Staying FIERCE with Uncertainty

life-expectations-versus-reality-33594224.jpg

This will be the fourth and final article in this series on managing Uncertainty during these times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As has been explored in the previous three articles in this series, there is a unique opportunity to do FIERCE inner work. Not only are we finding ourselves triggered by the thoughts and emotions we frequently suppress with habits, but the new magnified emotion of isolation is bringing about trauma in itself.

How does your storyline catch you?

Screen Shot 2020-08-06 at 1.09.41 PM.png

The first thing we can do is make friends with our dark side. So many of us spend time getting caught in self-judgement and self-sabotage, that we anesthetize the limbs we need to move us forward. Doing this is another way of grasping onto the ungraspable storyline.

By making friends with our dark side, we become more accepting of ourselves and we see more of ourselves in the actions of others and can be more and more compassionate towards them.The more we can lighten the grip and start to let it go completely, the more we are able to ground ourselves on the inevitable shaky ground that is always the way things truly are.

It may seem paradoxical to let go in order to gain ground, but we can start to witness this in action by getting to know the emotions we often try to avoid because we think they make us bad with a kind, pen and non-judgmental attitude.

Our reactions are pointing out where we need to work on ourselves. By learning to see these habits and patterns before they result in action with will judge, label, criticize, etc, like losing our shit and freaking out or buffering in distractions or getting bogged down in negative self-talk. None of that will serve us. We practice bringing awareness to our reactions, but resist making it just another way to get somewhere, or compete, or use it to get further entrenched in habit and reaction. Like a vicious cycle. Like the spinning buffering internet wheel from hell!

Inherently, we are good, but sometimes our actions (which includes speech) are bad. We have the power to Stay FIERCE and interrupt these patterns. But it takes patience and a sense of humor. We have to be willing to take ourselves less seriously. When we work on this we learn how to Stay FIERCE with greater and greater triggers. We are always a work in progress.

The edge of awareness without repression.png

The purpose of yoga is to practice coming up to this edge and riding it. When we are in a yoga pose, we become aware of how our body is beginning to resist. If we force ourselves and go too far, we will hurt ourselves and no one wants that. If we don’t go far enough, we have no potential to grow. Which, in that case, why bother practicing? The idea of the practice is to ride the edge, breathe with it and be okay where we are at this moment without judgment and without trying to get somewhere. Most people don’t practice yoga this way, but this is truly the way it was intended to be practiced originally.

Once we put thoughts to feelings we are trying to avoid, we are already hooked or caught. Language involves right and wrong, good and bad, judgment, bias, liking and disliking, virtue and vice. If we can make friends with ourselves unconditionally at the pre-verbal level and work with the emotions BEFORE we get hooked, this is how we can grow, change and see things as they truly are.

By continuing to practice keeping our awareness open and observing it coming and going, like our breath or the weather, over time we become more flexible, resilient, open to change and uncertainty. Like the weather there will be days when we find it more difficult to keep an open mind as easily. Be okay with that! Know that even if you cannot see or feel it that it will pass. It is just a detour on the endless journey.

Plan-vs-reality.jpg

When we allow ourselves to think of things as in our control is when they have the potential to become very difficult. The pandemic is an instant reminder that despite all of our busyness and planning, we are not ever truly in control. The fact that we are often lulled into a false sense of comfort and certainty, allows us to atrophy our own muscles of resilience. The more we practice with meditation and seeing things as ever changing and ungraspable and slippery, instead of fixed as negative, positive or neutral, the easier it is to allow things to be and allow everything to pass.

From everything from worrying when we will be able to venture out in public without wearing masks, to economic uncertainty, to balancing relationships with family and friends who may have views slightly or very different from our own, to dealing directly with fatal illness. Through all of this we can learn to build resilience and work with our minds and hearts so we can Stay FIERCE.

Screen Shot 2020-08-06 at 2.14.40 PM.png

For people throughout history such monumental experiences have resulted in light-bulb moments with the realization that living in habits and distractions is just postponing the inevitable and not fully being alive. Many people all over the world have the

potential to emerge from this crisis better than when they went in for having gone through it. This is a true potentially unifying moment. Globally people are seeing themselves as part of an interconnected whole, not just with other people but with all life on the planet.

But when we fall prey to craving comfort and certainty, we dig in our heels in a futile attempt to stay happy. This is an attempt to hold on to a feeling or avoid a feeling. So the impetus is in an effort to be kind to ourselves. But it backfires and causes more suffering.

Screen Shot 2020-08-06 at 1.50.13 PM.png

I like to compare this experience to walking my dogs. If I pull their leashes in a direction they don’t want to go, they pull harder in the opposite direction and then none of us go anywhere. But if I lighten my hold, they instantly relax.

When someone acts out of fear we can feel compassion for them because we can identify with their struggle to hold the feeling of comfort. So if someone is saying something off the rails wacko, we can empathize maybe not with the specifics, but we can put ourselves in their shoes in knowing we have been in situations where we dug in our heels to hold on to the elusive certainty. If we can see that they are just acting out of pain and drop the story or the specifics, they just can appear as a raw person in fear. This does not mean we empathize with the specifics of what they are saying or dismissing or condoning what they are saying. But we can see the root of it. You can condemn the action but resist condemning the person.

_Place your fearful mind in the cradle of loving kindness._.png

Consider the language we use when we describe our emotions and thoughts. We say things like “I am angry”. As if our identity is anger. What we mean, of course, is we are experiencing emotional anger. This is because of the way we are thinking about the situation. Not the way the situation actually is. 

Clearly see and notice what you say to yourself. The story we tell ourselves fuels the fear and reinforces it and magnifies it in our minds. This is absolutely not to say we should avoid, repress or brush under the carpet and feelings. Instead breathe them in fully.

Meditation lets us see the fear and let it go. If we avoid it through habits, distractions, buffering, blame and thoughts, we never loosen  the fear. Without looking we will deny and grasp  at anything that feels better. While grasping, we cannot let go.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me..png

Facing that fear involves feeling uncomfortable. So I will often suggest to my students that when they feel they are coming close to their edge, that they just sit with the feeling and do an on-the-spot taking and giving or tong len meditation. This involves breathing in the negative uncomfortable feeling for oneself and for anyone else who experiences similar thoughts and feelings. And then breathing out relief for one's own suffering and the suffering of anyone else who, again, has those negative thoughts and feelings. So this works with people who trigger us or that we do not agree with or we outright think are wrong. If you breathe in the discomfort and breathe out relief it is quite a transformative process. Be there for yourself without wallowing.

Attempting to think our way out of something is like putting a wild animal in a cage and wondering why it won’t calm. We fuel the fear with our thoughts. Get in touch with the feeling as opposed to the thoughts which will only be a road to avoidance, distraction, negative emotion. Feelings have the ability to open and expand. Thoughts have the ability to close, cage, confine. Our bodies are always in the moment. Thoughts never are.

We may notice the feeling will start somewhere like our hands, head, stomach, shoulders, etc. My typical ways are to hold my breath, start sweating in bizarre places like my crotch, and/or start picking my cuticles. Each of these are physical warning signs from my body that I may want to pay attention to my thoughts and behavior. So I can physically see and feel that something is brewing that requires my attention and I can stop and breathe with it instead of thinking, saying or doing something I may regret.

Screen Shot 2020-08-04 at 11.38.47 AM.png

When our bodies give us these hints, a great way to work with this is to breathe it in. So if I notice I am tense and picking my cuticles, I don’t try to analyze it, beat myself up, label it, etc. I just breathe it in deeply. Feel the discomfort and face it. When you exhale, think of exhaling relief, healing for yourself and for everyone on the planet who feels the same way you do in this uncomfortable moment.

It is difficult to see the consequences of the pandemic as useful, because there are so many people all over the world in so much pain. One thing we can do is prepare ourselves as best we can to avoid falling victim to suffering and to help others who have. We can build our resilience even as we navigate this difficult time. Because there will undoubtedly be more difficult times in the future.

If you are interested in doing some of this work, please reach out for a free consultation. If you require any financial consideration, I am more than happy to make concessions for you. It is my goal to help as many people as I can feel as adjusted to these uncertain times as possible.  I also offer free live daily meditations at 9am ET and free laughter therapy group sessions on Thursdays at 5:30pm ET. Both require no payment, but advance registration.

I will be starting a Weekly Group Sugar Detox, Weekly Group 60-minute and Weekly Group How to Stop Drinking in the Fall. I can work with you if you already have an organized group. 

Previous
Previous

The Gift of Cravings

Next
Next

FIERCE Boredom