Read the Goddamn Book

Navigating burnout through Self-compassion, Fact Checking, Rest and Boundaries

Burnout and I are very well acquainted.  We have danced together often and, if/when I forget all the things I know (and teach!), we still dance occasionally. It takes one to know one, and I am seeing the symptoms of burnout everywhere at the moment. In my friends, in my kids, in the dude who owns the local burger bar – all at different stages and all with slightly different symptoms, but all finding themselves in some kind of struggle.

As the bizarre year of 2020 continues to unfold, and we find ourselves faced with new and sometimes scary or overwhelming circumstances, I am noticing us struggling with the emotional ups and downs of this time. So many big emotions can leave our beautiful bodies exhausted and we can be left wondering “why am I so tired?”.

 We also find ourselves faced, well, with ourselves. There is very little to distract us from our own fears and neuroses or from the continual “what if?” thinking that whirrs and whirrs around our minds all day (and all night!). With very few answers and very little clarity on what the future holds - we find ourselves in these “thought loops”.  

I wonder if now might be a really good time to get to know ourselves and our habits more intimately – many of us have the time, if we make it. We can build our self-awareness through meditation, therapy, journaling, chatting to friends and loved ones – there are a lot of roads to the same destination.

 I would like to share some of the very specific things that continue to help me to manage my levels of energy and motivation. But first, here are some reminders of the things we may have heard before, but are worth mentioning again (you know, with COVID brain - we forget stuff!):

BODY

1. Activity - Exercise - 20-30 mins a day

2. Nutrition - Make sure our nutritional needs are sorted (try to reduce alcohol which is a depressant and coffee which is a stimulant - perpetuating the states of emotional ups and downs that we are trying to treat by drinking wine/coffee!)

3. Sleep – get 7-9 hours a night - Google “sleep hygiene tips”

MIND

1. Thoughts and emotions - track them and mind your mind. Which thoughts/emotions are we feeding?

2. Mindfulness - Try some meditation – download the Smiling Mind app, it’s free

3. Mindset - Cultivate a positive mindset – gratitude, kindness and awe are our superpowers

HEART

1. Values – remember the most important thing/s

2. Others - Connect to someone else every day – family/friends or even a neighbour

3. Self – take a few minutes a day to feel yourself in your body, to feel your ‘home’, you could even say a gentle ‘hello me’ and if you are feeling brave ‘hello me, I love you”

Now, here are the mental health heavy-hitters when we feel burnout arriving or looming. I have also suggested some little sayings (affirmations or mantas, if you like) that we may all like to bring into our minds and hearts to support us to ride these emotional waves.

1.     Self-Compassion – “I have my own back”

Many of us are so hard on ourselves. This is not our fault, setting high standards has had massive evolutionary benefits (like, being the most powerful species on earth!) but it also has its downsides (like zapping our vital energy when we continually berate ourselves). So, can we lean towards loving (or even liking) ourselves as much as we do our friends or our kids? Can we remind ourselves that we have our own back? That we have done and felt hard things before and we can do it again? Becoming my own best friend is the most radical and transformative thing I have ever done, it allows me to take care of myself. Please try it.

2.     Fact Check - “Is it true?”

Our beautiful minds create stories to explain the unexplainable – it is part of their job. I don’t know about you, but I am finding myself faced with many confusing or unexplainable things at the moment, like:

-       Being told to stay home and not see loved ones - weird

-       Wearing a sweaty piece of cloth on my face which is rubbing makeup off my red nose - embarrassing

-       Being a school teacher and debating with my kid about….too much to add in this blog

-       Preparing my 10000th meal in one day - annoying

So, when I find myself creating stories to explain these very odd circumstances like “I have no friends, life or career, I hate my clothes and I will never have time to myself again”, I stop and check the facts and the evidence.  Usually I have let myself jump on a train of catastrophizing or blaming - no wonder I find myself freaked out or bummed out.  So, to pull ourselves back, we can ask the simple question “is it true?”. Usually it isn’t and man, that is good news. Credit to Byron Katie for this magic question.

3.     Rest - “Read the goddamn book”

Many of us simply don’t know how to rest and rest is absolutely what our bodies need at the moment – to recover from 6 months of fear-induced adrenaline running through our system. Please allow yourself to rest. Do a Yoga Nidra deep relaxation (find one on YouTube or Insight Timer), take a nap or read a goddamn book. Do these during the day, walk away from the emails/phone calls/washing or children and take 15 minutes to rest.  The world will keep spinning without us – I promise.

 4.     Set Boundaries - “No, I value myself more than I value your opinion of me”

Listen to yourself and your needs and if something doesn’t work for you, say so and say no. This is a marathon, not a sprint, we need to keep ourselves well for the long run.

There is no denying it, things are weird, sometimes scary and often annoying but I do know, from my own experience, that we always have a choice when it comes to how we respond to the world and the challenges we face. Please take good care of you and your little people, love yourself stupid and rest like your health depends on it.

Puppy School for The Mind

Training ourselves and our kids with kindness and patience to really meet the “full catastrophe” of life

 I was walking along the beach this morning (doing my arm exercises to rehab a dislocated shoulder – yes, I looked ridiculous) and saw a fellow coming towards me with a big dog. When the dog saw me, he stopped and started tugging on the lead and tried to get away.

We have a new puppy. Part of our learning in puppy school is that we need to introduce our pup to as many weird and wonderful things as we can, to get them used to the whole plethora of experiences they will face as life goes on for them in the world outside of their litter mates.

 The trainer suggested the following:

“socialize your puppy by introducing him/her to trucks, motorbikes, scooters, people in hoods/hats/masks, bikes, bins, lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, people with walkers, people from different nationalities, people waving their arms around, prams, loud kids, running kids, crawling kids, friendly kids, big dogs, small dogs. And, every time they see something new, reassure them it is OK and then give them a reward”. Makes sense I thought. Good advice.

So, seeing this guy struggling to control his big dog when it saw a crazy lady whirling her arms around, I thought about puppy school and put my arms down and pretended to be normal person (quite hard for me really). As I came up to the guy and his dog and to show some compassion (you know, all in it together), I said “we have a new puppy and it is really hard to teach them to walk on a lead isn’t it?!”. He kind of looked at me sideways (possibly able to tell that even with arms by my side I am still not a normal person!) and then said “yeah, well if you hadn’t been waving your arms around, he would not have freaked out”. And we both kept walking. “Now that is interesting” I thought. He was blaming me for his dog’s poor behaviour….

 In my work at a university, we teach the students to train their minds in the same way they would train a puppy; firmly but lovingly. And after this morning’s interaction with this young fellow and his very big dog, I got thinking about how quick so many of us are to blame others for our own mind’s behaviour.

 “You made me feel….” “You made me do…..”

 The truth is, no one makes us think, feel or do anything. An untrained mind, much like an untrained dog, does not realise it has a choice. The fact is, it does. We always have a choice when it comes to how we respond to a situation. We absolutely cannot choose the situations we find ourselves in and we can pretty much guarantee that we will all find ourselves in less than fabulous situations in our life, but we can all choose how we meet each and every experience.

 Mindfulness meditation is like puppy school for the mind, body and heart. We expose our full self to all sorts of weird and wonderful things: memories, worries, sadness, fear, love, self-loathing - you name it, the “full catastrophe” to quote Jon Kabat-Zinn. And we do that in a kind and patient way. Much like a new puppy, we slowly learn that these things are all just part of a colourful life and they are not to be afraid of. They are to be inquired into with an open and curious attitude. When we approach ourselves and life in this way, even the most painful experiences can become a wellspring of knowledge and wisdom.

 The same goes for the way we parent our kids. If we protect them too much and don’t let them learn to navigate fear and boredom and sadness for themselves, we are depriving them of learning that they are capable to hold all of life – right within them.

 Of course, there are times when the most compassionate thing to do for ourselves is in fact to turn away, to avoid or even numb, to flick on Netflix or have another piece of chocolate. Sometimes stuff gets so big that Netflix and chocolate is actually the most appropriate response – until we are ready to turn towards it. The same goes for our kids – sometimes flicking on the television to quell the tears is the best thing to do. In much the same way, it would be negligent to leave a new small dog alone with a big untrained dog – it would simply do more damage than good. We can all deal with really big stuff, but only when we are ready and have some good resources to support us.

 So, as we venture into our own minds, hearts and bodies – can we meet whatever we find there with kindness? Can we reassure ourselves that we are OK and we can in fact handle this? We can handle all of this messiness of being human. The same goes for our kids, can we teach them that yes, their pain is big but they are bigger? The trick is, we all need to get to know our pain, in much the same way my new puppy needs to get to know all of life, so she does not freak out when she comes face to face with new and possibly scary things.

 And, if you see a lady walking along the beach waving her arms around like crazy, it’s possibly me. Please come and say hi.

Thank You, My Friend

She stands beside me and we smile,

Knowing we belong to each other,

Her and I, she and me.

She trusts me, with all of my funny quirks, so completely.

She rushes to soothe my bleeding knee or aching pride,

As I lie bruised and tired from rushing too fast or trying too hard,

She reminds me I am already perfect,

And, that they are too.

She shows me the purple clouds of the sunset,

And the sweetness in the tea,

And she whispers gently in my ear,

How lucky are we?

She waits patiently when I forget all the things,

As I often do.

And she lovingly welcomes me back home when I finally remember.

She stands beside me, inside me,

Always there to love and guide me.

She is pure, open, clear and kind,

She is my heart, body, and my mind.

She is me, she is you too.

We belong to each other,

So, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Home Schooling - A Path to Enlightenment?

I have not liked most parts of home schooling.

This is mainly because the whole process has tugged on all of my perfectionistic and people-pleasing neuroses and lay them out for the world (and myself and my kids) to see. This only occurred to me while I was feverishly posting evidence of my grade 1s activity on the school app and then checking constantly as to whether the teacher had “liked” it. Oh my goodness. I am not in grade 1, why do I care what Catherine (teacher) thinks of me? Why do I care what anyone thinks of me?

I have come to believe that the only thing that really matters is what I think of me.

I feel like the last 3 months of my life have required me to dig very deep into my self-care, insight & emotional management tool kits, not to mention my interpersonal tools. It is like I have been on a very long, not-self-imposed Zen retreat. With a slightly irritable and irrational grade 1 Zen master whipping me as I climb a very tall mountain, in the rain, naked. THAT is how hard it has been, so so many opportunities for insight and development and so so many opportunities for crumbling into a puddle of frustrated and angry goop, right here on the kitchen floor. Of course, in reality, most of the time, it was my own dear mind who was the old Zen master. Dammit, those realisations hurt.

Someone asked me the other day “how is home schooling going?” I paused, she jumped in and said, “I am sure there are some lovely bits”. My response was a very definite “no, there have been not been many lovely bits, I have actually dreaded most mornings at 9am when we are supposed to start ‘school’. I have had to constantly check myself as to whether I am going too hard or too soft, I have had to constantly remember what really matters at the end of all this (mental health and connection!)  and I am currently measuring the success of my days in terms of whether I killed or divorced anyone”. She was silent (and perhaps a little shocked) and she finally said, “oh well, at least you’re honest”. I could tell she was a little disappointed that I wasn’t more up-beat about the whole thing, I mean, I am a psychologist and meditation teacher after all – aren’t I supposed to be positive? Or at least have my shit together?

I have spent a great portion of my life not being honest about my feelings and, pretending to have my shit together. As women, and especially as mothers, society demands us to be smiling and grateful and to just get on with it. Of course, I am grateful, my life is awesome but, that does not diminish my pain and discomfort. In fact, I have now come to believe that pain and discomfort is necessary for us to truly grow into who we are supposed to be. And that all of this avoiding of pain and discomfort does us as a massive disservice. We then pass down this way of seeing and being to our kids, which, in turn does them a massive disservice. We gotta teach ourselves (and our kids) how to ride the pain and discomfort that comes with being a fully functioning human, not how to hide it and especially not how to fix it.

 I think this starts when we are little girls, when we are taught to be nice and quiet and pretty and well-behaved. We swallow down our feelings (unless of course they are the “positive” ones like happiness and joy) and eventually, they lodge themselves in our bodies. The mind/body connection is alive and well here, I can assure you. Our anger or fear or shame sits in our gut, churning, churning, churning – largely unacknowledged or unexpressed. Angry women are dismissed as aggressive or neurotic, or lesbian (as if that were an insult).

If we do somehow manage to keep a lid on it, sometimes these emotions seep out, trickling and whirling as insecurities or irritability or unexplainable tears. We wonder why rates of burn-out, anxiety, depression and autoimmune disease are higher in women!

As my sister in law pointed out to me the other day, women are the biggest losers in this global pandemic. Women make up most of the part time or less-skilled workforce and they are largely the ones who have lost their jobs due to the economic crunch we all find ourselves in. They are also largely the ones who have been tasked with homeschooling the kids, putting their careers on hold, once again (and having the Zen-retreat-like experience described above). Please be assured this is not having a go at men. Men are bloody awesome, it is not their fault that we all live in a largely patriarchal society set up by and for men. However, is sure as hell is their responsibility to be aware of what is happening here and, to step in to support and work with the women in their lives, at home and at work.

And so, this is why I am so passionate about running my #mindfulwoman meditation classes every week via zoom. It is an opportunity for women to come together to support and grow and rediscover their awesomeness.  The awesomeness that may have been stifled by society and/or the way they were raised (no fault passing or blame here – just an acknowledgement of reality). No competing, no pretending, no fake smiling or “I’m fine – how are you?”. Just us. As we are. Passionate. Smart. Funny. Whole. Human.

And so, home-schooling ends for some of us next week. However, I know that life will continue to throw me many more opportunities for development and growth. That is what life does. Life wants us to grow into who we are supposed to be, not what we have been told we should be. One thing I am not supposed to be for sure, is a primary school teacher, especially not to my own kids.

Thanks for the memories home schooling, smell ya later!

Coming Home to Myself

WHILE MEDITATION CAN OFFER US CLARITY AND CALM, CONNECTION IS ITS GREATEST GIFT

 Let’s be honest. Most of us start meditating to fix ourselves – in some way.

 To fix our stress, our sleeplessness, our over-eating, over-spending. To perhaps fill that hole in the pit of our stomach that yells at us “you are not enough, you need to do more”.

When we approach our meditation this way, it becomes just another thing on our endless “to do” list. Another thing we “should” do to live well and be happy. What if we changed this? What if we looked at meditation as an opportunity to nourish ourselves? As a gift to ourselves (and the world). As an opportunity to find out what we are really about and then to live from a place of greater compassion and wisdom……..

 As I have written and spoken about before, I was a resentful meditator. It was just another thing I felt I should be doing and another thing I could beat myself up about for not doing. I was simply bringing the same approach to meditation as the one I had been practicing all my life. Work hard. Don’t give up. Do it properly. Achieve and ultimately, win. I fell in love with mindfulness as a technique because it offered me the possibility that actually, I didn’t need to fix anything, do anything, achieve anything.

However, over the years of teaching and yes, “selling” this technique, I have noticed the promises I have made my students and clients. Yes, your concentration and productivity will likely improve (clarity) and yes, your stress levels will likely reduce, and your sleep will improve (calm). These are clearly great benefits and we all need more of these in our modern life of 24/7 stimulation. To be honest though, for me, the greatest gift of mindfulness and meditation, has been a sense of befriending myself, a sense of coming home (this, my friends, is connection).

 Before I started on this journey, I wasn’t even aware of my internal critic – she had always been there, spewing a constant barrage of orders. Setting goals and demanding achievements – to demonstrate my worth to myself and the world. It was only when I sat down and started to watch the activity of my mind that I was able to notice her, my very own drill sergeant.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this drill sergeant of mine has been incredibly helpful. She has pushed me to work hard when I wanted to give up. As an adolescent, she stood by my bed at 5am encouraging me to get up for swimming training, reminding me that I needed to beat my arch enemies – Penny and Lauren. As a young adult studying psychology, it was probably her that got me through the statistics at university. As a new mother, she was the one demanding I get up for the 400th time in one night. The thing is however, her constant commands about having to do and be more, caused me to leave myself, over and over again. I believed that joy and peace and happiness and perfection could not possibly be residing within me. I had to go out and search for it in other places – in jobs or clothes or friends or food. I left myself and my own heart over and over and over again. As a result, I had nowhere to belong and nowhere to rest.

“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”

Brene Brown – Braving the Wilderness

Mindfulness and meditation continue to help me to come back home, back to my true self, back to my heart. I am reminded to connect to something greater than my internal drill sergeant (she is still there but just doesn’t drive the bus as much as she used to!) and to value myself as a perfectly imperfect human. For me, this is indeed a daily practice and one I now enjoy and look forward to.

So, if you are looking to start or deepen your own meditation and mindfulness practice, pay attention to your attitude, pay attention to your expectations and pay attention to the promises the teacher makes. The clarity and the calm may arrive and hallelujah for those, but it is the connection that we can never unlearn or un-feel, it is the coming home that we will carry with us forever.

But She Can Do It

COMPARING OURSELVES TO OTHER WOMEN CAN STEAL OUR JOY AND MAKE BURN OUT FEEL EVEN WORSE

 Last night I caught up with a dear friend. She was telling me all about how busy and full her life is and in the next breath, described the panic attack she had had only days earlier. Waking up at 3am, unable to breathe and feeling as if she were dying. Now this woman is amazing, strong, funny, smart, a mum and highly respected in her industry. We were at a bar, it wasn’t time for therapy and deep soul searching but the thing she said that got me thinking and really prompted me to write this blog was:

 “If she can do it, why can’t I?”

I remember having that thought, several times, just before I burnt out. I remember having that thought, several times, as I lay in bed, completely exhausted feeling not only like a failure because I “couldn’t do it” but feeling like failure because “she could”. That was me, 4 years ago.

Burn out can look a little different for everyone, but for most of us, it looks a little something like this:

·      Feeling drained, unable to cope or tired for no apparent reason

·      Headaches or digestive problems (can lead to weight loss)

·      Feeling disengaged at work or just not caring as much as you used to

·      Feeling irritable or even angry with your work colleagues/family

·      Disrupted sleep

Of course, if these symptoms persist for longer than a few weeks, it might be worth going to see your GP and working with them to determine whether you may benefit from a referral to a psychologist or psychotherapist. You could also check in with your organisation’s EAP provider (if they have one) for some additional support. We belong to each other and we do not have to go alone through this tough stuff that can come with being a feeling or sensitive human.

Over the past 4 years I have really deeply enquired into what happened for me when I burnt out, where did I get it so very wrong?

This is what I have learned:

We are all put together differently – we absolutely cannot compare ourselves to another person with any amount of validity. Us humans are so damn complex. We not only have all of our genetics and childhood experiences that have gone into making us into the women we are, there is also a whole lot of other stuff we are not aware of such as epigenetic trauma/emotions or even past life memories. As a result, each of us will have our very own and very unique recipe of wellbeing and success. The trick here is to slow down, listen, and stay in your own lane. We need to stop competing and comparing and just “do us”.

Play to our Strengths – we each have a unique set of strengths that make us excel in the workplace. Now the strengths I am referring to here are not just things we are good at but things that we like and that nourish us as well. Often, we find we may start to head towards burn out if we are playing outside of our strengths too often, doing work that we may excel at but that doesn’t naturally fill us up. You can check out the work of my friend Nikki Smith with whom I worked to learn more about my strengths. Nikki works with the Gallup Strengths Finder and leads her clients through developing a career that is more strengths based.

Connect to and listen to our Values – “The most important thing, is to remember the most important thing” (Suzuki Roshi). So what is that for you? What kind of person do you want to be? How do you want to be living? So few of us have ever had the opportunity to take the time to really reflect on our values. Because of that we often adopt others’ values and try to fit our beautiful selves into them and then wonder why it just doesn’t feel right in our body, heart or minds. Do your own values audit and consider what is your most important thing.

Define Success – In the depths of burn out, I was moaning to a friend “but I just want to have a successful career”, she asked me, “But Liv, what does success look like?” I started reeling off the typical characteristics of success that I thought were universal, you know: “to be well-respected” and “to make good money”, my friend looked at my wryly and she said (she’s also a psychologist) “is that really it? Isn’t it more about helping people in our line of work?” and the words “yes, yes” spilled out of my mouth and I could feel my heart opening and my body softening…she followed up with the next question “do you think you have ever helped anyone?” and my clear answer was “absolutely!”. Then the crazy and incredibly freeing realisation dawned on me “MAYBE I HAVE ALREADY HAD A SUCCESSFUL CAREER and I can stop trying so bloody hard now!”. That was a massive “ah ha” moment for me. So my question for you is, what does success look like for YOU? Not your parents or your cool friend or you school mates, you!

Honour our Body – Our body knows what is going on and some argue it has direct access to the deeper layers of our being, our soul and our life’s purpose.  It is trying desperately, often daily, to give us these clear messages, helping us to get back on track and follow the right path. That squeezing in the heart, that knot in the belly, they are messages to be noted and explored, not sensations to be repressed and simply breathed through (or brushed over with meditation!). Of course, for some of us, these feelings are remnants of unresolved trauma or something much deeper which may need to be addressed with medication or some form of psychotherapy. These more chronic issues aside, for many of us, we really do need to learn to listen to the whispers of our body and honour her messages.

 Put our Own Gas Mask on First – As women, we are trained to put everyone else before ourselves. We rush to work, we rush to pick up, we rush to the supermarket, we even rush in and out of yoga class (if we manage to prioritise the time to go!). Dr Libby Weaver refers to this pattern that is all too familiar as “Rushing Women’s Syndrome” and she purports that this (along with many other factors of course) is contributing to the rise in rates of depression, anxiety and chronic illness in women. Our bodies (that haven’t changed all that much since we were cave women) just can’t keep up. When we are unwell, we are of no help to others. Please, take some time to ask yourself – how can I keep myself well and balanced so I can better contribute to my family, my workplace or my community? Is there a way I can be setting firmer boundaries so others in my life (partners, friends and children included!) are clear of what is OK and what is not OK when it comes to how they treat me?

Review your Environment and Set Boundaries – Getting to burn out, usually takes two, both us and the organisations/group we work/live in. So, take some time to consider, are the requests being made of you realistic? Or do you need to set firmer boundaries? Are you working in an organisation that actually aligns to your values or are you being asked (usually covertly) to compromise these? Take some time to truthfully determine whether you are happy in the role/organisation you are in and if not, review your options.

Summary - Questions to Ask Ourselves

·   What is my personal recipe for wellbeing? What do I need in my day/week to be full of energy and thriving?

·   What are my strengths and how much time am I spending playing to them?

·   What are my values? Are my values aligned with the organisation I am working with?

·   What is my definition of success?

·   What is my body trying to tell me?

·   Can I reframe self-care to become important so I can better serve others (rather than a selfish activity)?

·   How can I set firmer boundaries, so others are clear when it comes to how I need to be treated?

Finally, burn out is absolutely not your fault so please do to put a layer of self-criticism over yourself for already feeling exhausted. Burn out is simply very useful information that perhaps there are some tweaks that need to be made to the way we are living and the way we are valuing ourselves and our time. And please, let’s stop comparing ourselves to our sisters, especially when we are not coping. Comparison of course can be inspiring and can help us to grow and learn if used wisely. It can point us in a direction we may want to go and give us tips when it comes to setting and achieving our career goals. However, very often “it can be the thief of joy” (Theodore Roosevelt) and you know what, there are enough very real joy thieves in our lives, let’s not add another one unnecessarily.

It's Both

HOW BEING MORE INCLUSIVE IN OUR APPROACH TO LIFE CAN REVOLUTIONISE THE WAY WE WORK WITH OUR EMOTIONS, OUR MINDS AND OUR BODIES

 I may be a slow learner, but I have come across something that has actually revolutionised my world – the idea of “and” as opposed to “or”. Very rarely is anything completely pure, it is usually a beautiful mixture of a whole lot of seemingly conflicting things – all mushed together in one big marbled messy stew of life.

 Now, this has been a very long time coming for me. I have always found it incredibly hard to work out exactly which “box” I fitted into. I never really seemed to fit anywhere, at its most basic level; this can be demonstrated by my taste in fashion.

 I remember growing up and being really torn between wanting to wear a tie-died petticoat and no shoes and a really lovely designer dress and Prada mules. I honestly thought I had to choose one style and stick with it. So, I did. I would flip flop between wearing twin sets one day and then opp shop gems another. Neither of these styles, in their pure form, felt authentic to me but I had no idea there was another option. Although, I felt, on a very deep level, like I was abandoning my true self to fit into a particular box and there was that gnawing sense of a lack of authenticity – or something akin to that, lurking in the pit of my stomach.

 And then one day, I realised, I am actually both. I can like both and I can combine both to create something completely new. I am the boss and I can create a whole new “box”. And, so I did. It started with fashion and now it has extended into other (waaay more important) areas of my life.

 So, working with the possibility that you too may be constrained by black and white, either/or thinking, I thought I would share some of my learnings across these areas. Of course, the general learning of “both” can go across pretty much every area of life, both personally and societally.

 Holding our emotions

We were holidaying one summer with friends. One day, the wife and mother of the other family was complaining about her husband (and father of the children). She felt he didn’t seem to be around much, he seemed to prefer to be at work or at the gym rather than with her and the children and when he was with them – he was distracted and snappy. I rather flippantly commented “so you don’t love him at the moment?”. She looked up from what she was doing and with a very serious look on her face she said:

“oh no, I never withdraw love, I always love him, I am just frustrated”

This was rather groundbreaking for me; it had honestly never occurred to me that we could feel two seemingly conflicting emotions at the same time. Love and hate. Happiness and grief. Gratitude and jealousy. It was some years later that I discovered mindfulness and then, it all made sense. I leaned that I am not my emotions – I am the sky and they are simply the weather (as the famous Pema Chodren quote goes). So, next time you feel consumed by an emotion, see if you can remember it does not need to take up all of you (or all of your relationship). By all means, let it be there, hold it, be curious about it, experience it fully but remind yourself that you can feel it all – the love and the hate, at the same time.

 Working with our mind

In my early 20s, at my quarter-life crisis, I read “You can Heal Your Life” by the wonderful Louise Hay. To be honest, my life wasn’t sick and really didn’t need healing, but I was not happy and felt a sense that something was missing. So, I studiously did the daily affirmations in front of the mirror. I would stand in front of the mirror and recite “I love and approve of myself” daily, for months. I imagined the life I wanted to be living, but it continued to feel artificial, as though I was forcing something. Then in my early 30s and, having abandoned positive thinking and affirmations as hippy dippy stuff that doesn’t work, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the idea that actually, we don’t have to “do” anything. I went from one extreme to the other! I now worked with acceptance (still getting the hang of this one) and non-judgement (always a work in progress) and spent many hours observing my thoughts and emotions, without doing anything in particular about them; all in the name of building my self-awareness. Then one day, this process of non-doing backfired. I had stopped actually listening to my intuition, my values and my heart and was just coasting along in a never-ending haze of acceptance.

As it turns out, we need both. We need both intention and attention. It is helpful to have a clear view of where we are going and what really matters (intention) but we also really need to stop and reflect on where we are first (attention). If all we do is manifest – we are never truly happy now, if all we do is sit contentedly in the now without assessment – how do we really grow?

We need to both work WITH our mind (accept where and who we are) and ON our mind (cultivate more wisdom, love and gratitude – or “grow the good” as Rick Hanson puts it).

Start where you are, pay attention, be present, be clear and keep your feet firmly on the ground. Practice mindfulness and meditate your little heart out if you are so inclined. Then, set your intention for what you would like in your life and watch for signs that you are heading in the direction (such as better sleep, improved relationships, clearer thinking etc) and change course when you need to. It is all good and the path, especially when it comes to the management of our mental health is incredibly personal. Finally, be wary of any teacher/psychologist/coach who tries to tell you there is only one way – I used to be one of these people (a slightly fanatical meditation teacher!) and honestly, we can serve you best by being a point of reflection and accountability – you are the only one who knows you, listen to you.

Managing our physical health

Health issues run in my family. My dear mum suffered with cancer 3 (or was it 4?) times and she struggled with a range of other auto-immune disorders. When, at 34 I was diagnosed with my own auto-immune condition (rheumatoid arthritis or RA) my own journey of healing and acceptance began. To be honest, getting RA was probably the thing that saved me, it was certainly the reason I took a deep dive into my own mindfulness and meditation practice. It was my body yelling (incredibly loudly) that something was not right, that the way I was living was not serving me well. Over the past years I have flip flopped between a 100% blaming attitude towards my genetics and early childhood (“it is just the way I am put together”) and a 100% blaming attitude towards myself and the way I have lived, thought or eaten (too much stress, too much negative thinking, too much sugar etc). After 9 years of exploration, and kind of tiring internal and external battles, I have pretty much come to the conclusion, you guessed it, that it is, indeed, both.

There is BOTH the genetic/early childhood learning component and the environmental/behavioural component and this realisation has allowed me to shift from blame to responsibility. Yes, some people can cure themselves with enough kale juice and deep meditation while others, need to add medication and deep interpersonal connection into their healing recipe and will still not slide into remission or be symptom free. Through this blossoming realisation of “both”, I have managed to make the massive shift from “fault” to “responsibility” – it is not my fault I have RA but it is absolutely my responsibility to manage it as best I can.

In conclusion, our very human tendency to think in absolutes, to be seduced by judgement, at the expense of inclusion, can create some real challenges for us – especially when it comes to managing our health. At the same time, if all we do is pay clear and accurate attention to what is happening, without weaving in a healthy measure of intention setting or effortful change, we may end up coasting along in a semi-superficial stage of fabricated bliss, missing out on all of the beautiful authenticity of being human. By accepting the marbling together of seemingly incongruent experiences, our world can open up and we can either create brand new boxes or get rid of the boxes all together. I vote for no boxes. Here’s to a box-free future for all!

Mindfulness and Meditation for Parents

A RADICAL ACT OF LOVE FOR OURSELVES AND THE WORLD

How can we make space in our busy day for our own nourishment? 

Modern parenting is hard. We have so much information coming at us all the time when it comes to what we “should” be doing to ensure we raise balanced and well-adjusted adults. Sign them up for “this” extra-curricular activity, read “that” book, watch “this” TED talk, do more, be more. We are so inherently uncomfortable with the struggle or discomfort of parenthood (and any discomfort, to be honest) that we seem to be constantly seeking to fix or numb the situation by any number of antidotes.

Firstly, we need to become discerning when it comes to where we place our attention when it comes to how we parent. We need to choose the philosophies or experts that align with our personal values and then build on our inherent wisdom that way. We are wiser than we give ourselves credit for, often, we just need to learn to see clearly to access that wisdom. We know, there are many routes to the same destination (and in this case, the destination really, is children who are thriving – but not at the expense of broken parents) and for us to be prescriptive about which way is “right” is foolish. However, from my personal experience as a daughter, a parent, a psychologist and a meditation and mindfulness teacher, I truly and wholeheartedly believe the best thing we can do as a parent is to build our own capacity for self-awareness and then choose to live and to love consciously, rather than automatically. Meditation is one way for us to build this capacity. And yet, in our busy lives, full to the brim with so much richness and activity, it can be really hard to find the time to, basically, do nothing.

 So how do we do it?

Valuing it more than the laundry

So many of us barrel through our days so mindlessly, that we are not even aware of where our attention is at any given moment. This is absolutely not our fault. It is a small glitch in our evolution and one that can be worked with and even rectified. By becoming aware of where our attention is, we can actually choose where we would like to place it. This choice can become conscious and can be guided by our own personal value system.

 Imagine this, it is the evening, the kids have gone to bed, the house is finally quiet and you slump down on the couch to watch TV and attack the epic mound of laundry that has been piling up over the week. This point in time is a moment of choice, we can either watch TV and fold, we could go to bed and read (or sleep!) or we could mosey over to our meditation cushion and simply watch our breath, feel our body, open our heart or do whatever we do when we meditate. It is all about how much we value each activity. We might ask ourselves, what is the best way I can spend my time right now? Or What is the most important thing? Whatever it is, do that. Often we will actually find that the laundry can wait until tomorrow, the kids can even burrow through the mound and find clean socks in the morning.  Better still, leave it on the couch and see if someone else does the folding for you.

 The shift comes when we start to value our own self-care and our own ability to wake up and bring choice and freedom into our lives, over other seemingly urgent tasks that are simply calling to us with the voice of conditioning and habit. When we step outside of the conditioning we may have inherited or learned, we can choose how to spend our time, we can choose with wisdom and with heart.

 A radical act of love

Self-care is not selfish. When I make time to meditate, I am a more grounded and present and more loving parent. The same goes for physical exercise, cooking nutritious food or leaving the kids at home to go out to see friends or a film or play. When we become a parent, our need for nourishment doesn’t simply disappear – we are still human. I don’t know about you, but I certainly need more in my life than just my kids (as grateful as I am that they are in it). So, I will always remember the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn:

“Meditation is a Radical Act of Love”

I can’t guarantee exactly what he meant by that but for me it means: meditation is an act of love for myself and therefor love for my kids AND love for the greater community. The more centered, present, loving and “mindful” I can be, the better I am able to contribute positively to myself, my family and my community. It all starts with us, we are the ones we have been waiting for, but to remember that, often we need to get out of our own way.

 Choosing a time that works for you and your family

The time of day I have meditated over the years has varied as my children have continued to get older. When they were little babies, I was often too tired for a long formal meditation practice (as I would nod off the minute I closed my eyes) and so I prioritized sleep in those moments I could steal. Now, they are much older and can entertain themselves for a time.

 When our kids are babies – 0-6 months

Sleep when you need to sleep, don’t meditate. When we have babies, we can use this time to really practice being mindful and present with them – both of us are nourished by this practice. Our baby can become the object of our typically distracted attention as we become engrossed in their eye colour, the shape of their ears or the wrinkles on their little hands. As our mind wanders to our “to do” list or other plans or worries, we can gently bring it back to our baby. When we do this over and over again, we start to learn the typical places our beautiful minds go and can start to become familiar with our own internal territory. This will till the soil for our growing consciousness as parents. “Mind the Bump” is a free app I helped create that has some great practical tools to help us through this age-group.

 6 months – 2 years

When my kids were in this age-group, I would meditate either before they woke up in the morning or while they napped in the middle of the day (if I was at home).

 2-5 years

As we sadly say good bye to our midday naps, we may need to either start getting up before our kids or asking a partner to watch them for us so we can sneak in our morning meditation practice before the day begins. I know what I am about to write is not PC at all but, we could even pop on a couple of episodes of “Peppa Pig” and sneak to our meditation cushion. I mean, they are probably watching it anyway so why not make the most of this time to nourish ourselves rather than do laundry?

 5 years +

I will never forget the time I wanted to sneak into the study for a midday meditation and I told my oldest son (5 years old) that he needed to entertain himself for 15 minutes. I think I set up blocks, puzzles, drawing or something for him to do. About 5 minutes into my meditation, I started to hear a gentle bump against the study door…bump….laughter….bump….laughter…I wasn’t sure what it was and everything in me wanted to get up from the cushion to see, but I continued to sit. So I decided to simply include the “bump…..laughter” into my meditation. These sounds were just like the thoughts that were coming and going in my mind or the dull ache in my knee that was starting to make itself known, they simply contributed to the moving landscape of my meditation. When the time was up, I gingerly went out to see what was going on – he had been making paper planes and throwing them at the study door and then falling into fits of hysterics. I was teaching a class not long after this experience and I remember including that insight into my teaching – everything that happens in our awareness can simply be included into our practice.

These days, with a 6 and 10 year old, I get up early-ish and meditate most mornings, either while they kids are asleep or waking up (they know not to disturb me unless someone is bleeding!). Sometimes my meditation happens after school drop-off or in the middle of the day, sometimes in the evening. I do find however, that my day tends to run more smoothly when I spend, even a few minutes, centering myself in the morning.

Parenting is wonderful and hard and tiring and exhilarating – all at once. Meditation is a wonderful addition to our kit of resources. To welcome meditation into our lives in a meaningful way, we need to be flexible with how we do it but value it enough that we prioritise it over the thousands of other tasks calling to us. And you know what? By modelling this nourishing activity to our kids, we can only hope that they build their own practice of stopping, of noticing of expanding and of loving – the world sure could do with more of that right now. More radical acts of love I say. 

Wonder Women

THE ROLE OF MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION IN SUPPORTING WOMEN TO BE EVEN MORE WONDERFUL

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Modern women are just amazing. This is the first generation we have been told we can have it all – we can step up and have our fathers’ successes BUT we need to still maintain our mothers’ responsibilities (ref. Dr Libby Weaver). As a result, we are working tirelessly from the minute we wake up to breakfast to children to work to children to dinner and then often to work again on the couch with a heat bag and a cup of tea…we then fall into bed exhausted at night and get back up again to do it all again the next day. 

Dr Libby Weaver has come up with a syndrome to describe the lifestyle of the modern woman – she calls it “Rushing Women’s Syndrome” – where we are dragged from one demand to the next – not even allowing ourselves time out to do nothing in the car or on the train or bus – using that time to make phone calls, answer emails or listen to the latest podcasts.

Now, some of us can do this. There are some true wonder women who can and do, do it all with some ease. There are even some, I am sure, who love the busy and frenetic life they have. However, the vast majority and certainly the women I seem to meet in my line of work, are only just keeping it all together, but the cracks are starting to show: they are not sleeping well, their temper is flaring, they are moving further and further away from their partners or they are getting sick more and more often…..

 So what is going on?

The current climate is a result of so many factors, here are a few:

Feminism - It is a result of the great successes of feminism (while there is obviously still a long way to go when it comes to equality in many areas) that women are now sitting in boardrooms and running companies and even countries. Hooray for this, about time.

Technology - broadly has a lot to answer for – the fact that there is no clear division between work and home these days has helped to create an ongoing cycle of a 24/7 need to respond and deliver. We never really “go home” anymore – we are always “on” and for those of us who need to take some down time, it just is not there organically anymore.

Social Media – the habitual and mindless competition and comparison of what women are doing and how they are succeeding is RIGHT there – right in our face while we are sitting at home in our stained tracksuit pants with chocolate dripping down our chin, already feeling less than glamorous – only to have her there in her fab Prada suit and red lippy and then that little voice echoes to us “why cant I have that, be that, earn that?”

No Family or Village - The breakdown of the family system and the “village” means we are relying more and more these days on paid childcare of some kind to look after our kids – with that comes very little flexibility so when kids get sick or the date for a client’s workshop changes, it takes more effort to juggle everything.

 So, in summary, we are doing more, more often and with much less support than previous generations. Our beautiful bodies and minds just can’t keep up with this pace and something has to give. Often, sadly it is our health – be it mental or physical – or both.

In 2013, I was part of the team to set up Australia’s first mind and body studio, I went into partnership with 4 amazing people and we worked hard to set up a “mindfulness studio” where we offered mindfulness based yoga, fitness and meditation. We opened in April 2015 and were voted one of the best studios in Australia within months of opening, we were ON FIRE! The catch was that it was a 7 day a week business and, given I was the mindfulness and meditation partner and this was very new to Melbourne back in 2015, the workload was unforgiving. Now, I was terrible at setting boundaries and saying no… so I just kept taking on more and more and saying yes to more and more….all the while…my brain AND my body was talking too me….the thoughts were “Liv, this is too much, you need to slow down, you haven’t seen your kids in a week….” but, as I became so adept at managing my thoughts, I would “notice the thought and let it go”…what I didn’t do, was FEEL into my body, until it was too late. I completely burnt out and ended up in bed by Oct 2015. In Jan 2016, I listened to my heart and my body and decided to leave the partnership as I couldn't give the business what it needed and still be the present and engaged parent I wanted to be. It was the hardest decision I have ever made but, my body and my heart thank me every day – my ego is still recovering though….

What I learnt:

 Mindfulness and meditation are important but they are not all we need to be doing to look after ourselves in the current climate – we still need to exercise – often, we still need to see our girlfriends and we still need to sit down and eat (at least one meal a day!) to really get the nutrients out of our food.

 I needed to reconnect with my body – to listen to my gut and my intuition and treat myself like a “whole person” – not just a brain and then a body that is dragged around after it.

 So what do we need to do? 

1. Set firm boundaries

We need to stop saying “yes” to everything, we need to stop seeking approval of others and we need to stop, listen to our gut and from that place that is deep and strong within us – we need to say “no, thank you, but no”. This is new for many of us, as girls, we were never taught to listen to our own inner voice – we were taught to be quiet, to be pretty, to be polite and to seek approval.

2. Change the rules

This is brand new territory for all of us, we ALL (women and men) need to make it OK for men to pick up more of the family and domestic duties. We need to sit down as a family and divide the tasks – rather than leaving it all to the woman to manage. The other mummies in the park or at kinder need to include the daddies in the play dates and invite them over for afternoon tea too.

3. Stop Competing and Comparing and instead Connect and Collaborate

As humans, we part of us is wired to compete and compare, it has held us in good stead as far as our survival as a species goes however, these days with the added impact of social media, we may need to work at tempering this a little bit. What has happened to the sisterhood girls? We need to ask our friends and family for help, we need to reconnect with our community.

 4. Fall in love with ourselves again

We need to learn to trust ourselves again and maybe if we trust a little more we can try a little less. We can stop seeking approval from others and simply do our work and then step back. All of this trying is totally exhausting.

5. We need to let go of our own vision of ourselves as wonder woman

As I was sharing the outline for this article with my husband, he smiled in his beautiful supportive way and he said – “the other thing is, you need to allow yourself to let go of having to do everything yourself” – we need to let go of our own vision of ourselves as wonder women.

How can we do this?

Well, given I am a meditation teacher and a mindfulness educator, part of the answer for me lies in building our general levels of awareness. We need to build our awareness across two areas; the external world – what is actually happening?  And the internal world – what are we actually thinking and feeling?

External Awareness

We need to see clearly the actual external situation we currently find ourselves in – are we doing more than our fair share? Can we ask for more help from our partners/friends/family? What is actually happening here? Am I being taken advantage of or not?

Internal Awareness

We need to learn to really connect with our internal world. What is important for me? What is my body and my heart telling me in this situation? Of course we cant always be guided by our body and our heart but my general rule is (now!) if you get the same message a few times – you should probably listen.

 The rules and the landscape have changed my friends so we need to change too. If we don’t, we are just going to keep getting sicker, more marriages will break down and the anxiety rates in our beautiful children will just keep rising.

 None of us really knows the answers, we are all just making it up as we go along and we are really the only one who knows the answer for ourselves.  Just because she is working 5 days in her power suit and sits on all of the kinder fundraising committees and still makes organic bread with free range ham sandwiches for Jimmy for kinder – it doesn’t mean you have to keep up.

 Let’s cut the crap, if not for our health and ourselves, for our children.

 In all of this, I think the best gift we can give ourselves and our children is the capacity to come home, to come back to the place inside us that has always been there – the place that is clear, calm and connected. It doesn’t matter how we get there, what matters is that we get there – often. By living and working and parenting from this place of clear seeing awareness we can fall in love with ourselves again and come back to each other. We will all be better for it.

A Real Superpower

MINDFULNESS TO HELP US ALL TO RIDE THE WAVES OF LIFE WITH MORE EASE

Originally posted 2016

We were holidaying in Queenscliff recently and the opportunity came up for me to have 1 hour to myself – my youngest took himself off to bed for a midday nap. Ahhhh peace, it must have been the 1-hour of running along the beach and the 1.5 hours of up hill scooting we had done in the morning. No, I really didn’t mean to exhaust him, honest……

During this nap time, my eldest (7 years old), was complaining he was bored…. And I tried to explain to him that being bored was OK and really, part of life. That he should practice being bored well as, when he is an adult there will be large chunks of his life that are boring but necessary, like putting petrol in the car, lining up at the bank and paying bills online.

Needless to say, he wasn’t really interested in my philosophy at that point and he snapped “its OK for you, you have that super power”….which one I thought? Gosh, I have so many! So I asked him…”what do you mean”….and he responded, “well, you have the power that allows you just to sit out here and watch the clouds and do nothing, I don’t have that power”.

I tried to explain that we all have that power; we just need to practice it. Again, he was really not interested in hearing mum rant on (again) about how accessing the natural clarity, calm and connection within all of us was a basic human right. After helping him to come up with an imaginary game to play with his Shopkins, I stopped and asked myself “what are we doing to our kids?”. The constant entertainment we are providing them today – the iPads and TV, the phones and toys. Are we robbing them of a basic life skill? Of knowing how to be bored and just doing nothing? Just playing for the sake of playing, with no agenda, hidden or otherwise?

Now, I am absolutely not saying that we should stop all technology – as my dear husband (who works in tech and TV) points out to me, it is here to stay now, we may as well embrace it and of course I agree. I just wonder, what is, or more accurately, what will be the cost of this 24/7 stimulation generation we are raising? Are we raising adults who will be so disconnected from their bodies and the present moment experience that they will have no way to understand or sit with less pleasant emotions like boredom? Will this generalize to other human less pleasant emotions like sadness or worry? Are we just teaching them to numb out from a very early age by shoving an iPhone in their face when they don’t get what they want? In later years, will the iPhone be replaced by something more harmful like drugs or alcohol? I have absolutely no idea, I am curious though. I do know though that time doing nothing does feed our spirit, it does nourish our body and it certainly feeds our creativity.

We are at a really interesting point in our evolution, both as humans and, more specifically, as parents. We are raising kids at a time where there are really no parenting rules, anything goes. We have access to books and research that pretty-much support any parenting model we choose to follow: strict rules vs. more lasaiz fair, full time day-care vs. full time stay at home – really anything is OK and it is up to each family to work out what is best for them. And this is how it should be.

One thing hasn’t changed though and that is our core job as parents, which is (among many many other things) to prepare our children to be citizens of the world, to be able to contribute to the world in some way and to support them to live to their full potential. As we know, the “dark” parts of life are often the bits that can help us to learn and to grow most profoundly (such an unfortunate phenomenon this one!), as the quote goes, “we cant get to day without going through the night”.

What will happen if we don’t give our kids the opportunity to experience sadness or disappointment or boredom?

Life is hard and beautiful and hard and we need to equip our kids with a whole tool kit to support them to thrive and feel strong, regardless of what is going on. So, in my effort to help myself and anyone else who would like to listen, I have jotted down a couple of tips to support us to allow our kids to experience the whole rainbow of emotions – rather than just the shiny bits and you know, that really is a super power.

 1. Explore it

When they are feeling sad or worried, ask your child to explore the feeling. Where do they feel it in their body? Can they make room for it rather than fight it? Can they breathe into it and really feel it? Can they allow themselves to hold it gently, as if they are holding a precious flower or gem? Can they see that they are not the emotion, that it is something happening to them? They may even like to experiment with asking the emotion or feeling what it needs right now.

 2. Colour it

Ask your child to describe their feeling in colours or shapes – this can help them to express how it feels using words they are more familiar with. The risk here is that they become really annoyed and just throw something at you!

 3. Celebrate it

When they express either “positive” or “negative” feelings (from a mindfulness perspective, we tend not to assess feelings as good or bad) say, “that’s great, you are feeling, that means you are human and you are alive” or “how lucky are we that we get to feel all of these emotions – lets explore them together”.

If you ask me, we all do have this superpower, in fact, I believe it is our birthright. Sometimes, however, we just need to be reminded and, so do our kids.

Acceptance is not Giving Up, it is Waking Up

THE APPLICATION OF THE ANCIENT WISDOM OF ACCEPTANCE IN OUR MODERN LIVES

Originally posted 2013

I feel like the term “acceptance” is deeply misunderstood in our modern world. And yet, it is such a wonderfully powerful attitude to develop and I am sure we would all generally have a happier and more fruitful existence if we were to nurture this skill. So, let me be really clear, from the perspective of mindfulness, acceptance….….is not:

·       Giving up or giving in
·       Dropping your standards
·       Liking everything
·       Tolerating injustice

…..is

·       Seeing things as they are and not wishing for them to be different
·       Waking up to the reality of our situation
·       A skill we can develop
·       Easier with practice

It could be represented in a diagram where Giving Up is at one extreme and Striving is at the other. Acceptance sits somewhere in the middle, it is not an either/or scenario; it is not black and white. While we may move across this spectrum throughout our moments, days and lives, the purpose of this article is to support you to spend more time in the middle zone and less time in the exhausting “fight” at either end.

According to a well-known (and, in my opinion intuitively and experientially accurate) theory, acceptance is the final stage in the five stages of grief (Kübler-Ross). Grief comes in many shapes and sizes. We can grieve the loss of a loved one, we can grieve the loss of a dream or we can grieve the fact that somebody ate the last piece of dark chocolate without telling you.

The good news is, no matter how big or small your grief – acceptance is usually the end result. The bad news however is that in the early days, you may need to do some emotional gymnastics before you can reach this nirvana of acceptance.

According to Kubler-Ross, the emotional hoops you may go through are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance. While this theory gives us an awesome framework in which to place acceptance, and an understanding of where it can come in our emotional journey, the purpose of this article is to give you some tips to cultivate more acceptance in your life – in those everyday moments with which we are faced ….everyday.

Have you noticed we tend to spend a lot of time and energy wishing things were different? Wishing our boss were more caring, our children were better at maths or our husbands more interested in yoga? We spend a lot of time denying and resisting what is already a fact. When we do this, we are trying to force a situation to be different to how it already is, which, in turn just causes more tension and contributes to less room for real growth, happiness and healing.

Life is full of discomfort (the Buddhists refer to it as suffering) and, as humans; we are neurologically programmed to avoid this discomfort. This was an important skill to help us to survive as a species however; we are no longer running from the discomfort of tigers or lions and bears (oh my!). We are more likely to be running from the discomfort of our thoughts and feelings, the discomfort of our relationship dynamics or the discomfort of the incongruence between our actual and our ideal lives. This act of constantly trying to avoid these discomforts not only makes them stronger by creating more tension in us, it is downright exhausting. The key to managing these discomforts more effectively and thereby reducing our levels of anger, anxiety or depression is acceptance.

As detailed above, acceptance is not about giving up on your dreams and aspirations, or tolerating a life that is not in-line with your values. It is about seeing your life as it really is, accepting it and then having access to the skills to respond appropriately. How will we ever get to “there” if we never allow ourselves to truly see what “here” looks like?

Acceptance allows us to see things as they really are, rather than spending so much time being pulled off-course by our attachment to our desire that things were different.

So, how do we build this skill I hear you yelling?

Start small

Lets not launch into building this skill with the big ticket items in life, lets start small, after all, this is a new skill for many of us so taking baby steps is they key. You may like to choose a couple of simple unexpected scenarios to practice such as if a meeting you had been looking forward to was cancelled or a friend is running late for a dinner date. Use the following steps to cultivate acceptance in these scenarios.

The Steps
When you find yourself in a scenario where you are feeling frustrated, disappointed or angry, follow these steps:

1.     OBSERVE – Observe the thoughts/feelings that come up for you (be aware of any thoughts around wishing things were different)
2.    DESCRIBE - Describe and acknowledge these thoughts/feelings (do not judge them as good/bad or right/wrong)
3.    TAKE NOTE – Take note of the facts - what is actually happening? (not what you wish had or hadn’t happened) and use this information to respond skillfully
4.    BREATHE – Come back to your breath (your trusted anchor for the mind) and continue on with your day

 Self Talk
There are some handy phrases you might like to start to introduce into your repertoire to encourage this new skill. Just the process of saying these things will not make you truly accept but they can act as a prompt and a reminder and they are solidifying your intention to accept - that is part of the way there already!

·       “I am enough” – I accept me as I am
·       “It is what it is” – this can be extended to people as well as scenarios
·       “This is uncomfortable but it will pass”
·       “I do not agree with it or like it but I accept it”

Practice
The best thing you can do to develop any skill is to practice it. There are two types of practice, formal and informal.

Formal practice (Meditation) - One of the great benefits of meditation or any other contemplative practice is the opportunity to practice acceptance. To watch the thoughts and feelings come and go, knowing that they will always change and accepting them for what they are. This kind of formal practice does not need to happen only when sitting on a hilltop in the lotus pose – you can practice this while doing your daily chores. For example if you are folding the laundry, watch the thoughts come and go and accept them as they are, regardless of their nature. And then, gently and with compassion, direct your attention back to your folding. Through the repetition of this simple process, your “acceptance muscle” grows stronger and stronger.

Informal practice – there will be many opportunities in your life to informally practice acceptance. Your son dropped a whole jar of vitamins on the floor? Accept it, there is no benefit to anyone in taking the journey through denial, anger and depression – just go straight to acceptance and you will be able to develop a more effective strategy to get them cleaned up.

In the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn (Full Catastrophe Living, 2009) “If we keep our attention focused on the present, we can be sure of one thing, namely that whatever we are attending to in this moment will change, giving us the opportunity to practice accepting whatever it is that will emerge in the next moment. Clearly, there is wisdom in cultivating acceptance”.