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3.1 | What have you learned from / observed in your formal meditation on continuing to practice mindfulness of the body and cultivate goodwill for the person with whom you are having difficulty?
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I’ve learned that for me, personally and professionally, sending goodwill to challenging people is the single most powerful way to access mindfulness in my interactions. I try to do so immediately prior to meetings with more challenging colleaugues.
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I learned to be more self-compassionate and trust myself when I have a difficult request to ask my manager. As a result, I had a productive conversation and realized I don’t need to overthink or over-prepare myself and trust myself more.
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This brings up all the difficult feelings to the top first which can be hard to stick with.
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While this may be unique to my experience, what I’ve noticed continuing to develop is a temporal awareness of what ‘difficulty’ is. It’s impermanence and—at times—hollowness. So many instances of what I’ve construed as difficult aren’t really all that difficult or are an overlay that I’ve placed on a situation or a relationship. I’m aware this might be a feature of only my experience and only my current experience. There is the potential for more significant difficulties down the line. But for now, that’s what I’m continuing to notice.
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Cultivating goodwill gets easier over time and I like how we have broadened it to “people who I am having difficulty” with. I have difficulty with people I love and care about all the time but that doesn’t make them “difficult” people per se. Taking that approach lets me sort of “ease” into it when practicing with people who are truly difficult, for example, like a certain former ex-president.
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It helped me tap into the truth and the stillness that got buried by a story. By language, and culture, and all the constructs that present someone from resting in loving awareness. Peace was there all along! When I can sit with self-compassion, body awareness, and goodwill, I am on a fast track to surrender and being of service to the greater good — to fully living life, and loving all people.
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I have slipped in my mindfulness of the body practice – I do notice when I do this practice I feel much more connected to my body and emotions and more grounded. The cultivating goodwill was a difficult one and I purposefully and not practicing metta meditation right now. I’ve had a difficult year (as have many of us) and was advised that protection meditations are more appropriate for my current circumstances but I have practiced metta in the past and do highly value this practice and will return to it in the future.
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I have observed that my practice is slowly deepening and the more I is becoming more available to me. Specifically. I am feeling my breath and my body more times a day as an anchor that is calling me back into a more present and balanced state. And I am becoming more familiar with the feeling of metta generated and being able to call it up more easily as a background in everyday interactions.
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Through my sustained practice I’ve noticed an increase in my ability to understand that we’re all just living life & that difficulty with a person doesn’t necessarily mean they are intentionally going out of their way to make my day or life more difficult. I have been able to open up my heart and my perspective so that when I am faced with another challenging situation with this person I am able to stop and consider how I may be interpreting the situation in a way that adds to my own suffering, my own stress. It has also helped me craft better responses to this person, taking a more tender approach than pragmatic so that I can find ways to bring us closer together than further distance us and contribute to any potential unspoken tension.
Mindfulness of the body practice has been revelatory over time. I have some experience with it prior to this course and have continued to find it to be one of the most healing approaches for me personally. As someone who struggles with generalized anxiety, I often find returning to my body, the breath and tuning into my surroundings and my physical placement within them to be so relieving and to provide me a sense of “control” in a way that is healthy and tangible and welcoming. I’ve not always liked my body but finding I can use it this way to help me get through my days has been a practice I hope to stick with for some time.
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Yes, this question touches on the crux of the matter in my personal life. First, to understand the reality of the conditional, which is not a personal perspective. Then to practice empathy, even as I am being attacked. Then to express a willingness to let go of the hurt, and allow for the space of restoration to have an effect.
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Health problems have resulted in a disconnection with my body. I avoid feeling sensations to avoid pain and discomfort. I’ve noticed that this fear is more impactful than the actual sensations. If I sit with the pain or discomfort, it moves through me and I notice that things are always changing. In this case, I am the person with whom I find difficulty. Sitting with my body has created more trust and goodwill in myself to withstand difficult and make healthier choices.
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I find myself seeing them more as someone who is also struggling and learning vs someone who is simply difficult.
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I struggled with my metta practice, I made the mistake of making my difficult person a person at work. The metta affected my decisions at work and led to some increase in difficult interactions, which then led to a strong resistance toward my meditations.
I almost dreaded the sitting, and avoided it for several days. After this repeated itself for several days, I decided to return to mindfulness of the body instead, as I appreciate this and had to find a way back to the sitting routine. I missed having a meditation guide or coach at this time, but the adaptions felt correct for me.
As the weeks went by I have noticed that when work thoughts come up for me in meditation, or at the end of sittings, they are mellower and I see and feel the co workers point of view. To just think of the person with goodwill seems to work better for me than to follow the four stages.
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This is so important in freeing myself from patterns of behavior that do not serve me well. Over the last few weeks when I have had experiences with people with whom I have difficulty (individual experiences) – I have returned again and again the Metta practice of cultivating goodwill. It is so helpful to stop the internal spiral of ill feeling/or righteousness. I can pause and find appreciation for our common humanity – the shared pain and challenges of the human condition. It consistently helps, and gets me unstuck.
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This practice helped me in facilitating a series of challenging work conversations – remembering and highlighting shared hopes and big-pictures goals before diving into places of contention allowed us to start from a common and collaborative ground.
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