In the previous module, I pointed out that our relationship to the difficulties in our lives is an important contributor to how much we suffer. And I gave you the example of how a challenge at work or life and the associated stress that comes with it can drive us into habitual behaviors that don't really serve our well-being. When we're on autopilot, and we meet with difficulty that results in anxious, unpleasant energy in our bodies, we tend to do whatever we can to make ourselves feel better in the short term. For example, maybe you come home after a long day where nothing seemed to go your way and sit in front of the TV for hours, mindlessly eating chips and tuning out the world. After getting yelled at by your boss, you act snarky to the next innocent co-worker who happens to cross your path. While this avoidance coping might give us some brief reprieve, it also has unintended longer term consequences attached to it. So what are alternative options and how does mindfulness fit in? Well, let's take a minute to look back at the process of stress and see how things might change when we meet with difficulty while we're present and paying attention without judgment. Imagine for a moment that you have a major deadline at work that's looming and you're behind for some reason. So the stressor or demand here is the deadline. Remember what comes next? Your appraisal. Is this important and do I have the abilities or resources to meet the demand? Your perspective and answers here dictate the terms right off the bat. So if what we do is judge our experience as being not quite right in some way, if we think this isn't what should be happening, or I can't get this done, or some aspect of the situation isn't what we expected or wanted. We move ourselves right into fight or flight and all the physical symptoms that come with that cascade into the body. Now, intervening at this stage can feel quite tricky. Most of these thoughts are involuntary like a reflex almost. They happen quickly and with almost no conscious awareness on our part, and they tend to lead us to a larger series of thoughts about blame, what needs to be changed or how things could or should be different. When we get caught in these narratives, and they can have quite a bit of momentum, we lose awareness of the moment of what's actually going on in life all around us. And when we do that, we diminish our freedom to choose what or if any action needs to be taken. But if we're being mindful, we can notice these thoughts as they arise and make intentional choices that prevent us from getting lost in them. Regular mindfulness practice teaches us how to observe our own mind, which helps us begin to understand that even though thoughts can feel extremely powerful. In reality, they're just transient appearances in consciousness like a sound that appears and then disappears from your environment. And like the sounds around you, you no more or less responsible for producing the thoughts that appear in your own mind. Now that may not sit quite right with you likely believe yourself to be the thinker of your own thoughts and therefore responsible for producing them. But if you pay attention to how thoughts arise, you'll see that they just appear in the margins of consciousness. And that you don't actually have the ability to control this in any way. Let's do a quick exercise to illustrate this point. Think of the name of a famous actor. It can be a man or a woman young or old, it doesn't matter. You're free to choose any actor you like. Just pay attention to what the experience of choosing is like. You're totally free here. You can think of any actor in the world. You can pick anyone you like. Go ahead, choose. Now choose another actor. Now another if you're like me, you probably thought of the names of a few different individuals than debated back and forth about which one to land on. This short debate is part of what convinces us that we're the thinker of our thoughts. Ultimately, you made a final decision on who to pick. But my guess is that you were only considering a handful of actors. I said pick an actor and then there's a brief moment or nothing happens. And then the names of actors begin to appear from the margins of consciousness. Where these names come from? Why did Gwyneth Paltrow come to mind but not Tom Cruise? You could have picked any actor you know, and ultimately you landed on one. But if all of the options that are actually available to you, only a few came to mind in the first place. You had no control over which names occurred to you and which didn't. If we can open ourselves to this, it sets us on a path that allows us to see our thoughts in new ways and to learn to relate to them very differently. We can begin to take our thoughts less personally keep them at some distance from us. If we can become a witness to thought rather than a thinker of them, we have so much more space to decide what to do with them. At the very least we can ask ourselves, is this thought helpful or unhelpful? If the sponsor effective go with them, but when they're ineffective, let them go their own way. Because without energy from us keeping those thoughts alive in our mind, thoughts will disappear all on their own. By the way, if you're interested in learning any more about the role of perception and mental filters and haven't taken the first course associated with this specialization, you might want to check that out. I spend more time talking about the ways in which our minds become conditioned and how thoughts become automatic in the first place. Now let's get back to the stress process. What I hope you see is that right here in this very first stage, we have an opportunity to help ourselves out. We can shift our perspective so that our approach to meeting the demand or our interpretation of the presence of the demand is different. We might notice thoughts like, "I can't do this," but we don't have to believe that they're truth with a capital T. Or if we notice that we're judging our procrastination and this judgment is creating even more inertia for us. We can take a mindful pause, bring our prefrontal cortex back online and rationally considers what needs to be done to accomplish the task. Play around with this a tiny bit, it might feel a bit unsettling to let go of the idea that you're responsible for the thoughts you produce, but there's also tremendous freedom in it. Now let's move to the activation phase of the stress process, the stage where we begin to feel the symptoms of stress and anxiety. How might mindfulness play a role here? Well, first of all, when we're present and connected to our bodies, we can feel the symptoms of stress. We can feel tightness in the chest or throat, we can feel tension in the neck and shoulders. We know where the stress resides in the body, and we can do things to practice good self-care in those moments. So instead of just having a vague sense that you don't feel good, you can pinpoint the places in the body that might need some extra care. Take a mindful minute to engage in breath work that ignites the parasympathetic nervous system. This can help relieve some of the symptoms and signal to the body that it's okay to let down the guard that there really is no life-threatening danger here. Keeping in tune with what's going on in the body also keeps us in the present moment. And everything that happens in the body is happening in real time. So being with the experience of the body is a direct portal to presence and this is important because as you just heard me say the present moment is where our only freedom to act actually exists. If you're a kinesthetic person with good body awareness, it might be easier to notice the activation in the body than the thoughts that are replaying in your mind that keep that activation alive. You can always start with the body and then see if you link persistent felt sense experience to the thoughts that are responsible for keeping those sensations around. And the last place that we can help ourselves out is in the actions and behaviors that we choose in order to cope with stressful demands. Just humor me for a minute as I go back to the brain for a minute. When we're worked up and our amygdala are firing away, and our minds are running themes of threat and danger, we're unable to access the parts of our brain that help us engage in thoughtful, creative and resourceful behavior. But if we're able to take that mindful pause, we can give our prefrontal cortex the chance to come back online. And really, this does a few things for us. First, it helps open up space for us to explore new options for problem focused coping strategies that we maybe haven't tried or thought of before. These are the types of strategies we engage in that might help us resolve the stress or meet the demands. For example, using a planner for better time management or seeking out valued resources are both problem focused strategies. If we're being mindful, we're better able to access the network in the brain that allows for creative thinking. And we can bring fresh eyes to the challenges at hand. Second, if we can't directly resolve the problem or there are intense emotions that accompany it, we can see new options for emotion focus coping. These strategies help us deal with the emotions that surround the situation and include things like reframing a situation so that you see it in a new way or meditating to invite a sense of calm into the body. These types of strategies don't always directly help you manage the stressor itself, but they can reduce the negative emotions that surround it. And I really can't emphasize enough how important this type of coping actually is. I'm a problem solver by nature and I typically try and fix or power through the various demands in my life. And this works for me sometimes, but the older I've gotten and the more of life I've experienced, I found that when I meet with situations or events that I can't change or control. My ability to regulate my emotions has been immensely helpful. And my mindfulness practice really helps me do this. Not only does it help me be more aware of what I'm feeling, it's also taught me how to simply rest with accept or make space for whatever emotions are arising. I'm not as afraid to feel the negative emotions that often accompanies stress, so I don't have to numb out when they come up for me. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm human, sometimes I still do. But more and more I'm learning to trust my resilience and ability to handle the situation. Even when the stressor is new to me. And the last thing that I'll say about how helpful and mindful approach to stress reduction is that the more you practice mindfulness, the less frequently you're knocked off balance by life. Activation around stressful situations aren't as intense, and you tend to recover more quickly even if you do get aroused. In general, it helps promote a calmer demeanor and a more balanced approach. There's greater equilibrium. I talked a bit about this in the first course and one of my lectures on the mind body connection. So feel free to go back and check it out again if you need a refresher on the relationship between mindfulness and the nervous system. Okay, until next time
