I will alter the balance between nourishing and depleting activities by:
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And most important of all: see if it’s possible to remain mindful when you’re carrying out both the nourishing and depleting activities—and especially when you are consciously shifting the balance between them. See if you can sense how even the tiniest—seemingly inconsequential—changes can alter how you think and feel, and how this affects your body.
You could refer back to the list often, perhaps weekly, and certainly if you feel your mood worsening. And remember, you don’t have to make major changes in direction: tiptoes are perfectly fine.
Many of us find numerous ways to avoid or put off altering the balance between nourishing and depleting activities in our lives; usually for very solid-sounding and altruistic reasons. Some may say, for example: “I’m balancing being a mom, a career woman, a wife and a homemaker. Where do I find the time for myself?” Others will point to the large projects at work or home, and say, “Not now, not yet; maybe some day—when this project is finished.”
On the surface, this approach seems reasonable; but try to see if it is possible to take the long view. In time, if we don’t rebalance our lives, we will become less effective at everything we do. We will become joyless, sleepless and witless. Here are other common reasons people have given for not rebalancing their lives:3
There are things in life that I don’t have a choice over, like going to work.
If I don’t keep up, I fall behind.
It’s shameful to show weakness at work.
I wasn’t raised to take time for myself.
I can only do something that I enjoy once all my obligations to others, or to my work, have been completely satisfied.
I have so many caring responsibilities. It would be wrong to put myself first.
If any of these reasons, and countless others like them, sound familiar to you, then perhaps you are now in a position to see how many of them depend on old habits of black-and-white thinking in which there seems no middle way. Mindfulness helps you to get beyond the extremes, to see how you can find creative ways of helping to nourish yourself in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Like Beth, you might start finding gaps in your day. And, in the long run, it’s best foreveryone, including yourself, to find a balance between nourishing and depleting activities.
Seeing clearly the balance between the things that nourish you and those that deplete you is important. But they also have a deeper underlying message too. First, they help you to explore the connections between your actions and your mood. Deep down, we all feel that when we’re unhappy, stressed or exhausted there’s nothing we can do about it. It feels like a set point. If you feel at your wits’ end through stress, then you feel helpless—you are stressed. Period. Likewise, if you feel exhausted, devoid of energy or lacking in vigor, you feel that “this is just the way things are” and “there’s nothing I can do to change it.”
Taking time to see how you can rebalance your daily life encourages you to see these thoughts as just thoughts—as “propaganda” that prevents you from even testing whether it is true or not.
Furthermore, if you can more easily sense a shift in the balance between the nourishing and the depleting, this can act as an early warning signal for worsening mood. It also acts as a route map back to a balanced and happy life. If you know which activities nourish you, you can do more of them should you start to feel unhappy or unduly stressed or tired. They also give you a menu of activities from which to choose should you feel your mood worsening. This map may prove to be of huge significance because chronic low-level unhappiness, stress and exhaustion sap your capacity to make decisions. If you have preplanned for such an eventuality, a minor dip in mood can become a springboard to greater happiness rather than a stepping-stone to misery. Depleting and negative thoughts are part of the territory of living in a frantic world, but that does not mean you have to buy into them.
Practices for Week Seven
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Over the coming week, we suggest you carry out three meditations on six days out of the next seven. This week is not as prescriptive as the previous six. We suggest that you tailor your own formal meditation practice by choosing two of the meditations at http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness that you’ve carried out before.
Choose one of the meditations because you felt it gave you some appreciable nourishing benefits, such as helping you to relax or simply making you feel good about the world. Choose the other because you felt that you didn’t fully get to grips with it first time around, because it was difficult in some way or because you feel that you’d benefit from repeating it. Devote about twenty to thirty minutes to the two combined meditations.
As with the previous ones, you could carry them out in sequence while listening to the appropriate tracks online, or do them at different times of the day. The order in which you do the two meditations isn’t important. It might be worth setting up a playlist for the two meditations on your MP3 player. And try to remember that it’s the spirit of the meditations that’s important rather than the detail.
Write the two meditations you plan to do here (you can mull this decision over for a while if you wish):
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The Three-Minute Breathing Space meditation (twice a day at set times and when needed—see p. 132).
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Step Two: Breathing Space plus taking further action
The first theme of this chapter has been to bring you to greater awareness of the balance between depleting and nourishing activities, and to help you optimize this balance. The second theme develops the first, by coupling the Three-Minute Breathing Space with concrete action to make an immediate and meaningful difference to how you feel. The Breathing Space can be more than a means of reconnecting with your expanded awareness. It can also act as a powerful springboard to help you take skillful action.
You may have already experienced through your practice of mindfulness that the tint in the lenses through which you routinely see the world has, progressively, become more obvious, allowing you to survey reality with a bit more clarity. With this in mind, after “grounding” yourself through meditation you are in a better position to take skillful action. So this week, when you feel stressed, as always, take a breathing space first, then afterward consider what action you might take. This need not be productive in a business sense, or even in a personal sense, but should be something that just feels right and appropriate. It should not be impulsive or habitual but, rather, an activity that will actively enhance your life.
As we have already seen, often the most skillful course of action will be to remain mindful and let the situation resolve itself. However, during this week in particular, we’d like you to focus on taking a specific action that you can do almost as a behavioral experiment. We use the word “behavioral” to remind you that you do not have to feel like doing it—you just have to do it! This is because research has found that when our mood is low, our usual motivation process is reversed. Usually, in daily life, we are motivated to do something, then we do it. But when mood is low, we have to do something before the motivation comes. Motivation follows action, rather than the other way around. You may have noticed this, for instance, if there has been a time when you almost decided not to go out with friends, saying, “I’m too tired; I won’t enjoy it,” and then discovered to your surprise that you had a great time. Curiously, although this may have happened many times, we find it difficult to learn from it because when our mood is low next time, its propaganda—blocking our memory from accessing positive times in the past, and telling us there is no point in doing anythi
ng now—is so strong that we are, once again, caught in its trap.
In summary, when you feel tired, unhappy, stressed or anxious, waiting until you feel motivated may not be the wisest course of action. You have to put the action first.
When mood is low, motivation follows action, rather than the other way around. When you put the action first, motivation follows.
So, after you have used the Breathing Space at times of stress this week, pause momentarily and ask yourself:
What do I need for myself right now?
How can I best take care of myself right now? You have three options for skillful action:
You can do something pleasurable.
You can do something that will give you a sense of satisfaction or mastery over your life.
Or you can continue acting mindfully.
Why these three options? Because the sort of exhaustion and stress that can be most undermining for your quality of life particularly affects these three: your capacity for enjoyment, your ability to keep on top of business and your motivation to be mindful. We’ll explore each in turn.
Doing something pleasurable Exhaustion, stress and low mood ensure that instead of genuinely enjoying life, you experience “anhedonia”—that is, you can’t find pleasure in life. The things you used to enjoy now leave you cold—you feel as if a thick fog has put a barrier between you and simple pleasures, and few things seem rewarding any more. Research suggests that much of this is because the “reward centers” of the brain have become insensitive to the things that used to activate them. So gradually, by taking mindful action, you start, in small ways, to wake up these neglected pathways, selecting activities you used to enjoy or think you might now enjoy, and trying, as an experiment, to discover if they give you pleasure.
Enhancing feelings of mastery or control Anxiety, stress, exhaustion and unhappiness reduce your sense of control over your life. Research over many years has found that when we feel out of control in one area of our life, this can spread like a virus affecting other areas too. We end up feeling inexplicably helpless, saying to ourselves, “There’s nothing I can do” or “I just don’t have the energy.”
When this “helplessness virus” kicks in it is extremely powerful, affecting even little things. So you can end up feeling like you don’t want to walk down the road to mail a letter or pay that bill, even though it might only take five minutes. It just lies there, accusing you each day, reminding you that you are not coping. Gradually, there is an accumulation of little things, and you seem to have lost control over the most intimate aspect of your life. So, in gradual steps, you select tiny actions that can be done and, once done, they communicate with the deepest aspects of yourself that you are not as helpless as you thought.
Enhancing mindfulness As you have seen throughout each week of this course, stress and exhaustion arise from (and contribute to) the Doing mode of mind that volunteers to help when you are stressed, but has the side effect of narrowing your life, paving it over with overthinking, striving, suppression of “weakness,” automatic pilot, mindless eating, mindless walking and, well, mindless everything really. So following the Breathing Space this week, you have another option—act mindfully and return to your senses: what do your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smell? What can you touch? What is your posture, your facial expression? What is right here, if you take a moment of mindful awareness?
Choosing actions—being specific Choose what feels most appropriate. Some ideas are shown below, but don’t feel limited to them. Do what feels the best. Don’t feel guilty about doing something for the hell of it. And don’t expect miracles. See if you can carry out what you have planned as best you can. Putting extra pressure on yourself by expecting this to alter things dramatically may be unrealistic. Rather, activities are helpful experiments—done whether you feel like doing them or not—to rebuild your overall sense of pleasure, control and mindful awareness in the face of shifts in your mood.
1. Do something pleasurable4
Be kind to your body. Have a nice hot bath; have a nap for thirty minutes or less;5 treat yourself to your favorite food without feeling guilty; have your favorite hot drink.
Engage in an enjoyable activity. Go for a walk (maybe walk the dog for a friend); visit a friend; get together what you need so you can do your favorite hobby; do some gardening; get some exercise; phone a friend you have been out of contact with for a while; spend time with someone you like; bake a cake; go shopping; watch something funny or uplifting on TV; go to the movies; read something that gives you pleasure (not “serious” reading); listen to some music that you have not listened to in a long while; do one of the Habit Releasers from a previous chapter.
What things can you add to this list?
Being kind to my body Enjoyable activities
2. Do something that gives you a sense of mastery, satisfaction, achievement or control6
These are sometimes difficult to do because they can seem to add to exhaustion, rather than relieve it. We suggest doing small amounts of an activity, and doing it as an experiment, specifically when you feel helpless or out of control. Try not to prejudge how you will feel after it is completed. Keep an open mind about whether doing the activity will be helpful in any way. It may be something like cleaning a room in your house; clearing out a cupboard or drawer; writing a thank-you letter or other “catching-up” letters; paying a bill; doing something that you have been putting off; getting some exercise. If you like, break them down into smaller steps and only tackle one step at a time. It’s especially important to congratulate yourself whenever you complete a chosen task or even part of one. For example, if you resolve to clean a room, only do it for, say, five minutes rather than ten or twenty. Savor the feelings of satisfaction, achievement and control it gives you.
What things could you add to this list?
What gives me a sense of mastery, satisfaction, achievement or control?
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3. Act mindfully7
Whatever you are doing, mindfulness is only one breath away. It is as easy as focusing your entire attention solely on what you are already doing right now. In this way, see if it is possible to bring your mind to each present moment, for example: (“Now I am standing in a line … Now I can feel the basket in my hand … Now I’m walking forward … Now I’m reaching for my bag …” Be aware of your breathing as you do other things; be aware of the contact of your feet with the floor as you stand and as you walk. No one else need know that you are doing a mindfulness practice, and it could change your whole day.
The truth is that often, tiny changes in what you do—whether you feel like doing them or not—can fundamentally alter the way you feel. You can become reenergized, destressed or have your spirits lifted by taking a few baby steps forward. For example, a short walk may dissolve exhaustion, a cup of tea may lift your spirits, or ten minutes reading your favorite magazine may reduce stress. Taking mindful action helps you to discover which activities most soothe your frantic nerves in moments of crisis. They may be unique to you and they will quite often seem like tiny steps—almost inconsequential tiptoes forward. However, when you couple these small actions with the Breathing Space meditation, you produce something of profound power and importance. This is something that each of us has to feel for ourselves; you may be told this a thousand times and shown all of the scientific evidence, but none of this will be anywhere near as powerful as actually sensing it for yourself (see box, opposite). And this is the core message of Week Seven:
Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Page 21