An Intentional Life

by Lisa Kentgen

  Pam was able to engage in a healthy and skillful relationship dance when she saw herself as worthy just as she was. Understanding this, she reflected on ways to take the same skills she brought to her friendships to her dating life. As a result, she became more discerning and approached dating with greater confidence. Her desires organically shifted: she had less desire to drink heavily on dates and found men who appreciated her strengths more attractive. This shift in relationship to her own desires was more in line with a belief of being worthy of deeper connection. Not surprisingly, the quality of her dates changed and Pam knew she was moving in the direction of more meaningful connection.

  Exercise: Bring Greater Awareness to What You Desire

  Where do your desire traps lie? Money, recognition, power? Do you sometimes use food, alcohol, or drugs as a way to get distance from what is happening? Do you spend a lot of time thinking about what you would do with money you don’t have? Do you play out scenarios of people rejecting or criticizing you? Or fantasize about people showering you with admiration and praise?

  Write down a desire that has been a trap for you. You might refer to the list of different types of desires earlier in the chapter, such as desire for pleasure-seeking or material things, to be other than you are, or to use things as a means to get away from discomfort. Do any of those desires tip over into traps?

  For each desire you write down, create an intentional practice around it and implement it in the coming weeks. For example, if you spend lots of time thinking about how to make more money, can you notice yourself doing this as it is happening and consciously redirect your awareness back to the present moment? Can you stop checking your online investments more than is needed to wisely manage them? Or, another example, if you enjoy getting high at the end of the day, can you choose another way to practice relaxation? If a craving to get high comes up, can you watch it come and go without acting on it?

  The Dalai Lama speaks of practicing contentment as an antidote to the pain and suffering caused by craving and unfulfillable desires. Implied in the words practicing contentment is active choice. It is an active choice to recognize all you have right now and to believe that you are enough and that you have enough. Practicing contentment makes room for opening up to having things that are not here now while still partaking in the abundance of the present.

  Chapter 4

  The Benefits of Pausing

  and Stillness

  In an age of constant movement, nothing is

  so urgent as sitting still.

  Pico Iyer

  To meaningfully shape your life, learn to pause. Pausing is stepping back from thinking and habitual ways of doing, and simply noticing. Pausing is the entryway to stillness, in body and mind. Practicing pausing and valuing stillness is the doorway to all contemplative practices. It is in stillness that you most intimately know yourself. Pausing, and the quiet and stillness that comes with it, is initially uncomfortable. It becomes comfortable, and desirable, as you witness its transformative powers.

  Pausing is not typically a first response. A more typical initial response is to think, to do, to act. It is part of our biology to want to do something. We have characteristic, often unhelpful, ways of coping with what makes us uncomfortable: like ignoring it, distracting ourselves, fleeing from it, prematurely analyzing it, denying it, and blaming others for it. Jumping to habitual ways of handling discomfort, rather than pausing and opening to stillness, prevents a clear understanding of what is happening. These habits to deal with discomfort actually make it worse. Pausing lets you become aware of these habits as they are happening. This is the first step to being able to do things differently.

  Building your capacity for pausing, and opening to the stillness within it, you learn skillful means to cope with discomfort. This leads to the greatest freedom of choice and action.

  When I want to be away from my internal discomfort, I try to recall a quote by John Burroughs, the nineteenth-century naturalist. “Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.” These words help me pause and stay with what is happening right now, even when I don’t like it.

  Pausing is a Foundation of Mindfulness

  Enrica was a striking young woman who knew that she was attractive and intelligent. She had a healthy appreciation for herself, and yet this positive regard was in stark contrast to her habit of reproaching herself for laziness and other small inadequacies. Enrica believed self-criticism motivated her to try harder and be better. She was unaware of the cost to her well-being of not accepting herself as she was.

  Most of the time Enrica’s self-reproach was a quiet stream in the background of her awareness. However, when she felt uncertain or was having a difficult time, her self-criticism became louder and overwhelmed her. At these times, she sought comfort in binge eating. Binge eating didn’t comfort her—it numbed her. When she binged, it was as if she emotionally left the room, compartmentalizing her pain outside of her awareness. Compartmentalizing pain doesn’t address it. As a result, binge eating intensified Enrica’s pain. She was filled with self-loathing the day after binging.

  After a few sessions, Enrica told me, “I keep telling myself that I can’t have what I want. I’m constantly down on myself, telling myself I’m not good enough or I’m lazy. Or whatever happens to be the self-repercussion of the day. I knew I thought this way but didn’t know how frequently I thought this way. It’s kind of shocking. But I can’t imagine doing it differently. How do I do that?”

  My response to a statement like this (“I now see what I’m doing that hurts me or holds me back, now what?!”) is to highlight the insight that came from the pause and the feeling of urgency to do something about it. I focus on what an accomplishment it is simply to notice what is happening as it is happening. It is a big deal to tolerate the discomfort that is present without jumping into action or resorting to habitual responses. It is so important that you not gloss over what you notice about your thoughts and perceptions, and your physical responses. Enrica, understandably, wanted to jump from noticing what was happening to doing something about it. Before doing something about it, she first needed to find ways to care for herself within the discomfort, rather than run from or react to it.

  Pausing and noticing are the doorways to your capacity to practice mindful reflection. They are the bedrock of real freedom to make choices and take action that lead to meaningful and lasting change.

  How do you begin to feel more comfortable with pausing, especially with discomfort? Practice noticing without judging, and noticing without immediately looking for deeper implications. Simply noticing. Easier said than done. Simply noticing is often far from simple. And yet pausing in difficult experiences presents the kernel for radically transforming them.

  Enrica’s practice of bringing awareness to her habit of self-reproach enabled her to change the way she spoke to herself. Talking to herself with kindness, rather than judgment, changed the way she felt. Enrica brought this heightened conscious awareness to moments when she was uncertain and in pain. She came to trust she could tolerate these moments, face them, and be OK. This realization was empowering and her confidence grew. This awareness helped Enrica to face, rather than compartmentalize, painful experiences and she eventually stopped using food as a way of closing herself off from her internal experience.

  The practice of pausing and noticing what is happening offers you alternate ways of moving through discomfort. Naturally and organically, you develop healthier options for allowing room for all of your experience, including discomfort.

  The answers that come to you out of pausing, and stillness, are more creative and effective than suggestions someone else can give. Yes, sometimes you need help from others. Still, simply pausing and noticing what is happening inside lets you see unhelpful habits for what they are. Their power becomes reduced. Pausing quiets down your struggle against discomfort and allows your inhere
nt wisdom to come to the fore.

  Exercise: Simply Noticing is an Important Pause

  Walk around the block with an intention simply to notice. You might first notice what comes to you visually. You might then notice subtler things like the experience of your body as you are walking: the sensation of your feet touching the ground, the sensation of the breeze as it touches your face, moves your hair or rustles your clothes. You might notice the smells on the street: exhaust, food from store fronts, fresh air. Notice what you do with the smells. Can you let them come and go? Notice the differences in your response to smells you find pleasant and those you don’t. Notice the sounds: birds, car radios, engines, people talking. Notice the absence of sounds and the alteration between near and distant sounds. Notice the natural ebb and flow of a particular sound.

  As you notice this panoply of stimuli, you will likely associate to what you notice, or get distracted and think about the day’s activities, or find some mental scape other than the one right here. This practice is to bring yourself back, again and again, to what you notice while walking.

  If this relatively non-emotionally laden task challenges your ability to stay present, imagine trying to stay present to things when you are emotionally triggered, stressed, or very invested in a certain outcome. Imagine the challenge of simply noticing, without interfering, when it comes to moving toward your long-term goals and highest aspirations.

  The Anxiety of Never Being Still

  Jamie was a young man who came to therapy for help with pervasive, and at times paralyzing, anxiety. He felt pressure to be more successful and did not know whether to stay in the restaurant industry or change career paths entirely. Jamie heard I worked with hypnosis and on his first visit to me for therapy challenged me to hypnotize him: “I don’t think I can be hypnotized.” Interested in why he thought this, he explained, “I am so stressed, I can’t relax! I don’t even know how to unwind when I go to sleep. I don’t unwind, I stay wired until I just pass out. There’s no way you can talk to me that will put me in a relaxed state!” What was interesting was not whether Jamie could go into a state of therapeutic trance but, instead, that he never experienced himself as relaxed.

  Knowing that Jamie recently began taking yoga classes, I asked him how he experienced the final relaxation, the end of class when you lie down and physical movement postures are over. Here, the focused awareness of the postures and breath cease, and you let go of any effort. This part of the class is important because the nervous system relaxes, allowing the body and mind to integrate the physical practices of the past hour. Jamie’s feeling about this “relaxing” part of the class was, not surprisingly, “I hate it! I want to get the hell out of there!”

  The work in therapy with Jamie initially focused on building pauses into his day and coping with the discomfort of being still. This was done in two ways. First, by setting aside time to move his body, because the only time Jamie experienced a calm mind was when he ran. I encouraged him to build in time to run most days and to protect that time. The second type of pause was to notice when his mind jumped ahead, which was constantly. When he noticed his “jumping ahead mind,” he was to try to bring himself back to the present moment. This type of pausing was the most foreign and difficult for Jamie. Importantly, he committed to trying.

  His efforts to step back from his habit of jumping ahead helped Jamie see, in a way he never had, how his aversion to stillness undermined his ability to make effective choices—to even know his preferences. He had to be present to his experiences to be able to evaluate them. Jamie’s habit of constantly doing, his mind’s endless jumping around and ahead, was creating a state of constant unease and anxiety.

  As Jamie strengthened his ability to pause, he still had the impulse to flee from stillness. But he also increasingly tolerated the experience of pausing and noticing. He built up, very gradually, the ability to slow down. In the pauses, Jamie noticed the micro-moments when he desired to flee and, in fact, often still did flee. What changed for him was that he also built up the capacity to bring himself back to moments of stillness. These moments of coming back to the present accumulated and gradually began to change his experience. He became less anxious and gained confidence in his ability to make decisions that would eventually help him craft a career that matched his skills and interests.

  Jamie kept up with yoga practice and when I last saw him, the final relaxation was still his least favorite part of the class. However, he recognized its importance and, occasionally, enjoyed it.

  Even if we don’t relate to Jamie’s particular experience, if we are honest we can identify our own challenges to pausing and being still. Most of us can relate to wanting “to get the hell out of” an experience, whether by distracting ourselves, zoning out, or finding something else to do.

  Stepping Back from Routine and In-the-Moment Pausing

  What does the practice of pausing concretely look like? It is helpful to conceptualize two types of pausing practices. The first type of pause is to step back, in action, from your daily routine. This kind of practice can occur in breaks throughout the day or for longer chunks of time. The second type of pause, subtler, is to notice what is happening as it happens. The first type of pause helps to develop the transformative, in-the-moment, second type.

  The purpose of the first kind of pause is to step back from routine. This kind of pause can be any activity where you step back from your routine and your habits of mind. Earlier in the chapter, Jamie did this by incorporating running into his schedule as a way of quieting his thoughts. Vacations and travel to new places can do this. Other kinds of pausing are: occasionally leaving work early to do something you enjoy or walking around the block in the middle of a work day; turning off your phone for an hour or more a day; practicing yoga; taking naps; getting a massage; writing in a journal; meditation; sitting in nature; physical exercise; listening to music.

  This first kind of pause has the quality of engagement, not distraction. This is important because there are countless ways to distract ourselves. For example, how much time in a day do you spend internet surfing? Facebook relies on our attention being pulled away from the present moment in order to generate advertising revenue. It is fine to occasionally take a break and watch a television show, play a video game, text, or internet surf. This is not, however, pausing in an intentional way and does not promote a centering stillness.

  You probably do try to incorporate the first type of pause into your life. What is important is that you schedule and honor the time set aside for these pauses. Don’t let the obligations of everyday life intrude on them.

  The second kind of pause, the practice of noticing what is happening as it is happens, is the heart of mindfulness practices. I’ll refer to it here as the Mindful Pause. The first kind of pause (quieting down through stepping back from routine in ways that cultivate engagement) is in the service of the Mindful Pause. For example, if you meditate, it is not because it is inherently noble but because it helps you pause and stay present to all aspects of daily life as you are living it. The Mindful Pause, and the stillness it brings, holds the key to accessing your internal resources and developing your most authentic self.

  The Mindful Pause can be done in diverse ways. Earlier in the chapter Jamie learned to watch his attention as it jumped beyond the present moment, an important Mindful Pause. He tried to bring his awareness back to the present moment, another important pause practice. Here are just a few other examples of the Mindful Pause. If you sit all day at your desk, every so often stand up and notice the sensations in your body. Drink a cup of coffee or tea and be aware of your sensory experience as you take each and every sip. When you are angry and want to lash out, touch your heart and say to yourself in a kind voice, “Anger”. When you are under a tight deadline, take time to notice how you are experiencing the pressure—dip below the thoughts and notice your body. Walk around the block, you have time for it! When you are responding to an email, can
you pause and stay present to just that one email rather than focusing on multiple things at once? When you are half listening to someone while thinking of something else, pause and bring yourself back to the conversation at hand.

  One of the most helpful pausing practices is to anchor yourself in your breath. Throughout the day, step back from what you are doing and place your full attention on the inhale and exhale of your breath for at least thirty seconds.

  Consistently practice pausing. Practice every day and throughout the day. This sounds simple, and yet it is a radically different approach to how we often go through our days.

  When you practice the second kind of in-the-moment pausing, recognize it! Especially notice those moments when you have stepped back from habitual ways of perceiving, thinking, and acting. Building up your capacity to automatically pause more of the time has the transformational benefit of centering you; tapping into your internal resources no matter what is happening around you.

  Exercise: A Valuable Practice of Pausing and Breathing

  Try this exercise twice a day for a month. It only takes a few minutes and offers tremendous benefits if you stay with it. Until this practice becomes a natural part of your day, schedule it! Find a relatively quiet place to practice.

  To start, either close your eyes or pick a point a few feet in front of you to comfortably direct your gaze. Then take five easy, full breaths and place your awareness on each in-breath and out-breath.