30 Day Meditation Challenge

Hello friends! Previously I talked about meditation as a tool to bring more presence into our lives. I've decided I want to make meditation a more regular part of my current routine. Practice what you preach, right?

I've been an avid meditator during many periods of my life, but lately my practice has fallen off. I want to bring it back into my life in a structured way. In the past, I've often practiced meditation as way to cope during difficult periods. During those stressful times, meditation brought a great deal of inner-peace and a sense of space into my life. I'm curious as to how my life can transform if I commit to a daily practice when I'm in a mental space of relative peace and happiness.

I've challenged myself to a 30 day meditation challenge. Every day I will start my day with a 10 minute meditation. It may be a guided meditation or it may be simply sitting in stillness. I'm choosing 10 minutes because it's a manageable amount of time. I'm not a morning person, but I know if I leave my meditation until the evening it simply won't get done (and as much as I love my warm bed, getting out of it just 10 minutes earlier is not going to kill me).

As I've mentioned, I've meditated at different times in my life and I also practice Reiki self-care, so stillness is not something that is entirely new to me. What is new to me is the idea of committing to 30 straight days of it! Part of the reason that I'm choosing to share this on my blog is I'm hoping it will give me some extra accountability.

What am I hoping to achieve by the end of the challenge? More presence, more gratitude and more peace. I would love to have some fellow travelers on this meditation journey, so please feel free to join me!  I'd also be thrilled to hear from you. Leave a comment on your favorite meditation style, a guided meditation you enjoy, or what you do to bring more space and awareness into your life!

Growing Our Tolerance for the Unknown

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

-Agnes DeMille

I was listening to a New-Agey podcast the other day-- because I do that kind of thing sometimes. And the host was saying that he thought that people thousands of years ago could communicate telepathically. His rationalization was that people couldn't write letters and if they were separated for long periods of time, they must've found a way to communicate with each other. His hypothesis was that they must've done so telepathically.

I didn't necessarily agree with his hypothesis, but it got me thinking... about human beings today and how our intolerance for the "unknown" is so low.  This random podcast led me to my own hypothesis: humans who lived thousands (or even a hundred) years ago must've had a much higher tolerance for the unknown.

A thousand years ago, information was extremely hard to come by. Books were rare and usually written in Latin. According to Google, only 6-15% of the MALE population was literate in the Middle Ages. There must've been a great deal they would've had to come to peace with not knowing.

Go back to 1915, just a hundred years ago, there was no internet, no television, no radio. There were telephones and it was possible to send a telegram, but it was expensive and uncommon for most people to do so frequently. People mainly wrote letters to communicate. If you wanted information, you had to go to a library or ask someone. Alternatively, you might have to live with the fact that there was a question that you could not answer.

Now there's us in 2015, living in the age of technology. In New York City, most of us walk around with palm-size computers in our hands (or at least within arm's reach) for at least 16 hours a day. Today, information is literally ALWAYS at our fingertips. Is there something you don't know? Not a problem, just Google it and you have your answer-- or in most cases, you have pages and pages of answers.

This has revolutionized the way we relate to the world. It has had many positive benefits, sure, but there are some negatives. I would argue that it has greatly lowered our tolerance for dealing with the unknown. We can find answers or confirm what we already know on an infinite number of subjects. "What was Robert Downey Jr's most recent movie?" "How do you make a chocolate soufflé?" "Should I worry about this funny looking mole on my right elbow?" 

So when we are confronted with the questions we can't "Google," it's very disquieting to us. We have the answers to millions of questions one click away, but we don't have all the answers. "Am I going to get cast in that show?" "Did I do a good job at my callback today?" "Does my agent still like me?" Then there are even bigger life questions like, "Am I always going to work at a day job?' "Will my relationship last?"  "Is there a God?" "What is the meaning of life?" 

Of course, all of the above questions were always unanswerable (even before the internet). However a hundred years ago, there were also many more questions in any given day that were unanswerable.  And so we were more used to living with the unknown. We were confronted with it all the time. Today, we are still confronted with the unknown, but information is so easy to come by that it makes the answers that we can't have intolerable! And this is backed up by the increasing rates of anxiety in our culture. According to an  article in Salon, almost 1 in 5 people are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in any given year and 28.8% of the population had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives.

How does this relate to acting you might ask? Well, it certainly relates to the anxiety that many of us experience when we're waiting to see if we booked a job or how nervous we get before we go in the room for an audition. Below are some coping strategies that may help increase your tolerance for the ambiguity we face in our lives. 

• Unplug: Turn your smart phone off or put it away two hours before you go to sleep each night. If you do leave it on, resist the urge to check Instagram or Facebook just one more time before you go to bed. You'll sleep better... and really you won't miss much. Give yourself the opportunity to sit with the uncomfortable feelings that might arise. I promise you they will pass and you will have given yourself the gift of growing your tolerance for the unknown.

• Get outside: Studies show that people who live in less populated areas suffer less anxiety and depression than those who live in urban areas. If you live in a city, make it a priority to get out of the city and into nature weekly. This doesn't even mean you have to leave the city. If you live in New York, go sit or take a walk in Central Park, Prospect Park or go to the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx.

• Meditate: Every day find time for stillness. Meditation can be what you want it to be. I don't necessarily mean sitting in the lotus position and contemplating your navel (although that can be great.) Meditation can be listening to a guided meditation, it can be sitting quietly and focusing on your breath or on a mantra, it can even be coloring in an adult coloring book. The most important thing is that you're taking space in your life for quiet stillness and contemplation.

• Exercise: This is perhaps the most important item on the list. When we exercise we create more space and flexibility in our bodies. Creating space in our bodies also creates space in our minds. Exercising regularly is a proven fighter of anxiety and depression. However, even if you don't suffer from either of these conditions it can still help to create more ease and joy in your life. 

I'm not sure previous generations were telepathic, but I'd argue that people who lived in another era experienced more wonder and more uncertainty in their lives. And as a consequence, they had greater tolerance for the unknown. We can cultivate a greater tolerance for the unknown in our lives through the above tips and also through simply connecting with our breath, grounding, and having compassion for ourselves. 

The Inner Critic

Being an actor seems like the most fun job in the world. You ostensibly get to "play pretend" for a living. But sometimes for myself, and perhaps for you, it isn't fun. When my inner critic gets involved, it can suck all of the joy out of the process.

I spent a few years solely teaching and not acting because putting my ass out there was too scary. This thing I used to love stopped being fun because my inner critic got so loud that it might as well have been called my "inner bully." Recently I've come to realize that avoiding acting (or whatever your creative craft is) doesn't make the fear go away, it just shows up in other aspects of your life -creative or otherwise.

A few weeks ago, I started taking an art class. I used to love painting and I thought it would be fun to take a figure drawing class. I was having a great time doing gesture drawing when the teacher came up to me and made an innocent comment: "Don't go over that line you just drew." I froze up. The pleasure of creating went away and that seemingly innocuous statement activated my inner critic. "You don't belong here." "It was a mistake to sign up for this class." "You don't know how to draw." "You're the worst artist here."

Then I got mad! How dare my inner critic show up here! This was something I was supposed to be doing purely for fun. Is my inner critic going to show up and steal my pleasure and my joy every time I do something creative?!? That's not fair!

I had thought my inner critic only came out to play when I was acting. Now I realized it will rear its ugly head no matter what the creative endeavor. I've been giving fear way too much power in my life. It's been dictating what I do and don't do. And the more power it has, the less joy I experience.

The inner critic is always going to be there looking for the right moment to strike. If I can't get it out of my head completely, how can I work with it so it doesn't control me? I have a few ideas:

• Recognize it for what it is. It is the voice of fear; it is NOT your true voice.

• Treat it as something separate from yourself. Imagine your inner critic as a friend who sits next to you. Would you let someone speak to you the way your inner critic does? I wouldn't! Say to your inner-critic, "Thanks for the input, but I got this!"

• Acknowledge the fear is there. Don't deny it. Do your creative work anyway. By not practicing your creative work, you've shown the inner critic that it's powerful, that it can control you and can prevent you from being creative. Instead, "feel the fear and do it anyway."

• Take time to journal. Writing down what you're inner critic says can be so helpful because when you see it on the page, you can call it out for the bullish*t that it is. Writing it down will help you discover what is underneath the critic and that is a huge step towards quieting its voice.

• Take time for stillness every day. Meditate or go inward in a way that works for you. Meditation has a cumulative effect that will start showing up in other areas of your life. When you meditate, you're a more centered human. And when you're centered in yourself that voice isn't going to be nearly as loud. Plus, you'll be able to recognize the "inner critic" more quickly (rather than falsely identifying the voice as your own).