Lightness vs. Seriousness – Part II

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I’d like to acknowledge ICA for their help and inspiration with this topic

Have you ever heard of the saying “carrying the weight of the world around on your shoulders?” Imagine this image for a moment, a person with this huge weight on their back, leaning forward as they are weighed down. Maybe every part of their body is weighed down – legs, arms, neck, back, etc.

Can you image what it must be like to have to walk?

Now imagine trying to run free, but this weight is still attached. Imagine if you carried this weight around with you for a day, or a week or a year or several years and you kept adding to it. Overtime it would nearly be impossible to move. You would have to think through everything that you do to make sure you can physically make it. Every minute of everyday would be spent planning out how to get around with this weight on your back.

You would have to think about getting into a car, how far you have to walk, are there any stairs, how will you be able to have a conversation as you can‘t make eye contact as you are so weighed down.

Now let’s just change this image a little. The weight is still there but you can‘t see it. It‘s invisible to the eye but it is still there. You can still feel it. And it still impacts you in the same way. The difference is that you look completely normal, you may be a little stooped but in general you are looking pretty okay.

So you look okay but all your actions and thoughts are still calculated. You can feel that weight and with each decision you work out what you need to do to include it. When people see you they don‘t realize you are carrying a weight. It is only when they notice that everything you do is being calculated and that you are cautiously working things out – things they don‘t understand. They also notice that as a result of you working things out, you don‘t hear much of what they say. You are either working out the future, your next step or thinking about how you got through the past. You also tire easy and you wear a worried look on your face.

Now let’s shoot over to another image. Imagine opening a suitcase. It is old and dusty and slowly as you open it a range of images flash before you. You see your family, your past friends, you see past incidences, you see hard times, you see things that happened to you that hurt you, you see all these images and everything is black. All the images feel dark and painful and scary. You are filled with fear in seeing them all. Your body stiffens; you can feel a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. You can feel the pain of all those memories. At this moment in time you can either shut the suitcase and leave all those images inside, gone forever, you can deny having ever seen them, or you can take each image out and carry it around with you.

If you chose to shut the case, you will stop and think for a moment about how you feel and then the sadness will pass as you realize that you have left it all behind. You know it doesn‘t belong to you, it is the past. You see this as a great moment to celebrate where you are now and that you can leave this all behind. The lightness of this release is felt though out your whole body. You stand upright and take a huge breathe.

You feel alive. You feel like you could fly, you feel like you could do anything. You feel like you can dream big and make it happen. You begin to dream and then to plan and slowly your goals come before you. Your energy is so high, you are excited and off and running at top speed. As you run along, people look at you because you are so happy. Slowly they run after you because they can see you have something they want – your happiness and energy is spreading. You are now running along with hundreds of people following you – they see your radiance and your purpose. They try so hard to catch up but you are so fast, nothing stands in your way. This is the world of lightness.

But what if you had chosen the other option, if you had decided to take each of the images with you and to carry them around with you all day to remind you of your past painful moments in life, to remind you of your fears? Each day you are weighed down by these images that you carry that only you can see. Each time you look out into the world you look at the world through these images. You carry the pain everywhere you go. Your whole body feels the pain. Each decision you make is made through the fear of these past images.

You begin to try to plan your life around these fears but all that happens is that you build greater fears. You are not happy, you don‘t laugh, you are alone. No one understands your plight. Your life is a struggle; you are a victim to the past, to the images you carry around with you. They hold onto you so strongly like a vine around your limbs, mind and emotions. Every thought, feeling or movement you have reinforces the images. The images are now your world. Your world is now fearful, black, painful and a struggle. This is the world of significance.

If you chose to deny having ever seen the images then you are living in a world of deception, where the only person you are deceiving is you. You will have exactly the same outcome as the person who carries the images around with them but you will believe that the outcome is someone else‘s doing because you live in denial. Over time, living in denial leads to bitterness and fear and anger. This is the world of seriousness.

Certainly you could now be saying that this is not you. These examples are taken to the extreme for us to see the results. The results are still the same no matter how extreme. In ourselves it is difficult to see the results of what we carry. We can however see the results of what others carry. What you see others carry is what you carry. You identify with it.

Not only do you identify with it but you also attract people who carry around experiences that are tagged in the same way as you. You attract these people because they may comfort you, as you hold the same view of the world. However being with other people who hold this same view only reinforces this view for you. It will never shift you away from this view. Your fearful view of the world will only grow. This world ensures greater seriousness.

Consider This:

What is Seriousness? Here is a Buddhist tale that illustrates what happens when we become overly serious.

A young monk was travelling with an older monk. Along the way, they came to a stream where a beautiful woman was standing, afraid to cross. Without hesitating, the old monk picked her up, carried her over the water and placed her down safely on the other side. The young monk was shocked but said nothing. They walked on until they reached their destination. Finally, the young monk, who was so disturbed by what he had seen, could hold back no longer.

“Why,” he asked angrily, “did you carry that young woman across the stream. We monks have rules – it is forbidden to touch women!”

The elder monk smiled at him and said “I put her a long time ago, but you’re still carrying her around.”

He was carrying his Seriousness – a trunk load of fixed ideas about what is right and wrong, true and false. The young monk‘s seriousness blinded him to the reality of the moment. A woman needed help, and the older monk responded to his own humanity. His Lightness in the moment freed him from judgment and allowed him to act spontaneously.

We become serious when we bring our baggage to a situation. We carry it around, weighing ourselves down with beliefs, notions and learned behaviors. That ?unobserved mind? puts us on auto-pilot and its gravity keeps us from soaring to a higher vantage point. Seriousness shows up most often when we are attached to our outcomes. Ask yourself, when engaging in any exchange, ?What am I attached to here? What baggage am I bringing to this conversation that is weighing me down?

Coming to the Present Without the Baggage is Lightness

To be light is to feel – light like a feather, weightless, free, floating. Imagine a feather floating through the air. It turns and spins and moves throughout the air with such ease and grace. It flickers here and there and it moves in whatever direction the wind blows it. The feather, when in this mode, looks beautiful as it plays with the wind, spinning, rolling and gently floating around. This image we often refer to as a beautiful image, watching the wind and the feather working together, playing in the moment.

The feather is not alone. It is moving with the wind.

Let’s relate this image to how we appear in our everyday life. We all have to work with someone or something at different stages of our day, just like the feather with the wind. However there are times when we become so intense about the direction we are going in or need to go in that we lose the ability to be able to float freely around. We begin to try to control the wind, to determine which way we want it to blow. We all know this is not possible but we still try to achieve it.

Instead put on your dancing shoes, lighten your step and move to the moment

So how do we bring about lightness in our life? The first step is to want to. To do this requires observing where you are serious in your life. Awareness is the first step to change. Identifying that you see the world in a negative way is an important moment.

You can make a choice as to whether you see the world in a positive or negative way. You do not need wealth, or anything else to do this. It is within you to make this shift – not outside of you. We have all observed people who have had the most horrendous things occur to them and yet they are still positive. This is a state of mind – this is a state of being.

Paul Wilson in his book “Calm for Life” believes that being calm is the key to lightness. Wilson describes an activity you can do to achieve calm. He calls this “The Pleasure of Calm.” Here are some steps he takes to achieve the pleasure of calm.

Run a Warm Bath – OK this might resonate more with the ladies, but what the heck guy, give it shot 🙂

• Add some bath salts or add five drops of lavender and rose oils. Camomile is a wonderful calming oil.
• Light a candle, turn off the electric lights.
• Take a warm face towel and drape it over your face as you sink down into the tub.
• Tell yourself you have all the time in the world. Then listen to the sound of your relaxed breathing as you begin to forget there‘s another world outside.

Being still is very important in achieving inner calm.

Letting Go

There will be times in your day or week when you may feel like you are moving towards seriousness. It is usually more likely to happen when you are tired or feeling a lack of self love and self respect. Take a moment before you move too deeply into seriousness and can‘t see your way out. Stop and ask yourself these questions. They will help you to ascertain what you are needing right now to shift out of this state of mind.

• Where in my life do I not feel satisfied right now?
• What do I need more of in my life?
• What do I need less of?
• What do I want right now?
• Why or what is causing me to feel resentful?

Contemplation

Think of a situation in which you were caught up in seriousness’s. What ?baggage? did you carry into it that may have weighed you down?

Consider a time when you were able to ?lighten a heavy situation.

Application

In my everyday life, and as coaches, I can empower myself and help my clients to make positive shifts by bringing the perspective of Lightness to what we do. Lightness isn‘t about thoughtless optimism; it‘s no good trying to see that – silver lining in every cloud – when your underlying belief is that it‘s going to rain anyway. Lightness is much more about a mental strength attitude that honors the Game of Life in all of its complexities.

We’re present in the moment, free of judgments that can bind us to old ways of thinking. Treating things with Lightness, even though some things are extremely important to us, can free us up to enjoy more of life and be more effective when facing our everyday challenges.

As a coach, I want to help my clients identify where Seriousness is closing them off from the present moment, where they have choices. Keeping the option of Lightness is like holding a skeleton key that will open any door that is locked. If I can help them see the baggage? they are bringing to an encounter, then they can decide to leave it at the doorway and experience what comes up in the moment with a free mind. If however, I bring my baggage through the door, the only thing that comes up is the baggage.

Creating a Mindful Space

When I notice Seriousness in my clients, I remember that when they can lighten their perspective, when they are above it all, they’ll be able to step back, take some distance and gain greater clarity on the situation.

In her book, “Mindfulness: Choice and Control in Everyday Life”, Ellen J. Langer wrote:

“When we are behaving mindlessly, that is to say, relying on categories drawn in the past, endpoints to development seem fixed. We are then like projectiles moving along a predetermined course. When we are mindful, we see all sorts of choices and generate new endpoints.”

I always consider ways of holding a mindful? space for my clients. To help them gain some distance from the situation by asking questions such as:

• What do you need right now?
• Stop and take a deep breathe. What are you feeling right now?

Sometimes it helps me to take a big step back when I sense that a client is overwhelmed by a difficult situation by asking, “What is the worst thing that could happen here?” It can help to seriously ponder all worst-case scenarios to arrive at a lighter viewpoint. Once we know the worst, we can flow with the situation and create something different, knowing that if the worst does happen, we can handle it.

If you’d like assistance in this or others personal performance challenges consider Coaching for Success.

OK…let me know your thoughts on this subject in the comments below.