by Connie Habash | May 8, 2014 | Action, Beginning, Challenges, Change, Goals, Right Action, Uncategorized
I like to walk on the treadmill at the gym, since I don’t have a nice hilly area right out the door to walk. When I say “like”, however, that may not be the most accurate description.
For the first several minutes, I constantly look at the time – how much longer? It feels like a lot of effort, my legs feel stiff, my muscles cold and complaining. I question whether I can really do this today. I don’t feel like going up those hills, or walking so fast, or expending the effort. It seems daunting, and I am tempted to stop.
But once on the treadmill, it’s easier to keep going. As they say in physics, “a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” So I try to make it easy to begin. I start with a slow speed and lower hills, and gradually build up. I make it as unintimidating as possible.
Something happens for me at about that 13 minute mark. I hit my stride. It feels easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable. I am warm, strong, and capable! I’m ready to challenge myself. My attitude and my body shift from resistance to embracing the experience.
So it is with our goals and aspirations. The most important step is to begin. It doesn’t matter whether you begin perfectly or not; what matters is that you start getting the energy in motion. Nothing will change if you do not take a step in the direction you long for.
You do not need to worry about how it will turn out. Do not compare yourself with who is already at the finish line. Start where you are, and get the ball rolling. Just begin.
If you want to meditate more, set out a cushion or sit down on that chair and give it a try for a minute. If you want to run a marathon, put on some running shoes and run a block. If you want to learn to play the piano, see if you can plunk out Mary Had a Little Lamb. Get started, wherever you are.
Rather than trying to swallow the whole enchilada right off the bat with unrealistic expectations, choose microactions. These are teeny, tiny little steps that are so doable, you can’t be intimidated.
Recently, I was helping a friend with cleaning out her house. She had a room packed to the gills with boxes of stuff to sort through and start giving away. Looking at the whole thing was overwhelming. In fact, she really wanted to avoid the whole thing.
But I knew the best way to tackle it was with a microaction. I told her we should just start, and maybe we only get to one box today, or half a box – that’s OK. It’s one less box you have to deal with. So we began.
I picked a box, and chose three things from it to show her. Keep, give away, or throw away? When she got through them, I went for another handful of items. I tried to focus on the smallest amount possible, so it was easy for her. I made it doable. Before we knew it, we had cleared out three boxes, and I was hauling a bunch of bags off to the Goodwill to give away.
So what are your goals? What do you long to change in your life? Brainstorm some microactions you can take to set the wheels in motion, and just begin. Make it doable. Let go of your expectations and start easy. Once you hit your stride, the energy will flow, and the universe will flood you with support to keep it going.
by Connie Habash | Jan 28, 2014 | Action, Appreciation, Choices, Empowerment, Possibilities, Potential, Right Action, Small
I’m tired of everyone telling me to think bigger. “You need to play on a bigger field! You’re capable of so much more!” Does that message ever exasperate you?
It sets us up for feeling we’re not enough as we are. And that whatever we do, it doesn’t measure up, or isn’t significant enough. We’ll never feel at peace within, because we’re always comparing ourselves to what we think we should be and do – bigger, better, and more of.
Sure, we can all offer more to the world. I want to do that. But I don’t want to set myself up for an ego-trip of imagining myself to be a Nelson Mandela. And that, if I don’t think that big, I’m just not living up to my potential.
Let’s stop for a moment. Can the world use some more Gandhis and Mother Teresas? Sure. Can we all be that? No. In fact, if the world were full of them, who would follow whom? Who would serve whom?
Not to mention that it’s just plain intimidating to think about doing something on that kind of scale. I don’t even think I’d want to.
But that isn’t how they started. They may not have had a big vision. They started with one, small action.
I want you to think small for a moment. Doable. One good thing that you KNOW you can do. Can you pick up that trash on the sidewalk? Can you call up a friend who is lonely? Can you volunteer at a soup kitchen this Saturday? Or give the extra lemons from your tree to a neighbor?
Planetary – and personal – change comes from a lot of small actions, not big huge ones. Many small steps made by many people. It’s billions of molecules of water together that make a big wave. A bird makes a nest from a lot of small twigs. Don’t tell the bird that one little twig won’t make a difference!
So think small. Today. And then do it again tomorrow. Everyday, can you do a little something to transform yourself, make someone’s day, or make the planet a better place? I KNOW you can.
Then, share it here on my page. It’s not bragging, it’s motivating. Your small thing may just inspire someone else to do the same!
by Connie Habash | May 3, 2013 | Action, anger, Authenticity, Choices, Empowerment, Energy, Fear, Judgment, Right Action
It’s quite common in spiritual circles to put down anger. Anger is bad, they say. Or anger is unenlightened. We must transcend our anger. We must think loving, good thoughts, and put all that anger out of our mind.
Hogwash.
Saying that anger is bad, whether it’s tacitly implied or directly stated, is just another way that we beat ourselves up and deny our truth and empowerment. It’s an easy way to judge and criticize ourselves or others for anything less than perfect behavior.
Anger is just as human as any other emotion. If we deny any of our human emotions, we become sanitized, without life, without authenticity. And we feel we don’t have a voice, can’t speak out when something happens that disturbs us. [For more about this, read my article “Authentic and Heartfelt NO!”]
There is a difference, however, between healthy and unhealthy anger. There is good reason why many spiritual traditions have attempted to banish it, because unhealthy anger expressed outward can be violent and hurtful, and repressed inward can result in resentment, disempowerment, and illness.
A healthy approach to anger is to understand it as an energy, like electricity. It is neither good nor bad, but it has an important function: to get us to pay attention and to take action. It lets us know something isn’t OK with us. It tells us when a boundary needs to be set – “no, I will not tolerate that!” It is often a cover for a deeper emotion, usually fear. Anger tries to keep us safe by holding up a caution sign. It also gives us the energy to be able to take appropriate action.
Anger can be positive when understood for the warning signal that it is and utilized to prevent harm to ourselves or another. It is a powerful energy that, when used with mindfulness by expressing our feelings or taking care of ourselves, can create a greater sense of safety, authenticity, and security in our relationships and lives.
As evolving human beings, we can learn to listen to the messages in our emotions – including anger – and consciously respond to them, rather than react. Then, anger can become healing and transformative, rather than an unwanted, “negative” emotion.
For more on healthy expression of anger and its spiritual implications, listen to my radio show “Spiritual Anger!”
by Connie Habash | Apr 7, 2013 | Action, Choices, Courage, Empowerment, Fear, Illusion, Right Action, Tolerance, Transformation, Trust
facing down fear
Everyone deals with difficulties in life. Sooner or later, something scares us. It may be the aging process, a snake, the fear of rejection, or a dwindling bank account.
Gone are the days when we have to worry about lions chasing us (unless, of course, you live in Kenya). Fear has become more subtle. In the words of Kristin Neff, PhD, author of Self-Compassion, now our fears arise not just from dark alleys or sounds that go bump in the night, but from “threats to our self-concept” – the idea of who we think we are. Yet, they end up causing similar levels of stress in the body as that lion chasing us. The fear that runs us, day in and day out, is the fear that we’re unlovable, of being bad, wrong, or a failure.
React or Respond
When we are faced with fear, we have two possible choices: react or respond. When we react, we allow fear to run us, to control our emotions, our actions, our words. But when we respond, we transform a moment of fear into a moment of empowerment.
What is a fear reaction? When we are exposed to a traumatic situation, there are three reactions that occur: fight, flight, and freeze (see Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine). The kind of fear I’m referring to, however, isn’t life or death situations, although learning how to respond rather than react in those is very helpful. In our day-to-day lives, it is the little fears – the perceived threats to our self-concept – that disempower us and cause us to react.
It is in these little fears that we have the opportunity to change our lives. And we see three similar reactions to those little fears: fight, flight, and freeze.
Fight
When we fight the fear, we attack as if it were a danger to us. This makes sense if it’s a lion after us, but most of the time our fears are subtle. We fear ridicule, failure, rejection, and when it’s that kind of fear, we often react by attacking ourselves. And if we’re not attacking ourselves, we’re attacking our partners, friends, or a stranger for things that often are imaginary affronts. In either case, we only defeat ourselves.
Flight
When we flee a fear, we do everything we can to run away and avoid it. This leaves us powerless in the face of anything that frightens us. It also can severely limit our freedom, for when we define our life by what we must avoid, it cuts off our choices.
I once knew an actor who had a reasonably successful career but had to turn down many of the best roles that came his way because he was afraid to fly to other locations. This fear not only limited his leisure time but his opportunities and prosperity.
Freeze
When we freeze in the face of a fear, we become immobilized, feeling like we can’t take any action one way or the other. We may not even realize we’re afraid, but we become indecisive, unable to discern which way to go or what to do. We can lose relationships by our uncertainty about commitment or promotions by clinging to what is familiar and being unwilling to make any move.
The other path – respond
Fear reactions may be all too familiar to us, but how do we respond instead of react? This is actually two questions in one. First, we wonder how to gain the capacity to respond, how to develop those inner muscles to overcome the reaction. The question also begs what way do we respond, for there are choices of response, too.
We actually don’t have to worry about gaining the capacity to respond. We all have the capacity to respond, to overcome fear or any other negative reaction. It is part of the inner equipment we come with as human beings.
The problem is that we rarely use it. Sometimes we use that capacity so little we don’t even think we have it, or have no idea how to use if it we did. But it’s there.
Some discover it in a crisis situation, where we spontaneously jump into action and help someone pinned under a car or caught in a house on fire. Occasionally, mothers discover it during child birth, and still others become aware of this innate ability to override a fear reaction when we know it is important not to show it to our children lest they become scared. We become brave for their benefit.
Lifting the heavy weights
Like any other capacity, learning to respond rather than react requires practice to develop it. It’s like a muscle – we have biceps, but do we really use them? How strong are they? If you aren’t lifting some sort of weight, whether at the gym or carrying logs to the wood pile, they won’t get very strong.
So in order to become good at responding to fear rather than reacting, we must be willing to lift the heavy weights: to face our fears, investigate them, and find alternatives to reacting. Life gives us plenty of opportunities to practice.
Responsibility
Responding to fear rather than reacting means we have a choice about the way we behave. When we react, we are unconscious, like a knee-jerk reaction. We may feel we are conscious about it because we can actually observe ourselves in the process of it. We watch as we become speechless in front of a group. We are fully present to the fact that we have just consumed an entire box of cookies, because we can’t stand feeling alone. But these are unconscious reactions nevertheless.
Responding means we choose an action that is more helpful to ourselves and the situation, regardless of how uncomfortable it is. We take responsibility for our life and the situation, and therefore we affect how it affects us. Responsibility means the ability to respond.
Three choices
What paths are there to take when we want to develop our responsibility in the face of fear, our ability to respond? There are three main responses (and possibly more) to fear that can truly transform your experience of the fearful situation: tolerance, courage, and fearlessness.
Tolerance
Tolerance is the ability to withstand something. We learn to accept what is when we are tolerant. Tolerance is a word used regarding cross-cultural relationships – to become fair towards and accepting of cultures and customs that are different than our own. It is also used to describe a person’s physical capacity to endure a substance such as alcohol or pain killers. A person with high tolerance can drink a lot of booze before showing signs of intoxication.
But tolerance also is defined as “the capacity to endure pain or hardship.” Rather than react, we can learn to endure what is. My eight year old daughter is learning this concept the hard way right now – with a flu bug and pink eye, she’s pretty uncomfortable and unhappy about it. But as we mature, we learn to accept that sometimes we get sick, it will pass, and we can tolerate it.
It’s the same with fears. They arise, they feel scary, but most of the time we can be with that fear and know it will pass. We can learn to tolerate the situation rather than run from it, and each time it gets a little better. This is one aspect of a traditional therapy for phobias, known as systematic desensitization. The patient is exposed to the fear-inducing situation a little bit at a time, and they slowly become desensitized – more tolerant – towards the phobia, until it no longer runs their life (or at least no longer severely limits them).
Courage
The second response to engage when faced with fear is courage. Courage is distinctively different from fearlessness. It is the act of being afraid and going ahead with the right action anyway.
We become courageous when we walk through the park instead of buying more stuff to feel better; when we take a deep breath instead of screaming at our child or partner; when we raise our hand and speak up at a meeting even though we are terrified of being judged; when we sit still in meditation even though something screams for us to fidget just once more. We do the right thing even though it’s uncomfortable or downright frightening.
As Lao Tzu, author of the ancient text, The Tao Te Ching, said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” One of the most powerful ways to build courage is to love, whether or not someone loves you. To love in the face of rejection or not getting what you want. To love when you don’t feel like it, or even when you think someone doesn’t deserve it. That includes loving yourself. When we love without limitations or conditions, we recognize that there isn’t anything anyone can say or do that will hurt our sense of self. Love is its own reward, and love overcomes fear.
Fearlessness
Which leads me to the third response you can choose in the face of fear – fearlessness. To be truly free of fear is to be full of love. Obviously, this is not a beginner’s practice, and it’s not for the faint-hearted. In fact, this isn’t something you can make happen, but something that results from many years of spiritual practice – of lifting the heavy weights.
The greatest spiritual adepts, such as Jesus or Mahatma Gandhi, were masters of this kind of love, and it gave them the greatest inner strength there is. They could face down the most threatening, frightening, and painful of situations and meet them with grace and power.
We become without fear when we completely trust in something greater. In yoga philosophy, this practice is called Ishvara Pranidhana – surrender to the Divine. This is a powerful practice. It is letting go of our attempts to control what we fear and the acknowledgement that something beyond us, the Source of the cosmos and all life, is much better at running the show.
Overcoming Avidya
More importantly than that, we become fearless when we overcome Avidya – ignorance of our True Nature. When we realize that our true Self (not our limited self of the body, mind, or personality) is Divine and eternal, that has no beginning nor end, and is unchanging, not subject to conditions or experiences, then what is there to fear?
This is not something we can simply intellectually grasp, for if we could, most of us would be there. This is something that, in order to truly become fearless, we must become. This is enlightenment.
The next time you are faced with a fear, which path will you take? Will you notice your reaction? Will you consider how you could respond? Let yourself become more tolerant of the discomfort, while developing the courage to take right action even while feeling the fear. Practice connecting in your heart to the source of love and feel love and compassion for yourself and the other. As you walk down this path, you will someday know that your true Self cannot be touched by anything that you fear.
Copyright © 2013 by Rev. Connie L. Habash
by Connie Habash | Oct 31, 2012 | Acceptance, Buddha, Choices, Happiness, Illusion, Judgment, Nonattachment, Now, Presence, Right Action
The funniest thought arose in my meditation today, after I had been contemplating the Eightfold Noble Path – Buddha’s prescription for eradicating suffering and attaining liberation. Apparently, my thoughts weren’t entirely still (big surprise) and thus this image of an ice cream cone being offered to the Buddha somehow sprang to my awareness. Would he eat it? What would the Buddha do?
I can’t claim to know what the Buddha would do, to be quite frank. But, based on his teachings, I can certainly take a stab at it. There’s one thing I do know – the Buddha would be aware that he has choices. He can choose to eat it, he can choose not to eat it. He would know that any desire or aversion that arose regarding the ice cream would be continuing the cycle of suffering in this life. He also knows that judgment would be a slippery slope – it feeds the ego, the idea that we are right if we choose one way, and wrong if we choose another. This would lead to either pride or shame, which again is back on the hamster wheel of suffering.
Therefore, he couldn’t say “No! It is wrong to eat ice cream – it’s bad for you, and will increase your desires, and therefore your suffering!” He also couldn’t simply indulge, giving in to a craving for the sweetness. He would probably be considering what Right Action to take – one of teachings of the Eightfold Path. What’s a Buddha to do?
He could decide not to eat it, plain and simple. He could decide not to eat it, but thank the person who offered it for their kindness in the offering. He could decide to taste it and experience the pleasantness of the flavor and texture as an expression of Maya, or the illusory state of the material world. He could decide to eat it, and recognize the temporary experience of the ice cream, from its taste on the tongue to how quickly it melts. He could eat it or not eat it, and recognize that the pleasure or pain he experienced from either choice is not his true nature, and that eating it or not eating it will not give him true happiness. Who really knows what the Buddha would do?
But one thing is for sure – whatever he chooses, he will forget about it in the next instant. He won’t even be thinking about the ice cream ever again, because he is firmly established in the eternal now, the ultimate reality, that transcends any of the temporary fluctuations of thought or form. So once he did whatever he did, he’d be done with it.
What do you think the Buddha would do?
I like to walk on the treadmill at the gym, since I don’t have a nice hilly area right out the door to walk. When I say “like”, however, that may not be the most accurate description.
I’m tired of everyone telling me to think bigger. “You need to play on a bigger field! You’re capable of so much more!” Does that message ever exasperate you?
It’s quite common in spiritual circles to put down anger. Anger is bad, they say. Or anger is unenlightened. We must transcend our anger. We must think loving, good thoughts, and put all that anger out of our mind.
The funniest thought arose in my meditation today, after I had been contemplating the Eightfold Noble Path – Buddha’s prescription for eradicating suffering and attaining liberation. Apparently, my thoughts weren’t entirely still (big surprise) and thus this image of an ice cream cone being offered to the Buddha somehow sprang to my awareness. Would he eat it? What would the Buddha do?
