Wandering Aimlessley

Michelle Uris

When we are in a new city, or mountain valley, or country, we find it easy to reside in the present moment. Every detail around us is new and exciting. Foreign street corners speak in dreamy song; morning dew along our backcountry trail radiates a celestial presence so new, we mistake ourselves for being under a different sky. We are mesmerized – engulfed in each moment. We find the subtle beauty in those around us. Whether street vendors or pigeons or crashing waves, we eavesdrop as though opening our ears to prayer. When we travel, we do this naturally. Because we have set the intention to discover newness, whatever it may be. We put our expectations aside, and instead approach our wanderings with curiosity. We are outside of ourselves, interested in what every turn has to offer.

The mindfulness practice of aimless wandering is a way to bring these dreamy, traveling inspirations into one’s everyday life. In many forms of meditation, we place our attention on our inward experience, such as our breath or the sensations arising in our body. When we aimlessly wander, we usually move through space (although the practice can also be done sitting), and let our senses be the focus of our thoughts. We take things in, just as they are.

We connect with our inner child: naturally curious, inspired, unassuming, amused, and connected.

So why is aimless wandering a helpful practice, and how do you do it? Aimless wandering is helpful in that it grounds us in the present moment. It helps us appreciate the world around us, it slows our thoughts down, it gives us a break from anxiety, depression, worry, and stress, and by engaging our curiosity, we find ourselves naturally inspired. We may see a spike in our creativity, playfulness, and gratitude. And at the end of it all, we are guaranteed a different perspective.

There is practically no wrong way to aimlessly wander. Simply focus your attention on your senses, and explore! Take a walk. Pause to examine the things that catch your eye, your ears, or your sense of smell. Maybe you are pulled toward the swirly pattern of bark on the neighbor’s tree. Feels its texture! Let it remind you of something. Then let your thoughts go again, and keep wandering. Sit and watch the world when a bench or patch of grass calls your name. Step into a store you’ve never thought of exploring. Smell the smells. Pretend you just landed in this neighborhood from another planet, and you are seeing earth for the first time. What baffles you? What makes sense to you? What draws you in, and what repulses you? Be curious, and then let the thought go, and continue moving, without needing to draw any definitive conclusions.

Wander for ten minutes on your lunch break. Wander after work, knowing you’ll end up home eventually. Wander with the dog, an equally inquisitive companion. Wander alongside your partner and family, detaching and reattaching like seaweed in the rocking tide of your curiosities. At the end, share with each other. Or journal and paint what you felt. Or just continue your practice, perhaps sitting on your porch, watching the leaves quiver in the wind.

Perceived Partner Demands

LaShelle Lowe-Charde

It could be that your partner really is making demands of you*.  It could also be that your partner is really making a request and you mistakenly perceive a request as a demand.  When this is the case, you likely encounter a look of exasperation on your partner's face as s/he wonders how to ask you something in a way that won't be heard as a demand.  

Reflecting on your own experience in this situation you might notice that you are saying things to yourself like:  "It's better to just say yes and preserve the peace."  "S/he will be upset if I say no."  "Why is s/he is always telling me what to do?"  "As usual, I don't have a choice."  These are all signs that you might be hearing a demand where there isn't one.

If you have a history of experiences in which people close to you couldn't hear a "no" to their request without lashing out at you in some way, then you might hear lots of requests as demands.  Perhaps even your current partner has gotten pretty reactive in the past when s/he was met with a "no" from you.  In this situation a disappointed partner isn't just a disappointed partner.  Looking through the lens of past pain, a disappointed partner means there's a threat of pain and punishment.

To avoid this potential pain, you might find yourself trying to manage your partner's emotions.  If s/he is anxious, you are anxious.  If s/he is disappointed, you rush to make him or her happy or try minimize or explain away the difficult feelings.  You aren't able to tolerate your partner's upset, because it is linked to punishment and pain for you.

This is no way to live.  It's stressful and over time builds toxic resentment in you both. To shift this dynamic, there are a few key things to which to attend.  For you there are, at least, these three things:   

1. There is the practice of noticing when you hear a demand and then checking it out with your partner to see what's true.  
2. Then there is setting a boundary when your "no" or you choosing what's right for you isn't met with respect.  
3. Lastly, there is the practice of tolerating the anxiety or defensiveness that arises in you when your partner makes a request.   You want to be able to manage your own reaction long enough to find out if there is really a demand and to mindfully receive your partner's respect for your choice when it is present.  When your partner is respecting your choice, it doesn't mean that s/he doesn't feel sad or disappointed.  It does mean that s/he takes responsibility for meeting needs in another way and maintains a loving connection with you.  This last one is really the core work of creating a new association to setting boundaries with people you love and seeing that neither you nor the connection is threatened.

For your partner, there is to earn your trust by making requests in a clear way, and showing that s/he can tolerate the disappointment of hearing you say "no" without resorting to pressuring, punishing, inducing guilt by naming all the things s/he sacrificed for you, or other forms of disrespect.  If your partner isn't able to offer this, then it's time to get some extra support for your relationship.

Life gets a whole lot easier when you and your partner hold each other as capable of being with difficult emotions without having to rescue one another from them and without lashing out.  In addition to all the difficulties mentioned above, you also want to say yes to requests because you care for your partner's happiness and want to contribute to that.  In those moments when your choice doesn't please your partner, you can still express caring.  Caring comes in many forms - empathy, affection, honesty, warm tone of voice, etc.

Practice

Take a moment now to reflect on a moment when you have felt the pull to say yes to someone's request without considering your own needs and preferences.  What could you have done to make space for your own needs?  What would it have sounded like to check in about whether the other person was coming from request or demand energy?  How might you have expressed what came up for you hearing the request?

Setting Boundaries

What makes boundary setting difficult?

If you have difficulty setting boundaries, there's a good chance that you grew up in a family where setting a boundary (asking for something outside the family norms, saying no, or attempting to make a decision for yourself) was punished, shamed, or simply ignored.  As a kid, your first imperative is to belong to your parents and family.  This is a deeply wired in response that is meant to ensure your survival.  In order to maintain a sense of safety and belonging, a child will wall off parts of herself.  She will put any part of her that threatens safety and belonging on a shelf and engage in behaviors designed to protect herself.

Research shows* that these behaviors that were adopted in the face of threat can be very difficult to change.  An attempt to change them triggers the sense of threat experienced in the original traumatic situation.  This sense of threat implores you to stop what you are doing, to back away at any cost.  Your heart starts pounding, your palms sweat, and adrenalin rushes through you.  Your body tells you to flee the threat and return to homeostasis as soon as possible.  Really though, you are lucky if your symptoms are this obvious, because it's easier to see how the reaction doesn't match the situation and therefore you can be more clear about what's really true in the moment.

What's more common is that you have adopted a set of complex decision making processes that keep you from ever facing threat at this level.  You learn which situations to avoid and how to navigate through potentially threatening situations in such a way that the sense of threat remains minimal.

So in learning to set boundaries you may be faced with two fundamental challenges:

1. To go into compassionate relationship with the acute, heart pounding, reactivity that occurs when you move forward with setting a boundary in what you perceive as a threatening situation.
2. To wake up to all the unconscious ways you sacrifice who you are in order to avoid ever facing threat.

The first one, acute reactivity, you can meet with all the tools you have for centering, the mental clarity that this is arising out of a past threat, and the soothing mantra that it is okay for you to set boundaries.  If these three aren't effective at grounding you, you will notice another layer of reactivity.  This layer of reactivity will likely show up in the form of defending your right to set boundaries by (either in your head or out loud to someone else) making the other person wrong, giving all the good reasons why you have a right to set that boundary, making yourself wrong for setting the boundary, attempting to shut the whole system down through alcohol, comfort eating, or distraction.  Lastly, in the long term, each time you can stay grounded through this acute reactivity and see that your life is not actually threatened as a result of setting the boundary, boundary setting becomes easier and less triggering.

The second challenge requires a subtle study of your experience, decisions, and results of those decisions.  With unconscious decisions to avoid being triggered look for these symptoms:

• a feeling of being small or shrinking
• accusing others of taking advantage of you, using you, or ignoring you
• feeling disconnected
• a sense of inauthenticity as you attempt to give empathy or achieve harmony
• regret or pain about not getting what you really want
• complaints about how others get what they want but you don't
• making someone else wrong (selfish) for engaging in self-care and saying no to what they don't want or asking for what they do want

As you see both of these forms of reactivity more clearly and with compassion, you will become more free to make the choices that serve you and others.  To begin to change your relationship to boundaries at this level, it's important not only watch for these patterns, but to also look for opportunities to set boundaries in situations that hold a sense of security for you.  For example, you might practice setting boundaries with a trusted friend.  This boundary setting practice might look like saying no to his idea of where to eat or asking for what you want when it's uncomfortable and would be easier to let it go.

Practice

Take some time now to review an agreement that you have made with someone recently.  Mindfully feel and reflect on each part of the agreement and notice if there are any symptoms from the second kind of challenge (bullet points above).  If so imagine yourself changing the agreement, mindfully feeling your body and grounding through any physiological escalation.  Find even the smallest action to move you towards setting a boundary in this situation.