December 10, 2008
7 ways to calm your mind NOW
This is not going to be one of those, "watch your breathing" or "go to your happy place" lists. But, instead, 7 simple ways to rediscover peace of mind.
Notice that I said "rediscover peace of mind." Peace of mind isn't something you need to create, it's something you need to find, like looking for your keys. When your keys are lost, you don't need to meditate or visualize or call your favorite channeled entity. You simply "do the mission" of looking for your keys and, if they're there, you'll find them. So here are 7 missions that, when you do them, help you rediscover peace of mind. And, hey, they may not all work for you, but who cares? You only need one!
- Recall 3 times that you were agitated in the past… and then and then remember that, each time, it passed…probably on it's own, without you needing to do anything. (We tend to project our current state into the future as if it will never change, forgetting that it always does.)
- Find one tiny "place" in your mind or body that feels good, or is vibrating pleasantly… or, at least, feels neutral. Look in odd places, like the back of your knee or inside your ear or in the middle of your wrist. Look outside your mind or body if you need to. Check and see how big that place is — is in the size of a pea? A grape? A baseball? A beach ball? Move your attention around the edge of that place… and when you're done, see how you feel. (We often tell ourselves that we feel something "all over" when that's not accurate.)
- Make a list of at least 3 times in the past where something you didn't like at the time turned out to be something great or valuable sometime later. This isn't about being all woo-woo and Pollyanna-ish and trying to convince yourself that everything is peachy-keen. It's reminding yourself that we tend imagine that something unpleasant now will into the future forever… and we also forget that, well, things often aren't what they seem.
- Take it all the way to the death… make a list of how what's going on now will lead, step-by-step, to your lonely, horrible, broke, battered, helpless death. Don't leave any steps out. Then draw a line to divide your list at the place where everything that follows seems highly unlikely. Then see how close to NOW you could move the line if you were really honest. (We usually only play out our "worst case" scenarios long enough to validate our story… take a few more steps and the loop unwinds.)
- Have an identity transplant. Back to those 6,000,000,000+… there has to be at least one of those people who, if they were in your situation, would be calm, cool, collected (and think the way you're reacting is just silly). What is ONE SIMPLE, TINY THING they might DO (not think or feel, but DO… an ACTION they might take which is easy and quick) differently than you? DO THAT THING! (We "lock in" an unpleasant state by not doing things inconsistent with it.)
- Do the math… you are one of 6 billion+ people on the planet, one of over 120 billion that have ever lived. As they say in Australia, "Harden the f*&% up!" (When our attention is turned inward we seem so much more important than, well, we are.)
- SHUT UP! Don't talk to your friends and family about "what happened." Don't commiserate over drinks. Studies show that recalling the event has 2 problems: First, we remember it wrong, and embellish the story to validate our position. And, secondly, each time we re-tell it, we re-create the unpleasant feelings. (We often think the unpleasant feelings are PROOF that something horrible happened to us, when they're just the EFFECT of thinking an unpleasant thought!)
Any one of these has the potential to snap you out of anxiety, panic, fear, or anger and into something more spacious, relaxed and peaceful. The point is not to make the "unpleasant" experiences go away, but to open your awareness to other experiences that are just as valid, just as present, if you only take a look.
And this means that it's not a problem if the unpleasant stuff comes back. If that happens, here's an 8th mission for you…
- Be kind to yourself. Think of one thing you would do if one of your friends came up to you and was, clearly, temporarily insane… then do that for yourself.
Comments on 7 ways to calm your mind NOW »
All things that are happening in our daily life are experiences of course;sometimes we found oue selves in an embarassing situations we can't get it out like my problem I had never thought that one day I'll face a big problem in my work and I'm suffering I have no peace of mind I need serenity and this problem hurted me in all domains I don't know what I do and what will happen I'm igonring how can my future situation will be in the rights things believe me
Hi Amile,
It sounds like what you're describing is the phenomenon of imagining an unpleasant future based on the ideas that:
a) Any unpleasantness we're feeling now will continue (or get worse)
b) We can accurately predict how we'll feel (and what will happen) in the future.
Interestingly, research has been done showing that neither of those two things are true.
When imagining an unpleasant future, it RARELY is as bad as we imagine (if, in fact, it ends up bad). Often we find that our imagination is completely wrong.
But more to the point, the ACT OF IMAGINING an unpleasant future is what causes the discomfort NOW. If you imagine sucking on a lemon, you get lemon-sucking feelings. If you imagine some other unpleasant thing, you get some-other-unpleasant thing feelings.
These feelings are NOT proof that what we're thinking is true!
They're just the effect of thinking something unpleasant.
In our lives, we all have examples of times where reality was MUCH better than the future we imagined.
Maybe something similar is happening now, but you're on the "near side" of the event, rather than the far side.
Maybe all of the above will help you find some calmness now… or maybe there's nothing to do but wait for the inevitable time that your feelings change.
Speaking of which, when we're experiencing something unpleasant, we often talk about it as if it's happening 100% of the time. We fail to notice, or we overlook, that even in THIS MOMENT, the feelings/thoughts are not stable.
We'll imagine an unpleasant future, and then our attention will move to the taste of dinner, and then back to the imagined future, and then to an itch, and then to a sound outside, and then we get lost in some thought, and then back to the unpleasant future thought…
Overlooking the reality that we're not experiencing one thing all the time is one way we "stay stuck." (That is, we fail to notice that we're NOT stuck!)