But her name is not Sharon....

There is an interesting story from a parenting workshop run by Adler Institute. Here goes:

A mother and her young child were walking through a supermarket. Soon, as the mother got engrossed in shopping, the child grew irritable and began crying. The mother said in a calm voice, “We need to get just a few more things, Sharon, and then we are done”.

The child continued crying. Within a few minutes, the crying began to grow louder. The mother said calmly, “We’ve finished shopping, Sharon, now all we need to do is to pay.”

As they reached the billing counter, the crying and yelling intensified. The mother maintained her calm demeanor, and said, “We are almost done Sharon, and soon we will go into the car”. The child continued to cry till they got to the car, and then finally child calmed down.

A young man walked up to the mother and said, “I was watching you and your daughter in there, and I wanted to tell you that I am impressed with your ability to stay calm while Sharon was throwing her tantrum. Today, I have learned an important lesson from you.” The mother thanked the man and then said, “But her name is not Sharon, I am Sharon.”

Having been through similar situations myself, I could relate to Sharon’s struggle.??I could feel the tension created by two conflicting needs – the mother’s need to get things done and the child’s need to get out of a place she doesn’t like. Sharon chose to work on her own thought process while navigating the situation.?

How different could things have been for Sharon and her daughter if she had reacted to the child’s meltdown with harshness???It would have probably led to a further escalation in the tension and wouldn’t have set the right example for the child. Moreover, it was neither the right setting for correcting the behaviour and nor was the child in a receptive state to process the feedback.

While this story refers to the parent-child dynamic, I think the core concepts apply to interpersonal relationships and life in general:

1)???Working with our own mind and emotional state first?

2)???Choosing ones’ best possible response in each situation (rather than acting on impulse)

When it comes to high-pressure situations, these two concepts aren’t the easiest to follow because the stress often brings out our primitive flight or fight responses. We may want to just give up and run away (just abandon the shopping cart and dart towards the exit) or resort to harshness (and regret later).?

Just like Sharon’s behaviour inspired the gentleman watching her, people who hang in there, with feet firmly grounded during tough situations evoke this rare feeling of awe.??Their way of being in tough situations gives us a glimpse of the inner work that has gone into cultivating the patience and endurance that it takes to stay calm and collected.

“Progress is relatively fast in fields that apply knowledge to the material world, such as physics or genetics. But it is painfully slow when knowledge is to be applied to modify our own habits and desires.

??—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi”

This inner work of developing patience and tolerance comes from slowing down and deliberately choosing what is appropriate in a particular situation versus acting on an impulse or doing what is convenient. I think the beauty of the process of cultivating this behavior is that it positively affects all the areas of our life because we begin making each choice from a place beyond our default behavior or likes and dislikes.

Two questions that support the process of making such choices are:

1)???Does this choice support the right thing to do in this particular situation?

2)???Is this choice beneficial in the long term?

Drawing these distinctions in our daily lives?consistently?may feel laborious and inconvenient, but over a period it helps us develop the kind of patience and endurance that makes it easier to choose responses in a myriad of situations – be it making a choice related to satisfying our tastebuds versus being conscious of what is good for our body or making a choice between an appropriate response versus a reaction that could damage a relationship. Tal Ben-Shahar, author and teacher of Happiness Studies at Harvard explains that we need to develop endurance and patience to enjoy positive and long-lasting changes individually, interpersonally, and organizationally.

Developing this endurance and patience is a long journey, one that I have been on myself and every time I stop to check how far I have come, I still see a long way to go ahead of me. What has helped me on this journey is a technique called the SNACK. It is a mindfulness practice where:

S - Stop – If a situation feels overwhelming and produces a rush of emotions, the first step is to just stop and take a pause.

N - Notice – This step requires us to bring our awareness to notice what is happening right at that moment – around us and within us, and bringing our awareness to:

• What sensations do we feel in our body?
• What are our emotions right now??
• What are the thoughts passing through our mind?

A - Acceptance – This step is about accepting “what is true” in that moment. Both about the situation and how we feel about it.

C - Curiosity – Bringing acceptance to the situation makes it easier to progress to the next step – which is bringing gentle curiosity to our experience, in the given situation. Two questions that I find most useful here are:

• What is it that is making this situation tough for me?
• What is it that I need the most at this moment?

K - Kindness – This is a reminder for us to make choices that are kind to ourselves as well as those around us.

While I first came across this technique in a book called “Mindful Parenting in a Chaotic World” by Nicole Libin, the following article also explains the technique in a simple and effective way:?https://www.mindful.org/how-to-take-mindful-snack/

Each day in our busy lives has moments that offer us opportunities to choose between what is easy and what supports our personal growth. I hope Sharon’s story and the Mindful Snack help you navigate these choices.?

Wishing you a great week ahead!?

References

·?????Choose the Life You Want by Tal Ben-Shahar

·?????Mindful Parenting in a Chaotic World by Nicole Libin

·?????Mindful.org