Conscious Intention

One essential element of meaningful living is that of intention.  Each one of us develops our own patterns of day to day, year-to-year living; these patterns are essentially habitual ways of seeing and relating to the world.  For example, we take the same route to work every day without really thinking about it. We dress with whatever is clean and available that day with little thought. We brush our teeth before bed, perhaps even floss every day, because that’s what we’ve always done.

A certain amount of habitual patterns is healthy and adaptive way to operate in the world. But it is also easy for these ways of interacting in the world to become stale, automatic…in a sense thought-less ways of living. Dressing without much forethought is a different experience that thinking intentionally about how you want to present to the world for that day or occasion. Brushing and flossing are great habits, but brushing and flossing because you always have feels very different from brushing and flossing as an act of caring and love to your body.

And while driving to work on the same route might be useful, relating to relationship partners or our children in an automated way is similarly disconnected in impact. It takes us away from the moment that is unfolding; the thought-less experience allows us to “be here” and yet not be present. Perhaps you can think of experiences you have had of going through the motions at work, in a relationship, with a hobby.

To shift out of habitual patterns of living and re-engage in your life experience from the driver’s seat, the concept of intention is absolutely key. Operating from intention is about being in yourself –like flying manually, not on autopilot. Living with and from intention is worth doing on a micro-scale—in a sentence by sentence exchange in conversation—and also on a grander scale of planning for the kind of life you value over the coming months and years ahead.  Intentional living is essential for creating a preferred future. Here's how you can do it!

Self-Soothing

When life happens in a way that is overwhelming on a large scale, or when we are experiencing the usual ups and downs of day to day living, it is so important to have strategies for staying grounded. Today I want to highlight a psychological concept that is key in this regard: self-soothing. The importance of soothing goes back to our childhood days and the need for a kind of warm, caring, and protected experience when we encountered the unpredictabilities and stressors of the world.

Soothing is as much about attitude as it is activity

While soothing might be an ideal response toward children when they are distressed, what we each experienced (or not) as responses at home may not always have been ideal. In part, this is why many people do not really know how to go about self-soothing—it may simply not have been modeled. In addition, as children develop and grow (unfortunately, especially so for boys), they may get social messages that equate soothing to being infantile. But soothing is a normal and healthy response to distress and has nothing to do with gender or age. In fact, it is just as essential to have this strategy in our toolbox as adults!

In therapy, some clients will comment that they soothe themselves by doing something like exercise or watching T.V., or using alcohol or drugs; as such, they are confusing soothing with distraction. Distraction can indeed be a useful strategy for some situations, but soothing involves a connection with the self, whereas distraction takes us away from ourselves. As such, it tends to be of limited usefulness, particularly in the longer run. Often, we rely primarily on distraction as a means to cope with distress, we will end up feeling like we have to keep running from part of ourselves.

So, how can you go about incorporating soothing into your life? First, consider all the different ways you can be gentle and nurturing to yourself. Soothing is not just about “doing something”—like having a warm bath. It is equally about the attitude you pair with the activity. Soothing requires that you tune into what you are saying to yourself and ease away from being critical. Now is the time for permission and easing up any restrictive self-talk. Acknowledge the sense of distress—move away from blaming yourself to being more responsive to yourself. 

Second, consider some possible activities you could try—going for a walk, visiting a place you feel safe and positive associations with, brewing hot tea, talking with a trusted friend, asking for and receiving hugs, and writing in a journal are a few ideas to consider. See if you can come up with a list of things you already do and add a few new ones in! Experiment and practice building your self-soothing capacity.

Building Intimacy

Building intimacy is an ongoing process!

Developing connected relationships with those around us is a critical part of having a meaningful life. As much as many of us might like the idea of emotional intimacy, it isn’t always easy to create. One reason for this is that intimacy is all about being known—and that entails some vulnerability through sharing about who we are, how we feel. Intimacy is also about knowing the other person, hearing and seeing another’s perceptions, experiences, places of commonality and those of major differences, including perhaps things that are hard to hear.

Intimacy can also be challenging because people are not static beings—we are ever changing and having more life experiences. So in a sense, intimacy is not just about getting to know another and be known by him/her, but about the ongoing process of knowing ourselves, knowing others, and the sharing of that experience relationally.

So how do we go about building greater intimacy in relationships with those around us? Courage and curiosity are essential qualities you need to call upon. Have the courage to risk some sharing of yourself, and have the curiosity to reach for the other person’s experience through your questions. Ulitmately, you want to ask questions and listen to what it is like to be the other person, and help them to know what it is like to be you in the world.

When couples in my counselling practice are looking to build their intimacy, here are some examples of questions I might give for homework. The questions should be asked of and shared by each partner about how they see things in a back and forth dialogue together.

Relationships: Closeness and Intimacy are Not the Same

Both closeness and intimacy are vital ingredients to a sustained healthy connection. Often we hear these terms used in reference to relationships as though they are the same. But in fact, they refer to different facets of our connections with others. 

Closeness has to do with our experience of feeling drawn towards another person, and the expression of that feeling. We can have feelings of infatuation, passionate desire towards someone we have only recently met. We may yearn for closeness—wanting to be physically close or near someone we care about. In closeness, we draw together. Examples of closeness on a larger scale include: responses of communities pulling together after a natural disaster, or fans congregating in support of their favorite sports team.

Intimacy is related but different. It has to do with the experience of knowing another person and being known by him/her.  Intimacy is all about your knowledge and understanding of a person, and the degree to which that person knows you in return.  Intimacy continually develops as we mutually share about ourselves and are open to receiving others’ sharing in a relationship.

This distinction between intimacy and closeness is important because you could have a relational connection with someone where you spend a great deal of time together (closeness) but do not really know each other (lack of intimacy)—or perhaps that you stop knowing each other because you have been around each other for a time and feel familiarity “fills in the blanks”.

Familiarity is really the name we give to something when we begin to make assumptions. The wonderful thing about familiarity a relationship is that it can provide a sense of comfort, predictability, and ease in a relationship. This is true of any kind of connection with someone, not just a romantic relationship. For example, office workers, sports teams, and emergency response personnel thrive on the predictability that comes with familiarity.

But familiarity’s assumptions also bring with them a less visible problem: we cease intimacy. In other words, we no longer are curious because we feel we “know” the other person. The problem here is that none of us are static beings—who you and I are now is different from last week, last month, last year—even though many things are still the same. In relationships, it’s important to continue getting to know your partner.

Another aspect to intimacy is that knowing someone also means knowing things about your partner that are hard to hear, or that trigger some of your own frustrations or disappointments. But true intimacy is knowing another person as who he/she is, a complex being, not just a simplified image that we may hold of the person, or latch on to because it is safer or more pleasing.

So, in this sense, intimacy is vulnerable, intimacy is joyous, intimacy is risky, intimacy is truth, and intimacy is the basis of respect and love, because we cannot fully love someone who we do not know.

Now that you know about the difference of these ideas, in my next blog update, I will be sharing with you some tips on how to build greater closeness and intimacy with those around you.

What Do You Stand For?

It’s hard to make the most out of our life experiences if we don’t have a sense of who we are and who we are growing into. Having a vision about this is key. I want to share with you an important question I return to periodically in my own pursuit of making the most of it: "What do I stand for?"

“What do I stand for?” is really about your values and principles, but this question goes further to invite you to sift through and hone down what is really critical for you at this particular place along the road in your life. This question tends to move us away from notions of accomplishments and outcomes and makes room for the process of life: the day to day of who we are in the world, and how we are in the world.

You can also explore this alongside other related questions to work with the process a little further. I invite you to take out some paper and jot down what comes to you. Here are a few to get you started:

“What have I stood for in the past?”

“What am I wanting to stand for but find challenging to get to?”

“When I look at role models, idols, heros/heroines, or just people I admire in a certain way, what 

are they standing for that draws me toward them?”

As you become clearer on what you stand for, where do you see that you are already honouring this in your life? Talking it over and exchanging answers to these kinds of questions make for some great conversation, and it might just help you identify another piece in your journey to make the most of it.

How to Build Better Communications: First, Make Contact

A really important part of meaningful living has to do with meaningful connections with others in our lives. We may spend a lot of time with family, friends, partners, co-workers, but the quality of these relationships really isn’t about how much time we spend together. In fact, you may have examples from your own life of old friends who you see once in a blue moon, yet it feels as though no time has passed when you get together. What makes these connections different? Making contact!

Making contact is the experience of really being present and open to connect with someone in conversation. It is a way of listening and relating that allows you to connect more effectively and more meaningfully with others.

Here are some tips for building up your Making Contact Muscles!

Working with the Impossible...?

Recently I was thinking about the question “what is possible?”. It struck me that while we may not consciously ask ourselves this on a day-to-day basis, we are indeed answering it each day with how we live in the present and view the future.

As a trainer promoting wellness in organizations, I cringe at the extent of what I call “rah-rah-rah” books which seem to easily exhort notions like “the sky is the limit, just believe in yourself”. As a therapist, I feel this sort of philosophy oversimplifies people’s complex psychologies, and is much like tasting a teaspoon of sugar for a remedy: sweet indeed, but not long lasting and no nutritive substance to it. Surely, the way we think about things is very significant, but it is not always easy to change. And it says nothing of the very real challenges in the outside world that we may come up against: poverty, discrimination, competing demands to name a few.

Use Questions (Not Answers) to Get Out of a Rut

A few years ago, I was talking with someone who felt overwhelmed--she was pressuring herself over and over to “figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of my life”. She was frustrated and worn down. So, where to begin in a situation like this?  Here are 6 Steps to get the ball rolling again...

Welcome to Make The Most of It!

What is this blog all about?

Simply put, one thing we all have in common is a limited amount of time on the planet. How will we use it? How should we go about making the most out of our lives?

In my work as a therapist for the last 15 years, I have realized that so much of our dreams, conflicts, desires, relationships and emotional experience is in some way connected to these questions. I have been reflecting more on this question in my own life as well as working with clients in my practice and organizations invested in employee wellness as they explore issues connected with these ideas. I'd like you to join me as we blog our way along to wellness and meaningful living!

This blog is a series of thoughts on this question and others related to well-being and meaningful-life-making. My aim is to go beyond a "bucket list" or scorecard mentality in this exploration. Getting the most out of life has little to do with "doing everything", and far less to do with consumerism than we have been persuaded by advertising companies. Rather than providing simplistic answers to this important question, I want to introduce you to useful psychological concepts and practical strategies for your consideration. The goal of all this? To start creating greater meaning in day to day living right away, with a vision to make the most of our life experiences!

I welcome your comments and if you enjoy the blog, please recommend or link to others to grow our virtual community!

Regards,

Alex