Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Christopher R. Edgar of Purpose Power Coaching.
I used to have trouble taking criticism. When someone suggested I could have done something better—whether it was a superior at work, a loved one, or someone else—I’d feel an overwhelming urge to fight or flee. Sometimes I’d attack, trying to point out flaws in my critic’s statements or bring up their shortcomings. At other times, I’d surrender, meekly agreeing with them in the hope that they’d lose interest. Either way, I responded out of fear, as if my survival were at stake.
It almost seemed, when I was being criticized, like my critic was challenging my right to exist. If I didn’t prove them wrong, or make them relent by passively accepting their accusations, I would die. Thus, it was no surprise that I felt unsafe when someone put me down. It was only when a friend pointed out that I was treating criticism like a threat to my existence that I saw I was trapped in this mode of thinking.
I started exploring ways to free myself from this fear, and the first approach I experimented with was an intellectual one. Each time someone said something I interpreted as critical, I’d start mentally repeating to myself that I was a full-grown adult, and that this person’s disapproval wasn’t a threat to my survival. But this just didn’t seem to do the trick. No matter what I told myself, I’d still feel a chill in my back and shoulders, as if I had a low-grade fever, when I’d feel like someone was shaming me. And I’d want to run or fight to escape that feeling.
I finally found relief when I started taking up more practices, like meditation, yoga and qi gong, that helped me bring my awareness into my body. These exercises helped me notice that the way I felt often depended on where in my body I directed my attention. By bringing my attention into a part of my body, I mean focusing on the sensations I’m feeling in that part. If I’m holding the soles of my feet in my awareness, for instance, I may feel the ground beneath me, my blood circulating, the warmth of my socks, and so on.
I started to see that, when I wasn’t very aware of my body, or my awareness was trained on a high point like my head or neck, I’d be more likely to feel vulnerable or defensive when someone criticized me. But if my attention was on a lower area, like the soles of my feet or my pelvis, people’s jabs didn’t seem to knock me off center. Instead, I felt solid and powerful, as if I were rooted into the earth. This approach worked well, I found, not just when I was faced with criticism, but in most situations I encountered in life.
What I paid attention to in the outside world, I discovered, also seemed to affect my emotions. If my attention was fixed on a narrow area of the world around me, I’d be more susceptible to anxiety. But as I expanded the scope of my attention to include more of my surroundings, I felt safer and more confident.
For instance, if I’m at a social event, and my attention is focused solely on one person or feature in the room, I’m likely to have more trouble relaxing and enjoying myself. But if I take in everyone in the room with my awareness, I’ll feel more secure and have a much better time. And I get the best results—I feel the most secure and composed—when I hold my body and my surroundings in my awareness all at once.
Why does the way I direct my attention affect how confident I feel? As I see it, the more my awareness takes in my body and my surroundings, the more familiar, and even friendly, the world feels to me. If I’m less conscious of what’s happening within and around me, the world seems less inviting, and the risk that something could surprise or even attack me feels more real. It’s as if I’m walking through a jungle, and the more alert I am to my surroundings, the more I’ll feel capable of dealing with potential predators. Thus, where I place my awareness can profoundly affect how I see the world.
On a related note, psychologists suggest that each of us has a tendency to regress to childlike ways of thinking and acting in certain situations. The events that trigger these age regressions differ—some of us may start frantically apologizing and appeasing like shamed children when confronted with an angry person, and others might revert to our childhood habit of screaming when we don’t get what we want—but almost everyone has some of these “trigger points.” This is often because the events that trigger us resemble painful parts of our childhoods.
When we keep our attention on our bodies and our present surroundings, we’re more likely to remember that we’re mature adults when one of our trigger points gets hit, and be able to approach life in a calmer and more resourceful way. As psychologist Susan Aposhyan writes in Body-Mind Psychotherapy
I’ll discuss a few of the exercises I use to pay more attention to how I’m feeling on the inside and what’s occurring around me. By just focusing my awareness in the ways I describe, I’ve developed a more composed and peaceful attitude toward life.
1. Feeling The “Inner Body.” Many meditation teachers prescribe an exercise that simply involves slowly scanning your awareness over each part of your body. Jon Kabat-Zinn gives a particularly good description of this meditation in Wherever You Go, There You Are
Notice how just bringing your awareness into a part of your body helps relax the muscles and relieve any tension that may have been there. Then, slowly move your attention upward through your body until you reach the top of your head, noticing the sensations you experience, and relieving any tension you may have been feeling in the process.
This exercise is also good for shifting your attention away from painful or distracting thoughts and returning it to the present. As the sensations in your body always occur “in the now,” focusing your awareness on them helps to keep your attention in this moment. For instance, when I want to go to sleep, but my mind is clouded with worries or repetitive thoughts, I train my attention on the parts of my body that are in contact with my bed. If I’m sleeping on my side, I focus on the light pressure the bed exerts on my arm and torso. This helps me clear my mind and drift off.
2. “Grounding Out” Your Thoughts. Most of the approaches out there for dealing with negative and distracting thinking are cognitive—they focus on using positive or logical thinking to undermine the unwanted thought patterns. I think many of these techniques are great, and that using the way we focus our awareness to manage those thoughts is another dimension worth exploring.
When I find myself under attack from, or being distracted by, unwanted thoughts, one technique I use is to imagine those thoughts as an electric charge located somewhere in my body. I then visualize myself directing that charge, like a lightning rod, down through my feet into the ground, where the energy dissipates. If I’m sitting, I imagine the energy arcing down through my pelvis into my chair, and from there into the ground.
In Your Aura & Your Chakras
I’ve found that this approach also works if I’m in an interaction with a person that feels a little frightening or embarrassing. If I have the presence of mind to notice where I’m feeling the fear or embarrassment in my body, and direct that energy into the ground, I become able to respond from a calm place, rather than defending myself or running away.
3. Expanding Your Boundaries. The Vijnana Bhairava, an ancient tantric text, prescribes a meditation that goes like this: “imagine spirit both within and without, until the entire universe spiritualizes.” This exercise helps us experiment with a new perspective on who and what we are. On one level, we’re separate, individual human beings. But at another level, we’re all made up of the same energy, or substance. This meditation helps us experience ourselves as part of that universal energy field.
As I understand the exercise, it works like this. Sit alone in a quiet place. Start focusing your attention on the sensations you feel on the surface of your skin. After a little while, you may begin to notice that your skin’s surface, though it may look solid, is actually permeable—energy moves through it into and out of your body. Focus your attention on the movements of energy through your skin until you feel the boundaries between the inside and outside of your body begin to blur.
As you have this experience, notice how you begin perceiving objects in the “outside world” more acutely—almost as if you can touch them without using your hands, or feel them in the same way that you feel your circulation and breathing. Expand the range of your “feeling” to encompass everything around you, including the ground and sky. Consider the possibility that you aren’t just imagining how things outside you feel—that, in fact, there is nothing “inside” or “outside” you at all, because you are everything.
The more I’ve done this exercise, the more I’ve found my awareness expanding to include my surroundings. When I experience firsthand this feeling that I’m more than just one person—that, in a sense, I’m everything there is—I’m gifted with a deep peace and focus. This exercise may sound a little “new-agey” at first, but if you try it I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results.
Copyright © 2008 Christopher R. Edgar. All rights reserved.
Christopher R. Edgar is an author and success coach who helps people transition to careers aligned with their true callings, and find more fulfillment and productivity in their work. He may be reached at http://www.purposepowercoaching.com.
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35 Comments
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Chris
You’re right – there is really no reason we should be held hostage to our rawest instincts.
And as you demonstrated a purely intellectual approach isn’t the most effective way to deal with it either. Not being held hostage to these feelings doesn’t mean we can ignore their existence.
Actually even when you’re not striving to control your fears, the exercises you described are quite effective at helping you concentrate on the task at hand like writing a decent article!
Patrick
veryevolved.com
Hi Chris,
I like the meditation “wherever you go, there you are”. That keeps us in the present. I may also add “wherever you don’t go, you are not there” to stop us worrying about things that have not happened and basically living in the future.
Great post outlining the various meditation techniques!
Great article, Chris. I love the results you get with feeling grounded and noticing your feet on the ground, as well as expanding awareness to encompass more (of yourself, which includes all that is “outside” of the body as well, as you pointed out.)
There’s a quote I like from the book “The Untethered Soul” which ties in nicely here:
“True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection. This is done by constantly remembering that you are the one inside that notices the voice talking. That is the way out.”
I like the tip by Daphne, good point! Only have attention where you are right now
Nice (guest) post, I enjoyed reading it.
Excellent article, Chris! Thank you.
It is very much ‘be here now’…in this fathom long body.
I find that the more regularly I spend time between thoughts–in meditation, or any form of centering (formal or informal), the more reserve I have for staying centered in the trying times.
blessings and continued inspiration,
CG
Excellent article with practical exercises that I can try out. I’ve been meditating consistently for every night now. Hopefully, the exercises here can help expand my awareness. Thanks for sharing!!!
@ Patrick — interesting point about instincts — sometimes I wonder whether people who believe they’re naturally shy have actually just fallen into the habit of focusing their attention entirely on themselves to the exclusion of the outside world, or something along those lines.
@ Daphne — Wherever You Go, There You Are is definitely a bedside table book for me — I highly recommend that and Full Catastrophe Living.
@ Ariel — thanks for the quote — like it says, just watching the ways I habitually react to things in the world has definitely been liberating for me.
@ Alex — glad you enjoyed the piece.
@ CG — that’s true, noticing that moments of emptiness arise between thoughts, and letting yourself stay in that emptiness, does seem to promote peace.
@ Evelyn — I’m glad you liked the article, and I hope the exercises are helpful to you.
Thanks everyone for your comments! Best, Chris
@Chris – oh yes indeed you’re correct if you’re implying that learned behavior (like shyness) is often more habit than natural inclination.
The feelings of fear at feeling shy however are a pretty autonomic, hard wired response.
It’s just how the fear trigger gets activated that varies.
Patrick
Follow the Herd
personally, i tried meditation for like 5 minutes a week ago and it was a good experience.
So my comment will be on your first part on being open to criticism.
Personally, I have been quite open minded all my life, that is in terms of expecting criticism and ideas that were out of the norm.
I got to learn a lot this way.
What I found out recently, is by actually communicating my own thoughts had a great impact on me because the feedback i get from others, it gives me a new perspective and I learn and grow so much more from that experience.
Anytime I feel like I’m being attacked personally I always try to take the other person’s shoes and try to figure out why they’re thinking that way. Usually this helps me both understand their perspective and not feel bad because I understand the reasoning.
Talk about a great personal development story. It sounds like you’ve found a great way to improve your reactions to the inevitability of criticism–turning what was a negative experience into something positive.
Handling criticism can be tough. Finding a way to accept it and to leverage it to your advantage is very powerful.
@ Patrick — yeah, one of my personal goals is to help people rewire themselves, so to speak, so that the fear response you’re talking about doesn’t get triggered so often by so many things.
@ Tom — you’ve pointed out a great aspect of moving beyond the “fight or flight” response many of us have to criticism, which is that it allows us to actually learn from what people say sometimes.
@ Nashville Plumbers — it sounds like that takes some presence of mind, which I’m glad you’ve developed.
@ Dkprosp — I like the perspective that we can actually use criticism to our advantage — I think experiencing it definitely helped me in the end because it helped me discover the spiritual practices I talk about in the article, which have been life-changing.
In gratitude, Chris
Thanks Chris.
It took me a long time to realise that I am my body. I’m still very heady.
At the risk of being offensive (after all I don’t know you at all) I’d like to know whether you were criticised alot as a child. Or where the sense of your life being at risk came from. Perhaps most importantly how you dealt with this experience.
I find the cerebral approaches largely useless for deeper stuff. When they seem to work in my experience it is usually because something has happened in the body.
Thanks for a superb post.
I was about to go out for a walk & decided to go to a website linked to you. Whatever drew me to this article made me decide to subscribe to your postings. I greatly appreciate it.
@ Evan — thanks for the appreciation. My sense of it is that how solid we feel, and how vulnerable we are to disapproval, arises pretty early in our lives. This hit home for me when I was working with my coach and we were talking about how one of my deepest desires was to feel “welcomed into the world,” and she observed that this is what babies coming into the world probably want most as well. A lot of adults are missing that feeling, in my experience. One amazing thing, to me, is that we can actually give ourselves that feeling — we can welcome ourselves into the world.
@ Tina — I’m really glad you liked the article.
I never quite put my finger on how deeply attacked I could feel when being critiqued, but this really nailed it. I appreciate the concrete advice–I’m seriously going to try to focus differently on my body when I sleep (or try to!) tonight.
@ Sara — I’m really glad the article was helpful to you.
Great information, something that could really help in real live!
Regards,
Mario
I really appreciated this piece and seems to be along the lines of what I’m starting to write about concerning ‘inner knowing’.
I’m also working through the book, “The Presence Process”.. are you familiar with it? Yet another approach to cultivating present time response rather than unconscious reaction. Powerful.
@ Mario — thanks — I’m glad you’ve found some practical value in the article.
@ Gina — I’ve definitely been inspired by Michael Brown’s story and his book. He has some great interview videos on the web as well.
Great info and article. I think all of us can relate to that uncomfortable feeling at one point or another. I really like the idea of “grounding out your thoughts” – I never thought about doing it that way like an electrical charge before.
@ Chelle — I’m glad you found the article helpful and that the “grounding” technique works for you. Best, Chris
i doesnt know confidence would have this much worth in ground technique..
that’s great! but i always love yoga not just to make you fit but it improves your inner feeling of confidence.
Great Motivating article Chris. Good Job.
@ Motts — yes, these exercises are different from most of the techniques out there for helping us feel confident, but they do seem to have that effect.
@ Lilian — doing yoga has the same effect for me too. It seems hard to feel anxious when we’re really engaged in our bodies.
@ Marcus — I’m really glad you liked the article.
Good post and suggestions. The overly sensitive to criticism are so because of lack of self-confidence and self esteem. Bottom line.
Hi Jack — thanks for your comment. I agree and I think it’s surprising how much just changing where we direct our awareness can affect our self-esteem from moment to moment.
Chris, it’s an amazing gift to know that you can change the way you feel.
So few people know this, sadly.
hey chris,
Thanks for sharing.
It is always good to be remembered that we are more than our thoughts…
Your article reminded me of Jill Bolte Taylor’s lecture at TED.com where she describes her story of massive stroke.
Fortunately we can experience expanding boundaries in our bodies and souls – by safe, controlled exercises.
This is a great starting point for building confidence.
@ Nicola — thanks for your comment. I’m definitely into getting this message out as broadly as I can.
@ Yuval — I’m glad you liked the article. Taylor’s story is pretty remarkable. It makes the right brain hemisphere sound so much more fun than the left.
Didn’t you get some of your ideas from the “Power Of Now” from Ekhart Tolle? I’m currently reading the book and what you write in this article, is remarkable resemblant to the ideas he exposes in there. Nevertheless, the article is good, what you experienced is truthful, judging by my own experiences, and I can suggest the Tolle’s book, as well, as it was very helpful to improve my awareness and confidence.
Hi Georgi — thanks for your comment. I’m sure we could find exercises similar to the ones I talk about here in yogic texts that are thousands of years old (and in fact that’s exactly where the third one is from). I wouldn’t claim that any of them is 100% original — they’re all inspired by practices that I’ve learned from others. I know Eckhart Tolle talks about the inner body exercise, and several other meditation teachers do as well.
That being said, I think it’s useful to explore applying these spiritual practices in contexts where they haven’t received a lot of exposure, such as working, socializing, etc. in modern society. That’s what a lot of my work is about.
This is a very useful post. I’ve had troubles recently about confidence and I could very well relate to your experience. Focusing on our lower chakras would indeed bring us more power and help us in feeling grounded and secure.
Thanks Jocelyn. I’m glad the approach of focusing on your lower body has been helpful to you too. For me, when I breathe into the base of the spine it feels like I’m a tree with roots going deep into the ground, so that nothing in the world can shake me.
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