Self-differentiation requires the ability to self-regulate, then act in accordance with your goals and values. Here’s how mindfulness can help you do this.
Show Notes:
5 Rituals To Keep You Happy All The Time by Eric Barker
Why I Invited Myself to a Wedding by Jack Shitama
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Welcome to Episode 239 of The Nonanxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. I'm back with an all new episode after doing my mom's 100 birthday victory tour. If you want to know more about that, I had a blog post this past week, and I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Today's episode comes from an article from Eric Barker, five rituals to keep you happy all the time. If you're familiar with Barker's work, he likes to take work from social science and apply it to better living. His articles often spark a family systems take in my own mind, especially on how to live a self differentiated life and how to be a non anxious presence, especially as a leader. If you followed my work for any amount of time, you know that I emphasize the importance of mindfulness in being a non anxious presence.
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And Barker's article is based on acceptance commitment therapy, which has been shown to be effective even with people who have treatment resistant depression. I'm going to share the five things that he lists as helping you to be happy, but I think of them in terms of how they help you to be a non anxious presence. I'm also going to reward them slightly and re order them slightly in a way that I think is more helpful. The first thing that I think is the most important that will help you to be mindful and help you to be a non anxious presence is self awareness. Being aware of what's going on in yourself and knowing how to identify the feelings that you're having is important if you are going to be able to regulate your own reactivity. What I call self awareness, Barker calls openness, and he notes that mindfulness actually downregulates amygdala signals and reinforces self compassion. You may be aware of the so called amygdala hijack, where when we are feeling threatened, our primitive brain, which includes the amygdala, jumps into action to protect us from that threat so that we respond automatically. It actually bypasses our thinking brain, our neocortex, and so we react automatically.
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The problem with the amygdala hijack is, many times what we perceive as threats are things that have been developed because of traumatic experiences in childhood where we are responding as a coping mechanism, where we are responding to protect ourselves emotionally. In many, if not most cases, these automatic responses are not helpful because they are reactive. Either we get defensive, or we get aggressive, or we get argumentative, which is considered reactivity, or we get adaptive, we give in, we just shrivel up and let the other person dominate the situation without standing up for what we believe in, and neither of those automatic reactions is helpful. Barker describes openness as breaking free of the autopilot mode that keeps us locked into negative thought patterns. And to have any chance of having this awareness of self, let alone the situation around us, we need to be able to regulate our own responses. We need to be able to self regulate. So even before we get to the self awareness stage, the first step really is to pause to stop and make sure that we don't respond immediately. I was visiting a church this morning that was going through a difficult situation, and I was immediately accosted when I came into the sanctuary by a man who started calling the leadership of our denomination, money grabbing, and acting non Christian.
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He was done with his church and he was going to leave. The only thing I could respond with was, Well, that's your choice. But I knew I was thinking in my mind, This is not about me. This is about the denomination. What is going on inside of me is my need to just remain calm, to try to present myself as a non anxious presence. The second way that mindfulness can help you to be a non anxious presence is it helps you to be intentional. He notes that two key negative mental habits are suppression and avoidance. When I hear these terms, I think adaptivity. I think the avoidance of conflict, the unwillingness to take a stand for oneself and the desire to just escape, to get away. Being intentional is allowing yourself to know what's going on, that self awareness thing, to get a sense of the situation and to think about how you want to respond. What is the response that's going to be consistent with being a non anxious presence? In the case of the situation I just mentioned, I wanted to give responsibility for that man's choice back to him. I didn't want to take on the responsibility.
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If he's done with the church, that's okay with me. The third way that mindfulness helps you to be a non anxious presence is through acceptance. Mindfulness teaches to accept the present without judgment. I love this part of mindfulness. When you are practicing mindfulness, you are not blaming or regretting the past. You're not longing for a time that will never be again, nor are you looking forward to the future either with fear or anxiety or with a dreaming, wishful thinking. Instead, you are locked in in the moment. You are saying to yourself, What is going on in the situation? What is going on in me? If I'm having negative feelings, that's okay. I can't help what I'm feeling. I'm just going to accept that this is what I'm feeling, but then say, What can I do differently? Barker notes that acceptance is not giving in. He writes, acceptance is when someone crazy is ranting at you and you just nod your head. You acknowledge that they are speaking, but you don't have to agree. And that is how we handle the sad, angry, or scared emotions as someone crazy trying to make us crazy. We don't have to give in, but we do accept that they are here for the time being.
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The first part of Barker's statement is exactly what I was encountering today. The other person ranting on me and me having to accept the fact that I was the object of his anger, even though he didn't even know me. But Barker rightfully notes that sometimes we make judgments about ourselves. Sometimes we judge ourselves and our feelings rather than just accepting them and then trying to figure out how we want to respond. Edwin Friedmann often said that he has a bias towards encouraging challenge rather than comfort. It is through acceptance that we accept the challenge at hand. It's through acceptance that we acknowledge that this is a challenging situation, but I'm going to lean into it in a way that reflects who I am and what I'm about and try to make the best decisions and try to respond in the most helpful ways possible. Barker notes that this acceptance actually builds resilience. If you are trying to grow as a non anxious leader, being resilient is a major part of that, and learning to accept the present without judgment will help you to do that. The fourth way that mindfulness can help you to be a non anxious presence is to help you detach from your negative feelings.
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It's a reminder that we aren't our feelings and most times we can't help how we feel. If self awareness, intentionality and acceptance enable us to diffuse the power of our feelings, then detachment enables us to let go of those feelings. One technique that Barker mentions is to actually give your feelings a nickname. For example, if you are feeling sad, you can talk to that feeling and call it saddy. Barker notes that by giving it a name, if it has a name, then it's not you. It's just a feeling that you're experiencing. This also reminds me of the concept of third person self talk, which is to actually talk to yourself in the third person. This is another form of detachment that enables you to be more objective in a situation. In the same example, I might say, Jack is feeling sad. According to psychology today, a wide range of studies have shown that this self talk, this third person self talk, can help you improve your emotional regulation and your self control by facilitating self distancing or as marker would say, detachment. My own experience too is that when I am able to detach from my own feelings, I'm also better able to detach from the feelings of the other.
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When another person is ranting at me, I'm better able to not take it personally and say, Why is he doing this to me? But rather ask the question, What is going on in him? More often than not, this leads me to the conclusion that something else is going on in the other person that has less to do with me than it does with them, and it actually gives me a sense of compassion for them. I found that when I have compassion for another, I am less reactive and it's much easier to be a non anxious presence. Finally, the fifth way that mindfulness helps you to be a non anxious presence is that it enables you to act on your values. We know that self differentiation is the ability to claim, to own your own goals and values and to act on them in healthy ways in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure, in the midst of others' anxiety, in the midst of others trying to define you even as you're trying to define yourself in a healthy way. If detachment helps you to get away from the negative, then acting on your values helps you to take a positive step that represents integrity in the moment of choice.
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Whether you are leading in your family, congregation, or organization, it is this ability to act in line with what you believe, to act in line with your goals and values that is most essential to leadership, and the ability to do it in a healthy way as a non anxious presence, to be able to state what you believe while giving others the freedom to disagree and while remaining emotionally connected to the most anxious, resistant, and reactive. You can strengthen this ability through mindfulness, through doing mindfulness practices that are available on apps. You can find practices on the internet. I like to just practice mindfulness when I'm running or driving and just try to observe and remain in the present. However you do it, strengthening your mindfulness muscles will better enable you to be a non anxious leader. That's it for Episode 239. As I mentioned, you can find a link link to my most recent blog post in the show notes where I explain why I invited myself to a family wedding. You can also connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and subscribe to my Two For Tuesday email where I make two recommendations on things that I have felt helpful in becoming a non anxious leader.
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You can always email me at jack@christian-leaders.com if you have a question about how to grow as a non anxious presence or you have an idea for this podcast. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.
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