The Greatest Life Skill

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~?C.G. Jung

Have you ever:

Promised yourself that you would do something only to avoid it when the time came?

Beat yourself up for something you couldn’t possibly have done anything about?

Laid awake at night spinning in your head?

Avoided an important conversation?

Said something unkind and regrettable to someone you care about?

Told yourself that you are going to give up an old habit, only to continue?

Committed to beginning a new habit only to forget about it a few days later?

Wondered if there is something fundamentally wrong with you?

If you said yes to any of the questions above, then congratulations, you are human! Despite our profound intellectual abilities, most of the actions that we take are in reaction to something that we are feeling — whether we are aware of it or not.

“Neurocircuitry may be neurocircuitry, but we don’t have to run on automatic.” ~ Jill Bolte Taylor

Consider these scenarios

Caught in traffic.?What happens if you clench your jaw and create nightmare outcomes of being late? What happens if you breathe gently and relax your grip on the steering wheel?

Forgot a commitment.?What happens if you call yourself unpleasant names and refuse to accept that you are simply human? What happens if you take responsibility and let it go?

Engaged in a political conversation with someone who sees things very differently.?What happens if you dig in and argue? What happens if you drop your shoulders and just listen?

When things are not going the way we want them to, our biological survival mechanisms often kick in automatically. We tighten, resist, hold our breath, protect and defend.

We do this so often that it becomes a habit. We live in a fast-moving modern society with twenty-four hour news, constant access to email and texts, social media, and very high expectations for perfection — a low-level hum of vigilance, stress, and anxiety has become the new normal for many of us.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from our inability to sit quietly alone in a room.” ~ Blaise Pascal

There is another way to live. You can learn the skill of?being with.?You can intentionally experience circumstances and your feelings about them without constantly chasing, grabbing, fighting, or escaping them.

You can consciously bring attention to what is happening before jumping to your habitual reaction. You can feel and observe life without immediately attaching to an outcome. You can notice how quickly you define, categorize, evaluate, judge, or catastrophize.

You can identify the stories you are telling and make a distinction between them and what is actually happening. Seeing the difference between events and the meaning you assign to them is incredibly powerful — and it is only possible if you can be with your thoughts and feelings rather than being lost in them.

This whole concept of?being with?may seem abstract, passive, or privileged. However, there is a large body of scientific research showing a host of benefits to starting from a place of awareness and acceptance —?especially in times of challenge (COVID anyone?).?

It turns out that doing nothing about your thoughts and sensations until you see or feel them more clearly reveals many insights and options for healthy response.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~Viktor E. Frankl

Being with?your experience is where your personal freedom lies — it creates the time and space to choose how you respond to whatever shows up in life.

This skill has been taught in different ways in many wisdom traditions. The Stoics of ancient Greece, as well as the 19th century Transcendentalists, taught the power of bringing awareness and acceptance to thoughts and feelings before acting on them.

Contemplatives from Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam have all valued this skill. For thousands of years the art of?being with?has been seen as a way of celebrating the miracle of existence and participating wisely in it.

“There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

But let’s be practical. “Being in the moment” or “feeling our feelings” is not all there is to life. You have stuff to do and responsibilities to meet. There are people waiting for you to produce and respond. There are documents, lunches, answers, and expenses that need your attention. I get it.

Well, it turns out that in the midst of the hustle, the stress, the challenge, and uncertainty of life, this skill serves us incredibly well. Evolutionarily, our bodies have been sensing our environment long before we had the capacity for conceptual thought.

When you slow down and pay careful attention, you can glean the wisdom that sensations have for you. When humans are aware of what they are feeling, they are better investors, diagnosticians, athletes, and caregivers.

The reason that?being with?is the greatest life skill is because it supports so many others. Self-control, self-discipline, prioritization, organization, listening, empathy, decision-making, communication, critical and creative thinking — the list of important life skills is long. All of these are facilitated by your ability to know what you are thinking and feeling rather than just reflexively indulging or avoiding.

The scientific research is clear —?we are healthier,?we make better decisions,?we are happier, and we behave with?greater kindness?and?purpose?when we are practicing this skill.?Being with?is at the heart of wisdom, joy, freedom, clarity, confidence, and connection.

“It is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting, and you will find it easier to maintain control.” ~ Epictetus

To live skillfully is to make choices. The question is — upon what do you base your choices? If it is nothing more than the pursuit of pleasant feelings and avoidance of unpleasant ones, then you will live like a ping pong ball forever swatted by the paddles of circumstance.

Being with?is the difference between living life and reacting to life. It is the difference between working hard and fighting. It is the difference between sitting on the couch wishing or dreading and moving forward with purposeful action. It is the difference between a calm and confident life and one that is always at the mercy of ever-changing internal and external conditions.

“Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.” ~ Pema Chodron

Leveraging your capacity to be with the challenges of life rather than senselessly fighting them allows you to see the impermanence of them. Thoughts and sensations are constantly coming and going. Whatever you are feeling in this moment will pass and something else will arise. There can be a lot of peace in experiencing that.

Perhaps most importantly, you can see the conditioned habits that have become attached to certain feelings and you can discover new choices of response. This is growth. We are built for it. But we are not built to fight and grow at the same time.

“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar." ~ Mary Bryant

This may sound like a bunch of out-there, tree-hugging, crystal-sniffing, touchy-feely, hooey. That is exactly what I thought when it was first presented to me.

We are so accustomed to avoiding unpleasant feelings and pursuing pleasant ones that slowing down long enough to simply feel any of them can seem like a scary endeavor or a waste of time. Many of my clients express this when we first start working together. It’s like telling an alcoholic to just stop drinking — there is going to be a lot of resistance.

I am so passionate about this skill because I feel as though I have lived two completely different lives — one before I began practicing it, and one after. From personal experience, I can assure you building this skill is a complete game-changer

I am no guru. I have plenty of practice ahead of me. I just know that my life works so much better when I am practicing?being with?it.

As a coach who works with clients who can be very hard on themselves despite their achievements or accomplishments, I have seen the skill of?being with?help them:

Stop fighting with their partner and rebuild a mutually supportive relationship

Find close friends who were supportive of difficult life choices

Start a career in an inspiring and challenging new field

Work skillfully with doubt and uncertainty about the future

Finish a book that had been in the works for decades

Break the habit of avoiding uncomfortable conversations

Create a successful business in the midst of an economic downturn

Lighten up and enjoy their lives

Learning to be with discomfort is how I began — thirty years ago — to find freedom from my own debilitating anxiety. I had tried running from it, self-medicating it, and suppressing it. None of these strategies worked, and many of them intensified my suffering and caused pain for others.

I was shocked to find that I could sit with the sensations of my anxiety without needing to do anything about them. This knowledge took away their power over my life. Anxious feelings still show up from time to time, and when they do, it is a great reminder to slow down and pay attention to my life.

The irony in all of this is that the more willing you are to be with the challenging feelings, the more access you have to the ones you want. Joy, love, tenderness, gratitude and wonder are more available and more present when you are not working so hard to avoid the tough stuff.

“Under duress, we do not rise to our expectations, but fall to our level of training.” ~ Bruce Lee

It is not as easy as deciding one day, that moving forward, you will always be with your feelings before reacting. Some feelings are way harder to be with than others. It takes practice. The good news is that every moment in life provides an opportunity.

The more that you practice?being with,?the more your brain rewires itself to make this the new normal (scientists call this little biological miracle?behavior dependent neuroplasticity). The result of all this rearranging of neural networks is a more spacious life with deeper connections and greater fulfillment on a daily basis.

Full disclosure — while the practice itself can be rich and fulfilling, it can also be annoying and frustrating. This is true whenever we change things up. The human brain associates our past behavior with our survival, so it almost always creates some discomfort when we begin practicing something new.

Some effective ways to practice this critical and foundational life skill:

Using our posture and our breath.?There is a powerful connection between your mind and your body that contains it. When you take a more open stance toward life — physically and psychologically — you find a greater sense of safety and confidence. Breathing slowly and gently through your nose into a relaxed abdomen is a great way to reset from survival mode.

Taking time for restoration.?When you prioritize the big four — sleep, movement, diet, and relationships — you become healthier and more productive. Pushing yourself constantly actually keeps you in survival mode where a lot of energy is lost to a fight with life. Elite athletes know that the body actually gets stronger during the recovery between workouts, not during them.

Building awareness and acceptance through mindfulness.?Although it is commonly marketed as a way to escape stress, mindfulness is actually a powerful practice for being with uncomfortable feelings peacefully. Discomfort is an inevitable part of life — struggle against it does not have to be. The practice of sitting quietly with anything that shows up is a great way for you to prepare for the uncertainty of life.

Opening the heart through compassion.?When you practice reminding yourself that you are simply human and that no amount of accomplishment or achievement will rescue you from that reality, then self-compassion is a logical and powerful response. When you are open to the fact that everyone struggles no matter how shiny they appear on the outside, then you can see that kindness toward others makes a lot of sense.

Trusting in your ability to cope.?You have always dealt with whatever has shown up in life. There is good reason to believe that this will continue to be the case. Anxiety comes from doubting your ability to deal with an imagined future. Confidence comes from trusting in your ability to handle a future that is actually unknown. You can frequently remind yourself — “I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that I am up to it.”

Connecting with purpose.?There are principles, commitments, relationships, and goals that you value deeply. Feeling the importance of these on a regular basis — weekly, daily, hourly — gives you an anchor as feelings and circumstances change. There is a lot of emphasis these days on “finding your purpose.” You don’t have to have a single, grand life purpose in order to behave purposefully throughout the day.

Honoring life with choice.?Each time you choose to apply your attention and energy, you are putting value on something. Rather than viewing challenges as obstacles to the life you want, you can use them as opportunities to honor the life you value. At the end of the day, you can take a moment look back and respect the choices you made that honored life.

Dave helps clients relax, focus, connect, and enjoy their lives. You can reach him at [email protected]