The Gift of Patience
Instant relief is always at your fingertips. Want a boost? Here's some food / drugs / porn / attention. There's an app for that. There's a million apps for that. How many industries would collapse if everyone understood that you can just be with the feeling? You can just be sad or scared or angry or lonely or uncertain. Step aside, phone. The world's ultimate entertainment is even more addictive. It's the mind, with its oh-so-neat and tidy explanations for everything. A causes B, don't you see? Everything is a monocausality. The mind can also spin a real yarn about how it's not going to work out or how they hate you or how there's no point in even trying. These stories thrive when taken Oh So Seriously, as though they were delivered by a solemn-faced man in a gray suit with a deep baritone voice. You wouldn't challenge a story someone tells at a funeral. When the mind demands a remedy for a feeling or to give its pessimistic explanation, the ultimate act of self-compassion is to be. Just be with those feelings. Give them your full attention, maybe close your eyes or look out a window and be with yourself. Give yourself the gift of patience, without needing whatever is happening in your mind to resolve itself. Be with the discomfort. Something will happen. I made a mapping of chains of concepts that are important to me. So many arrows point to "Relax." It can be difficult for me to relax. I have stories that I'm not doing enough or that I'm not going quickly enough or that I'm not smart enough. And I can be tempted to seek immediate relief. But when I let myself be with the stories, I can tap into a deeper, embodied confidence that I will figure it out. I've always figured it out. There's no reason to think that this time will be different. Things I made:
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In any situation you can take a moment to notice whether you could enjoy it more - maybe a lot more or maybe a little more - and then take action to raise your enjoyment. Turning the act of noticing into a habit yields huge gains for lifetime enjoyment. This has been the message for me lately and so it is my solemn duty to pass the message on to you. Some examples: During a conversation someone asked me out of 10 how comfortable I was in my seat and I said 7. Once I was aware of this it was...
"Get back here!" I find myself shouting at my focus at times, but that's just a story. The internal tug-of-war isn't real. I could stop giving my attention to the distraction at any time, but I instead let the avoidance process run its course, and then I am resourced to do the task. Let me just run eight miles first, thinking intermittently about the message I want to send, and then I will feel resourced to send it and possibly receive a response that is not to my liking. I am practicing...
Asking is a skill which also makes it a game. It's a cooperative game between the asker and the askee and I'm going to describe a few examples I was in close proximity to recently in order to see what this game involves: The group asked for the delicious off-menu dessert and they got it. They had an advantage in that there was only upside. Since they weren't attached to getting the dessert, their circumstances would either stay as they were or they would get better. So an acceptance of any...