Perhaps this is one of the keys to happiness, especially if we think about how we can make another being’s quality of the day a little better — paying a small compliment, feeding the birds, holding the door, picking up trash that missed the can, walking your dog. The list of little things we can do for each other is endless. The bonus is that each random act of kindness to another improves the quality of our day as well. It’s an interesting paradox of life, when you help someone else you automatically help yourself by feeling better, which improves the quality of your day.

In this video of Mingyur Rinpoche talking about his own panic attacks and how he worked to overcome them.  Mingyur Rinpoche is a highly accomplished meditation teacher who travels all over the world teaching meditation and Buddhist Philosophy.  His humbleness and willingness to talk about his own struggles with anxiety and panic in this six minute video is an inspiration for all people who suffer from panic attacks or other forms of anxiety.

As a teacher of mindfulness meditation, I’m always interested in research that looks at the effects of modern life on our minds. Some recent research by Larry D. Rosen, PhD, California State University, shows some interesting finding about the effects of social media and high internet use on children’s and teenagers minds. Many of you are parents so I thought it would be useful to share this with you.

In summary here are Dr. Rosen’s finding:

Pros for frequent internet use:

• Can become faster learners; better at task switching
• Help shy teens become more outgoing in the real world
• Can improve empathy; virtual empathy leads to actual empathy

Cons to frequent internet use:

• High use can increase problems with anxiety and depression
• Don’t always realize when task switching is not effective
• Increased tendency towards narrcicism
• Lower grades from too much use instead of studying

None of these finding mean you should immediately wean your child off of computers. But it does reinforce the already wise policy of being involved in your children’s internet use and monitoring how much time they spend on the internet and what sites they visit. It’s very easy for children and especially teenagers to go to places on the internet that are not age appropriate. Supervision, conversation and shared time between parents and children of all ages will help your children to healthy adulthood.

While this research was done with children and adolescents, it’s not unreasonable to assume that similar effects occur in adults who spend a lot of time on the web.

Here is a link to a report on Dr. Rosen’s research:

So here’s my summer gift to all of my readers. Please enjoy!

Autobiography in Five Chapters

I walk down the street,
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost . . . I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

I walk down the same street,
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street,
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in . . . it’s a habit.
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault
I get out immediately.

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

I walk down another street.

(Borrowed from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, p. 31-32

Footnote references: Portia Nelson quoted in Charles L. Whitfield M.D., Healing the Child Within (Orlando, FL: Health Communications, 1989).

Last year 43,000 participants joined this Series. This year offers all new teachers who build on the wisdom shared last year (which you can still download).

For more information and free registration, click here:

https://shiftnetwork.infusionsoft.com/go/sas2011LP/a994/

Please join any part of this series. It is free and available online. Perhaps best of all, you don’t have to leave your home or office to participate.

Yours in loving kindness,
Larry

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6233076/managing_your_anger_with_rude_drivers.html?cat=5

I hope you enjoy. I’m interested in your feedback. Please post your thoughts or concerns.

Larry

Most of us experience stress and anxiety as something that is caused by events outside of our own personal awareness; “If my boss would only back off I’d be able to relax.” More generally, it goes like this: “if only circumstances beyond my control were different then they are, I wouldn’t be worried and upset.”

If we carefully analyze our response to the events of daily life it doesn’t take long to realize that stress and anxiety are entirely caused by our own thinking. It is our own response to the world of unpredictability and ever-changing circumstances that causes us stress, not the event itself. A closer analysis of our own internal process reveals the following:

1.Something happens that we don’t have direct control over.

2.We become aware of this event through our five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and/or touch

3.Based on how this new awareness makes us feel in our body, we identify it and give it a name that is based on past conditioning; sad, scared, angry, happy, etc. Most often when we go to stress and anxiety, it is because the emotion we are experiencing is some version of fear.

4.In micro-seconds, we search our memory and tell ourselves that this experience means ____________; fill in the blank. So we do. We fill in the blank based on our personal and collective history.

5.We then start running stories in our mind about what is going to happen next. At this point our stress and anxiety start to overwhelm us; “This event happened and now some doomsday scenario is going to play out if I can’t do something about it. It is like playing old home movies in our mind. And some of these movies are so old that they are on super 8 film! (For you younger people out there super 8 was pre-VCR.)

Now to be fair, all of this happens in unconscious mind unless we become aware of this ongoing process. If we do learn to recognize this process then we are no longer run by it and can learn to control our mind. We can break this bad habit right after step 3 and learn to respond differently to the ever-arising and unpredictable events that make up all of our lives.

One of my teachers, Dzochen Ponlop Rinpoche, calls this process “minding the gap.” He says there is a gap between step 3 and step 4 above. With practice we can learn to slow this process down and “mind the gap.” Once we learn to “mind the gap” we no longer need to be run by our fear and can choose not to run those old mind movies any more. Instead he teaches us that we should rest in the gap that exists between feeling and making meaning out of feeling.

When we are able to “mind the gap” we get used to feeling our fear and we no longer have to react in our old conditioned ways; stressing ourselves out by running our mind movies. Fear is an emotion. It doesn’t inherently mean something. Historically, when all of us were still living in tribes as hunter/gathers, fear was the signal that we were in danger of being eaten by a tiger, some other large carnivore or other life-threatening situations. For most of us in today’s world that is no longer the situation. However, that deeply ingrained response is still in our DNA and as a result we tend to react to modern situations in our home and workplace with as much adrenaline as we would if we were in danger of being eaten by a tiger. This sets off a stress/anxiety response and we can’t just run away on our two legs to solve the problem. Thus we tend to feel trapped and our anxiety goes through the roof.

So practice “minding the gap.” When you find yourself getting stressed out see if you can:

1.back up to the emotion and say to yourself “I feel afraid.”

2.stop the VCR in your mind.

3.and rest.

Be willing to feel your fear. I guarantee you it won’t kill you and feeling fear does not make you a weakling or a sissy. Rest into it. You’ll be surprised at how fast stress and anxiety go away when you mind the gap.

I’ve had the honor of teaching some of your how to manage difficult emotions during our work together. I’d be equally honored to share these wonderful teachings with the rest of you.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about working with difficult emotions Dzochen Ponlop Rinpoche has a new book Rebel Buddha which comes out next week; on November 9th. And as a bonus, he will be here for what promises to be a wonderful all-day event on November 27th, at the Boulder Theater. You can learn more about the event and purchase a ticket at the Rebel Buddha website. I plan to attend myself and I hope to see you all there.

So dare to be daring; let your inner Rebel Buddha out to the world and let yourself experience the fact that you too can stress less and still succeed and thrive.

San Francisco, scheduled for 9:00AM, now 10:05AM. I’m mad! An uncomplicated trip to the airport, pleasant drivers, helpful people checking me in and an easy rite of passage through security; all gone because I get to my concourse only to discover my flight is delayed. If they’d announced the delay before I left my house I would of stayed home longer, I pout to myself. My anger wipes out all of the good feelings generated by the relative pleasantness of the day until now. I know that anger and frustration are common responses to this type of situation but I have to ask myself, why? It’s not going to change anything and too much anger makes us sick.

There is a story I often tell clients about anger. The freeway onramp near my home is set up so that you can’t see the freeway until you’ve pulled part way down the ramp. Of course, by then you can’t back up or change direction. You have to keep going. I had an appointment to keep and had left the house in plenty of time to get there. As I pull onto the onramp I am greeted by a barely moving sea of automobiles. Anger arises in my awareness. I work my way into the sea of automobiles and now have plenty of time to ponder why I go to anger in this type of situation. I know it’s not helpful, that it won’t change the situation in any way, and that it is actually bad for my health. Yet, I am still mad. As I creep along the freeway thinking about this I ask myself “who am I angry at?” By now I’ve crested the hill and can see below me a bad car accident with fire trucks, ambulances and police cars everywhere. It gives me pause.

Am I mad at the people who wrecked their cars and may have died? No. Am I mad at the paramedics who are trying to save lives and block the road in their efforts? No. Am I mad at the police officers or the fireman who are on the scene? Again, no. The answer comes to me as if a voice spoke it out loud in the car. I am angry because I did not get my way! I am feeling victimized by the causes and conditions that led up to my being stuck in traffic and late for my pending appointment. I had a plan and my plan was thwarted. I felt helpless. I could do nothing about it except wait.

Each of us is the sum of all of our life experiences. This means that each of us has a 2 year old part of us that wants what it wants and wants it now! Emotions have a lot of energy attached to them and anger is one of the most energetic of the emotions. When anger arises with all of it’s power it often activates these otherwise quiet parts of our mind. My terrible-two persona wakes up when I am angry and wants to have a temper tantrum. I want what I want and I want it now! I also want everybody else to know that I am mad and it is my secret hope that someone will do something to fix the situation so that I can have my way. When you think about a two year old and how they behave when frustrated, isn’t this what the two year old wants? As children grow up, hopefully the lesson they learn during that two to four year stage is frustration tolerance, the ability to deal with disappointment in a constructive way. Sometimes we are still learning that lesson as adults.

Of course I am no longer two so this kind of behavior isn’t an effective strategy for getting along in the world. Luckily for all of us, as adults we can learn to channel the energy associated with anger into more skillful means in the world. Anger destroys our state of mind. When we are angry we can’t think straight. When we act out of anger someone gets hurt.

Anger is one of the five afflictive emotions in Buddhist psychology and it’s antidote is compassion and love. Back at the airport I stew for a few minutes and finally decide I need to take care of myself and get some breakfast. By being compassionate to myself, feeding my body and letting the anger subside I can think clearly again. I can see how to love myself in this situation. I decide to write this article while I enjoy a relaxing breakfast. It occurs to me while I’m sitting there how difficult it is to carve out uninterrupted time for myself and this extra hour at the airport is actually a gift to me. An hour to relax and use my time in a meaningful way. It took a delayed flight for me to receive that gift. The pleasant feelings I experienced earlier in the day return.

Soon enough I’m flight-bound.

The death of a loved one, sudden loss of a job, losing the house, loss of health and many other things are common experiences for all of us.  Is there any one of us who doesn’t know someone who is going through loss?  Perhaps you are going through loss yourself right now.

In my counseling work people come to see me because they don’t know how to deal with  significant loss.  They no longer know how to cope nor how to function on a daily basis.  They are experiencing grief.  Where do you find a life-philosophy that informs you on how to respond to the fact that everything we have we will eventually lose?  What can you depend on?  How do you stand on quicksand without sinking?  While both western psychology and Buddhist science of the mind help us to work with our minds, neither one informs us on how to respond to grief and to live skillfully in the world in spite of loss.  And for many people, western religious philosophy also tends to fail them when they are facing painful loss.  So where do you turn?

One of my teachers, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche says that Buddhism

is both a science of how the mind works and a philosophy for life [living skillfully in the world.] It is not a religion in the conventional sense. . .  Rather, it is a way of viewing our existence that brings meaning into our lives and benefit to the world. (Dzogchen Ponlop, Mind Beyond Death, Snow Lion Publications, Boulder CO 2006, p. 35)

Buddhist philosophy tells us how to deal with loss and how to respond to the uncertainties of life.

There is a Buddhist teaching story that takes place during the life of the Buddha, around 500 BC.  Those familiar with Christianity could think of it as a parable.  In this story a mother’s child dies suddenly.  In her grief she is unable to admit to herself that the child is dead.  She comes to the Buddha with the dead child in her arms and asks for medicine for her child.  The Buddha tells her to go to the town and get some mustard seed from a family who has never experienced a death.  She tried and of course could not find such a family.  Through her efforts and the Buddha’s teaching she then realized that everybody experiences loss.  Loss is painful but it does not need to be a bad thing!  To live is to loose.  The only other strategy is to try to hide from life, not experiencing life but protecting yourself by avoiding relationships and the other challenges we all need to face everyday.  Some people try to do this and create even more suffering for themselves and those close to them.

Life is impermanent.  If this is true, how do we find peace?  What can support us when things go wrong?  This is what Buddhist teachings provide the modern world, a way to understand that all things that appear also disappear  The teachings include instructions on how to live in the world with joy and a sense of fulfillment even though there really are no people, places, events or things that are permanent, unchangeable and 100% reliable.  Acknowledging this fact often leaves people feeling like there is nothing to depend on, no solid ground to stand on.  They feel they are going to sink into the quicksand.  But it is possible to stand on quicksand.  This is the great gift for everyone!  This is how to get out of bed in the morning in spite of loss and to be with our grief instead of trying to avoid our grief (which never works anyway).  This is the key to true freedom and joy in life.  Is it better to be prepared before a profound loss happens or to experience the loss and not know where to turn and what to do when the inevitable happens?

We all will experience loss and grieve that loss.  With my training in western and Buddhist psychology combined with my training in Buddhist philosophy, I can help.  If you or someone you know has experienced loss and could use some help learning to relate to the world again, please call or email me.  Let’s talk and see if I can be helpful.

Perhaps this is one of the keys to happiness, especially if we think about how we can make another being’s quality of the day a little better — paying a small compliment, feeding the birds, holding the door, picking up trash that missed the can, walking your dog. The list of little things we can do for each other is endless. The bonus is that each random act of kindness to another improves the quality of our day as well. It’s an interesting paradox of life, when you help someone else you automatically help yourself by feeling better, which improves the quality of your day.