The Value of Remembering to Pause Between Stimulus and Response

Every day unpleasant and unwanted things happen, some small and some big. Victor Frankl, noted author and psychologist, wrote:
"Between stimulus and response lies a space. 
In that space lies our freedom and power to choose a response. 
In our response lies our growth and our happiness."  

One of the primary reasons for a regular meditation, or other contemplative, practice is that is makes us more likely to remember to be mindful when things don't go the way we want them to. Often it's little things: hitting a stop light when running behind, an issue with technology, the day not going the way you planned, etc. And then the bigger things like a leaky toilet, someone being mean to you, ruminating about a relationship, worry about the security of your job, etc.   All of these situations can result in our being more irritable or short-tempered at work or at home.

When we remember to pause, it creates enough space for us to remember that we have choices other than the initial reaction. It's like your agitation muddies the waters, and the pause enables you to see more clearly.

One of the more gratifying things about teaching mindfulness is to see how it changes people's lives. Once or twice a year I ask the people at the Monday night sitting at our Center to share examples of when an unpleasant situation arose and they remembered to pause. Here are several of their stories. 

Situation: I was feeling frustrated with my life and realized that I was getting stuck in a cycle of ruminating.
Response: I stopped and  took a breath...Then I decided to focus on some of the positive things about my life. 

Situation: I was away for a mini-vacation and was frustrated when things weren't going the way I had envisioned.  
Response: I realized that I was getting more negative. So I paused and asked myself what's really important here. I immediately thought rest and relaxation, and there are so many ways to get R & R at the ocean!

Situation: I had made dinner and suddenly smelled something burning. The dinner was ruined. The old stories began immediately: what an idiot, how could you do this? 
Response: I paused and took a few breaths. Calmer now, I realized I could make something else quickly. Not the delicious meal I had planned, but nutritious, and enough.

Situation: I have a troubling relationship with a friend, and it's easy to fall into rumination about that person and all their issues.
Response: One day I decided to simply take a step back and go into witnessing mode, that is, observing myself ruminating like I was watching a play. My mood lightened noticeably.

 Situation: We had just started meditating and suddenly some people outside started talking loudly and were playing music on a boom box.
Response: Initially I was irritated, but when I paused to consider it, I realized that while my mind didn't like the noise, my body didn't mind. With this change in attitude, I noticed the birds and then the noise was no longer a bother. 

Situation: During the meditation I started having a fair amount of back pain and all of my attention was trying to move to get rid of it. Not working.
Response: I was doing a body scan meditation, so I moved my attention to my legs and intentionally brought more curiosity to the sensations in my legs. I then continued the body scan. The next time I got to my back, the pain was gone! [Many people have told similar stories.]

 Situation: I was looking forward to spending the morning on a new project that I was excited about. However, at the doctor's office, I was told it would be awhile as they were backed up.
Response: I was irritated by the wait. So I decided to meditate with my eyes open. After a few minutes, I suddenly had all these incredible ideas about the project.

There are several amazing things about these stories.
First, many of the choices are classic practices and techniques from various meditation teachers.

Second, many of these stories were told by people who had been meditating for less than a couple of years.

Third, this article could have been twice as long, because almost everyone responded to the question.

Over time, when people learn to pause and realize they have a choice, it really makes a difference! 

Habit energy: What's not working

Today's essay starts with a wonderful story from Martin Seligman, one of the pioneers of positive psychology.

One day he was out weeding in his garden with his daughter, Nicki, who was almost six. Martin is a serious gardener and also confesses that he is not really that good with kids. While he was focused on weeding, Nicki was having fun: weeds were flying up in the air and dirt was spraying everywhere. At one point, he yelled at her.

"Nicki got a stern look on her face, and she walked right over to me. 'Daddy, from the time I was three until I was five, I whined a lot. But I decided the day I turned five, to stop whining. And I haven't whined once since the day I turned five.’ Then Nicki looked me right in the eye, and said 'Daddy, if I could stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.'"

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed
The other day I got up 'on the wrong side of the bed' and was generating a lot of negative thinking. At one point I caught myself and was able to turn the day around, and this is something that is actually quite accessible to anyone who has practiced the basics of mindfulness.

ACTION/OBSERVATION	COMMENT/THOUGHT
I woke up and realized that because of my sore hip, I had slept on my back all night.	Damn. My back aches.
I got out of bed. The bottoms of my feet were puffy again.	This has been going on for months. What's going on?
I poured some psyllium husks into a glass of water. Some of the medications I take cause constipation, so I take psyllium and use other measures to address this. Today I don't sense much movement in my colon.	I didn’t pay enough attention to fluids and fiber yesterday. Damn.
The bucket under the water filter overflowed onto the counter top.	Damned water filter wasn't made well.
I couldn’t find the pan I use to cook eggs.	Damn. This kitchen is always too cluttered.

Angeles Arrien: what's not working
Years ago I read Angeles Arrien’s description of one shadow side she called ‘focusing on what’s not working.’ I have realized that this is a long time habit of mine, learned from my father. I realized that this habit was operating strongly at this point. I acknowledged that I could continue to be negative or simply acknowledge the 'not working' thoughts and also focus on what is working.

Thich Nhat Hanh: habit energy
In a talk in 1997 in Plum Village, France, Thich Nhat Hahn (also referred to as Thay, which means 'teacher') mentioned "habit energy." He stated that we have positive energies which we can cultivate and we have negative energies which we can transform. The practice “is to recognize the energy of our habits and smile to them. And also to cultivate the new habit, the good habit, until the new habit begins to produce energy." I recommend Thay's whole talk on dealing with habit energy which you can access HERE or you can copy and paste this url into your browser: https://sites.google.com/site/tnhdhamma/Home/test-list/taking-good-care-of-our-habit-energies

Applying these ideas into my own life
For the first several months after my aortic dissection last November, I was so happy to be alive and then happy that the repair surgery was successful, that I was carried by this positive energy. However, in the last month or so I have noticed that a tendency to slip back into the 'what's not working' energy. I realized the other morning that some intention to focus on this habit energy would be wise.

I want to highlight Thay's articulation "to recognize the energy of our habits and smile to them." Thay emphasized that mindfulness practice is not about suppressing those parts of us that we don't like and want to get rid of, but rather bringing that same kind of loving attention to these parts that we would bring to a young child who is clearly upset about something.

So that morning, once I realized that I was being sucked down the rabbit hole of this energy, I just laughed used a practice that Thay had described in another talk. I smiled and said "Hello old friend, I can see you are suffering. Come sit with me." And I felt that part as I practiced loving-kindness toward it: "may you be safe and well, may you be peaceful, may you be free from suffering."

Victor Frankl comes in too
I also remembered that great quote from Victor Frankl: “[B]etween stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." In that moment, I was able to change my response to my growing irritability. A half hour later when I realized that I had forgotten to pour my decaf coffee out of the coffee pot before making my wife's caffeinated coffee, I just laughed.

Internal Family Systems
It is important to emphasize that it's not just Buddhist practice to deal with negative habit energies with kindness, it is also an essential component of a psychotherapeutic framework called Internal Family Systems which I wrote about in my August 12, 2019 blog post which you can access HERE. I worked with an IFS therapist for some time many years ago to ‘unburden’ my 'I’m not good enough' part.

What isn’t working and what is working
Since that morning last week, I have recognized the "what's not working part" many times each day. Sometimes I catch it early, sometimes not until it's a full blown storm, but I have been catching it more often. One day, when it was particularly strong, I told my wife that I probably should be by myself for awhile because my "what's not working part" was throwing a fit. She thanked me.

There's a lot in my life that's not working now:

• I am dealing with the trauma from the dissection which almost killed me;

• with having so little energy: the other day I went a a small gathering of people for two hours and then spent the rest of the day in the recliner watching TV and then in bed reading;

• with the inability to lift more than 20 pounds;

• with not being able to take care of my garden;

• with having to monitor daily my blood pressure, my fiber intake (otherwise I'm constipated), my potassium intake (the medications I take lower my potassium levels), and more;

There’s also so much that is working, that is wonderful, including two friends who have volunteered to help me with gardening! When I remember and acknowledge what is working, it makes the hard stuff so much easier to deal with.

It's a full time job to be mindful. I’m not planning on retiring from that job soon!

Our choices always have consequences

In every moment of our lives we make choices, from whether to have soup or salad for lunch to how to respond to a made comment by someone. Over the course of a day we make thousands of choices, most of them unconsciously. However, all of those choices have consequences, often huge. Mindfulness helps us to remember this and to pay more attention to these choices and their consequences.

Mindfulness has taught me that when faced with a choice--especially about something unpleasant--it is important to pay much more attention to my responses to what is happening than to what is happening itself. Let me give and unpack some examples.

Three choices in the middle of the night
On many nights over the past four months, I have awakened in the middle of the night in a state of fear and not been able to go back to sleep immediately. I was aware that I had many choices in those moments.

I could do a light body scan or I could simply bring mindful attention to the most compelling sensation—an ache in my leg or the feeling of the back of my head on the pillow. I brought a curious and accepting awareness to that sensation and stayed there until another sensation pulled me away. Whenever I realized my attention had wandered, I simply brought my attention back to my body.

Or I could practice loving-kindness. Sometimes I juiced up the energy of this practice by asking what I was grateful for, for example, I was still alive as a result of medical intervention, I had a bed, food, and was being cared for. Then I voiced the simple phrases: May I (others) be happy, May I (others) be peaceful, May I (others) be free from suffering.

Or I could focus on my breath: simply breathing in and breathing out. Sometimes, I would silently say “here” when breathing in and “now” when breathing out. If my mind was restless, I would count the breaths, starting over when I got to 10 and smiling when I realized I had lost count and then starting over!

Sometimes I got back to sleep soon, other times not for a while, and a few times I didn’t get back to sleep at all. The key is it didn’t matter! That is the what (getting to sleep) is so much less important than the how (how am I responding now).

Of course, experiential knowledge helps. At a meditation retreat 40 years ago, the teacher said that sometimes people can’t get to sleep and that if that happened, either to pay attention to our breath or to do light body scans. He said that even if we got no sleep all night, if we could relax and not resist, that we would be fine. A few days later it happened to me and I followed his advice—I don’t think I slept a wink that night. When the wake up bell rang at 4:30, I got up and walked to the meditation hall. To my surprise, I was quite functional that day. This practice has been with me since then.

Floundering
I also floundered a few times during the past few months. One of those flounderings was when I had to be readmitted to the hospital after my surgery. I really did not want to be in the hospital again, my third stay in three months, and I was depressed that I was still having issues after the surgery. I was definitely ‘on the pity pot’ feeling sorry for myself.

Somehow, it occurred to me to go back to a fundamental of meditation which I expressed in my own words, “Can I be OK with what is happening in this moment now.” To my delight, I could always say yes! After all it was much easier for me to say yes than it was for at least a few billion people who are homeless, freezing, in prison or camps, or being physically abused. I immediately calmed down, and continued to say yes to each moment. It didn’t take long to get back to sleep. I have continued to use this simple, powerful response since then, when trying to get back to sleep and during periods of being down.

Sacrament of the present moment
I was recently talking to my sister who is a co-leader of a lay Catholic community she has lived in for the past forty years. She responded to my story with happiness for me and then told me that Catholics have a very similar practice called The Sacrament of the Present Moment. She explained how she has used this practice over the years, especially during difficult times. Her practice and my practice are in different traditions but their deep resonance was wonderful to recognize.

Victor Frankl
Interesting a new book of writings by Victor Frankl is entitled Yes to Life, and one of my favorite essays (which is an Article in the Inspirations section of my website), is called Say Yes to an Open Heart, and both convey the same message.

This is from the last two pages of Frankl's book “It is terrible to know that at every moment I bear responsibility for the next; that every decision, from the smallest to the largest, is a decision “for all eternity”; that in every moment I can actualize the possibility of a moment, of that particular moment, or forfeit it. Every single moment constrains thousands of possibilities—and I can only choose one of them to actualize it…It is wonderful to know that the future—my own future and with it the future of the things, the people around me—is somehow, albeit to a very small extent, dependent on my decisions in every moment…But on average, people are too sluggish to shoulder their responsibilities….Certainly the burden is heavy, it is difficult not only to recognize responsibility but also to commit to it. To say yes to it , and to life. But there have been people who have said yes despite all difficulties...And they achieved it under unspeakable conditions. So shouldn’t we all be able to achieve it today in, after all, incomparably milder circumstances? To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but it is also possible under all circumstances.” Yes To Life, pp. 106-107.

Christian, Jewish, Buddhist—it comes down recognizing that our choices all have consequences. And then recognizing (and remembering) the difference when we say yes to life as often as possible.