Facing Up to Difficulties
When faced with difficulty, a common response is to throw more and more resources (physical or emotional) at it, in an attempt to fix it or change it. Dr Gill Hicks recognised that this practice was pointless. She says that she’s ‘had to readjust my thinking to not expect recovery because my legs aren’t going to grow back … I just have to learn how to adapt; otherwise, I’ll be stuck in a bitter mess’.
Instead of being stuck in ‘a bitter mess’, Gill decided to set herself ten extreme physical challenges to force her to face her fears. She has taken her anger and channelled it in a way she hopes will make the world a better place. She has managed to create a ‘constructive anger’, she says, and feels ‘so fortunate to have this second chance’. She doesn’t ‘want to spend a second of that time in bitterness’.
Gill Hicks was selected to carry the 2008 Olympic Torch in Canberra, Australia, being recognised with an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List (2008–2009) for her services to charity. In 2013, Gill gave birth to a little girl, describing that experience as her finest achievement and greatest acknowledgment of the brilliance and resilience of the human body.
After her horrific injuries, Gill naturally faced many ‘mind the gap’ moments where she thought about how things should have been, how she would like them to be, or how they ought to be (for details about minding the gap, see Chapter 10). Her decision to accept what happened helped her to park her bitterness and inner torment and move forward, becoming a force for good in the world.
The following pages explore new strategies for relating to difficulties.
Accepting difficulty
When people encounter difficulties, the natural response is to want to push them away. You may try to push them away by attempting to solve them, by ignoring them, or by trying to distract yourself. Unfortunately, this approach often doesn’t work. Your difficulty simply shouts louder to make itself heard.
When you encounter difficulties, you can either continue to suffer by pretending that everything’s okay or embrace a new way of looking at things – simply accepting yourself, accepting what’s troubling you, and turning towards it, befriending it. You can do this even if it scares you or you don’t like it.
Acceptance isn’t a sign of weakness or defeat, as is clearly illustrated by Gill’s story (see earlier sections). It’s not about detaching from the difficulty; it’s about embracing it and getting acquainted with it at a deeper level, accepting it as it is. You pause, you allow the difficulty to step onto your field of awareness, you let it be, you gain a clear picture of how it is, and then, when you’re ready, you calmly decide what happens next. Doing so provides you with the time and space to respond. Mindful acceptance gives you choices.
Consider this Jamaican poet Barbara Dixion’s poem ‘Acceptance’. Barbara was involved in a serious car accident that killed two of her relatives. Doctors told her that due to the injuries she sustained she should give up the idea of an academic career. She ignored their advice, studied and worked hard, and is now a celebrated poet.
- Dear self,
This is who I am
This is all I’ve got
These are my mistakes
And everything I’m not
I’m not asking for your love
I want you to accept me
Let go of these chains
Set me free
Yes I mess up
And I’m nowhere near perfect
But are the bruises and scars
Really worth it?
Barbara Dixion (Used with permission)
What do you take from this poem? Do you accept your mistakes and deficiencies as they are? Are the bruises and scars you inflict upon yourself for your perceived failures and inabilities really worth it?
Try to accept and value yourself for who you are. Yes, acceptance can be difficult. It’s a common stumbling point on WorkplaceMT courses. Some participants find it difficult to accept themselves just as they are. They may have experienced years of parents, teachers, friends and work colleagues trying to force them to change into something that they’re simply not. Other participants view acceptance as a sign of weakness – of giving up – which, of course, is not the case.
Approaching difficulty
In Mark Williams’s and Danny Penman’s best-selling book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, they tell a story of a king who had three sons. The first two were handsome, clever and popular. The third son was a bit of a liability, so the king pushed him further and further away – both literally and metaphorically. He threw more and more financial and physical resources at trying to keep his problem son at arm’s-length. Eventually, the king realised that the sheer effort involved in keeping his son away was disproportionate to the actual difficulty that would arise if he simply learned to live with him.
When you encounter a difficulty in life, what do you do? Do you, like the king, expend time, energy and resources trying to make it go away or hold it at arm’s-length? Alternatively, do you (like Gill Hicks earlier in this chapter,) embrace the difficulty and find a way to live with it?
As we discuss in Week 4 (Chapter 11), some things are worth the time and energy to fight for, while fighting other things simply drains you of energy and achieves little or nothing. Acceptance is a matter of choosing your battles wisely. It’s the sign of a strong and pragmatic leader rather than an act of weakness.
Acceptance has two key steps:
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Notice
Simply notice and acknowledge the thing you’re seeking to accept. Try to avoid the urge to push it away or suppress it in any way. Simply accept it as it is.
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Approach.
Approach the difficulty with an open mind. Try to see it as it is without attaching any further meaning or inferences to it.
Noticing, approaching and accepting in a calm and open manner prevents rumination and, as a result, stops things from escalating further in your mind. By following these steps, you’re able to meet the things you find difficult and simply park them, allowing you to focus on something more productive. Approaching and accepting difficulties can be tough, but doing so is worthwhile and prevents your life from being further blighted by mental suffering.
Approaching difficulty exercise
Spend a few moments selecting a difficulty you want to work with today. Try to select an ice-cube-sized difficulty rather than an entire iceberg!
When approaching difficulties, practicing a familiar mindfulness exercise before you start is a good idea. Doing so will help you to settle a little and be in a more receptive mind state to actively approach and explore your chosen difficulty. If you do as we recommend, you can skip Step 1 from the following list because you should already be sitting in an appropriate posture.
You can also play MP3 Track 6 for guidance.
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Settle yourself into your chair, with both feet firmly planted on the floor.
Settle yourself into a comfortable, upright dignified position.
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Focus your attention on your breathing, exploring the sensations of the breath coming in and the breath going out.
If your mind wanders, don’t worry. Just congratulate yourself on recognising that your mind has wandered, and refocus on the current sensations of breathing. -
Bring to mind the difficulty you have chosen to work with and explore today.
If you’re a visual person, place it on an imaginary workbench so you can explore it in more detail. If you’re not a visual person, simply get a sense of how it feels to be sharing your space with it.
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Starting at some distance away from your difficulty, explore it from the top, bottom and sides.
Does it take on a visual appearance? If so, what does it look like? Is it solid? Is it still or in motion? Like a movie? Does it evoke any feelings or emotions? If so, what are they? Can you detect any sensations in the body? If so, explore them and notice where they’re manifesting in the body. Do you feel any aversion or discomfort? Is it possible to accept it and stay with it?
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Approach and explore your chosen difficulty with kindness and curiosity.
Stay in being mode – that is, being with the experience of the difficult encounter. If you find yourself trying to find solutions to problems or alternative ways to behave, you’ve slipped into doing mode. Kindly escort yourself back to the present-moment experience of observing what’s going on. If things feel too difficult, remember that you can let it go, and return back to your breathing at any time. -
Try to move a little closer to the difficulty that is sitting on the workbench of your mind.
Again, explore its visual form if you can see one. Is it the same, or has it changed? If it has changed, what has changed? Notice any feelings, sensations or thoughts that being in this proximity to the difficulty evokes. Has anything changed? If so, what? Things may remain the same or may change – simply accept your experience as it is in this moment.
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Try to move as close as you can to the difficulty.
Again, explore its visual representation, thoughts, feelings, and sensations (if any). Notice what remains the same and what, if anything, has changed. Remember to be kind to yourself throughout this exercise; doing so will help you to get the most from it and hopefully help you to release any tension that may have arisen.
- Let the difficulty go, and once it has vanished away out of sight, shift your attention back to your breath for a couple of minutes.
- When you’re ready to do so, open your eyes, ready to return to your day.
Reflecting on your experiences
Before reflecting on your own experience on the approaching difficulty exercise, consider the experience Dan had. Dan is an events coordinator who decided to try the approaching difficulty exercise on a difficulty he was experiencing with a ‘demanding’ client. When told to ‘place the difficulty on the workbench of the mind’, he said, ‘It was just like watching a movie. I could see [the client] walking round the venue, tutting and criticising. I felt my muscles contract and tighten. Quite frankly, it was really unpleasant’.
Dan tried to relax his muscles, but the minute he returned himself to the movie playing out in his head, he found himself tensing again. He decided to return his focus back to his breath again. He decided to give the exercise another try. Again, the movie in his head started to play in glorious Technicolor. This time, he decided to stick with it a little longer. He told himself, ‘It’s okay to feel like this. This isn’t forever – it’s only a moment in time. It will pass’.
Dan reflected afterwards that he had noticed some interesting things. He had noticed how quickly and impulsively he sprang to try to fix the difficulty, despite knowing that this wasn’t what he should be doing. He noticed the amount of aversion he had to even thinking about the client and started to question whether the client was the whole problem. He wondered whether maybe some of the problem was being caused by his aversion to the client. He also noticed during the exercise that the more he wrestled with the difficulty, the worse it got. At moments, he was able to just sit back and observe with an open mind, and when he did, things seemed to change subtly. The difficulty didn’t go away, but somehow it seemed easier to live with.
Was your experience the same or different from Dan’s? Although Dan’s difficulty was very visual (a person), not everyone’s is. Some people can’t visualise difficulties like a movie. Some people simply get a sense of a random shape, even moving or stationary. Others get no sense of visual representation, simply a sense of how the difficulty feels to be close to.
Even if you can’t visualise the difficulty, sensing it and sitting with the sense of being close to something you find difficult is equally powerful. The more senses you can tune into, the better.
What did you notice? Reflecting on your own experience, answer these questions:
- Were there any patterns or themes that emerged in your thoughts about the difficulty?
- Do you recall any specific thoughts or impulses as you progressively approached the difficulty?
- Did the difficulty remain the same or change as you got closer to it?
- Did you notice any specific sensations in your body? If so, what were they and where were they? Did they change or shift as you approached the difficulty more closely?
When approaching difficulty in this way, sometimes something happens. At other times, you experience very little. Sometimes when you approach and explore a difficulty, it subtly changes or shifts. Sometimes it remains the same or even feels like it’s increasing in size. Remember that the object of the exercise isn’t about fixing the problem or making it go away – it’s about seeing it as it really is. Doing so often provides insights or fresh perspectives. It goes without saying that approaching difficulties can be really difficult, so try to be kind to yourself and don’t push it too hard.
Take a look at another example. Sarah, an HR manager, experienced intense sensations in her body when sitting with her chosen difficulty of a difficult team member. She felt her neck and shoulders tense the moment she ‘invited in’ her difficulty. Sarah was not (by her own admission) a very visual person. She gained no visual representation of the encounter in her head but did sense heaviness in its presence. Initially, she said, it ‘felt very heavy’ to approach the difficulty, but as she progressively got closer, she felt things lightening a little. Eventually, it felt very small indeed, and she felt herself relaxing a little. To her surprise, she suddenly felt herself feeling a little sorry for the ‘difficult’ staff member.
When Sarah and Dan finished the exercise, their difficulties didn’t magically vanish, but they somehow felt less urgent and not as raw.
Approaching difficulty works by helping you to break down the sequence of mental events that may otherwise thrust you into a negative spiral of thoughts and rumination. The simple act of noticing and accepting negative thoughts, emotions, and sensations prevent aversion kicking in. By choosing not to engage in a downward spiral, you can reduce or eliminate its forward momentum.