What if we were able to see these voices as having good intentions? How could this ever be?

Many of us have past wounds in our lives whether it was parent seeming too busy to pay attention to us or losing someone early in life, or being the victim of assault. Voices start arising inside us to help us maintain some control over our environments to keep us safe from being wounded again. These voices may judge us or others so we don’t get too close and run the risk the danger of either losing them or being hurt by them. Or maybe the voices just criticize us so we don’t have to face the discomfort inside and spend all of our time taking care of other people. Although at the end of the day, these voices serve to water the seeds of our depression and anxiety, they can be viewed as trying to help.

The end result is that we can learn to be more kind and caring to ourselves instead of damning and hating.

What would change if instead of damning and hating these voices that keep us down, we learn to be a bit kinder to them, acknowledging their presence, and then choosing a different path. For example, if the voice arises “you’re not good enough, don’t even try it,” try and notice it and see it as a part of you that is simply trying to keep you safe from a past wounding experience. When the bad voice arises rather than entertaining it, thank it for trying to keep you safe and rather than cursing it, see if you can acknowledge the pain. You can tell yourself that you know this is a difficult task, but that was then and this is now and you’re going to give it a shot anyway.

Easier said than done, but in practicing and understanding that even our damning voices have the intentions of keeping us safe, we can begin to shift from watering the seeds of depression to watering the seeds of resiliency and even happiness. We can all break the habitual cycle of sending hate into ourselves and instead sending compassion and care.

See if you can notice the inner voices from past wounds in your life that keep you from getting too close to others or risking success to keep you safe from harm. When they arise, thank them for trying to keep you safe. Notice what a difference this can make than struggling with the messages.

As always, please share your thoughts and comments below, you additions here provide a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Megaphone head image is available from Shutterstock.

“I had no idea,” she said. “I thought I knew exactly what they felt like, I was shocked. When I think about it, I realize now how reactive I am to things around me. I think I know exactly who this person is or whether I’ll like a certain experience or not. When a test comes my brain interprets it as something to be feared when maybe it isn’t. Wow, amazing.” This 17 year old girl was talking about an experience she had on a mindful hike that my wife and I lead as part of a mindful teen retreat.

What can we gain by stripping our preconceived notions of things and engaging life with fresh eyes?

Maybe a renewed lease on life.

Thinking of our brain as a sponge is not a new metaphor, but it’s accurate. The sponge is made of memories that are constantly referenced to make sense of the worlds inside and outside of us.

While this is essentially adaptive for helping us walk, talk, and have highly enough hand motion to drink without spilling liquid all over our shirts, it’s not always good when it makes our perception of how we see other people and our abilities in life routine.

Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.”

Sometimes just entertaining seeing something with fresh eyes, whether it’s a conversation with a friend, eating something or even just touching a leaf, can open up a world of possibility you didn’t know was there before.

Consider for a moment. What in your life has become routine? Who do you think you’re an expert on? What do you feel so certain about? What would it be like to spend a short time every day choosing to put what you know aside and open up to something with fresh eyes?

Would you rediscover some wonders in life that you had been blind to? Might you open up the possibility of learning something?

You don’t grow new neural connections by being the eternal expert on things. Neurons fire together and wire together as a result of learning.

Now that we know the brain is plastic and continues to shape itself throughout the lifespan, we can open up to seeing things differently.

Are you someone whose mind often tends toward the negative or shutting options down? Do you tend to believe worst-case-scenarios? Do you think you have the world’s number?

The danger of the brain is that it makes things automatic and our perception of reality fixed so it can handle more complex tasks.

Like the 17 year old girl, choosing to see life with a beginner’s mind taught her not to always buy wholesale the stories her mind was telling her. Perhaps there’s more to life than we know.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Leaves in hands photo available from Shuttestock

Do yourself a favor, simply watch this 3-minute video and see what you notice:

Laughter is a stress reliever and it’s wise to add it in as a natural medicine to whatever anti-anxiety or anti-depressant regimen you’re using. But you don’t need to go to India to practice this and in fact, you can benefit from this without even having a group to do it with.

If you’re in comfortable place with no one around, try just laughing to yourself for about 15 seconds and see how your mind and body feels.

If you notice a lift, have gratitude for this. In fact, spread this feeling of gratitude out to all the people and places in the world where healing and gratitude is needed. May all people feel an alleviation of suffering, may we all be able to enjoy love and laughter again.

You can take this practice into subtle areas of your life by practicing smiling and see if it’s contagious to others.

As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I smile.”

If you just read this and didn’t try any of it out, put down your judgments and defenses and play a little, no one is watching. Allow your experience to be your teacher. This may be one of the best gifts you’ve given yourself in quite a while.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Coldwater. 

Today, Diana talks to us about what inspired her to write this novel, how mindfulness integrates into the novel, the themes of destruction and redemption are applicable in our lives, and some thoughts for the times we are suffering.

Elisha: What inspired you to write Coldwater?

Diana: I had been writing for film and TV for many years.  Although literally hundreds of hours of television had been produced from scripts that I wrote, developed or produced, I rarely had the experience of seeing my true values and vision reflected on the screen.  There were always layers of corporate or collaborative intervention which either shaped, changed or discarded what I’d written.  Although I am very grateful to television for the income it provided and the skills it taught me, I longed to produce work that was creatively self-expressive in a way that TV never could be. Coldwater is that work.

I had two ideas about Coldwater before I began writing it.  The first was to tell the story of someone filled with fear and self-loathing, who made the transformation to self-forgiveness, self-acceptance, and self-esteem – a transformation I had made myself.   The other was to tell a story about someone who had always relied on drugs and alcohol to deal with fear and difficulty, who was confronted with bigger fears and worse difficulties, but had to face them clean and sober.  As someone with many friends and family members affected by the disease of addiction, who has seen the challenges of recovery at close hand, I knew this was a story that had dramatic – and heroic – potential.

Elisha: How has your mindfulness practice been integrated into the book?

Diana: This is a great question.  I feel that the years that I have spent doing mindfulness meditation helped me describe my characters at the level of body sensation, mental image, internal conversation, and to describe scenes and locations with specificity of sights, sounds, smells and touches.  In other words, the things that I notice in my own mindfulness practice gave life and veracity to the scenes and characters I was writing about.  But the writing process itself, I discovered, cannot really be done “mindfully.”  It is necessary to see and hear people places and things that are not there.  While writing, the mind goes off into imagination and story-telling – just what we bring ourselves back from doing in meditation!  I cannot be “in the now” and be writing at the same time.  However, learning to hang out and be comfortable in “don’t-know mind” is very helpful.  A lot of writing time is spent staring into space and not knowing what comes next, and learning to be okay with that.  (Actually, for me, that is the hardest challenge of writing.)

And sometimes, the answer to problems that seemed unsolvable while at the computer, will bubble up in meditation the next day.

Elisha: Your book speaks of destruction and redemption, can you tell us more how this might support the reader in their daily life?

Diana: Ethics and morality, non-harming of ourselves and others, plays a crucial part in one’s sense of well-being.  The book explores the consequences of doing harm to self and others, and offers the possibility of redemption if we take ownership and responsibility for our actions.

Elisha: If you were sitting across the table from someone who was struggling physically or emotionally, what thoughts might you have for them?

Diana: I would very much want them to know that what seems endless is not.  That there are very concrete and specific ways of being with painful emotions and experiences that can help transform them. That very often what we think is the worst thing that could happen to us turns out to be the best.  That if we have the courage to open to the darkness and not run from it, it can contain the source of our relief.  That as Rumi has said, “the wound is where the light enters.”  That happiness is possible.  Freedom is possible. That everything we could possibly want is contained within each present moment, if we just learn how to recognize it.

Elisha: Thank you Diana!

Please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Photo of Diana Gould courtesy of the author

The poet Hafiz writes in his poem “It Felt Love”:

How did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too frightened

This is so true. It becomes easier to open up and reveal our own gifts to this world when we feel positive loving encouragement within.

Here is an opportunity to do a practice inspired by this poem that can help us cultivate a sense of gratitude and lovingkindness right now.

Here is short practice to feel that encouragement of light right now (what do you have to lose):

1. Think of a person or animal who represents light, who represents a loving and kind presence in your life. This can be a good friend who is alive, maybe someone who has passed away, a pet, or maybe a spiritual figure such as the Dalai Lama, Jesus, or even the hand of God. 
2. Take a moment to imagine that presence here, with you, looking into your eyes. 
3. Now imagine that person saying to you, “May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm”, “May you be happy,” “May you be free from fear”, “May you be healthy in body and mind”. You can also create your own wishes and aspirations here. 
4. Now turn toward that person and say that with the same intention to them. 
5. Now imagine your family and friends with you (those who you feel difficulty with and those who you feel more ease with) and with intention, saying those same word.

Take a moment to just feel into how you are doing and whatever is there, just letting it be.

I would be willing to bet that if I hooked you up to a brain scanning machine while you did the practice above we’d see a shift in activity to your left prefrontal cortex. What is that associated with? Resiliency.

Gratitude is a practice. May this be a springboard for you to cultivate this sense of gratitude and lovingkindness, which even though it may come with some uncomfortable feelings at times, can be a source of much psychological healing and feelings of well-being.

I deeply thank all of you who have been following the Mindfulness and Psychotherapy blog posts and for interacting below as your posts truly create a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Red rose photo available from Shutterstock

He didn’t see them again. But what happened next reveals a truth we each need to hear.

How we think of ourselves:

Prior to sketching the first women, the artist paired the women up and asked them to “get friendly with each other.”

Then he brought them in and asked them to describe the features of the women they had conversations with.

The answers were enlightening.

How others see us:

“She had a nice thin chin,” one person said. Another said, “She had nice eyes, they lit up when she spoke.” And yet another, “I remember blue eyes, very nice blue eyes.”

The artist made another sketch from their description, one that looked far more beautiful than the self description.

When asked about her self-portrait, one woman summed up the other responses, “She looks closed off and fatter, sadder, and the second one looks open, friendly and happy.”

How we treat ourselves affects our relationships, jobs, and how we treat our children.

Learning how to see our innate beauty is critical to our happiness.

From Self-Judgment to Self-Compassion:

Whenever you notice self-critical thoughts arising in your mind, take note of them; see how they make you feel. Then immediately swap it out with a thought of what you appreciate about yourself.

This can help reverse that negative habit and open up to the beauty that has always been there.

Let your light shine through and see what happens.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Woman’s face photo available from Shutterstock

Here’s the practice and I’ll keep it short and sweet so you can take it and begin experimenting with it in your life today:

1. Be on the lookout for doubt – Get curious about where doubt comes up in your life. Does it spring on you in the midst of a positive experience? When you look over the bed at your beautiful sleeping baby, do you wonder if something terrible might happen that may take him away? If you get a new job offer and then immediately wonder if you’ll measure up? Does doubt arise in the midst of any opportunity or challenge that squashes the excitement for it?The task here is simply to be on the lookout for where doubt arises in your day.
2. Understand the purpose of doubt – Doubt is there to keep you safe, however misdirected it may be. Sometimes doubt can save your life, like when you see a shiny blade swinging in a dark alley way, the doubt about going down that alley way is telling you something important. However, often times it’s misdirected, but it’s still important to recognize the intention is still to keep you safe.The task here is simply to recognize that doubt is not your enemy, although it may be misdirected in the moment.
3. Thanks, but no thanks – When you notice the doubt and understand it’s trying to be helpful, you can note this to yourself and also note that this doubting habit is actually causing you more suffering and squashing the upside of the moment.Practice: “Breathing in, acknowledging the doubt and its purpose, breathing out, letting it go.”
4. Swap it with gratitude – After acknowledging the doubt, seeing it for what it is, and practicing letting it go, immediately bring to mind what you’re grateful for about the situation at hand. If the doubting is around your parenting and children, think about what you’re grateful for around your own awareness with parenting and your children. If it’s around a new upcoming job, what do you appreciate about this upcoming opportunity? If it’s about any challenge, consider what you’re grateful for.

If you set aside any intentions of achieving the elimination of doubt and instead focus on what you learn as you make this a practice in your life, you will be well served.

Remember, doubt has its place, but if it’s placing itself in a situation that is stripping away your joy and excitement, this may be a good place to implement this reversing the doubting habit.

Try it out as an experiment, let go of any expectations and see what you notice.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Man at the beach photo available from Shutterstock

Helen Mayberg, a neuroscientist from Emory University called depression, “emotional pain without context.” In other words, here is this emotional pain and the brain can’t figure out where it’s coming from and so it feels lost, stuck and helpless. There is a strong lack of self-trust in these moments. The hippocampus is a part of our brain that is involved in memory, learning and also in giving us a sense of context. In other words, the hippocampus is part of what tells us it’s not appropriate to burst out in tears at work and yell at people at the top of our lungs (even if we feel like doing that). It also tells us that it may be more appropriate to let our guard down with someone who feels safe.

We know through past studies that there are various ways to create neural growth in the hippocampus. Creating an enriching environment has been connected with stronger neural growth in the hippocampus; we’ve seen growth through steady 8-week practice of mindfulness meditation, and one of the earliest studies showed this area of the brain larger in taxi drivers versus bus drivers because they had to constantly use memory to navigate versus just being on auto-pilot.

When it comes to trusting ourselves, we need to have retrievable memory of experiences where we were able to rely on ourselves to handle a difficult situation.

I have a theory that human brains (perhaps sea snail brains too), are primed for learning in times when we are mindful or aware of what’s here. I think that we are primed even more intensely for learning when we’re mindful during an emotionally vulnerable moment.

We know that the emotional center of the brain is a primary decision maker for us throughout the moments of the day. Emotional experiences (especially difficult ones); influence our snap judgments that form our perceptions and actions.

Most of us see vulnerability as something to stay away from because there is the fear of getting hurt or rejected in it. But the truth is, we can’t learn to trust ourselves without being vulnerable. You need one to build the other.

If we can learn to intentionally pay attention to our moments of vulnerability, without judgment, and meet it with a curious and caring awareness, we can build that into our hippocampus, and make it readily retrievable when we need it most. We condition the natural ability to trust and rely on ourselves.

But like anything, it takes intention, attention and practice.

Just sitting with yourself for 5, 10 or 15 minutes (or more) and paying attention to your breath or your body is, for many of us, an act of being vulnerable. The fact is, most of us are guarding against being alone all throughout the day by either staying busy in activity or staying busy in our mind.

In doing this you build trust that you can actually be with yourself with whatever is here. Through practice and repetition, the brain changes and a new thought emerges from the neural growth that “I can handle this, it’s going to be okay.”

Here’s a link to a 5-minute sample of a mindful practice to get you started. 

The fact is we are active participants in our health and well-being, we all have a hand in learning how to shape our brains to trust ourselves.

It starts right now and whenever we all off the path, we can always begin again.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.  

(Picture Source: Unknown)

Brain image available from Shutterstock

The ancient Greek writer Aesop left us with these words:

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

Be on the lookout for kindness in others today. You may find more of it in the world than you think is there.

Then, try bringing more intentionality to your own acts of kindness.

We may not always get it back, but in the long run this simple practice primes your mind for good and can be life changing.

Try it out today.

Warmly,
Elisha Goldstein, PhD

Little brothers embracing photo available from Shutterstock

In my mind, it all comes down to stress.

Kids nowadays are under a tremendous amount of stress with a push from our educational institutions and from parents to get the best grades, do the most extracurricular and conform to fit into the highest social circles.

Families don’t seem to have the time they used to have. The kids are so booked with activities that a 20-minute dinner together as a family is a major accomplishment. Many of those 20-minute dinners are then interrupted with everyone’s miniature media boxes intruding with texts, Facebook messages, tweets or sports scores. I’d say phone calls, but who does that anymore.

What happens is that the adolescent brain (as does the adult brain) defaults to certain ways to cope with this high level of stress. These unhealthy habits include, but are not limited to: Procrastination, over-eating, under-eating, isolating, self-harm, sleeping too much, not sleeping enough, working harder into the night at the expense of health, worrying and at times, the extreme attempt of suicide.

It’s hard to focus on a test when all this is going on.

When my wife, Stefanie Goldstein, PhD and I created the CALM program – Connecting Adolescents to Learning Mindfulness – we were floored to hear their stories in going through a mindfulness curriculum.

~ “From this class I learned about mindfulness, how to communicate better, how to manage stress, and how to be more compassionate with myself and others.” -Anna, age 17

~ “I was very amazed and happy at the effects mindfulness has had on my panic, focus, and mood.” -Paula, age 16

~ “Mindfulness for me, has become a practice in my life that helps me to have some perspective over my feelings instead of being lost in the middle of it all. It makes feelings less confusing.” – Lana, age 17

~ “A word I would use is “refreshed” because that is what I feel being in this class, coming from a long week and everything that leads up to the class” – Brandon, age 15

If you’ve read any of my work you know I often reference a quote that has been attributed to Viktor Frankl:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space likes our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and freedom.”

Mindfulness trains us to see that space and enter into it, seeing the “choice point” for a healthier coping response.

While we now know that we can influence neural growth throughout the lifespan, the teenage years are a time of intense synaptic pruning. This is the time of “use it or lose it.” That means it is an opportune time to have an influence on the strength of neural connections.

That’s why it’s so important to bring mindfulness into our educational systems, the future will be far better for it.

Here’s a link to a short practice to give to yourself or a teen near you, to not only get better test scores, but to influence a stronger and healthier brain (Source: The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life, just released in paperback).

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Happy teen photo available from Shutterstock