Читать книгу On the Verge - Cara Bradley - Страница 15
ОглавлениеEvery Sunday in the fall, for the past twelve years, I’ve been training the Villanova University football team. As a mental strength coach, I move ninety young men through a yoga and meditation session. The purpose is to strengthen their capacity to stay composed under the fire of competition — to be mentally stronger when physically challenged. I train them to be mentally steady and emotionally stable. Thankfully, they listen to me. The Villanova Wildcats know what a team that’s strong, stable, and clear can achieve — out of the past twelve seasons the Wildcats have been in the playoffs ten times, and in 2009 they won the FCS National Championship.
Mental strength is your capacity to show up in this moment and pay attention to what’s happening. It’s your ability to live on the verge.
Mental strength is your capacity to show up in this moment and pay attention to what’s happening. It’s your ability to live on the verge. Are you actively engaged in reading these words or passively paying attention? Can you bring your attention back to this word? This is showing up, and when you do so, you’re operating at full strength. You’re clearer, wiser, more aware, and more compassionate. Everything you do you do better when you show up in this moment. You have more energy. You have more confidence. You are on the verge.
If you’re passive or distracted, you’re in a weakened mental state. It’s that simple. If you’re foggy or dulled, sort of right here and out there at the same time, you’re less sharp and not at full strength or full capacity. You cannot be both on the verge and distracted in the same moment. You cannot be in your busy mind and show up and shine.
Welcome to Your Busy Mind
When you’re distracted, your mind is busy hanging out in the past, in the future, in your stories. It’s somewhere else — and in a weakened state. When you’re distracted, your mind and body aren’t working together. They’re not communicating. They’re not synchronized. You’re not even experiencing what’s happening in your body — you are somewhere else. You feel disconnected, off balance, or out of sorts. When you are distracted, mistakes happen.
Shift beyond your busy mind, however, and you arrive in this moment fully. When you show up in the now, your senses light up and your instincts are razor sharp. You experience the world in high definition. You feel crystal clear and fiercely focused. Your mind and body connect. They work together. They synchronize. You connect to your senses and glimpse your natural state. Step beyond your busy mind, and you’re clear and confident — you are on the verge.
When you show up in the now, your senses light up and your instincts are razor sharp.
A few years ago, I was watching an NFL playoff game that came down to a field goal with less than a minute to play. As I observed the kicker walk onto the field toward the football, I commented to my family, “He’s not going to make the field goal. Look at his eyes. See them shifting? You can feel his doubt.” His body language transmitted his nervous tension; he was distracted, not tuned in to the moment, and definitely not on the verge. Yes, he missed the goal, and his team lost the game.
Traits of Your Busy Mind
Have you ever tried to stop your mind from thinking? It’s not so easy, huh? The truth is that thinking is what your mind is meant to do! Your mind produces thoughts, just as your ears hear sounds and your eyes see your surroundings. Also, thinking isn’t a bad thing; it’s just that we’re preoccupied and often obsessed with it. Our thoughts rule our lives. We believe that what we think is actually the way things are, that our thoughts perfectly reflect our reality. As a result, we become attached to our stories and end up engrossed in and even imprisoned by what we’re thinking.
Your busy mind is made up of a mix of thoughts, emotions, doubts, and fears (along with various other thought patterns). By the way, it is the same for everyone. In our society of more and better, our minds operate with constant mental noise: planning, judging, analyzing, commenting, remembering, forecasting, and so on. You don’t realize how much your busyness controls your day until you collapse on your bed at night.
Shifting beyond your busy mind doesn’t mean you stop thinking, but it does change your relationship to thinking.
Shifting beyond your busy mind doesn’t mean you stop thinking, but it does change your relationship to thinking. Your thoughts and emotions stop ruling your world, and you learn to trust your direct experiences.
Let me say that again in a slightly different way. You move from being led around town by your busy mind to trusting your direct experience, your firsthand knowledge, of the moment to inform you of what is real and true. That is not to say that you’re going to disregard your thoughts and emotions; you’re simply changing your relationship to thoughts and emotions by recognizing that they don’t always clearly reflect reality.
In order to understand how your thoughts and emotions may be ruling your world, it is essential to get to know your busy mind. Some common traits of the busy mind are sloppy brain, being crazy busy, being on autopilot, information overload, and overthinking. Let’s look at them more closely.
Sloppy Brain
I call my busy mind my “sloppy brain” when I’m distracted and feel clumsy and out of sorts. Let’s face it, sloppy brain happens to all of us. Recently I went to work with my slippers on. No joke! Luckily, as a yoga teacher, I spend most of my workday barefoot, but that still didn’t protect me from the loving abuse I took from colleagues and students. I see examples of sloppy brain on the highway, in the grocery store — everywhere. Too many of us are sloppy in how we show up in our day-to-day lives. This isn’t a judgment, just a fact.
The distracted, sloppy busy mind is in a weakened state. It speeds through life and doesn’t slow down to take even a few seconds to tell you to, say, mindfully place your phone and keys in the same place, set your teacup away from your laptop, or notice the stop sign in front of you.
Crazy Busy
“Crazy busy” has become a common phrase and an accepted way to live. We’re so addicted to getting things done that we’re oblivious to what’s really happening around us. Just look around any public area, and you’ll see most people looking at their phones while waiting in line, walking, or even talking with others.
When you’re in “crazy busy” mode, you’re not really focused on what you’re doing or whom you’re with. Your mind is too busy processing stuff to do, daily activities, and places to be. Being “crazy busy” can make you feel as though your world is spinning out of control and there’s no end in sight. It’s not just you. It’s most of us. How often have you greeted friends and boasted about being “crazy busy”? The bottom line is that you cannot feel awake and fully alive when your mind is “crazy busy.”
Autopilot
Many of your daily activities are repetitive, like brushing your teeth, checking emails, taking a shower. The thoughts streaming through your mind tend to be repetitive as well. Many of today’s thoughts were yesterday’s thoughts — they keep replaying in your head. For example, you might think, “I have to go to the post office,” over and over for two days straight until you actually go to the post office. The script for autopilot is often a thought loop that keeps running in your head: “I need to lose weight,” “I need to make more money,” “I should clean my closet,” and so on. When you’re on autopilot, you think the same thoughts over and over without being aware of it. Living on autopilot is exhausting and will leave you feeling drained at the end of the day.
I observe autopilot in action all the time. Students rush through the doors, throw down their yoga mats, and lie down for a moment before class to “quiet their minds.” I’ll see them glance around for their cell phones (which are not allowed in the yoga room) or look for someone to talk to (no talking before class either), unaware of these mental habits and tendencies, especially the need to be constantly entertained.
Information Overload
Everywhere we look, we are surrounded by information to process and choices to make. Experts tell us to do this, buy that, and eat this. Bombarded by advertisements, news, emails, and senseless posts on social media, our mental hard drives become overloaded, inefficient, and sluggish. Every day, your busy mind tries to absorb and remember the onslaught of information coming across your mental screen. In our overstimulated society, living in the busy mind can lead to exhaustion and fatigue, chronic stress, and even depression.
Overthinking
Last, overthinking is a major cause of chronic stress in our highly demanding culture. On any given day, you experience thousands of repetitive thoughts, many of which are tainted with judgment and anxiety. Too much planning, worrying, and replaying these loops is exhausting. Incessant thinking creates tension and robs us of peace. Although thinking is useful, overthinking is draining. Although stress is necessary to flourish at times, chronic mental stress causes chronic physical stress, which is harmful to your health.
Get to Know Your Busy Mind
Sloppy brain, being crazy busy, being on autopilot, information overload, and overthinking leave you with little time to be in the moment and little space to show up and shine. Your muddled busy mind becomes the filtered, blurry lens through which you experience life.
Do you live with a busy mind? Are you distracted much of the time? Welcome to the club! Take a deep breath and get excited, because you’re going to discover how to consistently slow down, settle down, and shift beyond your busy mind.
Let’s first get to know what this busy mind of yours is so busy doing.
Take a moment to answer these two questions either on the lines below or in your journal. Your answers will help you get to know your busy mind and how living from it affects your daily activities, relationships, and overall sense of well-being.
List three times during your day when you’re most likely to be distracted, hurried, or anxious (for example, when you’re driving, reading, answering emails, or eating):
1. _______________________________________
2. _______________________________________
3. _______________________________________
Off the top of your head, list three traits that describe your busy mind (for example, feeling overwhelmed, scattered, anxious, rushed, or drained):
1. _______________________________________
2. _______________________________________
3. _______________________________________
Your answers to these questions will offer you new opportunities throughout the day to become familiar with your busy mind. For example, if you tend to space out while driving, use driving as time to practice noticing your direct experience of driving. Turn off the news or music and notice everything around you. Notice the sky, the light on the trees, the noise around you, and how your body feels behind the wheel. Then notice when you forget to notice, when you drift back into your stream of thinking. This is how you train your mind to show up. You notice, notice, notice.
Becoming familiar with your busy mind and how it works is your first step toward understanding how to shift beyond it. You do this by getting to know how your mind operates with a practice known as mindfulness.
Mindfulness is your capacity to show up in this moment and be fully engaged from the level of mind, body, and heart. It’s your ability to notice your firsthand, direct experience of what’s happening — no matter if what’s happening is good or not so good. To be mindful is to simply notice when you show up and when you don’t, when you’re on the verge and when you’re not.
Mindfulness is your capacity to show up in this moment and be fully engaged from the level of mind, body, and heart.
You become mindful when you notice that you’re distracted. The moment you notice that you’re not paying attention, you wake up — instantly! Noticing is enough, every time.
Noticing when you’re passive wakes you up. Noticing distraction wakes you up. This is how you cultivate mindfulness. Notice. Notice. Notice. You can remember to notice by asking yourself the following question several times per hour: “Am I distracted or am I right here right now?”
Ask this question, and it interrupts your mind from whatever it was distracted by (a tense situation at work, the beach, ice cream) and brings you back to the moment (in front of a field goal, a crying child, or a traffic jam). In a second, you can shift from busy mind to clear mind. You pull yourself back into the moment. That’s all there is to it. It’s really a very simple, ordinary thing to do. That’s mental strength training.
To practice mindfulness, show up in this moment, notice when you’re pulled away by a distraction, and, without judging yourself, show up for the next moment. Do this again and again. Notice that your busy mind is undisciplined. Notice how easily you’re distracted. Be prepared to notice a lot of distraction. Doing this over and over again — that is how you practice mindfulness.
Think of your mind as a muscle that becomes weak and atrophies when not used properly and becomes stronger and more stable when challenged to grow. In other words, your mind, if untrained, is weaker and likely to be easily distracted and flustered. Your mind, if disciplined, is stronger and likely to be focused. Imagine noticing as doing bicep curls for your mind. To build muscular strength, you need to either continually increase the repetition of bicep curls or add more weight over time. In the same way, you’ll need to practice noticing and showing up more often or for longer stretches.
Mindfulness is your mental strength training.
Noticing is like doing a bicep curl. Mindfulness is your mental strength training.
PRIMER PRACTICE: DISTRACTED OR RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW?
Read through the instructions first or listen to the guided practice on the Verge Mobile App. Commit to trying this right now. What do you have to lose? Perhaps just your busy mind!
1. Get settled in your chair.
2. Place your hand just beneath your navel, so you can feel the gentle rise and fall of your belly as you breathe. Take a breath in, and in your mind say, “Inhale.” Pause after your inhalation, saying, “Pause.” Breathe out slowly, saying, “Exhale.” Pause after your exhalation, saying, “Pause.” Repeat.
3. Continue to breathe this way, saying in your mind, “Inhale, pause, exhale, pause.”
4. When you notice you’ve become distracted by thoughts or sensations (and you will become distracted), say in your mind, “Distracted.”
5. Give yourself a mental high five for noticing.
6. Then immediately say in your mind, “Right here right now.”
7. Place your attention back on your hand on your belly and on your next breath.
It’s very simple. Identify what you’re doing (inhale, pause, exhale, pause), notice distraction, give a mental high five, and actively bring your mind back to your breath — over and over again. This is your mental strength training.
The point of this Primer Practice is to get to know your untrained busy mind. Remember, your busy mind is not “bad”; thoughts actually create great stuff. If you let your busy mind rule your world, however, you’ll miss opportunities to directly experience your life in high definition.
Am I distracted or right here right now? Ask yourself throughout your day, and notice how it interrupts your tendencies to overthink, be crazy busy, suffer from information overload, or operate on autopilot or with sloppy brain. This is how you shift from busy mind to clear mind.
Clear Mind: Your Natural Sense of Clarity
When you slip into the space beyond your thoughts and emotions, even for one moment, you immediately feel clear and alert. This is called waking up. Shifting from busy mind to clear mind, from distracted to right here and now is waking up — you show up in this moment in your naturally occurring state of clear mind. In the space of your clear mind, you are on the verge.
I run a few times per week. I run to clear my mind. I don’t care how far I run, and I certainly no longer care about my pace. I run simply to breathe and move. Breathing and moving in rhythm shifts me from busy to clear fairly quickly. The steady motion of my body when synchronized with my breath settles my thoughts and calms my nervous system in a way few other activities do. Beyond my busy mind I glimpse my natural state of clear mind.
Compared to the stuffy, crowded feeling of your busy mind, shifting into your clear mind feels like a huge relief. It’s as if a gust of sweet spring air sweeps through your mind. The mental fog dissipates, tension dissolves, and your senses come to life.
When you shift into a clearer state, you experience the world in high definition. The sky appears bluer, noises are crisper, smells are stronger, tastes are more flavorful, and your body surges with energy. Beyond your busy mind, you feel fully alive.
When you shift into a clearer state, you experience the world in high definition.
Although I can’t tell you exactly what glimpsing your clear mind will feel like for you, I will say that training your mind will help you find out for yourself. Research proves that mindfulness practices work. A committed, consistent practice can change the physiology of your brain so that you’re more engaged and less distracted. Mental strength training improves the way your brain works, and with practice you live more often from your clear mind and less from busy mind.
The Snapshot below offers you a handful of ways to recognize your clear mind. Pocket a few and use them in both your practices and your daily life.
SNAPSHOT: YOUR NATURAL STATE OF CLEAR MIND
| Alert | Composed | Settled |
| Stable | Free | Open |
| Calm | At ease | Radiant |
| Strong | Spacious | Unhooked |
| Present | Sharp | Awake |
Besides feeling clear, shifting beyond your busy mind has many benefits. Accessing your clear mind offers you space and time to precisely assess situations, to stay open to the opinions of others, to regulate emotions, and to prepare appropriate responses in heated discussions. When you have glimpses of clear mind, you may find that you:
1. Speak genuinely and authentically
2. Connect more deeply with others
3. Feel relaxed
4. Are easier to be around
5. Rally others around your message and vision
6. Execute tasks with precision
7. Create with freedom and joy
8. Sense your intuition or inner direction
9. Know what to say and what to do
