Whilst on retreat, I read Pema Chödrön’s Living Beautifully. In it, she outlines a practice that I’ve called interrupting the narrative.
Each time you notice yourself providing commentary or narrating your experience, interrupt the flow. Stop mid-sentence and notice what’s going on around you, in the senses. See how parts of yourself re-appear and your view widens.
This practice is direct. It quickly drops you back into a more expansive and open sense of being. It’s also accumulative: when you next narrow or narrate yourself down into something smaller, you’ll feel the visceral contraction that this requires, and perhaps think twice.
Yesterday, I talked about widening the view.
This is a simple pointer for escaping the tunnel vision of beliefs. You’ll see similar practices promoted by modalities such as the Alexander Technique.
Earlier this week, I found another way of widening the view.
As I worked myself up into a stress about how much I had to do, I saw something else happening—my sense of possibility was narrowing. This is not something I’d noticed before. Neither had I realised that the increase in stress and decrease in possibility were inversely correlated.
A big part of coaching is helping people make their belief systems explicit.
They want one thing to happen, but they end up doing something else.
Somewhere in between, the wires are getting crossed. This is usually where the belief lives.
It might be something like: “I’ll look stupid”, “It’s never worked before” or “I’ll get found out.”
Challenging the worldview of the belief is one way to proceed. A coach might help trace its operating assumptions and ask if they’re really true.
You’re exhausted.
You heard meditation might give you some peace. Your therapist nods frantically when you tell them you’re giving it a go.
The practice is to “let things be as they are, moment to moment.”
You try it but it “doesn’t work.” You’re still exhausted and conflicted! So you get up early.
This is pretty common. And it’s not just because the practice is hard: it’s because you’re not doing the practice.