Grow Mindfulness – By Dr. Ron Passfield

Surrendering to the Process of Shedding Old beliefs

There are times when we have to shed something of ourself that we hold dear – our beliefs, our self-stories, or an aspect of our identity. Sharon Salzberg, in her new book Real Life, describes this shedding process as “the movement from constraint, narrowness and limitation to openness, connection, and freedom”. Shedding was the topic introduced by Jennifer Harris, the facilitator of our recent Creative Meetup.

Jennifer introduced the theme of shedding by sharing Harryette Mullen’s poem, Shedding Skin. Harryette likens the process of shedding to stripping off “old scarred skin” and “sloughing off deadscales”. In her view, it involves being open to vulnerability by “shedding toughness, peeling layers down”. Jennifer also introduced the words of a song by Florence and the Machine in which she sings, “And in the Spring I shed my skin”. These words from Rabbit heart (Raise Me Up) are interpreted to mean “shed timidity and become courageous”.

Shedding old beliefs

Neale Donald Walsch, in an interview with Kute Blackson for the Soul Talk Podcast, spoke at length about the challenge of giving up old beliefs. He had been told by his father not to talk to black people because “they were trash”. He sustained this belief for some time because he thought it would be disrespectful to challenge the authority of his parent. However, his own life experience as a radio host caused considerable cognitive dissonance for him to the point where he had to shed his old belief about black people. Neale found that when interviewing for his radio show the audience was predominantly black and he found that they were, in fact, “brilliant and incredible…nice human beings” and ended up having lunch with them and seeking a close friendship with one black person in particular. He had to shed his old, wrong beliefs about black people to overcome his cognitive dissonance and sustain his relationships with members of his audience.

Neale also had to shed his beliefs about women (again taught by his father) – “women should take care of the house and kids and not being paid equally, not being as bright as men”. This belief undermined his relationships with women and resulted in multiple failed marriages. His beliefs about women were constraining, limiting and narrow. It took regular relationship crises for him to challenge his beliefs and to learn to behave differently in his relationships with women. So, disconfirming evidence and/or life crises can lead to shedding wrong or outdated beliefs.

However, some people continue to maintain firmly held beliefs despite disconfirming or conflicting evidence and will defend them with overt or covert aggression. I learnt this at my own expense when I was a young manager in the 1980’s. I participated in a national conference for State Managers of Training held by the Australian Taxation Office in Canberra. At one stage in the process, an Assistant Commissioner of Taxation (2IC) joined us to provide moral support for the Central Office Training Team (who were “under fire” from the State representatives for trying to centralise all training). During the Assistant Commissioner’s presentation, I politely challenged his statement that “The Taxation Office is at the forefront of technology in Australia.” I explained that at a State level the opposite was true – in fact we were years behind the private sector at the time. I was publicly abused for my challenge to his firmly held belief (which, while no longer true, was true in the 1960s and early 1970s). His abuse was so memorable that I was stopped in the street 10 years later by a participant from another State who recalled the “abuse”.

I also learnt again painfully that people in authority can protect their beliefs by covert aggression as well as overt aggression When I was an academic, I was introducing action learning into my university and using it as a basis for my PhD research. My Dean opposed my endeavours by trying to prevent my appointment as a tenured academic as well as my overseas travel for a World Congress on action learning in Colombia (I was a member of the international organising committee). He eventually prevented my promotion to a Senior Lecturer – in the feedback afterwards, telling me that “you had the best application [because of my experience and rating as a teacher], but you are using a non-mainstream approach in your PhD research”. Action learning promotes the view that we are all “personal scientists” building expertise through life experiences and reflection on our experiences – a position that conflicted with my Dean’s belief in the expert role of academics and the role of Universities as being the “repositories of all learning”. In consequence, he used covert aggression to try to prevent my academic advancement.

Shedding self-stories

Negative self-stories can develop through the influence of our parents, teachers, peers or colleagues. These self-stories can shape our beliefs about ourself and our worth and influence our behaviours in the face of difficulties and life’s challenges. Negative self-stories can arise through traumatic experiences and are often at a sub-conscious level. Self-beliefs such as “I’m not good enough” can arise from behavioural messages of parents (e.g. through neglect, constant criticism, or extended absences). The “need to please disease” as a hidden motivator can also arise from a belief that “I’m not lovable” and “I have to be nice to be liked and not rejected”.

It is difficult to overcome adverse childhood experiences that are often behind negative self-beliefs. Tara Brach suggests that mindfulness practices (such as mantra meditation, writing and reflective conversations) can help us to loosen false beliefs about ourselves. She offers a process for investigating and challenging false beliefs about ourself. She argues that as we grow in mindfulness we can develop the self-awareness necessary to enable us to identify our habituated behaviour and to name and challenge our false beliefs. In the process, we can loosen the hold of our false self-beliefs, restore our energy and engage more positively and creatively in everyday life.

Surrendering to the process of shedding

Participants in our recent Creative Meetup discussed the difficulty of letting go of old beliefs. They suggested that the process takes time, patience and self-compassion. They discussed the movement from the pain of shedding to the realisation of potential. They suggested that the process of taking on new beliefs is uncomfortable, moving from the known to the unknown.

The rewards of surrendering to the process of shedding beliefs were valued and highlighted. They talked about “a new way of seeing”, removal of blinkers, experiencing release and empowerment, and accessing a “deeper self” and a “a new way of being”. The challenge of surrender is real, but the rewards are great.

Tara Brach, with Jack Kornfield and colleagues, offers an online course, Power of Awareness, that is designed to help us “break free from negative thoughts” to realise balance, peace and joy. They offer a mindful approach to achieving a quiet mind by bringing awareness and self-compassion to our “inner dialogue”. I have undertaken this course and found it highly beneficial.

Reflection

Lulu & Mischka in their mantra meditation, Metamorphosis, capture the essence of surrendering to the process of shedding. They encourage us to “keep letting go”, “trust in the process”, relax into the present and “stop resisting”. If we can do this through mindfulness practices such as reflection and mantra meditations we can achieve healing and a metamorphosis that will enable us to spread our wings and fly higher. This exhortation resonates with Sharon Salzberg’s encouragement to move from constraint to freedom, from narrowness to connection. from limitation to openness. I have expressed these insights in the following poem:

Surrender to Shedding

There comes a time in our life when we have to shed old beliefs.
Slough off our limiting self-beliefs,
Remove constraints on our thinking,
Break down the barriers of our defence mechanisms,
Let go and stop resisting,
Surrender to the process of casting aside what no longer works for us.

The shedding process is painful.
Discomfort with the new,
Feeling lost,
Leaving behind the known,
Moving to uncertainty,
Open to anxiety.

The rewards of shedding are great.
Releasing from constraints and limitations,
Achieving a new sense of freedom,
Moving from pain to possibility,
Discovering a new creative self,
Flowing like a river, rediscovering “Flow”.

_____________________________

Image by Jonathan from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Finding Strength in Vulnerability

Kylie Orr in her novel, The Eleventh Floor, has her lead character, Gracie, comment after experiencing the impact of deceit in a relationship, “I was committed to loving up close, to being open, vulnerable”. While Gracie acknowledged that “there is danger in that”, she was willing to take the risk inherent in vulnerability because “a life held together by lies fell apart so easily”. Being vulnerable exposes us to the possibility of being harmed by someone else emotionally, intellectually or physically – it involves showing our true self with our emotional weaknesses, character faults and physical defects.

Vulnerability, however, is a source of strength. It underpins perseverance and resilience, facilitates sustainable relationships, enriches our contribution to community, and enables the writing of an entertaining and enlightening memoir. To access the strength in vulnerability we have to face up to being vulnerable – we need to name our feelings (e.g., fear of rejection) so that we can tame them.

Perseverance and resilience

Contrary to the Alpha Male depiction of power, dominance and the trappings of success, Lance Alfred (legally deaf NBA player) contends that perseverance and resilience in the face of adversity require a totally different orientation. He maintains that there is real strength in vulnerability – owning up to our feelings, being authentic, having self-awareness and self-intimacy (acknowledging our own thoughts, actions and consequences), forgiving others, moving beyond other people’s expectations to be our true self, accepting our inadequacies and mistakes and overcoming the fear of failure.

When we fear failure we can be trapped by inertia – unable to move forward beyond the current challenge. In her novel The Brightest Star, Gail Tsukiyama describes a time when Chinese-American actress, Anna May Wong, was making her stage debut In The Circle of Chalk and was terrified that her speaking voice and singing were not up to the expected standard (after spending so much time acting in silent movies). The critics were having a field day about her voice but she acknowledged this weakness and “went on the offensive”, hiring a voice coach. Despite the criticisms of the critics, the show had a “successful run”.

Sustainable intimate relationships

We can hide our fear of being vulnerable in a relationship in multiple ways including excessive criticism of the other person, aggression (anger), withdrawal (silent treatment), overcontrolling or projecting our own weaknesses or fears onto the other person. These defence mechanisms only serve to push the other person away, to wound them and disable them. While they provide protection for our ego and self-concept, they create a barrier to a sustainable intimate relationship.

Tara Brach provides a meditation which enables us to explore the ways that we create separation or distance in a relationship by resorting to defence mechanisms to ward off vulnerability. In the meditation, we are asked how we are impacting our relationships(s) by avoiding vulnerability. The challenging questions relate to self-protection, projection, judging, withholding, distrusting or engaging in “superior conceit”. Tara points out the power of being vulnerable (overcoming our natural defence mechanisms) in terms of building closeness and sustainable relationships.

Enriching our contribution to community

Tara tells a number of stories where being vulnerable led to someone else finding strength to manage a disturbing or embarrassing circumstance. One of the features of the Creative Meetups hosted by The Health Story Collaborative is the vulnerability shared by participants in the monthly, online meetings. Participants are people experiencing chronic illness or disability or are in a caring role. They willingly share their pain, difficulties in coping, inability to think clearly, physical weaknesses, anxiety or depression or lack of energy.

The level of openness and trust enables individuals to express their vulnerability without fear of being taken advantage of, or being consciously harmed by anyone else present. Vulnerability, enhanced by the culture of sharing and collaboration, builds closeness and healing. There is the implicit recognition that being vulnerable is integral to the human condition.

Developing a memorable memoir

In the Art of Memoir, Mary Karr, stresses the need for authenticity – revealing our real self, not the projected self or the deemed “virtuous self”. She highlights the importance of being vulnerable rather than self-protective. She sees the memoir as a personal unfolding that is sometimes painful – an honest exploration of our “inner landscape”, not just a recording of external events. Mary suggests that as we are developing our draft memoir with recalled stories “what burbles up onto the page is what is exclusively yours, both as a writer and a human being”. She maintains that we have to trust the power of truth enough to “keep unveiling yourself”, despite the shame in the revelations, and, in the process, the memoir will structure itself and you will show up ”warts and all” – leaving a memorable impression that highlights your contribution to relationships and community.

Reflection

Being vulnerable is difficult as self-protection is our natural fall-back position. As we grow in mindfulness through writing, reflection and meditation, we can begin to draw back the veil that hides our imperfections and inadequacies. With the inherent growth in self-awareness and self-intimacy, we can become more real and more invested in telling the truth about ourselves. This is a progressive inner journey – a slow unveiling of our true inner self. By letting go of shame and expectations (our own and that of others), we can develop authentic connections, friendships and intimate relationships.

I wrote the following poem as a reflection on the negative impact of defensiveness on relationships and the power of vulnerability to create intimacy by removing our constructed barriers.

Sustaining a Relationship

Deceit destroys a relationship.
Closeness is beyond us, as we retreat behind the wall.
Facing up to who we are can be painful.

Without vulnerability, our relationships are shallow.
We hide behind our self-projected mask.
We engage our defence mechanisms.
We fence off our inner landscape.

Sustainability lies in vulnerability.
Openness to ourselves and others.
No longer the frightened child.
Now exposed to risk and reward.
Intimacy is in our hands, if we reveal who we truly are.

___________________________________________

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

The Healing Power of Social Support

Social support can take the form of having friends, family or other people who can be a source of support in difficult times, such as chronic illness, death of a loved one or ongoing disability. They can provide emotional, companionship or resource support and enhance our self-image while offering different perspectives on what we are encountering.

Social support can be provided through a formal social network where people with common interests come together to achieve specific outcomes such as fitness, charitable work or a hobby (as with the Australian Men’s Shed). Alternatively, they can be informal where a number of people come together on a regular basis to share a coffee and have a chat.

The benefits of social support

Julia Baird, author of Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything, highlights the mental health benefits of social support and points to the research that shows the “poor mental health” that results from isolation and loneliness. She refers to a homeless support group organised by St. Vincent de Paul Society that she joined and noted that there was “no pretence”, people “just being who they are”. The healing power of this transparency and normality was evident in the homeless participants developing a positive self-image and contributing from their perspective and reality.

Social support is one of the three components for sustainable recovery from trauma, along with appreciating the complex nature of trauma and its impacts and adopting a holistic approach. Research and clinical practice have demonstrated that social support builds resilience in trauma sufferers – they realise they are not alone, are encouraged to pursue their healing process, are reinforced in their healing efforts and learn vicariously from others who are experiencing difficult emotions and challenging situations. The resultant sense of connectedness contributes to positive mental health.

The GROW organisation over many years has demonstrated that mutual social support has contributed to recovery from many forms of mental illness for hundreds of people (as documented in testimonial stories by participants). The peer-to-peer support process facilitated by a nominated leader within the “lived experience” group, promotes personal development and ongoing recovery – a process that may take a number of years.

Reflection

Social support helps participants to develop a sense of being cared for as well as feeling that they can seek assistance from others in understanding and managing their challenging situation. People gain a strong sense of belonging and connectedness through sharing their personal challenges, their success strategies and their progress towards healing. They grow in mindfulness as they share their stories and write about their insights, gaining increased self-awareness and heightened self-esteem.

Creative Meetups, provided by the Health Story Collaborative, is a powerful social support system in that it combines the healing power of social support with the healing power of storytelling. Participants feel fully supported by others engaged in compassionate listening or sharing their stories of challenging situations resulting from chronic illness, disability or their carer role. The following poem expresses the sense of social support that can be gained through the Creative Meetups:

Social Support

When we share our stories of personal challenges, we realise that we are not alone.
We draw strength from others experiencing and managing more difficult circumstances.
We sense that we belong and feel connected to something outside of ourselves and our pain.
We can be ourselves, free of pretence, unencumbered by the need to be “better than”.
We build trust, savour our relationships and look forward to the next encounter.
There is something magical and disarming about the process that leads to changing perspectives and healing.

____________________________________________

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Paternal Forgiveness – A Reflective Poem

Since I started participating in the Creative Meetups organised by the Health Story Collaborative I have been writing poems. It’s as if there are feelings inside me that need to get out. It reminds me of my PhD supervisor who told me at one stage of my extended procrastination, “You have a doctorate inside you, unless you let it out, it will undermine whatever you are doing.” Once I wrote the PhD, it released a whole new world of opportunity.

Over time, our disposition to forgive and our capacity to offer forgiveness to others and ourself will develop almost invisibly if we grow in mindfulness through appropriate practices, such as forgiveness meditations. The following poem grew out of my mindfulness practices and Meetup reflections:

Paternal Forgiveness

I didn’t forgive you while you were alive.
I didn’t even forgive myself.
Now I don’t know how to say sorry to someone who has passed.

You served in the army during World War 2 before I was born.
You spent four years in Changi and worked on the Burma Railway.
Shortly after your army discharge, you reenlisted.

When I was four, you left to work in Sydney and Woomera.
And served 18 months with the Occupation Forces in Japan.
There you were an “enemy stranger” in a foreign land.

In your absence, Mum was seriously ill following the birth of Michael.
You returned for two weeks to take Mum and my two brothers to Brisbane.
While baby Michael spent time with your sister before getting ill himself.

My younger sister and I were separated and left with different relatives in Melbourne.
Three month old Michael was eventually placed in a Founding Home.
When Mum returned a month later to collect the three of us, you told her that Michael had died while she was in transit.

I spent 18 months in an orphanage at the age of four while you were away.
Those were the months of my imprisonment and harsh treatment, shared by my younger sister.
Though we were separated from each other by the Institution.

Mum was only allowed by the Institution to visit us monthly.
It was only then that I saw my brothers and my sister, despite her being in the same Orphanage.
I felt isolated and alone.

When you returned from Japan, you became an aggressive alcoholic.
As a young child, I would freeze and dissociate when your rage flared.
As I got older, I would take flight by riding my push bike into the night as fast as I could.

I didn’t understand PTSD – no one did at that time.
I had not been where you had been or seen what you saw.
I didn’t see the triggered images that tormented you.

The war, the explosion, hospitalisation, capture and prison life.
You suffered the loss of mates killed in action or dying from cruelty or malnutrition while you were in Changi or working on the Burma railway.
You experienced unimaginable horrors.

I understand now that alcohol was your way to drown your pain and sorrows.
To block out the horrific images.
I forgive you and forgive myself for my harsh judgments – I didn’t understand.

It was easy to take sides when you were drunk and wasting our income.
While Mum slaved away at the local Woolies to keep us afloat.
And vented her anger and frustration at night.

As an adult, I had to take Mum away from your violence for her survival.
I was fearful at the time that you would try to find us.
As we took shelter in the small rooms at the back of a General Store.

The separation proved to be a godsend.
You both improved your lives.
With new partners eventually and a healthier way of life.

You even gave up alcohol and walked an hour every day.
On Sundays you took Mum to Church.
But we were not able to reconnect.

You had been a professional boxer, winning 20 of 22 fights.
You won trophies for tennis and athletics.
You became Player Coach of a Reserve Grade AFL team in Brisbane.

I am truly grateful that I inherited your genes.
The fighting spirit, resilience, determination and fast reflexes.
All of which have helped me in my tennis and my work and life.

I am sorry that I did not know what you were going through.
That I saw myself, instead of you, as the victim.
That I did not acknowledge your unbearable pain and unbelievable courage and tenacity.

____________________________________________

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Forgiveness: Forgiving Others and Ourselves

Forgiveness is hard to do, whether we are trying to forgive others or ourself. It’s not a one-off event but is an evolving process which is why experts in the area suggest that we start off small – with a minor incident or hurt. Forgiveness engages our feelings as well as our mind and body. It is something that we have to work at consciously if we are to achieve our goal of “letting go”.

Forgiving others

Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discover What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, suggests that one of the lessons from the dying is, “Don’t Wait to Forgive”. In his extensive hospice experience he found that too many people were consumed by anger and rage on their death bed because they were unable to forgive others. He argues that we should not wait until we are dying to forgive others and ourself. Frank maintains that there is a natural resistance to forgiveness because we have a need to maintain our self-image (of goodness/perfection) and find it difficult to acknowledge that we are carrying challenging emotions such as anger, resentment and regret. However, there is a real cost to ourselves and our relationships when we hold onto these emotions.

Danette May in her memoir, The Rise: An Unforgettable Journey of Self-Love, Forgiveness and Transformation, argues that we need to “cut the rope”, or as Frank puts it, “letting go”. These difficult emotions can hold us back, causing self-absorption and “emotional stunting”. There is a real challenge involved in acknowledging our part in an interaction (or multiple interactions) that was hurtful. We need to be able to see things from the other person’s perspective and understand what was driving their behaviour. Frank suggests that in the final analysis, we need to be able to honestly face up to “what we don’t like in ourselves”.

Fred Luskin contends that there are three elements of a grievance that contribute to our “maintaining the rage” and sustaining the hurt:

Preoccupation with the ”offence” and exaggerating its negative impact on us
Insisting that others are to blame for our negative/difficult feelings
Developing and perpetuating a “grievance story”.

Fred argues that the real costs of not letting go are extensive. Not only do we lose our personal power because we are “controlled by emotions”, but also we lose the ability to focus and achieve peace and wellness. If we are consumed by anger, hatred, resentment or envy we can’t see past our hurt and we use all our energy in sharing our story and maintaining our sense of hurt.

Forgiving ourselves

The starting point for self-forgiveness is acknowledging our part in the hurtful interaction. It is incredibly difficult to forgive ourselves for the hurt we cause to others – it can be a lifelong process. Part of the challenge is dealing with strong feelings of guilt and shame – feelings that go against the grain and undermine our sense of who we are. We can blind ourselves to our negative impact on others because it is too hurtful to ourselves to own up to our part in hurtful interactions.

Jack Kornfield in the Power of Awareness Course argues that there are three myths that underpin our reluctance to engage in self-forgiveness:

Self-forgiveness is a sign of weakness – the reality is that it takes a lot of strength and courage to face up to our hurtful words and actions
We can forgive ourselves through a “quick fix”, e.g., a short meditation or exercise
Forgiving ourselves is condoning our hurtful behaviour.

Elisha Goldstein cites Lily Tomlin when discussing forgiveness of others, Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. This insight can as readily apply to self-forgiveness as to forgiving others. In self-forgiveness, we have to give up our “grievance story”, let go of wishing that we had behaved better and dismantle our defenses that prevent us from acknowledging our part in a hurtful interaction.

Mindfulness – a path to forgiveness

When we develop a mindful disposition by observing our inner landscape – our thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations – we can reduce our negative thoughts and increase our ability to forgive. Mindfulness can develop our “disposition to forgive” – it can unearth grievance stories, clarify our part in any interaction, help us to take the other person’s perspective, increase our awareness of negative emotions and related bodily sensations and cultivate compassion. Ultimately mindfulness can help us to develop self-awareness and emotional regulation so that we are not captive to our strong, challenging emotions and can live in the present rather than the hurtful past.

Forgiveness meditation

There are multiple forms of forgiveness meditation. Loving kindness meditation, for example, has been shown to cultivate compassion towards others as well as self-compassion. Sharon Salzberg, experienced mindfulness trainer, offers a three-part forgiveness meditation encompassing:

Seeking forgiveness from someone you have hurt or harmed
Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt or harmed you
Self-forgiveness for the times you have harmed yourself through being judgmental.

Sharon includes an affirmation related to the last point, For all the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness. Other meditation trainers, such as Mitra Manesh, focus the self-forgiveness on the harm that we have caused to others, rather than to ourself. Mitra, in her forgiveness meditation podcast, places a lot of emphasis on becoming aware of our bodily sensations as we deal with the “heavy energies” involved in holding onto grudges, anger or rage. She also suggests a mantra for seeking forgiveness from others, For all the ways that I have caused you pain and suffering, I ask your forgiveness.

In reflecting on a number of forgiveness meditations, I identified four common principles underpinning the meditation process:

Stay grounded, relaxed and focused
Manage distractions through an anchor such as your breath or sounds
Start small with something that is manageable and recent (limited history or replaying)
Adopt a healing perspective – show loving kindness to others and yourself.

We can develop a mindful disposition in multiple ways , not just through meditation. As we grow in mindfulness we can more readily adopt the perspective of others and understand their hurt. We can own up to and name our own feelings, however negative or challenging. Over time, our disposition to forgive and our capacity to offer forgiveness to others and ourself will grow almost invisibly.

Reflection

Forgiving ourself can be a lifetime pursuit as I have found in trying to forgive myself for my part in my marriage breakup which occurred more than 40 years ago. This is something I am working towards. I find that forgiving others and forgiving ourself are interwoven activities – not discrete, independent steps.

I have also been reflecting on my long-standing anger towards my Father for his alcoholism and its major impact on my childhood and my family. I recently started crafting a poem called Paternal Forgiveness which I will publish soon in this blog. In the poem, I offer forgiveness to my father, seek to forgive myself for my harsh judgments and express my sorrow for the hurt that I had caused him when he was alive. In writing the poem, I have drawn inspiration from Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words. In the book, Kim describes how poetry has helped people to deal with challenging situations, including the need to forgive others and themselves, and provides insight into the transformative elements of a poem.

____________________________________________

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Creative Meetups: Action Learning for Health and Healing

Creative Meetups are provided by the Health Story Collaborative (HSC) to enable participants to reflect, connect and gain support from other people who are also living with chronic illness or disability or are carers. The free Meetups, currently facilitated by Jennifer Harris on the Zoom platform, provide a stimulus for writing “to access and release emotions, personal stories and creative spirits”. They form an avenue for healing through the mechanism of narrative therapy.

Alice Morgan, author of What Is Narrative Therapy?, maintains that narrative therapy can take many forms. For instance, she suggests that it can involve “particular ways of talking with people about their lives and the problems they are experiencing”. In essence, it involves people sharing their stories orally and/or in writing to gain insight into the meanings they ascribe to events, experiences and current situations (such as a physical or mental health condition). Jodi Clarke points out that we carry multiple self-stories including those related to “self-esteem, abilities, relationships and work.” She maintains that the process of “putting your narrative together” (however, this is created) enables an individual “to find their voice” as they explore their life experiences and the meanings they attribute to them.

What is action learning?

Action learning can be described in simple terms as a cycle – planning, taking action and reflecting on the outcomes (intended and unintended). It is used worldwide in public, private and not-for profit organisations and communities to create positive change and empower people to be the best they can be. It can be undertaken by an individual by themselves (as I have done with my tennis playing over the years) or, more often, as part of a group or “action learning set”.

Creative Meetups and Action Learning

Creative Meetups and action learning have a core assumption in common. Alice Morgan expressed this well when she maintained that narrative therapy assumes that “people have many skills, competencies, beliefs, values, commitments and abilities” to resolve their own challenging situations – an assumption that underpins the process of Creative Meetups. This is also a fundamental assumption of action learning (AL).

Reg Revans, the “Father of Action Learning”, charged with improving the mining industry in the UK, got mining managers together to solve their “here and now problems” in the mines. He also got nurses in Intensive Care Units together to work on their challenging situations. In an action learning context, participants are often described as “personal scientists”. Some academics in universities, tied to the concept of universities as the sole repository of “expert knowledge”, had great difficulty accepting this core assumption and would actively oppose the uptake of action learning – it challenged their firmly held beliefs about knowledge creation and dissemination.

Creative Meetups and action learning have a number of other elements in common and, in the final analysis, both seek to create positive change in a situation (either individual or collective). Some of the shared elements are as follows:

Peer support – a fundamental principle is to treat each other as peers – with no acknowledged hierarchical difference. There is a recognition that we are “all in the same boat” – each facing challenging situations. Reg described this element as “comrades in adversity”; more recently, people have termed it “comrades in opportunity”. In essence, it involves providing mutual support irrespective of our work role, status, social position or experience level.
Collaboration – participants work together towards a common goal (e.g. health and healing or team improvement) and willingly share stores, resources, and insights for mutual benefit. People are unstinting in their sharing – often recommending or loaning books, highlighting helpful websites or identifying relevant expert people.
Don’t know mind – participants adopt a “don’t know mind”, not presuming to know and understand another person’s situation. Reg suggests that if you think you understand something fully, you are not only going to get yourself into trouble but other people as well. Adopting a don’t know mind – not jumping to conclusions or interrupting another’s story with your own (erroneously assuming they are same or similar) – enables a person to tell their story in an unfettered way, opening up the path to healing and recovery.
Honesty – the conscious exploration of what it means to be honest with oneself (owning up) and with others. This opens the way for improvement and change. The process of writing in Creative Meetups helps participants to identify false self-stories and unearth truer and richer stories that open up new avenues for their lives and their relationships. Action learning, too, enables the development of honesty. Reg, for example, recounts an action learning program involving industrial executives in Belgium who, after 18 months of action learning, identified “What is an honest man and what do I need to become one?” (they were all men) as the most significant question they wished they had asked at the start of the program. He maintained that the pathway to learning and change involves “admitting what you do not know”. Reg also maintained that if you are going to do “something significant about something imperative”, you will come up against how you define yourself and your role.
Reflection – reflection is assisted by writing and sharing. The more we reflect, the more it becomes a way of life. Frequent reflection-on-action can result in the ability to reflect-in-action. Reg suggests that reflection is best done in a group because when we reflect alone we can tend to reinforce our existing assumptions and maintain our blindspots. He argues for diversity in the reflective group – diversity of culture, nationality, profession and orientation (business/not-for-profit/community). The Creative Meetups provide a rich diversity in terms of location (participants are from different countries and cultures) and health/caring situation. Participants can gain insight gratuitously when others share their reflections from their different perspectives.
Questioning – the willingness and ability to ask “fresh question” to open upinsight into a challenging situation. Reg describes this as “questioning insight”. This approach involves “supportive challenge” – challenging assumptions to enable a person to be the best they can be. Alice Morgan highlights the role of questioning in narrative therapy because we can often develop negative self-stories. Both action learning and Creative Meetups (narrative therapy) cultivate curiosity.
Action taking – action learning involves learning through action undertaken with others where possible. Creative Meetups promote writing as taking action to become open to the healing power of storytelling. The writing can take any form, e.g. prose, poetry, dot points. Action is also reflected in the changes in behaviour undertaken by participants as a result of insights gained through writing and sharing.
Facilitation – to design and manage the process of sharing. In Creative Meetups, the facilitator provides stimulus material (e.g., a story, music or poem) to enable participants to write and share. In action learning, the facilitator guides the process of planning, acting, reflecting and sharing. In both situations, the facilitator is not a teacher. Their role is to create an environment that promotes safety, trust, openness and sharing – their metaprocess goal is to develop a learning community.

Creative Meetups, in promoting writing and reflection, are helping participants to grow in mindfulness which is described by MARC (UCLA) as “paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity and a willingness to be with what is”. Both action learning and mindfulness contribute to positive mental health because they increase self-awareness and heighten a sense of agency (belief in the capacity to have some control over our inner and outer environment). In cultivating mindfulness, both approaches help people to develop resilience, compassion and creativity.

Reflection

I initially joined the Meetups with a view to writing my stories in prose but have found that the stimulus provided by the discussions and my recent reading of Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, has led me to write several poems about my health story and the process of the Meetups. Kim’s identification of the transformative elements of a poem continues to provide a pathway for my poetic expression. I used her elements to analyse a poem I had written called For the Love of Tennis that enabled me to express my gratitude for being able to continue to play tennis despite a diagnosis of “multiple-level spinal degeneration”.

Following a recent Meetup, I unearthed my feelings about my chronic condition of food sensitivity/allergy resulting from Long Covid-induced Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. I was surprised about the intensity of my feelings of frustration and alienation that I had not previously given voice to. The poem, The Inflammatory Thread in My Life, provided a creative outlet and release for emotions I had kept “under wraps” and not expressed to anyone, including myself.

In a previous post, I shared a poem, Compassionate Listening, that I wrote following a Creative Meetup where the stimulus input included an excerpt from Joni Mitchell’s performance of Both Sides Now at the 2024 Grammy Awards. To me the poem reflects the stance of participants of the Creative Meetup in being able to engage in deep listening, provide active support of the storyteller and reflect back not only the feelings expressed but also the intensity of those feelings.

Compassionate listening strongly reflects the ethos of HSC where Healing Story Principals (such as Micheal Bischoff) sought to support people “to tell and listen to stories in ways that are healing, connected and empowering”. The support and connection underpinning Creative Meetups and action learning promote health and healing.

Reflecting on the process of Creative Meetups and my long-standing experience with action learning in multiple contexts, I was inspired to write the following poem:

Where is “There”?

When you share your innermost secrets

and I say, “I’ve been there!”,

where is “there”?

It’s not where you have been

with your unique experience and perception.

I’m not inside you looking out,

I’m outside you looking in.

It’s like the glimpse of the Bay

that I get from my back deck.

It’s not the Bay!

It’s only a tiny window

on a complex ecosystem.

____________________________________________

Image by Xavier Lavin Pino from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Joni Mitchell: An Inspiration for People with Chronic Illness

Legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell has been an inspiration to millions of people and particularly those who suffer from chronic illness or experience long-term disability. You only have to look at comments on YouTube about her Blue Album to see how Joni has impacted the lives of so many people – people suffering from loss, grief, pain and stress and recalling the joyful moments and the feelings of hope when they heard her sing. She has the ability to positively touch the lives of people of all ages, as evidenced by her triumphant performance of Both Sides Now at the 2024 Grammy Awards. The recognition of her stellar career was reflected in her 10^th Grammy Award that night and her earlier (2002) Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Joni’s health challenges and courage

The story of Joni’s health challenges and her positive approach to overcoming them is a source of inspiration in itself. She had to learn to walk again after being diagnosed with polio in 1952 when she was 9 years old. She suffered the painful and crippling effects of polio for 40 years, initially overcoming the disease in 1995, only to then experience “post-polio syndrome”. If Joni had accepted the mantra of many medical practitioners about aging, she could have taken their advice “to lie down and die”, accepting one of the myths of aging. Instead, she chose to seek alternative medicine options and to fight on.

On a number of occasions, Joni spoke about her experience of Morgellons disease which she described in 2010 as a “weird, incurable disease”. The Mayo Clinic describes the disease as creating “a belief that parasites or fibers are emerging from the skin” and involving an “intense itching and sores”. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in their 2012 report stated that the “skin lesions and/or disturbing skin sensations” along with “multi-system complaints” can result in a “significantly reduced health-related quality of life”. Health problems reported by respondents to the research included chronic fatigue, overall poor health and cognitive deficits.

Joni herself reported in 2014 that her immune system was severely taxed by the Morgellons disease which restricted her ability to fly and made touring impossible. Her response to this debilitating disease was to say that she was not regretful about her condition but was enjoying the creative process away from singing – “painting, revisiting her music, prepping a four-act ballet or an upcoming collection of stories”. This clearly reflects her indomitable spirit and her ability to focus on what she did have, not what she had lost.

Her resilience was again severely tested in 2015 when she suffered a brain aneurysm. In an interview with Cameron Crowe in 2020, Joni stated that the aneurysm took more away from her than her polio – it “took away my speech and my ability to walk”. Her ability to talk returned relatively quickly, but even at the time of this interview she still struggled to walk. Doctors had advised her that she would “never walk again” but she stated categorically that she would walk again. She indicated at the time, “I’m a fighter” (with Irish blood) and told herself, “Here I go again, another battle”.

The aneurysm appeared to rob Joni of her singing voice, but in 2018 when some musical friends, including Elton John, turned up at her house for what had been famously called a “Joni Jam”, everyone was surprised and delighted when Joni joined in the singing with her “warm and familiar voice”. Joni indicated that she was moved by the spirit of the group and stated that “I forgave myself for my lack of talent” (having “lost her soprano voice” and only being able to sing “a low alto”).

Joni continued her fight against her chronic illnesses and, in 2023, made a triumphant return to concert singing in a three-hour Joni Jam organised by American singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile and involving friends such as Annie Lennox and Sarah McLachlan. Joni’s life journey can be revisited through BBC Radio 4 Legend’s Podcast – seven episodes of the Joni Mitchell story. Her journey into singing and songwriting can be reviewed through the Joni Jams Podcast which “goes album by album through Joni Mitchell’s entire discography”.

Reflection

During the most recent Creative Meetup, participants engaged in healing storytelling (in writing and orally) partly stimulated by Joni Mitchell’s song, Both Sides Now. Joni’s emphasis on “I really don’t know clouds [music, love, life] at all” resonated with participants who shared their experiences of unintentional exclusion by others.

For some, the metaphors that we commonly used can exclude others whose experience differs, e.g., for people who are extremely “light sensitive”, metaphors such as “silver lining” or “let the bright side in” can contribute to their sense of isolation and exclusion. For people who experience food sensitivity or allergies, metaphors such as “sweet as a mango” can be alienating. For others, established traditions or practices such as enforced prayers as a child or Australia Day Celebrations can trigger memories of terror and/or loss. As one participant noted, “Unless you are in my shoes, you don’t really know”.

The Creative Meetup hosted by the Health Story Collaborative provided ample evidence of the healing power of storytelling and the energy and insight generated by compassionate listening. Jennifer Harris, the facilitator of the Meetup session on Zoom, introduced Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope” is the thing with feathers, and this led to a participant’s comment that “hope emerges from dark places” – sometimes, when there appears to be “no hope”. As all participants in the HSC Meetup are people who are living with illness or disability or are carers, they were able to draw comfort, support and inspiration from Joni Mitchell’s struggle with ill-health.

My reflection on our Meetup is captured in the following Compassionate Listening poem that I wrote after our meeting:

Compassionate Listening

What you see is not what I see.

What you hear is not what I hear.

Your world is not my world.

Your feelings are your own.

I can’t know your reality.

I can only listen with compassion

… and openness to what is different for you.

I can learn to adopt a “don’t know” mindset.

As we grow in mindfulness through compassionate listening, reflection and sharing our story, we can deepen our self-awareness, cultivate openness and build resilience.

____________________________________________

Image by xiSerge from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

How to Develop Positive Beliefs About Aging

Previously, I discussed the pervasive impact of negative beliefs about aging and the life-enhancing benefits of positive age beliefs. In those posts, I drew on the mind-opening research of Professor Becca Levy, author of Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will determine How Long and How Well You Live. In her book, Becca not only explores the potential negative or positive impacts of our beliefs about aging, she also offers multiple ways to develop a positive mindset that will enable us to live longer and with a better quality of life. She provides numerous examples of people in different fields who have achieved incredible things in their old age. Becca stresses the need for each of us to be proactive in building positive beliefs about aging to counteract the influence of ageism which is with us from the time we hear our earliest fairy tales until we experience palliative care.

The ABC approach to developing positive beliefs about aging

In her book, Becca introduces the ABC Method to liberate us from the socially-derived negative beliefs about aging and free our minds to realise the potential inherent in aging. Her ABC method incorporates three core elements – awareness, blame and challenge:

A – Awareness

Becca suggests that developing positive age beliefs begins with ourselves, increasing our awareness of our own thoughts and the way this impacts our words and actions. We can increasingly become conscious of how we speak to people in different age groups – how we positively recognise “age diversity” (rather than perpetuating “age blindness”). She recalls that on one occasion, she found herself talking in a childlike manner to older people (“elderspeak”) and immediately pulled herself up and changed the way she spoke to these people. Her newly adopted adult-to-adult communication was respectful of the wisdom and experience of the people she was addressing. This is an example of reflection-in-action, a skill we can develop by practising reflection on our actions as a habitual approach.

Our awareness can develop by building a “portfolio of positive images of aging”. We can do this by reading newspaper reports and articles about people who have excelled in various fields of endeavour. Another rich source of positive age images is memoirs written by people who describe their accomplishments in old age despite early childhood setbacks, including traumatic experiences. An incredible exemplar of this approach to developing positive beliefs is Maya Angelou. She not only broke new ground in writing memoirs but wrote her seventh memoir, Mom and Me and Mom, in her eighties. Her accomplishments in many fields such as poetry, writing, acting, film, singing and activism are memorialised in a website in her name. Becca cautions us, though, to avoid trying to model ourselves on a single, exceptional older person – she argues that a more attainable goal is to strengthen qualities in ourselves that “older role models” exhibit (such as Maya’s work ethic).

We only have to look around us for positive models of aging amongst our friends, relatives, colleagues, our medical carers and other professionals. This involves developing relationships with, and paying attention to, people who have aged and yet who continue to contribute positively to their career arena, the local community or society generally. We can also seek the company of elders. Nadine Cohen, author of the exquisite, debut novel, Everyone and Everything, actively seeks people of her mother’s and grandparents’ age and finds that she is “usually richer emotionally” because of their counsel and wisdom.

B – Blame

Becca argues that we should put the blame where it truly belongs – not our biology but the ageism that surrounds us in every facet of our life. This involves consciously developing awareness of our social environment in our everyday life. It means being able to identify “negative age stereotypes” perpetuated in education, the arts, medical professions, and in daily conversations with friends, colleagues and family members.

As we develop this external awareness, we can begin to identify the “upstream causes” impacting the health and wellness of the aged. Becca maintains that “age beliefs are an upstream predictor of health and well-being”. She contends that if we actively develop positive age beliefs we can change our health habits. This approach is in line with the research that shows that to create new behaviours, we need to challenge the assumptions that underlie old behaviours – it is not enough to practise new behaviours if we want sustainable change.

C- Challenge

Becca recommends challenging ageism in whatever form it takes. She points out the example of antiageism activist, Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, and the blog Yo, Is This Ageist? Ashton is actively and publicly challenging the hidden negative beliefs as they are reflected in newspaper articles, headlines, advertisements, and elsewhere and educating readers by responding to their questions about ageism. She also has a YouTube channel incorporating her Talk at Google and other presentations addressing ageism. In her Ted Talk, Let’s End Ageism, she points out that ageism is “a prejudice that pits us against our future selves – and each other”.

While people like Ashton and celebrities such as Madonna and Robert De Niro are speaking out publicly against ageism, Becca contends that we can help to overcome ageism in society if we “call it out” when we encounter any form of ageist remark in the relationship circles in which we move, Becca recounts her discussion over coffee with Irene Trenholme who at 99 years of age ran the Secondhand Prose bookstore which donated all it profits to the local St. Johnsbury library. Irene proved to be an exemplar for challenging ageism. Whenever she encountered an ageist remark or action, she would firmly indicate that this was inappropriate, including challenging her doctor who spoke too loudly to her (assuming that, because of her age, she was “hard of hearing”).

Becca challenges many myths that surround aging and encourages us to take up the task of questioning firmly-held beliefs that have no scientific foundation. She provides an Appendix in her book which she describes as “ammunition to debunk negative age stereotypes”. She lists common negative age stereotypes and offers facts (proven by research) that can be used to debunk these stereotypes, including “cognition inevitably declines in old age” and “older persons are technologically challenged”. In relation to the latter myth, Becca points out that Mildred Dresselhaus innovated the field of nanotechnology in her seventies.

Underlying the assumption that older people are technologically challenged is a foundational ageist myth that I call the “blank slate myth”. People often assume that those who are older lack any related knowledge, skill or experience in a particular area, e.g. technology. They forget that the technology they enjoy today was pioneered and developed commercially (long before some were born) by people who are now in their later years. I am now 77 years of age (2024), but I have a long history of involvement in the development and application of technology in education and the workplace in the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and early 2000’s:

National Project Team – the design and implementation of the first online, national, accounting and management information system in the Australian Taxation Office (1973 -1977);
National Project Team – the introduction of word processing and personal computers in the Australian Taxation Office;
Role of Director, Computer Operations, Australian Taxation Office, Queensland and the Northern Territory;
Sensitive National projects associated with physical computer security and deterrence and detection of computer fraud;
Role of National Change Manager for the implementation of online learning and teaching in the Technical and Further Education Institutes across Australia (2000-2004);
Role of a Leader in Squidoo – a social media platform developed by Seth Godin (2007-2014);
Creator of a 6-month, online Social Media Marketing Course – 24 weekly PDF’s (2010);
Creator of e-books on internet marketing, social media marketing and Squidoo marketing strategies (2009-2012);
Creator of blogs on affiliate marketing (2005-2012) and small business marketing (2011-2012);
Co-Creator with colleagues in Germany and America of the article-based, social media platform, Wizzley.com (2011);
Sole author of my current Grow Mindfulness blog (2016 – present; 745 posts).

I spend very little time on social media platforms these days, not because I’m “technologically challenged” but because I have other priorities. My priorities at the moment are to write my mindfulness blog (1,000 word post per week); co-author a book on “managing people”; and write a memoir.

The “blank slate myth” not only applies to technology but also many other areas of endeavour. I found that it applies even in social activities. I still play social tennis in my late seventies and I am often confronted with the manifestation of this myth in our social tennis games. For example, I recently played with a younger partner who shouted out to me not to hit a shot that was clearly going out (by at least 2 metres), assuming that, through lack of experience (or loss of memory/faculties), I had not been able to judge that the ball would be out. Having played more than 10,000 sets of tennis (including competitive tennis at an A-Grade level) over more than 60 years, I have a fairly advanced awareness of what shots are going to go out – it’s embedded in my body memory. I can, for instance, when lobbed by an opposition tennis player, chase down the tennis ball and hit it back over my head and land it in the court (the secret is to face parallel to the back fence of the court so your body knows where it is in relation to the court outline). To me, the “blank slate myth” defies logic and denies the richness of skills, intuition, insight and reflexes developed over many years.

Reflection

In thinking about the impact of negative and positive age beliefs, I became very conscious that, despite social conditioning, what we believe about aging is up to us – and our beliefs determine our actions. I incorporated this reflection in the following poem that I wrote recently;

The Choices You Make About Aging

If you are positive, you open up your potential –

life’s joys and pleasures are yours to gain.

If you look, you will see what is possible –

aging models of achievement are everywhere.

If you challenge the myths, your mind is freed,

you can pursue your goals without constraint.

If you remember what you have achieved

you can draw on your sense of agency.

If you exercise your mind and body

you can restore your acuity and strength.

As you grow in mindfulness

through reading, research and reflection,

you can become more self-aware

and free of stereotypes, assumptions and insipidness.

What you believe about aging

influences the choices you make.

____________________________________________

Image by GreenCardShow from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

The Benefits of Positive Beliefs About Aging

In a previous post, I discussed the pervasive impact of negative beliefs about aging. Highlighted in that discussion is the research evidence that negative age beliefs can impact every aspect of our aging process and our quality of life. In that discussion, I drew on the work of Dr. Becca Levy, a pioneer in the area of successful aging and a world-renowned researcher and Yale Professor. In her book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will Determine How Long and Well You Live, she contends that it is critical that we address ageism in our society both as individuals and as a collective.

Becca has a section in the book where she identifies the widespread influence of ageism and calls for “an end to structural ageism” in education, Governmental systems, medicine, mental health, advertising and media, science and the arts. Ageism prevents people from effectively adapting to the aging process, from taking proactive action to maintain their quality of life, from achieving their potential both mentally and physically, and from realising the benefits that can accrue with age.

The benefits of positive beliefs about aging

In her book, Becca draws on her own research and that of researchers worldwide to demonstrate the numerous benefits of positive age beliefs and illustrates these benefits with stories of outstanding achievements by numerous people in multiple fields of endeavour. Ageism is based on the assumption that all people who are old experience decline in mental and physical capacity at the same rate and that this decline is inevitable. Becca’s research and stories of individual achievements demonstrate that each of us can arrest decline, or at least reduce the rate of decline, in our capabilities as we age. Our beliefs about aging are a key determinant of the choices we make and how long and well we live.

In providing research-based claims about the benefits of positive age beliefs, Becca identifies a number of findings that challenge prevailing myths about the aging process. Her research demonstrates the following benefits of this positivity:

Pattern recognition improves with age so much so that neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin, suggests that radiologists past 60-years old should be preferred to younger people for reading and interpreting X-Rays. Daniel is the author of the book, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives.
Indigenous knowledge and memories held by elders in Indigenous communities that have been passed down in communities around the world to ensure the health and continuity of these communities such as in the Indigenous Australian culture. This aspect of Indigenous aging was documented by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her book, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap.
Functional health is enhanced by positive aging beliefs. Becca demonstrates that her research and that of her colleagues disprove the assumption of the “stereotype of debility and decline” as the natural outcome of the aging process. She draws on the example of Sister Madonna Buder, who at the age of 52 undertook her first triathlon with borrowed running shoes – now, at over 90 years old, she continues to compete and has completed in excess of 350 triathlons. Sister Madonna’s view of aging is that it represents “wisdom and grace” and “opportunity”.
Irreplaceable knowledge and understanding can accrue to anyone in a specialised field with experience developed as they age. Becca illustrates this by discussing the experience of a 75-year-old paediatrician called Jonas who had retired from clinical practice “when he was most skilled”. A young colleague asked him for his opinion on what was ailing a baby because he could not work it out. Jonas figured it out “right away”. His young colleague had an instant insight and asked, “Teach me Doc, how’d you do that?” Jonas now teaches “medical diagnosis” at a university and participates in group diagnoses of patients in a teaching hospital. Jonas’s career transition highlights the opportunity for older people to make a significant contribution to society even after retirement – all that it requires is a positive view of aging and a willingness to make adaptions in their career role. Jonas has also acquired new interests and hobbies such as cultivating rare orchards, French cooking, close-up photography and amateur aviation.
Mental health growth – during a placement at a psychiatric hospital, Becca found (contrary to her expectations) that more younger, adult patients suffered from mental illness than older patients and that the latter “can be successfully treated”. Her own research, confirmed by others around the world, also showed that age beliefs heavily impact the nature and quantity of stressors experienced psychosomatically. She found that positive age beliefs helped to mitigate the impact of stressors (even in PTSD cases), while negative age beliefs acted as a “barrier to mental health”.
Longevity – in a significant research study, Becca found that participants who held positive age beliefs “lived an average of 7.5 years longer” than those who held negative age beliefs. ` Other research has demonstrated that non-biological factors such as age beliefs (and social/cultural environments) “determine as much as 75% of our longevity”.
Creativity – contrary to the prevailing stereotype, “creativity often continues and even increases in later life”. Throughout the book, Becca mentions people who achieved “their most creative work at an older age”, e.g., Matisse, Hitchcock, Einstein, Picasso, Bernstein, Lerman and Dickens. She also noted that 65 is the average age of a Nobel Prize winner. Becca also reported the comment of actress Doris Roberts that actresses/actors “get better and better in their craft as they get older”. Michael Caine CBE is just one example. Starring in 160 films over 8 decades, he produced an outstanding performance at age 90 in his last film before retirement, The Great Escaper.

In the above discussion of the benefits of positive beliefs about aging, I have only “scratched the surface” of Becca’s research and findings. However, it is very clear that positive age beliefs can impact us in multiple, beneficial ways – opening up opportunity and the realisation of our true potential.

Reflection

I can relate to Jonas’s experience (recounted above) when applied to a recreational context rather than a professional one. I have continued to play social tennis in my late seventies and recently I played a half-volley, drop shot that left my much younger partner “gobsmacked”. He responded, “Wow, how did you do that? Can you teach me to do that shot?” At the time, I just shrugged but felt like saying:

I can’t teach you as I have never learnt to do that shot – it was purely instinctive, as I was caught “in no man’s land”. When you have achieved in tennis what I have done – played 10,000 sets of tennis over more than 60 years, practised Tai Chi for years (for balance and coordination), and spent numerous hours doing tennis drills – you, too, will be able to do instinctive tennis shots that surprise others (as well as yourself).

Becca’s comment that creativity can increase in later years also resonates strongly with me. I started this blog in 2016 (at the age of 70) and have now written more than 740 posts on this blog alone (my fifth blog). I have reduced my output from three posts per week to one post to enable space and time to conduct manager development workshops (hybrid mode) and to co-author a book with my colleague of 16 years (as our legacy to younger managers and organisational consultants). I am finding that connections and patterns come to me more rapidly and profusely as I read and write and I now write an average of 1,000 words per post (compared to the 300 words per post, I started with in 2016).

In her book, Becca recounts the comments of 69 year old creative dancer Liz Lerman who observed that as we grow old we “don’t need to make major life change to activate creativity’. In her view, “expanding our connections to people” can create life changes for us and spark renewed creativity. I have certainly found this with my active participation in the Creative Meetups hosted by the Health Story Collaborative.

Additionally, I am finding (in terms of creativity) that, as I age and reflect, I am writing more poems that are longer and more complex in structure and scope. In three days, inspired by Kim Rosen’s book Saved by a Poem, I have written three poems – previously I wrote four short poems over five years. One of my recent poems relates to the theme of this blog post and its predecessor about negative age beliefs:

Beliefs About Aging

To be positive, is to see opportunities

To be negative, is to deny potentiality.

Positive age beliefs open new horizons

Negative beliefs hold us captive and inert.

Positivity is openness to reality

Negativity is a closed mindset.

In being positive

Our full potential is possible.

With a grateful heart

I live my positive beliefs.

Reflecting and writing poetry enables us to grow in mindfulness. We come to realise that negative beliefs hold us back. Through mindfulness practices, we can grow in self-awareness, concentration, creativity and resourcefulness – we can become increasingly aware of what is around us each day and what it is possible to achieve.

Photo Credit: The photo incorporated in this post was by Steve Buissinne, aged 74, from South Africa. He joined Pixabay in 2014 and has had 556 photos accepted, 148 of which have been singled out as “Editor’s Choice” – a sign of excellence. His photos have been viewed 32.83 million times, resulting in 19.39 million downloads. Steve’s comment on his Pixabay site demonstrates his mindful awareness of the beauty that surrounds us:

Everything has beauty – photography teaches you to see it

__________________________

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

The Transformative Elements of a Poem

In a previous post I discussed the transformative power of poetry. In that post, I drew on Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words, to illustrate personal transformations that have occurred through poetry, including that of the author and Maya Angelou. Poetry has a special power to transcend our analytical mind and capture our deeper inner landscape. It has a unique capacity to move people out of darkness into light, out of depression into contentment, out of loneliness into connection. In a section of her book, The Anatomy of A Poem (Chapter 5), Kim explains the elements of a poem that generate this transformative power. She links her discussion of the poetic elements to their psychophysical impact on an individual, while acknowledging that each person reacts to a poem differently and may change their reaction over time – rejection can turn into admiration.

The anatomy of a poem

In discussing the elements of a poem that may contribute to personal transformation, Kim identifies four aspects that can influence our reaction – (1) breath, (2) drumbeat, (3) song, and (4) image. These are discussed below to offer a sense of what they may look like and feel like:

Breath – our breathing can be impacted by the pattern and pace developed in a poem through rhythm, line length and phrasing. Rhythm, for example, can create calmness or a sense of urgency. Line length can be slow and ponderous or fast and staccato-like. Phrasing can be regular or irregular with disruption to an established pattern by short statements or punctuation. Surprise and challenge can change breathing patterns because they can pull us up from our habituated behaviours.
Drumbeat – the sense of a drum beating can flow from accentuated syllables followed by softer syllables or broken with pauses. The rhythm of a poem can create a sound experience similar to that of a drumbeat.
Song – a sense of singing can be generated through repetition, rhyme, or rhythm or alliteration as in the repeated “r’s” in this sentence. Words themselves can conjure sounds and their own sound can be a reminder of a song or singing. Resonance in a poem has a unique quality that can reverberate in the listener’s mind and body. Kim also maintains that “rhythm creates entrainment” and entrainment, in turn, “creates passion and movement” – the whole person synchronizes with the poem’s rhythm.
Image – can be created by word-pictures, metaphor, exploring ambiguity or opposites, and challenging linearity or expectations. Kim argues that “the body feels the images” – images that create sensations arising from both left-brain and right-brain activation.

While each component of an element (such as repetition, rhyme, or metaphor) can create an effect, it’s the unique combination of elements in a poem that can generate a transformational impact. In a New Dimensions Radio podcast, Kim discusses her concept of the “anatomy of a poem” and describes poetry, in all its many forms, as medicine for the soul.

Reflection: A poem about tennis

My poem below was inspired by Kim’s discussion of the “anatomy of a poem”. In writing the poem I was conscious of the transformative elements that Kim describes. I did not actively try to incorporate all the elements but became aware as I wrote how Kim’s discussion and illustrations were influencing the shape of my poem, For the Love of Tennis:

For the Love of Tennis

I’m grateful to play tennis again

The slice, the serve, the stroke, the sound.

A different goal

Not to win every point

To play with appreciation

And create surprise.

I’m grateful I can run, bend, stretch and strain

So much I’ve taken for granted.

No longer annoyed at my mistakes

Gratitude that I have the chance to make them.

There are many components of the elements that Kim describes incorporated in my poem. What immediately comes to mind is the alliteration achieved through the number of “s” letters/sounds present – slice, serve, stroke, sound, surprise, stretch, strain. The word “sound” has its own resonance and each type of tennis stroke (e.g. slice or serve) conjures up a different sound. The “strokes” together with “run, bend, stretch and strain” evoke images and conjure up a sense of movement.

There are components of challenge as well as surprise in the poem. There are challenges to expectations (to play to win; being grateful for the chance to make mistakes) along with “surprise” that is reinforced by the word itself. The goal of surprise arose from my need to change my own expectations of what I am able to achieve on a tennis court in my late 70’s. To this day I am able to create shots that surprise my partners and/or opponents (e.g., a backhand, half-volley drop shot; a topspin lob from corner to corner; an unplayable backhand slice; or a half-volley, backhand lob) – so this element of surprise is an achievable goal for me (since I have lost a lot of my strength, speed of reflexes and movement around the court). Surprise, too, is present in the sudden change in line length and equally sudden return to a longer line – eliciting the sense of a “drumbeat”.

Permeating the poem is a strong sense of gratitude – that I am able to play tennis again (after a period of rehabilitation); that I have access to a tennis court, social tennis partners and the equipment and funds to play; that I have been coached, had practice partners and played numerous games of tennis with different players; that I can move (run, bend, stretch and strain); that I can play many different tennis shots and associated spins; that I have played tennis on different surfaces and on overseas courts in France, Port Moresby, England and New Zealand. Finally, there is the personal challenge not to take these things for granted.

Tennis to me, like writing poetry, is one of the many ways to grow in mindfulness. Through tennis, I develop my powers of concentration and my gratitude, creativity, resilience and resourcefulness. I also become more able to “be-in-the-moment”.

_______________________________________

Image by Carola68 Die Welt ist bunt…… from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.