Tag Archives: thinking

BEING KIND TO OTHERS

Ways of Remembering, ,

When we have learnt how to be kinder to ourselves, we can begin exploring what it really means to be kind to others.

I used to believe that being kind was doing something thoughtful for someone else, required some effort on our part – the ‘I’ve made you your favourite meal’ syndrome. And of course this is a form of kindness, yet it has a sting in its tail – it expects some appreciation of your kindness. Have you ever made this sort of effort, and had a lack of appreciation? I know that my reaction tends to be: ‘I don’t know why I bothered!’

Slowly I began to realise that this effortful kindness is actually driven by a desire to be liked, appreciated, valued – the payback is part of the deal. And that’s a recipe for disappointment!

The Dalai Lama was the first person who gave me a different point of view on kindness. He describes it as a state of mind, rather than an act. He also makes it clear that it is a health-giving state of mind, that is good for us. To me, this makes more sense: if it is a state of mind, then we apply it to ourselves first, then others and the world around us.

I would now describe kindness as being open to the possibility of the good aspects of ourselves, of other people, of our world. So how does this work in practice? We see another person and give them a chance to be lovely, rather than making a snap judgement. If they aren’t lovely, we wonder what might be stopping them from showing that part of themselves, and feel a sympathy for them. Out of these reactions may arise spontaneously a kind act, but it is not a requirement.

We all know this at some level don’t we? When you’re feeling a bit ‘off’, sometimes the best thing that happens is a stranger’s gentle smile as they catch your eye for a moment – it soothes the soul a little, and the world seems a better place. You don’t have to be grateful or show appreciation; you just receive that brief gift of kindness.

This form of kindness is innate for us – babies give these gifts to us all the time – the bright eyes, the shy smile, the chuckle, making us melt for a moment and forget our cares. And then we learn to discriminate and to make judgements about others, based on all sorts of cultural norms. We also learn that, whilst being kind is a good thing, it does need to be applied in that rather effortful way, and not to just any old person!!

So we need ways to remember our natural kindness, and allow it to become more of a habit again. So here are a few suggestions:

1. Notice how you feel when someone offers you a kind smile, a warm greeting, a thank you.

2. When we are spontaneously kind towards another – a smile, a cheerful hello, a sympathetic look at the young mum struggling with a crying baby – notice how that feels too, to give kindness without any need for reciprocity.

3. When you look at strangers, just imagine they are a friend of yours.

4. Allow yourself to think and act kindly in this way, when you’re in the mood. Don’t force it – it is no longer genuine if you do.

And of course, you will sometimes be judgemental – it’s OK, don’t then judge yourself for it as well: that would be two unkind acts instead of one!

And sometimes you will do something kind and be disappointed that it wasn’t appreciated – that’s OK too!

By gradually cultivating a kind way of being in the world, you will begin to notice that you feel better for it, and that there are a lot of other kind people in the world!

STOPPING

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Are you one of the millions of people who think they are closet lazy devils? You may well recognise the thought: ‘If I allow myself to stop when I feel like it, I may never get anything done, because I’m naturally a lazy person.’ It is amazing how powerfully this message has been inserted into our consciousness!

So where does this thought come from? My belief is that it is built into western culture as part of maintaining what is called the Protestant work ethic. Remember those little children we once were? Not only did we have too much energy some of the time, we also inconveniently wanted to just stop and rest or sleep sometimes. Whilst this is accepted as part of being a baby, we work hard to train children into only sleeping at night-time, and being active physically and/or mentally when it suits. We teach them how to counteract their natural tendency to balance activity with rest, and fit in with the way things work: school, workplaces, family life.

Now children, who are still aware of their natural tendency, are likely to object to the training, which is when they learn that those who don’t fit in are called ‘lazy’ and this is a bad thing, and no child likes to be classified as something unacceptable, so we adopt the habits we see around us.

I know that I lived with the fear of being a closet lazy person for many years, and still find it reappears sometimes.  Yet a part of me felt that it was a false message. If I really were lazy, why did I find it boring after a while when I had enforced ‘laziness’, like being ill in bed? And I began to notice the evidence that suggested we aren’t lazy creatures at all.

When you step back from it for a moment, you begin to realise that it makes no sense. No child is born lazy – in fact we frequently complain that they have more energy than we can handle! So it is not an inherent part of our nature. And when we do allow ourselves to stop for long enough – maybe only if we take a holiday! – we discover that there comes a point when we are ready and wanting to do something. So as a grown-up, maybe it’s time to remember that we are actually designed biologically to ebb and flow, to have energy and to have time to rebuild that energy. If we want to be at our best, then we need to cater for our natural design and stop forcing ourselves past it.

This is radical, but doesn’t have to be dramatic: we can start gently. I remember I began to experiment when my son was young and I was working full-time. The normal routine was: busy at work, dash to the child-minder’s, pick him up, take him home, and immediately launch into tea, homework, getting things ready for the next day. I knew I wasn’t the most pleasant of mums, but I dutifully got everything done! I asked Jo if it was OK with him if we experimented for a week with me having 15 minutes to myself when we got home – time for a coffee and a cigarette and a sit-down – before starting on everything else. He agreed somewhat reluctantly, and I felt guilty, but decided to try it anyway. At the end of the week, I felt better – less exhausted, less snappy – but I still felt guilty about making him wait his turn for my attention, so I thanked him for letting me do it, and said we could revert to normal now. His response surprised me: he suggested I took 5 minutes longer from now on! When I asked him why, he pointed out that I was much nicer during that week, and he preferred that, so maybe 5 minutes more would make me nicer still!

Since that time, I have gradually got better at finding ways to stop for a while, and allow myself to recover my energy. In the process, I have gathered more and more evidence that it is not only a more natural way for us to live our lives, but also a more effective one. It is astonishing how a little stopping now and then allows us to be more pleasant, more creative, less exhausted and generally more our real selves.

So how do you introduce stopping into your life more often?

Breathspaces: begin simply! Remember to take a breathspace, before you respond to someone, send that email, get into the car, answer the phone. Just a breathspace can make a difference.

Five minutes: take five minutes before you launch into your day, start on those home duties when you get back from work, start the next task.

Fifteen minutes: allow yourself 4 or 5 fifteen-minute gaps in your busy week. Call them admin time and write them in your diary as part of your schedule. And do nothing: stare out of the window, go for a stroll, relax into a comfy chair.

When these become habitual, you can start to expand on your experiment with stopping. A half-hour or hour at the weekend that is just for you, an evening where you just read a good book or watch a good movie and leave the chores until the next day, a whole day with no list of things you have to do.

And notice how, after a while, your energy starts to lift again and, if you relax into it enough, you start having thoughts like:’ Oh, I know what I can do about that thing that’s been bugging me,’ or ‘I haven’t seen so-and-so for ages – it would be fun to catch up with her,’ – the healthy and positive thoughts that often aren’t allowed in because our minds are so full of what we have to do next.

You’re not lazy, you’re just over-stretched! Don’t worry: if you stopped for days on end, you would come to a point where you said to yourself: ‘ I want to do ….. now.’ What an improvement that would be over: ‘I’d better get on with  …..’ – wouldn’t it!

It’s a simple change I’m suggesting in our thinking process. It replaces: ‘I’ll just do …. and then I’ll stop’ with ‘ I’ll just have a little rest and then I’ll do ….’. It seemed like common sense when you were a little child – maybe it will again now!

 

 

REMEMBERING TO USE YOUR BODY’S INTELLIGENCE – PART TWO

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Last time I wrote about ways to notice the body signals that tell us that we need to take more care of ourselves physically. Once we get better at listening to the simple basic needs of our bodies, we can move to the next level of awareness of our body’s intelligence.

The body has a direct physical reaction to every thought action or behaviour we have. Each of these is ‘assessed’ by the body as either maintaining/enhancing our ‘ecology’ – the optimal balance of the system – or throwing it off balance. By the way, if you were in consistent static balance, you’d be bored to tears! The balance I am describing is not static, it is dynamic.

There are times when I need to be off-balance for a while, in order to move to the next level of balance as a system. For example, if I am learning a new skill, I may feel uncomfortable until I have integrated it into the way I do things. So the assessments by the body are constantly taking into account the specific circumstances, rather than having a single ‘right answer’ – part of what demonstrates its intelligence!

If we can use this element of the body’s intelligence, we can make our lives so much easier! I know that, for me, I used to persist in situations and cycles of thought which made me feel anxious or irritable, because I thought I had to. I would be with someone whose conversation offended my values, I would continue to worry at the miserable thoughts I was having, like a dog with a bone, I would agree to do things that I thought I should do, even though I didn’t want to – and I still do all these things sometimes!!

However I was lucky enough to be taught a way to help myself to tell the difference between something that made me feel a little uncomfortable because it was unfamiliar, and something which my body’s intelligence assessed as uncomfortable because it detracted from my balance, my ecology.

Notice I only use the words comfortable or uncomfortable: they are good generic words which don’t label the reaction specifically and pin it down.

So what is the ‘trick’ to this distinction? Your body has two clear signals it gives to you: one tells you that whatever it is is wrong for you, and the other tells you that whatever it is is right for you.

‘Wrong’ signals may be things like: your breath becoming shallower; your foot fidgeting; your shoulders hunching a little; your arm feeling itchy; that sinking feeling in your stomach.

‘Right’ signals may be things like: your breathing becoming deeper; your chest feeling expanded; your shoulders relaxing; your jaw loosening; finding you are humming a little tune to yourself.

To discover your signals, just remember a time when, you realise with hindsight, it was just right for you. When you think of how your body was reacting, what’s the first things you are aware of? And now do the same with a time when you know it was wrong for you.

Once we are aware of our signals, we can use them to help us. Let’s start with the ‘right’ signal. Just begin to notice the thoughts and situations that switch it on. And then consciously consider ways you could bring more of those kinds of thoughts and situations into your life. By the way, don’t make this hard! If your answers are like: ‘when I am with my friend whom I only see about every 3 months’ or ‘when I’m on holiday’, then it can seem impossible to have more. So what is it about these situations that feels right? Maybe such things as being with people whom I can just be myself with, or allowing myself to do just what I feel like, which are both situations you could expand into other, more everyday parts of your life.

Now what about the ‘wrong’ signal? Again begin to notice the thoughts and situations that switch it on. Now ask yourself: ‘How can I reduce the number of these thoughts and situations I have to deal with?’ I am a great believer in beginning by applying the Snoopy axiom: if you don’t like it, avoid it whenever possible!! Where it isn’t possible to avoid, then ask yourself: ‘What could I do differently in the future to make this more comfortable?’ Our innate wisdom usually gives us some useful things to experiment with, such as limit the time spent on it, or distract yourself by doing something else, or take a step back from the situation and let them get on with it.

Most of us put up with a lot of discomfort we aren’t obliged to, because we don’t see any alternative. In fact, a lot of the time we don’t even see it as discomfort, we just think it’s normal! Yet we have a means of helping ourselves to increase the time we spend feeling good, and reduce the time we spend feeling bad – our bodies encompass great aids for our well being, in every sense. They are a live, dynamic and intelligent system, designed to help us to be at our best. So let’s use that help to make our lives easier!

Questions to ask yourself

  1. Remember a time when, you realise with hindsight, it was just right for you. When you think of how your body was reacting, what are the first things you are aware of?
  2. What sort of thoughts/situations switch these signals on for you? And how could you bring more of them into your life?
  3. Remember a time when, you realise with hindsight, it was not right for you. When you think of how your body was reacting, what are the first things you are aware of?
  4. How can you reduce the number of these thoughts and situations you have to deal with? And if you can’t avoid those situations, what could you do differently in the future to make them more comfortable for you and reduce their negative impact?

IS THIS USEFUL?

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I’m starting with a fundamental: the judgements we make about ourselves, about others, about what we do, about how we are.

I was reminded of this in a conversation with a friend recently: we were discussing what we had been up to since we last met, and both assessing ourselves as ‘failing’. It struck me that she had made some real progress, and then I realised that I had as well. Why didn’t our conversation reflect that?

We are taught from an early age to assess everything as good or bad, right or wrong, and every time we do, we are using a set of criteria with judgement built in, and a tendency towards failure or lack. Notice these criteria are very black and white – if it is not 100% good it goes into the ‘bad’ camp, not 100% right it goes into the ‘wrong’ camp. And we rarely hit 100%!

The reason that the judgements tend to be negative is cultural. We are not innately negative – no small child walks around condemning themselves and others, until they learn to, from the comments of others. Thank goodness! If they did, they would stunt their own development, giving up on learning because they didn’t get it ‘right’ quickly enough.

And now we are grown-ups, maybe we need to free ourselves of the shackles of judgement and allow ourselves to continue to learn and develop. After all, it is what we are biologically designed to do: to continually evolve and grow.

So how do we release these shackles?

There is a very simple change of language that helps a lot. Instead of judging things, events, behaviour, thoughts, as being good or bad, right or wrong, we start to ask ourselves if they are useful to us. This takes out the externally driven judgement, and asks us to assess on a personal basis.

For example, if someone is irritating you with their behaviour, is it useful to you to react with annoyance? How is it paying off for you, now and in the longer term? This makes you think about what you really want to achieve with them, and whether it is worth it to perpetuate or increase the negativity between you. Or, if you are thinking about what a bad day you are having, is this useful to you? You may decide it would be more useful to notice what is working in the day, or what would make it feel like a better day. And of course, in both instances, you may decide that it is useful to you to continue as you were, and that’s OK too!

I find that if I remind myself to ask whether my thought or behaviour is useful rather than right or wrong, good or bad, then it automatically makes me more likely to allow myself to make my life work better.

And by the way, next time you feel good about what you have done, remember to appreciate your own brilliance: as a small child, this attitude is what enabled you to develop – it could be useful now!

So why not experiment with it?

Next time you are criticising yourself, ask yourself:

  • Is this useful to me?
  • How is this paying off for me now or in the longer term?
  • Would a different approach be more useful to me?
  • What would that be?

And next time you feel good about what you have done, appreciate your own brilliance and give yourself a treat!