The Element of Creating a Space Between Our Thoughts and Its Hope for Elevating Our Choices, Feelings and Behavior

I learned to meditate in the fall of 2010.  Meditation changed my life because it changed my automatic responses. 

You know what I mean – the immediate fight or flight response we have to situations and events....

The anger in response to being provoked....the sadness in response to a loss or a loss faced by someone we love.....the anxiety in response to things we are scared of.

Before I learned to meditate, I would have no control over any of this.

I would be an emotional puppet.

If there was a crisis, I would respond to the crisis with panic and anxiety.

If there was a loss, I would respond to the loss with overwhelming sadness or grief.

If I came across information that was not good for my ego, I would get all worked up. 

Getting worked up may not be as bad as getting angry, but it is bad nevertheless – because it is usually means experiencing a combination of anger and worry and despair and sadness all rolled up in one.

One such situation occurred shortly after I learned to meditate.

After leaving my full time job as a Commissions Analyst, I did the Xactly administrator course paying out of my own pocket.  Then by a wonderful stroke of luck, I got signed on as an implementer at an Xactly implementations company when an experienced implementer left the company and they were short staffed. I was taken on in the hope I would be able to fill her shoes.  In my first two weeks, I read docs, attended meetings and went to lunch with the other implementers.  I thought I was the cat’s whiskers. 

Then the rug was pulled out from under my feet.  One evening we went out to a restaurant and the implementer who had left the company joined us.  Starting out as a group of 7 or 8, eventually as the evening wore on, there was just me, the senior implementer and the implementer who had left the company. The implementer who had left the company asked the senior implementer how things were going and how they were holding up without her.  The senior implementer said the going was tough, but they had found a seasoned Xactly analyst and she would start the following Monday.  This news was a punch in the stomach for me.

For the rest of the evening, I could think of nothing else, and when the evening ended, I remember being in a tizzy all the way on the drive home.  When I reached home, I continued to be worked up.  But then I told myself, “Minoo,  time to meditate.  You are over-reacting.” And so I started meditating. As soon as I started meditating, I was able to look at the situation from the other side. The company needed an experienced implementer. I was still there but it would take me time to ramp up. It was not as bad as I was making it out to be.  By meditating, I was able to interrupt the continuous replays of the evening that were going on in Dolby surround sound in my mind.  I was able to calm down and stop the “it’s the end of the world” thoughts and feelings that had overtaken me.

In my post The United States of Friendship Part 2 - Gerri, I told you how I got in trouble when I was working for Palm Inc by interrupting my boss.  After learning to meditate, I discovered the best thing we can do for ourselves is to interrupt ourselves.  To interrupt the thoughts that immediately arise in our heads in response to different situations – the angry thoughts, the scolds, the lectures, the excuses, the rationalizations, the suspicions, the jealous thoughts, the envious thoughts, the covetous thoughts, the resentful thoughts.  

We should learn to interrupt our thoughts before they spiral downwards.

I have learned to do this through meditating.

Meditating helps me create a space between my first immediate thought and the next thought.

By creating this space, I am able to reduce the intensity of the next thought and reduce the intensity of the next to next thought and further reduce the intensity of the next to next to next thought.

I discovered if I am not able to do this, then every subsequent thought is stronger than the previous thought and in no time I am trapped in an extremely strong negative thought that started with that first automatic but weak thought which I could easily have let go.

When I started to be able to create spaces between my thoughts, I began to notice all sorts of things about thoughts and behavior in general.

I noticed the difference between loving people and between being people-pleasing or approval seeking.

I was able to tell when the words I uttered, or the things I did were done out of love, or when they were done just to people-please or to seek approval.

I meditated on becoming more of a loving person and less of an approval-seeker and people-pleaser.

I noticed a difference between healthy curiosity and unhealthy curiosity.

I was able to tell when the questions that arose in my mind about people or situations were uplifting or not uplifting.  Wondering whether someone has had some cosmetic work done is not uplifting, for instance.  Neither is wanting to know how much money someone makes, or how much they are worth.

I meditated on becoming less curious where these kinds of things were involved.

I noticed the difference between “caring about ”someone and “caring for” someone.

We “care about” someone when we ask about their welfare and we pray for them.

But we “care for” someone only by serving them in some way. By sacrificing our time, or our convenience to help them out.  This is especially true, if we have a lot of money.  Because our money sacrifices may be just a teeny little drop in the ocean of our money.  This made me understand it is tougher to be a caregiver than a philanthropist or a donor.

I noticed the difference between “expectations” and “expectancy”. It enabled me to write my post The Element of Expectancy vs Expectations and Its Hope For Less Misunderstandings and Frustration.

Expectations are my way or the highway. Whereas expectancy is having a hopeful spirit, but not freaking out when things don't go as planned.

I meditated on becoming more and more of the kind of person I describe in my post How to Become A Low Maintenance Person.

I noticed the difference between “communicating” and “showing off”.  I used to be a show-off as I narrate in my post The Element of Simplicity and Its Hope For Making Us Feel Abundant.

I meditated on focusing on the needs of the other person when communicating and not on the impression“I” wanted to make or the point “I” wanted to get across.

I noticed the difference between being physically available and being emotionally available.  They are two different things. 

If we are present, but we are preoccupied, we are not really there, are we?

What difference does it make if we are seated at arm’s length from somebody, but our minds are a million miles away?

What difference does it make if we only want to be with somebody if they will do the activities we want to do and we never do what they want to do?

I meditated on being present and being available, rather than being preoccupied with “I, me and my”.

It’s one of the reasons I watch Desperate Housewives with Tanita as I mention in my post, The Element of Doing The Things We Don't Have To Do and Its Hope for a More Fulfilling Life.

I noticed the difference between reasons and excuses.

I discovered that even if we convince ourselves we have a legitimate reason not to do something, to someone else it may just be an excuse, and they may call it out.

This is what happened when I did Grand Jury duty.

Grand Jury Duty

I served as a Grand Juror a few years ago.

I went to the courthouse as one of 38 people who had received a Grand Jury summons.

After a few hours of waiting in the general area of the courthouse, we were led to a courtroom.

Soon after, the judge came in.

She informed us of what Grand Jury service would involve.  Being a Grand Juror is completely different from being a Trial Juror. You can read about the differences here. Knowing nothing about being a Grand Juror, everything the judge said was new to me, especially the fact that our services would be needed for 2-3 months during which we would deliberate on multiple cases.

The clerk then called out 19 of our names - which had been randomly selected. Each person whose name was called was requested to occupy one of the 19 juror chairs.

My name was not called and I remained seated where I was.

When all the 19 selected people were seated, the judge looked at them and said, “I am aware some of you may have hardship reasons which would make it difficult for you to serve.  If you have a hardship reason and you think you should be excused, please stand up and tell me your hardship reason and if  I think it is sufficient reason for you to be excused from serving as a Grand Juror, I will release you.”

At that, 11 of the 19 selected jurors stood up to give their hardship reasons to be excused and released from serving.

The Judge ordered each of them to speak in turn.

And so the first person spoke.

She said she was unemployed and she needed to spend all her time on her job-search.

The judge told her it did not qualify as a hardship reason and there were many people in the same situation as her, and she could not be excused and she requested her to sit down.

The second person said he was unemployed and had some already scheduled interviews which he would need to drive down to Southern California to attend. The judge asked him for his interview dates and said he could be excused on those dates, and besides the court did not meet on Fridays and one of the interview dates was a Friday.  He was told to show proof of his interviews to the court clerk but he was not excused and he also had to sit down.

The third person said he was the sole breadwinner in his family and his mom, whom he lived with, was at risk of losing her home to foreclosure.  The judge said there were many people in the same situation in the Bay Area and she asked him to sit down.

Someone else said they were the sole caregiver to a family member.  The judge refused to excuse her as well and asked her to sit down.

Eventually, of the 11 who had stood up, only 3 were excused from Grand Jury duty by the judge.

One was a highly pregnant girl who said she would love to serve, but she was suffering from terrible morning sickness.

Another man already had travel booked for that time – flights, hotels etc – for an extended vacation he was taking with his family.  The judge said if he gave proof of his travel plans to the court clerk, he could be excused.

And a third person was excused because he said he was the CFO of a small company that was in the middle of a hostile take-over and he was needed at the office to help save the company from this hostile takeover and the jobs that might go with it.

The rest of us were then informed that from our group, 3 names would be randomly selected to replace the 3 who had been excused.

My name was one of the names called, so I made my way to one of the empty juror chairs.

When I heard the judge ask the 3 of us whether any of us had a hardship reason not to serve, I wanted to jump up and to say “Yes, judge, you see I am car-less. I had an accident a week ago and my car was totaled,” but I bit my tongue and kept sitting.  I knew that even though it was true – I had had an accident and I did not have a car, who would believe it?  It sounded like the classic dog ate my homework excuse. And anyway, why would not having a car be any more of a hardship than any of the other hardship stories I had just heard?

So even though the weather was very wet at that time and attending Grand Jury service would be more challenging than normal given that I did not have a car, I did not stand up.

The difference between reasons and excuses is another one of those things I started becoming more aware of after I learned to create a space between my thoughts.

And it has helped me become less prone to produce excuses and rationalizations for my choices and behavior.

Ultimately our choices, our behavior and our feelings are a product of our thoughts.

So when we improve our thought process, we improve our choices, our feelings and our behavior as well.

It’s not always that we feel badly and then as a result of feeling badly, we behave badly.

Often we behave badly and then we feel badly because of the way we behaved.

What if we could interrupt the thoughts that led to the feelings that led to the behavior?

This is what we can achieve by creating a space between our thoughts.

Meditation is a way to do this. When we meditate, we do our own cognitive behavioral therapy.

If we can’t meditate (You can find out how I learned to meditate by reading my post Connected Minds), we can always get ourselves into therapy.

We can even do our own therapy.

One of the best do it yourself cognitive behavioral therapy books to help us correct our thoughts is Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr. David Burns.

I have written about this book in my post I am a Good and Faithful Wife.  I Deserve to be Loved. Here is a link to that post if you want to read it.

Walking is also a great way to get in touch with our thoughts and feelings.

Friedrich Nietzsche said “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

We have to do whatever it takes.

You see when it comes to our thoughts, we can be stuck records.

We can think the same thoughts in response to the same triggers from Day 1 to Day Final.

So I am so glad I was able to break the cycle of thoughts that kept me trapped in being a Tiger Mom and a Helicopter Mom.

And I am so glad I was able to break the cycle of angry thoughts in response to the same old triggers.

When you create a space between your thoughts, you become clearer, braver and calmer, and a better person to be around.

Situations still have the power to take away physical things from you, but they don’t have the power to take away your peace and serenity and your ability to be a decent human being.

The ultimate reward of creating a space between your thoughts? Being able to  laugh at things which would have previously made you anxious, sad or mad.

Yes, start creating spaces between your thoughts...and sooner or later you will find yourself agreeing with Horace Walpole, who said: “The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week…M …..a Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay for his comments on my last post The Element of Multiple Paths and Its Hope for Understanding There are Solutions and Answers Out There and to the rest of you for your votes. Much appreciated.