“Silence is a source of great strength.” ~ Lao-Tzu
At heartspark, we have found that slowing down and being quiet is essential to the other success practices. It creates a quiet space within yourself from which your current path can emerge. And one of the best ways to discover and cultivate that quiet space is through meditation.
Meditation can take many forms, but the benefits can be life changing. Studies show that regular meditation shifts brain activity out of stress zones, aids natural healing, decreases chronic pain, controls high blood pressure at levels comparable to prescription drugs (without side effects) and reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Daily meditation also slows aging! One study found that people who’ve meditated for five or more years are physiologically up to 15 years younger than non-meditators. They’re also less anxious, neurotic and fearful, and more spontaneous, independent, self-confident and empathetic.
Reap the Benefits
Here are some simple ways to slow down and be quiet today:
- Reclaim silence as part of your daily routine through gardening, yoga, or just turning off the TV, radio and computers.
- Use your commute. In the car or on the bus, turn off the radio, sit up straight and breathe evenly. If you get behind a slow driver, take it as an opportunity to slow down yourself, and resist the urge to get irritated or pass them.
- Take a walk with no destination. Stop to look at something beautiful.
- Close your eyes and revisit memories that invoke a sense of peace or mystery: A walk on a frozen lake, time spent with animals, a visit to a mosque or temple.
- Try the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” Sit comfortably, but keep your spine straight and hands in your lap. Breathe slowly, releasing body tension. If your mind races, acknowledge the arrival of each thought but set it aside, as though placing it in a basket for later. Try this for 15-20 minutes each day, whether at home, in the sauna at the gym, or in a private room at work.
- Do one thing at a time. Just staying fully present in what you’re doing—not multi-tasking—is a form of meditation. As a monk friend says, “When you’re eating oatmeal, just eat oatmeal. When you’re washing the bowl, just wash the bowl.”
When you find that quiet place inside yourself, you may be surprised at what grows there.
When you’ve been worrying about a stressful, upcoming event, someone has probably told you: “Relax, it won’t be that bad.” Such encouragement is nice, but science has shown that when you take this belief to heart, it turns out to be true.
Researchers from Wake Forest University in North Carolina found that volunteers could moderate their pain experiences just by the power of their thoughts. These volunteers had a heat stimulator applied to their legs while their brains were scanned by MRI for brain activity. However, before they received the stimulator, they imagined that they would get a mild stimulation rather than a more potent, hot stimulus, and all volunteers reported less pain when they expected lower levels of pain. “Such research adds weight to the notion that how we think can effect what we feel,” said Dr. Ed Keogh, a psychologist and pain researcher from the University of Bath.
If we can moderate our sense of pain with just our thoughts, imagine what other benefits positive thinking can provide.
It Can’t Hurt to Think Positive
Here are a few thought exercises for you to try:
- It’s a small world. The next time you’re in a crowd of strangers—on the bus, walking around downtown, in a crowded mall—imagine that each of these people are part of your extended family. Keeping this frame of mind helps reduce the “me v. you” tension that can arise in the presence of strangers and cultivates a pleasant sense of camaraderie.
- Imagine beyond the obstacle. Always have the phrase “there must be something better for me” at the ready whenever you encounter disappointment. Say you don’t get that interview or you flub an important presentation. Don’t get stuck on the downside; tell yourself that there’s something better waiting for you. Even if it takes time to happen, thinking this way will make you feel better in the interim.
- Follow an icon. Surround yourself with positive images and make it a habit to look at them every day. Look at them when you start the day and before you go to bed. That way you’ll start the day with a positive boost and prepare your subconscious mind for dreaming positive dreams at night.
Challenges, obstacles and disappointments may happen, but your thoughts are your own and untouchable. Think positive, and you’ll feel good and enjoy life…no matter what happens!
You’re in the middle of a perfect meal at your favorite restaurant when the waiter stops by your table to check in. “Don’t forget to save room for dessert,” he chides.
It’s a standard up-sell technique in the food service industry: Remind the customer that there’s more good stuff to come—before they even know they’re hungry for it. But it’s also a key concept in our heartspark practices.
What happens when you allow your imaginings to reach beyond expected and logical outcomes to new possibilities and perspectives? What happens when you embrace the best case scenario—and then ask what could be even better than that?
What “More” Looks Like
Here are some of the things that saving room for more has brought into the lives of past heartspark clients:
- One participant came into heartspark with a goal of patenting one of his inventions. But he saved room for more than just one patent, and now he has an entire business built around his many patented ideas.
- Another felt ambivalent about a job that offered needed flexibility but didn’t fit her interests. A few months into heartspark, her boss redesigned her position to focus on the creative work she enjoyed while maintaining her flexible schedule.
- A 40-something single woman told her heartspark group that she longed for a child. She now has a son—and with him, she has also met the love of her life.
- A would-be author set a goal of finishing a book. Just finishing, he said, would accomplish a dream. But he saved room for more—and “more” turned out to include multiple publishers vying for the manuscript.
Take some time this month to consider what you want, and then push yourself to ask what “more” might mean for you in that context. Dream big. And once you’ve got your dream in mind, give the universe a wink and a smile—and dream bigger.
Have you ever watched kids play pretend? It’s amazing to see how just their intentions can transform themselves into anything they wish. They’re not “like” queens and kings; they are what they imagine and their actions follow suit. As adults we can still partake in this activity, and with our broader experience we can imagine even more—that is, if we cultivate the openness of children.
Even scientists have found that this creative openness is not only helpful but crucial to their discoveries. Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, a professor of physiology at Princeton, found that scientists often engaged the same sort of imagination as someone creating a work of art. “Whether the individuals … were artists like Picasso or physicists like Richard Feynman, whether they composed sonatas or invented machines or discovered molecular structures, they all made implicit use of the same set of imaginative skills.” These skills, including playing, were not special talents only exhibited by artists and scientists but could also be learned by others and applied to many different subjects.
Imagine this
So do these imaginative skills help us make discoveries in our own lives? Sure they do! Here’s how you can apply them to yours:
Dream a little dream. Sometimes the only thing keeping us from imagining what we want is taking the time to do it. Take just 15 minutes a day to daydream with a pen in hand. Start with “I am…” and then write the desired action or image that comes to mind. If writing “I am” gets you stuck because you’re just sitting in a chair at the moment and can’t get beyond that, think of yourself as another character. Make up a name and pretend you’re writing a story: “Carla is giving a guided tour of restaurants in Provence.” And then you’ll have your story!
Experiment with reality. To bring your vision into the present, find concrete elements to give you a taste of your vision. If you see yourself as that tour guide in France, read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle and write responses to your favorite parts. Plant lavender and rosemary at home. Browse online and make an itinerary. Have a Provençal wine tasting. In other words, start trying on aspects of the role and become familiar with how they fit.
And remember, there’s no need to feel any pressure about getting it right. After all, it’s just pretend.
Ever have this experience? You’re thinking about taking a trip to Thailand and suddenly meet three different people who’ve just been there. You buy a new car, then start seeing the same make and model everywhere you go. Or you can sleep through anything, but you wake immediately when the baby cries or a good friend says your name softly.
According to a 2006 article from Portland’s Science and Theology Center, the part of your brain responsible for these types of experiences is called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is a system of brain stem cells that filters sensory input coming at us from our environment-millions of different stimuli per minute-to pick out the pieces that may be relevant to us, based on our preferences and values.
From this perspective, your RAS is sort of like a super personal assistant, on the job for your benefit 24/7. And here’s the beautiful part: We get to decide what’s relevant to us, and therefore what the RAS presents us with each day.
Here’s the How-to
In order to put the Reticular Activating System to work for you in achieving your goals, you’ve got to let it know what you want. Get really clear about it. Write it down. Focus on the positive – your RAS will help filter out all the “noise” that isn’t pertinent. If you envision on a daily basis what it is that you’re trying to achieve or attract, your RAS will know what to be on the lookout for and help you see it.
Just imagine what you can achieve with that kind of assistance on your side!
“Just be yourself.” This phrase has been said countless times to people who are fretting about doing the right thing, whether they are thinking about how to behave in a relationship, speak in front of a group, or socialize at a party. It has been said so often that, unfortunately, many have stopped listening to that advice. But what if following it meant an increase in your success and happiness? Would that get your attention?
Dr. James Pawelski, executive director of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA), has observed that one of the major elements to happiness is that of a “eudemonic” approach. This means that people are happiest when they are cultivating and applying their character strengths and virtues. Sounds like “being yourself, “doesn’t it?
How to Be You and Me
However, before acting on your strengths and virtues, you have to know what those are. Here are some tips for getting in touch with your best qualities:
- Make a list. Think about times when you’ve been most proud of yourself, and write down a few words for each event that describes the qualities that you were most proud of. For example, if you’re proud of being a confidant at your workplace, you might cite “trustworthiness” and “good listener” as your strengths.
- Watch them in action. After you’ve made your list, spend each day for the next couple weeks looking to see where those qualities come into play and pat yourself on the back when you notice them.
- Put them to work. If it seems like you’re in situations where you don’t get to use these qualities, specifically look for or create occasions where you can. Good with people but find yourself in an isolated job? Maybe it’s time you threw a party!
Without realizing it, we sometimes compare ourselves to others and find ourselves lacking. Watch what happens when you focus on appreciating your innate talents instead.
Being who you are is more than enough.
Saying “thank you” is not just good manners. Cultivating gratitude represents one way to savor and enjoy one’s life more fully. Dr. Fred Bryant, a social psychologist at Loyola University of Chicago, notes that there are three ways that people savor daily living and appreciate the gift of being alive:
- Marveling (losing oneself in wonder and awe)
- Luxuriating (indulging one’s senses)
- Basking (receiving praise)
Cultivate a Sense of Gratitude
Here are some ideas for how to cultivate a sense of gratitude…and savor more of your life in the process!
- Take a marveling moment. Each night before hitting the pillow, review your day and think of at least 3 things that caught your eye and made you stop and say “wow.” (If there’s more, so much the better!) Everything is fair game, from life-changing events (a new job) to smaller, daily happenings (being welcomed home by your dogs,) and especially the ones you might not always notice (green tips of future tulips poking up through the ground.)
- Look for a little luxury. Read some of that fun novel that’s been beckoning you. Take yourself out to dinner—or dine in with something special if you relish cooking. Relax in a scented bath instead of filling up your evening with “to-dos.” And there’s always the underestimated relief that comes from taking a nap! Notice and appreciate how good it all feels.
- Bask in your own glow. When you’ve accomplished something—either minor or major—be sure to give yourself a mental “good job” before moving on to the next task. Acknowledge how far you have come.
By developing a regular habit of saying “thank you” for life’s little pleasures, you’ll find that you have more blessings than you realized, and by recognizing them, you’ll be receptive to even more bounty in your life.
I’m touched by how many people reacted to last week’s the heartspark way post on how “Altruism’s as Good as Sex” by giving to the Haitian earthquake relief effort. Thank you for letting me know how you interpreted the message as a timely reminder to Give it Back. Your response is yet another example of what big hearts you have!
“To Your Brain, Altruism’s as Good as Sex.”
Okay, there’s just something about this phrase that caught our eye here at heartspark! It was the headline of a recent article on MSNBC, highlighting the findings of a 2007 University of Oregon study on brain activity and charitable giving.
According to the study, when participants donated money to a charitable cause (even mandatorily), it lit up the pleasure centers of the brain on an MRI scan: The same brain areas activated by a great meal, chocolate, friendship and, yes, a good romp in the sack!
Now, think about that for a minute. If writing a check to the nonprofit of your choice—and there are so many worthy ones out there from which to choose—actually stimulates the centers of the brain that register happiness, then you may be getting much more than a tax write-off from your donation.
Feels so Good
Give a little something without asking anything in return. Make a quick debit card donation on your favorite nonprofit’s website. Pack an extra lunch for that guy with the cardboard sign you always see at the freeway on-ramp. Do an anonymous favor for an overworked colleague. Tip the waiter like you’re worth a million bucks, and you might feel like you are.
Perhaps the poet Maya Angelou said it best when she wrote, “Giving liberates the soul of the giver.” Try freeing up a little bit of your paycheck this month. You may just free up a little bit of your own joy!
Believe & Expect may seem like an obvious concept to practice. After all, you don’t pursue a goal believing you’re not going to get it, right? Sometimes, though, you can be bothered with self-doubt, which can hamper your efforts to envision clearly what you want and move forward. Therefore it’s important to cultivate optimism when engaging in any meaningful life-change.
Laura King, a professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, discovered this fact during an experimental study of optimism. She had participants come in twenty minutes each day for four days and write about their “best possible future selves.” This exercise entailed writing as if all their best dreams, all the goals that they imagined for themselves, were realized. Afterwards these people showed immediate increases in positive moods and even reported fewer physical ailments months later. When this exercise was repeated by another professor, Ken Sheldon, he also noted that these optimists exhibited “active and effective coping,” and they were more likely to “persist in the plan even when [they] hit inevitable obstacles.”
Give Optimism a Try
Even if you’ve never considered yourself an optimist, you can give your optimism a boost by engaging in the following activities:
- Acknowledge abundance. List the times in your life when things have happened just at the right time. These can be small, like finding a dollar bill on the sidewalk, or something more momentous, like bumping into an old friend in a grocery store who also happened to have a job opening. Chances are good that such serendipity will continue throughout your life, so why not envision the best for yourself?
- Aim high. When aiming at a target at the limits of her gun’s range, a target shooter sets her sights high to compensate for gravity. Likewise, whenever you set a goal, envision the best possible outcome. Even if you don’t achieve the exact result, you’ll feel better and go much farther than if you believed in a lesser outcome.
If you go forth on your journey with the foundation of your positive beliefs planted firmly under your feet, you’ll feel as if ALL your actions, big and small, have purpose.
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