Happy Sunday!
And welcome to today’s edition of ‘Conscious living with Purnima’. Today’s post is Part 2 of the Series, “Finding the lost art of living”. Last week I spoke about finding fun & play in everyday life. Hope you have been paying attention to that. Really, what is life without fun & play?
If you missed reading the article, then check it out here.
Today, I talk about the need to find pockets of silence in everyday life. Let’s get straight to it.
If you pay attention, you will realize that from the time we wake up in the morning to the time we go to bed, we have a constant mental commentary running at the back of our heads. Sometimes this commentary has nothing to do with the task that we are engaged in. This was also discovered in ‘The Harward happiness iPhone App study’. Check it out here if you are interested to know more about the study.
Some of the negative side-effects of having non-stop background mental noise are:
A. You miss being fully present with your immediate experience.
B. When the chatter becomes critical, judgmental or self-defeating, you run the risk of perceiving reality from a distorted lens of negativity.
I recently read about Beck’s ‘Cognitive triad of depression’ in the book ‘The Happiness hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt.
The triad are 3 related beliefs that depressed people have. These are - “I’m no good,” “My world is bleak,” and “My future is hopeless.” Depressed people are caught in a feedback loop in which distorted thoughts cause negative feelings, which then distort thinking further. Beck’s discovery is that you can break the cycle by changing the thoughts.
If you have heard of ‘Cognitive behavioral therapy’, then you would know that a big part of cognitive therapy is training people to catch their thoughts, write them down, name the distortions, and then find alternative and more accurate ways of thinking.
But how can you catch your thought if you so often get lost in them? We may not be depressed, but even then, our thoughts have the capacity to pull us down as well as drain our energy. It is imperative that we cultivate the capacity to watch our thoughts and the associated emotions they create from time to time. If we don’t learn, then we will not be able to manage them to serve us better.
How do you go about it?
A. Begin a formal meditation practice:
Without a formal meditation practice, it will be difficult for you to stop the mental chatter at will or to pause to pay attention to your inner dialogue. So, begin a practice of sitting quietly, if you haven’t already. Do it on priority.
If you feel that your mind is very active and stimulated (our jobs and environments we live in can influence our minds to be restless), then start small. Sit for 5 minutes. Next, resist the urge to judge your practice. Allow the thoughts to come. They will come as it’s the nature of the mind to generate thoughts. Many people who start a meditation practice think they should have absolutely no thoughts. That is not true. The goal of a meditation practice is not to suppress or kill thoughts but to hold them in our awareness without getting caught up in them.
You can choose to label the thoughts that come by describing them as - planning, worrying, fantasizing etc. Labeling a thought will give you the power to step out of its hold.
If you are new to meditation, then you might find the practice of sitting very challenging initially. Just keep at it. You know that with consistency, practice & repetition everything becomes easy.
So, don’t give up on your practice. Stick with 5 minutes for as long as you feel comfortable & slowly, incrementally raise the duration of sitting to 20 minutes.
B. Create spaces of quiet multiple times through the day:
A 20-minute formal sitting practice will make it easier for you to access this space of quiet and detached awareness outside of your sitting practice. You can choose to stop the chatter at will. Here are 2 ways that I do it that you can try for yourself:
Watch the chatter. This will automatically quieten it.
Bring awareness away from the chatter to sounds around you. Sounds can ground you to the present moment.
Enjoy the quiet for as long as you like. Initially these intentional empty spaces might be of a very short duration, but you will still feel their impact of creating peace of mind and clarity of thought.
The goal for us is to gradually increase this space of intentional inner quiet. Notice the effects of the practice on your psyche.
Next week I will talk about - Finding 'our voice to better articulate what we feel' as we go through everyday life. A post that will draw your focus to your emotions: understanding them & working with them.
Until then take good care of yourself, find fun, play & silence in your everyday life.
To know more about me & my work, visit my website: www.holisticwellnesswithpurnima.com.
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