30 Days To A New Life- Day 22

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How do I begin to change everything?

I used to think that the only way I could be free was if I tackled head on the major fears in my life: Fear of death, fear of failure and success, of turning out like my dad, of being inadequate-especially in the eyes of my wife.

12 years ago, I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. This was the conclusion my doctor drew when he assessed all my symptoms: debilitating fatigue, allergic reactions to dairy/yeast/ gluten, depression, stomach pain and a liver panel that revealed my alkaline level to be much higher than normal. I was put on Elavil, an anti-depressant and watched as the doctor raised the dosage every week beginning at 30 until it reached 200 milligrams. Healing felt like such an uphill battle. I intuitively knew that drugs were not going to address my core issues but I had no tools to even know how to begin to get all fixed up. Moving to Colorado was a great first step. With sun more than 300 days out of the year, I had the environment on the side of a cheerful me. When I reached 200 milligrams, I made the decision to command my doctor to wean me off of Elavil. I told him I would have to find another way.

His advice: “You can always try meditating?”

I had never meditated before and thought that sounds too simplistic a prescription for so complex a condition.

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell examines the reasons why New York’s crime rate had dropped so suddenly in the 1990’s. He explores the decision to let go of just focusing on “life-threatening” crimes and regularly tackling the “quality of life” crimes. Instead of putting more cops on the beat to look out for gang violence and murderers, the transit and police authorities dealt with removing graffiti from all subway trains, prosecuting fare-beaters, the “squeegee-men”, public drunkards and urinators. The thinking behind this new strategy was that if you make small changes to the environment that welcomes minor criminal behavior then the major criminal behavior will not develop traction either.

Now let’s substitute the word “crime” for “fear”. Instead of focusing on the major fears in life, if we make incremental changes to the environment that perpetuates minor fears, then the major fears will start to unravel and lose their grip on us. This environment is our mind and its flurry of thoughts and hang ups. You start to slow down your thinking enough to not blow your fears out of proportion. You start to ask “what am I afraid of” instead of being caught up identifying yourself as the one who is afraid. You start to find this thought which we call fear, as intriguing and not as scary. You just spend time cleaning off the graffiti instead of being angry that it is there in the first place. You don’t sit and wish for a dark night of soul to surface, you simply start with just letting go of the trivial thoughts that come up. You gently watch your thoughts come up, say hi and keep on going, saying bye. This builds mental muscle and when the deeper more frightening thoughts and memories do come up, you watch them come and go just the same.

So meditation for me was the unobtrusive and stealth catalyst for major change in my life.
It doesn’t even have to start as two-twenty minute sessions with a mantra in a sacred space. It could easily begin with a reminder three times a day to take three deep breaths. This simple act of witnessing your thoughts can transform your life and change everything because the smallest pivot in any area of our lives makes an immeasurable difference in the long run.

I attribute the elimination of every single one of my IBS symptoms to my simple practice of meditation. This simple routine has opened the doors to my connection with spirit, forgiveness of my greatest offenders, creative freedom and living out the Superman Effect. I’m glad I didn’t know that when I started. I would have overwhelmed myself if I thought meditation was to be my panacea. After all, I just wanted to feel better.

“The name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once is the Tipping Point. We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly.”- From the Introduction to The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell