Gem of peace: doing nothing out of anger

Gem of PEACE for today: A few weeks ago, the contractors restoring our house messed up and didn’t put insulation back into one of our walls.  Here’s how it went down and what I learned…about myself and anger.

I had a feeling they didn’t put insulation into one of the walls they were restoring.  I asked them.  “Of course we did,” they assured me.

But it still bugged me.  Brian and I sat with it over night.  We decided to ask them in the morning to open the drywall again.  If there was insulation, we’d pay for the extra repairs.

In the morning, Brian asked them to cut open the drywall to see.  There wasn’t any.

Brian was there when all this went down as I was at the doctor’s office (remember, I still have a brain injury!).  When he told me, I was livid.  I felt cheated.  I felt taken advantage of.  I was angry that we had been so kind to the workers (feeding them, making sure they were comfortable) and this is how they treated us.

I told Brian I was going to march into the house and talk to the manager. I walked inside and found the head guy.  I said to him, “How could you?!  How could you do this?!  We were kind to you!  We made sure you were taken care of.  We trusted you!”

I wasn’t yelling – and I felt “proud” of myself for this (I’m not proud of this now!).  Until…

The manager apologizes profusely.  He then explained what happened.  It was a mistake.  Nothing intentional.  All the guys on the crew apologized.  One guy cut the drywall and left it there. Another guy went upstairs, saw the drywall in place and just started sealing it up without checking to make sure it was ready to go.  Yes, they are responsible for slowing down and doing a good job.  BUT…

THIS is what sits with me:  I intentionally went in there to talk to the manager knowing I was angry, thinking I was justified and that my story was correct (“they are taking advantage of us!” etc).   I didn’t seek to understand first.  And really…my story was wrong. 

The bottom line is this:

my anger was coming from stress (try having a brain injury and then three floors worth of your home destroyed and tons of pounding and sawing) and from fear (feeling vulnerable — I know nothing about home repairs).  It was also coming from old habitual ways of thinking…past experiences making their way into my analysis of the current situation.

Anger does this — we get a story going in our head.  Our thinking becomes really myopic (“they did this to pull one over on us!”).   We feel vulnerable, taken advantage of, like a victim, and powerless.  We get justified in our anger.  And we act out.

I am learned that even though I was correct in that they did not put in insulation, it didn’t serve me (I felt awful later) or the situation to act out of anger.  I am learning and learning that when we are angry, it is better to do NOTHING.  Don’t talk.  Don’t reply to an email.  Don’t text. Goodness don’t post it on Facebook.  Don’t do ANYTHING out of anger.

Instead…breathe.  Long exhales.

Tend to the vulnerable feeling.

Tend to the feeling of powerlessness.

Treat yourself with the utmost kindness and tender regard.

Soften. 

Wait.

A reaction out of anger is always from fear.  And it holds an empty, short-lived, ultimately deflating sense of power (often then filled with guilt and shame).  It hurts others.  It hurts ourselves.  It disconnects us from others and our own hearts.  It feels sticky, ugly, yucky.  It’s laden with regret.

A response out of groundedness, tenderness, and self-compassion comes from love.  And it holds a sort of power that is spacious, full, uplifting, and EMPOWERING.  A true power.  It connects us to the deep power of our hearts…and this universe.  No matter what the outcome of the situation, there is a sense of peace within us because we are taking action that is aligned with love — ultimately, our true nature…our home.

I may not do this every time.  But I am going to make a commitment to try and do NOTHING out of anger.  Instead, to pause and wait… wait with kindness for my own self and breathe.  If this is humanly possible, I hope you will join me!  Do NOTHING when you are angry!  Wait.

Share with me how it goes for you!

Love,

Lisa

* Thank you for reading these Gems of Delight and being a part of the Barefoot Barn community.  Thank you for being a part of this evolution of bringing more compassion into the world by sharing these Gems with your dear ones so they can live with more delight, compassion, and connection in their everyday lives.  I hope these Gems serve you.  Visit the Barefoot Barn website for other ways that I may serve you with mindful coaching (especially for parents!), psychotherapy, workshops and retreats.  Thank you for sharing your comments — it is always a delight to hear what gems are emerging within your own heart.

Our family’s ban on being busy and in a hurry

When is the last time you talked to someone and they didn’t say they WEREN’T busy?!
A conversation usually goes like this:

“How are you guys?”
“Oh you know, we’ve got such n such going on and then there’s such n such coming up. We’re runnin’ from one thing to the next.”
“Oh I know. We are so busy too.”

It’s so common place that we come to expect people to say they are busy. And we think nothing of it when we say how busy we are.

But we should.

When’s the last time you WEREN’T hurrying to get somewhere?  Didn’t have adrenaline rushing through your veins on the way to work or to drop off your kiddos?

All this being busy and hurrying everywhere reeks havoc on our nervous system. It keeps us in stress mode. And that effects EVERY system in us – immune system, digestive…you name it.

And our children???

Our children’s generation is the first to be so darn rushed all the time from a young age on. What do we think is going to be the impact on our children’s developing brains, hearts, bodies, and relationships to be so hurried all the time, to be so in stress mode all the time???

Well the other night, I had enough. I had enough of treating the clock as a god. I had enough of hurrying my kiddos to eat breakfast and get out the door and into the car to go to school.  I was appalled at how the doctor and nurse (though knowledgable and kind) hurried our daughter through her three-year old check up with rushed hands — and how they probably did this with every other child that day and no other parent thought ANYTHING of it.  Why? Because we are used to it!  We are used to our bodies and presence not being regarded as sacred.

Well, enough, I said.

Sitting at the breakfast table…late…I looked around and I thought, “this is crazy. Our culture has lost all regard for honoring the sacredness of the body, for reverencing and honoring its flow. I refuse to teach my children to not honor their bodies. Let them sleep. Let them eat. Peacefully. And Brian and I are doing nothing for our relationship with our kiddos to be on them and hurrying them. Enough. I call for a family ban on being busy and in a hurry.”

Maybe it’s this mid-life shift thing I’m going through (it’s not a crisis and it’s not an awakening. I’m awake. Now I’m just takin’ action n shiftin’ stuff. Big time.).  I’m taking more responsibility for MY life and how I want to live it. No one else is going to be at my deathbed with me and the divine.

It’s going to be me and the Big G reflecting back on my life and asking, “Did I love fully?  Did I live fully?”

It won’t be: “Did I get the kiddos to soccer practice on time?”

Instead I’ll recall images of me and Brian being present with our children.  I’ll recall regarding them and seeing, really SEEING, their needs…and responding to them.  I’ll recall holding Little C. for awhile longer even though we are late for a playdate.  I’ll recall letting Big A. sleep in, leisurely being with him (with my eyes, my attention, my tone of voice), and then going to school.  I’ll recall the times I remembered what is most important.

mutual regard

So it’ll take some time (ha!) to get the busy and the hurry out of our nervous systems. But I am committing myself to “the ban on busy”. I’m committing myself to not being in a hurry.  To slowing it all down.  And really, there is no time to be in a rush.  Life is precious.  Short and precious.

daring to drop it all to find the miraculous right here

“Dare to drop the perfect and find the miraculous in your everyday life. We are about living courageously right here in the middle of crazy mornings, mounds of laundry-folding, tantrums (ours and our children’s), deadlines, heartaches, and the quietly content moments. How? Cultivating delight, compassion, and connection in our everyday lives.” ~ from the Barefoot Barn

I wrote those words awhile back. Today they really resonate with me. Daring to drop the perfect as I have been home for several weeks now recouping from a brain injury. On the couch. In bed. I’ve HAD to drop the need to make things perfect — our home, how I parent, what kind of friend I am, how I am as a leader and therapist. This is HARD!

Yet…it’s in the daring to be IMPERFECT and having the courage to be RIGHT HERE in the PRESENT moment that we exhale and see that our lives are miraculous. Imperfect and miraculous. A precious gift.

And it IS quite daring these days to be imperfect — to not be the perfect parent who responds mindfully every single time her child acts up, to not be everything to everyone, to be vulnerable and in need, to not have it all together at a meeting (or on the playground, for god-sake!).

It IS an act of courage to BE RIGHT HERE instead of scattered in a million different directions never really present to our dear ones, let alone our own hearts and bodies. Social media is great. Iphones rock. But…we can get soooo easily addicted to them (myself included) and get lost in cyberworld instead of RIGHT HERE looking at the snow softly falling, the warm blanket wrapped around you, your child’s eyes filled with excitement telling you a story, nourishing food at your table, a warm house.

But I find that the times when I do just allow myself to be imperfect, I create spaciousness. I literally breathe more easily. I find that when I pause and connect to whoever happens to be in our kitchen, my whole nervous system settles. I find that when I notice the goodness all around me, I rest and I smile deeply.

That’s where I’m at right now…in the middle of breathing that wisdom in, letting it take up residence in my heart and body. Open to the wisdom of being imperfect and cultivating compassion for me and my dear ones…and seeing the miraculous in that.

Where’s the miraculous in your life right now?

Love to you all, Lisa

Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #16: Drop the perfect, embrace the pleasant

I’m laying here on my yoga mat taking a break snickering to myself as I realize the irony taking place in writing this blog post:  I have a page of notes all crossed off as I try to perfect the opening lines of this post. Yes, perfecting a post about dropping the perfect!  Now there is irony!  And there is being very human.  Yes, this is how our human experience is — our habitual patterns are deeply entrenched within us.  And yet, we can shift these patterns.

This striving for perfection is weaved deep into our culture.  There are times when I think, “No!  Not me!  That may be what mainstream advertising is all about, but I don’t buy it.  I’ve dropped the notion of being perfect!”  And then I go around hurriedly straightening up before company comes over!

Two weeks ago, as Sandy the Hurricane whirled around us,

I was on a seven day silent Buddhist meditation retreat.

Things were definitely not perfect.  No power, no heat.  For four days. Nowhere to go (literally.  There was a huge tree down blocking the one exit to the retreat center) but inside (ha!  Literally.  Inside the building and inside our own hearts, bodies, and minds), unable to command the storm to submit to our demands for sunshine and warmer weather, we got to practice going with the flow.  Watching the wave.  Letting go.  Allowing…..aaaand of course, resisting all that, too!

I noticed again and again the truth of Buddha’s words that we suffer when we resist what is.  We suffer when we get caught up in our internal weather systems of stormy emotions, relentless thoughts, and painful sensations.  We suffer when we want something to be different than what it is, when we try and control EVERYTHING around us — trying to make it “perfectly pleasing” to us — when we keep busy, avoiding the inner wisdom of our bodies whispering to us the the simple and yet often elusive way home to our true self.

I practiced an incredibly simple yet profoundly healing practice on retreat:

noticing the pleasant.  Dropping the “trying.”  Dropping the “perfecting.”  And instead noticing what is pleasant.  Right now.  Right here.  In this moment.  This body — the constellation of ever changing sensations in the body.

This doesn’t ignore the negative.  We aren’t trying to get rid of or deny the negative.  We say, “I see you, too.  You can be here, too.”  And we turn our attention, we shepherd our attention back to the pleasant.

There’s resistance there.  We want to go to the negative.  We are primed to notice the negative, the potentially harmful and dangerous.  But often, the path of this neural circuitry is well worn.  So well worn that we jump on it in a nano second.  And that’s how we can spend most of our day:  going down the path of noticing the unpleasant, what’s wrong, what isn’t perfect…in ourselves, our partners, our children, our neighborhood, our nation, or world.  And reacting.

I don’t know about you, but during the retreat, I noticed how this “going down that negative path” impacted me.  How I got carried away by it.  And how, rather than protecting me from potential danger, was causing harm in the present moment.  Harm to my body, my heart, my mind, and my relationships.

And as I formally practiced more and more shepherding my attention back to what was pleasant, I noticed a peace rising within me.  A “soft delight.”  I noticed my heart opening.  I noticed how I felt a warm glow in my heart — for my own self, my dear ones, those on retreat, and all living beings.

I experienced how, ultimately, it is not WHAT happens in life, but how we relate to it that elicits peace or suffering, liberation or imprisonment.  No matter if we just got a diagnosis that we have two weeks to live or we lost a job or we just had a great time with old friends.  Whatever it is….the story and the specifics don’t create our happiness.  WE do. It’s how we relate to whatever it is that is happening right now within us and around us that creates our happiness.

So…here’s a thought:  maybe try noticing the pleasant for one day.  Shoot, one hour in the day!  Notice what is good and delight-filled, kind or pleasant.  Within you and around you.  And when the old habit of noticing the unpleasant shows up, say hello, allow it to be there, and then just come gently back (again and again) to noticing the pleasant.

I’m in this with all of you!  Many blessings!  (And next time you come over, I won’t hurry and straighten up!  Please notice what’s pleasant in our home…even the mess!)

The Call of Fall – Pause

This fall, I am drawn to pause.  Summer had us out and about, playing in the sandbox and on the playground, swimming and hiking, meeting up with friends, and looking at bugs (oh yes.).  We had our “Summer Activities Board” up in our kitchen from May til August, sparking spontaneity and creativity.

But every fall, and even this year with school starting for us, I find myself drawn to pause.

To slow down.  To “go within” after months of being out in the world.  To regroup.  To be in my body and heart.  And to rest there for awhile.

Stillness calls me.  Even as I type away from my second floor window in Georgetown.  Even as I drive up and down (up and down, up and down!) 270.  Even as I walk to work in the eaaaaarly morning hours of dawn (now just two days a week!).  As I go home and hug my kiddos and heat up some soup and put C’s rainboots on her little feet and help my son get into his knight costume.

Fall calls me to pause.  To breathe it all in.  And to let it all go, too.  And to rest.  My thoughts, my worries, my plans, my body.

Some times “how-to” steps can be helpful when cultivating a new practice…Here’s a post about taking a Sacred Pause I wrote in the Spring with easy “steps to follow” for finding that sacred pause.

Here’s another post about finding that Sacred Pause in our parenting.

I find that when I pause throughout my day, the Sacred emerges…or rather, I wake up and SEE the Sacred already alive and present in my day.  I soften.  I open.  My shoulders relax, my breath deepens.  And I find that a sense of gratitude fills my heart.  The beauty all around me beacons me to honor and reverence this one precious and short life.

Sweet blessings of Pause to you all.

How to heal by doing very little? Just N.A.P.!

I had a hard day.  You all know how it goes – something doesn’t go as planned, people don’t respond the way you’d like, you were just “off” and didn’t come across as confident or maybe even competent, your child threw up or is having a rough day, someone was critical of you even though you were really really trying to help. We’ve all been there. The specifics don’t matter. (No really, they don’t matter. Keep reading!)

Today, I could feel the sting in my heart, the tightness in my throat, the defeat in my slumped shoulders…all before noon.

I started down the path of aversion and separateness: “Well, I’ll never help them again!”  And judgment: “Who do they think they are?!”

I got into the car.  I sat there.  Tears were welling up.  Not the tears of hysteria and wild emotion, but the quiet tears of defeat.

I knew I needed to hear my own voice. I turned on my iphone (god, I love this thing!), went to the voice recorder and clicked “record.”

I sat there, pausing, breathing.  I know that explaining, complaining, and analyzing don’t do jack to heal us.  They aren’t the healing balm to suffering.

And I wanted HEALING BALM. Not some bandaid B.S.  I am over the “treating the symptoms” kind of approach.  I go for true healing.

So I decided to “go back to the basics” of my mindfulness practice:

I just started naming whatever was in my present moment awareness.

Any thought, emotion, memory, sensation…whatever came into my awareness, I named it.
“Anger.”
“Tightness.”
“Heat.”
“Now this layer of defeat.”
“Now breathing.  Now I am exhaling.”
“Crying….; wet…hot…”
“Now tightness in my throat.”
“Thinking.”
“Now thinking of memories from childhood.”
“Now this layer.  Thought.  Trying, trying sooooo hard.  And being misunderstood.  Feeling like crap.”
“Now breathing.”
“Now tightness.”
“Now ‘old belief’ – ‘I try and no one notices.”
“Aloneness.”
“Quiet.”
“Now regret.”
“Compassion.”
“Softening.”

It went on like this for 20 minutes.  Just naming whatever came into my present moment awareness.  No judgment.  No “going into the story.”  No analyzing the sensation, thought, memory, or emotion.  Only right here.  In the now.  Space.  And Breath.

Gradually, I noticed this:

life returning
a sense of resiliency
an okayness within me
no desire to change what was
letting go of blame, hurt
opening
expansiveness
a sense of connection

Gradually, there was less gripping.  My heart felt restored.  My body — calm.  My emotions — soft, even.

I thought of Lao Tzu’s words: “Can you wait until the mud settles and the waters become clear?”

The water was becoming clear.  Settled and clear.

NAME.
ALLOW.
PRESENCE.

That’s all I did.  I took a “N.A.P.”

This is what heals. This naming “what is.” This spacious allowing. This kind presence. Too often we get caught up in the weeds of our emotions and thoughts, when, really, all we have to do to become untangled from them is to look up and breathe in the expansiveness of the sky.  We get caught up in the waves of our thoughts and emotions instead of allowing them to just rise and and fall on their own…instead of remembering WE ARE THE OCEAN.

REMEMBER WE ARE THE OCEAN, as Tara Brach says.

Bitterness.  Confusion.  Gone.

In their place:  a gentle, compassionate, spaciousness for holding the deeper hurt within me – holding and regarding what longed to be seen within me.

But had I not just “allowed” and softened and breathed and named whatever it was that came into my awareness and held it all with gentle, gentle presence…but instead got caught up in the “weeds” of judgment, blaming, separating, I’d still be feeling like crap.  Maybe I would’ve called a friend and they would’ve been like, “Oh that bites, Lisa.  Wow.  They don’t know what a good thing they got!  You are an incredible………….” And I would’ve felt “better.”  For a moment.

But what was needing my attention most WEREN’T the particulars (the waves, the weeds) of what happened.  It wasn’t OTHER people’s reactions or behaviors that needed my attention.  IT WAS ME. The parts of me in need of some healing balm.

So I found myself THANKING these experiences of today – and all the people.  They woke me up to tend to ME.  I found myself BOWING to life and the SIMPLICITY and the ease to which we can suffer less.  Just a bit of spaciousness, naming, allowing, and gentleness.

Doing very little.  And yet healing a lot.

I didn’t change my experiences (or the people around me!). I changed how I related to them. And THAT cultivates peace. THAT is what, as the Tibetans say, brings on the lion’s roar: the capacity of heart to be with whatever arises.

I did call a friend. Well, she happened to call me. And I sat there telling her NOT about the particulars of the day but rather this process and the clearing and the CALM within me now. She gets it. We said very little. Still tender, I went home, lighter, softer, whole.

Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #15: Compassion closer to home

http://www.lifethroughthelensblog.com/

“Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.”
- Mother Teresa (1910-1997); Founder Of The Missionaries Of Charity

Everyday compassion. We don’t have to travel very far to find opportunities to offer compassion! We have them – right here in our homes, the grocery store, the bus stop, the office, the playground.

The leaders I most admire are the folks whose public life and private life match.

They are kind and compassionate to the people in their intimate circle — their families, their staff, their neighbors. The people who act with integrity when no one is looking.

In the worlds of motherhood, psychotherapy, mindfulness and compassion, yoga, spirituality, and poetry in which I swim, someone could have a bagillion followers and be preaching an incredible message…or be a parent going about their day with no fan-fare, her “yoga” in action as she tenderly tends to her own self, helps her toddler step out of the car, or picks up trash on their walk to the park — what matters is that our daily living is infused with compassion – for ourselves and the dear ones right in front of us.

To all of us who show compassion in everyday ways, SWEET LOVE TO YOU! May your day be filled with delight, kindness, and wholeness. (and a sweet nap if you can manage one!)

(Don’t you love the picture of hands holding hearts?! I have been so moved by the photography of Kristi Jackson. Her work evokes a sense of delight and compassion in me. It is light-filled, soft, and soothing. Check out her blog and Etsy shop.)

Blessings of Delight,
Lisa
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Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #14: Peace Garden

Peace Garden

Your Peace Garden

Decide today what seeds you will water.

The seeds of peace, compassion, connection, delight, and kindness?

Or the seeds of hostility, judgment, bitterness, separateness, and anger?

Whatever seed we water – moment to moment, day after day, grows. Keep putting even just a bit of water on that seed and in time, it becomes a garden, a landscape.

A garden of tenacious, tall weeds we get lost in.

Or a garden of beautiful, vibrant flowers we (and our dear ones) flourish in.

Sow the seeds of peace today. In this moment. Tend to the peace garden in your heart. Wherever you are planted.

Blessings of Delight,
Lisa

** If this post resonated with you, check us out! Explore The Barefoot Barn’s website. Join the growing Barefoot Barn community of soulful folks on Facebook. Or share this gem with a dear one.

Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #13: The “So do I” practice

Tom Goddard and Rezvan Ameli teach Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  They also lead mindfulness coaching groups and post-MBSR groups to support your practice.  Here is one of their latest “mindfulness nuggets”.  If you’d like to receive this nuggets, visit Tom’s website:

There is a practice called “so do I.”

It is not a defense of what others are doing by saying that I am doing it. It is merely an acknowledgment of the truth of our shared humanity.

It might go like this:

I notice a colleague fearfully protecting turf.
I say to myself, “she is defending her livelihood, her ability to provide for her family.So do I.”

I notice a family-member gossiping about another.
I say to myself,“she is gossiping about another. So do I.”

I learn, as I did this morning, that a friend has died.
I say to myself, “Chris died. So do I.”

Tom Goddard, April 5, 2012

*********
Such a practice reminds us of our common humanity.  In doing so, we soften — our judgment, our bodies, our hearts.   We recognize that we are not alone. And we also recognize our morality.  This further makes us tender and alive and embrace our life again with vigor, a soft smile and a warm, open heart.

Tips for Everyday Mindfulness #12: The Sacred Pause

taking a sacred pause in Spring.

“Rest in the pause between breaths.
Pause in the rest between thoughts.
Bask in the space between words.
Stop in the stillness of a calm lake
and listen.”
- Julie Rappaport

In her book, Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach talks about the Sacred Pause. Pausing for a moment in our day, perhaps several times in a day, to “arrive” right here. In your day. In your body. In your life.

As a mom to two little ones, I know how busy life can be. I get up at the crack of dawn (ok, even before dawn!) and I feel like I am going all day until I, often, fall asleep in my son’s bed after singing him to sleep.

It is challenging to get away for a girls’ night, a weekend retreat…let alone a week-long retreat. I find that I need “everyday” retreats. Mini retreats throughout the day so I can arrive at my heart again, center myself, and feel MY pulse as well as the pulse of Life. I need these mini retreats in order to be able to respond to my children (and husband and co-workers) instead of react.

Every. Single. Client. or workshop I facilitate, I offer the wisdom of finding “everyday ways” to take mini retreats. To center ourselves. To re-arrive in this moment. One such way or tool is the Sacred Pause.

The Sacred Pause is a gift. It gives us a chance to come back to our hearts. To relax. To recharge. To begin again our daily tasks of caring for others.

Here’s how a Sacred Pause might look:

Take a moment to pause.
Maybe you’d like to sit down.
Feel the feet on the floor.
Let the legs relax.
Soften the belly.
Feel the heart slightly lifting up to the sky.
Feel the crown of the head lifting up to the sky.
Soften your face – eyes, jaw, lips.
Feel the shoulders relax.
Become still.
Sense your attention deepening and feel your body.
Take a few full breaths – slowly exhaling.
Breathe in…
Breathe out…
Sense yourself softening – your eyes, shoulders, judgment
Sense yourself softly smiling.
Feel the heart – from the back of the heart – lifting.
Feel the sensations of your body – maybe tingling in your shoulders, or warmth in your hands.
Feel the body from the inside out.
Allow yourself to rest – just breathing in and out, feel the rise and fall of your breath.
Stay here, still and breathing, for as long as you need.
When you are ready, open your eyes gently and slowly.
Notice how you feel.

There you go. That’s what I try to remember to do and what I offer to others. In a few minutes – at the park, at work, before walking in to the house, when I’m brushing my teeth. A mindful practice that can often bring me back to my heart and help me to arrive here again and remind me of my connection to my own Self and the pulse of Life.