Tag: mindfulness

081a – growth recommendations

Haven’t done this in a few days. There’s something about private journaling that’s just not cutting it. Almost like the reverse of what used to happen— that is, journaling used to be better than writing in public because I would feel more free. However since I feel sufficiently free here as well, I feel better when I write here, since it then adds towards goal-completion pursuits. Journaling sometimes feels like “lost progress”. 

I’ve gotten a bit into Myers-Briggs and other personality tests again lately and though I know they can be a bit harmful (esp for people like me), I couldn’t stop myself from indulging in them. I think some of the findings have been interesting and can be potentially helpful too, actually, if I can take some time out to process them properly. 

The INFP thing I’ve been pretty comfortable with, but a friend recommended the Enneagram test to me as well, and that’s been a lot more stimulus than I was expecting. I test to be a type-4 at the moment and everything that’s listed in the “growth recommendations” is stuff that is quite.. intense, for the lack of a better word. 

The top two things that stick out, that also feel tough to implement right away, provided I’d even want to, are: 

  • Don’t pay so much attention to your feelings— this is quite tough since the last few months have been me actually paying a good amount of attention to my feelings. I think the meaning I’d want to assign to this is that feelings are valuable, and I definitely want to validate them, take my time to “feel” them perhaps (through activity and action as much as possible), but maybe I need to have time-caps on this, because spending more time than needed on any of the feelings can be harmful, of course. Maybe I want to cut myself off before it becomes “indulgence”.

  • Avoid putting off things until you are “in the right mood.”— this is also something I’m quite guilty of. I do tend to take a lot of time to do things because I generally believe I don’t do good work if I’m not doing it from a good state of mind. While I thought I had gotten quite better at dealing with these perfectionist tendencies, maybe there’s some more work to be done. I think if I had to be real, I’ve gotten better at this from one end only— for example, I’m now okay with leaving things at “90%”, but maybe I also need to be better at “starting things”— even when I don’t feel like I’m in the best state for them. 

The general theme seems to be that action, activity and discipline would be much better for me than fantasy and indulgence. Of course, this is something I know and I’ve been attempting to get to a point where I can think about implementing this, I haven’t yet. 

I had a couple of interesting conversations with strangers this week and those was also quite impactful, but something my therapist said which really helped me look at it differently was: 

  • What is the meaning you want to assign to it? 

This is important since it made me realise the right words— especially the right questions— can make such a big difference. I was taking everything I was thinking and feeling to be the truth, whereas really, I do have some control over how much importance I want to give to events and stimulus and feelings and thoughts. 

I feel like I have more things to talk about but I’m not sure what exactly. Social calendar is getting a bit pressurising— even though action and activity is nice, and it’s mostly nice to be around people, I don’t know what part of it is pressurising and draining exactly. Maybe it’s just my introversion needs coming into play. But when I do get time to myself I end up spending a lot of time in my head. So I guess the thing to figure out is how to spend time with myself that is still aligned with what I’ve learnt about action and activity. I think physical activity is the main thing I need to incorporate. I’ve been dancing a lot more and that feels pretty great, actually, but perhaps there’s more room for it. 

Alright, I think I have a qualitative plan, I’ll convert this into an action plan next week. 

Cheers xx 

007 – how internal and external awareness intersect

Preamble: This one’s a little all over the place, and perhaps a little circular in many ways, but I’ll post it out anyway since I’m pretty happy with the rough conclusion I was able to somehow reach. A little low on the word count on this but I’m sure the previous one makes up for it.

Today I want to take some time out to babble on about feelings and perception. I’ve been thinking how it’s funny (or interesting?) that one of the key concepts of therapy and psychology is “naming” your feelings to become more aware of them. And how one of the key concepts of Buddhism and mindfulness is to perceive the external world (and maybe even our internal world?) without naming it, without judging it. Both of these ideas however, as far as I’m aware, have the same goals, i.e. increased and expanded awareness.

So how does this work? How is it okay and even beneficial to name our feelings, but why is it beneficial to perceive external sights, sounds and smells without trying to label them? 

Of course one of the key points is that there’s a difference between naming something and judging something. Let’s maybe break these two things down. 

feelings + mindfulness

A situation occurs. We feel things. We make stories out of our feelings. More often than not, the stories are wrong. So here, if we interrupt the storytelling with just trying to name the feelings instead, we can become “aware” of them. Once we’re aware of them, we can remove the stories we were adding on to them.

Let’s look at this with an example: 

A situation occurs (my roommate left dirty dishes in the sink). We feel things (anger, annoyance, frustration). We make stories out of our feelings (my roommate is irresponsible, my roommate doesn’t respect rules, my roommate doesn’t care about cleanliness). More often than not, the stories are wrong. So here, if we interrupt the storytelling with just trying to name the feelings instead, we can become “aware” of them. Once we’re aware of them, we can remove the stories we were adding on to them.

Of course, there’s still some societal judgement that might persist (i.e. “anger” and “sadness” could be viewed as bad, or negative), but at least, we’ve removed the judgement about them from this particular situation.

perception + mindfulness 

Most meditation practices have some of these common directives: observe the world, focus on anything in your sights, look at objects, but try not to name them. Since naming them will create additional stories about them. For example, if you’re outside and you’re looking at some mud – try not to think of it as mud – since that might create a negative response in you. Or even flowers – perceive them, but don’t judge them. Don’t add thoughts onto them. 

reframe

Okay, I just realized that the goal of naming our feelings or getting in touch with our feelings is not awareness for the sake of it, the primary goal is to get distance from our feelings, or to enable unattachment from them, i.e. enable us to stop identifying with them.

Whereas the goal of perception, is also to create distance from ourselves, but the directive to avoid naming or judging things is probably only so that we don’t create unnecessary feelings, if they didn’t have to come about.

Naming our feelings, can help us get closer to our bodies, and away from our thoughts.

some sort of a conclusion

I suppose it’s because perceiving the external world comes naturally to us. We’re taught how to do this, most of us do this ever since we’re born. But we’re only clouded by whatever we’ve learned about these things. So in this case, we can directly start off by removing the “names and judgement” layer from these objects. It’s easier for a kid to “notice” an apple if they’ve seen it before. (I think) So, all we need to work on while practicing mindfulness is to remove the judgement of how an apple makes us feel (hungry, or nice) or what it looks like (ripe, or rotten, etc.)

But, not all of us are taught how to perceive our internal worlds or our bodies. So we’ve to first understand how to perceive it, and then work on the judgement part of it. Once I know what an emotion feels like, I can notice it, recognize it again. Once I get good at perceiving it, I can work on perception without judgement.

I suppose, naming our feelings simply allows for increased perception. Increased perception, when done right, can then allow for increased awareness.

So, it’s not that these concepts are meeting each other from opposite ends, but that they’re probably step 1 and step 2 of the same eventual goal – that of increased and expanded awareness.