How to Not Go Crazy
Three attentional tips for mental health
A famous Zen story describes the practical wisdom of Zen to a “man of the world”:
In ancient China, the emperor’s minister was troubled and so went to visit a renowned Zen master to seek advice. He said, “Master, the people are unruly and difficult to govern. Please give me a word of wisdom to help govern them.” The master picked up his brush, dipped it in ink, and wrote the symbol for “Attention.”
The minister became angry. “I asked for wisdom and you give me just this! I demand you give me a word of wisdom!” The Master then wrote “Attention, Attention.”
“Well,” said the minister, “I really don’t see much depth in what you have written.” The Master then wrote the same word three times: “Attention, Attention, Attention.” Angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean, anyway?” The Master gently responded, Attention means attention.”
There’s a lot of dharma packed into that little anecdote. For now, let’s just appreciate that the essence of Zen is to pay attention to your own mind, which means pay attention to what your mind is paying attention to. Attention attention.
The inquirer in this story is a minister of the emperor. Our modern equivalent would be a government or business leader. He is not a spiritual seeker; he is asking for practical leadership advice. People are unruly and difficult to govern. You can imagine him stressed out and frustrated, pulling his hair out because people aren’t listening to him, the emperor has unrealistic expectations, and all the scrolls got wet in last week’s thunderstorm.
(In terms of our Sacred Contracts, he is asking for help not with his contract to Self, as most of the Master’s students were. Instead he needs help negotiating his Contract with Work. )
Unfortunately, the minister does not understand the teaching. He gets impatient and storms off. I know that feeling! Through two decades as a Founder and Executive, nearly every day my mind would be drawn to the question of how I would accomplish what I wanted to accomplish.
What did I need to do? Who were my allies and where could I find support? Negotiating an environment famous for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, what were the practical tools to assist me?
Even with years of meditation practice, a persistent voice in my head would look for the external resource: information, time, money, or people. I was beset by worry, stress and anxiety all the time.
I should have heeded the Master’s words of wisdom: attention attention.
In retrospect I see that my mind was constantly drawn to attentional habits that I now know were maladaptive and counterproductive. Specifically:
Multitasking
“Continuous partial attention”
Mental “looping” on problems.
We all know about multitasking (shifting quickly amongst tasks) and “looping” (obsessing). “Continuous partial attention” (CPA) is when we pay shallow attention to multiple sources of information at once, scanning for relevance but not necessarily focusing on doing anything.
CPA is another remarkable ability of our minds that we tend to deploy excessively to deleterious effect. “Continuous partial attention leads to the formation of a vicious cycle. Actively and constantly trying to eliminate distractions and focus leads to cognitive fatigue and a reduced sense of control in work environments. This lack of control results in stress, which triggers the release of cortisol.” (Wikipedia)
Having studied my mind a lot in meditation, I developed the following map of maladaptive attentional strategies, and the positive attentional objects that are more adaptive.
The three adaptive attentional objects are pretty simple. You can practice them yourself whenever you get stressed, worried or anxious:
Breath Meditation is just following your breath. If you get too distracted, then count your breaths, so you can notice your distraction and return to the breath.
Open Awareness is holding your mind like the sky, allowing all feelings and thoughts to move through like clouds. Whenever you get overly engaged with a thought or feeling, simply expand your awareness to again be like the sky.
I discussed the Question meditation in my post a little while back, “How Not to Worry”.
These simple meditative practices are very powerful. Intentional attention can create an instantaneous shift in our nervous systems, which includes our thoughts patterns.
We have much more influence on our mental state than we believe.
Thanks for supporting the newsletter with your shares, likes and sponsorship. And if you would like to explore working with me one-on-one or in my upcoming Catalyst Group, sign up for a free Discovery session and let’s chat. I integrate personalized meditation practices like those above into my coaching, making it easy for you to develop healthy mental habits, even if you don’t think you can meditate.
cheers,
Paul