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In most difficult situations in life, there is almost always a message to be discovered about something you need to learn or a habit you need to abandon. A difficult situation may signal unskillful behavior, weak judgment, poor boundaries, sloppy thinking, inadequate planning, or inferior communication or listening skills on your part. Understanding the message redeems the situation from simply being a bad experience. However, we sometimes receive our most important messages from hurtful messengers and the messages are hidden in upsetting forms of communication. Then it becomes emotionally difficult to separate the message from the messenger, and the message from the form it takes.
For example, imagine you’ve been fired from your job due to what management calls a “bad attitude.” Maybe you believe you are the only person in the organization that fights for what is right. While that might be true, you may have created a lot of unnecessary suffering by being divisive and undermining morale. In this situation, the form of the message is getting fired, the messenger is your boss, and the real message is that you have not learned to stay mindful of your inner experience when you are triggered by external factors at work. However, it is possible to train yourself through mindfulness to “remember” that you are more interested in receiving the message than giving into the emotional resistance that arises.
1. Stay with the experience without getting lost in judgments or comparisons, or getting caught up in endless “what if” mind games. Practicing compassion and loving-kindness toward yourself is extremely useful in helping you stay with the unpleasant experience.
2. Identify the form of the message. So often we are simply overwhelmed by the form the message takes—such as being left by a spouse, being overlooked for a promotion, being severely criticized, or being taken advantage of in some fashion—and we fail to identify the message.
3. Re-frame the messenger. Usually, it is clear who the messenger is—an unhappy spouse, a friend who won’t return your calls, or a sibling who always takes advantage of you. However, it is critical that you re-frame that person as the messenger rather than getting lost in their shortcomings or your history with them.
4. Listen to the messenger, but never give away your authority. You’re being given a message from life—only you can receive the message and know what it means. Sometimes you have to wait for your emotions to settle before you can receive the message. Also, it’s not unusual for there to be more than one message. The message may reflect a pattern of behavior or a series of shortcomings in you that causes similar problems to occur repeatedly.
5. Cultivate a true desire to know and grow in wisdom. Receive the message with humility, knowing that you do not know everything about yourself, and accept your own imperfection.
6. Ask a friend, a psychotherapist, or coach to help you identify the message. Before you take any feedback, tell that person what you think the message is after telling them the story. Often just saying it out loud to someone else helps clarify the message.
7. And be patient. In my own life, I can recall situations where I was quick to get the message and how empowering that was, even though I was feeling bad. I also recall other situations where it was months—even years—before I could comprehend the message.
1. Think of a current of past difficult situation in your life. Try to separate the message from the messenger, and the message from the form the message takes.
2. What do you think you need to learn or abandon or understand?
3. Do you find yourself in similar difficult situations time and again? Is there a message you are not receiving from these experiences?
Listen to Phillip’s talk on separating the message from the messenger and the form of the message.
One of the primary ways values and intentions manifest in life is through priorities. We create priorities based on the things that matter most to us. They give direction to our life. They help us set appropriate goals and rank them so that in any moment we know what we’re about and what we want to accomplish. They also help us allocate time and resources, organize activities, and make decisions. Knowing your priorities, remembering them under pressure, and acting from them are essential skills for living authentically.
You undoubtedly have numerous immediate and long-term goals you hope to accomplish in your life, as well as tasks you’d like to undertake and activities you’d like to do. Realistically, you’re probably not going to get everything done that you want to, so it’s essential, if you are to experience a sense of fulfillment in life, that you know which goals or tasks take precedence in any given moment. Also, each day you are faced with situations that require you not only to take action but to choose those actions from a range of possible responses. If you are to retain a meaningful relationship to life, especially during difficult times, you will need a clear sense of what’s most important for you.
Lack of clarity about priorities can be a major source of emotional chaos. When you don’t know your priorities, you’re prone to succumbing to whatever entices you in the present moment, even if it doesn’t help you achieve what really matters to you, or to letting others determine how you spend your time. And if you have a number of professional and personal goals but you haven’t prioritized them, you will inevitably encounter conflicts as you try to achieve them all. Over time these conflicts can be devastating to you and cause pain for those you hold dear.
Priorities fall into two categories: outer and inner. Outer priorities are those things you want to achieve or do in your life, and inner priori- ties are how you want to go about accomplishing those things from moment to moment. In other words, your outer priorities are about doing, and your inner priorities are about being. Both are important and must be continually weighed against each other and balanced according to your values.
In a sense your inner priorities are more important than your outer priorities because they help you determine your outer priorities, and they help you maintain your balance even when you fail to achieve your outer priorities. One way to understand just how important your inner priorities are is to reflect on how bad you feel when you violate your own ethical code (even if no one else knows you have) or when you hurt someone else while seeking your own gain. Is this feeling of disappointment in yourself worth it to you? Probably not.
Your values and intentions form the foundation of your inner priorities. So in setting inner priorities, you are specifying how you wish to feel inside no matter what you are doing. Begin by naming your values and intentions and reflecting on what brings you peace of mind and joy. Acknowledging that you are a work in progress, set reasonable priorities that are truly possible for you to live out in daily life. As best you’re able, rank your inner priorities on a scale of 1–3, with 1 being your most important priorities and so forth. As you do this, you begin to see which priorities support others and that together they form a web of priorities that can help ground you in daily life, even in the heat of intense desire, anger, or fear. Through this process of ranking your inner priorities, you also begin to understand how to balance your priorities. For instance, one of your priorities may be to tell the truth about what you feel and think and another priority is not to cause harm, so you develop a habit of what in Buddhism is called right speech, which involves saying only what is true and only if it is useful and timely.
In setting outer priorities, reflect on what matters most to you in both your professional and personal lives. What are your ego needs? What levels of physical comfort and financial security do you require? How critical is having a sense of professional achievement? Do you need others to like you? Or is admiration or respect of others more important? How essential is being in nature or having time for your hobby or your art? As with inner priorities, you will discover that your outer priorities also form a network, with some supporting others. You may be pleased with some, shocked by others, while some priorities may seem like anomalies. For example, some people discover to their dismay that vanity is a priority for them and mistakenly feel that they must work to rid themselves of it. You will certainly encounter conflicting priorities. But at this stage simply acknowledge all your various priorities and weigh how each one feels to you, without judging whether it should be a priority. You can’t discern which ones are best without first understanding the forces in you that are vying to be lived out. Moreover, an unacknowledged priority can later sabotage your chosen priorities.
Once you feel as though you’ve identified all your outer priorities, you can then start to sort and discard them. Let go of the ones that are the least critical, because you have limited time and energy. You are not trying to be perfect but rather to establish a set of realistic priorities that work collectively and that you feel neither ashamed of nor guilty about. Just as you did with your inner priorities, rank your outer priorities on a scale of 1–3, with 1 being your top priorities and 3 being nonessential but nice if you can find time for them. As you rank your outer priorities, you will begin to see how it’s possible to strike a balance among them. For instance, if exercising every day and career advancement are both top priorities for you, you may realize that you need to get up earlier in the morning to exercise before going to work and give up your less essential predilection for being a night owl.
The final step in setting priorities is integrating your inner and outer priorities into your life. There will be times when they are in conflict and you will need to decide which one is more important. For example, you may have to decide between pursuing an inner priority such as creativity and an outer priority such as financial security. If developing your artistic abilities requires many hours of practice and expensive instruction, you may decide that for now it’s more important to put energy into work in order to pay your bills.
I can’t tell you how many priorities to set; however, I will caution you that fewer are better because you can only be continually aware of a few. Also, if you set too many, you will increase the odds that conflicts between priorities will occur, which obviously defeats the purpose of setting priorities. Only you can determine how many priorities is a comfortable number for you to consciously work with.
Although these steps are intended to help you get started setting priorities, living from your priorities involves more than just thinking about them and creating a list that you memorize. It involves developing a felt sense of your priorities, continually clarifying them in your heart as well as your mind, and then living them out as best you’re able. Sometimes you will forget them. In some situations you will not know what your priority is. At other times your priorities will be in conflict. Such uncertainty and conflict do not mean you have made a mistake; you are not doing anything wrong when this happens. Life is simply like this.
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Want to know what really happens during our 1:1 sessions? We asked Strategist Ron Ames to share all, from where he begins with his creative clientele to the tools he utilizes in sessions to help them on their path to well-being...
“I have always been fascinated by tools, their gleaming physical quality, the beauty of a purpose-built design. My love of tools, technology, and the nature of how things interconnect is my life’s work.
In the film business, I build workflows and pipelines to manifest creative storytelling. In my role as a Life Balance Strategist, I use tools to help individuals and groups discover perspectives and means to skillfully and intentionally manage change and transition in the unfolding of their lives.
Like my well-worn physical tools that I use to build things, and my digital tools that I use to create fantastical film images, the tools that I employ as a Strategist are dependable, elegant and powerful. Some are simple and easily utilized and some are more complex. Like all works of craft, the use of the tools for change must be engaged in a wise way with skill and a sensitive touch. That is the art of what we do.
Cartographers use compasses, angles and fine pens to describe the world they see. Navigators use chronographs and sextants to find their place in time and space. The navigation tools used by Life Balance Strategists help us find where we are in our current change and on our life path.
We start right where we are, right here, right now. We look for the question. We learn to love the question and not concern ourselves with an answer. The question rebounds and echoes around the room. It takes patience and courage to stay with the question.
Armed with a question, we use a series of clear analytics to discover where we are in our adult development. What are our goals and values? Are we fulfilled? What are our unmet needs and longings? The Life Balance analytic tools have been built with wisdom and have been tested and proven for clarity and efficacy. The process helps lead us to clear direction.
We delve into the shadow side of our lives, leaving no part out. We leave behind “shoulds” and “coulds” and instead we look for real possibility, finding the path to get from here to there. All costs are weighed so decisions and actions can be taken.
Two unique developments of our Life Balance protocols are the map of The Journey through Change and The Path to Well-being. These maps allow us to know exactly where we are on the great adventure of our lives. Knowing where we are and what to expect provides great comfort and helps us to move forward with surety, even in difficult circumstances.
Some of the other tools we enlist are knowing the difference between ambivalence and ambiguity. Both of these factors can lead to inaction and missing opportunity. Life Balance Strategists guide individuals and companies in coming to terms with ambivalence and ambiguity and to boldly make decisive, creative decisions.
In the chaos of both personal and creative endeavors, a simple but powerful tool is the pause. In moments of emotion, conflict, confusion, great excitement, joy or a creative breakthrough, we pause, breathe and reflect. We allow insight to arise to inform a skillful response. This tool has personally helped me on numerous occasions and kept me from adverse consequences.
As so many of the people who have availed themselves of sessions with a Change and Transition Strategist will tell you, these methods and tools really work. The collaboration between client and Strategist creates possibilities for great intentional change and helps us face change that arises from unexpected causes and conditions.
I bear witness to the importance of living life intentionally. My own life changes and transitions are rich and exciting. When anxiety and insecurity arise, I have strategies and tools to effect positive change. I encourage you to attend a Change and Transition Workshop or work with a Strategist. Learn that change can be met with strength and resilience. Find your own power to change. If you are in the midst of change and need guidance, work with a Change and Transition Strategist. You don’t need to face change alone and unprepared.”
Ron Ames is a filmmaker, meditation teacher, and Life Balance Strategist who specializes in supporting creatives, leaders, and professionals through changes and transitions.
Request a 1:1 Strategy Session with Ron here.
Sarah (not her real name) began by relating her good news: “Well, I landed that new job I applied for, and my husband and I got through the crisis I told you about.” Her voice, however, was surprisingly rueful, as if she were reporting that life was worse than before. I felt a wave of happiness for her, but before I could say so, she went on to complain about the new job and her relationship.
Sarah is a participant in a weekly vipassana meditation class I conduct. We spend a lot of time in the class trying to understand how we create much of our own suffering by getting caught in an endless cycle of desire and attachment. Sarah was certainly exhibiting how suffering arises. What had recently seemed to be the key to her happiness – if only she could get the job and stop quarreling with her spouse, then life would be great – was now a source of dissatisfaction. Our discussion revealed that she repeatedly experienced being disappointed whenever she actually got what she sought. In response, she would create new expectations, and the cycle would repeat itself.
Without noticing it, you too may be suffering from the myriad ways in which expectations can undermine your life. I call it the tyranny of expectations. They plague your daily life, causing you to be irritable, disappointed, and disillusioned. Many times they lead you to say unkind words, act unskillfully, or make poor decisions. Expectations are so insidious that you can persist in maintaining them even after you have clear evidence that they are unfounded.
What is most amazing is that despite the suffering caused by your expectations, you hardly notice them most of the time. Sure, there may be a few big ones you are somewhat aware of, but even so, you only sort of notice them; you do not act to free yourself from their tyranny. Plus, there are countless smaller ones you never notice at all. It is only when you feel acute disappointment that you have any awareness of having been possessed by expectations. But for each of these moments of acute disappointment, you’ve experienced many hours of dissatisfaction, impatience, and tension that you never realized arose from your expectations.
Expectations turn up in many forms – from what we expect of ourselves to what others expect of us and we of them. You may have high, low, or even negative expectations. You also have large expectations and thousands of small expectations that arise in your life every day. Your large expectations have their own unique expression but are the result of the common strivings every human undergoes. As you learn to free yourself from these larger expectations, you can start to notice the smaller ones and not allow them to define your daily experience. You may expect that certain efforts will yield desired results, or believe you can be in control of your life, or be totally convinced that the so-called good life must have particular components. You may be enslaved by your expectations of what defines a good marriage, a good person, or success. More than likely, you expect to behave in a manner you know is right, and you expect to be treated similarly. Left unnoticed, these expectations become all-powerful. Just think of the amount of suffering – yours and the suffering of others – that comes from these unrecognized expectations; it is a call for mindfulness and for choosing not to be defined by expectations.
As I travel throughout the United States teaching meditation retreats, the yogis perk up whenever I bring up the possibility of finding freedom from expectations, for something unacknowledged is being brought into their consciousness. When I ask if there is anyone who has not suffered from the tyranny of expectations, their response is always laughter. So you can let go of any shame or inferiority you might feel because you have a lot of failed expectations.
The good news is that you do not have to continue to suffer from the tyranny of expectations. It is one of the most troublesome areas of life, yet it is also changeable. Even a little effort makes a huge difference. But first you must penetrate the nature of expectations, observe how they manifest themselves in your life, and be able to access another way of approaching the future.
Expectations are almost always the result of what in Buddhism is called “wanting mind.” This wanting mind is driven by desire, aversion, and anxiety; it creates an illusion of solidity and control in a world that is constantly changing and unfolds independently of how we believe it should. Knowing this, how do you proceed? How can you free yourself from expectations? In mindfulness meditation, the method I teach, you always start with what is true in the present moment. You use discernment to know what is true, but you do not fall into judgment, which is yet another form of expectation and one of the most tyrannical.
One distinction is critical for you to understand if you are to work with expectations: the difference between expectations and possibilities. Expectations assume a certain result and are future- based. They actually narrow your options, retard your imagination, and blind you to possibilities. They create pressure in your life and hold your present sense of wellbeing hostage to a future that may or may not happen. Expectations create rigidity in your life and cause you to react impulsively to any perceived threat to that future you believe you deserve.
When you are controlled by your expectations, you are living a contingent life; you cannot be free in the present moment. You cannot be happy with a beautiful sunset or with a moment of warmth between you and another; instead, every experience is interpreted in the context of an expected future. Can you feel how enslaving this is to you? It would be one thing if in fact you could control the future, but is that the case? I suspect not. To deny the truth of life is a fool’s errand and is costly to your well-being.
In contrast to expectations, possibilities are based in the present moment, where you’re alive to the mystery of life. You live as fully as you can in the present moment based on your values, which reflect your preferences for the future, but you do not assume that the future will come to pass, because you realize that the future is unknown. Being open to possibilities acknowledges that what you may think you want changes with time, or that there is another future that will bring you equal or more happiness, or that the future may turn bleak, or that you may die before any future can unfold. Real joy, then, is that which is available to you right now.
Living a life that is open to possibilities is more like a request, a prayer, or an act of witnessing your faith in life. Your well-being is not contingent on the future. Your mind is open and inspired in this moment. You therefore have more access to imagination and intuition. Your mind is clear and less reactive, and you make better decisions. You respond rather than react to life as it unfolds.
This ability to respond to change rather than react to it is the primary distinction I have observed between those who feel free and those who are caught in the suffering of life. You may often find yourself reacting to the behavior of others or to changes in your circumstances and never realize it is because you were expecting others or your life to be a certain way. When you react this way, you are opting not for the mind of possibility but for the mind of expectation, and you are left disappointed, hurt, lost, angry, or defeated.
In freeing yourself from expectations, you are likely to encounter a number of challenges. You may be one of those people who say they have no expectations, in either their daily life or their spiritual life.
I find in those who make such claims a strong presence of denial, which is usually rooted in past disappointments and fear of failing to have expectations met. Huge expectations are often hidden inside, accompanied by an inflated sense of “If I can’t have what I want, I don’t want anything.” You are just giving up on yourself when you feel this way.
When you are not real with yourself, it is impossible to be authentic with others. When you are in denial of the existence of your expectations, you limit the possibility of actively participating in the truth of your life in every moment and preclude accessing the power of the love of those close to you. It can sound so hip or advanced to lay claim to being beyond expectations, but if you look closely, you will see that what you are really doing is denying yourself access to possibilities.
Many people struggle to overcome negative expectations in their life. Beth (not her real name), who attends the weekly meditation session I lead, complained for a couple of years about how inadequate her meditation practice was and how she never made any progress. She bemoaned her inability to concentrate and criticized herself for repeatedly getting lost. Her self- appraisal was very sincere, and her face reflected tremendous pain. She was disheartened but felt she was being honest with herself.
I, on the other hand, thought her practice was going great. I repeatedly told Beth this and pointed out to her that she was suffering from having expectations about what a good practice should look and feel like.
She was never relieved by my words, but she kept up her practice, coming almost every Sunday to sangha. Then, just as she was making a major transition in her life, retiring from her job to pursue her spiritual interests full-time, one of her daughters became ill with a life-threatening disease. This required Beth to completely abandon her own plans and move to another city to care for her daughter full- time. I did not see her for several months, then one day she returned to meditation class, her face aglow. “My practice saved me!” she exclaimed. “I was calm, mindful. I did not fall into resentment or anger.” She paused and then continued, “I was just there for my daughter. I was compassionate toward myself and her. I want you to let everyone in the class know.” The very difficulties of her life had revealed the true strength of her practice, in contrast to her expectations about what a strong practice felt like.
When Beth’s plans were derailed and an expectation of a happy, exciting time transformed itself into the reality of a time of concern and stress, she was able to respond with equanimity. Her practice served her, and she was able to do exactly what life called for in the moment. She was able to let go of her goal of enjoying a happy adventure wandering in spiritual study. She thought life was going one way, but it went another. That was all there was to it. Do you see how this can apply to your own life? It is not that you must avoid making plans or moving toward goals; it is that you don’t become defined by those expectations or attached to the outcome.
Can you feel the freedom that exists in being able to respond rather than react when life goes other than how you had planned? It doesn’t mean that you won’t unconsciously create expectations over and over again – no one is expecting you to be perfect (which in itself is just another expectation!). Until you are enlightened, you will repeatedly fall into expectations. But the reason to practice being mindful of expectations and compassionate with yourself when you feel yourself caught in them is so that you acquire the skill to let go of them. You may have expectations, but you are not tyrannized by them. This is freedom from expectations. It is what vipassana teacher Sharon Salzberg describes as “just starting over.” When you realize you are creating expectations or are caught in them, you see them for the suffering they represent and you just start over in that very moment, as best as you are able.
On meditation retreats, I often work with yogis and their expectations. They will come to me for an interview and announce that they have had a “good sitting” or a “bad sitting,” when they really are referring to the level of serenity or mindfulness they experienced. Likewise, yogis will come to a retreat or a meditation class with the expectation that it will pick up where the last one ended or that it will be better than the previous one. This is the delusion of expectations based on false notions of progress. Such expectations assume that you know what it is you are seeking, that pleasantness and lack of struggle characterize “getting there,” when in reality, just the opposite is true at certain points. It is often not serenity that is needed by a student but the ability to stay present when the mind is caught in a storm. It is not hard to be clear when things are calm, but if you work diligently with mindfulness and compassion when things are difficult, you are in the vital training for your tumultuous daily life.
Part of doing mindfulness practice is letting go of expectations in your practice, which can be found in self-judgments, concepts, and impatience. Recently, a yogi described to me in detail a mind-altering experience he underwent at a long-term meditation retreat. To his amazement, he entered into this experience during a sitting time, which he had already labeled as bad. Ironically, it was just as he was saying this to himself that the experience began and then lasted for many days. Why did it happen in that moment and not another? It was because he let go of expectations, he relaxed, he started from where he was rather than staying stuck in his ideas about meditation. I have seen this time and time again. I don’t mean to minimize this yogi’s previous effort. He had diligently worked toward his goal, which created the proper causes and conditions so that when he let go of expectations, he was capable of entering an altered state of mind.
It is very easy and very dangerous to get caught in expectations that might be called “spiritual materialism,” such as wanting to have special experiences, to receive a sign that guarantees you are on the right path, or to enter altered states of mind. You may expect to be rewarded in life because you are a good person. You may secretly desire recognition for your good works or for being a dedicated student. You may feel it is unfair that you should suffer from a lack of material comforts when you have been so faithful. You may desire certain powers of mind to control outcomes, to manifest your will, or you may feel that God owes you for being faithful. These are all examples of the delusion that can be created by expectations, and they can tyrannize your life.
All of us have to be alert to these expectations sneaking into our minds. When you discover one, the proper response is not to judge yourself but rather to laugh at yourself with compassion. The Buddha himself was repeatedly visited by a deity he called Mara, who would tempt him with such expectations. His only response was to say, “I see you, Mara,” and it is said that Mara would eventually slink away in defeat.
Sometimes students confuse expectations with self-discipline. They will sincerely ask, “If there are no expectations, why should I apply great effort?” I like this question, because it helps clarify the difference between living out of your values and living for results. The Buddha continually warned us not to be attached to any specific outcome, yet he also stressed the importance of making an effort and sacrifices, of living a life of moral discipline. Right effort is part of his eightfold path. The difference is in what you control. You have the power to choose your level of effort; you can learn from experience how to improve it and how to be balanced in what is skillful and what is not. But you cannot control the result of your actions. As painful as it is to admit, oftentimes you cannot even know if the results are truly positive or negative just because initially they appear to be one or the other.
The stories of most of our great spiritual teachers are not about ease and glory, or about having all of their expectations met; rather, they’re about patience, endurance, sacrifice, and unconditional love. This is not to say that extreme pain and harsh self-denial are to be considered inevitable, for that would be yet another expectation, a negative one! Instead, the call is to be in the present moment whether or not the situation meets your expectations.
To truly be in the moment, to not be defined by expectation, requires mindful clarity; a heart conditioned by love, compassion, and empathetic joy for others; and equanimity that allows you to receive life however it unfolds. This may seem like an inconceivable challenge, but it can be your goal, your beacon through the fog of your life. Most important, it can inspire and orient you in how to live in the moment. You simply lay aside your expectations as best as you are able.
You may be surprised when you discover how much choice you have in letting go of expectations. As you have seen, there is nothing to be gained from a mind filled with expectation. But there is much to be gained by living out of your values with real effort and discipline. When you do this, you are showing up for what you value and discovering a sense of joy and ease that is independent of the conditions in your life.
When you practice staying in the “sacred now,” the future will take care of itself as well as is possible. My teacher the Venerable Ajahn Sumedho calls this “trusting your practice.” It is an acknowledgment that you cannot know the mysteries of how life unfolds or even if a certain outcome that seems desirable would, if it occurred, truly be beneficial. At the same time, it is a declaration that you can attune yourself to that which is loving and benevolent in life. What else would you choose to align yourself with? Do these values not offer the best prospects for any possible future?
I often end a meditation retreat with a poem by the 12th-century Persian poet Hafiz, called “The Sun Never Says.”
“Even / After all this time, / The sun never says to the earth, / “You owe Me.” / Look at what happens / With a love like that, / It lights the whole sky.”
This is the power of giving to life without the burden of expectations.
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Sometimes we choose change. Other times life pushes us into change by way of a job loss, a death, an unexpected relationship change, inheriting money, losing our home, or perhaps a chance encounter with someone that changes the trajectory of our life. These are some examples of what I mean by change choosing you. Instead of us voluntarily taking the step into change, or into what a Change & Transition Strategist would name the ”liminal,” we are kicked there by a life event.
The liminal is an in between state. We may not know where we are going but we definitely aren’t where we’ve been. When we land in the liminal, the most dramatic change is our sense of whom we’ve believed ourselves to be. We may be focused on the significant change in our circumstances, but it’s really our self-identity that is undergoing a big shift. We are being asked to learn to hold ourselves in the world in a new way. When change hasn’t been our choice, that learning can be quite painful. Yet, in order for us to find, or regain, a sense of well-being, that internal shift is necessary. When we cross into the liminal, especially by being pushed, it is necessary to accept that we are on a journey.
This journey contains the potential to transform us. However, sometimes we can get stuck in the liminal by not surrendering to its transformative nature and not recognizing the challenge of doing so. To my mind, some words that describe the liminal are dark, unsure, difficult, and fear. Yet the liminal is also fertile, moist, rich, and deepening. How we navigate the liminal matters. There is often grief and tears as we let go of what was and move into acceptance. But beware of lamentation as it can limit our ability to imagine a future. This is a place where we learn to accept and work with our fear and uncertainty rather than have it paralyze us and keep us stuck. We must honor our loss and also learn to not be defined by it.
In the liminal, we can begin to develop new inner strengths or tap into ones that we hadn’t allowed ourselves to own before. This can be tremendously empowering. When we’re in this dark, rich place, new capacities can be mined and planted. It is also a time for reflection on our values. Often as we gain clarity about our values, new possibilities can come into focus. In this way, if we have experienced a loss, we can gain a higher, healthier meaning.
I had an aunt who was never truly able to make the journey through the liminal. The department store she had worked for much of her young to middle adult life went out of business. She was severely myopic and believed she couldn’t drive. After she lost her job she got trapped in a lot of internal stories: she couldn’t find a new job because she couldn’t drive, she’d claim the bus routes were limiting, she was caught in blame of her company, she didn’t want to try to get a drivers license. Her predominant belief system about both herself and the world kept her stuck. She became bitter, isolated, resentful, and miserly. What was worse was that no one in the family had challenged her belief system. In fact they avoided it. She was prickly and you know that old saying about porcupines.
What my aunt really needed was some help and support. She needed someone to help her navigate her loss through the natural stage of mourning and then to acceptance; someone to help her tack through the sea of doubt and fear; someone to encourage her and to help her begin to challenge her notions of herself and imagine a different, empowered version of herself. She needed someone to help her find new meaning in her loss and a new vision for her life.
If we allow ourselves to recognize the need for support, we can meet new people who become allies that challenge our unskillful thinking, help us gain clarity about our priorities and values, shine a light on our ambivalence and ambiguity, help us live intentionally, champion our growth, and who may walk the path with us for a while or for the distance.
These people can come in the form of a support group, a meditation group, or mentors. And now there is a new source of guidance — a highly trained Certified Change & Transition Strategist who is willing to get into the trenches with you and work as your advocate to help you claim a sense of well-being even after loss.
Go someplace quiet, where you won’t be interrupted, and sit comfortably.
Begin by acknowledging what’s true. Notice the unpleasant sensations and feelings that are present in your body and mind.
State to yourself, out loud if you can, “This difficulty feels like this.” For instance, “Having a broken heart feels like this.” Or, “Disappointment feels like this.”
Recognize that in this moment you are suffering and, as best as you are able, have compassion for your suffering.
Notice if you are adding to your suffering by criticizing or judging yourself or making up a story about what’s happening.
To calm yourself, take a few moments to focus your attention on your breath or one of your senses, such as hearing or seeing, or a part of your body that feels comfortable.
Observe that you are not just this difficulty and that you have other thoughts and bodily sensations. If it helps to calm you, name these thoughts and bodily sensations.
Now notice that these thoughts and bodily sensations are always changing. Seeing that this is true, this feeling of difficulty must also be subject to change and not permanent.
Ask yourself, “Is there something I need to do and can do right now about this difficulty?” If there is, focus on your breath for a few moments and then get up and do it. If there’s nothing to be done or you don’t know what to do, then just sit there being kind to yourself.
Remind yourself that you can’t control all the conditions of your life, but you can choose how you respond to those conditions. Ask yourself, “How do I want to respond to this difficult situation?” Sometimes this question is best asked while taking a meditative walk.
You’ve now moved from your reactive, chaotic mind to being present and clear.
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A five-minute guided meditation to help you come into the present moment.
You can find instructions for starting a mindfulness meditation practice here.
To practice being mindful of happiness and courageously work with it, you need to develop clarity about the various kinds of happiness that you feel. In my experience, there are three kinds of happiness: the happiness that arises when conditions in your life are what you desire them to be; the well-being that comes when your mind is joyful and at ease, regardless of the conditions of your life in that moment; and the unbounded joy you feel when your mind has reached final liberation or cessation of all clinging.
It is easy to recognize the first kind of happiness; you know full well how much you like it when conditions in your life are just as you wish them to be. What you may not do so well, however, is know how to use your happiness based on conditions to find genuine freedom. The second kind of happiness is experienced on those occasions when you are temporarily in such a good mood, or so centered, or so quiet, or so appreciative that when you encounter an unpleasant person at work or a frustrating situation at home, you aren’t overwhelmed. Life isn’t the way you would prefer it to be, but you feel just fine right now and you are not being defined by unpleasant conditions. You have had many such moments in your life, although you may not have noticed them and therefore never had the chance to cultivate them. I characterize this second kind of happiness as being centered in a state of mind that is happy in order to distinguish it from happiness that is dependent on conditions being just as you want them to be. It is obvious that your mind is clearer, your heart is more open, and you have more freedom in the second kind of happiness than in the first kind, which is condition based. Yet, even the second kind is nowhere near the level of attainment of the third kind of happiness, the well-being of full realization.
Notice that when you are happy because the conditions of your life are pleasant (the first kind of happiness), your well-being is dependent on conditions, and therefore ultimately is not reliable or lasting. As the Buddha taught, you cannot control conditions or prevent happiness from being replaced by suffering. Still, who isn’t happy to be healthy, or safe, or loved, and so forth? By contrast, when you are temporarily centered in well-being that is not dependent on conditions being right (the second kind of happiness), your happiness is dependent on your state of mind. But this second kind of happiness is also unreliable, just as the Buddha said. Yet it too can be received and enjoyed and teach you the dharma. The well-being that arises when you begin going through the various stages of nibbana (the third kind of happiness) is not subject to conditions or to the state of your mind. You can be having a lousy time and your mind not be in an exalted state, yet the mind is unruffled. This is a mind that is liberated. There is nothing temporary about it. This third kind of well-being is independent of any external or internal factors.
Do you see the difference between the first two kinds of happiness, which are temporary and dependent, and the third kind, which is lasting and non-dependent? By cultivating awareness of the limitations of condition-dependent happiness, you can break your attachment to getting conditions just right, and mind-state-dependent happiness will start to arise spontaneously.
I have seen many students make a significant shift in their sense of well-being in just a year or two of practicing awareness of the kinds of happiness; you can too. You may have heard of behavioral studies that show people are born with a certain predisposition to happiness and that they tend to consistently report experiencing their innate level of happiness regardless of their circumstances. Mindfulness and compassion practice allow you to affect this kind of core programming and, in my experience, this is particularly true in working with happiness.
When your responsibilities are bearing down on you, understanding the difference between pressure and stress can create a greater sense of ease and well-being in your life.
In my role as a Buddhist meditation teacher, I’ve observed a phenomenon that I call the “stigma of suffering syndrome” among many beginning students. They are uneasy with the fact that their lives contain suffering; therefore, they are ineffective in coping with whatever difficulties and disappointments arise. For such individuals to admit to suffering would mean defeat, humiliation, or shame because they did not measure up to our culture’s view that winners don’t suffer. Their ineffectiveness manifests as passivity, helplessness, guilt, or self-hatred. I’ve repeatedly witnessed people respond unskillfully to stressful situations at work, in their home life, and even in the political arena all because of a fundamental misperception of what suffering really means, which is understandable.
Our culture’s debasement of suffering represents a major loss to us. It denies the validity of many of the significant emotional events in our lives. It narrows life such that we are constantly reacting to a set of questions: How do I get and keep what’s pleasant and avoid or get rid of that which is unpleasant? Am I winning or losing? Am I being praised or blamed?
It wasn’t always like this in Western culture. The Greek philosophers and playwrights understood that suffering is ennobling. In fact, they placed it in high esteem, giving it context in their art and mythology. Just think of Homer’s Odyssey and Odysseus’s epic struggle to return home, in which his suffering is portrayed as noble, even glorious. For hundreds of years, the Western mind took comfort in this noble view of suffering, which gave it meaning and did not equate it with failure.
Since all of us experience suffering, how has it become stigmatized? First of all, our culture evolved into one that is pleasure-based and ego-identified, and that emphasizes immediate gratification. It also began to define success as your ability to control outcomes. Today, we teach our children that if you are an effective person, you can control your life. You can get and do what you want. If you do, you win in life. This modern image portrays “winners” as people who have it all together. You are not supposed to have internal conflicts, stress, or anxiety—that means you are incompetent. You’re a loser.
Furthermore, our culture teaches you to constantly judge yourself based on superficial measures: How much money you make, the car you drive, the clothes you wear, the level of recognition and reward you attain at school and at work, how beautiful you are. But this perspective flattens life. It denies the possibility of finding a deeper meaning to your experience. If you measure your self-worth and effectiveness according to these superficial cultural standards, then each time you suffer you are forced to interpret suffering as humiliation. Why would you choose to acknowledge suffering if it only stands for failure?
Suffering is derived from the Latin word ferre, which means “to bear” or “to carry.” Helen Luke, the late Jungian analyst and classics scholar, likens the true meaning of conscious human suffering to a wagon bearing a load. She contrasts this definition of suffering with grief, from the Latin word gravare, which refers to “the sense of being pressed down,” and affliction, from the Latin word fligere, which means, “to be struck down, as by a blow.” When you deny or resist the experience of your own suffering, you are unwilling to consciously bear it. It is this resistance to accepting your life just as it is that makes suffering ignoble, despicable, and shameful.
The Buddha understood the ennobling power of being able to bear your suffering over 2,500 years ago. In his very first (and most well-known) instruction—the Four Noble Truths—the Buddha taught that it is not your suffering but rather your reaction to it that is crippling. But if you can learn to separate your resistance to suffering from the actual pain and loss in your life, an incredible transformation takes place. You are able to meet your suffering as though you were a wagon receiving the load being placed on it. Paradoxically, the effect is that your load is lightened. You are no longer expending energy denying your suffering, therefore you have the willpower to respond skillfully to your life’s circumstances. Moreover, in surrendering to the ups and downs of your life, you discover the truth of your inner dignity.
Sitting at my desk on a late afternoon in September, I watch the sunlight as it bounces off the leaves of the trees in front of my window, cascades down the serpentine steps leading to my office, and merges with the shade on the roof of the house next door against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. This is the first day I can feel the coming fall through the differences in how the light manifests on familiar surroundings, and I am in awe of the beauty of the light’s shadings and endless patterns and keenly aware of its fleeting nature. Between now and the end of the year, I will go through a similar experience each day as though the light were somehow part of me, yet outside me, the way a breeze feels on the face or the way water feels against the skin when sinking into a warm bath. The changing pattern of the light reflects the cycle of the seasons and reminds us of the preciousness of our own time. You may, as many do, feel a personal response to the fading light, experiencing it as a call for endings and the need for new beginnings. Do you find yourself resolving to make major changes in your work, your home life, or in yourself as the winter solstice approaches? Most people do, although they may not be conscious of doing so. Sometimes these reassessments are merely daydreams or just banal musings, but other times, they are your inner voice speaking and attention should be paid.
If you watch closely, you may discover that your own life is part of this seasonal pattern of endings and beginnings. In early fall, you externally focus on finishing up tasks with a burst of energy, followed by delving into your internal experience as the days get shorter and the darkness lasts longer. This pattern mirrors that of other living creatures on Earth as they prepare for winter and then hibernate until the warmth returns, reflecting the cycle of the Earth itself around the sun. In our cultural preoccupation with New Year’s resolutions, we make a cliché out of this profound biorhythmic activity. It is our weak attempt to acknowledge this seasonal pattern and to consciously participate in its natural rhythm. So how can you honor and work with this arising desire to make changes in your life that occurs this time of year? To do so you must acknowledge that the call for changes may be larger than your ego identity and therefore may be arising from impulses you don’t fully understand. Yet you must find a way to consciously and skillfully participate in allowing the new to emerge. Bookstores are full of books whose authors want to tell you how to do this, from the most sacred aspects of your life to the mundane. These books promise to help you find a spiritual direction, shape up your body, get a new job, and overcome your shortcomings as a lover, parent, and friend.
Some of these books are really quite useful. But there is another, more fundamental perspective based on the teachings of the Buddha that can help you directly explore the feelings that arise within you and understand why you want to alter some aspect of your life. Think of it as the dharma of life changes—the practice of bringing mindfulness to the longings and impulses that lead you to make major life changes. Mindfulness provides a method for consciously and skillfully working with the complexity of moving in new directions in your life.
The mindfulness approach to change assumes that your most important work is to move towards freedom from your inner afflictions. You use it to avoid grasping after goals or alternatives that simply substitute one unhealthy situation for another. Bringing mindfulness to the inner calling for life change enables you to stay true to your underlying values in what is almost always a time of chaos and uncertainty. Diligently applying mindfulness allows you to answer three basic questions: What are your real motives? What are the possible effects of any change? Is the manner in which you plan to go about change skillful?
Opening to the possibility of change is healthy, for like plants the old parts of yourself have to fall away, lie fallow, or die so that what wishes to emerge can do so. When an impulse to make a change arises, the first question to ask yourself is always: What is your motive? Is it wholesome? The Buddha taught that many of the impulses you feel to make dramatic or even small changes in your life come from aversion, greed, and particularly delusion. A simple example is weight loss, something a lot of people think about this time of year, yet seldom handle skillfully. For many, losing weight is a worthy goal because it promotes good health and ease of movement. But these health reasons are seldom the motivations behind dieting, which instead tend to be vanity or the desire for social acceptance. Therefore, the effort put into losing weight is actually reinforcing the very longings that are throwing you off balance in the first place. Organizing around unwholesome motives in this manner will not help you move into a healthier relationship with yourself and seldom unifies your efforts to change, so you fail to sustain your intention and never achieve your goal.
The same perspective applies to major life changes, such as leaving your career or ending a marriage. If you do not like how you are behaving in your work or your marriage, finding a new situation will seldom help if your desire to escape is coming from aversion to your own inner work. On the other hand, if you are in an unhealthy environment or are being subjected to demeaning behavior, feeling an impulse to leave, even if it will mean much disruption, is healthy motivation. So the same desired change or goal can be wholesome or unwholesome, depending on the motive; therefore, spending time honestly exploring your motives is critical before taking action.
After assessing your motivation for change, the next question to ask is: What will be the results if you succeed in achieving the change? How will it affect your life and the lives of those around you? Will it really serve you and, at least, cause no harm to others? Is it a proper priority in your life? It seems so obvious, but applying this simple ethical screen makes a difference in how wholeheartedly one can move to make changes. The third question relates to your plan of action: What means should you use to end the old and acquire the new? If the means of making change are harmful, then you are working at cross-purposes from the beginning, even if the motive and change are benign. So often people panic around change and act in a manner that is not skillful, hurting themselves and others as a result.
One must approach major life changes with care and respect, for their consequences are far-reaching, and many times they create unforeseen further changes in your life. It is painful if you disrupt your life and the lives of those close to you only to discover that you are in pursuit of the illusionary. The goals may be unattainable for you or simply not hold the desired result you are imagining. Even if you can realistically create a good change, it might not be what should be a priority in your life at this time. It is not that you are supposed to be perfect in working with life changes, be without mixed motives, or never make poor decisions or be inconsistent in your behavior. Whom do you know who is so perfect? Of course you are going to do all these things. The practice is rather to be mindful of your intentions and actual behavior in order to make adjustments when you realize that you are off track. Change that does not lead to liberation from fear, greed, and delusion is not wholesome. Furthermore, any change that does not yield more compassion and loving-kindness for yourself and others is a waste of precious life energy.
The Buddha taught that there are five qualities, or spiritual faculties, that bring balance to your life and can be of great aid in making changes that will bring about inner freedom. The first of these is faith, called saddha in Pali, and it involves trust, clarity, and confidence. Faith is essential in making change. If you do not believe in the possibility of a positive outcome, you never begin because doubt overwhelms you.
The second quality is effort, or viriya, sometimes described as energy. There are three kinds of effort. It is said that the first effort comes from faith. If you have no faith, you are never able to make the initial movement toward change. There is also effort in the form of perseverance during the hard times that inevitably come with difficult change. Finally, there is effort that arises from the momentum of the effort itself as you engage with something you believe in. It may help to recognize effort in each of these forms and to cultivate them consciously. Often when you are trying to change, nothing appears to be working, and the only positive thing you find to focus on is that you are sincerely making the effort.
You only know that you have sufficient faith and are making the right effort if you are being mindful, which is the third spiritual faculty, called sati. So it’s critical to be awake. The practice of mindfulness is a specific form of meditation known as vipassana or insight meditation, but you can cultivate it in your daily life by keeping your mind focused on your experience in the moment before you add your reactions and various associations.
The fourth spiritual faculty, concentration, called samadhi in Pali (which has a different meaning than in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra), and it strengthens the intensity of effort. It provides the continuous connection to your intention that is necessary for perseverance. The metaphor often used to describe concentration is that of rubbing two sticks together to create fire. If you start and stop, you never create fire. Concentration provides the momentum that can carry you through the difficult periods of change.
You can see how these qualities build on one another. Faith allows you to initiate change in your life, the actual moving towards change requires effort, and you need to concentrate on that effort to keep persevering. Then to know if all of that is happening, you need mindfulness. The fifth of the spiritual faculties is wisdom, or panna. It’s wisdom that allows you to redirect your movement toward change when you realize that your goal was incorrect or that the way you are going about it is not skillful.
The five faculties come together to allow you to change in wholesome ways. When you are trying to make a difficult life change, cultivating each of these qualities is a wise and proper thing to do. These five qualities are truly spiritual characteristics, so they are not to be treated lightly, but rather evoked in the pursuit of finding your own Buddha nature when coping with change.
Before committing to a major life change, you may want to ask yourself if it is truly needed. Is your desire for the new a way to avoid some inner work in the unfolding of your own maturity as a human being? Are you trying to avoid a necessary ego surrender of your wanting mind? Is what you think you need to be happy just an old idea that you’ve outgrown or was it simply unreal all along? Instead of trying to get more of something—money or attention, for instance—would you better serve yourself by practicing letting loose of your attachment to having life be a certain way? Each person has to go through this agonizing, self-doubting process as part of a major change.
These hard questions are most alive when asked in the context of the spirit and allow a deeper sense of meaning to emerge. For sure, trying to get life arranged just as you want it never works. Looking back on my own life, it sometimes seems that it mattered less whether or not I made a certain change than that I grounded myself in this process of self-examination. Somehow it was coming into my full range of feelings that was the most important step toward continuing vitality in my life. Needless to say, the times I have failed to do this grounding in authenticity I paid the consequences.
Without this deeper sense of meaning, life is dull at best and most often filled with suffering. Usually, it is not life’s difficulties that cause the most suffering, but rather the lack of being connected to self, to others, and to life as a whole. Separation from your natural enthusiasm dampens or kills your spirit. Therefore, the question in contemplating change is always: Are you moving more fully into your essence, your most authentic self?
Once you commit to making a major life change, be prepared to embrace darkness as part of that change. Just as the Earth uses the short winter light for renewal, so in moving through change your own psyche may well need to go into an inner darkness. In the darkness that which has been ignored or denied—be it unsettling feelings, difficult events from the past and present, or ambivalence about yourself—will be given time to decay and be renewed. This little death of the psyche mirrors your ultimate physical death.
Experiencing this kind of psychic death is a vital part of aliveness. It is scary business surrendering to death before rebirth, which is why tribal cultures have rituals to help them cope with the anxiety of seeing the days become shorter and trusting that another spring will come. This concern was so great in some cultures they performed rituals for the setting sun each day to ensure its return the next morning.
Do not imagine that you are that much different in modern life. Provide yourself with ritual around your change. Make it a sacred act. Create reminders of what you are doing and symbols that are visible to you. Use literature for inspiration. Have friends and professionals as both witnesses and support group. Avoid judging yourself by whether or not you succeed in making a change, and never put yourself in the position of giving others the power to judge you on such a basis. Let the act of changing be the reward, and do not count on the outcome, for it may well be far different than you ever imagined. All these steps represent an honoring of yourself, a surrendering of your ego that thinks it is supposed to be in charge. They also honor the mystery of life, for no one ever knows the full consequences of an action.
One of the beautiful things about the early twilight at this time of year, as it fades into the dark of the long nights, is that you can just surrender yourself to it. Allow the twilight to remind you that it is a time of consideration and renewal. Know full well that in this world the darkness and the light are one. There is no new dawn without the night; their seeming separateness disguises a unity that reflects the unity of life, an unfathomable dance of opposites. This paradox is the very essence of what it is to be alive—joy and pain, sickness and health, light and dark, wonder and fear.
As you reflect and make decisions about your future, never forget that the you who embarks on any life change will not be the person to reap its benefits or woes when the process is complete. Neither are you the person who made decisions in the past.
You are only connected to each by memory, by the consequences of cause and effect, and by the degree to which you embrace your life by owning your intentions. You are only here now, in this moment as the light fades, the night settles. Be alive to this moment. It is all you have, the only time when thought and action can occur for the benefit of yourself and those you love.
May your inner and outer life be of balance and harmony. May the darkness be your light. May your life be peaceful, but not to the point of lethargy. May the season’s ending be a new beginning.
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