Mind Set Go

When spring approaches, it seems natural to transform spaces with cleaning and tidying up, fueled by the promise of transformation and newness found in emerging paperwhites and the knowledge that crocuses are not far behind.  How do we break old habits and start new ones?  Are we sometimes actually stuck in what Carol S. Dweck, PhD calls a “fixed mindset” as opposed to a “growth mindset?”  As she described in her 2006 book, Mindset: How we can learn to fulfill our potential, many do not believe that people can change, but are, rather, of a fixed mindset.  Where do you fit in?  Do you believe you can grow and change?

In Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, one can learn about the triggers and responses people have.  The key, it seems, is altering what we do in the middle space between the trigger and the response.  If we know that we are triggered to do something as a habit, we can discover what triggers that habit, and we can anticipate that and plan.  When triggered, rather than, say, stopping for a snack, perhaps we could already have a healthier option with us that we could have instead in that moment… or we could drive or walk a different way to avoid a visual trigger.  By analyzing the process of what happens, one can elicit gratification, but with a completely different outcome than before.  It’s what we do in the middle that breaks the habit.

The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, is a beautifully written book that presents ways to foster creativity.  Fumio Sasaki wrote, Goodbye, things.  As a minimalist, he reveals how little you really need to be happy.  He suggests, among other things, to think of the items you buy as rentals that you can easily let go of as if returning a rented item.  He suggests taking pictures of items you care about and then letting them go. 

This freedom of having less is echoed in the well-known book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.  She outlines simple steps of throwing away things first, before organizing, and tidying by category—not by space.  In other words, throwing away and organizing items like clothing and not having a mindset to tackle the entire room at the onset.  By only keeping what you truly love and what makes you feel good, you can find true happiness.  Putting things in totes is not considered true tidying up.  It seems happiness is, rather, about letting go rather than holding on to what might be called organized stuff.

So where does all this leave us at this time of year when we seem ready for change?  Do we resort to our same old habits?  Do we make new ones?  Is it all about purging and letting go? 

When I was sick, I did start to think of the analogy of a cocoon as I was undergoing what felt like a real transformation.  In yoga, there is the cocoon pose: shavasana.  In that pose, often at the end of a yoga session, magical things can and often do happen.  If you are unfamiliar with the pose, one is supine, aka, on one’s back.  Breathing can start deeply but often reverts to an almost shallow feeling—of non-existentence. You may experience visual light and/or colors.  You are not asleep, but very much aware, but in another sense of being.  And later, when you wiggle fingers and toes, you seemingly can come out of what feels like a relaxing meditative, energy-inducing trance.  Poor choice of words, really.  But, for many, this is a transformation.  You are leaving the yoga mat much different than when you started.  No matter the type of yoga, this culminating pose (asana) allows for deep meditation. 

What happens in meditation is mysterious.  But some things are known.  In the book, Altered Traits: Science reveals how meditation changes your mind, brain, and body by Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson, the existence of neuroplasticity within the brain, the actual change that occurs (from the acts of various types of meditation through scientific research) is documented and discussed.  Cellular aging can change (improve) as you produce more telomerase, an enzyme with some types of meditation.  It’s a fascinating read that documents the studies that have emerged in the short history of neuroscience in the field of meditation; they are pioneers in that field.

I am always left with the question of what many believe is the purpose of meditation.  Goleman and Davidson identify it simply as the quest for altered traits.  When a young man named Siddhartha Guatama left home, however, was he in search of altered traits?  Was he looking to reach nirvana if nirvana was an unknown thing?  Do some of the people whom Goleman and Davidson have studied, yogis who have spent countless hours in meditation, meditate for an end-result?  While machinery and GRE test scores can measure change, I believe the real question and difference in the brain structure of many eastern minds of meditators compared to western counterparts may be in the very simple underlying opposing purposes they hold of meditation.  Easy for me to say. 

Our mindset is often based on outcome.  Do this, gain that.  What if someone has everything to gain and does gain, but does not set out on that quest.  The quest is surly not what one may gain and how one may change, although change could be documented as inevitable for some.  And change, for some, can be incredible.  We still don’t know the impact and far-reaching outcomes… the possibilities.

Jon Kabot-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has remarkable success in outcome from meditation.  (He, Goleman and Davidson were all students together at Harvard.)  They journeyed in fields of science that, at the time they started, were not popular with many professors and doctors.  But the outcome of their work, the teaching they have done, the promoting and research, have been note-worthy.  They have helped people learn, practice, change and heal as they have uncovered the mysteries of something centuries old. 

Kabot-Zinn teaches that meditation does not have to be uncomfortable.  It can be embraced by all.  It can and does help people.  As you take this time (of the year) to be open to change, I challenge you to allow your mind to rest from your worries, to acknowledge that your mind wanders and that you, alone, create scenarios within your own mind that affect how you feel, what you do and how you rest.   You can transform your thinking, your being, your doing.  By being kind to yourself, you can be kind to others. 

I meditate many different ways.  The free app called Chill Drills from Military One Source is a good starting point for many.  I have sat for hours.  I have laid in bed for hours, freeing my mind from thoughts yet being very much awake.  I have thought, “I am whole,” and believed it.  I have healed.  I have breathed deeply and read many, many books, and found websites to meditate with others.  You can find free websites with videos of Jon Kabott-Zinn, Ian Gawler, etc.  You can visit a retreat.  You can literally change your mind.  But I urge you to do so not for what you can get out of it, but for what you put in.  You can be of any religion, any age, any ethnicity.  You have everything you need.  Freeing yourself of physical clutter is one way to embrace less mind clutter.  Freeing yourself of mind clutter will free yourself to let go and to let in the powerful spirit that exists.  Be kind to yourself.  Open yourself to opportunity that abounds.  Look in the right place within your own mind.

I had an experience less than a year ago in which someone was incredibly mean to me.  I could say it set me back.  I am human, and I reeled from that experience.  I have never been treated like that in my entire life time.  I received no apology.  But it has been a great learning experience.  When you hurt, it is real.  But is it necessary?  How much of what we feel is self-generated? I truly wish for that person the best, but it is taking me a long time to recover.  It’s easy to express in words what we need to do when someone is incredibly cruel.  There is a meditation that seems in order.  It’s one in which we express compassion for ourselves, for those we know and those we do not.  Compassion can and should fill the void of mind clutter.  Create the right environment within your mind for that to happen.  Fill your thoughts with compassion, not with perseverations of how something made you feel.  Acknowledge your feelings, move them aside for compassion to take their place and move on. 

There are many mountains to move one stone at a time, and the memory you hold of an event is not one of them.  It’s not worth the mind clutter of the how’s and why’s of what you could have done, or would do, or your own memory of what happened, when it is not necessary.  Climb your mountain rather than moving it one stone at a time.  Soon you will summit and not look back.