Having declared an intention to maintain my equanimity—and why didn’t I think of this before now?—I have been looking for ways to keep reminding myself that this is my intention and to assist me when situations arise where I’m in danger of losing it.
The last time something pushed one of my buttons, I remembered how powerfully music can affect mood and state of mind. So I created an Equanimity Playlist: 25 songs that make me feel good or lower my blood pressure—or both. They range from the ridiculous (or corny) to the (at least in my opinion) sublime. It’s much more satisfying to turn the music on than it is to throw a stapler across the room (not that I actually do that with any regularity…anymore).
Here’s my list:
For a Dancer (Jackson Browne)
Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Gurthrie)
I Heard a Rumor (Bananarama)
When You Awake (the Band/Acoustic version by Rick Dank)
Sail On (The Commodores)
Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby (Counting Crows)
Lookin’ Out My Back Door (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Save Tonight (Eagle Eye Cherry)
Uncle John’s Band (Grateful Dead)
Rise Up (Indigo Girls)
Mexico (James Taylor)
Take a Minute (K’naan)
What It Is (Mark Knopfler)
Peace Like a River (Paul Simon)
Half a World Away (R.E.M.)
All This Time (Sting)
I Want You (Bob Dylan)
Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Van Morrison)
Who Says (John Mayer)
Birdhouse in Your Soul (They Might Be Giants)
A Thousand Beautiful Things (Annie Lennox)
High Tide or Low Tide (Bob Marley & The Wailers)
Human Nature (Michael Jackson)
Terra Nova (James Taylor)
Kathy’s Song (Eva Cassidy)
Many of these songs have been lifting me up for decades, from Michigan to California to New Mexico, and still do it for me today.
What songs would you put on your Equanimity Playlist?
A snag amongst other living trees. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Science is telling us something we already knew—even if we hadn’t put it into words. We have a limited amount of conscious attention, and when we’ve exhausted it on a task, there’s nothing we can do to immediately replenish it.
But we don’t just exhaust conscious attention on important matters or complex tasks. We squander it bit-by-bit on dozens of things throughout the day. As if that weren’t bad enough, we often squander it on the same darn things day after day after day.
I’ve had an annoying problem with my car for what I thought was the past year and a half but then found out was the past two and a half years. It isn’t as though I hadn’t tried to get it taken care of because I made multiple unsuccessful attempts to do so. In the meantime, I learned to put up with the problem. I didn’t have to think about it unless I wanted or needed to drive my car. But every time I started my car and attempted to drive it, I was forced to put my conscious attention on a routine my basal ganglia normally handles.
Recently, I had to take my car into the shop for an unrelated issue. This time I told the mechanic I didn’t care what it took to resolve the other longstanding problem, I just wanted it fixed once and for all. And lo and behold, it has been fixed! It took about a week before starting the car and driving it stopped snagging my conscious attention each and every time.
The experience led me to notice other things I’ve been putting up with in various areas of my life—things that snag my conscious attention repeatedly. I made a list of various minor but highly visible things that need to be taken care of in my apartment and gave it to the maintenance manager of the complex the other day. These issues all resulted from a series of upgrades that were done about two years ago. At least I thought it was two years ago. Turns out I was wrong about that, too. It was actually three years ago.
I began to notice that every time one of these things-I’m-not-taking-care-of rears its head, I have to give it conscious attention if only to disregard it. That’s true whether it’s something visible in my apartment, something I’ve been wanting to do, something I haven’t finished, or something I’ve been needing to take care of in another area of my life. It’s as if “not now” has become the mantra for these things. Compared to some, my list of things-I’m-not-taking-care-of may be relatively small, but that doesn’t matter. Everything on it still takes up headspace, still snags my conscious attention. There are things in life we do have to tolerate (put up with, if you will), but we don’t have to tolerate these kinds of things. And we do ourselves no favor by tolerating or putting up with them.
So my intention for the rest of 2013 is to clear up every item in my backlog of things-I’m-not-taking-care-of, no matter how large or small. I have only a dim idea of what it might be like to face a new year without these things taking up headspace and without regularly giving my conscious attention away to them. But I can’t wait to find out.
Perseverance Trail Head (Photo credit: AlaskanLibrarian)
After creating an intention and choosing a tool or technique to help focus our attention on it, we will surely achieve quick and easy success.
Are you laughing? That was supposed to be a joke. Remember, doing something intentionally and deliberately—and staying focused on it—requires conscious attention. If we’ve already got a habit in place that we’re trying to change, we have to convince our brain to go along with the plan, and that isn’t going to happen overnight.
The problem is that we’d prefer instant gratification, while our brain requires persistent effort on our part to convince it that we really do want X instead of Y. When at first we don’t succeed, we might decide it’s not worth the effort. Why bother? Just go with the flow. Or we might chalk it up to being weak or lacking discipline or having no will power. So we give up—to prove the point, apparently.
Perseverance isn’t the same as dogged persistence. Sometimes there’s a good reason to stop attempting to do something. One of the reasons for paying attention is that we might recognize that it isn’t precisely A we want; it’s more along the lines of B. Or we might realize we’ve bitten off too big a chunk and need to pare down our intention. Perseverance just means we keep moving toward the desired outcome. It’s incredibly simple. We don’t need to chastise ourselves. We don’t need to make up excuses. We just pick up where we left off and keep going. It isn’t a competition or a race. It doesn’t matter when we get where we’re going, just that we get there.
Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential. ― Winston Churchill
It helps to have a cheerleader—a person or a group of people—who can encourage us. We don’t need someone to call us out on our failure to achieve instant results. We need someone who recognizes that what we’re trying to do isn’t easy, not because we’re incapable or lazy, but because we’re human and our brain is very set in its ways.
Perseverance gets a bad rap in some quarters. It isn’t flashy or catchy or stylish. It’s often linked with discipline and endurance and sounds like something that’s good for you or that builds character. But perseverance is the key to accessing the brain’s autopilot. It really is magic.
Intention is a great catalyst. It gives us something to aim at, a focus, a goal. But after creating an intention to do something, we also need to pay attention to what happens—to what we do, what we think, and what we feel. Paying attention helps us override the brain’s autopilot so we don’t simply fall back into familiar patterns and habits.
Attention is the same as awareness or mindfulness. Since much of what we do is done automatically, we tend not to be very mindful of our own thoughts, feelings, words, and behavior, let alone the effect we might be having on other people. We aren’t fully present most of the time.
There are various kinds of mindfulness practices, including mindfulness meditation. Meditation has many great benefits and is an excellent habit to develop and maintain for general health and well-being. But it isn’t the only way to be mindful, aware, or attentive. In terms of following through with an intention, a practice or a tool that helps us focus on the behavior we’re trying to generate may be more useful. Here are three suggestions:
Self-Awareness Pie Chart
Draw a circle a couple of inches in diameter and divide it into three slices that represent how much of your attention in that moment is on your feelings (F), your thoughts (T), and your body (B). Put the letter designations inside the appropriate pie slices. Then write your answers to these questions:
How do I feel emotionally?
What am I thinking about?
How do I feel physically?
You can write as much or as little as you like. If you use this exercise to help with an intention, the best time to do it is when you have done—or not done—what you intended to do.
Theme Word or Phrase
Come up with a word or phrase that reminds you of what you’re trying to achieve. Write it on Post-its or index cards and put them where you’re most likely to see them. You don’t have to limit yourself to a word or phrase. You can come up with a theme song, an image, a string around your finger, or anything else that focuses your attention.
Questions
Create two or three questions you can ask yourself each day, such as:
What is my intention?
Why do I want to do [whatever it is]?
Am I committed to doing [whatever it is] today?
You can ask and answer the questions on paper, in your head, or you can invite a friend to ask them.
It doesn’t really matter what you decide to do, as long as you do something to keep your attention focused on your intention. It takes many repetitions for your brain’s autopilot to get the message.
