The Happiness Trap (14 page)

A
ccept your internal experience.

C
hoose a valued direction.

T
ake action.

We experience urges all day long, every day of our lives, and most of the time acting appropriately on them is no big deal. In ACT, we’re concerned only with urges that get in the way of our living a meaningful life. For example, I act on my chocolate urges fairly regularly and it’s not a problem. But if I acted on them all the time, I’d be the size of an elephant and that would not be in line with my values on health. On the other hand, if I never acted on them, I’d be unnecessarily depriving myself of a simple but satisfying pleasure.

All this means is, there needs to be a balance. Aim to find that balance over time. Don’t put ridiculous expectations on yourself, deciding that you’re never going to act on self-defeating urges ever again. Of course you will—you’re human. You’ll screw up again and again over the course of your life. But remember: the instant you are aware of what you’re doing, you have a chance to do something more effective. And over time you’ll get better and better at catching yourself earlier and earlier.

While urge surfing can be very helpful, like any skill, it requires practice. (Look, you had to know that was coming.) The best way to practise is to put yourself in a situation where you’re likely to feel confronted by troublesome urges. But don’t choose just any challenging situation; choose one that moves your life forward in a meaningful way.

During the next week, pick two or three difficult situations that naturally occur when you take your life in a valued direction. These situations could be anything: getting some exercise, attending a class, asking someone out on a date or attempting something new at work. Once you’re in those situations, notice your urges, surf them and stay fully engaged in what you’re doing.

Of course, staying engaged in what you’re doing can be tricky, especially when the thinking self starts mouthing off. That’s why in the following chapters we’re going to look at a process called ‘connection’, which is all about engaging in and connecting with our experience (rather than getting caught up in our thoughts and feelings).

Connection builds on, and overlaps with, expansion and defusion. So if you’re still struggling with thoughts and feelings, you’ll find that connection skills will help you.

But before we get to that, we need to pay a very brief visit back to those demons on the boat...

So here we are again, back on the boat with all those creepy, scary demons. But hopefully, now you’re starting to see them as they really are, starting to make peace with them, so you’re free to steer the boat where you want. When you can see that your unpleasant emotions are nothing more than sensations and urges (with words and pictures attached, of course), you are able to relate to them differently. An unpleasant emotion arises and instead of struggling you can let it be and focus on doing something of greater value.

Naturally, at times those demons will steer you off course. (Why ‘naturally’? Because you’re a normal human being, not a saint or a guru.) But here’s the exciting thing: the moment you realise your boat is headed in the wrong direction, you can instantly turn it back around. Instantly! All it takes is awareness.

Of course, you may be a long way from shore at the time. And in fact, that very thought is often one of the demons: ‘I’m so far away from achieving what I want in my life, what’s the point in even trying?’ But the point is, the instant you turn that boat toward shore, you’re heading in the direction that you want—and that’s so much more rewarding than drifting aimlessly out at sea!

In Chapter 9 you listed some of your main demons in terms of thoughts and images. Now it’s time to add emotions, sensations and urges to that list. The first step is to read through the seven questions below, noticing what thoughts and feelings automatically come to mind:

If unhelpful thoughts and unpleasant feelings did not deter you:

In reading through your list, you have probably already noticed a variety of unhelpful thoughts and unpleasant feelings. If you’re experiencing those right now just by reading these questions, then you can be sure they’re going to confront you later, when we focus on taking action. So take a few minutes and write down the answers to these questions (or at least spend a few minutes thinking about them):

The next step is to make some time to practise defusion and/or expansion with these demons. What valued activities can you do in the next few days that will give you a chance to meet these demons, see them for what they are and make peace with them? Set yourself a few goals: specify the time, the place and the activity you’ll do. Then engage yourself fully in that activity.

And if you have trouble with any of this, don’t be discouraged. In the next few chapters you’ll be learning another useful skill that will make a world of difference.

‘Where are you?’ asked my wife, startling me out of my reverie. We were halfway through a meal at a Japanese restaurant and for the past couple of minutes I hadn’t heard a word that she’d been saying. Or to be more accurate, I had
heard
the words but hadn’t consciously
listened
to them. ‘Where are you?’ was an appropriate question, because even though I was there physically, mentally I was miles away. I’d been completely ‘carried off’ by thoughts about a troublesome family matter.

We’ve all had this happen to us. We’re in a conversation, nodding and listening, but we’re not paying a bit of attention, because we’re ‘off in our heads’ thinking about what we’ve got to do later, or dwelling on something that happened earlier. Often we can get away with this ‘fake listening’, but sometimes, to our great embarrassment, we get caught. When someone asks, ‘Are you listening?’ we may try to bluff it out, saying, ‘Yes, of course.’ Or we may sheepishly confess, ‘No. Sorry, I was thinking about something else.’

The thinking self is constantly generating thoughts—after all, that’s its job. But all too often those thoughts distract us from where we are and what we’re doing in the moment. Ever been for a drive in a car and reached your destination with no real memory of the journey? Or thought you knew where you were going but ended up driving to the wrong place? That’s because your attention wasn’t on the road; it was on the activity of your thinking self (daydreaming, planning, worrying, problem-solving, remembering, fantasising and all the rest). And this is how we habitually go through most of our lives.

Take eating, for example. When we’re eating food we rarely, if ever, give it our full attention. We’re usually talking to someone, reading, watching television or even working at our desk. How often have you eaten a meal and focused on it completely, to the exclusion of all else? For most of us it’s a rare occurrence.

Have you ever been asked, ‘What did you do today?’ and not been able to remember? Do you ever find yourself snacking on something without even realising it? Or read an entire page of a book and realise you haven’t taken in a single word?

We say we were ‘lost in thought’, ‘distracted’ or ‘preoccupied’—all terms that mean our attention is fixed on the products of our mind instead of on what we are doing right here and now. That is, our observing self is distracted by our thinking self. We call this being ‘absent-minded’, but our mind is not absent at all; it’s our
attention
that’s busy elsewhere.

The thinking self is rather like a time machine: it continually pulls us into the future and the past. We spend a huge amount of time worrying about, planning for or dreaming of the future, and a huge amount of time rehashing the past. This makes perfect sense in terms of evolution. The ‘don’t get killed’ device needs to plan ahead and anticipate problems. It also needs to reflect on the past, to learn from it. But even when our mind is thinking about the here and now, it’s generally being judgemental and critical, struggling against reality instead of accepting it. And this constant mental activity is an enormous distraction. For a huge part of every day, the thinking self completely diverts our attention from what we’re doing.

Suppose you’re trying to have a conversation with someone and you’re giving most of your attention to thoughts like, ‘I’ve got nothing to say’, ‘He thinks I’m boring’, or ‘I’ve got to get my taxes done.’ The more attention you give to those thoughts, the less involved you are in the conversation. The same goes for every activity you ever do, whether you’re water-skiing or making love: the more you’re caught up in your thoughts, the less you’re engaged in the activity.

Of course, some activities require creative or constructive thinking as part of the process—playing chess, for instance, or doing a crossword puzzle. But even then thoughts can pull you away from what you’re doing. If you’re playing chess and carefully thinking through all your options, that’s fine; those thoughts keep you involved in the game. But if you’re giving your attention to thoughts like, ‘I’m going to lose’, ‘She’s so good, she must think I’m a dope’, or ‘I wonder if that new Steven Spielberg movie is out yet’, those thoughts will pull you out of the game.

Now, obviously there are times when being absorbed in thought is precisely what you
should
be doing—for example, if you’re dreaming up ideas for a new ad campaign, mentally rehearsing a speech, planning an important project or simply solving a crossword puzzle or philosophising about life. But too much of the time, we’re so absorbed in our thoughts that we aren’t fully engaged in our lives and aren’t in touch with the wondrous world around us. And when we’re like this, only half present with friends and family, we’re not even connected with ourselves!

‘Connection’ is the process of making full contact with your experience in this moment. ‘Connection’ means being fully aware of your here-and-now experience and being interested, open and receptive to that experience.

In practising connection, we pull ourselves out of the past or the future and bring ourselves back to this moment, right here, right now, with openness, receptiveness and interest. Why do this? For three main reasons:

This means we need to add three extra words to the ‘A’ of ACT:

A
=Accept your internal experience
and be present.

C
=Choose a valued direction.

T
=Take action.

Connection is about waking up, noticing what’s happening, engaging with the world and appreciating the fullness of every moment of life. You’ve already experienced this many times in your life. Perhaps while on a walk in the countryside you feasted your eyes on the fields, the wildlife, the trees and flowers, enjoyed the touch of a balmy summer breeze, and listened to the songbirds. Or during an intimate conversation with the one you love, you hung on their every word, gazed into their eyes, and felt the closeness between you. Or while playing with a child or a beloved pet, you were so involved in the fun of it all, you didn’t have a care in the world.

As these examples suggest, connection often happens spontaneously in novel, intense, stimulating or pleasurable situations. Unfortunately, it rarely lasts for long. Sooner or later the thinking self pipes up and its comments, judgements and stories pull us out of the experience. And as for all those familiar, mundane or unpleasant situations that make up a sizeable part of even the most privileged life, connection is pretty well non-existent at those times.

Connection happens through the observing self. It involves bringing our full attention to what is happening here and now, without getting distracted or influenced by the thinking self. The observing self is by nature non-judgemental. It can’t judge our experience, because judgements are thoughts and therefore a product of the thinking self. The observing self doesn’t get into a struggle with reality; it sees things as they are, without resisting. It’s only when we start judging things as bad or wrong or unfair that we resist them.

Our thinking self tells us that things shouldn’t be as they are, that we shouldn’t be as we are, that reality is in the wrong and we are in the right. It tells us that life would be better somewhere else or we would be happier if only we were different. Thus, the thinking self is like a pair of dark goggles that dims and obscures our view of the world, disconnecting us from reality through boredom, distraction or resistance.

The observing self, though, is incapable of boredom. It registers everything it observes with openness and interest. It’s only the thinking self that gets bored, because boredom is basically a thought process: a story that life would be more interesting and more fulfilling if we were doing something else. The thinking self is easily bored because it thinks it already knows it all. It’s been there, done that, seen the show and bought the T-shirt. Whether we’re walking down the street, driving to work, eating a meal, having a chat or taking a shower, the thinking self takes it all for granted. After all, it’s done all this stuff countless times before. So rather than help us connect with our present reality, it ‘carries us off’ to a different time and place. Thus, when the thinking self is running the show we spend most of our time only half awake, scarcely aware of the richness in the world around us.

The good news is that the observing self is always present and available. Through it we can connect with the vast length, breadth and depth of human experience, regardless of whether that experience is new and exciting or familiar and uncomfortable. The fascinating thing is that when, with an attitude of openness and interest, we bring our full attention to an unpleasant experience, the thing we dreaded often seems much less bothersome than before. Likewise, when we truly connect with even the most familiar or mundane experience, we often see it in a new and interesting light. To experience this for yourself, try the following exercise.

In this exercise the aim is to take a fresh look at the book in your hands, to see it with ‘new eyes’. Therefore, imagine that you’re an alien from another planet and you’ve never seen an object like this before. Pick up the book and feel the weight of it in your hands. Feel the cover against your palms. Run your finger down a page and notice the texture. Run your finger down the cover and notice that texture, too. Bring the open book up to your nose and smell the paper. Slowly turn a page and listen to the sound it makes. Turn several pages and, along with listening to the sound, also notice how the shadows change as the pages move. Grab about twenty pages between your index finger and thumb, and gently flip them all at once. Notice the feeling, the sound and the movement. Look at the front cover of the book. Notice how the light reflects off the surface. Notice the borders where one colour meets another. Notice the shapes of the spaces between the words. Then do the same with the back cover. Pick any page at random and notice the shapes made by the white space.

How did you find that ‘alien’ experience? You’ve been reading this book for quite a while now, and until now you’ve probably taken all these different aspects of it for granted. And the same is true for just about
every aspect of our life.
Over the next few chapters we’re going to focus on several different aspects of connection, particularly how to use it when dealing with painful experiences. For the rest of this chapter, though, we’re simply going to focus on ‘waking up’: on increasing our awareness of the world around us and refocusing whenever the thinking self distracts us.

In each exercise that follows, you’ll be asked to connect with some experience, such as the sounds in your environment or the feelings in your body. When distractions in the form of thoughts and feelings occur:

There are four short exercises, each lasting only 30 seconds, so there’s no excuse for not doing them. It’ll take two minutes to do them all!

Once you’ve finished reading this paragraph, put the book down and notice your surroundings. Notice as much as you can about what you can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. What’s the temperature? Is the air moving or still? What sort of light is there and where is it coming from? Notice at least five sounds you can hear, at least five objects you can see and at least five things you can feel against your body (such as the shirt touching your shoulders, the air on your face, your feet on the floor, your back against the chair). Put the book down now and do this for 30 seconds. Notice what happens.

As you’re reading this paragraph, connect with your body. Notice where your legs and arms are and the position of your spine. Inwardly scan your body from head to toe; notice what you can feel in your head, chest, arms, abdomen, legs. Put the book down, close your eyes and do this for 30 seconds. Notice what happens.

As you’re reading this, connect with your breathing. Notice the rise and fall of your rib cage and the air moving in and out of your nostrils. Follow the air in through your nose. Notice how your lungs expand. Feel your abdomen push outward. Follow the air back out, as the lungs deflate. Put the book down, close your eyes and do this for 30 seconds. Notice what happens.

In this exercise, just focus on the sounds you can hear. Notice the sounds coming from you (from your breath and your movements), the sounds coming from the room and the sounds coming from outside the room. Put the book down now, close your eyes and do this for 30 seconds. Notice what happens.