As I walked across Central Park on my way to office one morning this week, I had an experience that still brings a chuckle as I think about it. I was walking along, enjoying the trees as I usually do, and a young woman walked toward me. She wasn’t on the phone, and didn’t seem to be listening to any kind of device – just walking along the same as I, but in the opposite direction. She was smiling and happened to look my way. As she did, she burst out laughing – a huge belly laugh that took her over and she couldn’t stop. As we passed, she continued to laugh out loud, and I began to laugh, as well.

As she went on by, an old part of my brain wondered, fleetingly, if she had been laughing at me for some reason I didn’t know. Was there something wrong with my clothing? Was my hair strange looking? The good news was that these thoughts were like whispers and moved through my awareness pretty quickly. What stayed with me was the energy and delight of her laughter, and how it touched into my own. I really enjoyed that laugh and continued to chuckle for a good bit of the way to my office. Her face and the sound of her laughter were like sunshine, and it didn’t really matter what had tickled her funny bone.

This all got me to thinking about the power of the stories we tell ourselves, and how they affect our internal experience of who we are and the quality of the world around us. If the stories are good, that tends to support us. If they’re bad, our mood or self-image are likely to take a dip. The good news is that we can learn not to get caught in our own stories at all but, instead, to recognize that we’re making something up and then let it go.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to notice the stories you tell yourself and whether they enhance your experience or diminish it. It can be hard to recognize when we’re making up what we think is going on around us, but it’s pretty likely that if we’re attributing motives, thoughts, or feelings to someone else, we’re in the realm of story-telling. In some psychotherapy approaches, this is called “mind-reading”, and it leads to all kinds of difficulties, not the least of which how bad it makes the person feel who’s doing the mind-reading.

Even if you think you’re right about what someone is thinking about you or something you care about, I invite you to play with what you experience if you let go of the story and tell yourself that you really don’t know for sure. Then, just hang out with the present moment and notice what shifts. The key intention here isn’t to get to the “truth” of whatever is going on. Rather, it’s to have an opportunity to explore the tendency we all have to make up stories about our world and other people based on the maps we carry around from a lifetime of experience. Sometimes our stories are right; sometimes they aren’t. That’s not the point. The emphasis here is to notice how quickly you fall into interpreting what others mean and the impact this process has on you, as well as developing a greater capacity to let go of stories that reinforce old patterns of hurt and distress.

As always, play with this as a support for living more consciously. There’s no right or wrong here- just an opportunity to discover how story-making and mind-reading add to discomfort and distress, and how being free of these habits allow you to engage the present moment even more fully.

275th Week: Cultivating Patience
I’ve been having a lot of computer trouble lately – always a good teacher for developing more mindfulness and letting go of struggle. Not being particularly computer savvy, I have learned over the years that the computer is always right. In any given moment of a computer glitch, it is I who haven’t yet discovered the right way to invite the computer to work as it needs to do. I’ve even had the opportunity to become soft and fluid around losing data that wasn’t backed up properly and have learned, yet again, of the importance of backing up *everything*, ‘cause I never know when the next “oops” moment may emerge.

I have also had an opportunity to practice being mindful of how I interact with tech support people over the phone. I have had to breathe through many moments of frustration – sometimes less successfully than others – and remind myself again and again that the person on the other end of the phone is doing the best they can. My patience with this is more or less elegant, depending on how late in the day is it and how long I’ve been on the phone, but practice is practice, and these are magnificent real-time opportunities to stretch into a greater capacity for patience and no struggle.

And so, the past several months have offered me a deepened capacity to cultivate patience and to experiment constantly with my experience of how things eventually work out, one way or the other. In this case, either a computer comes back to life or it doesn’t, the DSL line works correctly or – if not - it will eventually, the bricks being drilled off my office building will eventually all be replaced and relative silence will be restored. Having just completed a three-hour stint with wiping and reloading yet another computer, I got to thinking about how my relationship with patience has deepened and how I only go berserk for a few moments these days before settling into my deepened knowledge that things will ultimately work out, whatever that may mean. I just have to allow enough time and energy for the process to unfold and complete itself.

Patience and letting go of struggle are close companions, and developing skill in one automatically offers support in developing skill in the other. For this week’s experiment, I invite you to explore your relationship with both patience and struggle. In particular, notice your initial responses or reactions to the glitches that show up in your life. Then, notice how you move through these initial responses and begin to play with deepening your patience and no-struggle response. This doesn’t mean not to respond and do things that need doing. This is more about moving into inevitable processes at the pace and in the ways that will allow them to resolve themselves with the least internal wear and tear on you (and on those around you).

Also notice how it feels to monitor your internal urges to lash out or withdraw as you encounter situations that require you to be patient or to give up struggle. Especially notice what helps you to shift into a stance of greater patience. Are there things you can tell yourself that help? Are there images that support ease and greater equanimity? I find myself taking these kinds of moments and shifting into either tonglen practice, meditation, or hanging out with internal images that are healing and nourishing for me. Because I have such a busy life, I now use this internal time to practice any number of mindfulness approaches rather than mentally stewing in distress and discomfort. Lines and waiting have become real gifts to me now that I engage them in this way.

The surprise is how much choice we actually have about what we do internally, even when our choices about what’s going on externally aren’t available. As you play with your choices, be sure to engage curiosity and leave judgment at the door.