In no particular order, here are a few ideas that just might lead to a more interesting and insightful Holiday season:

1. Examine your pictures

No, really. Go through old photos, either photo albums or digital. Take a look at photos of the people you plan on spending time with. Also have a look at “oldies”, featuring those who are no longer with you… whether dead or moved on to greener pastures. Let your eyes flow over faces, and pay attention to the stories that pop up. Likely, many of the stories will be “inflated”—stories designed to create warm, fuzzy feelings. Others will be “conflated”—stories designed to confirm your worst thoughts about the person featured.

The thing to get is how easily the stories pop up, and how, if you decide to, you can focus on one and really flesh it out. But notice how inflated or conflated it is; how, the more you focus in, the more guesses and judgements pop up.

It’s just what minds do.

Now, take a breath. Let go of the stories and judgements, and have another look. This time, pretend you’re looking at strangers… as if you’re looking at someone else’s family. Don’t try to do anything; just look. This is how we begin to notice our story-making, and how “judgey” we are; we notice our unreal expectations. For example, family dinners with my wife’s family is decidedly different from my memories of my family dinners. And, of course, since different people were involved. But judging one gathering as “good” and one as “bad” would be silly, as it’s based not on reality, but on inflated or conflated memories that only exist in my head. This season, notice what projecting judgements on people and gatherings get you: nothing good.

2. Try a little tenderness

Some years ago, I met briefly with the mother of a friend of ours. She really didn’t like her husband, and especially didn’t like him around the holidays. She had all kinds of stories about how he “ruined Christmas”. My favourite: he was, as we were talking [it was October] at home, putting up the Christmas lights which, she swore, “he always puts up wrong, just to spite me and ruin Christmas!” I said, “Why don’t you go home and help him by telling him what you want him to do?” Silence, with a glare. Then: “I’”l be damned if I’ll tell him. We’ve been married for decades, and he should just know what I want!”

Well, no. Not unless you want to keep your story going.

And many of us do have much invested in how hard-done-by we are. Evidence to the contrary is ignored or demeaned. Because… poor me!

Tenderness isn’t just for meat anymore. Give the drama and “poor me” a rest. Ask for what you want, without judgement or rancour. If person “A” won’t or can’t do what you ask for,  wait for it… ask someone else! Because you’re aiming for a drama-free zone this season.

3. Develop your own holiday traditions

If your family gatherings are warm and fun, by all means enjoy them, and engage fully. At the same time, see about setting up one tradition for your principal family [with your partner/spouse, and your kids, if any.] And if you don’t much like the ‘Home for the Holidays’ tradition, shorten it, eliminate it, book a trip…in short, change it.

In my family of origin, by the time I was a teen I was expected to help out with family dinners. In my wife’s family, not so much. My 30-something niece and nephew and their significant others mostly just sit there. But see? There it is. Everyone gathered, repeating the past, and me, wanting to grouse about it.

Another option, which will happen eventually anyway, is for the next generation to start planning their own events. You know, their own dinner parties, featuring them…

Stop looking backward and trying to recapture or repeat something. Instead, create ceremonies, activities and timetables that are meaningful for you.

Your task is to create a memorable life, for you. This requires actually doing something different.

4. Take it easy, baby

How about seeing the holidays as a time for reflection and renewal? A decade ago, there was a Zen Centre in Buffalo that my wife and I attended as often as we could. They had a Buddha’s Birthday meditation session in December. We went, and sat for some hours. Best gift I ever gave myself. Quiet time, reflective time. A chance to wind down, as opposed to the endless tearing about that the holidays seem to engender.

Not sure how the whole holiday thing turned into an endurance contest, but hey… you can call a halt by calling a halt. Take a break, take a holiday, take some time for yourself. If it doesn’t all get done, who cares?

5. Deepen, Deepen

This season is either a thing to be endured, with a fake happy face, or a time of reflection, self-knowing, intimacy and sharing—a deepening. You pick. You choose. All moments are bare of meaning. We add meaning. Or, we go brain dead and numb and run [literally and figuratively] ourselves ragged as we attempt to avoid the pain we create.

Instead, capture this season and make it your own. Provide meaning to everything you do, real meaning—meaning significant to you. Use this time to deepen your commitment to your spiritual path, and to find more groundedness. This opportunity exists in each moment, and it’s up to you to use it. In the end, your path is yours, and you make of it what you will. Strive for more depth, more understanding. Bring yourself back to bare presence. Invigorate and enliven yourself.

Celebrate the gift of living and being!

The post Going home for the holidays does not have to be agony appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Wabi means humble and simple, a life lived in nature and solitude. Sabi refers to the ‘normal-ness’ of the imperfect: things oddly shaped, lines on faces, rust on metal, moss on paths. Wabi sabi reminds us of the transient nature of living—and that the nature of—well, nature—is imperfection.

Leonard Koren, author of Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, wrote: “Wabi sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete, the antithesis of our classical western notion of beauty as something perfect, enduring, and monumental.”

Picture a Zen monk, with full attention, raking a lovely garden, and leaving a leaf behind

The leaf left behind is a mark of wabi sabi, and something Nature is going to do anyway, as Nature marks everything with a touch of imperfection. It is only the mad chatter of our minds that tells us that the garden, that our children, that our career or life path, should be perfect. Nothing is perfect.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t try to make things better. The issue is that what is better for me is not necessarily what is better for you. Wabi sabi reminds us to start from acceptance of ‘what is’.

The nature of our universe is a movement toward entropy; things are—and are also winding down at the same time.

Our minds are slowing, our bodies are rusting and wrinkling, and our world groans under the weight of all of us.

One thing I enjoy is photography, and I mostly take photos of people. I notice I am drawn to younger people, yet, once in a while, I’ll photograph people my age. As I begin the cropping and editing, I see the life of the older person in the set of their eyes and in the lines and creases. There is something imperfectly perfect there. What about face lifts, pumped up lips, botoxed foreheads. There’s something artificial about trying to smoothen away the years. But it fits with the urban ideal of youth equalling beauty, where women past a certain age are cast as mothers and grandmothers, not as sex objects. So out come the scalpels, and no one is fooled.

We get caught up in this game because it’s being played all around us.

And that’s not likely to change. It’s why most religions have a ‘monk’ tradition. One description of wabi is that of the reclusive monk, living in a cave, one threadbare outfit to his name. Running from the game seems sensible.

But sabi is there to remind us that really, there is nothing to fear from ageing, from imperfection. And it is as the two terms come together, we see an inclusive path.

In Zen, the chief recognition is that life, with its impermanence and imperfection, is real, [or as it is] and that our misery [suffering, the sense of ‘unsatisfactoriness’, dukkha] comes not from the world itself, but from our minds. We cling to the notion that life should be perfect, and then spend most of our lives in our heads, doing comparisons.

We make our lists [good /bad] and compare ‘what is’ with what we think ought to be. Yet, the ‘way it is’ never really changes, and the more we fight this, the more we disappoint ourselves, anger ourselves, depress ourselves.

The lesson of Zen is that, in the instant when we stop trying for perfection, we free ourselves from the dictates of our mind. Right then, right there, we find the space to stop thinking and actually do something. The monk rakes the garden. Without ‘perfection’ as her goal, she can show reality’s imperfect perfection in miniature.

The Zen life is a moment-by-moment dance between the creative soul and reality of what is.

Back when I was counselling, one of the biggest lessons I conveyed is that the actual situation my client faced was what he or she needed to work on. Not their fantasies about how things ought to be, but the reality in front of them.

Again and again we would look at reality versus faculty assumptions. The assumption that the world should bend to my will because I’m making myself sad is a big problem. My goal was not to get my clients to give in and accept the unacceptable. It was to get them out of their heads and into dealing with the actual situation.

Playing with imperfection

One of my best friends was a vice-president of a Canadian corporation. His boss was a not-so-nice guy. My buddy would go in and ask for something he needed for his department. The boss would yell, swear, scream, and order him out of the office.

He came to me to talk about how unfair it was. People shouldn’t act like that. So on and so forth.

I said two things: you can always quit, and how many times will he say “no?”

Nothing is perfect. His boss was ‘as he was’, so rather than complaining, my friend could walk away, or work with the boss he had, warts and all.

We devised a plan.

My friend went in with a list. He asked for item one. Got yelled at. Instead of leaving, he asked for item two. More and louder yelling. He asked for item three. Silence. Then, “Okay. I guess you’re going to keep asking… go ahead with that.”

He reported back to me. I said, “There! Now you know his number is three! Ask for two things you don’t want, and the thing you do want, ask third.”

This worked for his entire time with the company.

Now, some may think this was manipulative. I disagree. My friend got nothing from his boss by playing the “It isn’t fair!” card. As soon as he accepted the situation in front of him—the simple truth of the inherent imperfection of the situation—another way of acting appeared.

One that benefitted the company, my friend, and his boss.

Wabi sabi is dancing gently with reality, all the time, escaping your head as you have a gentle interaction with ‘what is.’ Imperfection, with wrinkles, age spots, and a slower gait, is quite lovely—just have a look, smile, and act.

The post Wabi Sabi: The beauty in brokenness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Susie and Charlie have brains that are wired differently. The introvert prefers his internal theatre, and judicious doses of external stimulus, carefully chosen. Hence, he has fewer friends, prefers smaller crowds, and tends to gravitate to the periphery of a party.

The extrovert finds little stimulation internally, and craves much external variety and excitement. They are hence gregarious, prefer larger crowds, and tend to be in the centre of the action.

Both states are personal preferences, and have to do with levels of brain stimulation.

• The cortex of an introvert is naturally highly stimulated. So, excessive external stimulation may lead to overload.
• The extrovert, on the other hand, is naturally less cortically stimulated, and so seeks external stimulation to add to what is missing.

There is a certain balance in the behaviour and desires of both extroverts and introverts. They are both seeking the same thing—an acceptable, balanced level of cortical stimulation. Nothing is broken, nothing to fix. How Zen!

The problem comes when we judge a person’s preference to be ‘wrong’ or in need of fixing just because they act differently from us. That’s one of the reasons why people sometimes end up dating their opposites and end up clashing.

Charlie, the introvert, is sitting around one day, deeply immersed in a project. He has a thought, “Hmm. My friend Susie, the extrovert, says I spend too much time by myself, and there are moments when I wish I was more social.” If Charlie was wise, he’d find a therapist and have a look at how to open himself to more experiences. But Charlie isn’t wise. So, he calls up Susie and asks her out on a date. She agrees, because:

1. She thinks it might be good to slow down a bit, while…
2. She fixes Charlie.

The model both are using: something’s wrong with the other person and must be fixed. As a result, both will collide repeatedly, over their different preferences. Don’t get me wrong, Susie and Charlie can be friends. But it’s tricky. The only way it can work is if they monitor their cortical stimulation [which will be somewhere between not enough and overload] and find their own point of comfort. When the introvert is getting too much or the extrovert too little, it’s time to call it a night.

Introversion is misunderstood [except by other introverts]

• Introversion is often mistaken for shyness. But it’s not the same. Shyness is a label for the anxiety felt when thinking about interacting with others. Introverts are not anxious. They simply prefer their own company. Many introverts are excellent public speakers, and willingly engage with the public as teachers or artists. Give them something that interests them, and they’ll gladly explain it, elegantly.
• Introversion is not standoffishness. People who tend towards introversion are not bored with others, nor do they think they are ‘better’ than others. Biologically, the introvert’s cortex is easily stimulated. To avoid overload, introverts limit their connection to the external environment to remain in balance.
• Introverts are interested primarily in their inner experience. While many introverts choose the helping professions such as that of a counsellor, it’s not because they love listening to others go on and on. I’m rather high on the introversion scale. I tell my clients that I do what I do in order to learn about myself. I’m interested in what I’ll come up with in response to my client’s issues. Here’s the thing: the introvert is not reacting to a dread—introverts do not feel a sense of social discomfort. The introvert is acting according to personal [and cortical] preference.

Introversion is not a flaw [neither is extroversion]. It’s a preference. All you need to remember is that introverts are already well stimulated—so you relate the best with them by providing a minimum of drama. And the extrovert? They need more, more, more! Take ‘em dancing! When it comes to preferences, there’s no right, no wrong. Just different. And as the French say… vive la difference [long live the difference]

This was first published in the May 2012 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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