Joyful Minds, Open HeartsOvercoming Negativity Addiction

Today I intend to use my main vibe switch as present moment awareness.

Whenever I get lost in any kind of thought and leave the present moment, I am going to become aware of my body sensations, sounds around me, my breath, my thoughts, and emotions, all from the observer perspective.

I am going to aim to spend at least 75% of my day today in my body, in my awareness of the present moment.

Right now, I hear the sounds of the computer keyboard clicking as I type “click, click, click”, and I hear the “hummm” of my computer and I hear my chihuahua snoring in the other room. Oh, and some birds just chirped outside. “Chirp” “Chirp”. I feel a little sleepy because I woke up really early, but I feel fresh and clean because I just took a shower. My hair is still a little wet and I can feel it on my neck…Ahhhh. (For those few seconds I was not lost in thought!)

There is a great Zen saying that instead of asking yourself “Why?” (Which gets you out of your body, into your head, lost in thought once again) it’s helpful to ask “What?” meaning, literally, what is going on around and inside of you?

Present moment vibe switch check in!!! All day today.

Today has been about staying “calm” as a vibe switch as so many wonderful things are happening with my film. It’s looking like there is a good chance I will direct the film myself. Ahhhhhh. I like not releasing adrenaline over this. I like staying calm about it, in the present moment.

There were a couple of times today where people around me were agitated and usually I get all worked up chemically because they are. This time, I kept my voice calm and low and slow and focused on my breath and I stayed in a really comfortable place with my ONA.

When I scared myself with imagined future scenarios, I just said as my new vibe switch, “This is just the painted tiger” (From that Zen story I wrote from that earlier blog).

Tonight I am going to keep vibe switching whenever the excitement swells about this film. I am finding I prefer calm peaceful energy to really off the charts excited, even when a big dream comes true.

Who knew?

Love and Happy Biochemicals,

Denise

Whoever thought that when your dreams come true, it would be one of the biggest days ever of being triggered into negativity addiction and needing to vibe switch out of it?

But today was exactly one of those days. I found out that the producers of this movie want me to take a bigger (meaning very big) role in the making of the movie and instead of being delighted, I was so triggered with anxiety because of the scope of this project and I jumped into a million different imagined future scenarios or “what ifs” about what could go wrong, etc. that I literally had to stop and meditate several times during the day just to get my stress chemicals in check once again.

I am finding that various kinds of meditation are the best vibe switches when anxiety about the future kicks in because one thing most meditations have in common is they concentrate your mind on the present moment and in the present moment we are never really needing to fear much (unless a very real threat is standing in front of us or something like that).

I was thinking about the negative addiction to anxiety and fear and I realized that a lot of anger is also fear based. And then it occurred to me that the “fight or flight” mechanism of our brain is wired to do just that: “fight” (anger) or “flight” (fear).

I was also listening to a Zen teacher talking about how our brains have not evolved as fast as our society has so that, even though there is very little actual need for us to have the fight or flight response in our modern culture because we are not constantly in danger of imminent death, our brains still feel the need to trigger these stressful chemicals about simple imagined future scenarios.

Another vibe switch that has helped me when these “fight or flight” chemicals surge through my body when imagining the scope of this upcoming project, is I just observe the whole show from my witness perspective. I watch my body get fearful. I watch the adrenaline squirt into my system. I watch the uncomfortable feeling. I watch my mind speed up. And for some reason, by watching the whole show, I don’t engage it as much. I just label it as “the addiction to fear” and then it passes rather quickly. I do this because sometimes trying NOT to be afraid feels like resistance and only makes it worse.

I do believe that as our brains evolve to catch up with modern society, our fight or flight mechanisms will take more of a back seat and we won’t be so scared by imagined scenarios, since we are rarely threatened with actual ones. ONA is a big part of doing this for myself.

I’ll end this with a Zen story I heard that has to do with scaring ourselves with imagined future scenarios. It’s a classic ONA story.

A monk lived in a cave in the mountains and he concentrated his time on meditation, knowing himself and making a painting of a tiger on the wall of where he dwelled. It was incredibly realistic and when it was finished he found that he was frightened when he looked at it and couldn’t stay in the cave. This experience is called “painted tiger” and everyone has known it and created it in their own mind at one time or another.

Love and Happy Bio-Chemicals,
Denise