Have you enjoyed the pause that refreshes, the pause of taking three breaths when that phone of yours rings, whether it is a cell phone or a land line? Have you been taking those three slow breaths, pausing and centering yourself first, and then picking up the receiver or opening up your cell phone to respond to whoever is calling?
- Has your impatience reduced over the last several days?
- How about the anxiety that you consistently feel here and there or continuously?
- Are you less irritated?
Chances are all three of these behaviors will be improved if you decide you would like to continue this mindfulness practice from this day henceforth.
First of all, many people actually are not aware and do not realize that they are constantly anxious and stressed. Let me offer an example of what I have noticed about myself.
I have made it a practice in the evening as I am falling asleep to assess the muscular tension in my body. The result of these assessments has been shocking. The muscles in my face are always tensed up around my mouth, around my neck, around my eyes. With my intention, I can release and reduce that tension before I actually fall asleep. I never really knew I held so much tension in my body.
I suspect that many people are actually not aware that they too are constantly and continuously anxious, holding tension in their muscles in the legs, arms, neck, face and even their scalp. If it is always in a continuous state of tension, the physical body is not going to have a great deal of opportunity to come back into balance. Only a body that is in balance can settle down an overactive neurological system.
There is an advantage to the fact that phones tend to ring randomly. This particular mindfulness challenge of pausing when the phone rings offers an opportunity to acknowledge the extent to which you happen to be irritated or anxious or impatient at these entirely random times when your phone rings. Once recognized, it becomes possible to sooth that anxiousness, that impatience and that irritation so that we, you, I and everyone for that matter is more able to be present and in the moment.
There is a second, more profound implication for this mindfulness challenge as well. When there happens to occur an irritating and troubling encounter with another person who you just talked with on the phone, it is normal to carry that irritation into the next encounter or even all of the remaining encounters for the rest of the day.
How many times have you decided you wanted to go talk with someone else, perhaps a boss, perhaps a co-worker, perhaps a family member or spouse and as you approached them they had a sour look on their face? Something is obviously troubling them. Do you have an opportunity to talk about what you wanted to talk with them about? The answer typically is “no way.” They are going to be preoccupied with what has just happened to them whether it was earlier in the day or, in often cases, what happened days and days prior to your encounter with them. It is often a wise decision to walk away and hope for a better time to have a conversation when a person is in a state of turmoil and distress.
We carry these irritating encounters from one encounter to the next as they accumulate in the tissues of our body. Eventually we become a continuously irritated person. We are not able to release that irritation because we can’t seem to unload it. It literally sticks to our backs. .
How magical it is to realize that each encounter of another person can be in fact a new and fresh encounter? When we treat it as such, that new encounter has a much, much greater opportunity for us and for them to be positive and life-giving. If we engage and enter any encounter with a sour attitude because the last person that we actually talked with put us in a very bad mood, every encounter that we have for the remaining day, for tomorrow, for the week, for the month and perhaps even for the rest of our lives is typically going to be pretty sour as well.
The mindfulness exercise then is to pause throughout the day when the phone rings. We pause randomly by simply the signal that the phone is ringing. We pause. We clear out all of that irritation, that anxiety that has accumulated up to that point. Then, we are ready to start fresh with the next encounter.
I must say I have truly relished doing this particular assignment. I am oftentimes deep into doing some type of writing or work on my computer when the phone rings. My response is oftentimes irritation,
“I’m almost done with my task and here somebody wants to talk with me. Give me a break. I only need a couple of more minutes.”
So there the irritation is. If I carry that irritation into how I answer the phone, the person on the other end is going to immediately know,
“Oh my goodness, this is not a good idea to talk with Robert right now. I should only take a couple of seconds of his time.”
What a big difference it can make if I can simply pause between those the two tasks. With breaths, I am able to realize that there will be plenty of time to complete the task that I was working on prior to the call. I can finish my work after the conversation. I can center myself. I can then be ready to engage the conversation with the individual who is calling with a new attitude, an attitude that does not also carry with it the compounding accumulation of impatience, anxiety, irritation and stress.
I hope this particular mindfulness challenge has been and will be useful to you in identifying anxiety that may have been lingering in your physical body throughout your entire life. If your experience is anything like mine, you have likely been unable to acknowledge, recognize and honor the extent of the tension that is held throughout the tissues of your body. May this mindfulness challenge be an opportunity for you to stop, re-group and have marvelous encounters with each and every person that you encounter from this day henceforth. And may it also be a method of reducing the tension that may be lingering throughout all the tissues of your body.
Robert
© Parkinsons Recovery