Monday Mindfulness Minute: Trust The Inner Stability of Gratitude

"When the big things feel out of control focus on what you love right under your nose." - The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

I've always had awful external balance. No matter the activity—rollerblading, skateboarding, or ice skating—they all seem to end with the same result: me on the ground. That's probably why I laugh when I see YouTube videos of people slipping on ice; it makes me feel a little less alone about my lack of balance (come on, I know you laugh at them too).

As it turns out, the mind at times can be more unstable and slippery than any amount of ice we find ourselves on outside. We all know what internal slipping feels like: we are completely fine enjoying our day when out of nowhere one of the 70,000 thoughts that usually floats by seems to stick. This thought could range from why we did something 10 years ago to what will happen in 2 years if we make x or y decision and anything in between. While this sticking thought may seem harmless, like the first blanket of snow on a road, it can quickly solidify as we think about it more and more ("Neurotic behavior is sometimes defined as a frozen pattern." Awakening the Buddha Within). Before we know it, we can completely slip away from the now to the land of illusions.

So how do we return to solid ground when we feel ourselves slipping on thoughts inside? If only there were an internal lifeline we could grab a hold of to steady ourselves when we get lost in the past or future. As it turns out there is. That lifeline is gratitude.

Gratitude isn't thinking about what could have been or could be but an appreciation for what is right in front of us. The tree we see outside our window. The coworker we chat with every day at work. The body that gives us the opportunity to experience any of this.

The power of gratitude lies in its ability to help us return to the present moment and appreciate what we have "right under our noses" (as the quote at the beginning states). While gratitude for the "big" things in life is great, finding gratitude for the "smallest" (aka the most under-appreciated) things helps me get back on my feet the quickest. An example of one of the "small" things is the breath. If I'm able to see myself slipping, acknowledging and having gratitude for this breath never fails to re-balance me in the present.

While at first, we may only turn to gratitude when we notice ourselves slipping into the unchangeable past or unknowable future, it eventually becomes a life practice that is always there to help us thaw a thought that starts to stick. We make the decision every day of whether we want to spend our life off-balance on the ice of mind, or whether we practice gratitude and return to the child-like enjoyment of splashing in puddles of thoughts that appear but never quite solidify.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: Treat your inner weather like outer weather

"... like the weather, what you think is unpredictable and subject to change." Awakening the Buddha Within p 82

Weather and meteorology have fascinated me since I was a child. My parents joked for the longest time that they thought I would grow up to be a weatherman because when a storm would roll in I would head outside to provide my stormchaser analysis. It wasn't until I was much older that I began to notice that inner weather seemed to have as much if not more impact on my life than outer weather.

I have found it increasingly useful to think of the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise inside as nothing more than internal weather with characteristics similar to the weather we experience outside. As it turns out, so much of what we find in nature outside is reflected inside each of us, and here are just a few of the ways our inner and outer weather relate:

1. Temporary: Has there ever been a rainstorm that has lasted for more than a few hours or days? The same goes for our thoughts, feelings, or emotions. We should experience them fully while they are with us but should rest in the knowledge that whether good or bad, they aren't going to last.

2. No need to figure out why: Just as there are countless reasons why outer weather is the way it is, there are just as many reasons why we think and feel a certain way inside. Of course, there may be an opportunity to get down to the root cause of why we feel a certain way if it lingers, but more often than not our thinking about and trying to figure out why we feel or think a certain way just amplifies the issues.

3. Know where your storm shelter is: What is the top thing meteorologists tell us to do if a tornado is near? "Get to an interior room of your house and get as low as possible." The same goes for us. We must know that when we are triggered or extremely upset about something, we must find a solid point within us that we can rest in without wreaking havoc outside like a tornado would. Usually, this inner storm shelter is a place where we can just be quiet and not say anything until the storm passes over.

Monday Mindfulness Minute: "I am never upset for the reason I think."

“One of the most amazing things you will ever realize is that the moment in front of you is not bothering you—you are bothering yourself about the moment in front of you.” Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

Life outside moves at such an incredible pace that it can be hard to pinpoint the source of our frustration, and we end up almost exclusively blaming our upset feelings on some external happening. What if the source of our frustration was something that lived inside of us?

In The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse, the little boy remarks, "Isn't it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside." As it turns out, what happens on the outside can stay with us on the inside. The Sanskrit word for this is a Samskara. Samskara translates as an impression or imprint that remains with us after an outside event is over (I remember it because -skar reminds me of scar, and it's like an inner scar we take on).

These internal scars are like internal wounds that we spend our lives protecting. Ever wonder why we get so defensive when we get called out in a meeting or a driver cuts us off in traffic, it's because we are protecting some open wound from the past that hasn't had a chance to heal. The insidious nature of these open wounds is that because they are on the inside, and we never look inside, we blame the effects of them getting hit on what is happening outside. This misdirection leads to a lack of healing and leads to us having the same negative feelings over and over.

It might sound like we're arguing semantics, but this shift in our perspective can be the difference between living as a victim our entire lives, thrown here and there by what's happening outside, and living from an elevated perspective where our automatic reactions aren't one of upset at what's happening outside but one of gratitude because it is showing us an internal wound that needs to be healed.