Category Archives: noticing

Can you let that story go?

Last week, my sweet Aunt Millie was hopping mad. She called me at 7:00 am from her assisted living facility.

“I want to move right away,” she said. “I don’t want to stay here any more.”

I sighed. We went through this last year when she and her sister, my 99-year-old aunt who lives in the same facility, had gotten into a spat.

She wants to move whenever any bit of stress crops up. When you’re 97 and living in close proximity to twenty-five or so other nonagenarians, there are apparently plenty of opportunities for hurt feelings.

This time a new resident parked her walker behind Aunt Millie’s chair in the dining room. Aunt Millie politely asked her to move it. The new lady refused. She might have even smiled slyly.

“But what about your sister and your boyfriend?” I asked, trying to cajole her. “You will miss them.”

“I won’t miss them. This place is terrible. They won’t accept my claim against her.”

“Your claim?” I asked.

“Yes, I made a claim and they rejected it.”

It took about ten minutes to unravel the fact that Aunt Millie meant her complaint, not claim. She’s a little confused sometimes and doesn’t hear well, so there was some shouting, too.

“They won’t accept my complaint,” she said. “And they said I’m an adult and can move anywhere I want if I don’t like it here.”

I patiently tried to explain to Aunt Millie that there were no other places as nice in our budget and that I couldn’t take off three weeks like I did two years ago to get her moved. Nursing home regulations require doctor’s exams and reports and when you’re 97 and have multiple medical issues like she does, that’s a lot of doctor visits and reports.

“And we’d need a truck and people to move your furniture,” I added.

“I don’t care,” she said. “I want to move.”

I sighed again and told her I’d think about it and call her back.

I hung up and began to grumble in my head. Why me? Why am I always the one she calls? Why does she always have to react like this? Ugh. I can’t believe this. Why does she always have to call so freaking early? She’s not moving and I’m not going to drive five hours up there to explain it to her. Again.

I picked up my phone and began to text my cousin, to let her know that there was another incident. Another crazy request. One. More. Thing.

Later, I’d tell my friends, too. What a sacrifice I was making! What B.S. I put up with! What a wonderful niece I am!

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. I felt my stomach tighten.

Halfway through the text I looked up. The sun was shining and a light breeze was blowing through the palm fronds in my back garden. There was an orchid blooming on my back porch. I’d just made a pot of fresh coffee and could smell it. A little pan of steamed macadamia nut milk was ready to add.

I didn’t need to text my cousin. She didn’t need to know what had happened. We weren’t going to move our aunt.

I poured a cup of coffee, added the milk, and took it outside. I breathed deeply and looked at the bright green around me. The tension in my belly relaxed.

I’d call the facility administrator later in the day to make sure my aunt had calmed down and that the parking rules for walkers was explained to the new resident. That was all the situation required.

I’d been on the verge of “story fondling,” Martha Beck’s description of unnecessarily keeping an unpleasant situation alive by retelling the story over and over. I’d momentarily wanted to milk the full drama out of this, which would only keep me aggravated and perhaps get my cousin stirred up too.

All I really needed to do right then was to savor my coffee and enjoy the quiet morning.

Which is exactly what I did.

I had been right on the verge of ruining my morning when I came to my senses.

I’m sure you have your own version of “Aunt Millie wants to move again.” Most of us do.

Maybe your friend canceled dinner plans at the last minute again. Do you really need to stew about it all evening or complain about it to another friend? Really?

Maybe the traffic made you late to an important meeting and you charged in feeling frazzled. Do you really need to keep telling yourself that you probably looked ridiculous? Do you really need to keep worrying about the impression you made? Are you sure?

Maybe you sprained your ankle and you’ll be on crutches for a couple of months. Do you need to tell everyone you encounter how clumsy and stupid you were? How much weight you’ll gain since you can’t go to the gym? Is that going to make you feel better?

What if you could just let it go? Just stop and breathe and look around for the beauty that is pretty much always somewhere nearby.

Whether you can sit outside or sit by a window or look at the beauty of the faces of the people or pets you live with, there is always something else better, more nourishing to focus on. There always is.

When I catch myself hanging onto unnecessary stories, maybe finding drama in ways that make me feel worse, and I let it go, my whole system settles down. My day can open into a possibility, a creative idea, or a bit of magic just waiting to be discovered.

We don’t have to hang onto our unpleasant stories.

Truly, we don’t. Take a breath. Look at what’s around you. Let the story go.

Try it and see.

Emotional Contagion—What Every Leader Needs to Know

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goldfish2
“Mom, something’s wrong with my eyes. I have some weird blind spots that aren’t going away.”

My son, 33 years old, was calling. He sounded scared, and I knew exactly why. My son’s father had gone blind with a progressive eye disease that started in his thirties. True, it was a rare genetic condition and the chances of my children getting it are almost infinitesimal.

But still…

My mind immediately jumped to a horrible thought and I brought myself back to the present, to reality. Immediately.

Because I knew my son would be having his own frightening thoughts and my job was to keep him as calm and grounded as possible. To do that, I needed to be calm and grounded.

There are a lot of good reasons to face any challenge, whether a crisis or a more routine problem, in a calm state. We think more clearly, problem solve more creatively, and have greater physical stamina.

For me to stay calm with my son, I had to avoid the impact of emotional contagion, the tendency that we humans have to synchronize our emotions to those around us. Emotional contagion can transmit either positive, supportive emotions, or negative, anxiety-laden ones.

Dealing with emotional contagion is a crucial quality for anyone in a position of leadership, whether it’s in business leading others, in coaching working with upset clients, or in family situations dealing with anything from medical emergencies to agitated toddlers.

In this situation, I didn’t want to absorb my son’s upset and get agitated. I wanted to set a positive tone for him to absorb. I wanted to be the emotional leader.

I do this routinely in my daily encounters with clients and their anxieties and upsets. Before I work with clients, teach a class, or lead a workshop, I make sure I’m aware of my mood. If anything is happening in my personal life that might negatively impact my mood, I will consciously set it aside, and take steps to lift my mood.

Admittedly, avoiding emotional contagion from my son was much more challenging. It’s always more challenging with someone close to us, but it can be done.

Emotional contagion transmits easily in-person, but it can take place over the phone, too. We humans are sensitive enough to each others voices to pick up negativity mood, agitation or anxiety, even when we can’t see the other person or feel their physical presence.

In business settings, studies have confirmed that both positive and negative emotions, spread among employees like viruses. Feelings can be “caught” by others when working together in groups. Not only is employee mood affected, judgment and business decisions are impacted, as well.

Emotional contagion can even take place in writing, over social networks. Facebook drew a lot of criticism a few years ago when it revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of more than a half-million users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw.

Facebook did this is in a research study with Cornell University, confirming the existence of emotional contagion in this context. The people who viewed more positive posts responded with more positive content and those seeing more negative posts responded with more negative posts. Facebook was accused of violating ethical boundaries by turning users into lab rats without obtaining their informed consent.

And the study proved how easily our emotions are impacted by others.

Because I could think clearly and brought up my son’s mood, I was able to get enough information to help him decide whether he could wait though the weekend until Monday morning, when we could find a better place for him to be examined. We decided that waiting was a better option.

On Monday, he went to an excellent eye clinic and was told that he had a couple of very tiny retinal tears that had no similarity to his father’s eye disease. The doctor he saw was confident that he would fully heal without treatment.

Within a few days, he called to say he could already tell that the blind spots were getting better.

And for an added bonus, he said, “Thanks for helping me through this. I would have really panicked without you.”

This was a very happy ending. It confirmed my commitment that any anxious or distressed person I’m dealing with is going to synchronize to me and my emotions, where I intend to always remain the calm, grounded, positive leader.

Here are some tips I used that can help you stay away from emotional contagion:

Set your intention to be the calm, grounded leader, to stay in a positive emotional state, and to let anyone else you are encountering synchronize to your mood.

Harness your out-of-control imagination. Your mind may want to create a narrative out of the few facts you have. It’s what our brains do automatically to keep us safe. But those narratives are generally based on speculation and predict terrible outcomes. Remind yourself that you can’t know that the situation will have an unhappy ending.

A regular mindfulness practice is really helpful in building the skill to stay away from imaginary scenarios. So can regular use of my heartbreathing meditation. (You can obtain a free mp3 recording of it and a descriptive worksheet by emailing support@terrydemeo.com and putting “Heartbreathing Meditation” in the subject line.)

When dealing with an upset person, put your attention on them, on what they are saying and doing. If you are in person, make eye contact. If on the phone, you can give them your full attention by closely listening to them.This will help divert your attention from your inner world and your mind’s imagined parade of horrible outcomes.
Breathe slowly and regularly, inhaling and exhaling to a slow count of four. Inhale-2-3-4-exhale-2-3-4. Over and over. I use a simple mantra, “Breathe and stay calm, breath and stay calm, breathe and stay calm.”
Move. If you start to feel distressed, adrenaline and cortisol will be released into your system to prepare you for battle. This is what is known as fight or flight. When you aren’t having to run or fight, you will get a jittery feeling from the hormone buildup. Shake it off any way you can, with physical movement. If you need to go into another room and close the door, do so. This simple tool only takes a few minutes to work.I hold a lot of tension in my arms in tense situations, so in this one, I stood and shook my arms and let my body tremble several times over the weekend when my son was in distress.
Keep this in mind: you don’t need to DO anything to convince the other person to change their mood. Your job is to hold a positive mood. Our bodies naturally want to synchronize. Be the one that gets synchronized to.

Small Connections Can Make a Big Difference

There’s no wrong way to practice mindfulness

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There’s no wrong way to practice mindfulness.
It’s impossible.
You either do it or don’t do it.
But you can’t do it wrong
Because it’s not about right and wrong.

It’s not about sitting still,
It’s about letting something inside get still.

It’s about attention and where it goes.

So go ahead and walk, move, do something,
Something that doesn’t need thinking.

And don’t be fooled.

Don’t think you don’t think when you’re mindful.
You’ll think.
You’re a human and humans think.
That’s why we practice.
To notice that we are such great, grand, relentless thinkers.

It goes like this: you’re following your breath, just like you’re supposed to.
And next thing you know, you’re thinking.
It happens. A lot.

Don’t get on your case.
Just notice.

As a noticer, you notice that you can always notice your thoughts instead of engaging with them.
{Except, of course, when you can’t. Or don’t.}

And then, the magic comes.

Sometimes you notice a tiny clear voice inside.
It sounds different from the usual voice, the one that’s there distracting you.
It’s different because it’s the voice of Truth, and it has no agenda.
It simply whispers in your ear and something inside you goes Ping! and that’s really cool.

But then there’s that other voice. The Nag. The Worrier. The Scold.

Be gentle with her.
When a thought about a problem comes up, gently tell yourself you can solve it later.
When a thought about something interesting comes up, promise yourself that you can daydream about the new shoes you want later.
{Be sure to keep your promise. Daydreams are important.}
When a thought about something ordinary comes up, remind yourself that you can make the grocery list later.

Remind yourself that you are a noticer, an observer,
A scientist in a white lab coat observing microorganisms dance on a slide.
You are the Scientist of You.
You with the urgent, interesting, enticing, dancing thoughts.

When those thoughts get harsh,
Remind yourself that you are not your thoughts.
You are flesh and blood and hair and guts and spirit and energy,
And heart.
That’s what you are.
You are not your thoughts. Listen again.
You are not your thoughts.

And if you notice you don’t want to go back to your breath, then
Notice your resistance.
Observe it with the curiosity of a child watching a bug crawl on a leaf.
Notice what color your resistance is and how it speaks to you.
Is it scratchy or smooth, fast or slow, high or low?
Does your resistance come in words, images, feelings?
Notice that your resistance, too, is just a thought.
And an I-don’t-want-to temper tantrum of a thought is still a thought, just like the other ones.
The ones that tempt you with visions of dinner.
The ones that rerun crappy conversations a million times and tell you that you have to do something about this RIGHT THIS MINUTE.
{Isn’t that funny? What’s the big hurry?}

So go ahead and resist with your wholehearted approval.
Because there’s no wrong way be mindful.

African Lessons in Noticing

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Among the many lessons in the African bush, the lesson of stillness unfolded again and again. Many times during our game drives, we were invited to get still and notice what was happening around us. Putting down our cameras and stopping our social chitchat, we sat still and simply did nothing.

Africa’s a place where there’s stillness in every direction, where the sights and sounds of human activity are completely absent, where not even the hum of a distant highway or an occasional overhead airplane breaks the silence. Only the subtle presence of nature surrounded us.

Before long, our Shangaan tracker would quietly gesture to something which we hadn’t noticed.

Like the beautiful blue heron sitting beside this lake,