Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun who has written many helpful books, is a constant source of inspiration and practical wisdom.  In “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times” (see Recommended Reading list), I find myself constantly saying “yes” to what she offers.  One of the paragraphs that caught my attention follows:

“…we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.  We always have this choice.”  p 3

When I read these words, I began to think about the times we all tend to harden around self-protection and how often we probably actually want to be more open, to be able to soften into the experience that’s happening  in the present moment.  Some examples that came to mind were: 

At a party or a meeting where you might ordinarily wait for someone to approach you, what would happen if you took the first step?

When you might ordinarily be irritated by something and tighten around it because you don’t want it to be there, what would happen if you softened into its presence instead?

When someone compliments you or tells you how much they care about you, do you open to that attention, or does it make you feel self-conscious?  What would happen if you softened into it?

If someone close to you were ill or dying, would you allow yourself to be fully present to what’s happening, to soften into what is?  

And so, for this week, I invite you to enter the experiment willing to “soften into the places that scare you”, without adding to your discomfort with whatever meaning or “story” you may put on the experience.  For example, if someone close to you confronts you about something you did, or lets you know that you have hurt them in some way, can you listen without creating a story about yourself or the other person – can you just listen to their experience?  Can you listen with your heart open and receive the communication without closing down or internally running away? 

Whatever you may choose as your focus of the experiment, be sure to remember that each moment offers us a choice:  We can either harden ourselves “so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid”, or we can “let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.”  The important thing to keep in mind is that what scares us can become our teacher, can become an opening to stretching beyond where we’ve been, and can open a door to deeper self-understanding than we had before.  It can also add to our “menu of options” in terms of our capacity to respond to life’s challenges.  Expanding our menu of options enhances our psychological resilience, because we have more than one way to move through difficult experiences.