Letting Go of Stuck Habits With as Much Kindness as You Can Muster
April 2nd, 2012
Being a health coach, I try to help my clients make positive changes in their lives.
So whether a client wants to let go of their sugar habit, inject some oomph into a tedious exercise routine, or stop out-of-body-snacking (you know, “What did I just eat?”), I want to help them do that with gentleness.
Recently, a student asked me: “Don’t you worry that if you encourage your clients to cultivate self-compassion, they will just sit on the couch and make excuses for themselves?”
This is a common belief — that if we are too compassionate with ourselves, we won’t get anything done. We have to be at least a little self-critical, a little hard on ourselves, or we won’t take responsibility for our lives.
Groaning rights
Maybe the necessity of self-compassion is clear to me because I hang around yoga people who experience how much easier it is to face challenges once they have been stretched and strengthened, lovingly grounded and centered, and finally invited to rest in that pure, humming goodness that is so palpable in Savasana.
Maybe it’s because I had a mom who encouraged me to be extra-nice to myself when I had a hard day.
Or because of my sister, with whom I shared a bedroom for 17 years, who set up a sickness-ritual: If one of us was sick or sad, we had groaning rights. Kira groaned more in bed than I did (she was gutsier that way), but letting her groan when she didn’t feel well felt loving and right. Plus, sometimes she’d let out a good one, and we’d both start laughing.
Tuning out vs. acknowledging
Granted, there is the less helpful, grumbly kind of groan that can become self-pitying stuckness. I think this happens when we “tune out” or “forget” about our common humanity. We forget about our interconnections with others. We forget that others have similar difficulties, challenges, pains. We think we must be the only one who has it this bad.
And then there is is the active, self-healing, kind of groan. Acknowledgement of your sadness, sickness, or suffering is most helpful when it has an active element of self-tenderness, of wanting the best for yourself, of wanting to heal, and be at ease.
When we emotionally soften toward ourselves and open up to our experience, we have compassion for others who are hurting too.
Self-compassion isn’t a self-placation vacation
The student who is reluctant to encourage self-compassion is likely afraid she will invite her patients to “get away with anything.”
She worries a patient will say: “I’m trashed today, so I will be “nice” to myself and watch three hours of cringe-worthy reality TV, and eat ice cream until I’m stuffed.” And she’s concerned her patient will do that again and again, in the name of self-kindness.
Being self-compassionate is not about repeatedly checking out to our detriment — it’s about loving ourselves up in a way that nourishes our well-being in the long-run. It’s about protecting the person we really want to be. Sometimes cultivating well-being involves some discomfort, and we can hold that discomfort with kindness too, while we take steps to heal.
It’s business-time
Sometimes when we acknowledge and fully meet our suffering, we recognize it’s time to make a change. If we can move toward changing habits with self-compassion, it’s more likely we’ll lay down a path we can travel over the long haul.
I have witnessed clients being exceptionally mean and self-critical — they think the best way to whip themselves into action is with increasing doses of guilt and shame.
It’s heartbreaking to see.
And it doesn’t work. What tends to happen instead is seasoned self-evasion. It becomes way too painful and scary to look at self truths because of the hateful meanie-backlash that will follow, so understandably, they don’t look, and they can’t acknowledge what is really happening, and they get stuck.
Being tender with ourselves creates a safety net for the truth. We can see what needs to change without worrying we’ll fall into a venomous pit of self-condemnation.Tuning in with support and kindness, we can look at ourselves more clearly, make conscious choices, and take constructive steps.
When we cultivate self-compassion, something wonderful tends to happen. We awaken the most durable kind of motivation. We are motivated by love, and with self-love comes the desire to care for ourselves as best we can. We want to change behaviors that are causing us harm, and love ourselves healthy.
It’s reassuring that loads of psychological research backs up what I have witnessed over and over with my clients: those who are self-compassionate are more likely to take personal responsibility for slip-ups than self-flagellators, are more likely to remain motivated to make long-term changes, and are more able to accept the emotional discomfort that arises when transforming entrenched patterns.
Permission to be kind
Scientifically-backed, ultra-official, and certifiably-trustworthy permission granted. If you’re having a hard day, week (or month) — you are invited to be extra-caring to yourself. You may remind yourself you’re not alone. And if you feel like it, groan out loud until you make yourself giggle. If you treat yourself with compassion, you really won’t want to groan forever. Your self-tenderness will wake up the best motivating force of all — LOVE.
Creating Room For Internal Mess
May 31st, 2010
“Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness.”
My yoga teacher, Scott reads this teaching a lot — and my guess is, not just because it’s kind to remind us of our basic wonderfulness. I think he returns to this quote because it butts right up against our natural human instincts: HUH? It doesn’t do any good to get rid of our so-called negative aspects? What are you talking about?!! Getting rid of scary stuff is what we evolved to do!
The human instinct to move toward safety and pleasure and way-the-heck-away from danger and pain is hard-wired into our brains. And it would be pretty satisfying if we could spear all our negative aspects and burn them to ashes in a primeval fire. If only it worked.
Reflecting on this natural propensity to “get rid of,” I asked each of my boys Owen (10) and Lucas (7), “What would you do if a scary monster was lurking outside your house?
Their minds, no surprise, spit out solutions at warp speed.
Owen came up with these, without stopping for air:
- We could ambush it from a tree fort with rocks and pine cones,
- We could nail it with the Nerf Heavy Duty Pumper dart gun,
- Lucas could wiggle around and distract it while I snuck up from behind and hit it over the head with a baseball bat
- We could blare really loud, annoying music at it.
And on and on he went. His mind, like all of ours, is a birring-whirring solution-producing machine.
Lucas, Zen master, said we wouldn’t have to do anything unless the monster attacked us, because we should only protect ourselves in self-defense. He then came up with his own staggering list of defensive options including the giggle-inducing idea of using the Wuxi finger hold a la Kung Fu Panda.
Scary monster problem? SKADOOSH!
I noticed neither one of my kids said, “We could try to make friends with it.” Or “Maybe he’s not as scary as he looks,” or anything of that sort. Their immediate instinctive responses to “‘scary monster,” were protective.
And, it makes complete, self-protective sense that we would want to get rid of, or fix, or be done with negative aspects in our inner world much like we would get rid of monsters lurking outside our house.
Loneliness? Fear? Grief? Sadness? Disappointment? SKADOOSH!
But what if our efforts at avoiding, getting rid of, and fixing internal monsters not only don’t work, but bring us suffering and keep us stuck?
What if we spend so much energy and time fighting our emotions that we’ve got nothing left to do the stuff that really matters to us?
For instance, maybe we try to get rid of emotional emptiness by overeating. Then we at least feel full, or numb. Anything but empty. We live in service to getting rid of emptiness. But the emptiness returns again and again, only it’s hungrier.
Maybe we attempt to banish anxiety by avoiding situations that might “trigger” more stress. We create artificial safety, but our lives get smaller.
Maybe we evade fear by procrastinating. We hide our imperfections, and in the process miss the chance to share our best stuff.
I’ve tried just about every emotional-avoidance maneuver at one time or another, and although I do get the highly sought after short-lived relief, the inner-emotional ICK is only temporarily mollified.
Within minutes or hours, the emotional ICK returns, somehow skewed, magnified, or more insistent by my attempts to evade it. “Mwah, hah, hah, I’m baa-acck!”
When I get all caught up in trying to control my internal space, I miss everything happening in the present. It’s like being on a hamster wheel, spinning-spinning-spinning, while I could be using that glycogen to do something I value instead.
In my experience, efforts to get rid of difficult emotions, thoughts, sensations, or urges lead to a life that gets constricted, smaller, airless.
If it doesn’t do any good to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also lose sight of our basic goodness, our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness then,
WHAT is the alternative ?!
For me that answer has been acceptance, or what I prefer to call willingness. (I don’t love the word acceptance, because it sounds too much like resignation to me, which it’s decidedly not. I like the word willingness which I borrowed from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Willingness sounds to me like an active choice, which acceptance decidedly is.)
Acceptance or Willingness is opening up, making space and room for emotions and sensations, allowing what arises to be there.
Rather than trying to avoid or control my thoughts, memories, emotions or sensations, my practice now, is all about allowing the stuff I can’t change right in the moment to be there — while making oceans of space for it all to float around in.
Which isn’t to say fix it/get rid of/control strategies never help us in our quest for inner peace. Because in some ways they sort of can:
- When I clear out the clutter in my home & office, it’s more likely I will feel more peaceful and I can work better.
- When I keep my kitchen stocked with healthy choices, it’s more likely I’ll experience less cravings and this makes it easier to choose eating well.
- When I go for a run or to a yoga class, it’s more likely I will feel more open, receptive and grounded the rest of the day, which makes it easier to love better.
In a way, these external structures and rituals are control strategies that help me be more open and flexible internally. I have many rituals, big and small that help me cultivate qualities I like.
But sometimes I can go through all the rituals and structures, and still, I feel sad, or angry, or scared. That’s where acceptance is really, really helpful.
My yoga teachers often say, 99% experiential wisdom 1% philosophy. And acceptance/willingness is one of those concepts I’ve had to practice to “get.”
I made a list of some of the things I have learned about acceptance/willingness from my experience. In sharing my list, my hope is I might help you consider an alternative to the endless stuck-in-the-muck struggle of wanting things to be different than they are right now, this second.
What I’ve experienced about willingness:
- Willingness is a choice. I may not want or like what I am experiencing, but here it is, and I can be willing to have it.
- Willingness isn’t tolerance. Tolerance is gritting your teeth, white-knuckling, holding out as long as you can. Willingness is the act of opening and allowing things to be as they are in the moment.
- Willingness isn’t resignation. Or wallowing. It’s an active intentional choice to allow uncomfortable feelings, sensations, urges, or thoughts which arise to come and go without struggling with them, running away, or getting entangled in them.
- I can’t see what needs to change if I don’t look. Willingness opens me up to see things as they are, which helps me contact what is important and meaningful to me. Sometimes discomfort is a sign that I need to make changes in my work, my relationships, my health, my living space, or some other area of my life.
- Sometimes seeing things as they are is exquisitely painful. There may be a big gap between my immediate reality and the vision of how I want things to be. I can’t close the gap right this second or the next. Ouch.
- Willingness is easier when difficult mindy-stuff has lots of internal space in which to come and go. When I’m on the yoga mat, or sitting in meditation, or on a run, I can create some separation between who I am and what I am experiencing. Even the most intensely uncomfortable emotions become less urgent and softer when I give them an expanse of space to move in.
- All the time and energy that was caught up in fixing, getting rid of and controlling my internal space is freed up to do what matters to me. Instead of stopping and struggling and being stuck in place, I can live a vital, engaged life, inevitably touched with natural human pain and awkwardness.
- I don’t have to embrace everything all of the time. Sometimes it’s OK to temporarily avoid, escape or ignore. As long as my avoidance or escape isn’t keeping me rooted in stuckness. Escape hatches are useful now and then when I hide consciously and with the intention to restore and renew my energy.
- I am still practicing, practicing, practicing.
What about you?
Does the difficulty of making painful emotions go away make your life feel more difficult?
Looking to your experience, what have you learned about acceptance? Have you practiced acceptance, and found your life, however painful at times, opens up?
Go to the Limits of Your Longing…(And Um, Hang On to Your Center?)
March 11th, 2010
Big loooooong out-breath, my 40 days of yoga, meditation and conscious eating is over.
And now I can do whatever I want.
I can sit still every morning, and open to what arises in my mind and body, with curiosity, and my best in-the-moment go at acceptance. Or not.
I can eat beautiful, fresh, whole foods. Or not.
I can consistently show up on my mat, and breathe and flow, and connect internally. Or not.
I can seek connection with yoga friends, giving them love and smiles, and receiving their love and smiles. Or not.
I have so many options before me that I can choose. Or not
And I see, ever more clearly, how these choices determine the quality of my lived experience.
Which brings me to the question I have been asked by friends:
“Oooooh, tell me Lauren, what did you get out of your 40 day experience?”
Oh, you mean, why was taking on the 20+ hours per week adventure of yogini/meditator/mindful eater worth every particle of space and moment of time it occupied?” I’m happy to share!
Because maintaining this 40-day commitment forced gently reminded me about choice. Discernment. And longing. And it invited me, again, to be willing to trust my own intuition. To captain my ship. And to trust my own answers to the big questions.
Questions like: How do I long to spend my time? What qualities do I long to bring into my life? What qualities do I long to give to the people in my life?
What allows me to flare up like flame and make big shadows that love can move in? (*Paraphrasing a Rilke poem)
And how the heck can I do all I yearn to do in a way that is sustainable, self-loving, and other-loving?
Because I tend to overextend. I’m scary-good at gritting my teeth and pushing through. Moremoremore is added until I have to start throwing things overboard. And I don’t want to be all gogogo if it means I’ll find my center has careened off to the left, or hurtled off to the right. If it means I’ll find my mind all tightly-wound, and my feet walking as if on slippery fishes. And I’d rather not hold my breath without reprieve.
I want to exhale. I’d like more yin to balance out the yang.
I’d like to create emotional balance and a deep sense of well-being. Consistently, resolutely. And to do that, I’ll need harbors to anchor in after long days out in the wind and the weather.
During this 40 day endeavor, I was squeezed by a giant time crunch. I said yes to many things: new clients, speaking engagements, copywriting projects, teaching opportunities, cool collaborations. Yes, yes, yes, I said.
And I’m a mom too, and a wife. A loving, fun, engaged mom and wife. Which involves saying yes every day. Because I like being there for my family. And this means being there-there, because when I’m not there-there, they notice. And I notice. And sometimes that’s o.k., but most of the time I would rather have containers around when I’m there-there for my family, and when I’m somewhere else. Half-way presence feels disconcerting.
And I want to say yes to other things too: my head-clearing runs, my yoga practice, my garden, living in a peaceful de-cluttered space, and occasionally being social with friends.
All those yes-es have been packed into not enough time and space. I’ve kept every commitment, by mapping them all out on a calendar, and summoning up energy from the deep. And by asking for help, and forgoing beloved sleep. And surrendering. Some good lessons in there. But I’ve also felt that dark sludge of resentment building.
And I came face-to-face with an embarrassing truth
Saying yes to all that stuff didn’t come from the most aligned place inside. I was saying yes because it was exciting to be wanted, all at once, in lots of different places. So I followed the calls – here, there, and everywhere.
And then, on the yoga mat, I noticed my flame was making piddly shadows, leaving little space for love to move in. And the resentment was oozing its way in. (Oh, yoga, I love you so, for all you invite me to notice.)
Resentment sludge? ICK. Big wake-up call. Time to step back.
It’s still a new thing for me to step back and say, hang on, what do I want? I am so grateful to be practicing this, but there’s no denying it feels awkward. I’m stepping up to a new place and I feel more responsible, more vulnerable.
But now that the wisdom is there, there’s no turning back. And the resentment-gunk must go.
So, I’m asking myself: How can I grow Basic Goodness (the business) in a way that honors my needs? How can I do the work I feel I was meant to do without overextending? How can I create containers around my life-life and my work-life so everything ignites bright and makes big shadows for love to inhabit? All the while, heading in a valued direction?
Synchronicity
And as I was asking these questions, (synchronicity alert!) my new friend, Eileen, was building a sailboat. The sailboat is her metaphor for a way to manage time — a schedule that holds things, but not too tightly. It’s a way to intentionally choose how to spend time, but in a way that is not pant-pant-pant overextending or soul-squishing.
And well, this metaphor works for me. I know sailboats. I spent every childhood summer on a 30 foot sailboat with my family, sailing to pretty ports on the East Coast. So, I’m going to build one too. A metaphorical one, that is. I am going to practice (and practice some more) intentionally deciding how to spend my time in a way that sustains me and helps me love big.
Once I build my sailboat, and set sail, I’ll blog about it. And yes! I get to decide what I bring on my sailboat (my rituals will board first)….And oh, what I love about this metaphor too, is my sailboat will only sail so far before it’ll throw down an anchor in a lovely, tranquil harbor. I’m feeling more seaworthy already…
Please, tell me about you. Do you interact with time in an intentional way? Do you rebel against structure, or do you love it? How do you find freedom and meaning in time? Where do you take refuge from the wind and the weather?
