Hi, welcome back for the third module of the course. Hopefully you had some success this past week approaching the stressful events in your life a little more mindfully and that some good things came as a result. But if the week felt hard for you, if maybe you felt mindful one minute but mindless the next or struggled with the meditations or found that coming up close and personal to your true self was more difficult than you anticipated, go easy on yourself. Becoming more mindful isn't a quick fix to life's problems and it's definitely not a easy discipline to habituate. The practices associated with mindfulness will help you learn to take life less personally and to move beyond your thoughts, but it takes time and a fair amount of commitment. It also takes a willingness to investigate some of the most challenging parts of who you are. It can be a really humbling practice. You'll see this for yourself if you stick with it. This next module is an extension of something we've already talked about a little bit, which is the impact that our attitude or approach has on any given situation. These are the beliefs or mindsets that orient the way we handle situations, the way we sort out what's going on and what we should do. Our mindsets can help us spot opportunities, but they can also trap us in self-defeating cycles. Let me give you an example. Recently, my partner and I were invited to a dinner party hosted by some of our neighbors who live down the street. We were one of four couples and besides the couple who had invited us, we really didn't know anybody that was there. The evening began smoothly enough with the kind of polite conversation that happens between people who don't really know each other very well. Things like kids, recent weather, sports, superficial low-key topics. But as the night wore on and folks loosened up a bit, the subjects of the conversations began to deepen and shift and someone brought up what's happening right now in American politics, which at least in 2020 at the time of this filming is a topic that has the potential to be pretty divisive. People on both sides feel very, very strongly about their positions and the struggle to be open and to listen to one another is real. This group at the dinner party was a mix of people. There were people there who represented both liberal and conservative points of view. Now, unless I'm really comfortable with a group of people, my typical MO in a situation like this is to just keep my head down. I'm a little shy in general, I don't like to be in the center of drama or conflict and for the most part, I try and have a live and let live attitude about life. I don't expend a lot of energy trying to convince people to think like I do. But there was a woman at the party who engaged me directly, making it impossible for me to duck out of the conversation and as luck would have it, we didn't share the same views at all. For 45 minutes, we went round and round with one another, just each trying to convince each other of their rightness. Pretty soon I just had to politely stopped the conversation. We weren't really listening to each other. Our conversation wasn't productive and I felt upset and mild despair in my body, listening to her opinions and conclusions. I really couldn't see how she thought and felt about the things that she expressed and she really couldn't see how I could think or feel the things that I expressed. We were both locked in fixed views about what was happening in our country and what needed to be done about it. As I went home that night, I marveled at the time and energy I had wasted and I kicked myself for not being able to navigate the conversation with more grace and ease. What I really wanted that night was to connect with a new community. What I ended up feeling was defensive and closed off. I spend a lot of time thinking about that night and about the polarity and divisiveness in this country right now. I've been wondering how people with different ideals and principles might find ways to come together and stay together. And while I don't yet have all the answers to that question, what I do know is that regardless of the topic, all of us have the tendency to believe a little too fervently in the righteousness of our own beliefs and views. This creates very real difficulties, tensions, suffering, and harmful experiences in the lives of many people. In essence, what we've done is lock into a fixed way of seeing and believing. This limits our ability to remain open and non-judgmental, to feel compassion or be vulnerable. It creates a false and separate sense of self and it prevents deep connections with others. When you look at your own life, can you see any places where you might have fixed views or a fixed mindset? My guess is that this is something that you can relate to, you're human after all. In the next several videos, we'll be unpacking our fixed views. We'll be starting with examining the role that our beliefs play in shaping experience and the challenges that come when we have absolute and non-reflective attachment to our viewpoints. Once it's clear that our fixed mindsets don't serve us, we'll shift gears and focus on approaching life's difficulties with more of a growth mindset. I'll share my thoughts on how mindfulness supports our development in this way and helps pave the way to more resilient and flexible thinking. By the end of the module, my hope is that you'll understand what he meant when Jon Kabat-Zinn said, "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." So let's go get in the water.
