Just One Thing (JOT) is the free newsletter that suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind.A small thing repeated each day adds up over time to produce big results. Just one thing that could change your life.(� Rick Hanson, 2011)  |
Click the box to subscribe to Just One Thing. (You can unsubscribe any time.)
|
This newsletter comes from Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuropsychologist, founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, PsychologyToday.com contributor, and meditation teacher.
See Rick's workshops and lectures for therapists and the general public. | |
|
My Offerings
� Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom - Written with a neurologist, Richard Mendius, M.D., and with a Foreword by Daniel Siegel, M.D. and a Preface by Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., it's full of effective ways to use your mind to change your brain to benefit your whole being.
� Stress-Proof Your Brain - Meditations to rewire neural pathways for stress relief and unconditional happiness.
� Meditations to Change Your Brain - Three CDs of powerful guided practices, plus practical suggestions, for personal transformation.
� Meditations for Happiness - Downloadable program (3 CDs worth) on gratitude, inner protectors, and coming home to happiness.
|
|
The Practice
Protect yourself.
|
|
Why?
Safety is a fundamental need.
Our ancient ancestors lived in hazardous, often lethal
environments. So they evolved powerful bodily systems for reacting to things
that could harm them. This machinery is locked and loaded in your own body
today - particularly in your nervous system and hormones - and its job is to
keep you alive at any cost.
Therefore, as soon as you feel unsafe, these systems kick
into gear, making you fight, flee, or freeze in one way or another. Most of the
time, fear trumps everything else. Therefore, if you want to be productive,
focused, loving, meditative, creative, or open . . . you've got to feel safe.
Which means managing the things that could harm you.
|
|
How?
The major areas for safety include life and limb, physical health, finances, treatment by others, and treatment by oneself. In the limited space here, I'll focus on the last two - but do what you can for the first three!
Treatment by others - Make sure there is no threat of violence (a sad reality in a startling number of homes). If there is, reach out to trusted others, identify potential safe havens, talk to a counselor, and make a plan.
Don't tolerate verbal abuse: speech that is demeaning, threatening, or raging. Angry quarrels are one thing, but verbal abuse is another, and most of us know when that line's been crossed. In a calm and neutral setting like a restaurant, try to make agreements about how you will talk to each other. If the other person still keeps going out of bounds, get a counselor or shrink the relationship to the size that's safe.
Others can harm us in ways subtler than violence or verbal abuse. If you're feeling uneasy in a relationship, tell the truth about it to yourself: say the words in your mind, write them down (in a safe place), or talk into a mirror. Once they're said, let them echo inside you: What does the truth feels like? What does it move you to do?
When dealing with mistreatment by others, it is so important to get support from people who care about you.
Treatment by oneself - We typically focus on harms coming from the world outside. But the greatest harms often come from within. That's because the world usually affects us only part of the time, but we live with ourselves 24/7. And people routinely treat themselves in judgmental, aliveness-killing, mean, or self-destructive ways that they would never tolerate coming from another person. People say "it's a jungle out there" - but the real jungle is between the ears.
For example, do you speak to yourself with compassion and encouragement, or with criticism and undermining doubt? Talk back to the inner critic: thank it for sharing (and take action on whatever it says that's valid), ask if it has anything new to say, and when it doesn't, tell it that you've heard it out and now it's time to be quiet.
Do not use a tone inside your mind that you would not use with a dear friend. Have you internalized judgmental, shaming, dismissing attitudes toward you from family members or peers while growing up? Recognize those attitudes (give them a funny name, like The Loudmouth), hold them at arms length, and argue against them; they are not your friend.
Or: are you harming yourself with unreasonable fears . . . of love, of speaking out, of reaching high, of betting on yourself?
Replace self-criticism and unreasonable fears with conscious validation of yourself. Admit it when you do things right, when things go well, when you see something good in yourself. See the world clearly; don't overestimate the barriers to your success, or underestimate your own abilities and other resources. Don't lie there on the ground like Gulliver tied down by a hundred threads: stand up for yourself!
Do little experiments where you go against your negative assumptions about yourself and the world, and then take in the good when things turn out well. Develop a growing sense of an inner protector and nurturer that is fiercely honest about you and the world . . . and therefore loyal, protective, reassuring, encouraging, practical, inspired, and hopeful.
* * *
May you be truly safe from both outer and inner harms.
|
|
|
|
|
