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How I established a daily meditation practice. And made it stick.

March 7, 2017 by Nabil Leave a Comment

Meditation Log, Day 1: Can’t wait to meditate. Found a nice cushion, good spot in my room, I can see it now. Me 2.0 here I come! Oh and today’s session was so great. I feel so balanced and centered.
Day 2: Is it time to meditate again already? Huh, that snuck up pretty quick. I made it! Two days in a row!
Day 3: I’ll make up for it with an extra session this weekend.
Following week: Let’s not talk about.

If you’re anything like me, this song will sound familiar. Be it meditation, or any other long term habit I try to form, if it takes sustained effort, at some point (for me) it has a tendency to fall apart.

I sincerely wanted to keep a daily practice. When I meditated I noticed how much better I felt throughout the day. When I was feeling anxious or stuck, I wished I had stuck to my practice. And yet sooner or later the number of days I skipped grew larger than those on which I sat. Thinking a new angle might work, I dove into the meditation “deep end” and committed to a 10-day silent meditation retreat. If I can make it through this — I thought — a daily practice will be peanuts in comparison. Well, I did make it. And after the retreat I indeed managed to meditate daily. For less than a week. There goes that theory!

In March of 2016 I completed a roughly two year stint of meditating every day. With a few exceptions, my track record was close to 100%. As I reflect on how I (of all people) was able to establish a daily practice and make it stick, here are a few of my lessons learned

Designing A Practice That Sticks

My approach to meditating daily was essentially based on sheer will. When that continued to unravel, putting in place two elements did the trick:

1: Set an achievable goal (no matter what)

Eyes heavy, body spent from a full day of traipsing through the city: how am I going meditate today? Alarm buzzing, full day of travel followed by dinner with friends or family: when am I going to find the time? I often ran into such quandaries, all of which seemed to conspire to push meditation off my schedule. Knowing that moments like these would keep coming up, I asked myself: what is the minimum amount of time I can sit no matter what my day looks like. For me, the answer was 15 minutes. Whether I was sick, traveling, or it was New Year’s eve, no matter how busy I was, I knew that if it was indeed a priority, I could make room for a quarter-of-an-hour in my day. (Note: at this point I had been meditating — on and off — for a while. If I were just starting off, I may have set that time to something that felt like less of a haul — say 5 minutes).

2: Don’t “break the chain”

Now that I had an achievable daily goal, how was I going to stick to it? For some folks peer pressure works well (buddy system!). For others, some sort of punishment (20 bucks for every day skipped!). For me, the trick was positive reinforcement. The don’t-break-the-chain technique (as described by Jerry Seinfeld) works like this: Get a calendar (or print one off your device). Put it in a visible place (e.g. fridge, bedroom wall). Every day you complete your chosen task, mark it with a big X. The more days in a row you complete said task, the longer the “chain” of Xs will become. Don’t. Break. The Chain. After a few days, I grew proud of my unbroken chain. A couple of weeks in, and the disappointment I anticipated from breaking the chain outweighed my desire to skip that day. I was eager to keep the chain going. It worked! Thanks Jerry

Making It Work Day-to-Day

As my practice became more consistent, I began to run into some unexpected obstacles. To help keep my practice going, and get deeper into it, I learned some tips and tricks along the way. Among them:

Be scrappy

When on the road, I sometimes struggle to find a spot to meditate. Over time, I’ve learned how to make do with what’s available. Staying at a hotel or friend’s house and missing a cushion to sit on? I stack a couple of pillows and slide them under my butt (sorry friends). On a bus, plane, train, and no cushions or pillows nearby? I’ll grab a seat in a chair, keep my back straight (if I lean back I have a tendency to doze off), and I’ll go for it. Out and about with no private space to sit? Park benches and grassy areas can be great. I’ve noticed that when traveling through airports, some now have spaces for prayer or reflection. Score. And it’s a nice way to get out of a noisy terminal — double score.
The double-stack (left); meditation spaces-a-plenty, if you’re okay with being that oddball with their eyes closed (center, right)

The double-stack (left); meditation spaces-a-plenty, if you’re okay with being that oddball with their eyes closed (center, right)

Experiment with time of day

When first starting my daily practice, I found that evenings worked best for me (I had trouble getting motivated in the mornings). Today I’ve grown to prefer mornings: I find it easier to focus because my mind hasn’t yet fully “spun up” with all of the day’s thoughts. It kicks off my day with a nice sense of accomplishment. And it gives me a “touchstone” when I face a challenge that day. Maybe that’ll change in the future, and experimenting with when I practice has kept it feeling workable and fresh.

Noise can be a friend (and so can earplugs)

A dog barking. A car honking its horn. A conversation down the hall. Depending on the time and place, these sounds can be hard for me to escape, and can made it difficult for me to meditate. A teacher once shared that rather than fight such distractions, I could use them to help me. Just as challenging our muscles through lifting weights strengthens them, meditating in a noisy environment can help sharpen our focus. Today I try to welcome these sounds. That said, when I’m feeling particularly distracted, I’ll throw in some earplugs. I’ve found that playing some white noise on a speaker helps too

Insert when necessary

Use a timer

When meditating I often have a poor sense of time. Was that 10 minutes or 15? When I first began sitting I would find myself distracted by that question, especially if my sit fell on a busy day (and I really needed to get going once my time was up). Using a timer helped solve this problem. The basic smartphone app will do. I’ve enjoyed using a meditation timer (one of many on your app store) which gives me some added features: a 30 second “warm-up” to get in place before the time starts. A nice chime to ease me into and out of my sit. And a helpful log of my past sits.
So many bells

So many bells

Do it with others

I always thought of meditation as a solo activity and, while 99% of my practice is by myself, I’ve been surprised at how practicing with others shifts me into a lower gear. Maybe it’s the “energy” of being in a group. Or just the shame of getting up and quitting before anyone else (I’m outta here!). Time and again I’ve found that group sits have upped my game (Meetup is a good resource for finding them). Also, when meditating in groups they’ve generally gone longer than what I was used to practicing on my own, which, painful as it was in the moment, made my daily 15 minute practice feel shorter and easier.

Some years ago, while working a project for a client in the Middle East, in the middle of the day my office would clear out. Where had people gone? One day one of the employees took me a few floors up and showed me: a large room, chairs pulled to the side, where employees would gather to conduct their afternoon prayers. How interesting, I thought, that there existed a place where, in a professional setting, taking time for self-reflection was built into the daily schedule (and into the office space!).

In the US some of the companies we work for (and public spaces we cross) are getting better at accommodating quiet reflection. That said, in my experience, to make it work no matter what we still often need to be scrappy. On the plus side, as I think back to the moments when I felt I had an excuse to skip a day — because the space wasn’t easily available, I was embarrassed to do it in front of a family member, I was dealing with a mosquito, or my ears were ringing from a night out on the city — it’s the moments where I pushed through that in retrospect most strengthened my practice. And sustained my commitment to it. An experience that has — incidentally — bled over to some new daily habits, such as curbing my sweet tooth or avoiding social media.

Today my practice continues to take work, and I’ve got my work cut out for me to stay focused when I sit, and continue to go deeper. In the meantime, flipping through my meditation log gives me a sense of accomplishment, and boost of encouragement to keep it going. Here’s to your practice doing the same for you.

Happy sit.

// As published on Medium.

Filed Under: Prose Tagged With: grit, meditation, mental health, mindfulness

How meditation helped me get a handle on compulsive thoughts

February 19, 2017 by Nabil 1 Comment

“You can hide ‘neath your covers / And study your pain”
 — Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road

Having driven my car from Pennsylvania to California, here I was sitting in the bleachers of a small theater in Los Angeles, taking my first improv class with the storied Upright Citizens Brigade. I had made it! The dream I had — of spending the summer exploring my interests — was finally coming to fruition. And yet, as I sat with my classmates while our instructor shared yet another nugget of his (boundless) improv wisdom, rather than focusing on him, my attention was 100% trained on — my little pinky.

You see, at some point in the previous weeks, I noticed that when I angled my wrist in a certain way, and tried to bring my pinky closer to my other fingers, it trembled. Fear surging through my body, struck with panic, my mind raced around until it latched on to a startling conclusion: my trembling pinky is a sign of a neurological disorder. I must have MS! Or Parkinson’s.

This routine, of feeling that something in my body was amiss and pegging it on one ailment or another, had repeated itself many times prior, and continued to in the years that followed. Be it gum disease, a heart condition, diabetes, an STD, restless leg syndrome, you name it — if I could find a pretext for it, I found a way to worry about it. Gorgeous sunny days spent in a state of panic. Conversations with friends or family where my body was physically present but my mind locked in an intense medical self-investigation. And when I got the all-clear from a medical professional (as I did from a neurologist for my pinky): an intense sense of calm. Hallelujah! I’m okay! And, inevitably, in the days that followed: the surfacing of a new fear.

With the patient ear of a mentor, and a therapist skilled in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, over the years I found a way to make sense of this two-step I danced. I came to understand how investigating these illnesses (damn you Google & WebMD!) fed my fears, rather than diminished them. How, often, my compulsive thoughts were themselves symptoms of other— completely unrelated — unresolved issues in my life. Such as a work assignment that intimidated me. Or how I was going to stay afloat financially while working as a freelancer. In addition to helping me make sense of my habits, my mentors also gave me some tools to help me to avoid falling into the trap I was so good at laying for myself. One such tool was meditation.

Now I knew that meditation generally helped manage stress. And I had felt some of its benefits in the (sporadic) practice I had developed. But it was in developing a daily practice over a couple of years that I’ve come to know how to relates to getting a handle on my compulsive thoughts.

First, meditation gave me a better shock-absorber. Ever driven down a bumpy road in an SUV? Pretty smooth right? Coffee in one hand, drumming the steering wheel to a good beat with the other, life is good. Now have you ever driven down a similar road in a sports car? The coffee quickly turns into a Frappuccino. Hands are white-knuckled just to keep your car moving in a straight line. Just like a sports car has more tightly wound shocks (for better handling at high speeds), my mind and body too were tightly wound (for better freak-outs). Any external stimulus (such as an errant thought about a disease I might have) and I had little capacity to deal with it. It instantly jumped into crisis mode.

Meditation afforded me the ability to recognize the feelings that such thoughts elicit and, rather than react to them when they came up (by say, freaking out, Googling symptoms, booking a doctor’s appointment, or (often) all three!), I learned to stay with them. Funnily enough, as I did, the feeling had a way of dissipating. Like putting a sugar cube in water.

Second, by helping me get better in dealing with scary thoughts and emotions, meditation gave me a greater capacity to look squarely at uncomfortable questions in my life — questions I artfully swept under the rug, but that in practice lurked under the surface and “acted out” by triggering my compulsive thoughts. Dreading an upcoming work assignment? What part of it was dreadful to me? Fearful of how I am going to work for myself and pay my rent? Well, what is my financial strategy? Maybe some financial planning is in order after all. And wouldn’t you know it — the more I’ve looked into such questions — the fewer freak-outs I’ve had.

I sometimes see meditation portrayed — in Instagram snapshots and glossy check-out-line magazines — as this wonderful luxury to indulge in, preferably while outfitted in Lululemon™ and surrounded by floating votive candles. As if it were some sort of chocolate truffle, to be savored when convenient. Perhaps that’s true for some, and for me there is little glamour in the practice of meditation. I’ve recognized that this “pattern” of compulsive thoughts is deeply ingrained in me and — without proper care and feeding — will resurface. Much like an alcoholic is one for life — no matter how many years they’ve been sober — I am forever really good at having compulsive thoughts. And much like a drug for depression can help restore a chemical imbalance in the brain, for me meditation helps break the connection between my thoughts — the emotions they elicit — and the pre-programmed actions that ultimately get me stuck. It’s a prescription. Knowing full well that if I stop my practice I’ll be “off my meds” and, while I’ll have added a few free minutes to my day, sooner or later I’ll be right back where I started.

Though I do sometimes light a candle.

*   *   *

Oh and how did the improv course go? I learned that improv is really, really hard. But Jason Alexander (George Costanza from Seinfeld) happened to be in the audience for our class show! A character who I suspect knows a thing or two about compulsive thinking.

// As published on Medium.

Filed Under: Prose Tagged With: meditation, mental health, mindfulness, thoughts

if i could travel through time

February 12, 2017 by Nabil Leave a Comment

what would my great-grandpa say?
as he found his seat in a slick fusion restaurant
robe pulled to his knees
to reveal his slip-on shoes making contact with the ground

what would he do, as he sat across from me
would he study my hands, scouring for traces of how i earned my keep?
or would he sit back and bask in watching me place our order
seemingly commanding a small army of busboys and waiters
our tribe produced a chief!

what would it be like for me to look into my great-grandfather’s eyes
would they be welcoming portals into births he celebrated and deaths he mourned?
memories of his friends sharing a story by candlelight?

or would it be like staring into a wall
the concrete slab of hardened operator unimpressed with our circumstance
“you’ve lost your hair – why aren’t you married yet”?
or: “tell your father he owes me some money”

i’d like to think we’d get along fine
we’d finish our last bites of food and make our way outside

where he’d take me by the wrist and lead me to a nearby collecting pool
where he’d teach me how to make a flute from a piece of reed
and twine with its roots
where he’d tell me a salty story about when my grandfather was a teenager
and give me advice on what to look for in the mother of my children

so that one day they may have children
so that one day those children may have children
so that one day of them may sit alone at a restaurant
on a warm Sunday evening
and wonder

what would my great-grandpa say?

As originally shared at Words Tell Stories:

Filed Under: Poetry

Teaching Design Thinking via Workshops: Four Lessons from the Road

February 4, 2017 by Nabil Leave a Comment

A couple of years ago, if you had told me I would be down on all fours in front of a room, letting one of my workshop participants lead us through a series of cat-cow stretches, I would have laughed in disbelief. And yet here I was last December in Singapore, joining my participants in doing just that.

In 2015 I set an intention to travel more, and to move from consulting in design thinking to enabling others to use the tools of design thinking for themselves (“teaching how to fish”). Some 65+ flights later, with opportunities to coach workshops across the US, Kuwait, India and Singapore, the universe said yes.

One byproduct of this experience is that – with that much floor time – I had the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes as a facilitator. And learn from a number of talented colleagues and participants along the way. Thinking back on what I’ve learned in this last year about teaching (or coaching) design thinking in a workshop format, here are four of my most favorite take-aways:

Lesson 1: It’s all about managing energy
No matter how brilliant the material is – or how mellifluous I think the sound of my voice may be – keep it a one way conversation (i.e. me standing and talking) and before long I lose the room. Eyes glaze over. Cell phones magically make their way into hands. Content starts to get lost in the ether. Solution? Get the participants more involved. For example, rather than asking a question to the room, have participants ask it of each other. In pairs. Or in groups. If it’s a deeper dive into a topic, have participants do some research and present their findings to the room. At times, a front-of-the-room style presentation makes sense. And most times there are other – more engaging – options to draw upon. Other tactics to keep participants engaged (without wearing them out): think of the days’ activities as sprints; keep work focused and tight, then work in ample breaks. Play music during breaks (and some longer activities) to lighten the mood. Beverages are great! And yes, when necessary, do a round of stretches (or other warm-up or improv exercises) to shake things up. My goal for the day: a room of participants who feel like they’ve just played a great game of (insert your favorite sport here): energized, spent, and feeling that the day has flown by.

Lesson 2: Want participants to take risks? Go first.
When leading workshops I often ask participants to present out a concept poster. And I used to push them to go big. Sell it with conviction! Pretend your life depends on it! Every once in a while I’d get a brave volunteer or two who’d be willing to go big – and get a little silly – in front of their colleagues. Inevitably, though, we’d fall into the (understandable) pattern of a typical boardroom presentation — polite, buttoned up, “acceptable” for the workplace. No matter how hard I pushed participants up front, the end result was often the same. One day I coached with an instructor who did something different. He had made his own (fake) concept poster – and he went first. Eyes blazing, mouth foaming, he gesticulated and stomped while selling the heck out of a totally nonsensical product. I was entranced. Stunned. Laughing out loud. With that much energy injected into the room, the next team couldn’t help but hit it out of the park. And the next teams followed suit. My take-away? If I’m asking participants to do something out of their comfort zone, start by modeling it myself. Hear me roar!

Lesson 3: Being lazy can be good
When setting up for a session, I like to hang up the set of templates we’ll be using and pre-label them, as a way of creating a visual reference of our work that day. I once supported a coach who had a different idea: have the participants do it. The scandal! Here I was, being paid to co-run a design session, and I’m having participants do the dirty-work? Here’s why he was right. First: if my intention is to teach participants how to facilitate others, what better time for them to take their first steps in that role than when I’m there to provide feedback? Second: giving these tasks to participants frees me up to do other – more valuable – things, such as connecting individually with folks in the room. Or noticing the patterns that are emerging (Are people engaged or distracted? Are teams collaborating or is one person running the show?). Being “lazy” can extend to bigger tasks as well, such as asking participants to present out a design method they’ve researched — as they say, “the best way to learn something is to teach it.”

Lesson 4: Less tree, more forest
Dawn was just beginning to break and I was (literally) screaming into a pillow. Here I was, a couple hours away from leading a two day workshop for a client, and I had two competing agendas – neither of which I had led before, and neither of which I totally understood. Panic had struck. Not sure what to do next, I stepped away from my laptop and made a couple choices. First: I decided I needed a pep talk. Second: I admitted to myself that there was no way I was able to follow either agenda, as they each had a lot of intricacies that I didn’t have time to understand. My final option? I’d have to throw away the script, and use my gut. To prepare, I laid out a high-level structure for two days that I could make sense of and that I thought would offer value to the participants. I dressed down (long t-shirt and sneaks) so that I would be comfortable, and I kicked off our session with our chairs in a circle. Conversational. Making eye contact. Feeling out where the interest was in the room. The session ended up going great. In fact, one participant even requested I come back to help run another session at their company. Would I use this preparation style for every session? Not unless I want an aneurysm! When running workshops I’m often stressed because we’re a few minutes behind schedule: I’m caught up in making the day go as originally planned, rather than focusing on the needs of the room. This episode was an unexpected gift – a stark reminder of the value of being present, having fun, and not letting the details get in the way of delivering the big picture.

In closing..
If I’ve learned one additional lesson from this last year it’s that failure is my own best coach. I’ve bored, confused and frustrated more than my fair share of participants and co-instructors. It’s wanting to avoid these moments – and experimenting with new solutions – that has kept me engaged in this practice, and allowed me to be less fearful and more present in the workshops that followed. When things do come together – a workshop can be as energizing to me as (I hope) it is to the participants. And, after all, isn’t that the goal?

If you’re about to set off on coaching your first design thinking workshop — (try and) have fun! If you’re an old hand at this, I hope some of these tips are a helpful reminder of the options at your disposal.

// As published on LinkedIn.

Filed Under: Prose Tagged With: designthinking, facilitation, workshop

on sadness

January 17, 2017 by Nabil Leave a Comment

beneath my room
flows a river
every now and then
a song
cracks the floor
and the river
swallows me whole

*  *  *

my sadness
– when it comes –
grabs me with its skinny arm
pulls me below the surface

the next morning
my clothes are crisp and clean
and underneath my feet
one mile of bedrock

*  *  *

i’m crying
in the shower
my face
contorted with pain
are these tears i’m tasting?
or just water

who cares?
isn’t this funny?

Filed Under: Poetry

on love

December 19, 2016 by Nabil Leave a Comment

you love me as you love
yourself

maybe even
a little less

isn’t that

bliss?

*  *  *

fill my cup
once you’ve filled yours
or soon
we’ll both
be thirsty

*  *  *

your first touch
melts a wall
inside me

how would it be
to feel this warmth
without you?

Filed Under: Poetry

December 12, 2016 by Nabil Leave a Comment

I found you in a house
Wrapped tightly in coarse wool blankets
The winds of an open plane
Buffeting these pine-wood shingles
Shuddering
With the breath of an overwhelming God

I looked into your eyes and saw a boy
Stalking the planes
Putting flint to steel
Dragging a sled with the breadth
Of his honey pot torso

Together we walk the banks of this river
Your hand in mine
I feed you scraps of meat and dried fruit
Your regale me with stories of men and women
I’ve never met

And as we make our way through gullies and forests
Meadows and mountain
Beside us the river flows
As it does
Patiently waiting for us to step in
And float away
Just me and you

http://www.laoudji.com/?p=1719

Filed Under: Poetry

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