Mindfulness can awaken what is known as the witnessing or observing self, a facet of your consciousness that observes what you’re experiencing. There is the self who is immersed in the intensity of feeling an emotion and the experience you are having (such as a verbal argument), but there is also the mindful self that is noticing the event unfold and how your anger or frustration feels in your body. This mindful self can create a space between you and your emotions when you are feeling overwhelmed.

In my book Core Creativity:The Mindful Way to Unlock Your Creative Self I encourage readers to take their emotional pulse with a mindful pause at intervals throughout the day, in order to observe what they’re experiencing. Mindful pauses let you tune into what’s important and what’s not, making it easier for you to remember to let go of what is unimportant—or unwholesome. In Buddhism, we talk about wholesome, neutral, and unwholesome thoughts (“wholesome” means “supporting well-being”). If you’re not aware of your mind’s internal chatter, you might not realize how many of your thoughts are, at best, neutral and too often, damaging to your sense of well-being. Taking mindful pauses can help you become conscious of the quality of your thoughts, giving you the opportunity to consciously replace them with ones that are conducive to feeling equanimity, tranquility, and optimism.

You might even want to set aside a day to practice taking mindful pauses: Set a timer to go off every hour to remind you to tune into what you’re doing rather than letting your mind wander. Or, use sticky notes to post reminders to yourself to take a mindful pause: Affix them to spots in your home or office that you come into contact with often such as light switches, windows, and doors. Whenever you encounter them during your day, stop and take a mindful pause. Notice what’s happening, and ask yourself:

If the answer to the last question is “yes,” take a mindful breath and savor the experience. If not, ask yourself, “Where does my attention and awareness need to be refocused for me to feel that I am in a zone of calm and openness to creative flow?”

Mindfully redirecting your awareness provides you with the opportunity to reset your compass. Let’s say you’re in a conflict with someone. If your observing self is active, you might notice tightness in your muscles and a desire to forcefully voice your opinion even as the other person is talking. At the same time, your witnessing self is able to silently say, “I’m frustrated.” Then, you’ll find yourself thinking about what you want to do next. Being aware of your emotions and not trying to repress them allows you to tolerate them for a time before they shift—or before you consciously do something to change them.

For example, you might envision them taking form and then seeing this form grow smaller and smaller until your emotion feels manageable. Think of a sailboat sailing away from you toward the horizon, growing smaller and smaller, or a ball of anger or anxiety that begins to shrink until it is small enough for you to throw into the distance.

Because it activates the witnessing self, mindfulness practice can train your brain to alter any habitual resistance to feeling your emotions, making it easier for you to experience them and observe as they transform, naturally flowing and shifting like the currents of a river. And over time, being able to access your witnessing self when you’re upset develops your ability to be less emotionally reactive and have less intense reactions as well. That allows you to be more adventurous and creative, more open to experiences that might not be pleasant but could be valuable.

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That’s what happened to one of my clients who was a writer who had been successful in her craft for many years but had suddenly developed writer’s block. When she came into my office, she reported that she felt as if she were inside a large block of ice and her arms and hands were frozen. She had no ideas and would stare at her laptop screen paralyzed, unable to type more than a few sentences before deleting them. After I took her medical and psychological history over a few sessions, I recognized signs that she might be dealing with unconscious trauma and abuse.

I knew my client had to release the pain and afflictive emotions and harness them to use in a pursuit of her own choosing and that doing this healing work could help her get to a new level in her writing—I’d seen it happen with other clients. I felt confident that Somatic Experiencing work would help my client liberate herself from her creative block. As we worked together, I had her meditate and focus on her “blocked” feeling. Where did it reside? What were its qualities? As she identified the blockage, her shoulders rolled forward, and she bent in on herself as if she were frail and frightened. She began talking about when she had been molested by a family member, a memory she had not retrieved for many decades.

As we worked together, she began to have dreams of scenes from her screenplay, and
upon waking, she felt renewed and eager to work. Soon, her writer’s block began to melt away. My client’s story illustrates that sometimes, a feeling of being stuck in a rut—a block—can be connected to something deeper that our unconscious needs to attend to. Towards the end of our therapy, as my client was writing again, she told me that it felt as if the ice blocks had melted and become streams and rivers of beautiful words.

Emotions don’t just reside in your brain. You experience them in your body as well as your nervous system. Even if you don’t feel you’ve experienced a trauma, emotions can get stuck energetically in your body. A mindfulness meditation practice and mindful movement, such as yoga and Tai Chi can help you discover insights that might include past trauma, and you might be able to release the emotional energy related to trauma by using these techniques. Many people though find it difficult to access their emotions. They feel numb or minimal emotion even when in a situation that we would expect would cause a strong emotional reaction.

Here are four techniques from my book, Core Creativity to help you get in touch with your emotions:

• Go to art museums and galleries, concerts, and comic or dance performances if you can, but also, find online sources of art whether it’s on social media, a website for a museum or artist, a site for artistic photographs of nature, or something else. You might also want to sit back, turn off any devices that could interrupt you, and listen to some music that takes you on a deep journey inside yourself, whether it’s music with lyrics or only instrumental.

• Do mindful listening, paying attention to your emotional and physical responses to the experience. What if any thoughts come up? Notice them and consider having a creativity journal by your side to write down your impressions or sketch them out during or after the session.

• Watch a film or read a book that inspires you to self-reflect.

• If uncomfortable emotions or sensations arise, take deep, slow breaths and exhale slowly to cue your parasympathetic nervous system to become active, relaxing you as the emotion moves through your body and your stress hormone levels drop.

These activities can often bring your emotions and sensations into your consciousness. You might find yourself tearing up over a piece of music or when reading a passage in a book and decide to explore why you were so moved. Did a forgotten memory resurface? Did you connect with an aspiration you set aside long ago? If you start to cry about a character’s emotional pain in a book or movie, you might find you’re ready to reflect on your own emotional pain, having released some of it through crying.

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Traditionally, we’ve been told that to achieve happiness, we should use our minds to figure out what would make us happy and then work hard to achieve our goal. The problem is that even the sharpest, most clever mind is limited in its ability to create opportunities and see possibilities. Without guidance from the heart, we’re merely playing notes on a piano, not composing a melody. To move out of suffering and back into contentment and joy, we must listen to the music that calls to us from our hearts and go where it takes us.

Some people are able to embrace the process of transformation so easily that they evolve seemingly without effort, while others get stuck, afraid to make a move, hoping in vain that the change they desire will come about magically and painlessly. For those that get stuck their ego, or false self, often presents them with a long list of arguments for fighting the changes they long for or avoiding the changes that requires them to break out of their comfort zone—even if the cost is their own happiness.

Most people desire change, and even radical change, because their lives are out of sync with their most heartfelt longings. Yet, when they’re faced with overwhelming evidence that it’s time to move on, to let go of what was and enter into their deepest, or core, creativity, where all sorts of overlooked possibilities will begin to reveal themselves to them, they freeze in fear. Resistance takes over. To access their power to transform, they must start by exploring and dissolving their deeply rooted resistance to change.

I don’t believe that we can ever get rid of certain resistances or emotions so instead of trying to overcoming a hindrance I write about the importance working with mulching them. There is an ancient Buddhist story that illustrates what I mean by mulching. In the parable two farmers are living next to each other. One farmer takes all of his horse manure and keeps throwing it over the fence into the other farmer’s yard. About six months later, he notices the other farmer’s tomatoes are gigantic, his pumpkins are huge, his corn is green and his front yard is filled with tall grass.

The first step in embracing your resistance is to identify it and also check if you have any hidden hindrances. Then it is important to understand the payoffs of resistance as these are what is holding you back from moving forward. There are five basic payoffs that I call the demons of the ego or egoic mind. First by resisting change, we can avoid the unknown. What’s familiar may not be terribly comfortable, but sometimes it seems that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t know. We fear that venturing into the unknown will cause us to discover painful secrets about the world and ourselves that have been hidden from us. Secondly we can avoid being judged as “strange.” When parents are frightened by their child’s differentness, labeling them as “strange,” they’ll usually try to stifle his creativity. The child, sensing their disapproval and fearing abandonment, can shut down his creative flow and then either tries to conform to his parents’ expectations or acts out, claiming not to care what anyone thinks of him.

Another payoff is that we can avoid failure. When we fear failure, we tend to overestimate the risk we’re taking and imagine the worst possible scenario—the emotional equivalent of our parents deserting us as children. Conversely, we can also want to avoid success. Strange though it may seem, a fear of success can cause as much resistance to change as a fear of failure can. While you may consciously long for a promotion or hope that your romantic relationship will result in marriage, unconsciously you may be afraid of what will happen if these changes occur. The last payoff is that we can avoid feeling guilty. If we take a risk and make a change, we may feel guilty because we’re contradicting what others think we should or shouldn’t be doing with our lives.

If your resistance is stronger than your desire for a better situation, you must find your courage and delve deeply into your psyche. There, you can discover this hindrance, break it apart, and access the fuel of your passion. This passion will pull you out of your routine and resistance, and into the creative process, opening your eyes to infinite possibilities. Freed from the burden of creating avoidance behaviors and repressing your anxiety and fears about change, you’ll be invigorated.

There is an old Zen proverb that says, “Happiness and Suffering are both getting what you want and not getting what you want!” Both bring happiness and suffering something to ponder as you dream!

Adapted from Ronald Alexander’s book “Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change”

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Yoga in Sanskrit means union or to yoke. It is the balance between the (Ra) sun energy and the (Ma) moon energy or in Chinese medicine the yin and yang. The application of mindfulness meditation with yoga allows one to bring these energies into a deeper state of balance. It also enables one to access what I call a state of “Open Mind,” that gives us direct access into the core creativity of our inner subconscious. This state of Open Mind is the space that all innovative artists use to bring forth their new creative works.

Mindfulness meditation also enables us to experience a deeper level of wisdom or “Wise Mind.” Here our egoic self or small mind drops away and we open into a vast and infinite expansive state of luminosity. In this expansive state the small mind no longer ceases to exist. We evolve our practice into the Wise Mind and Big Heart. Below are four ways mindfulness meditation can enhance your yoga practice that I discuss in deeper detail in my book “Wise Mind. Open Mind”.

How Mindfulness Meditation Can Improve Your Yoga Practice:

• A mindfulness meditation sitting before asana practice will assist you to become more focused in your physical movements as well as your breathing.
• You will learn to move in and out of each posture by applying a focus of breath, attention to movement and focus with your eyes.
• When we practice mindfulness meditation we learn to become more attentive and concentrated both during our yoga practice as well as when we are going about our day. With each and every action and movement there follows an increased quality of awareness.
• After a yoga practice mindfulness sitting will not only assist you to deepen your concentration skills but also enable you to penetrate deeper levels of concentrated absorption. The first level of enhanced absorption is called a Jhanna state. The first Jhanna is wisdom or samadhi a state of heightened peace, bliss or joy.

Mindfulness and yoga practice are excellent upaya’s (meaning “methods” in Sanskrit) to help us to overcome in-balances in our moods whether they be anxiety, depression or painful afflictive mind states that work their way into the body to create symptoms of pain, stress and dis-ease. Together they enable us to navigate our way through the muddy and murky waters of the egoic mind’s daily moods, fears and anxieties and deliver us to the other shore of balance, joy and bliss.

Adapted from Ronald Alexander’s book “Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change” (New Harbinger Publications, 2009).

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From both a Buddhist (non-violent) and a healthy psychological view, if you have an unwholesome intention and are consciously choosing to manipulate or hurt others, you’re limiting your own capacity for change and stunting the creative unfolding of your own life. Your energy is being wasted on the futile effort of trying to force the external world to conform to your vision. The mental and emotional effort required to maintain these actions is enormous. Having wise intention is more than merely ethical; it’s necessary for psychological well-being and clear thinking.

The greater our facility with language, the more tempting it can be to try to control situations through our words. Insults and sarcasm can dominate and intimidate others, and someone who’s very verbally gifted may use these techniques to manipulate others in a subtle or not-so-subtle way. Gossip unfairly gives us power over others. Left-handed compliments designed to make someone doubt himself and feel weak, or carefully constructed insults designed to humiliate another person while preventing him from recognizing that he’s being ridiculed publicly, are common weapons in the arsenal of one who doesn’t exercise wise speech.

Wise speech requires mindful attention to the power of your words and the messages underneath them. Recognize that your tone of voice, facial expression, and body language matter, and drop any defensiveness that arises in you when someone points out the discrepancy between the literal meaning of your words and the message you’re sending with your eyes, crossed arms or disrespectful tone.

Direct, honest communication even if it’s uncomfortable is vital if you want to have more productive and respectful conversations. Often, I’ve counseled executives who had no idea just how intimidating or disrespectful they were when speaking to employees. When in a panic, they tended to respond with aggressive speech meant to frighten others into changing their behavior in order to placate upper management. This approach shuts down productive communication, reducing the manager’s ability to see the larger picture, make better decisions and effectively influence his or her team. Good leaders carefully hone what they say, mindfully expressing themselves.

When we cultivate wise speech, we don’t fear saying something wrong. However, we’re more attuned to the quality of our words and their effect on others. We speak up and say, “You seem upset by what I just said. Have I hurt your feelings?” inviting the other person to let go of his suffering. Wise speech fosters good relationships and partnerships and prevents future crises.

Sometimes, we should speak up in order to influence someone to change, but wise speech requires that we do so kindly and respectfully. Although it may seem well-meaning, being blunt or tactless with another is unkind and usually motivated not by a genuine desire to help that person but by the need to feel superior and be intimidating. Wise speech is gentle, never cruel or harsh. It enhances the situation by inviting everyone to improve it instead of shutting down the communication process.

To speak the truth respectfully, you must let go of your desire to pressure others into doing what you want. At some point, you may discern that no matter how often you say the same thing with kindness, honesty and compassion, you’ll never affect the other person the way you’d like. Part of wise speech is letting go of your attachment to having your words change the way others think, feel or behave.

But not only do we need to be conscious of the words we say to others but also the ones we direct at ourselves. Despite their popularity in our culture, cynicism and pessimism have been shown to be poor tools for creating a sense of well-being, although they may provide an illusory sense of power for a short time. The cynic who claims, “I know the system isn’t set up to allow people like me to achieve my goals,” isn’t empowered but trapped in an unwholesome state of mind where his only choices are anger, sadness and other unwholesome emotions. There can be no true joy or contentment in believing that what lies ahead will, in all certainty, generate more suffering.

Often people who are verbally abusive have the personality diseases of insecurity, inferiority, helplessness and hopelessness. When I’m coaching or counseling my clients I teach them is how to become mindfully aware of their unwholesome emotions so instead of being completely immersed in an experience that they’re unwittingly manipulating, they’ll experience a sense, however fleeting, that they’re doing something unwholesome.

An uncomfortable thought such as, “I’m trying to make him feel guilty so that he does what I want him to,” or “I ought to let her know that I disagree, but it’s easier for me to say yes and work behind her back to do what I really want” may arise. Instead of quickly dismissing it, they allow themselves to experience any guilt or shame that arises. Then they consciously and bravely explore why they feel the need to resort to manipulation and control. This discovery process gives them the strength to accept the situation exactly as it is, even if they don’t like it, and use positive means to influence it for the better.

Ronald Alexander, Ph.D. is the author of the widely acclaimed book, Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change. He is the director of the OpenMind Training® Institute, practices mindfulness-based mind-body psychotherapy and leadership coaching in Santa Monica, CA, for individuals and corporate clients. He has taught personal and clinical training groups for professionals in Integral Psychotherapy, Ericksonian mind-body healing therapies, mindfulness meditation, and positive psychology nationally and internationally since 1970. (www.openmindtraining.com)

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Mark and Selena, a couple I treated a few years ago are a remarkable example of how they dealt with a devastating loss and transformed their lives. They came to me shortly after their two young children had been killed in a car crash when they were with their teenage babysitter who had somehow survived. Mark and Selena were overwhelmed with guilt, anger, and feelings of loss. They could barely function and couldn’t begin to imagine how they could go on without their children or why they would want to. I discussed various treatment options and we agreed upon a method outlined in my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind that combines a mindfulness practice with positive psychology and creative thinking to help one let go of the past, tune into the present and their core creativity and finally move forward with the future. While we were working with the tuning in stage, I was concerned that due to the depth of their sadness it could take several years before they would be ready to move out of their grief and begin to envision a new life.

I decided to meditate on their situation, and what came to me was the visual image of the subcontinent of India. “That’s curious,” I thought, but decided to sit with it and soon, as if a voice had spoken to me, I had an inner knowing that I needed to suggest to Mark and Selena, who had conveyed an openness to the idea of traveling, to take some time off from their jobs and travel to the city of Varanasi in India. Varanasi is known as a holy place where the dying go to prepare for death and where bodies are prepared for the traditional cremation and return to the sacred Ganges River.

My logical, rational mind said, “Ron, that’s crazy. Why would you send two grieving and suffering parents who have no spiritual connection to India, and who are Lutherans from the Midwest, to Varanasi, where they know no one and would see death and suffering all around them?”

I discussed it with several of my colleagues who agreed it was a terrible idea but every morning when I meditated and connected to my intuition it kept telling me the same thing. Finally, one of my old teachers and mentors, Ram Dass, told me, “I think you may be on to something. They need to immerse themselves in their grief instead of denying it. Where better to do that than India?” When I mentioned it to Mark and Selena they weren’t sure how they would benefit from a trip to Varanasi, but meditated on it and told me that taking the trip felt “right” to them.

In India, Mark and Selena connected with their grief as they observed the dead and dying, but at the same time, they started to feel a sense of connection to other people and to a world in which suffering is inevitable. While there they spent time working with a committed humanitarian in her facility for the poor. She did not try to explain to Mark and Selena how they might handle their loss but instead invited them to join her in her everyday work of attending to the sick and dying.

When they returned to the States, Mark and Selena told me they had finally begun to heal. The deep compassion that had been awakened in them had eased their grief, and they felt they’d transformed from suffering parents who had lost their children to people who reached out to other suffering parents. They said they no longer felt quite so alone.

Over the next few months, Mark and Selena continued their mindfulness meditation practice and began to move forward with their lives. Selena, who loved music returned to school to earn a master’s degree and began working with children as a music therapist. Mark went back to his work as an electrician, but he now approached it in a very different way. When he consulted with clients, he suggested bold changes they hadn’t considered and had more patience and compassion with them. In time, Mark and Selena adopted two special-needs children and had another child of their own. They continued to talk about their children who died and kept photographs of them in their home, but they were able to creatively transform their tragedy into a new life with meaning and purpose.

For those of us who are unable to take such radical steps here are six strategies from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind to help you mindfully recover from a loss.

Six Mindful Strategies to Recover from Trauma, Loss & Change

• Reach out for Support: Don’t try to bear your trauma alone. Ask for assistance from your friends, spiritual leaders, support groups and professionals.
• Sit Quietly and Reflect: No matter the severity of your trauma, sit quietly and ask yourself, “Historically have I experienced other challenges in my life and how did I navigate through them?” Now use these past experiences to tap into your internal courage and strength and explore if you can implement the same strategies again.
• Trust Your Inner Resources: Once you realize that you survived other traumas before now trust in yourself to know that you have the ability to get through your present challenge.
• Learn to Keep Yourself Centered through the Unbearable Feelings of Grief: When the waves of sadness and helplessness wash over you initially feel the emotion and it’s depth but then start to breathe through the grief with slow deep breaths. This will help you stay grounded and bring you back to the present.
• Start Imagining a New Life: Even though you are experiencing immense grief start to imagine and invent in your mind’s eye a new future for yourself.
• Practice Mindfulness: While doing grounding practices such as meditation, yoga, or even walks in nature remember that your loss is cyclical like the seasons. Even when we are in the depths of winter, we know that eventually it will become more manageable with advent of summer. Learn to tolerate and pace yourself through the most severe times.

Many of us admire people like Al Gore, who found his road to the White House suddenly blocked and chose to focus on educating people about global warming, and Christopher Reeve, who left acting behind after becoming a quadriplegic and went on to become a film director and advocate for those suffering from spinal cord injuries because they were able to let go of the past and transform their lives. You too have the ability to tap into your inner courage, move forward with your life and even reinvent yourself.

Adapted from Ronald Alexander’s book “Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change”

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When we’re in a state of wanting mind, we’re never satisfied, no matter what we have. If we attain the object of our longing, we simply replace the old desire with a new one. If we achieve revenge; we feel worse than we did before. The problem is that wanting mind is rooted in the incorrect belief that something outside of ourselves is the key to lasting happiness so we look there for the solution. The reality is that no emotion or state of being, however strong, is permanent and that happiness can’t be found outside of ourselves only within. Buddhists call this phenomenon of endless wanting and dissatisfaction the “hungry ghost.”

Now I realize that one can never completely avoid the wanting mind or any other hindrance. Desire is part of being human. It causes us to strive toward bettering our lives and our world, and has led to many of the discoveries and inventions that have provided us with a higher quality of life. But there’s a danger in thinking that by ridding yourself of this quality of wanting, you’ll lose the motivation to better your life. The unhealthy side of the wanting mind is despite all that we can achieve and possess, we become convinced that we won’t be happy or contented unless we acquire even more. This unwholesome belief can lead to competitiveness and feeling resentful toward, or envious of, those who seem to have an easier life.

This leads to the unwholesome habit of comparison. Some people look at others’ successes and feel deeply envious. They may be angry that they haven’t achieved what they feel entitled to, start to diminish all that’s working for them in their lives, and obsess over what seems to be lacking.

Often, I’ve found that younger people put tremendous pressure on themselves to succeed in their careers at a very early age, not allowing themselves to venture out and explore, take risks, make mistakes, discover their talents and passions, and slowly begin formulating a plan for their personal mandala. Others often have unrealistic expectations rooted in the narratives spun by popular culture. In movies and television shows for example the difficulties of maintaining and nurturing relationships are often minimized in favor of a more engaging and unlikely story of couples who meet, fall in love immediately, have great sex as well as an unwavering long-term commitment, and rarely disagree—and if they do, they quickly resolve all their issues. The amount of effort and time that must be invested to foster a healthy relationship is often surprising to people with little experience of such relationships.

One remedy to addressing these underlying, and distorted beliefs of the wanting mind that contribute to the complexities of depression is through a mindfulness meditation practice. I had one client, in particular, who dreamed of being a successful novelist, and became deeply envious of a talented writer who’d written several best-selling novels that had defined a genre and made her famous. This client, who was only a year or two out of college, had already managed to procure a scholarship to a prestigious writing program but felt disappointed in her inability to find a publisher for her novel.

Through meditation, the conflicted young woman was able to explore her belief that she should have as much skill and success as someone who had spent many years honing her craft and building her profile among booksellers and readers. By becoming mindful she recognized that she’d been repressing unwholesome feelings of low self-worth. I helped her see that the passion she was devoting to envying this best-selling author’s success could be redirected to more productive activity if she would apply a positive antidote of satisfaction to her wanting mind, which had created a grandiose expectation completely out of proportion to a reasonable level of achievement for a writer just starting out. Only through self-love and being in the moment can one open themselves up to the type of creativity they need to improve their circumstances.

By dropping out of wanting mind and negative comparison, you can then drop into an acceptance of what’s ordinary as well as what’s extraordinary within yourself. Each of us has the potential to do something no one else has ever done before, and you open yourself to discovering just what that is when you replace wanting mind and its negative feelings and thoughts with a mind-set of satisfaction.

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Meditation, prayer, or contemplation are effective methods to break the negative cycles of thought, feelings and sensations that when left unchecked leech the mind of the more healthy and positive neurons in your brain, whose job it is to bring balance, harmony and equanimity to your immune system. To break this reclusive loop, we first need to identify the negative, unwholesome patterns. We can then interrupt them through mindfulness meditation by flooding the brain with wholesome emotions and thoughts.

Recent advances in neuro science understand that meditation supports a healthy brain and balance mind. Twenty minutes once or twice a day can turn on the production of millions of healthy new neurons in the brain, including the region responsible for infusing your immune system with positive molecular cell configuration. Permeating your brain with wholesome neurons leads to changes in your mind as well as your physical and energetic (spiritual) bodies.

To help you regain your wholesome emotions here’s a short meditation from my book “Wise Mind, Open Mind.

Recapture Wholesome Emotions

Take a comfortable seat and begin to mindfully breathe. In your mind’s eye, return to a location where you had very positive experiences. It may be a place you associate with being comfortable, enthusiastic and eager, appreciated and loved, or successful. It could be a place from your past: the park where you ate your brown-bag lunch every day when you were beginning your career, or a library where you spent countless hours as a child lost in the world of ideas and books. Any place with positive associations for you will work in this exercise.

Allow yourself to experience the wholesome emotions and sensations that arise for you. Let your observing mind label them as you bask in these energizing feelings (for example, acceptance, harmony, enthusiasm, and contentment).

Feel a sense of belonging. Be mindful and fully present with all that’s around you. Don’t allow your thoughts to take you elsewhere. Remember how you used to feel when you were there, and experience those emotions right now, in the moment.

After luxuriating in these enriching emotions, note what you’ve just experienced. Then ask yourself:

• Which of these emotions can help me right now?
• In what way can these emotions serve me?
• What have I discovered about myself? Have I discovered a forgotten ability? (For instance, had you forgotten that you could feel a particular emotion?)

You may wish to write your answers in a mindfulness journal. You might also want to repeat this exercise several times, mindfully journeying to different locations.

Wholesome resolve and awe at the mystery provides a steadiness far more satisfying than the false security of pessimism and cynicism. To sit and look at the vastness of an ocean, the lushness of a mountainside covered with fir trees, or the swaths of stars in the night sky can help you to appreciate that you can never explain or explore every nook in the mystery of existence. Immersed in curiosity, you begin the art of creative transformation.

In short, if you want to energize your immune system “Worry Less / Meditate More.”

Adapted from Ronald Alexander’s book “Wise Mind, Open Mind: Finding Purpose and Meaning in Times of Crisis, Loss, and Change”

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Procrastinators are more in love with the act of wanting and live in the tide pools alongside the stream of life. They are very good at creating excuses or stories for putting off an activity. Without realizing it they become great artists at writing, producing and staring in these stories in order to avoid life. But crafting these excuses takes an extraordinary amount of energy that can be very disempowering. Imagine for a moment that you are able to become mindfully aware in your mind’s eye and in that magical moment see how this destructive type of energy could be shifted from resistance to self-empowerment.

In my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind I relate how one of my clients was able to have this type of ‘aha’ experience. Jared, a web designer truly wanted to create a plan for attracting more lucrative jobs and clients who offered steady work, but he could never find the time to do it. During one of our sessions I asked Jared to tell me everything he had done that morning, from the moment he woke up to the moment he came into my office. After he outlined all his activities I said, “Alright now let’s spend a moment and simply breathe.” This is an easy mindfulness awareness method where one focuses on the “in breath” and then on the “out breath,” allowing us to calm the churning waters of our thoughts and emotions. After we meditated together for several minutes Jared was able to bring to the forefront of is consciousness that a lot of what he was doing wasn’t a priority and only busy making “chores.”

Upon further exploration Jared came to understand that behind his procrastination was a fear of success. He wasn’t sure if he could command top-dollar clients or manage a lot of them. He hated the idea of calling people cold or sending blind emails soliciting work. As well he was afraid he would become like his father, a successful but challenging entrepreneur and distant parent, preoccupied with his work. Through the process of mindful awareness Jared was able to make a new space in his mind’s eye to clear away the clutter and develop what I call, “mindstrength,” the ability to build mastery over your thoughts and feelings, opening your eyes to whether the products of your mind are useful tools for self-discovery or merely distractions. Over time, Jared discovered that he was quite capable of handling several clients and negotiating good deals for himself, without feeling that he had turned into a cold workaholic.

Top 7 Excuses to Procrastinate
So what are the pretexts you’re using to avoid life? Do any of them sound familiar to you?

Many times in my capacity as a psychotherapist trained in mindfulness I’ve been invited to participate in the sacred end of life experience of my friends and clients. So many of them when they realize that the hour glass of life has run out regret that they hadn’t taken a certain trip, reconciled a relationship with a loved one or taken action on pursuing a life’s passion.

To remedy procrastination you have to experience the vital life force that sharpens and focuses the mind. One way to do this is with the traditional Buddhist walking meditation in which you focus on the slow process of putting one foot in front of the other and being mindful of the shifting sensations as you propel yourself forward. Once you’re in a mindful state you can recognize if you’ve slipped into an avoidance behavior. If so, you can immediately shift out of this emotion with the simple thought, “I want to go forward into my future life as a [website designer, entrepreneur, student, or whatever it is that you want to do].”

You can look at your subconscious thoughts and fears that are holding you back, stop identifying with them, and let them float out of your awareness. Thoughts in the mindful space of awareness simply become like clouds in the sky drifting by. If they return, you can decide not to become attached to them and follow them wherever they take you. Instead, you can simply become curious and ponder their origin. Exploring your thoughts and fears can give you the insight to help you move forward with greater self-awareness, and away from the limitations you set for yourself that box you in.

It all comes down to a mindful choice and the ability to creatively source from a place of immediate passionate action. Mindful action takers live in the vibrant stream of a somatic flow state. Don’t wait until your time has run out and it’s too late for you to live your life to the fullest. Start now by writing down your actions steps for a life of passionate creative possibilities. It may seem simplistic to say that all you need to do is start your bucket list in order to stop procrastinating but this is the first step in moving through your resistance. So what are you waiting for – write away!

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By looking at these four central tenets of Buddhism we can better understand how micromanaging our circumstances can cause us to become agitated and restricted. Instead when we learn to let go of our attachments we can transform our lives in an innovative way.

The four noble truths can help us break out of the need to be in control and, instead enter into an acceptance of the present moment. Only in the present will we find the courage to cross the threshold of the unknown and relax into the changes we cannot avoid. I find it helpful to take a mindful pause throughout the day and check in with one or more of them. It’s a lovely compass to follow.

Here are the four noble truths from my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind and how they can help you let go of resistance and move forward out of your dilemma.

The first noble truth: In life, there is suffering, because of the impermanent nature of things.

Because we feel more secure when we have a sense of predictability, we develop a great capacity for denying a simple truth: that nothing stays the same. Then the unpredictability of life shows us that even if we do everything “right” and exercise every precaution, we can still face unexpected loss.

When this happens the shock can make it hard to regain your equanimity and exercise nonreactvity. Too often, rather than surrender to the inevitability of change and work creatively with it, people resort to the fear-based behavior of trying to take charge and force other people and situations to conform to their expectations. The first noble truth of Buddhism is a reminder not to slip into the avoidance behavior of denial. While it’s not wise to create gloomy thoughts about how matters might take a turn for the worse, consciously ignoring the reality that all situations transform sets you up for a great shock when that time comes.

The second noble truth: Suffering is due to attachments and expectations, to grasping and clinging.

Your inability to avoid change may make you angry, sad, and frustrated. It can be hard to let go of the false belief that the only way to achieve happiness again is to regain what’s been lost. Even when you know you can’t reverse the situation, you may agonize over this reality.

Clinging to what once was, avoiding the process of grief and acceptance, causes paralysis. Grasping for a future set of circumstances identical to the past holds you back from discovering what better roads lie ahead, outside of your sight. The desire to backtrack or reconstruct will likely result in your walking around in circles, lost in the dark woods, instead of peering around corners to find new paths.

The third noble truth: It’s possible to end suffering by giving up attachments (clinging) and expectations (grasping).

The shift in perspective that comes when we recognize that there’s no such thing as a permanent sense of happiness begins our healing from suffering. The next step is to accept that we must broaden our definition of what we need in order to be happy, giving up the habits of clinging and grasping, as well as the need to control external circumstances.

After emerging from the shock of a great loss, we’re even more despairing about the possibility of being joyful again. However, the third noble truth offers us the promise of a new way of living that’s as satisfying, if not more fulfilling, than the old. It beckons us to begin the process of transformation.

The fourth noble truth: The way to end suffering due to clinging and grasping is through balance and living in the present.

It’s important to balance a thirst for something better with an acceptance of what is, right now. Balance allows you to live in the present moment and trust that your acceptance will clear the mist of confusion and distractions, and show you the way to move forward into happiness again. Here’s the paradox of change: until you can accept what is, you cannot move into what might be.

When we cling to the past or what no longer serves us, we contract ourselves to the point where we’re unable to be nourished and invigorated by the present moment. We have to accept that what’s past has truly passed in order to open up to what the present moment offers us. In this opening we become nourished, refreshed and revitalized.

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