by Lisa Kentgen
I then generated a list of types of thoughts that I found to be helpful.
1)the naming thought as I notice what comes into my awareness from my senses;
2)reflecting upon what is right about me and my life thoughts;
3)intentional thoughts that consciously choose what to reflect upon;
4)the thoughts that float through my mind right after I wake up that give me feedback about what I’ve been grappling with (also on the prior list);
5)noticing that I’ve drifted from the present moment and gently bringing myself back thought;
6)the open and spacious thought that reflects on what others are telling me without cutting them off with my own narrative;
7)noticing and naming when I have an unhelpful negative response thought;
8)giving other people the benefit of the doubt under ambiguous circumstances thought;
9)thinking about a kind way to say something difficult to someone thought; and
10)reflective thoughts about how to integrate an intentional practice into my day.
The first item in both lists, the naming thought of what comes through all the senses, is a helpful way to stay present. Notice the lack of correlation between other items in the lists. Again, what is most important is increasing the number of helpful thoughts and quieting down unhelpful or unnecessary thoughts.
Be curious about the types of thoughts you have, and after reflecting upon them, make your own list. Practice this same exercise while in different moods. Generate names for the type of thoughts you have. Borrow my language in the prior exercise or make up your own. Identify which thoughts are helpful, unhelpful, and neither helpful or unhelpful. Notice how much time you spend in each. Notice their quality. For example, are they gently unfolding, fast and intense, looping and repetitive, curious?
The practice of skillful reflection is to patiently observe your types of thoughts without getting lost in them. Developing the ability to reflect upon your types of thoughts will help you become a more skilled thinker. With practice, your thinking becomes more deliberate. You can rely on it as a trusted, albeit imperfect, advisor.
Carve Out Time for Direct Reflection
Wise investigation (or direct reflection) on the five foundations of intentional living is a powerful tool that will eventually transform your thinking. Directly reflecting upon what is coming to you from all of your senses grounds your thoughts in your body. Wise investigation of what naturally interests you deepens your understanding and helps you stay perpetually curious. Other topics for direct reflection include the timeless, important questions—questions like “Who am I?” and “What is my purpose?” “How does my culture influence me?” “What are the greatest challenges facing us?” and “How do I best live in relation to these challenges?”
In this digital age, where your attention is pulled in so many directions, one of the costs is time and space for direct reflection. It is important to consciously carve out time for it. Reflecting directly on your experience, perhaps more than any other intentional practice, gives you a sense of being in the driver’s seat of your own life. Direct reflection clarifies what gives you purpose and helps you focus your decisions and actions accordingly,
Chapter 7
Self-Talk in the Spirit
of Inquiry
The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.
Thomas Berger
I was fortunate to have had a wonderful mentor in my first professional job as a psychologist in a clinical academic research center. Keenly intelligent and worldly, Rachel had a wealth of professional wisdom to pass on. I learned much about being a professional by observing how she conducted herself in meetings and in front of larger audiences. I looked forward to our weekly one-on-one meetings, which focused on my administrative and clinical responsibilities in the center.
While Rachel was generous in her willingness to pass on knowledge beyond my immediate job responsibilities, my success in securing time with her was dependent upon my ability to keep her attention. To do this, she wanted to know, quickly, what my point was. I often didn’t have a specific question or point because I was still learning to formulate the most relevant questions. However, if I didn’t frame what I wanted to learn about in the form of a specific question, I would soon hear her kind, Parisian-inflected voice marking the end of our time together: “Are we finished?” or “My dear, what’s your question?”, a friendly but pointed reminder not to linger.
This was a formative experience. I internalized the importance of observation and how to ask the right questions. A good question holds attention and shines light on the most effective way to discover what is being sought. I often still ask myself, over two decades later, sometimes with a smile and a French accent, “My dear, what’s your question?”
As a clinician, I am struck by how often clients ask me direct and heartfelt questions in a way they don’t ask themselves. “How do I do this differently?” “Do I have to keep doing this over and over again?” “Why is this so difficult for me?” “What do I do the next time x or y or z happens?”
It makes sense to ask a trusted professional or teacher questions. At the same time, it is equally or more important to ask yourself what your heart and mind want and need to know. And—more important still—listen to your answers! Listen as if you have something of value to say. Even when you are confused or uncertain, your response to your own sincere inquiry provides valuable guidance. And you benefit most from the understanding that you, yourself, arrive at. You often know more than you give yourself credit for knowing. At the same time, you need to practice effective inquiry in order to access and develop your knowledge.
When exploring your mind ask yourself direct questions, rather than thinking about or inferring something. With direct questions, you are more likely to be clear about what can be known.
Even when not asking questions, we often try to make sense out of what is happening by making inferences that imply certain questions. Instead, practice asking yourself, “What, if anything, is my question?” and, “Can it be answered?” Then pause and wait for your response—yes, no, or maybe.
We don’t always have to ask questions or know what the right questions are. Noticing without formulating a question is a great way to be present, observe, and learn. Yet practicing asking specific questions like, “What’s my question?” and “Do I have a question?” trains your attention on helpful ways to make sense of experience.
Skillful questioning helps you perceive what is happening, both within and outside yourself, through an open lens. An open lens of attention is not layered with implicit questions, premature conclusions, and stories about your experience that unnecessarily limits it.
Learning to ask yourself pertinent questions, and listening thoughtfully to your responses, is a practice in reflection that takes time to develop. Consciously set out to become a skilled question-asker.
For skillful reflection, not only is the question important, so is the spirit in which you ask yourself the question. Directly ask yourself questions rather than thinking about them. Then, when you respond, pause again and take it in for a moment before rushing off into more thought. Don’t ask your questions in a rhetorical way. Rhetorical questions don’t take seriously the answer. An example of a rhetorical question might be, “Why do I keep doing the same thing over and over?!” or “How much longer can I can I continue to put up with this?” said with frustration but no real inquiry. Again, when you ask yourself a question to reflect upon, ask it sincerely and with curiosity. Care about your response.
Ask Simple Questions That Invite Direct Reflection
To practice skillful reflection, a good rule of thumb is to ask simple questions that allow for the greatest breadth of response. Two simple questions of enormous value are ,“What’s happening right now?” and “How is this for me?”
By asking “What’s happening right now?
” and training your awareness on the question, you are inviting a pause and direct reflection. Your response can include anything—your sensory awareness, physical sensations, thoughts and half-formed thoughts, feelings, judgments, evaluations, ruminations. When you ask “What’s happening right now?” in the spirit of sincere inquiry, you adopt a more dispassionate stance to witness the happenings of your mind. “What’s happening right now?” shines the light on your mind’s busy-ness and is a good start toward quieting it down.
When I train clinicians to work in an experience-near way with clients, i.e., a way that encourages the client’s personal experience of an idea, I encourage them to use the question, “What’s happening right now?”, which is usually more helpful than the question “How are you feeling?” The challenge with “How are you feeling?” is that we don’t always know how we feel. We might be more familiar with and habitually report one feeling over another. And feelings may not be the most relevant aspect of the experience. Paradoxically, the question “How are you feeling?” is more likely to bring you away from your body, which is the seat of feelings and emotions, into the realm of thought disconnected from feeling. In other words, “How are you feeling?” can take you away from the fuller breadth of your current experience. In contrast, “What’s happening right now?” places your awareness on all aspects of experience, including your feelings.
Imagine sitting across from someone you care about who is talking about a painful experience and tears well up in his eyes. “I see your tears, what’s happening?” indicates an openness that invites exploration of the sadness or any other feeling that is present. It also invites awareness of all other aspects of what is happening. He may have responded to happy memories of a loved one who died, “I remember how she played cards and made all of us laugh.” Or, “I was thinking about what you just said and realized that I have never given myself credit before, always ready to judge myself. That makes me sad.” Or the physical experience of what is happening may be most relevant, “As we were talking, I noticed this tightness in my throat, aware of the black ball of pain every time I think about the breakup, and wonder whether the pain will ever go away.”
Don’t limit the range of your inquiry with a limiting question. Helpful questions give you the greatest range of possibility in which to understand yourself and others. For example, if your loved one shared an experience of a black ball of pain, that is a powerful visceral experience. You can continue to be open and curious. Tell me more about that black ball. Is the black ball dense? Is it permeable? This kind of exploration of an image which came spontaneously from the interior, brought forth by a good question, gives insight into what is happening and, often, helps to let go of the painful experience.
My clients practice in this way outside of therapy sessions, throughout their day and in different situations. They practice pausing and asking themselves, “What is happening right now?” in moments of pleasure and discomfort, and in moments when they are not noticing anything in particular. Neutral moments, or moments that are not charged, allow you to notice more subtle sensations, thoughts, and feelings that can otherwise get overlooked or ignored.
The practice of asking “What’s happening right now?” and other questions that are meant to place awareness inward can be misconstrued as being self-referential. It is a mistake to equate self-exploration and self-understanding with self-preoccupation. A capacity to consciously shine light on the workings of your mind—how you preference, take in, respond, react, and make sense of all that is happening within you—allows you to develop skillful reflection. This is why a practice in reflection is so important. It helps you understand the quality of your thinking, helps you move toward greater understanding of things as they are, and creates space for discovery.
A Good Question, “Is This True For Me?”
Another great question is, “Is this true for me?” It is important to understand what you are telling yourself and whether or not this is really accurate for you. The self -statements you make influence your experience and understanding. It is important that they not unnecessarily limit you.
In the room, when a client says something that is filled with energy, emotion, or conviction, we pause. I sometimes mirror back the content and energy and have the person reflect whether this is true for them.
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Jennifer recently had an asthma attack while at work, the first in nearly a decade. Until now, her asthma had been well-controlled. The experience had shaken her up. In the room with me she animatedly described the experience of her asthma attack which created anxiety. “I was lying there on the floor telling people what was happening and I was freaking out! I couldn’t handle it!” Jennifer now had substantial insight into her old belief that she couldn’t handle a lot of things. In reality, she did cope with most things even when they were difficult. Now it was important to understand if this recent experience of the asthma attack and related anxiety had really left her feeling out of control and not able to cope.
I asked Jennifer to share more about her experience of not being able to handle what was happening. Her animated style shifted and she became quieter, slowing down and speaking more deliberately. In this slowed-down space she described the experience of herself while having the asthma attack as of being both frightened and of being in control. Her actual experience of the asthma attack was different than the story she told herself after the fact. Jennifer felt that she would be OK, her anxiety was not to the level of a panic attack, and she knew what to do to take care of herself. This experience of both being frightened and feeling that she would be OK was very different from her childhood experiences with chronic physical illness and not understanding what was happening. It was also different from her experience of just a year before when she had difficulty discerning the degree of her anxiety and when all anxiety was experienced as overwhelming.
Jennifer’s capacity to pause and look at the fear of the recent asthma attack helped her discern the difference between being frightened and being unable to handle the situation. As a child, there was no difference. In her present circumstances, there was. This was an important recognition for her. Jennifer could see how physical correlates of fear triggered by something in the present evoked old beliefs of not being able to cope. She came to this transformative insight by pausing and asking, “What is happening right now?” and “Is this true for me?”
This recent frightening experience around illness provided an opportunity for Jennifer to reflect on the changes she has made and to further integrate them into her present experience. For Jennifer, “What’s happening right now?” and “Is this true for me?” provided the chance to disentangle old connections and beliefs that were no longer true and didn’t serve her. As a result of asking herself relevant questions about her most recent experience, Jennifer was able to have the insight that she had made qualitative changes in her characteristic way of responding to fear. She now saw that when old triggers arose, she had the capacity to view them from a new perspective, as an opportunity for further transformation of old, unhelpful beliefs. This type of meta-reflection is breakthrough thought that ushers in transformation in future thought.
Exercise: A Direct Way to Notice Experience
Find a place to sit quietly for five minutes. Close your eyes comfortably and ask yourself, “What’s happening inside?” Try to witness for a few moments before putting words to what you are noticing. Then say to yourself what you notice as you notice it. For example, “I am thinking about what I’ll make for lunch.” “I feel tightness in my neck.” “I feel restless.” “Time is passing slowly.” If what you notice is primarily your thoughts, try to direct your attention to your physical experience and continue.
Practice this same exercise for a couple of minutes at different times and while in different situations and internal states.
Good Questions Teach the Most from Experience
Karen, a young tech entrepreneur, recently sold her company t
o a much larger company, the holy grail of many young start-ups. Only three years earlier, she experienced tremendous disappointment, uncertainty, and fear when her first start-up folded. The company going under, after so much hope, sweat, and perseverance, shook Karen’s confidence at its core. She had profound self-doubt and questioned her competence and judgment. She struggled with depression for a time during which she replayed in her mind, over and over, vignettes of meetings with potential funders that did not come to fruition and other possibilities that didn’t quite materialize. Karen accumulated evidence of her inadequacies and built a case against herself.
Karen’s self-indictment got in the way of earnest inquiry around what really happened and what, if anything, she could have done differently. (Sometimes it is helpful to wait before you extract lessons from experience. But since Karen was getting down on herself, it helped to test out the truth of her self-accusations.) Karen practiced pausing and saw that she was creating a story around what happened that probably wasn’t accurate. The story came from a small place inside her, where she experienced the painful emotions of shame and embarrassment.
Now Karen started more consciously asking herself simple, helpful questions like “What is happening?” “What can be known now?” and, when she blamed herself, “Is this really true?” This kind of reflection enabled her to begin to answer herself in a dispassionate way, less skewed by self-doubt. Intellectually, Karen understood more than most people how in the area of tech, good ideas, experience, and hard work need a healthy dose of good fortune in terms of timing and financial support. Even so, it took time and practice in wise investigation to appreciate the skills she had brought to the company irrespective of the painful outcome.