On sitting out the storm and soul combing
Sometimes a bad day can hit you like a sudden thunderstorm, lightning and all. Life has a habit of flooding you without warning, almost unbearably so. At times, I have fervently wished that the earth would split open and swallow me up, just so that the bad day would stop, immediately. For those moments, I have a simple mantra: Sit with the pain. Like during a storm, when you have nowhere else to go, you just have to wait it out, as if you were snowed in by your own emotions.
Keep breathing and feeling: only that. Sometimes I feel the thunder in every fiber in my body, and I just sit with the pain, while I breathe calmly and deeply. Because there is no other option. And with every breath I try to stay present. Not because it is comfortable: On the contrary, it is super uncomfortable. This is not a fun exercise. But I know I will regret it later when I don’t do it. There is no point in numbing or hiding pain. Hiding fresh pain is the same as hiding fresh fish: Sooner or later, you’ll find out it’s a really bad idea.
So, sit with the pain. Sometimes, on a bad day, that’s really all that needs to be done. Give yourself your full attention. Feel your feelings. Recently, I was caught by a wave of anger and embarrassment, one of my least favorite emotional cocktails. It hit and seared my body: My cheeks were hot, and it felt like lava was pouring into my chest. In the meantime, I started doing the dishes, just to kill some time. Giving your hands a nice shame-filled soak in soapy water. What else can you do? The pain is there.
Sitting out the storm means letting your emotions run their course. And I’ve come to learn that I can rely on the following idea: The pain will pass, just as rain will pass and snow will melt. After the storm peaks and the wind and rain ease off, things get brighter, safer. And although a few roof tiles have blown off and a branch has fallen, the house and the tree are still standing. The time has come to see how things should proceed, but the worst is over.
// A Little Discipline
But do it only for yourself
It is unfortunate but true: Discipline doesn’t come naturally to me. I do have perseverance. If something makes my heart beat faster, I will work dutifully, diligently to the bitter end. But if I don’t immediately see the purpose of something… well, sometimes I have to dig deep, very deep, to stay motivated. I envy people who have an iron discipline. Take the father of my children; he has it in spades. The moment he sets his sights on something, he turns it into a project and devotedly applies himself. For example, he earned an MBA the year our first son was born. He combined completing an intensive yoga teacher training with a full-time job and taught himself to play the guitar via YouTube. When we were together, that sometimes was a point of contention; the more fanatically he rolled out his yoga mat in the morning and did his asanas, the more fanatically I avoided the whole practice. Still, for a meaningful life, discipline is pretty useful. Meditation, attention, self-examination—the discipline for these doesn’t come easy.
Discipline requires practice and dedication. It means taking responsibility for yourself and the life you want to lead.
Sometimes I waste precious time painting my nails, checking Instagram, organizing books by color, and shuffling my furniture around when I could be doing something different, bigger, more important. Lacking discipline on a bad day feels horrible, because especially then you need some semblance of willpower to move toward the light. The great thing is that you can train yourself to have willpower and discipline—literally. You can control the part of your brain where willpower resides, activating it through practice. This is good news, because that makes it very worthwhile to give it a try. Without any discipline, after all, you continue to act based on what you already know and are familiar with, and doing so means you’ll never get ahead.
The secret of healthy discipline is making sure it’s balanced energy-wise. You want an adequate return on your investment. When you are solely driven by your ego—you worry about what others will think if you don’t work out enough or fail to meet a deadline—discipline will often end up costing you more than it yields. Your relaxation, your social life, or your mental health may suffer, to name but a few aspects of life where discipline is valuable. Staying disciplined isn’t a donation box for the approval, admiration, and appreciation of the people around you. Healthy discipline gives you a sense of self-worth, a goal, satisfaction.
What helps me to stay disciplined is a combination of ownership, self-compassion, higher purpose, and trust. In other words, I make conscious choices, and I am willing—to put in work, for example, or to forgo things. I forgive myself when I fail, and I investigate the reasons I failed. I find out why I do what I do, and I formulate a long-term goal and know why taking action is important to me. I trust that when I stray, I can always return and that, eventually, I’ll end up where I want to be, in a way that works for me and at a time that works for me. On bad days, I no longer have to doubt that.
// Stop Blaming Karma
Karma is not “what goes around comes around”… then again, it actually kinda is. It’s just a little more complicated and subtle than that.
On bad days, the concept of karma is often reduced to a worn-out term. It’s mainly misinterpreted as a reservoir of negative feelings about punishment and justice and compensation. Take the karmic gun, the firing of negative vibes at others by making statements such as “Karma is a bitch”—the idea of “chickens coming home to roost” or “you will get what’s coming to you.” Maybe you have an arsenal of excuses, like “Karma made me do it.” Another favorite is the classic karma complaining: What did I do to deserve this? All of this is giving karma a bad rep.
In Sanskrit, karma means something like “action” or “deed” and simply refers to the universal law of action and reaction. When you throw a pebble in the water, the surface ripples. Thus, every action, large or small, has a consequence. Negativity causes circles of negativity; positivity causes circles of positivity. That is a fact, no ulterior motive: no judgment, no punishment, and no reward. It is a pure observation of what is. Broadly speaking, you can see karma as follows: Your behavior today already carries the future with it. In all of your words, actions, and thoughts, you sow what is to come. Karma is not a court of judgment and punishment. It is simply the law of reciprocity.
For that precise reason, you yourself can change the direction of your karma. That makes it a powerful tool. When you manage to redirect your thoughts, by forgiving yourself or someone else or by feeling compassion for yourself or for others, you can balance so-called negative karma. When all your actions come from an intention of loving-kindness, karma doesn’t come from the outside, but rather from the inside.
And, no, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any hassles or that other people will never annoy or hurt you again. At best, it means that you’ll find the resilience and flexibility in yourself to deal with it better. When you are aware of your actions and motivations, you are creating something new for yourself. If you want a different result, you will have to take a different action. It’s that simple.
If you aren’t in the mood (yet) for self-reflection and just want to be angry or disappointed, then just leave karma out of it. Wielding karma as some sort of sword can quickly turn ugly. It may feel fair, but you may wonder who is eventually “learning a lesson.” Feelings do want to be felt, but there isn’t necessarily an effect or action associated with them. As much as we would like it, we often have no insight into the complexity of the cosmic fabric of which we are a single thread. Do what is right, and trust that the world at large will restore its balance without your personal interference.
Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, from whom we can learn quite a bit about resilience and justice, wisely said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Karma is no excuse for selling yourself or others short. Let it go. Karma is a matter of trust: If your acts are pure and loving, without ex
pectations and without clumsiness, sooner or later you will reap the benefits.
// Loving-Kindness
Do you know what will really improve any bad day? What works universally and always and everywhere? Loving-kindness. Loving-kindness is the answer to everything.
The principle of loving-kindness stems from metta, which is what the Buddhist practice of gentleness and kindness is called. The Buddhist saint Guanyin—the name means something like “she who hears sounds of suffering in the world”—is the embodiment of this life skill. You may have seen an image of her: She has a thousand arms, and those arms are full of friendship, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, grace, and comfort. Guanyin has so many arms that she embraces everyone. And I mean really everyone: the schmucks, the criminals, those who are down on their luck, the ne’er-do-wells, even the people who don’t feel they deserve that embrace.
Practicing loving-kindness isn’t easy. On paper, it’s beautiful; in practice, it can be difficult, especially if you are having a shitty day and actually feel the urge to give everyone who’s bothering you a kick in the butt. On a bad day, someone bumping into my cart in the supermarket can be enough to tick me off.
Fortunately, loving-kindness is a quality you can develop, a skill you can learn, like riding a bike or tying your shoelaces. When loving-kindness becomes your basic attitude, everything in life becomes a little lighter. It is an effective cure against resentment, against shame, against a whole arsenal of negative emotions. By practicing loving-kindness, you develop compassion and empathy for yourself and others and for all the stupid things you do and they do.
After all, metta is also realizing that everyone has their particular flaws. Other people are also just doing whatever. And instead of snapping at them or pushing them away, perpetuating a vicious circle of crankiness in your mind, put your arm around them. For that matter, you can put an arm around yourself.
My metta hobby in a busy supermarket? Whenever there’s a long line and the person behind me is sighing and groaning, I gracefully step aside and let them go first. It only costs me a couple of minutes that I can easily spare, and it invariably produces a smile. Just an everyday example of how simple acts of kindness can brighten your days.
While metta is something you can learn and develop, it’s also innate. However cynical you may have become about the state of humanity from watching the news or observing the world around you, in essence we are loving, caring creatures. Really. We care. When you see someone hurting, isn’t your first urge to offer your help? It is a primal instinct.
Today, for some incomprehensible reason, we have come to see kindness as a weakness, as if you are effacing yourself, as if you are submissive, as if you don’t have anything better to do. After all, you are also busy and hurt and tired. People should take that into account for a change. These days, kindness often doesn’t fit our needs. We prefer to make it through our days efficiently, unhindered, undisturbed.
Loving-kindness offers a different perspective: It is not at all about justifying or brushing away. It is about seeing what is there, perceiving, without directly attaching a judgment or action to it, and then thinking: What kind of wise, positive and loving contribution can I make?
It works both ways: People who practice loving-kindness are generally better at dealing with adversity. They are less downcast, because they feel there is always a choice, always an option that is positive and light.
Now, can I be loving and kind twenty-four seven? No. In an ideal world, we rise above our annoyances and setbacks. But we don’t live in an ideal world. When riding my bike, I will still grumble about tourists casually walking in the bike lane. After a hard day, I’ll blast Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” at full volume. All of that is present too, and we need to allow it, although by now I’m more inclined to keep it to myself.
Sometimes you have to move through negative energy to arrive at loving action. Anger, jealousy, and fear are often indicators of metta. They show where there’s still friction and where there is room for improvement and relief.
What I do know: The more you practice loving-kindness, the easier it becomes to arrive at compassion. It’s as if you were building a highway from your heart to your head, on which you can increasingly quickly travel the distance from cranky to friendly.
A Metta Exercise
Calmly sit down and relax, making sure you are warm and comfortable, and close your eyes. Think of the person who is bothering you (or of yourself, if that’s where you need to send some love) as a small child, open-minded, innocent, and vulnerable. Take this child on your lap and comfort it. Try to see both the child and yourself as imperfect, growing people, each with their own powerlessness and ineptitude. Doing so will breathe some air into feelings of revulsion or irritation. Behind all our masks and humanity, we are all made of the same stardust.
Create for yourself a mantra, like “May everything that lives be happy. May my thoughts, words, and actions contribute to that happiness.” And to that first sentence, I have learned to add “including me.” Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield put it this way during an interview for Lion’s Roar: “The circle of compassion is incomplete if one person is left out. Do you know who that person is? You. As Buddha said, you can search the entire tenfold universe and you will not find a single living being worth more to love than the one in your own home—you.”
Metta Meditation
There are many variations of metta meditation, and I wholeheartedly recommend that you find a form that suits you and practice it. Just as no toolbox is complete without a hammer, no kitchen without a spoon, and no bath without a drain stopper, metta should be part of the basic practice of everyone who wants to live a lighter life. The lines below and on the next page are a good starting point. You can recite them out loud or mutter them softly to yourself. I often do that when I want to create distance between a (negative) primary and a secondary reaction or when I feel compassion and powerlessness.
First, look inward and say:
May I be happy.
May I be healthy.
May I be safe.
May I live lightly.
Now think of someone who makes you smile. That could be a loved one or perhaps a colleague—someone who has a positive presence in your life.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be safe.
May you live lightly.
Then think of someone who leaves you neutral and indifferent because you don’t really know her or him: the train conductor, someone who passes you on a bicycle, an acquaintance of an acquaintance.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be safe.
May you live lightly.
Now think of someone who annoys you, who evokes something negative in you. Don’t immediately think of your nemesis; practice first with someone who irritates you only a little bit. You can work up to practicing loving-kindness for the really tough people later.
May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be safe.
May you live lightly.
Finally, complete the meditation with your intention for everything that lives: people, animals, nature.
May everything and everyone be happy.
May everything and everyone be healthy.
May everything and everyone be safe.
May everything and everyone live lightly.
YOUR LOVELY BODY AND BAD DAYS
// The Soft Animal of Your Body
Why human touch is so important on hard days
I once had a massage therapist who told me that she regularly had clients who didn’t have a specific problem. They didn’t come to have a knot kneaded from their muscles or to prevent back issues; they had simply booked an appointment because of the touching itself, the pure sensation of skin on skin. It’s known that, for babies and young children, being touched is essential for a secure bond and healthy emotional developm
ent. However, the fact that being touched is equally important for adults seems to have been somewhat brushed aside and forgotten in our culture. Placing your hand on someone’s arm during a conversation, embracing a stranger—it isn’t necessarily okay, because the way in which one enjoys being touched is highly personal.
But some form of physical contact, without any other intention than establishing a connection, is a pleasure you should allow yourself. In her poem “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver writes about “the soft animal of your body,” an image I’ve always found beautiful and touching: your body as a soft animal, instinctive, primal, pure, full of life, no ego, no fuzz.
Just as a cat can surrender completely to a pet behind the ears and apes can spend hours grooming each other, the human body also relaxes when being touched. The feeling of a warm hand on your skin, someone combing your hair or giving you a warm hug is often more effective than any painkiller or other drug.
Touch consoles, comforts, connects, relaxes, energizes. It’s primal. I can really experience skin hunger: I can jump in my car in the middle of the night and drive to another town just so I can cuddle up against the sleeping, breathing body of my boyfriend of the moment. It’s a pure desire to occasionally just snuggle with someone without any further intentions. I’m still toying with the idea of a Tinder app for sleepers, for people who just want to nestle and nothing more.
Human touch scores well in scientific studies: It lowers blood pressure, causes the release of oxytocin (also known as the cuddle hormone), and lowers the level of cortisol, the stress hormone, in your blood. Touching boosts your immune system, enhances your sense of security, strengthens your confidence and self-love, and allows you to come home into your body. And on top of that, it is a balm for the soul.
Not everyone has easy access to human touch, though. There’s a strong chance that on a bad day you’ll have more physical contact with your phone than with a living person. Getting a massage is a really good idea on days when you’re feeling meh, if only for your mental well-being. Or asking a friend for a hug. At our editorial office, I occasionally walk over to our office manager, Simone, who’s always up for a firm hug. So nice and familiar. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes it simply has to happen.
The Handbook for Bad Days Page 7