Step 4: Action
You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf
--Jon Kabat-Zinn
Action Exploration (click here)
1. What kind of mover are you?
2. Do you move slowly and deliberately, or quickly and impulsively?
3. Do you prefer movement or stillness?
4. Do you move gracefully or do you feel clumsy?
5. When you move, do you think of the goal or do you enjoy the ride?
6. Do you hold yourself back or do you plunge headlong?
7. Do you have trouble starting things or do you start too many things that end up in chaos and incompletion?
8. Do you do what you need to get your needs met or do you waste energy on trivial distractions while feeling unsatisfied?
• As we move now from Mobilization to Action, we also move into the part of the Awareness Cycle that shifts from passive to active. Sensation and Awareness tell us what we need, Mobilization gives us the energy to get it, and Action begins the process of doing just that.
• So, working on Action means to watch and learn about how we do or don’t allow our energy to become Action, how we Act, and how we get stuck either in inaction or in fruitless action.
Some Action Stucknesses:
Introjection: Perfection vs. Good-Enough
This polarity is fueled by the introjecting (swallowing whole) of perfectionism. We could call this introject “The Maven”.
“Maven” is Yiddish for “expert” or “connoisseur” (from Hebrew, meaning “teacher”). It has the connotation of being a know-it-all, too.
If you are afflicted with the great god Maven, consider romancing a different archetype, the good-enough god of Acceptance.
Acceptance is remembering that our ideals of perfection are just that, ideals. They are not gospel truths, etched in stone for all time. While they may reflect our experience of Quality, they are calcified stereotypes, absolutist demands that make our lives a living hell.
In fact, far from making life better, perfectionism is highly-correlated with depression and anxiety.
So, cultivate Acceptance as you approach Action.
Remind yourself that life has many shades of gray, that errors can lead to surprising pleasures, and that the Quality of our lives is just as improved by enjoying what is, rather than what we think ought to be.
Everything we do suffers from the idea that we could have done it more perfectly and everything we do thrives on the pleasure of accepting it just so.
Does this mean don’t strive? No. Let’s not get perfectionistic or absolutist about Acceptance. We can strive, we can practice, we can improve our Actions without the curse of the demanding maven of Perfectionism.
There is grace and ease in accepting good-enough, a kind of groundedness and humility that says, “I’d rather enjoy this moment than curse it for not being some other moment”.
Retroflection: Inhibition vs. Aggression:
Action Exercise: Exploring Retroflection (click here)
Allow your attention to “scan” through your body, from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head.
Notice where there is tension and tightness, and, particularly, where you seem to be “holding on” with your muscles.
When you notice a “holding on” place, intensify the holding a little bit and wonder what you are doing with those muscles, what the action of the holding-on seems to do.
Let go of the holding deliberately, if you can.
Notice the emotional tone that emerges when you focus on bodily holding and how it shifts as you play with the holding and letting go.
When you have finished your scan, return your attention to your breathing and then slowly open your eyes.
• Retroflection is the act of over-inhibiting our Actions, and, in its fullest form, turning our own energy against ourselves.
• Action requires healthy aggression, the lively, forceful flowing of our energy into attacking whatever task will get us what we need.
• When our healthy aggression is met with too much resistance, control, disapproval, or punishment from these giant Others who raise and teach us, we learn to inhibit our aggression too much.
• We internalize the prohibitions and criticisms, turning against ourselves the energy that we should be turning outward.
Introjection: Nice vs. Tough:
Depending on what was reinforced in childhood, our Personas can be either heavy on Nice, or heavy on Tough.
If we were raised to be overly-concerned about how our Actions affect others’ feelings or to be submissive, we may inhibit Action to prevent crossing boundaries, hurting feelings, or overshadowing Others.
Conversely, if we’ve been reinforced for being tough, very task-oriented rather than feeling oriented, or very dominant, our Actions may be quite forceful, rigid, or harsh.
For every overly-Nice Persona, there’s a Tough Shadow-self that is undeveloped or hidden, and thus underused when toughness or forcefulness is helpful. Likewise, those with Tough Personas have trouble finding their Nice-Shadow, and can’t modulate their actions to make them more-graceful, considerate, and measured.
Whether you are trying to toughen up your Ms. Nice or soften up your Nurse Ratchet, feel the freedom to use both ends of the Nice/Tough spectrum depending on the situation. This is the wholeness of the Mensch you were meant to be.
Action's Deeper Meanings:
Being the Verb:
“I used to listen to a lot of music.” She paused, trying to find the words for what she was thinking. “And that’s what I wanted to be,” she finally said. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said. She answered, and it sounded as if she’d never formulated this thought before, as if it was news to herself. “I wanted to be the music,” she said.
--Alan Arkin (about Meryl Streep), An Improvised Life
“Danny. I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe...that makes things happen. All you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking. Let things happen...and be...the ball. Hear nothing. Feel nothing. Find your center. Picture the shot, Danny. Picture it. Turn off all the sound. Just let it happen. Be the ball. Be the ball, Danny…You're not being the ball, Danny.
Well, it's difficult with you talking like that.
Ok, I'm not talking. Stop talking. I'm not talking now. Be the ball.”
--Brian Doyle-Murray, Harold Ramis, & Doug Kenney, Caddyshack
Reification means to make a Thing out of something abstract.
The deepest reification we do is in making a Thing out of our Selves.
We are so taken up with having a Self, an Identity, that we continually watch and critique this imaginary Self. This means that how we Act gets tied up in having to be consistent and ruled by that Self.
And, on the deep level, there isn’t a Self. We are not really frozen entities with stereotyped action-patterns. We are actually fluid, dynamic Consciousness that takes the temporary forms of Sensation, Awareness, Identity, and Movement.
In Action, and, as we’ll see, also in Contact, Satiation, and Withdrawal, we work, on the deeper level, to de-reify our Selves, to return to the impermanent, dynamically-flowing Consciousness that is our truest Being. We practice being a Verb, not a Noun.
When we practice being the Verb, we let go of our desperate grasp of ownership and the bondage of Identity, and we allow the flow of energy moving through us to be us. There is great freedom and flexibility in this.
In Taoism, this is the practice of “Wu Wei”, which means “non-exertion”, “inaction”, or “effortless action”. It means to forget the Self, to reduce the strain or effort of trying too hard to get it right or be somebody, and to allow the energy of Action to flow intuitively.
Action and Mortality:
How do you write like you're
Running out of time?
Write day and night like you're
Running out of time?
Ev'ry day you fight like you're
Running out of time
Like you're
Running out of time
Are you running out of time?
How do you write like tomorrow won't arrive?
How do you write like you need it to survive?
How do you write ev'ry second you're alive?
Ev'ry second you're alive?
Ev'ry second you're alive?
--Lin Manuel-Miranda, Hamilton
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or a saw a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
--Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom speaks of “the primitive dread of death that resides in the unconscious-a dread that is part of the fabric of being, that is formed early in life at a time before the development of precise conceptual formulation, a dread that is chilling, uncanny, and inchoate, a dread that exists prior to and outside of language and image.”
Yalom points out that this primitive death anxiety often is transformed into more emotionally-manageable forms and defenses, and so the original source, the dread of non-existence, is overlooked. However, once we see how very baked-in to our psyche is our need to exist and to be someone and to matter and to live this life we love, we begin to see how it undergirds so many other urgencies, anxieties, distractions, and defenses.
An unconscious and habitual mad rush through life is a kind of non-presence, a continual Being Here while desperately trying to Get There. Maybe you have your own version of this, or some other anxiety or habit that, at its root, is driven by the fear of nonexistence.
When we practice Action, we can begin to become aware of the fear of death, of ending, of non-existence and begin to come to terms consciously with it. Rather than rushing madly and self-protectively to the next thing, we can, instead, being to savor this Action in this Now. We learn to treasure this moment of Action right Now, because right Now is the only time we are alive.