The fresh air and exercise

laimisk | May 8, 2010 | no comments

Terrible things happen but there are things you can do to build up emotional resilience. If you can turn them into regular habits, they’re the mental equivalent of vitamins, fresh air and exercise.

The first two underline all the rest.
Step One is the practice of Gratitude. It’s a housekeeping tool for the heart. In the midst of turmoil it is easy to sink in despair. Climb on to the life raft of gratitude instead. Gratitude for what? Gratitude for anything. Gratitude for still being able to breathe in. Gratitude for your morning coffee, the fall of sunlight on grass or rain on leaves, for whoever is close to you. Saying thank you is a circuit breaker for misery. Use it every day.

Step Two is Forgiveness. Nothing corrodes the heart and then the body like resentment, jealousy and rage. Forgive whoever hurt you. Forgive the person who cut you up in traffic, the boss who doesn’t appreciate you, the lover who left you, the thief who broke into your house. You won’t feel it at first but say it anyway. Each time you find them eating away at your peace of mind, forgive them again. If you go through the motions enough times you will travel further from pain. And, for advanced forgivers, throw in a blessing. Let them go. The goal is not your revenge against the world but your own emotional freedom.

Step Three helps with the first two. Write Things Down. Make a regular practice of emptying your mind onto paper. Get the bad stuff out. Make a record of the good stuff, to be reread and enjoyed. Express your feelings in order to understand them better. Write down a problem in order to solve it. Unload your mind in the morning and your mind is free to take action. Unload your mind at night and you are ready for sleep, knowing that, if something must be done, you won’t forget.

Step Four is the life-saving practice of seeking Silence. Life is horribly noisy. Phones, iPods, televisions, traffic, planes, radio, people. Who can think, or feel, or get a sense of one’s own balance without turning the volume down? The best practice for seekers of silence is meditation. The practice of meditation allows meditators to observe and identify their own endlessly repetitive thoughts, and, by so doing, free themselves. Even five minutes’ meditation can break the circuit of mindless thinking and give you refreshment and perspective. Silence, however you find it, allows you to take off the emotional armour, de-stress, open out and listen to your own heart.

Step Five is Approval. It is very good for us to approve of things. Have you noticed how easy it is to slide into a downward spiral of disapproval and despair? We have been living through an election campaign. We have been bombarded with the idea that the country is going to the dogs, the world is coming to an end, that the economy is in crisis.

This constant diet of fear and foreboding is very bad for our emotional health. Learn to notice when it is happening and make yourself find something to approve of.

Yes, approve of things on purpose. The smallest things will do – the bus that arrives on time, the tea that is hot, good behaviour from a badly behaved child. Seek these things out and feed on them. Better still, express your approval whenever you can.

Step Six is what I call the practice of Fleeting Feelings. Emotions are like weather. However, there is a Buddhist practice of observing and releasing feelings that can really help. It is all too easy to fall into a habit of hanging on to bad feelings. Emotionally healthy people learn to pause in the midst of chaos, identify the predominant emotion – fear? anger? – and say to themselves, “feelings of anger are passing through me”. This is a truth. Your feelings of anger will pass, maybe in a few minutes, and though they may resurface, they are not in charge. You are. Say the mantra, “feelings of anger are passing through me”, take a few deep breaths and your sense of perspective will return. You are restored to emotional health. There are so many more techniques than this that can turn your day, even your life.

So my Seventh Step, which I highly recommend to you, is to Be Your Own Resource. You already know things that work for you. You know that if you can go for a walk on a beach, read a favourite poem, stroke a cat, bake a loaf of bread, you will be restored to emotional health. So write these things down, keep them in a file, keep adding to them and you will have written your own self-help book.