Kelly Barron

Mindfulness in schools, at work & everywhere

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Opening to Change

I’ve long envied my friend’s bountiful garden. Several raised planter beds in her yard grow a farmer’s market worth of plump tomatoes, squash, eggplants, peas, and beets.

When I visited her recently, though, I was surprised to see the planters gone, the ground beneath flattened and awaiting sod. After toiling in the garden for years, she was ready to let it go.

There are those among us, like my friend, who embrace and even begin change. I admire them and often think they’re the better for it.

Of course, we know change is the essence of life. If you doubt this, look at your 17-year-old who once sat in a highchair dribbling liquefied carrots down her bib and is now taller than you. Impermanence is a core teaching of mindfulness. Yet, the constancy of change is difficult for many, myself included, to accept.

This is not an optimum position to hold. It’s a bit like standing in the surf and trying to stop the waves with your outstretched arms. You get knocked down doing that.

We may not like change – particularly when it’s forced upon us by events we can’t control – but fighting it is futile. That’s never been more true than it has this year, which is like a master class in navigating unwanted upheavals brought on by a global pandemic, racial unrest, and natural disasters. (One of my favorite memes likens 2020 to a Razor scooter to the shin.)

But while we may not welcome change, we can learn to wade into its icy waters and eventually open ourselves to the possibilities it presents.

Julia Samuel, a British psychotherapist, and author says it’s by allowing ourselves to feel the pain of change that we adapt to fit new circumstances. And pain can be a signal that change is either underway or that we need to be bold enough to initiate it. https://juliasamuel.co.uk/

Long ago, another friend of mine (I’m so fortunate to have friends or I’d have nothing to write about) moved from her quiet, suburban townhome to a Zen center located in a noisy, dense part of the city.

She made the choice for many valid reasons and was secure within it. But she missed the lush, shady trees surrounding her townhome and the community pool she swam in daily. One day, she had a conversation with the roshi at the Zen center about her internal struggle. The roshi listened patiently and then kindly said: “That was then, and this is now.”

My friend realized she was trying to stop the waves with her outstretched arms. After that, she began to settle into her new home.

The power of heeding the painful signals of change often reveals new prospects, adventures, or long-postponed explorations. As Samuel wisely counsels even in the midst of change there are parts of you that remain soothingly and reliably unchanged. So much so that you might be confident enough to broker the vicissitudes of life on your own terms.

I fell into a conversation recently with a neighbor who told me she was considering renting out her house and using her dual citizenship to move her family to Canada.

Because of COVID-19 she and her husband were working from home and could now work anywhere with a solid WiFi connection. What’s more, schools in Vancouver allowed children to attend classrooms in person, an appealing option for her kids who were struggling with pandemic-induced Zoom school.

The other week I noticed the rental sign on my neighbor’s lawn was gone. A storage pod stood in the driveway.

All I could think was: “Good for her.”

 

On My Mind

Sometimes we need more than a little guidance traversing change especially when it comes to the big questions in life or things that Bill Burnett, the executive director of the Design Program at Standford University, calls ambiguous problems.


A common and recurring one is: What do I want to do when I grow up?

Burnett points out this isn’t just a question kids ask. Adults encounter this question over and over again as they transition through life’s many stages.

Much of the time when we seek to answer this question Burnett says we engage in suboptimal thinking predicated on misbeliefs. Only a rare few, less than 20% according to Burnett, know what their passion is, for example. And 10 years out of school      less than 20% of college students wind up working within the field of their major, he adds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPjoCO5Juj0

Most of the time we have to try things before we fall in love with them. And that applies to ice cream as well as careers, of which we’ll likely have more than one. Using design thinking, or a non-linear, iterative approach, proves to be very helpful when      working in try-it-out mode and finding what it is you love to do.

If you’re curious about learning how to apply design thinking to life’s thorniest questions, you can read Burnett’s and Dave Evan’s book (see above) or watch the Ted Talk (see below.)
 

https://www.kellybarron.com/1096-2/

Deliberate Decompression

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When my daughter was a toddler and given to vibrant tantrums, I’d duck into the bathroom and tightly shut the door to deliberately decompress for a few minutes and settle my jangled nerves.

Doing so saved me from many regretful mothering moments. And it’s why I say I’ve done my best parenting in the bathroom.

Deliberate decompression has helped me in many other ways, as well.

It’s been an on-the-spot mindfulness practice to cope with moments of overwhelm – i.e., the bathroom technique. It’s also been a longer-term strategy that’s helped me course correct and renew my mind, body, and spirit.

Deliberate decompression takes many forms.

It can be as simple as pausing and purposefully relaxing the body by taking a full breath in and out, dropping your shoulders a few millimeters, and softening your belly. (Much of the day, whether we’re aware of it or not, we brace our core as if we’re waiting for a sucker-punch.)

We also can soften and widen our gaze to induce states of relaxation. (More on that below in On My Mind) Standing up and from the desk chair you’ve been glued to for the last three hours and stretching, taking a walk, napping, and, of course, meditation all count as intentional ways to deliberately decompress.

Using any of these approaches throughout the day creates more ease and increases alertness, concentration, creativity, and productivity as research on the Pomodoro technique, https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/pomodoro-technique which advocates taking work breaks every 25-minutes and science on napping and meditation show.

Hitting pause, especially when our emotions run high, also allows us to take our next action with wisdom at our side. Often, when we don’t pause, any insight or kindness we possess quickly gets run over by reactivity. (Like I said, it’s always good to know where the nearest bathroom is.)
Deliberate decompression also can be like a long-form poem – a day, a week, or a month or more off work to do nothing or whatever you want, provided, of course, you can financially afford to do so or desperately need to so do.

I once fell in the desperate camp and quit a job to decompress. In the fruitful uncertainty thereafter, I decided to change what I wrote about, become a mom, and later a mindfulness teacher. I’m far from alone in experiencing the upside of downtime.

In his book, “Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less,” author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Soojung-Kim-Pang/e/B001KHJ91I/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1 chronicles countless examples of great leaders, scientists, artists, and writers who have all benefitted from slacking off.

General Dwight Eisenhower famously decamped to Telegraph Cottage on the outskirts of London during World War II to read cowboy novels and golf, which those who knew him well said prevented him from having a “mental crack-up.” Others have had creative breakthroughs on vacation. Lin-Manuel Miranda got the idea for his award-winning play Hamilton while reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton when on a break in Mexico.

For years, German sociologist Sabine Sonnentag has been exploring whether emotional resources for workers are as valuable as physical energy for athletes. Her work shows that workers who take time off are invariably more productive, have better attitudes, and are more collegial. Drawing on the athletic metaphor, Soojung-Kim Pang writes: “However much you love the game at some point, you have to stop playing and rest.”

As a culture, we’re notoriously bad at resting. Paid time-off piles up like laundry in an overflowing hamper. And apparently, we’ve been piling up even more vacation days during the pandemic, according to Zenefits, a human resources software company. (Some of that’s because we’re frightened about what will happen to our jobs if we take a break from them.)

But if you’ve been charging too hard lately, maybe it’s time to step back and ask yourself whether you need to deliberately decompress – even just for a moment or a weekend. You might be surprised by the good that comes from it and by how much your weary mind and body require it.

Lately, a friend of mine has been taking a breather by driving to the beach 15 minutes from her home and sitting in the sand whenever her schedule allows. I add this note knowing what a Los Angeles luxury it is to spend time at the beach. I also know that for many essential workers, who are putting in long hours on our behalf,  a day at the beach seems like, well, a day at the beach.

I have to say, though, my friend looks very tanned and very relaxed.

On My Mind

Ralph Waldo Emerson said “the health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never so tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

Turns out Emerson was on to something.

Most of us think the main job of our eyes is to see. But neuroscientist Andrew Huberman says that our eyes aren’t just for seeing objects, shapes, and colors. They’re primarily designed to help us regulate the state of our nervous system. Our eyes, for example, notice sunlight and darkness, which help coordinate the body’s internal clocks, cueing us when to be alert and when to fall asleep.

How we use our visual gaze also affects our nervous system. When we narrowly focus our gaze to stare at our iPhone we engage the go state of our sympathetic nervous system. In contrast, when shift into a more panoramic gaze to take in a sunset we activate the rest and digest state of the parasympathetic nervous system.

One isn’t better than the other. We need to do both. But we tend to spend a lot of time visually focussing and not so much time taking in the scenery.

For that reason, Huberman offers a simple hack that can help relax our nervous systems. Every so often, he suggests defocusing or shifting into panoramic vision where you can see what’s in the periphery. Taking a walk or riding a bike also induces optic flow, which is additionally relaxing to the nervous system and yet another way to deliberately decompress.

To learn more about Huberman’s fascinating research visit his website at http://www.hubermanlab.com/ or check out his Instagram page where you can learn about neuroscience in short, easy to understand snippets.  http://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/?hl=en.

Cultivating Joy

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The other day I spoke with a friend I hadn’t connected with since the pandemic began. When I asked how she was, she unexpectedly said she had just tasted the best cherry in her life.

Her delight was refreshing, and it didn’t alter the underlying fact that she felt heavy-hearted and off-kilter because of the state of the world. She nonetheless found momentary joy in a bowl of cherries. Often, we have to coax these small moments of joy into our awareness. We have to let our guard down and allow them rub up against us like a purring cat.

Joy can be like that—small, unassuming, disarming. It’s hiding in a cherry, a song note, or a pair of comfortable shoes. Often, we have to coax these small moments of joy into our awareness. We have to let our guard down and allow them rub up against us like a purring cat.

Of course, our attention is often otherwise occupied—tugged toward irritation when we hear the grating whir of a leaf blower, or when we feel sadness after learning a friend is ill, or anxiety when someone we love has lost their job. And there are the larger forces that pull our attention—oppression, climate devastation, deep uncertainty about the future. Much of mindfulness practice is about learning to relate to these sharp-elbowed moments with equanimity.

But along with all of those dark and stormy moments is also the sunshine of joy. Just like irritation or sadness, subtler moments of gladness arise throughout our day. Bringing awareness to the many small good moments we experience isn’t a denial of everything else that might be wrong. Instead, it’s an honest appraisal of what might be arising in the moment.

For my friend, momentary joy arose in the taste of cherry. Right now, for me, it’s the dancing of my fingers on the keyboard. For you, it might be reading this story (I hope so) or sipping a refreshing glass of water. Connecting with modest moments like these not only feels good; it tempers our hard-wired tendency toward negativity.

Even without a pandemic weighing on us, human beings tend to be downcast. The brain registers negative experiences more strongly than positive ones because it helped our ancestors survive. It’s useful to have a brain highly attuned to threats when saber tooth tigers lurk in the brush. It’s far less helpful when threats to our physical survival are fewer, and when our enduring desire is to be at ease. As psychologist and meditation teacher Rick Hanson says, “The brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones.”

One practical way to counter our negativity bias is to attend to joyful moments. Soaking in moments of delight requires mindfulness. It’s challenging, for example, to enjoy an uplifting breeze when you’re doom-scrolling on Twitter.

We don’t have to aspire to picture-postcard ideals of happiness to feel more joyful. Those are more than welcome. But so, too, are the quiet, happy moments that arrive when we’re present for them.

But you might be surprised that with intention to do so, you can notice the burst of joy you feel when your car engine reliably starts after sitting in the driveway for weeks, when the bus arrives just as you do at the bus stop, when a welcome breeze touches your skin.

We don’t have to aspire to picture-postcard ideals of happiness to feel more joyful. Those are more than welcome. But so, too, are the quiet, happy moments that arrive when we’re present for them.

Here are a few mindful perspectives and practices to cultivate joy in your daily life:

  • Shift Your Frame of Reference: I’ve made a case for finding joy in the nooks and crannies of our lives because too often, we reserve jubilation for milestones—a wedding day, the birth of a child or a hard-won promotion, etc. When we think of joy as belonging only to big events, we sideline the many small pleasures strewn along the way. Finding joy in our daily routines makes it far more accessible and creates a positive feedback loop. The more we attend to joy in the ordinary moments of our lives, the more we experience it, and the more joyous we become.
  • Slow Down: It can take the brain a few seconds to register that something good is coming your way. Slowing down lets your heart, mind, and body to acknowledge pleasure is present. Savoring the flavor of juicy peach allows you to enjoy it more as does pausing to feel your bare feet in the grass or lingering over the lines of a beautifully written poem.
  • Non-Problematic Joy: Sometimes, finding joy is as simple as noticing what’s not wrong. In the wild swings between pleasant and unpleasant, we often neglect the contentment of the neutral middle. Most mornings, for example, my teeth feel fine, the sun rises with confidence, and birdsong fills the air. While these experiences might not thrill us, paying attention to them encourages an appreciation and gratitude for all that’s still right in the world. As Chade-Meng Tan writes in Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within, “Knowing you are not entirely at the mercy of agitation can bring some joy.”
This article originally appeared in Mindful Magazine https://www.mindful.org/

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there,” Rumi.

 

I once read a story about a man on a subway train who became angry at a father and his misbehaving sons. The two young boys were creating a commotion – jumping up and down, darting from seat to seat, making noise – while their seemingly hapless father looked on.

Eventually, the father turned toward the irritated man and apologized, explaining that he and the boys were returning from the hospital where his wife had just died. Wearily, the father said he didn’t have it in him to discipline his sons.

I can’t recall where I read that story. (My apologies to the author.) But it’s served as a long-standing reminder to soften my judgments and wrap them in a blanket of open-mindedness.

Who knows what trouble has befallen someone in a foul mood? Who knows what thorny path someone has taken to reach a firmly held belief?

It’s not easy to air out our assumptions and consider alternatives. Doing so seems all the more difficult in a culture of political polarization, and outrage porn where brash, tweeted, posted, or broadcasted opinions often compel us to cling more tightly to our own.

But open-mindedness is a bridge to a better understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us. It also fosters dialog, collaboration, and tolerance.

Open-mindedness – or the willingness to consider differing ideas, opinions, and perspectives – is more than just an attitude. It’s both a skill and a mental allegiance. It’s also a hallmark of mindfulness.

Being open-minded doesn’t mean we abandon our principles. Instead, it means we’re willing to hold them up to the light, and like a piece of stained glass, see their colors more clearly.

One way to train yourself to become more open-minded is through a process Paul Saffo, a forecaster, and professor at Stanford University uses. http://www.saffo.com/about-paul-saffo/

Saffo advocates holding strong opinions, weakly, and then intentionally challenging yourself to find contradictory information and data to shape a better conclusion. He explains how to do so this way:
“Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the ‘strong opinion’ part. Then –and this is the ‘weakly held’ part– prove yourself wrong. Engage in creative doubt. Look for information that doesn’t fit or indicators that point in an entirely different direction…” https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-framework-for-thinking-6530d417e364

In other words, entertain – even if only for a moment – a contrasting perspective and let it guide you to a deeper conception of what’s valid. Think of open-mindedness like a key that unlocks a door to what you don’t yet know and what you might learn about another person, a scientific or political theory, a problem or a situation, or yourself.

Another story that relates is coming to mind: I recently met a woman who loved to travel to remote places. Her husband didn’t enjoy this, but at times he tagged along. When he went with his wife, though, he stayed in the hotel, tethered to the familiarity of having breakfast in his room, reading the paper, or watching television. I wondered about the experiences and discoveries he missed as he huddled in his hotel room while his wife explored a foreign country.

I like to think of open-mindedness as a form of intellectual travel to a remote village. Doing so takes a willingness to leave home and be uncomfortable. But it’s also an adventure. And who doesn’t like a bit of adventure now and then?

On My Mind

It’s always good to have a poem in your pocket to lift your spirits or entertain you while your waiting in line at Trader Joe’s. For the past few weeks, I’ve been carrying around one from Derek Mahon as a reminder that maybe, someday in the not too distant future, things will take a turn for the better.

Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the daybreak and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon, from Selected Poems

Highly Entertaining

Gratitude comes in many forms – in quiet prayers, we say before bed or in loudly shouted party cheers. For Elmarie Du Toit, it came in a long line of clapping from students who applauded her retirement after 50 years of heartfelt teaching. Watch the video below, and you might feel a bit of gratitude as well.  http://twitter.com/FrankieFire/status/1290550516011892736

The Benefits of Mental Flexibility

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Years ago, New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz was running late to catch a flight at JFK airport. When he entered long-term parking, the ticket to the lot jammed in the machine, worsening his predicament.

As cars piled up behind him and the risk of missing his flight became pressing, Shortz went into problem-solving mode. He got out of the car and spied a paperclip on the ground. Thinking quickly, he twisted it into a hook, extracted his ticket, and dashed to the gate just in time to catch his flight.

Shortz tells this story as an example of the benefits of mental or cognitive flexibility.https://bigthink.com/videos/the-importance-of-mental-flexibility

When we’re cognitively flexible, we find novel solutions to challenges such as Shortz’s NYT crossword puzzles.

But mental flexibility goes well beyond puzzling. Mental flexibility allows us to see things from different perspectives and appreciate another person’s point of view. It’s what keeps us from getting emotionally stuck and helps us go with the flow of life. All of which not only supports problem-solving but enables us to get along better with others.

Mental flexibility is an essential life skill. And it’s one that appears all the more valuable in a climate of political polarization, outrage porn, and personal broadcasting where tolerant and reasonable exchanges about issues are as rare as shooting stars.

Fortunately, mental flexibility is a trainable skill. To get a sense of what it means to be mentally flexible, let’s try an experiment. Look at the picture below.

What do you see? Do you see a duck with its beak pointing to the left? Can you see a bunny with its nose pointing to the right?

If you can see both images, congratulations, you just exercised a bit of mental flexibility. This 100-year-old drawing has been used in studies to gauge creativity by how quickly people see one image and then the next. It might be relatively easy for us to toggle between a duck and a rabbit in a drawing. But it’s not so easy to be as mentally nimble in daily life.

Think back to the last time you argued with your spouse, a friend, or a co-worker? Was it easy to see their side of the story? Could you empathize with their point of view? Or was doing so as challenging as one of Shortz’s crossword puzzles?

When we become rigid in our thinking, we invariably get straight-jacketed in perceptions and behaviors that exacerbate our stress. Not only do we lose the capacity to see things broadly and create ingenious solutions we wind up locking horns with others. As a result, our efforts to solve problems or resolves disputes often devolve into anger and frustration.

Of course, this happens to all of us, particularly when we care deeply about situations, people, and issues. Training in mental flexibility, however, can allow you to enter problem-and-resolution mode more readily.

There are many ways to become mentally agile. You can do crossword puzzles, fix a broken paper shredder, or cook a recipe with alternative ingredients. You also can practice mindfulness.

A smattering of studies show mindfulness meditation improves cognitive flexibility. Research on how mindfulness affects the brain is still in its infancy and I’m hesitant to rely on it too heavily.

What I’ve experientially gained from practicing mindfulness meditation, though, is a widening tolerance for nuance, alternative perspectives, and the gray area of not knowing.

Mindfully observing the coming and going of thoughts, beliefs, and judgments lessens the investment in them, allowing you to hold them more loosely. It doesn’t mean that you don’t retain a point of view or that you don’t have strong opinions. But what once seemed like the only way to see something often gives way to an open field of other possibilities and outlooks.

In other words, you see both the duck and the rabbit.

A version of this blog originally appeared on emindful.com: https://emindful.com/home/

On My Mind

Nobel Prize winner and legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan was interviewed in the New York Times recently before the release of his latest album “Rough and Ready Ways.”

Asked why more people didn’t pay attention to Little Richard’s gospel music Dylan responded in a way that made me want to blare gospel music throughout the house. Dylan said:

“Gospel music is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum, and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news…On the other hand, gospel news is exemplary. It can give you courage…” Bob Dylan, NYT, June 12, 2020

If Dylan’s quote below inspires you check out this ranking of the top 20 gospel albums of all time.http://www.soulinstereo.com/2017/05/20-greatest-gospel-albums-on-our-playlists.html