselves, use it as a cover-up or bypass, or attempt to apply this directive in times when we’re not at the letting go stage yet, these words can be a dagger. 

Four Arenas of Practice (part 2 of 2)

To read the part 1 of this post, please see here

G R A T I T U D E

Offer words of thanks before eating. Try not to underestimate the value of small daily acts such as saying words of thanks – whether inwardly or outwardly – before eating a meal. If you decide to adopt this particular practice, I would suggest coming up with a meal verse to recite, verses winging it on the spot (unless you’re good at that sort of thing, which I am not). A verse that is short & simple, using whatever words resonate for you, and easy to commit to memory. The point isn’t to try and come up with the most profound thing to say here, it’s to engage with gratitude as an actionable practice. Tying it to an activity that we do every day helps to ensure that we have an ongoing opportunity to put gratitude into play.

Recite & reflect on the Five Remembrances. 

1. I am of the nature to grow old, there is no way to escape growing old. 
2. I am of the nature to have ill-health, there is no way to escape having ill-health. 
3. I am of the nature to die, there is no way to escape death. 
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change, there is no way to escape being separated from them. 
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand. 

Practicing to stay in touch, and over time connect deeply, with these Five Remembrances can help to illuminate how vitally important it is to be fully present and alive in the here & now. When we understand how everything and everyone is dynamically impermanent; how our lives can change quickly; and how those we love can be taken away from us unexpectedly, it enables us to not take such things as the health & physical functioning we are afforded and the people we love for granted. When we keep these remembrances active in our life, it lights a fire of gratitude within us for everything we have and everyone we love. 

Share your appreciation with others. When you are thankful for something someone does, whether it’s a friend, your boss, a co-worker, a stranger, an organization or a business, let them know. Whether it’s delivered verbally in-person, written in an email, sent via text message or posted in the form of an online review, share your appreciation out loud. Another way this practice can show up is to share the appreciation for things & people you have with others. For example, when chatting with a good friend, tell them a few things you’ve been grateful for lately, or share with them something especially nice your husband recently did that you really appreciated. My logical brain doesn’t quite understand it, but my heart super knows: sharing our appreciations helps to amplify and multiply our gratitude. 

S E L F – B E F R I E N D I N G

Reflect on your good qualities. Brother Phap Hai, a teacher I cherish dearly and follow closely, encourages mindfulness practitioners to reflect on their good qualities. Which, if I’m remembering correctly, is a teaching the Buddha offered to his monastic disciples. While this may feel anywhere from uncomfortable to impossible, our difficulty in engaging with this reflection practice is precisely why it’s important that we do it. I think it’s worth expressly stating that reflecting on our good qualities is not the same thing as inflating our ego or being full of ourselves, nor does it have anything to do with fostering a superiority complex. The motivational energy fueling this practice centers around the desire to extend understanding & love to ourselves, and to see ourselves more fully and clearly, with the aim of developing self-awareness and generating good self-care. 

Speak with kindness & care to yourself. Many of us speak very harshly to ourselves. Our self-critic may be so well honed that we aren’t even fully aware of the extent to which it operates & dominates our life. So the first step might be to tune into how you talk to yourself on a regular basis, and pay attention to the words you use. If we discover that we’re routintely hard on ourselves, we can then start to make adjustments to our self-talk, using words that fit for us, in order to help bolster our well-being, verses tearing it down.

Allow your feelings to be as they are. So often, we try to kick the feelings we don’t like to the curb or rationalize them away, or we fight against them willing them to be different. Self-befriending centers around integrating all of the many different aspects of our self, not separating out certain parts.  Allowing our feelings to be as they are may not sound like much, but it’s a foundational element for supporting our well-being. It’s worth noting here that allowing and falling into are not the same thing. When it comes to handling difficult feelings, allowing involves noticing and giving space for things to exist as part of our human experience, whereas falling into involves feeling sorry for our self and being a victim. 

C O M F O R T  Z O N E  E X P A N S I O N 

Monitor your discomfort meter. Discomfort exists on a spectrum. We all have an inner discomfort meter that pings in different spots, ranging from mild to extreme, based on stimulai. The first step in being able to slowly start expanding our comfort zone involves gaining familiarity with what pings where for us on the meter. We need to get a sense for when discomfort is simply a natural human response to growth or learning in progress, or something new happening or changing, and when it’s a warning signal relaying important information that we need to heed and listen to. If we don’t know the difference, we can have the tendency to run from any & all forms of discomfort, which shrinks our comfort zone more & more as time goes on. 

Engage in small uncomfortable acts on purpose. This is a regular & active part of my practice, which I find extremely valuable. Finding small ways in which to dip into discomfort on purpose, allows me to take responsibility for slowly expanding my comfort zone. The bigger my zone of comfort is, the more able I am to remain open & grounded in varying circumstances & around a variety of people. In the personal growth department, widening our comfort zone is crucial. I want to emphasize the word small. Taking huge flying leaps outside of our comfort zone is not something I tend to support. I’m a superfan of starting & working small. Some examples: choose a chair to sit in for a short period of time that you would typically avoid; eat a meal with your non-dominant hand; ask a co-worker you don’t know well how their weekend was (unless this is something you would do anyway, then it doesn’t count). 

Don’t engage in a small acts you normally would. I had to think about this one for a bit, because in a way, if you take up the last practice exercise you’re often doing this one at the same time. For instance, if you choose to sit in a chair you tend to avoid, you are automatically not engaging in a small act you normally would, which is to sit in the chair that’s most comfortable for you. However, I do think there’s room for these two practice areas to be different, even if it’s simply motivationally based. For example, sometimes when I feel inspired to turn on music in my car, I specifically opt not to. And it’s not that it feels necessarily uncomfortable for me not to have music on, I simply would prefer to listen to it and I choose not to. 

Okay. So that was a lot to take in. Thanks for hanging in (if you did in fact hang in). I’m considering turning these Four Arenas of practice into a 5-week online practice group early next year, which would be free & open to participate in. If this would be something you’re interested in, please use my website contact form to reach out.

Four Arenas of Practice (part 1 of 2)

Right up front, please know that Four Arenas of Practice is a list I’ve crafted myself, like super recently. So if you haven’t heard of them before that makes good sense. Four Arenas of Practice are: joy, gratitude, self-befriending, and comfort zone expansion work. NOTE: I’m trying really hard not to put the word ‘The’ in front of Four Arenas, so as not to give the impression that these are the ONLY practice areas worthy of investing time & energy into. There are many places in which to dig the well, these four just happen to be mine. 

Assuming our basic needs are being met, actively engaging with one or more of these four arenas will enable us to truly feel as though we’re living a good life, regardless of the ills, challenges, and hardships that come our way. 

There’s part of me that wants these arenas to be a linear situation. As in: if I start in one arena it will lead me to the next arena and then when I make my way to the final arena, I’m done! Mission complete! But these arenas do not work that way. They overlap; co-create each other; spill into one another. There’s no starting place, and therefore also no ending place. While they are distinct and distinguishable, they are not separate. 

These practice arenas are places of ongoing maintenance, on-the-spot upliftment, and strength training. They assist us both in the short term and over the long haul. Their influence and impact are simultaneously immediate and time-releasing. 

These Four Arenas are not simply areas for contemplation and reflection. Though yes, do that. These are areas in which to practice. And by practice I mean effort and action need to be applied. Here are some possible ways to activate ourselves in these Four Arenas. 

J O Y

Make time to do the things you like to do. This may sound super basic, but most of us don’t prioritize enjoyment in our life. We put it off, relegate it for later, regard it as trite & trivial, and/or wait for joy to manifest spontaneously. For many of us, work & house projects & errands take precedent (always). Encouragement: think small. Sure we might like to travel or see a fave musician in concert or do a million other big things, but the subtleties of joy are vast & varied. When it comes to making time to do the things you enjoy doing, think & act small. This way we can enfold the cultivation of joy into our daily or weekly routine. 

Expand your attention. Misperceptions about joy abound. One of the common ones is that joy is only big & flashy. If we think joy exists only in big-bang moments, we’re likely to miss the quiet simple joys that are quite literally all around us. The other day, for example, I was making a blended butternut squash soup and I was really wishing I had a ladle in which to scoop it up with. Then I remembered that we had fetched all of our things from our storage unit the previous day and my ladle was in a bin inside our freshly delivered shipping container now wonderfully located on our property. My ladle was just a short walk away! Expanding our attention when it comes to joy allows our radar to pick up on things that we might otherwise gloss right over. When our attention is more expansive, we discover joy everywhere we are and anywhere we go. 

Let the good in. When something good happens we can sometimes have the tendency to slough it off or disregard it as being no big deal, or at least not a big enough deal to make any sort of difference. This kind of practice – and yes, it is a practice – is very unfortunate. If we keep the door to our heart closed when good things happen, we can become quite cynical and jaded. Letting the good in involves making a conscious effort to notice goodness when it’s present, allowing it to penetrate into our mind/body system, and savoring it for as long as possible. Goodness is always in motion and good people are everywhere. Practice to see it and let it in.

(Stay tuned for part 2 of this blog post, where I’ll share practices for the other three arenas.)