82. How to DO More Things you REALLY Like

What can you do to enjoy the holidays a little bit more? The answer is incredibly simple. It didn't say it was easy. I said it's a simple answer. 

This episode is all about making contact with the present moment so that you can be in a state of mind to create your response in a way that is authentic and genuine and in alignment with how you want to be and how you want to feel. 

Transcript

What can you do to enjoy the holidays a little bit more? The answer is incredibly simple. It didn't say it was easy. I said it's a simple answer. And this episode is all about making contact with the present moment so that you can be in a state of mind to create your response in a way that is authentic and genuine and in alignment with how you want to be and how you want to feel. 

Welcome to the Modern Creative Woman podcast, and this is for women like you who want to elevate their creativity and start applying creative thinking in their everyday life. I'm your hostess and creativity expert, Doctor Amy Backos. Through our conversations and creative insights, I'll provide simple, science backed tricks and proven creative practices that will help take the mystery out of the creative process so that you can start each day feeling empowered, creative, and ready to take on whatever comes your way. Let's get started. 

Inside the Modern Creative Woman membership this month, we've been talking all about process versus product and how we can engage with our process for more satisfied living, and the product is not as relevant. And the ironic thing about that is that the product becomes better when we're enjoying the process. There's research that's very compelling about how this works and in acceptance and commitment. The work is not on the problem. The work is on value based identification and value based behavior. The process involves focusing on how we want to be and how we want to live according to what's important to us. The focus is not on what's wrong, what we don't like. It's about aligning ourselves to what we want, but magically, somehow, by doing that. Psychological problems begin to dissipate. It's a bit of a paradox. It's different from any other kind of therapy that I've learned about, experienced or taught, because it involves this paradox of focusing on what you want, not focusing on what you don't want. And I think it makes good sense. I feel like that was good advice, that I got a lot growing up. Focusing on what we want, like points us in the direction and allows us to reach it. Today, I wanted to talk a little bit more about process and have a look at it from a few different perspectives. Certainly Zen Buddhism influences acceptance and commitment. So we'll talk a little bit about that process and how you can use it. We'll talk about acceptance and commitment art therapy. We'll really get into some ideas about how you can apply these to your holiday process. When people think of meditation, they are thinking of the stereotypical Zen process of a sitting meditation. It's called zazen. And zazen is what we see maybe in movies, or we imagine when someone says they're going to meditate and zazen has a particular series of steps, and I'll explain those in just a moment. But there's many ways that you can meditate. There are people who experience what's called relaxation induced anxiety. And when people grew up in really chaotic households or noisy or abusive households, when there was calm, it was often the quiet before the storm. And he gives people sometimes a little bit of anxiety to do a sitting meditation or to pull up a moment of silence in their lives. It can really cause some distress. So if that's you, don't worry, I have something for you as well. But the Zen process overall involves meditation, mindfulness, compassion and wisdom, both in a quiet practice and in our everyday life. And it's a huge foundational component of acceptance and commitment. So I'll speak to that piece in particular. It's making contact with the present moment. And in fact, that's one of the core concepts contact with the present moment. And the next part of that is acceptance of the present moment. I woke up the other day feeling all right. I started off with my usual morning affirmations, my loving kindness meditation that I've been doing since the summer, and I still didn't feel very good. I had just a bit of dread or discomfort, and I knew a little bit what it was about, but it was just thoughts about things. It wasn't that something was going wrong. I was thinking thoughts and feeling uncomfortable about it, and in the past, I definitely would have let that influence my day. I might have been cranky, withdrawn, but from doing the work of acceptance and commitment, I know to ask myself what's happening? What's going on? Go slow and not try and escape it. Just feel uncomfortable. Think my thoughts. And I ended up going for a walk, and in my walk I focused on a meta analysis. Really like a meta cognitive process of what's happening. And metacognitive means thinking about thinking. So I'm thinking about my thinking and I'm observing it, and I'm doing what's important to me, which is going for a walk, taking the dog out for some exercise. And, you know, I'll see my neighbors. I'll get some fitness to and observing my thoughts. Even though I didn't like them, I was willing to have them. I just kept focusing on my own willingness. By the end of my walk, I really did feel quite a bit better, and that was the end of my kind of circular, ruminating thoughts. It took me a really long time to get to that. This place where I can observe, I can recognize it, and I don't always. Sometimes I do get snappy, I feel frustrated, and I'm not sure why, but a sitting meditation definitely helps with that. And an active walking meditation definitely helps. Let me describe the zazen process. That's the sitting meditation, and it'd be amazing for you to be able to practice this in the morning or in the evening, even just for 2 minutes or 1 minute. So the process has four steps. It's finding a quiet space. So it really does require a little bit of effort to find that place. Noise canceling headphones works fine, and it's making sure that you can choose a peaceful area to sit without interruption. Now you can go to a park and there's things happening, but it's unlikely people will, you know, interrupt you. So it's finding a quiet space for you. The second step is adopting a comfortable posture. And zazen gives you two options on that. Sitting on a cushion or on the ground with your legs crossed, like crisscross applesauce or sitting on a chair with your feet flat on the ground. So make sure your legs are uncrossed. Make sure your hands are uncrossed. You can just dress them on your legs, back straight. Gaze softly lowered so you can close your eyes if you wish, but it's unnecessary. You can just look down, soften your gaze. Just unfocused your eyes a little bit. The third step is focusing on your breath, and that means following the natural rhythm, the inhalation and the exhalation. Now in this Zen process, it is non intentional. It is not guided. It's not about box breathing where you're counting in for holding, for exhale, for hold, for there's no formula in the Zen process. You're simply observing. And that's the difference between a mindfulness meditation and a guided meditation. Mindfulness is just observing what's happening. And a guided meditation is maybe listening to someone's voice, following along the count, having an intentional thing that you're going to meditate on. Mindfulness meditation is what we're after here. No direction, strictly observation. And the fourth step is observing your thoughts so you can pay attention to your breathing and then notice your thoughts as they come and go. And the goal is to allow them to come and go. They come into focus and then they fade away. And what happens to me and most people is only have a thought about something. It captures our attention and our mind kind of runs away with it. Now, there's nothing wrong when this happens. That's just what's happening. And you observe it. You don't judge it and you don't try and escape it. Just go back to your breath and noticing. I love the metaphor of a chain. so our mind kind of looks like that if we're just sitting on a hillside watching a train go by or letting the thoughts go by, just having them, experiencing them. And sometimes it's like we jump into one of those train cars and hop on that train and start writing it. And when we do that, then we say, oh no, I'm doing this wrong. Why can't I focus? What's wrong with me? That's a whole nother set of thoughts, and that's judgment and non-acceptance. So that string of thoughts is what we're now noticing are I'm having thoughts that I'm judging myself for doing this wrong. Okay. That's what's happening. And I'll confess to you that when I do my lovingkindness meditation, it's really four steps. I'll start thinking of lots of people, and then I'll start thinking of things that they do or what I should be doing. It's only four sentences, and I would say 80 or 90% of the time I lose track and jump on that train, start thinking of other things, and I have to remind myself to come back. Nothing wrong with that. That's just how our mind works. So those are the four steps of a sitting meditation. Quiet space. Comfortable posture. Focus on your breath and just observe your thoughts. Remember when you get stuck with your thoughts or you start judging, now you're just observing those thoughts. How I repeated this thought. Oh, I've even had this sore before. Oh no, I'm judging myself. That's part of the process now. This process of the sitting meditation works. If you have 20 minutes, great. Do 20. If you have 10 to 10. If you have one minute, do one. It will benefit you regardless of how much or little time you have. A Zen process will help you. It will help you settle down. It'll help you have that metacognition where you're thinking about your thinking, and it's training for when you're out in the world and things are coming at you. Now athletes go to the gym. And let's say someone's a runner or a gymnast. They still go to the gym and they lift different weights. They engage in different stretches. They're not always practicing running or gymnastics or doing these other things to prepare. So an athlete lifts weights to prepare their body to run fast. So the zazen sitting meditation is like lifting weights to prepare you to engage with the rest of the world. I do like that metaphor of filling your own cup. Zazen is to fill your cup so I can almost hear you thinking, I don't have time for that. I don't have time for that in the morning. I promise you, you have time in one minute. You can still do a Zen mindfulness meditation, even if you think you don't have time for zazen. I want to challenge you. You absolutely have one minute to commit to a morning in the evening. Zazen. 20 minutes is best. One minute in the morning, one minute and night. You have that time, I promise you. So for those of you that experience that relaxation induced anxiety, just try for one minute of the sitting meditation so that you can start to train your mind, and part of your work there is to reassure yourself that you're safe, that quiet is still safe, silence is still safe, and over time, you'll accumulate lots and lots of evidence to show you how quiet can be safe. Silence can be safe. So be gentle with yourself. There's no hurry. I encourage you to set your timer for one minute and go all the way to the end of the minute. If that feels like too much, do 30s or 20s, but one minute don't stop before you hit the timer. You'll start to train your mind that quiet can be good and safe. Now the Zen process is about taking a calm mind into the world. We practice alone so that we can be in the world with ease and gratitude and present moment awareness. You can apply mindfulness. Remember, that's just the open awareness, the accepting, non-judgmental observation of our mind and what's happening. You can apply that mindfulness meditation to your daily actions. And one way to do this is just set your timer. Do something for a few minutes and when the timer goes off, you just notice, oh, I'm here now. I'm doing this. That's all it takes to be mindful in your daily actions. You can do walking, mindfulness, eating mindfully. Have you ever eaten a Hershey kiss? Mindfully? Maybe you want to pick a better kind of chocolate, but I think that Hershey Kisses perfect for this exercise. You hear the tinfoil unwrapping. You can smell the chocolate. You can taste the chocolate. It lasts, you know, a little bit of time. You can just observe all of that. What it tastes like, what you're thinking of, what you're hearing. You can apply mindfulness the first few bites of your food. If you're watching TV and eating, you're not being mindful. There's a hugging mindfulness exercise. I'll tell you that in a moment. There's also speaking mindfully, and it requires listening, clarifying, asking questions, and making no assumptions about what the person is saying. And that's a wonderful practice for the holidays, as we often walk into situations feeling like we know what's going to happen. Oh, this is what the party is going to be like, or this is what this person's going to say, and we start responding before the situations even happen. We might do some worrying, engage in anticipatory anxiety, and all that does is set us up to reply, respond and react to what we think is going to happen. And that is not mindfulness. So where can you apply this mindfulness meditation? Now the research shows you can experience more satisfaction if you're mindful, even during uncomfortable, unpleasant, tedious tasks. You will feel more satisfied during them. If you are in the present moment making contact with the present rather than daydreaming. You can apply Zen mindfulness practice when your holiday shopping. When you're sitting in traffic. Maybe you don't like going to holiday parties. You can apply it there. Maybe you do like going to holiday parties. You can apply it there as well. It's about observing, noticing what's happening, noticing when we're judging, when we're worrying or anticipating. This works equally well for when we're thinking of people that we miss, when we have a sadness or some really uncomfortable kinds of feelings. Mindfulness works just as well. When we're laughing, we're feeling joy or we're feeling happy. Okay, let me tell you the hugging meditation I love this. It's not hard. And he's written extensively about real life mindfulness meditations. I know I've mentioned washing the dishes meditation before. I think we need a driving the car meditation. We need a walking the dog meditation. All we have to do is be in the moment. So the phrase for the hugging meditation is she is alive in my arms and I love her and you can change it however you want. He is alive in my arms and I love him. They are alive in my arms and I love them. You could fill in names as well. And interestingly, research shows you want to calm your nervous system. 22nd hug will put you on that path. It takes 20s for us to absorb the physicality of a hug and start to relax and feel good. From the hug, you can hug yourself and say, I am alive in my arms and I love me. Let's shift gears just a little bit and talk about the psychology of process. The journey is an important phrase that we use in psychology and in popular psychology. People talk about a man, a health journey. That's a great description. I'm always working on my how. It's my number one value because I know it's foundational to me living a long life. To being present. It's foundational for me to be able to think clearly, to be able to get around, move around in the world. My health is essential for me to go see my friends or engage with my family. My health is essential for me to do my work, to essential for me to be able to bring you this podcast. So a health journey allows me to think about the process rather than the end product. I'm not trying to get to an end product of lifting a certain amount of weight. That might be a goal, but I'm focusing on the process. How will I live my process today? Well let's see. Yesterday was my birthday. I had cake last night and I'm going to have cake again. That's left over for dinner, but what else am I going to do? I went on a long hike with my friend Sarah. I've eaten it, balanced meals for the rest of the time, drank a lot of water, slept my nine hours. You see, it's a process that allows me to feel good. If I am only focused on today, I lift a certain amount of weight. Well, I didn't lift weights today. If I'm only focused on something about eating, I'm eating cake today, I guarantee it. The process allows me to feel good about it and enjoy it. Paradoxically, we know focusing on the process helps us get to the goal so much faster. Now, art therapists will have a lot to say if you ask us about process. Artists will be able to describe process to you as well. So if you're an art therapist and an artist, you already know this concept. But I think you if you're here, you already understand the concept. So where else have you come to understand that process is more important than product? You might as well enjoy. If you're baking cookies, you might want to eat the cookies and they'll be enjoyable. But why not enjoy making them too? Engaging with the steps and the process of your activities gives you growth and satisfaction and well-being. Remember that research shows if you're present, even doing your laundry, you're gonna feel more satisfied. I'll give you a couple examples. If you're in the moment and focusing on process, it's easier to solve a problem. Any problem. If you're making art, you want to feel that experience of flow or time seems to lose its importance. The materials become increasingly important. How your mind is focused seems automatic. Focusing on process also works. When you're celebrating a holiday. It absolutely works when you celebrate a holiday. If you have a miserable time putting up decorations or going to parties, that's it. That's all there is. That's the process. The goal, ultimately, is putting away the decorations and going back to your normal routine. So anything that's out of the ordinary is a different process. Might as well enjoy it. It works if you're singing in a choir, planning a vacation, preparing a meal. We all have an educational journey. There's formal education, there's informal education, there's community education, social education focusing on the process of what you're learning and perhaps more importantly, what you're unlearning gives us satisfaction. I shared a really wonderful story about my grandfather and the game of golf inside the membership this month, and I'll just give you a taste of it. There are people who are playing golf right now who are cranky. They're mad at the ball. They're having a bad time. They're annoyed. And there are people who are playing golf who are laughing and having fun. And each of those people have decided for themselves how they want to play the game of golf. That's process. The product is playing the 9 or 18 holes. The process is what you make of it. Process. As the way back to acceptance and commitment. It's focusing on your values and how you want to be. Oh, if your value is to have a happy marriage, how do you want to be within that marriage and are you behaving that way? There's no like product in a marriage, right? There's not like an endpoint. It's this ongoing relationship with someone. The process is day in and day out. I just want to remind you the benefits of process. It involves mindfulness and contact with the present moment, and that is one third of what acceptance and commitment is teaching us. Process helps us avoid that black and white thinking, and it allows us to step away from our repetitive thoughts and become more engaged in the present process. Focus allows success to become easier. You don't have to be 100% with your meditation or going to the gym or whatever your goals are because, you know, it's a process. Process is also value based. And that value based pleasure and enjoyment are possible for the entire experience, not just the end. Like, will you be satisfied when you've packed up all the decorations and cleaned the house and the new year has begun? Only if you've focused on the process. The goal is to have all the decorations put away, so we might as well not pull them out. Would be product process means let me pull these out, have some memories about them, and in a couple of weeks we'll put them away. And here's one of my favorite parts about why process focus is so much better for us creatively and relationship wise, is we don't have to wait to feel good when we have to wait to paint something that is worthy of hanging up. We don't have to wait to feel good about our painting process. We can just enjoy the process. And the more we enjoy the process, the more likely it is we're going to get a product we like. So what do you most enjoy about the month of December? Your mind might come up with things you don't like. I want you to only focus on the things you do like, and I'll give you a challenge question I think you'll love. So what do you most enjoy about the month of December? Here's the challenge. Can you just do more of that and less of the other stuff? The answer, of course, is yes you can. But I want to challenge you to figure out how to do more of what you love and less of what you dislike. Have a wonderful rest of your week. Now that you know about how to use your creativity, what will you create? Want more? Subscribe to the Modern Creative Woman digital magazine. It's absolutely free, and it comes out when some men and I know you can get a lot out of the podcast and the digital magazine. Yet when you're ready to take it to the next level and want you to know you have options inside the membership, and if you're interested in a private consultation, please feel free to book a call with me. Even if you just have some questions, go ahead and book a call. My contact is in the show notes and you can always message me on Instagram. Do come find me in the Modern Creative Woman on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest at Doctor Amy Backus. If you like what you're hearing on the Modern Creative Woman podcast, I want to give you the scoop on how you can support the podcast. You can be an ambassador and share the podcast link with three of your friends. You can be a community supporter by leaving a five star review. If you think it's worth the five stars, and you can become a Gold Star supporter for as little as $3 a month, all those links are in the show notes. Remember to grab your free copy of the 21 Day Gratitude Challenge. The link is in the show notes and you can find it at Modern Creative women.com. Have a wonderful week and I cannot wait to talk with you in the next episode.