I recently saw the movie, “What the Bleep Do We Know?”, which is a conversation about quantum physics, life, and spirituality.  One of the points made in the movie is that “neurons that fire together wire together,” which is a statement that those of us in the trauma field hear all the time.  What is means it that what we do habitually quickly becomes automatic.  The good news is that this helps us learn how to be in the world without having to think about it.  The bad news is that when uncomfortable ways of being get wired together, we don’t always feel in the driver’s seat when we get triggered by someone or something. 

The movie also pointed out that we become addicted to particular feelings and responses and, then, feel compelled to continue to create them in our lives.  We all know this one – if you’re accustomed to getting angry at the smallest thing, it becomes easier and easier to get angry at even smaller things.  Since neurons that fire together wire together, any feeling we experience habitually becomes its own kind of addiction.  We return to it over and over again, and often need more of it to truly feel it.  One of the interesting pieces of information in the movie is that our neuron receptors become so filled up with these addictive emotions that they can’t take in the amount of nourishment they ordinarily would.   All this adds up to the importance of creating a practice that allows us to promote nourishing states of mind and being. 

One of the practices I’ve had for many years now is to stop myself from judging or mentally criticizing myself or other people.  It’s a habit I had when I was younger – learned in a number of ways – and one I decided to change quite a few years ago.  I decided I wouldn’t indulge in judgmental thinking and, whenever I caught myself doing so, I would replace judgmental thoughts with constructive ones.  What the movie reinforced is that this isn’t only good for the people I encounter, it’s also tremendously healthy for me. 

As an example, as I write this experiment sitting in the Starbuck’s section of a Barnes and Noble bookstore, to my right is a woman speaking loudly on a cell phone and to my left is a young man with loud music coming from his earphones.  When I caught myself beginning to think, “They shouldn’t be making so much noise,” I shifted to different thoughts.  About the woman, I told myself, “She’s actually having a friendly conversation with someone she cares about.”  With the young man, I thought, “He’s enjoying his music a lot and seems to be deeply engrossed in a book he finds interesting.”  Shifting into these thoughts immediately moved me away from any reaction to the people on either side of me, and allowed me to remember my connection to them as a human being who, first, has people I love with whom I enjoy talking and, secondly, can thoroughly enjoy becoming immersed in a good book.

This kind of shift offers me two gifts.  First, I become more relaxed, more comfortable, more able to drop back into the ease of flow and to have an open heart.  Secondly, I continue the practice of breaking the habit of judging.  Over the years, as I’ve shifted away from judging, I’ve become increasingly relaxed and free of the tension that comes with evaluating or criticizing others.  While I no longer tend to go deeply into this kind of thinking, I do catch random thoughts occasionally arising from the back of my mind.  The payoff for me is that they rarely captivate me, moving on moving through, as I note and counter them.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to notice random thoughts that may represent judgment, criticism, or irritation with someone.  As soon as you catch the thought, notice what it’s like to say “Big surprise!  There’s that habit again.”  Then, drop the thought and find something positive about the person as you notice how it feels to shift in this way.