Slow Down
Lucy knows.
Stop what you’re doing—wherever you are—and take a minute to feel yourself breathe in and out, for six seconds, each, holding at the top and bottom of each breath for six more seconds. Better yet, if you can spare the time (you can) take ten minutes and close your eyes. After ten minutes of noticing the miracle of your breath, you will come out the other side a little different. I promise.
Eyes On The Gratitude—Not The Prize
I’m sorry to have to break it to you, and on some level you already know this, but there is no finish line to life. There is no prize waiting for you at the end, once you’ve done life the best. There is only what comes after you die, whatever you may believe.
The joy in living is found in the journey, which will be full of both ups and downs. This is why successful people aren’t necessarily happy. Life has no guarantees except for loss. Better to lay off on expectations and outcomes that you can’t control and remember to—ritualistically—appreciate what you do have. Make a list in your head before you go to sleep each night. Meditate, write in your journal, pray, do a jig. Hug someone close, or simply hold yourself by putting your hand over your heart.
Notice The Architecture And Get Curious
The unexamined life amounts to little more than a series of habits and reactions. If you take the time to look inward and acknowledge your feelings, they will tell you something about yourself and your experience, and if you give them the attention they need, they will also pass.
If you push your feelings down, they will pop up somewhere else in your life in the form of a symptom. That’s not to say that once suffering passes it won’t show up again, but the immediacy and intensity of your emotions does become more bearable if you can learn to accept yourself however you show up and process your feelings without judging them.
Witness And Breathe
When you breathe in and out richly, slowly and deeply, this has profound effect on the amygdala, your “reptile brain,” which doesn’t have any concept of logic or time, but regulates fear-related processes including anger and anxiety. Breathing in and out slowly and intentionally affects your emotional processing by acting almost like a hard reboot on a clunky old PC to your frazzled central nervous system. Slowing down tells your amygdala it’s okay to chill.
Notice the undesirable emotion, name it specifically, sit with it, and breathe. If you allow your feelings and befriend them by learning to breathe through them—since you can’t control them anyway—it will get easier. Because science.
