Years ago, I read a business book on networking by Harvey Mackay entitled “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty.” It was about making contacts and relationships before you need them so that when you’re actually in the process of building a business, creating a new product, launching a global cause-related initiative, you have the support and resources already in place.
Recently, I experienced an entirely different understanding of “digging my well before I’m thirsty” as it relates to prayer and meditation and it came to me in the least likely place of being encased in the tunnel of an MRI machine.
I’d been having chronic pain and limited mobility in my shoulder. Although not debilitating, it was prohibiting me from fully participating and enjoying simple things like downward facing dog pose in yoga. Part of me wanted to just “suck it up” and push through it, but the responsible part of me wanted to make sure I hadn’t torn a tendon or ligament and damage it further by continuing to ignore it, so I went for the MRI.
I’ve never been claustrophobic, so I wasn’t overly concerned with being in the tunnel, but I was not prepared for the loud and strange noises once they shoved me inside that tube!! Thankfully, I have a daily meditation practice and immediately and intuitively knew how to use the sounds to take me deeper within and find that quiet and sacred place where nothing disturbs my serenity. It was over before I knew it and came out of there feeling like I just took a nap or had a massage!
So why was my MRI experience so vastly different from others who have been known to flip out inside that tunnel? Everyone has different reactions to the stressors in our lives. Stress is our bodies’ reaction to any external stimulation or change – and God knows, there is certainly more than enough external stimuli in our world to react to.
The Cost of Stress
It is our reaction to that stimuli that puts us into overwhelm, that keeps us stuck in the past with regret or jettisons us into the future with worry. Stress increases fight or flight reactions in our body that leads to ulcers, high blood pressure, skin and autoimmune disorders. Left unattended, it not only causes us physical damage, it affects our capacity to be in relationships, thrive in our careers and find deep contentment in life.
A Different Approach: Silencing the Itty Bitty Shitty Committee!
Just the term “stress management” infers that it is possible to manage and manipulate the external environment to help us feel less stress – which is not only an illusion but is totally “bass ackwards!” If you really want to manage stress, you need to go to the source – to the very cause of every effect you see – to your own thought system.
However, trying to think your way out of stress is like the proverbial blind leading the blind – you cannot heal your own mind with the same sick mind! So the best approach is to learn how to quiet your mind altogether and allow some space between you and your thoughts. We must learn how separate who we are from our thoughts and stop identifying ourselves by our thoughts.
Referred to by some as “the monkey mind” or by others as the hamster on the wheel that never stops spinning, or what I like to call the “itty bitty shitty committee,” we need to first become aware that it is there, and practice simply observing it and then detaching from those incessant mental gymnastics that exhaust us and keep us stuck in the loop of chronic stress and anxiety.
Mindfulness and Meditation – The Keys to Inner Peace
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a world renowned author, lecturer and founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, teaches mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness. He describes meditation as if you are weaving a parachute. On day one you may have only woven a few strands together. But over time, it is the cumulative effect of consistent practice that eventually creates this parachute that will carry you safely through the challenges of life when you figuratively get kicked out of the plane and are free falling.
We all know what stress is, yet mindfulness is our innate capacity to be with whatever is happening in this moment. Mindfulness teaches us how to stay with our experience rather than run from it or suppress it. We learn by remaining present with our breath how to live life in the now and tap into the wisdom and natural healing capacity of our bodies.
Below is a guided meditation that I created to get you started in learning how to be in the miraculous power of the present. Do yourself a favor and start now! Don’t wait until life kicks you out of the plane to realize that you haven’t taken the time to weave your own parachute!! Dig your well BEFORE you’re thirsty and start TODAY!
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