After a year of physical lockdowns and social meltdowns, a lot of people are exhausted, frazzled, and on the brink of burnout. More than ever, one of the best things you can do is learn to calm your mind.
I’m going to share a great and simple method. As soon as you’re done reading, you can close your laptop, turn off your phone (ok fine, airplane mode), and try what I’m about to suggest.
Last week I posted about the dangers of information overload and how to avoid it by shifting from consuming to creating, especially through writing.
Writing is a great way to calm your mind by cutting off info inputs and giving yourself a chance to process what you’ve already taken in.
But, it still involves a lot of mental activity, which uses up a LOT of energy.
In stressful times, your body constantly pumps out stress hormones like cortisol to keep you at the top of your game.
Cortisol is kind of like that party-go-lucky friend you like to hang out with once in a while because it’s always a good time.
But do you really want them moving in?
Sometimes, you just need to STOP.
Otherwise, the stress will run you down and make you sick.
You Can Calm Your Mind Even in Hard Times
If you’re feeling stressed out these days, you’re not alone. We’ve all been impacted by the pandemic in some way. And other stressors of life on Earth certainly haven’t hit pause just because there’s a global crisis.
For me, the lockdowns came swiftly on the heels of divorce. Then my mother had a series of non-COVID medical crises that have had me at times neck-deep in our broken and overloaded medical system.
I had the worst client experience of my career. And I’ve had to contend with two environmental disasters (fire and ice!), as well as remotely navigate another family health crisis in Houston in the midst of their recent freeze and power outages.
And all of this to the backdrop of pandemic, the movement for black lives (which I support), the election conspiracy circus, and the assault on the capitol.
Not complaining here—a lot of things have gone amazingly well, and I know others have had it much worse. Just saying, if you’ve had some stress this past year, you’re not alone. Even in more “normal” years, fatigue is one of the top reasons people go to the doctor.
Fortunately, I have a lot of practices and tools for dealing with stress. But what’s most important is avoiding getting overly stressed out in the first place. And that’s much less about what’s going on around you than what’s going on inside.
You have to set yourself up to handle stressful times by cultivating internal peace in moments when things are relatively calm.
Give your mind a rest when you’re not stressed, because that’s the only time it’s really possible.
Wind Down Your Mind
Minimizing your mental activity is the only way to truly let it rest and prepare to handle new information.
Pausing for even a few minutes can open up an impressive amount of mental space for fresh ideas and insights. Usually when I’m working on a piece of writing, as soon as I feel mental fatigue or what some people might call writer’s block, I stop and step away.
Letting my mind rest, 99% of the time I feel refreshed within minutes.
Now, cutting down mental activity does not mean sleeping. You can be just as mentally active asleep through dreaming as you are when awake (and it can be almost as exhausting).
If you want to calm your mind, it has to be an intentional practice, while you’re awake. It takes conscious awareness and willpower, otherwise your mind will do what it wants (which is never being quiet).
Meditative traditions talk about the “monkey mind”—wild and unruly, jumping around and generally causing a ruckus. It keeps going, going, going, whether we want it to or not.
Getting our minds to quiet down is not something we’re taught to do, or even taught to want to do.
Quite the contrary—our society encourages us to think and feel and do and consume as much as possible.
Shoot, even the mindfulness movement has produced an endless array of apps and programs and videos and courses. A lot of it is great and wonderful, but on the other hand, it’s just more stuff to consume.
If you really want to calm your mind, like, for realz, at some point, you’ve just gotta have less.
A Simple Method to Calm Your Mind
Let me introduce you to my good friend, “ting.”
Ting 聽 is Chinese for listening. In Daoist internal arts, it’s a concept of turning your attention inwards and dropping as much outside information and stimulation as possible.
Ting is a complex subject, but the basic aim is to minimize the mental chatter and simply be present in your body, in the moment.
Thinking is like talking. You can’t effectively talk and listen at the same time. So if you want to get your mind to take a break from thinking, listening is an alternate mode of awareness you can switch to.
How to Ting
The method is very simple: do nothing.
Just sit still, breathe, and listen inside your own body.
But then the monkey mind starts jabbering, right?
So to satisfy the monkey, the idea is that you give it a “banana.” The banana is an object for it to focus/chew on.
You give your mind something to keep it occupied while being deprived of its usual stimulants. It’s like the monkey is used to living on quad lattes and you’re secretly replacing it with decaf. I know, evil.
The best banana-object (banobject?) to start with is your breath, “listening” to the movement of your muscles and tissues as the air goes in and out.
The joke is, it won’t work.
Monkey will fling the banana in your face, along with a few handfuls of poop for good measure. That can show up as random itches, pains, emotions, or thoughts. Monkey will be entertained.
Keep calm, and ting on.
Tips for Ting
Set a time for a few minutes and see how it goes. If you have a bit of discomfort like boredom, itches, or minor pain, that’s normal. Try to ignore it and remain still.
If you realize you’re lost in a stream of thoughts, just remind your mind that right now you want to listen, not think. Go back to listening. Repeat as needed.
With practice you’ll get better and be able to calm your mind to some degree. Maybe not perfect, but better.
Don’t worry if thoughts come up.
Don’t worry if worry comes up.
Don’t judge anything that happens.
Practice with the intention to not have any intention, but just to give your attention to whatever the experience ends up being.
If this is highly uncomfortable (panic, shooting pains, head doing Exorcist-style 360s), this might not be the practice for you right now. No shame in that, but perhaps consider working with a professional to help with your stress.
Personally, I like to do this a few minutes here and there throughout the day, as well as longer sessions on a regular basis. It’s an important part of my self-care and sanity support, as well as my spiritual practice.
Constant stimulation is overrated.
So stop. Embrace the boring.
Listen inside and discover a whole new way to inhabit your body and your life.
