This idea comes from Dr. Joe Dispenza’s, “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself,” and hits on how our habits are rewired through changing our thoughts. We may know that thoughts -> feelings -> actions, but it’s so easy for feelings to completely take us over and get caught in the ruts of habitual action.
Like this morning when the alarm went off at 5:15 AM my initial instinct (the feeling inside) was to turn off the alarm and set a new one for 6:30 AM (and I actually did that). Being comfortable under the covers is a habitual feeling. But right after that, I thought, “No, I’m rested enough and should get up to go to the gym,” and so I got up and went.
Does this mean that I’m going to feel like getting up tomorrow at 5:15 AM when the alarm goes off again? Nope. But it does mean that I’m one step closer to making it a habit. I like to think of thoughts as bricks and habits as the brick wall. One different thought isn’t necessarily going to dismantle the wall, but it will start the process of change.
The body and feelings will eventually catch up if we can work to see and have different thoughts.
How can you think greater than you feel this week? Try doing it once a day and see what happens.
"The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences... To set up what you like against what you dislike is a disease of the mind." Third Zen Patriarch
While math was one of my favorite subjects growing up, I shared a common gripe with math lovers and loathers alike, "When am I ever going to apply this in real life?" The quadratic equation? Asymptotes? PEMDAS*? Even in college I barely applied any of the calculus that haunted my later high school years.
There has been one concept from high school math that has stuck with me and I try to apply it more and more on this inner journey: absolute value. If you remember, the absolute value of any positive or negative integer is the distance of the number from 0. As you can see from the example below, the absolute value of |+5| and |-5| is 5; it essentially removes the positive or negative designation.
Absolute value had admittedly been relegated way back to the section of mind where other rote memorizations go to die. Still, it reappeared a few years ago as I was starting to wake up to the fact that I was living my life like a bowling bowl. No, not the bowling ball you see a professional effortlessly deliver* down the lane as it finds the sweet spot of the oil pattern and seems to merge into the pins with a sforzando crash. My day-to-day deliveries (experiences) were altogether different. It seemed like my preferences kept me careening, and still do (albeit less than before), from one bumper to the other in a dizzying fashion (yes, the bumpers are up - I'm not a pro).
My day-to-day life seemed to go something like this:
This visual of bouncing from the positives to the negatives is also reflected in the hedonic treadmill.
Graphic from CFI (Corporate Finance Institute)
The Hedonic Treadmill concept does a lovely job of explaining how we return to a baseline level of happiness between the seemingly positive and negative inflections of our lives, but I think it misses the mark a bit. For me, the curves in the graph seem to underplay just how serious we are about getting the positives and avoiding the negatives. My experience on that treadmill is in no way like the meandering nature of the curve above and instead is like the bowling ball screaming down the lane at 100 MPH as I get beaten up and bruised from both extremes.
Which brings us back to absolute value. What if there was a way we could experience the "positive" and "negative" (keep in mind that we are the ones that define both, we usually only define what we want and don't realize that by doing that we have created the opportunity for what we don't want to happen) parts of life from a different level? What if our defining events as positive and negative really stand in the way of us actually experiencing them? What would happen if we could learn to bracket the positive and negative experiences and return them to their harmless state of just experiences?
But if we can slow down, and remove our labeling of experiences as "good" or "bad," we can return to the absolute value of life each day. Applying this concept to our lives is essentially another practice in mindfulness (becoming aware of how our relationship with our mind impacts our lives). Living this practice in as many moments as possible has increasingly helped me maintain the intention of these absolute values of life:
| Experience the moment fully and then experience whatever comes next |
| Experience the freshness of life in each moment |
| Live in peace with whatever emotions and feelings come up |
| Handle Life |
| Experience the moment fully and then experience whatever comes next |
"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." -Joseph Campbell
It seems that most of the time I'm not able to experience life because I'm busy trying to line everything up to be the way I think it needs to be so I can be ok. In short, I feel great when things go "my way" and I feel upset and pissed when they don't go "my way." I have found that this clinging to "my way" and trying to avoid at all costs "not my way" is THE SINGULAR REASON why I get stressed and become resistant to what is happening, aka reality.
This is by no means a new thought as many wise sages scattered throughout history have taught that the way to get the most value out of our lives, aka to experience being alive, lies in transcending our preferences. As Buddha succinctly puts it in his 2nd noble truth; the cause of suffering is preference.
While living this untethered life is much easier said than done, what's the alternative? As you probably know, trying to get life (everything out there) to line up with what we want (comprised of our limited experiences) is a full-time job that leads straight to exhaustion. How could it not?
Let's slow down and think logically about this for a second. How tiny is the way we think life should be (our preferences), created from whether an experience felt good or bad when we first experienced it, compared to all of the different ways life can be (reality)? So what are the odds that we will ever get it to be the way we want? Let's just go with extremely unlikely.
That's why we hoard the "Kodak Moments" of our life. You know, those few moments we just have to capture because they lined up perfectly (aka we hit the preference lottery) with what we wanted to happen. Not saying these experiences aren't great and we shouldn't revel in them (and appreciate the inner energy they reveal that has been there the entire time), just that we should consider whether it's worth chasing these few moments at the expense of all the rest of them.
How do we feel in those "Kodak Moments"? That's essentially the same question as, "What does it feel like to be alive?" For me, I feel most alive when the thoughts stop. Like when you're having a deep conversation with a friend and look up and 3 hours have gone by in an instant. Or you're at a concert and become one with the music and the crowd and just completely lose yourself (if we define ourselves as our thoughts and lose the thoughts then we will lose ourselves). The moments when the incessant background noise that usually colors our experience disappears and we experience whatever is happening fully are bliss .
How many moments do you think you've experienced since you've been alive vs. the total number of moments you've actually been given? No, really stop and ponder it. How many moments have you been completely open to with a curious sense of wonder vs. how many have you automatically labeled according to what has happened in the past or what should happen in the future?
We're talking about an absolute value of life that transcends the momentary hits of high or low. We are talking about an absolute value where in every moment we feel the current of life flowing in us and we acknowledge that each moment adds to our wholeness.
| Experience the freshness of life in each moment |
"I just feel like life is speeding up and it doesn't feel like it used to. I can't quite put my finger on it."
It's easy to admit that for most of us life has become a stale repetition of daily tasks that we have to do. Walk the dog. Take care of the kids. Drive to work. Sit at work for 8 hours (if we're lucky). Go grocery shopping. Get ready for bed. Do it all again the next day.
What the absolute value of life can do in these moments is loosen the predictable and routine chains that make it feel like we are drowning in a vat of "same shit different day." We will come to experience moments as new by learning to drop the negative and positive assignments. These fresh moments are what feed us instead of draining us. Would you rather eat fresh food or stale food every day? The answer is clear but we just keep eating the same stale experience day after day and wonder why life doesn't taste the way it used to (remember Campbell's quote above that we want more than anything to experience being alive).
And when life gets stale what do we do? We immediately say that we need to find a new job, a new spouse, or a new hobby. "I just need something to get the spark back," we lament to our friends. While we very well may end up doing one of these, the absolute value of life implores us to first try and fully experience what is right in front of us before making drastic outside changes (always start with adjusting "how" we're doing something before immediately trying to change "what" we're doing).
Life is imploring us to ask ourselves why our first experience of something feels powerful and special (think the first kiss, the first "I love you," having the first child, the first day of the new job) but then it somehow loses that spark as we do it more and more? It's precisely because we are laying our past labeling of each experience on top of whatever is happening in the present and so we aren't able to fully experience it as fresh and new. Give up the labels and each moment becomes enough.
| Live in peace with whatever emotions and feelings come up |
We've reached a critical juncture in the conversation of experiencing life because it might seem that I'm telling you that the absolute value of life is to just experience positive experiences/emotions. Please don't think that. Similar to music, we can't experience (wouldn't know) the treble parts without the bass parts. Experiencing life doesn't mean we are trying to solely experience the "high notes" (how boring would music be without all the interval variations that take us on musical journeys), but that we reach a point where we experience them all without running from any.
As Eckhart Tolle says, "Even if everything were to collapse and crumble all around you, you would still feel a deep inner core of peace. You may not be happy, but you will be at peace." Peace is that which transcends the seemingly negative and positive events in our lives. It really is possible to feel at peace when we're sad, upset, or angry. Again, experiencing life means we get to experience each emotion to the fullest. It's just that when it's over outside, it's over inside. But that's not the case now.
In our current state, we aren’t able to move on because we are weighed down by the lifetime of negatives and positives we have stored in an attempt to control the outside. This dream state is one where the unchangeable past we are anxious about and the unknowable future we worry about causes us to miss the miracle of each moment right in front of us. We become light and free when we drop the negative and positive designations we have attached to life and experience life as just life.
Living this way we can experience life instead of just experiencing our belief that something should be happening, should happen again, or should not be happening.
| Ability to handle life |
What the Absolute Value of life ultimately comes down to is whether we can handle life. What does it mean to handle life? It means to be ok and at peace with whatever happens and realize that we can learn from it all. Otherwise, we default to a life of manipulation and forced control where we live every second trying to get things to line up with how we want them to be. If we slow down and look at the paradox we have put ourselves in it becomes clear that when we define our likes and dislikes we are defining our boundaries. As these boundaries get tighter and tighter we can get increasingly distrustful of anything new happening. The NEW is LIFE!
This is exactly what the Stoics taught. One of my favorite Stoicism writers is Ryan Holiday and he produces the Daily Stoic Email. I remember one such email where he shared a quote from Epicteus (a well-known figure in Stoicism - a slave who discovered internal freedom through being externally controlled):
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”
This should be comforting news! While the outside is completely out of our control (something we know deep down but is much harder to acknowledge day-to-day), we can work to find inner freedom that transcends what is happening outside.
Both Stoicism and the Absolute Value of Life are trying to remind us that while what happens externally is out of our control, we can always have the last say about what is happening inside. Epictetus also said, “Every event has two handles. One by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t." To handle life means that we choose to carry it from the open perspective that I'm entering a new moment and while I don't know what is going to happen I commit to being ok and learning from whatever happens.
Living the absolute values of life mentioned above won't be easy to start as it will require re-wiring patterns and habits that we've been fortifying since we were children. But it is absolutely within our capability to rewrite the script. We will rewrite the script one experience at a time. We will remind ourselves moment after moment to come back to the now, that this is a fresh and brand new experience, that we can fully experience whatever emotions arise, and that we can ultimately handle life.
If we do this enough we will find absolute value in each moment and will reach the state of equanimity described by Caroline Myss:
“My job is to get to a point where neither abundance nor poverty scares me. Where neither being married or alone scares me. My job is not to pray for one of those states, but to recognize that no matter what state I’m in I’ll be fine. So that no matter what God gives you, whether you find yourself in the most wonderful relationship or you find yourself alone, either way you say this is ok, I can handle this. Whether you find yourself wondering where your next meal is coming from or you find yourself rolling in loot, you say to yourself, "Either way, God, the challenge is the same." You’re asking me how do I manage myself and you’re watching my response to this and that’s what counts.” Spiritual Madness by Carolina Myss
Additional Thoughts [click on the note to return to where you were previously]
"Why?!?!?!?!," I think as my eyebrows furrow and my face scrunches up in a way that closely resembles toddler Austin who didn't get his way with a toy or how much time was left at the playground.
Except now the situations aren't about Lincoln Logs or getting called a name on the bus, they're about situations at work, family members, people I love, and mostly just about complete strangers who I'll never see again.
Why did they do that?
Why did they say that?
Why would they believe that?
What's funny, read - insane, about this is that I'm not really asking why. "Why?" is just an automatic INTERNAL response to something that doesn't immediately coalesce with whatever I think should be happening EXTERNALLY. It's like a warning signal my mind sends me* that says, "What just happened is not right and if we don't incessantly think about it then it is more likely to happen again. They NEED TO KNOW they messed up."
Imagine for a second, (stops at stoplight, rolls down window, leans over out of window) "So, a few miles back, when you cut me off like an asshole without signaling, why did you do that?"
While I know a few friends who could/would do that, I'm not one of those people (thankfully, I guess?). For me, it's much easier to know. To know that they cut me off because they're a jerk or that their driving 30 mph below the speed limit is a crystal clear indication that they are so old and incompetent they shouldn't be allowed to have a license. To know that what they did was on purpose and to just get in my way. To know and be pissed that I didn't get my way. It is my way or the high-way, right?
Except "my way" thus far has left me perpetually agitated with others and constantly at war internally with what everyone else is doing (aka reality). My life changed when I started to consider it differently.
The Online Etymology Dictionaryis not exactly sure where 'consider' stems from, but my favorite connection is to the Latin word considerare meaning "to look at closely, observe," or more literally, "to observe the stars."While I'm not certain of how many stars are in the sky, I would guess it would be fairly close to the number of possibilities for why someone does/says/doesn't say/doesn't do something.
Maybe they cut you off in traffic because they are in a rush to pick up their kid for school, or they had a greasy breakfast sandwich from their local gas station and they need a restroom asap, or dare I say they didn't see you there. Or maybe it was something bigger like them rushing to the hospital to be with a dying parent or contending with crippling anxiety that makes it difficult to drive.
While it would be great to be able to consider other possibilities automatically, it turns out that considering takes time, energy, and space.
Until now, whether we’ve been aware of it or not, all of our time, energy, and space have been completely occupied with keeping the door of new possibilities shut (not considering why). It's almost as if we have shut ourselves up in a tiny closet filled to the brim with our preferences, what should happen every second of every day so I'm ok, and we do everything in our power to keep that door shut. Considering something new is opening the door just a bit to let out some of the self-centeredness and in some kindness.
In our tiny small closet of a mind, we assume
they hurt me because they’re disgustingly self-centered
they called me a name because of who I love
they passed me up for the promotion because they had something against me
they left because they're selfish
they skipped me in life because they think they are better than me
they cut me off in traffic because they’re inconsiderate
they are talking too loud in the restaurant because they don't have any home training
One of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, describes it best in a commencement speech he gave in 2005, "If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting – then you, like me, probably will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying."
Come on DFW, I'm not being annoying, THEY ARE! They are the ones that keep hurting/skipping/leaving/cutting me off. Have you considered that?
But in our current state, instead of considering, we quickly assume and call it a day. Except doing that over and over becomes our life.
I, like you (maybe but hopefully not), don't usually have time to consider Wallace's reminder because it's much easier to automatically fall back on assuming I know why. But what if we could become a society of considerers instead of assumers? A species that was aware enough to pause and consider the best instead of rushing to assume the worst. And even better, what if there was some fancy superhero*that would pop up to slow us down in those tense situations when we feel like giving a piece of our mind to the dog/kid/coworker/spouse?
Now that I think about it, we may have already been joined here on earth by one such superhero (and many more) whose entire message revolved around considering...
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these."Matthew 6:28-29*
I'm in no way suggesting we immediately try to start considering at the level that Jesus taught, to consider the best unconditionally in every situation, but we can start with small situations every day. Wallace goes on to provide one such situation in his commencement speech:
"But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line – maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband, who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicles department who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmare red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness... Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible – it just depends what you want to consider."
As it turns out, JC and DFW were on to something because considering is not just something we do for others, it's something we do for ourselves. I've seen on my growth journey over the past three years how considering, not automatically going with and believing the first thought that comes to mind, has drastically changed my life. Here is what I've noticed on the inside when I choose to consider or not consider possiblities about things happening outside.
When I don't consider I feel...
When I consider I feel...
Tight and closed
Open and expansive
Constant agitation (stress arises from resisting what is)
Feeling of freedom (because I don't have to go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out why)
Inflated sense of entitlement
Ability to rest in not knowing
Need to react immediately (like my finger is resting on the send button)
Space to slow down and choose an appropriate response (usually means not responding at all)
Assumptive
Curious
But how do we actually gain the superhero strength to consider something new in the moment? I wish had a cooler answer, but like anything, it just comes down to practice. Just as we have to do bicep curls at the gym to lift heavier weights, we have to do inner curls with day-to-day experiences to handle heavier situations. As our inner strength grows (really stops contracting), situations outside start to slow down and we are able to be there in the moment to DECIDE how we want to proceed.
One specific way we can practice is by using the “5 Whys.” I first learned of the 5 Whys while reading “The Mindful Coach” by Doug Silsbee. Doug describes the exercise as follows, “When you are troubled by a situation or problem, simply ask yourself “Why am I troubled?” — but don’t be satisfied with your first answer. Look at that answer and ask “Whyisthatso?” Repeat the process again until you’ve asked “Why” five times… The goal, of course, is to come to a place of acceptance by understanding the true nature of the difficulty.” (The Mindful Coach p. 59).
We can adapt it a bit to fit our consideration by asking, “Why would they do that?”
Here’s an example:
The situation: You come home from a long day at work and decide to cook your significant other a nice meal. However, when they get home, they slam the front door shut and march through the house straight to the bedroom without saying a word.
“Hm” (continues cooking and staying centered until they either come out of the room or you go inside to see how they are doing)
As DFW mentioned earlier, are any of these reasons why likely to be the actual reason? No. Are they impossible? Also no. The only thing that we can know for sure here is that considering the additional whys leads to a way more compassionate and open view of it. I like to think of it as a consider*it* scale:
With each “why” we zoom out just a bit more as kindness and understanding (which ironically turns out to be the undoing of our previous "understanding" - read assumption) are born in that widening of the frame.
We spend so much time looking for wisdom, and it might be closer than we think. Just remember, the more whys you ask the more wise you become.
While we’ve explored what it’s like to consider various perspectives, don’t think for a second that this is me telling you which perspective is correct. We know where that leads – debates over morality that amount to nothing more than drowning in a shallow pool of who is more righteous.
Here is the TLDR point of this post:
IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE WHAT YOU CONSIDER, JUST THAT YOU CONSIDER IT COULD BE ANOTHER WAY.
Considering is an acknowledgment that we don't know and that our assumption (the automatic reaction our mind has based on everything it has experienced before – which is basically nothing compared to the entire reality everywhere) is limited. This consideration is the first step outside of the mind, outside of the dream we currently find ourselves in with so many nightmare creatures.
This is exactly why the second step in the AA 12-Step program is, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Again, this isn't telling you which "Power" to believe in, it's just telling you to believe in something other than YOU (up until this point we define ourselves as the mind - "Ego is the false self created by unconscious identification with the mind" [Power of Now by Elkhart Tolle).
It's admitting, NOT ME.
As we consider more in more and more moments, we will find that there is space where we can choose not to automatically go with how we have been wired (remember, we are born with love and learn fear). This space gives us room to work to unwire ourselves and return to the state of unconditional love we experienced and shared as a child. As we’ll see, this entire journey isn’t about learning anything, it’s about unlearning it all.
"The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse"
As we find more space, time, and energy to consider through our unlearning, we’ll even see that considering isn’t the highest. The highest is being able to handle reality (what just happened) without feeling any internal stress or any need to try and cling or push away the moment (5th example above in the 5 Whys scenario). It’s when life is effortless and we transcend the need to ask or know why.
But until we’re there, just focus on pausing to consider it differently. As we practice, we may even get a glimpse that considering new possibilities for others is really considering new possibilities for ourselves. Right now we are shackled by our limited view of what seems to be others, but it turns out that these views are really of ourselves. The arrogance that we see in others is already planted in us. The stupidity we see in others is already inside us. The ugliness we perceive in others must first be festering inside of us.
I aspire to reach a point where I can consider in a tense moment with another human that they are in fact being considerate as they help me realize and see how truly inconsiderate I am. I hope you will join me on this journey.
Additional Thoughts [click on the note to return to where you were previously]
