How Do You Maintain Your Cool?

And a meditation for when you feel like you can't.

So how was your day?

Me? I am writing this fresh off a 2-hour and 47-minute phone call with Brad, the fifth and final representative I was transferred to at my health insurance provider. He was certainly the most helpful, but he was also not so helpful, despite his best efforts. I won’t go into the details but he referred to my account as being affected, not only by a cyber attack but also a “tsunami of issues” — all on their end. The call ended with Brad asking me to take a “giant leap of faith” that the issue would be resolved “hopefully sometime next week”.

Dare I say, in some respects, this exercise in patience was, and will continue to be, a good one for me. I spent a lot of time on hold, doing the NYT crossword which was filled with delightful clues, but mostly practicing what I preach. Meditation never fails.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I wasn’t upset. It’s a ridiculous situation to have insurance but not have it be accessible. And, truth be told, at one point, about two and a half hours in, I was doing a breathing exercise to keep calm.

“How do you maintain your cool?” he asked.

“Most people can’t do that,” he said. As we all know, people become livid about small things and subject others to tirades and sometimes, violence.

I am reminded that there are bigger problems to tackle, and this annoyance will be resolved, one way or another. We ended the call laughing over ways to manage the stress of spending so much energy with no clear resolution. I call that a win. I will skip over Brad’s stress-relieving ideas here because they were all temporary solutions and not truly helpful. They were funny but alas, we know a better way.

Having a consistent meditation practice has bailed me out of many stressful situations.

When people get rattled, the first thing to go is often their ability to regulate emotion. Having Brad on my side, and working with him, not against him, was my best option for getting this situation resolved. Being angry would only have hampered that. And hanging up would only mean that I would have to restart the process another time.

Still, logic does not always rule, so it’s worth revisiting some basic meditation techniques. The tried and true meditations are the ones I call upon when life’s frustrations, big and small, affect me.

You’re in luck!

The first meditation that most people learn is what I’m offering this week. It’s often referred to as Present Moment Awareness, and it’s a great, great foundational practice. Many meditations are built on the fundamental aspects of this technique. I love to teach this one in person to newcomers, but I don’t feature a bare-bones recording very often. It is a great place to start for new subscribers, and so interesting to revisit for more experienced meditators.

I don’t say this lightly:

If you practice this meditation consistently, it will change your life.

In this meditation, we train our attention as we would a muscle, returning again and again to the present moment. In doing so, we avoid the traps of fear about the future, regret about the past, or being agitated in the present moment. In time, if you cultivate this practice, you will improve your ability to pay attention—to your reactions, your habits, and your surroundings. As an added benefit you will see a big improvement in your ability to stay focused, and the ability to maintain a focus is very important these days. I don’t need to tell you what social media has done to our attention spans.

The instructions are simple.

Sit comfortably. As best as you can, relax. Bring your attention to your breath. When your mind wanders, regather your attention on to your breath. Don’t berate yourself when your mind wanders. Instead, notice the thought or distraction, allow it to fade, and bring your attention back to your breath. Repeat this for ten minutes or so a day. This technique will come naturally to you when you feel stressed if you keep it up.

You have the basic instructions. For more detail, a recording of the meditation is below for paid subscribers.

Have a great week. See you back here next time.

xx Page