A Subtle Mindset Shift for Summer

Summer is a beautiful time to become more aware of what’s around you, consider who you are in the world, and who you really want to be. Looking around at the ever-growing plants, hearing the buzzing bees, or staring out at the ocean’s horizon can make you appreciate the interconnectedness of life.

After all nature by design is interrelated. For example, in Utah there is an aspen clone of over 40,000 trees called Pando that originated from a single seed, and spreads by sending up new shoots from an expanding root system. Trees, interestingly, are also social creatures that communicate to cooperate and are linked to neighboring trees by an underground network of fungi that resembles the neural networks in the brain.

Photo credit: Grand Canyon Trust

But at the same time, life can be a paradox. It can be difficult to accept as a human that we are only one in seven billion, especially when tribalism is rewarded in our culture. Just look at the news headlines and what we’ve endured the past few years—conversations often dominated by “us” vs “them”. 

Conventionally, we are taught –whether consciously or unconsciously—that happiness comes from getting exactly what we want, sometimes by coercing and manipulating others who disagree with us to take our side. But one of the first ethical tenets of yoga is ahimsa or do no harm. What if we choose instead to enter these conversations and live from a place of compassion, empathy, and more understanding?  

As the Dalai Lama puts it, “our basic mind should be very neutral.” This comes from the Nalanda Buddhist tradition, in which, he says, monks are trained always to ask why and to never simply say yes. Not even to a master—not even to His Holiness. Here are three tips to look at things in your life a little more openly: 

1.     Not knowing—giving up fixed ideas about yourself and others. This happens with sound.

2.     Bearing witness—know you cannot know what you cannot know, observe with compassion.

3.     Taking loving action—when you suspend your viewpoint, a new viewpoint arises.

And a helpful journal prompt for anxiety that I have used over the years about fears:

1.     Write down a fear or anxiety

2.     Ask yourself what you are fearing or anxious about—write those down

3.     Then take the reasons you are anxious or are afraid, then write back to yourself the reasons why those things are not true