Ahh, flow.
Many people I’ve talked to this year have made flow their word of the year. It’s one of those words that makes your mind and body just go “aaahhh.” We won’t resist, we’ll go with the things that present themselves. It will all be good.
I’m just finishing up making beef Bourguignon for Christmas Eve dinner. One of the many heartfelt things we do to show our friends and families how much they mean to us. In our family, every two years we congregate from far and wide to celebrate together. We look forward to it for months. We plan and prep for these two weeks for two months. This year is interesting as the first wave of children return from school and we see how they are growing into adults. There are different ideas, diets, friends, beliefs, and values to share and watch evolve.
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ― e e cummings
Courage doesn’t belong just to the brave or the leaders or the young. Courage belongs to you. You don’t need to wear your courage on your sleeve, either. Courage is you living your life fully and from your heart.
We all want to be courageous. Particularly as we get older and it gets harder.* If we let it, over time fear will bully us into a corner. We see it happen in others.
Fear encroaches when we’re not paying attention. As we get older we see how life can treat some very unkindly. We see people we care about struggle and fall. Sometimes they have the strength and resilience to get up again stronger. But sometimes they don’t and that’s hard to watch. It makes us afraid that we might lack strength at some important time.
Pema Chodron, a witty and kind Buddhist nun, gives voice to a common fear about fear in her audio book, Don’t Bite the Hook. She talks about not wanting to be that uber-sensitive person who hasn’t worked with the discomfort of pushing back on fear. They complain all day about the noise, the heat, the food. With her gentle humour she describes someone we’ve all known — the person, young or old, whose life get smaller as more irritates and frightens them.
By the intentional persistent practice of courage.
A moment for practice comes when you’re standing at the intersection of fear and your values. You are called to take a risky action for something you believe in, despite being afraid of what might happen. The risk may be big – like your physical safety – or it may be smaller – failing in the eyes of someone important to you. When you call on your courage you are showing that you are willing to face fear for something important.
Your biggest bang for the fear-busting buck comes in the areas that hold the most value to you. Perhaps love or self-expression, freedom or fairness. There are many worthy beneficiaries of your courage.
By contrast, bravery happens when you fearlessly take risky action that has value. We see people do something brave and they say that anyone would have done it. Recklessness happens when you fearlessly take risky action that has no value. No glory there.
Fear can be big or small. You recognize that familiar feeling when it rises up. Your nervous system can’t really distinguish between a “real” fear that comes from outside (like a snake) and an “anxious” fear that comes from inside (the worry that you might meet a snake along your way). Both fears are real to your mind and body and they have the same physiological effects. Of course, your bigger fears will have a bigger effect. But it’s the small constant fears that take the bigger toll over time.
Practicing courage is not a linear thing. It’s easier to think of it as a dance, a choreographed back and forth that circles in many directions. If you’re tired and you haven’t taken good care of yourself it is much harder to take the lead with fear. Big fears that bubble up from places you don’t understand are hard to work with. Be very kind and patient with those.
Learning to lead the dance is worthy of your time. As Maya Angelou said, “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
Here are some ideas to find a rhythm with fear as you build your courage.
* We’ll never really get to a cranky dotage as we’ll always be fabulous and youthful. But let’s entertain for a moment that we will eventually slow down.
Image: Courage and hope by Denise Carbonell under CC2.0
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The power of daily habit is undeniable. Bit by bit you inch towards your goal. At the beginning you saw progress and it felt good. But there’s still a lot of work between you and the finish line. It’s not that you’re unhappy with the way things are going. It’s just slow going. Sometimes you feel stuck.
When you look around your house and see it full to the brim, what do you think?
Do you think, “Wow, I live an amazing, full life and my house is a perfect reflection of that!” Or do you think, “If only I could find “x” I could get on with things.” If you’re in the second camp then a bit of spring-cleaning might be in order.
Most often we think of spring-cleaning as de-cluttering our possessions. But did you ever think of doing some spring training for your brain with daily mindfulness?
I sometimes think of standing in my childrens’ shoes as they head off for university. What would excite me enough to devote years of study to? It would definitely be neuroscience.
I am fascinated by the workings of the mind and the brain and how they affect so much of our experience of life. More often than not the books stacking up in my reading pile are about the wild reaches in the mind-body connection.
A decade ago the prevailing belief was that our brain was fixed as we left childhood, or perhaps adolescence. Any later experiences left little trace in our brain, beyond minor alterations in neural connections or cell death. But the new thinking is that the brain continually changes as a result of our experiences—whether through fresh connections between neurons or through the generation of utterly new neurons.
Much of the meaty research about the brain from the last ten years is courtesy of the functional MRI (fMRI). It’s an imaging technology based on the MRI that moves beyond creating images of organs and tissues. The fMRI is able to detect blood flow in the brain, so scientists can start to map which parts of the brain handle particular functions.
One of my go-to people for research in mind-body research is Rick Hanson. He’s a neuropsychologist and author of a number of books about mindfulness and the brain. He does one of my favorite things – take complex information, pull out the important stuff, and put it into bite-sized actions that are simple to do and make a real difference.
His book, Just One Thing, is full of simple practices that support and increase a sense of security and worth, resilience, effectiveness, well-being, insight and inner peace. That’s quite a list!
One of the practices he recommends is savoring pleasure when it appears in the day. Life is so busy that we’re constantly in motion or our minds are rushing ahead to the next thing.
While we often seek out pleasure, we don’t always take in the pleasure in a lot of what we do. He suggests taking an extra 20 seconds to really enjoy those first few sips of coffee in the morning, the way an orange smells when you peel it, or the feel of newly washed sheets on your skin.
When we really stop and experience pleasure – do a full body enjoyment of it – we become more fully present to life, more grounded in our bodies and more alive and aware. You can feel it in your body like a warm glow spreading, or like a ripple on a lake, reaching all the tender places.
Even understanding that your neurons are firing and wiring together when you hold this good experience in awareness is enough to reap the benefits.
Savoring the good stuff that’s already around activates your body’s relax and repair system, the parasympathetic nervous system. This is your steady-state system that signals to your brain that the alarms are off and that it’s time to rejuvenate. That’s when your body goes back to building your immune system, digesting your nutrients and rebuilding your bones and tissue. Oh, and sets you off looking for a little loving, too.
Experiencing pleasure also makes us secrete endorphins – source of good moods, pain relief and improved immunity. We’ve heard a lot about them through the runner’s high. But they are also released at low levels in mundane daily activities such as playing with a pet, watching a funny movie, listening to our favorite music and generally connecting with things we love.
I’ve been enjoying taking the mundane to a higher level. What have you been savouring lately?
Alfriston Clergy House – Gareth Willams