Hi,
My name is Laura Garrison-Brooke.
Thanks for joining me for this meditation.
I've got to tell you,
I had a rough time earlier today.
I'll share a bit around the details in a second.
But right now,
I'll tell you that I was really dragging,
And I started hearing this voice in my head.
Here's what it said.
This is really hard.
This might be too hard.
I don't know if I'll ever be successful at this.
Maybe I should just give up.
Have you had moments like that?
Are you maybe struggling with feelings like this right now?
If yes,
You're in the right place.
I'm glad that you're here.
I'm going to tell you a little bit about what happened earlier today,
Which inspired the creation of this meditation.
Of all the meditations I've shared so far,
This one is probably the most personal and unfiltered.
Which,
I've got to tell you,
Makes me feel a little bit nervous.
So thanks for holding space as I share these experiences with you.
Here's a bit of my backstory.
For most of my life,
I had the strongest sense that I had a life purpose,
And I hadn't found it yet.
I'll tell you,
It's not a good feeling.
It's very unsettling.
So the great news is that around four years ago,
I figured out that my life purpose was to help other people discover their life purpose.
Knowing this made me really happy.
So to embrace this new reality,
I decided to leave my cushy job with awesome health insurance and seven weeks paid vacation to start a new nonprofit.
We work with at-risk teens to help them live more meaningful lives,
And it's amazing work that I really love.
Fast forward three and a half years to today,
And there I am in my kitchen,
And I am feeling swamped with self-doubt,
With fatigue,
With worry.
Maybe this is just too hard.
Maybe I should give up.
These are the thoughts that were echoing in my head.
Now I'm happy to say I didn't stay in that space for long,
But I got to tell you,
It rattled me right down to my core.
I've invested three and a half years in this organization,
Working full-time to build out all that a charitable organization requires,
And that's a lot,
Most of which I had no idea how to do in the beginning.
I mean,
I just jumped into the deep end of the pool,
And there was a lot of floundering and flailing going on at times.
Even if I wasn't always good at it,
I had invested my heart and soul into this effort for years.
I had sacrificed for years.
Walk away?
Give up?
It made everything inside of me clench and drop.
The fact that you're listening to this right now makes me think that you're struggling too.
Maybe you're like me,
And it's something tied to your job,
Or maybe it's an important relationship in your life that's challenging.
Maybe you're on a life path that's just kind of kicking your butt.
During this time together,
I'm going to share a process I've created called art that helped me,
And fingers crossed it'll help you too.
Have you ever heard of Robert Holden?
He's a British author and positive psychologist who focuses on happiness.
I was listening to an interview with him last year,
And he said something that really hit me.
He talked about how sometimes people have a hard time,
And they describe it as a dark night of the soul.
And he said he doesn't believe that.
He said,
There are no dark nights of the soul.
Your soul is doing just fine.
There are only dark nights of the ego.
There are only dark nights of the ego.
Isn't that interesting?
Let's return to my moment of darkness earlier today and unpack some of what was happening.
Earlier this week,
I had a conversation with another nonprofit,
Also focused on helping teens connect to purpose.
They sprung out of a tech company,
So they're really well funded,
Have a sizable staff,
And have served a lot more students than I have.
So there I am comparing myself to them and feeling less than.
That's ego,
Right?
And while the loudest voice in my head might have been,
This is just too hard,
Here are some of the thoughts that boosted this frequency.
I invite you to listen for the most consistent words.
I should have had more success by now.
I should be getting paid for this work by now.
I should have more students signed up for the class by now.
Should,
Should,
Should,
Right?
Ugh,
The ways that we should all over ourselves.
And then,
To make it even worse,
I add in,
By now,
As if this is a race or a competition.
When we get sucked into this kind of zero-sum thinking,
Even when we win,
We ultimately lose.
Because this is a scarcity mindset.
By their very nature,
Scarcity mindsets increase anxiety and lessen feelings of abundance.
We're going to go through three stages of exploration.
We're going to assess,
Then realign,
And then test.
A-R-T,
Which I call art.
This meditation includes binaural beat technology that will help enhance your ability to relax and go deep,
While staying centered,
Calm,
And relaxed.
So to get started,
Let's settle in,
So that we can better understand what's going on.
Let's start by sitting comfortably with both feet flat on the floor,
About shoulder's width apart.
You can also take a different comfortable seat that serves you better.
And we'll be together for a while,
So if it's most comfortable,
Feel free to lie down.
Rest your hands on top of your legs or at your sides.
Close your eyes or leave them softly open.
Face is relaxed with maybe a small smile on your lips.
Begin to focus on your breathing.
Let the belly expand as you breathe in,
And then softly draw the belly back as you breathe out.
Play with the speed of your breath until you find a comfortable,
Soothing rhythm of breath.
However your pacing is,
Keep the length of your inhale and your exhale even.
For example,
If you inhale to a count of three,
Exhale to a count of three.
Let's get grounded.
Focus on your body,
Sensing the weight of your body resting on the chair or the bed or the ground.
Feel the floor underneath you.
Let yourself feel held and supported.
If you notice that your mind has gone elsewhere,
That's okay.
Just notice this and gently guide it back to awareness of your body.
Breath by breath,
Allow yourself to be right here in the moment,
Connected to this body.
Are you ready to go on a journey?
I invite you to create a safe space,
A place where you feel deeply peaceful,
Calm,
And safe.
What speaks to your heart?
Where do you feel most connected to your true self?
Within your mind's eye,
Imagine yourself looking around.
What do you see?
Wherever your special place is,
Feel yourself gently landing in that space.
Feel how the whole body is able to relax and melt down as this safe space gently welcomes you and nourishes your spirit.
In this safe space,
You're in an easy,
Comfortable seat,
Relaxed.
You look down and notice that next to you,
There's a tablet.
You pick it up and on screen you see there's a video of you.
You settle into your comfortable seat and hit play.
From your safe space,
You watch yourself get up in the morning,
Moving around your bedroom and preparing yourself for the day.
And you notice that at the bottom of the tablet,
This movie is subtitled.
You can read what your on-screen self is saying in their mind.
Now you're still in your special place,
Safe and relaxed.
You are not thinking these thoughts.
You're just aware of them as your on-screen self thinks them.
As you are ready,
Gently shift the focus of your on-screen self.
Whatever challenge might have brought you to this meditation,
See your on-screen self in that reality.
Witness the struggle with kind,
Loving eyes,
But don't allow yourself to be dragged into the struggle with them.
See your troubled self through the eyes of compassion.
Whatever the struggle is,
See that internal dialogue clearly subtitled on the screen.
Be aware of what you say to yourself,
What the big triggers are,
And what you do when these negative voices begin to circle in your head.
Remember,
You are watching these challenges from a distance.
You're still here,
Firmly in your safe space.
If you sense yourself being drawn into the home movie you're seeing on the screen,
Let the imagery fade and just breathe.
Find your soothing rhythm breath.
Then see yourself back in your safe space and begin again,
Witnessing the subtitles of your internal dialogue as the on-screen self thinks about this challenge.
What do you notice?
What do you learn?
Gently set this tablet to one side and sit in your special place.
Breathe in and out.
Feel grounded,
Relaxed,
And aware.
In this clear and calm state,
Distill down what you read in your subtitles to a simple word or phrase.
How is this situation making you feel?
Some examples are maybe that you feel unappreciated or disrespected,
Unworthy,
Unloved,
Or unsafe.
What feeling is fueling that sense that you might want to give up?
Where is that coming from?
Now if you come up with a word like tired or exhausted,
I invite you to dig deeper.
Ask yourself,
Why am I tired?
What about this situation is making me tired?
The power of this assessment phase is to bring what might be churning below the surface out into the light.
By mindfully seeing these emotions,
We can often shift or diffuse their power.
What was the dominant feeling I was having in the kitchen this afternoon?
I'd say I felt incompetent.
Now look at the irrationality of this response.
There I was comparing myself to an organization with deep pockets,
Ties to a major university,
And a staff and contributors of more than a dozen people.
When we compare ourselves to others,
We're in for a rocky road.
Social media and the internet make us even more vulnerable to this kind of comparison.
So another quick example of mine happened right here on Insight Timer.
I totally love Kenneth Soares,
An Insight Timer teacher who has a lot of affirmation meditations.
We have a very similar focus and approach to meditation.
He has over a hundred thousand followers and millions of listens to his meditations.
And I don't.
And sometimes it makes me feel bad.
But look at how ridiculous that is.
Kenneth has been doing this for years.
I just added my second meditation to Insight Timer a few months ago.
And this happens all the time,
Doesn't it?
By virtue of their success,
Those people are the ones who are the most visible.
As a result,
Those are the ones we seem to compare ourselves to.
Which makes those of us just getting things started feel like we're even farther behind or smaller in comparison.
I've had the opportunity to study with Dr.
Tal Ben-Shahar,
A Harvard-trained positive psychologist whom I love.
Tal calls this dependent self-esteem when our sense of self-worth comes from how we compare to others.
I've also heard this called rollercoaster self-esteem since it can rise and fall with the day.
So as I've shown by my own personal experiences,
A surprising amount of our discomfort comes from the shadow of our ego.
Our irrational ego.
The good news is that just the act of bringing these emotions to light will help diffuse them.
But our ego isn't always the culprit.
In your assessment,
If you felt like the brakes were really slamming on as you went into that challenging space,
Let's look at that more.
For example,
Maybe you've come to realize that you feel unsafe in a particular situation.
Or you feel that what you're doing is deeply out of alignment with your values.
If that's the case,
Once we get into the realignment process,
I'm going to ask you to revise things a little.
There are absolutely times when walking away is the right decision.
Are you truly quitting?
Or are you choosing to live a different life,
Better for you and the unique person you are?
The path of life is long,
And part of its beauty is the winding directions it might take you in.
Part two of the art process is to realign.
To do this,
We're going to leverage something called appreciative inquiry.
Appreciative inquiry,
Or AI,
Is when you look at what's working in your life and then dig down to figure out how to get more of that.
Here's what we'll do.
Think of your word or phrase that you came up with in the assessment part of the meditation.
And then,
Think of a time when you felt the opposite of this word,
Ideally in the situation that's currently challenging you.
I'll go as a guinea pig so you can see what I mean.
You might remember that my word was incompetent.
So as part of the realignment phase of art,
I need to think of a time when I felt really good at what I was doing.
In my realignment,
I chose to relive a debrief meeting that I had with the program director of a group foster home.
I'd just finished teaching my program to some teen girls there,
And the director told me in detail what a difference it made for them.
The stories of how I helped these foster girls really feeds my soul.
Okay,
So I've relived this experience to bring forth that positive emotion.
Here's what's next.
Now,
I need to learn from this and figure out how I can get more of this into my future.
That's the power of appreciative inquiry.
Here's what I came up with.
To boost my feelings of competence,
I need to stay connected to how the program benefits the teens we serve.
I need to remember that even if my numbers are small right now,
The impact I am having on these individual kids is big.
Let's do another quick example.
Maybe your word was unloved,
And you're in a relationship with someone whom you love and who you think really does love you.
While that might be the case,
Maybe the way they show love doesn't make you feel loved.
The invitation is to think of a time when you really did feel loved by this person.
But let's say you're feeling unloved because they really don't love you,
Or you're feeling unsafe because you are unsafe.
This is a really important point.
The realignment phase is not meant to try to whitewash things or talk you into doing something that isn't in your best interest.
It's about coming back into alignment with what authentically exists.
It's not about playing make believe.
For example,
I am a competent person.
By reminding myself of examples,
It helps me reconnect with this reality.
It helps me realign with this part of myself.
If you're struggling with coming up with an example tied to your challenging situation,
Then I invite you to look for one elsewhere.
Like,
You just can't seem to come up with a time where you felt loved in your relationship.
When did you feel loved in a different one?
Okay,
Now it's your turn.
Come back to your comfortable seat.
Rest your hands on top of your legs or at your sides.
Close your eyes or leave them softly open.
Focus on your breathing.
Let the belly expand as you breathe in.
Softly draw the belly back as you breathe out.
Feel yourself back in your special place.
Focus on your body,
Feeling yourself there safe and relaxed.
Root down into the earth.
Center on the positive word that you want to re-experience.
Remember,
This is the opposite of the negative feeling you uncovered in your assessment.
So if you felt unloved,
Think of times you felt loved.
If you felt unappreciated,
Think of times when you felt appreciated.
Bring this positive word softly to mind.
No effort,
No stress.
Pick up the tablet and see yourself on screen.
See how happy you are,
Relaxed and strong.
And on screen,
See a past experience you had where you felt that emotion.
Is this in a situation that's been challenging you lately?
If not,
Ask yourself if you want to go there.
It's okay if the answer is no,
But make this decision mindfully.
Center again on yourself on screen.
Think of a memory when you experienced this positive emotion.
What are you doing?
Where are you?
Who are you with?
How are you feeling in your body?
How are you feeling in your mind?
How are you feeling in your heart?
What caused you to feel this way?
What was it that boosted this positive emotion in you?
See yourself in lots of detail,
Trying as best you can to relive this positive moment.
Now I invite you to harvest from this memory.
What was it specifically that helped you feel so good?
And how can you get more of this,
Either in this situation or in other areas of your life?
Here's where we are now.
Hopefully you now have a better sense for what emotional states have been turning you up.
That was the assessment phase.
And from reliving a past memory,
You've learned about what makes you feel better and how you can bring more of that into your life going forward.
That was the realign phase.
Okay,
So we're ready for the final phase of the art process.
And that is testing.
Again,
Focus on your breathing.
Let the belly expand as you breathe in.
Softly draw the belly back as you breathe out.
Feel yourself back in your special place.
Focus on your body,
Feeling yourself there,
Safe and relaxed.
Decide what you'd like to test,
Continuing in your current situation or moving into a different way of living.
Keep this softly in mind.
Look down and see yourself on screen.
You notice that this scene is in the near distant future,
Maybe six months or a year out.
If you're seeing yourself still in your situation,
See how you've been able to boost those positive emotions by bringing more of the good stuff that works into your life.
Like,
If you feel most loved by your partner when you're intellectually connected,
Maybe see yourself sitting together on the couch watching a documentary.
Paint as realistic a picture as you can.
This isn't about dreaming of moving to Paris or winning the lottery.
This is about learning from times in your past when things were good and seeing how you'd feel if you planted more of those seeds in your life in the future.
Now,
If you've chosen to live a different kind of life,
What does that look like?
How do you feel about this change?
Whichever you choose,
Take time to envision that future now.
Watching your future self on screen,
Let's check in.
How are you feeling?
And when I say you,
I mean the self who is observing this scene.
How are you feeling?
Watch the scene some more and really stay connected to your body sense of how you're feeling as you watch the scene unfold.
Again,
How are you feeling?
Check in with your head,
Your heart,
Your body.
And as you're ready,
Come back to the body.
This was a big journey,
Right?
So,
What do we do with this information?
Where do we go from here?
Maybe you're asking,
How do I score the test?
Well,
Were your emotions positive when you thought of staying in the situation?
Or were they negative?
If they were positive,
That's a good sign that staying in the situation is the right thing for you.
If they were negative,
You might want to retest and see how you'd feel when you see yourself in a future where you've chosen to live a different kind of life.
I love that I've named this art because there's definitely an art on how to use it.
Now,
If you were like me and this helped you plug back into your why,
That's obviously awesome.
At this point,
You can probably check the box and say that you're done.
Let's keep exploring if things weren't quite so neat and clean for you.
Keep in mind that we have two seasons in our brains,
A hot state and a cool state.
When we've just had a rip-roaring fight with our boss or partner or whomever,
We're probably running hot.
When that part of the brain is turned on,
Our cool part of the brain is turned off.
And you know what lives in the cool part of our brain,
Which is also called the prefrontal cortex?
Our values,
Goals,
Strategic planning,
Skills and more.
It's our thinking brain.
I don't think it's a great idea to make a major life decision until your thinking brain has weighed in too.
So if you did this meditation and you're still really feeling turned up,
I invite you to let things settle.
Repeat the meditation a few times to see if things shift or new things come to light.
But if these two parts of our brains wind up in different places,
What should we do?
Who should make the decision?
The thinking brain or the feeling brain?
Again,
There's a lot of art to this and everyone's situation is unique.
I would probably recommend running the should and shouldn't test.
If we've got a lot of layered should and shouldn'ts in one area of the mind,
Then I'd say that the other part of the mind might be the best one to decide,
Because that might be more plugged in to your authentic self.
As you go out into the world,
I invite you to keep art in mind.
In the moment,
If things aren't feeling great,
You can assess what's going on and then see if you can realign.
The more you practice this kind of mindfulness,
The easier it will become.
In closing,
I want to say that if you are in a place where you're still struggling with dark or overwhelming emotions,
Please remember there are a lot of resources you can look to for help.
We don't want you to feel alone with these strong emotions.
It's a true sign of strength to ask for help.
Whatever your journey and wherever it takes you,
May you forever walk your own path with mindfulness and grace.
May you be surrounded with abundance,
Beauty,
And wellness.
May you embrace all that life has to offer you.
