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| One of the 6 puzzles we've put together in the last 2 weeks... |
One thing has become increasingly clear to me this last week - life is not going to be back to normal for a while. Our governor just issued a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” directive, the boys school announced that schools would remain closed at least until May, and even Disneyland announced it’s closed indefinitely, which is the most apocalyptic sign of them all for Simon, who is in a big Mickey Mouse phase.
Yesterday, with all this uncertainty was swirling through my head, I was reading the book The Next Right Thing by Emily Freeman. In it she talks about being beginners, and how so often we fight against being beginners at a given task or life stage. I started to think about how we are all beginners at living in this new reality, and about two ways that adopting a beginners mindset could help me navigate the days to come.
1. Learning a new skill set or mindset needs practice takes a lot of work
Since all the boys have done at least some piano lessons now, I often use the piano as an analogy when talking to my kids about what it takes to learn a new skill. Nobody expects to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time and begin playing a Mozart Sonata, and when we start learning a new piece on the piano we begin knowing fully that our first efforts are going to be slow and stumbling.
But often when it comes to skills like being more patient or perhaps the completely hypothetical example of not eating all the junk foods in the house when feeling overwhelmed, I get frustrated that even though I know better I’m not always doing better. If I can adopt a beginner mindset however, I can remember that these too are skills, and that my first attempts at them are going to be stumbling, and that’s okay.
All of us have been forced to learn some new skills recently, from teleworking and homeschooling our kids to maintaining our friendships and sanity without our normal routines and places we go, be it church or the gym or book clubs. We need to give ourselves extra grace, learning new things is hard, and learning new things inevitably means messing up sometimes. Things feel overwhelming and hard right now because it IS overwhelming and hard to learn a lot of new things at once. If history has shown us anything though, it’s that as humans are capable of doing hard things and adapting to new realities. We got this.
2. Recognizing we are all beginners can help us be more compassionate
I’ve been super into reading books on our minds/brains recently, so I'm going to start this with some brain talk, hopefully it makes sense. Our brains have evolved to eliminate unnecessary variables and to create patterns and routines to lower the workload of the brain so it can to focus on new inputs and information. In our day to day lives, a large percentage of what we do are routines or habits that don’t take that much processing power from our brains to accomplish. So what happens when all our normal routines and patterns go out the window overnight? All the sudden our entire day requires brain power and concentration to figure out what is going to work best in our new reality. This can obviously be overwhelming, and our brains tend to treat overwhelm as a threat.
When we are threatened our brain and body go into fight, flight or freeze mode, which is a great mode to be in if you are trying to escape from a tiger, but not so great for daily life. In fight/flight/freeze mode our stress hormones go up, which leaves us feeling on edge and unsettled, and blood flow to our prefrontal cortex is diverted to other areas. Our prefrontal cortex is the most evolved part of our brain and is where executive function happens - handy little things like self control, problem solving, decision making and planning. So when the best part of our brain is offline due to lack of blood flow, we are going to have a much harder time with things like not eating all the chocolate chips straight out the bag and staying calm when your kids (who now never leave the house) need help at the exact same time with their school work (which you are now in charge of). Once again, both hypothetical examples.
The good news though, is that if we can recognize what is happening, if we can let ourselves feel the overwhelm and help our brain know that it is not actually a threat to our life, we can bring ourselves back out of fight/flight/freeze mode and start to get our prefrontal cortex back online. That process involves slowing down and paying attention to our mental state, and being mindful of when we need to take some time to bring ourself back into a better mental state. Here I’m going to throw in a plug for meditation. I know that meditation can feel a little over-hyped recently, but it really is for good reason. Among other benefits, meditation has been proven in multiple studies to activate and thicken our prefrontal cortex, and as you might guess, a stronger prefrontal cortex equals more access to those problem solving/self control skills that are so very useful.
There are lots of different styles and types of meditation, so if you are put off by whole sitting cross legged in silence, do some searching for a different type of meditation that might be more your style. Some resources I’ve been liking recently, both free, are the short 6 minute meditations on DoYogaWithMe.com and the 21 day meditation series that Oprah and Deepak Chopra are offering right now created specifically for this crisis.
Alright, back to compassion. When we recognize that being beginners at almost everything we are doing right now is hard on our brains, we are more able to give ourselves kindness and compassion. And sorry for more brain talk, but the last thing I’ll say is that our brains are a lot better at learning in a state of kindness and compassion then they are in a state of frustration and discouragement. So in the long run, we’re going to figure out our new reality faster if we can slow down enough to give ourselves room and permission to be beginners.
Last, as we look around us and realize that we are surrounded by beginners we can have more compassion for everyone else, and recognize they are doing the best they can too. Those people panic buying the toilet paper are caught in fight or flight mode, and that’s not a fun place for them to be either.
So my call today is let's all slow down and let ourselves be beginners at all this, and realize that as beginners, we are going to fail sometimes, and that’s okay.
Yesterday, with all this uncertainty was swirling through my head, I was reading the book The Next Right Thing by Emily Freeman. In it she talks about being beginners, and how so often we fight against being beginners at a given task or life stage. I started to think about how we are all beginners at living in this new reality, and about two ways that adopting a beginners mindset could help me navigate the days to come.
1. Learning a new skill set or mindset needs practice takes a lot of work
Since all the boys have done at least some piano lessons now, I often use the piano as an analogy when talking to my kids about what it takes to learn a new skill. Nobody expects to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time and begin playing a Mozart Sonata, and when we start learning a new piece on the piano we begin knowing fully that our first efforts are going to be slow and stumbling.
But often when it comes to skills like being more patient or perhaps the completely hypothetical example of not eating all the junk foods in the house when feeling overwhelmed, I get frustrated that even though I know better I’m not always doing better. If I can adopt a beginner mindset however, I can remember that these too are skills, and that my first attempts at them are going to be stumbling, and that’s okay.
All of us have been forced to learn some new skills recently, from teleworking and homeschooling our kids to maintaining our friendships and sanity without our normal routines and places we go, be it church or the gym or book clubs. We need to give ourselves extra grace, learning new things is hard, and learning new things inevitably means messing up sometimes. Things feel overwhelming and hard right now because it IS overwhelming and hard to learn a lot of new things at once. If history has shown us anything though, it’s that as humans are capable of doing hard things and adapting to new realities. We got this.
2. Recognizing we are all beginners can help us be more compassionate
I’ve been super into reading books on our minds/brains recently, so I'm going to start this with some brain talk, hopefully it makes sense. Our brains have evolved to eliminate unnecessary variables and to create patterns and routines to lower the workload of the brain so it can to focus on new inputs and information. In our day to day lives, a large percentage of what we do are routines or habits that don’t take that much processing power from our brains to accomplish. So what happens when all our normal routines and patterns go out the window overnight? All the sudden our entire day requires brain power and concentration to figure out what is going to work best in our new reality. This can obviously be overwhelming, and our brains tend to treat overwhelm as a threat.
When we are threatened our brain and body go into fight, flight or freeze mode, which is a great mode to be in if you are trying to escape from a tiger, but not so great for daily life. In fight/flight/freeze mode our stress hormones go up, which leaves us feeling on edge and unsettled, and blood flow to our prefrontal cortex is diverted to other areas. Our prefrontal cortex is the most evolved part of our brain and is where executive function happens - handy little things like self control, problem solving, decision making and planning. So when the best part of our brain is offline due to lack of blood flow, we are going to have a much harder time with things like not eating all the chocolate chips straight out the bag and staying calm when your kids (who now never leave the house) need help at the exact same time with their school work (which you are now in charge of). Once again, both hypothetical examples.
The good news though, is that if we can recognize what is happening, if we can let ourselves feel the overwhelm and help our brain know that it is not actually a threat to our life, we can bring ourselves back out of fight/flight/freeze mode and start to get our prefrontal cortex back online. That process involves slowing down and paying attention to our mental state, and being mindful of when we need to take some time to bring ourself back into a better mental state. Here I’m going to throw in a plug for meditation. I know that meditation can feel a little over-hyped recently, but it really is for good reason. Among other benefits, meditation has been proven in multiple studies to activate and thicken our prefrontal cortex, and as you might guess, a stronger prefrontal cortex equals more access to those problem solving/self control skills that are so very useful.
There are lots of different styles and types of meditation, so if you are put off by whole sitting cross legged in silence, do some searching for a different type of meditation that might be more your style. Some resources I’ve been liking recently, both free, are the short 6 minute meditations on DoYogaWithMe.com and the 21 day meditation series that Oprah and Deepak Chopra are offering right now created specifically for this crisis.
Alright, back to compassion. When we recognize that being beginners at almost everything we are doing right now is hard on our brains, we are more able to give ourselves kindness and compassion. And sorry for more brain talk, but the last thing I’ll say is that our brains are a lot better at learning in a state of kindness and compassion then they are in a state of frustration and discouragement. So in the long run, we’re going to figure out our new reality faster if we can slow down enough to give ourselves room and permission to be beginners.
Last, as we look around us and realize that we are surrounded by beginners we can have more compassion for everyone else, and recognize they are doing the best they can too. Those people panic buying the toilet paper are caught in fight or flight mode, and that’s not a fun place for them to be either.
So my call today is let's all slow down and let ourselves be beginners at all this, and realize that as beginners, we are going to fail sometimes, and that’s okay.
