My mother would often say, “pay attention to what you pay attention to,” usually paired in conversation with, “feed your hope more than your fears.”
Mothers are a little bit famous for saying true and wise things that are irritating at first pass; so if you bristled a little or twitched your eye, I get it.
After all, folded into both of these phrases is the idea that we have a choice. In complex situations, we humans tend to feel subject to circumstances, not like powerful agents within them. Mom’s suggestion that I should choose how to direct my attention or alter my feeling-state rarely helped in the moment.
So I’m not offering these phrases as platitudes. This is a time of significant change in the world, and I’m not about to sugar coat that. Often when reading the news I feel fear, sadness, and anger.
In the past, I would manage big feelings like this by quickly going to my head. I would avoid overwhelm with logic and research; and dodge powerlessness by crafting campaigns to mobilize action. I honed those skills and found safety in that acumen. And I discovered personal strength in collective strength. But my body paid a price.
It seems that most humans can only run on cortisol for so long before it bites them in the butt. So I’m approaching this differently today. Yes, I have loads of questions I’ll research, and many plans at various stages of development. But first, I’m making contact with my body. Doing so is an act of radical self care that will better ensure I’m here and in good shape for the marathon.
So what does this look like? First, I’m slowing down, allowing my attention to track where each emotion shows up in my body. In response to what I read, the fear sits between my shoulder blades, where I would prefer to feel solid and more shielded. The sadness is just below my clavicles, with a weight like worry or burden. There are tendrils from that to my throat, where I feel constriction. The anger sits as tension in my belly.
I don’t like any of this, but I can be with it. After all, the more contact I make with my full self here and now, the more accessible all of me will be when I need to draw on other qualities later.
It works in the other direction, too. If I’m engaged with media that seems sensational, I will notice which sensations are evoked and provoked, and then notice how those sensations are feeding my emotions. To Mom’s point - am I feeding my hope or my fear? If fear, I can make a decision to select the sources of information with greater care. This way, I stay informed, awake, and aware, yet hopefully with less emotional hijacking. Resistance and resilience can start in very personal ways like this, choosing which external channels get access to what internal parts of ourselves.
And from there, we are better equipped to craft and engage with nourishing images that fortify us. How else will we know where we want to be headed? Other worlds are both present and possible, but we have to tend them with our hope.
Comments