“Centered” and “uncentered” are useful words that conjure a way of dividing our experiences into the kinds that we want to nurture and the kinds that we hope to avoid. We would prefer to feel less scattered, chaotic, distracted, anxious, nervous, irritable, and unsettled. We would like to be able to marshal our inner resources, focus our attention, make strong decisions, and act when action is required. We would love to feel more grounded, centered, and calm. People understand these distinctions without needing to have them explained.
However, until you take the time to describe in writing your own experience of uncenteredness, you won’t possess a clear personal picture. Do that right now. Take a few minutes and describe what it feels like when you’re uncentered.
Here are some reports from clients and study subjects. Jessica, a painter, explained, “When I feel uncentered I feel chaotic, fragmented and unable to move forward. There is an ominous feeling of impending failure and a keen sense of paralysis.” Linda, a social worker, described this unwelcome state in the following way: “When I’m uncentered I feel off-balance, as if I can’t right myself. I feel like I’m searching for something but I’m completely lost. Sometimes my uncenteredness manifests itself as disorientation, confusion or, worst of all, disconnection from my emotions.”
Annie, a poet from the Ozarks, described her experience metaphorically:
I’m floating along a calm river, watching birds, marveling at the stark beauty of the limestone bluffs, when at a bend in the river I get caught in a roiling eddy. In the force of the whirling vortex my self-esteem is torn away. I’m spinning so fast I can’t focus. I tell myself ‘if you paddle, you can get out of this’ and I reply ‘I can’t paddle well enough, so there’s no point’.
Why is it so important that we rid ourselves of uncenteredness? First, we have accidents that we might otherwise have avoided, mental accidents and physical ones as well. Second, when we’re uncentered we do things that we regret, things that come from shadowy parts of our personality.
We make some of our biggest decisions—to marry, to pursue a new career, to move to a different city—while uncentered. Stop now and write about the mistakes that you’ve made and the accidents that have befallen you while you were uncentered. Stopping to remember these painful experiences will help remind you why you are spending time with this book and committing to learning how to center.
Traditional Solutions
Most people don’t know what to do to center themselves and simply hope and pray that their anxiety, agitation, and confusion will pass of its own accord. Some try to alter their state of uncenteredness chemically, risking addiction and achieving something very different from the experience of centeredness. A large majority of people do not even recognize that they’re uncentered, either accepting their rushed, harried, fractured state as the norm or misnaming their uncenteredness as personal style. They think of themselves as “just anxious,” “overly sensitive,” “obsessive-compulsive,” “a worrier,” and so on, not realizing that their uncenteredness is a state and not a trait.
Possessing no solutions, possessing only ineffective solutions, and not being aware of the problem are the usual ways. A minority of people are aware that they need to center and try to practice healthy methods of grounding themselves. They try meditation, yoga, tai chi, and other practices that share a commitment to slowing down, reducing mental chatter, and becoming present. People who try these methods almost always find them valuable. They also typically report that these helpful strategies are hard to sustain over time and hard to employ in real life situations.
Barbara, a singer from Chicago, complained: “I practice tai chi, yoga, and qigong regularly, plus my own form of meditation. I have routines that are part of my day that are designed to keep me centered and I currently spend some time each evening meditating and reflecting on the day’s events. This keeps my general stress level low. And still I don’t have a mental practice that I can call on when I’m really off center and need to shift my state of mind on the spot.”
Traditional solutions tend to require time—a half-hour listening to a relaxation tape, fifteen minutes going through postures, twenty minutes quieting mind chatter—and are not designed to be used in public. They do not help you center, except in a residual or cumulative way, when your boss throws a new project on your desk, your daughter tells you that she’s just been in a fender-bender accident, or you feel scattered and anxious during an important meeting.
Leslie, a small business owner in Ontario, observed: “I’ve created several guided meditations that I currently use to calm myself, to regain my confidence, and to bring me back to the present moment. I simply put on some relaxing music and visualize my way through one of these meditations. This works wonderfully but it takes at least a half hour of time, which I don’t always have. I would love to find something that can bring me to a similar place but doesn’t take so long.”
Traditional solutions fall short for an even more important reason. They have no thought component. They help you relax, focus your mind, calm your nerves, and so on, but they are not designed to meet your centering challenges by providing you with a repertoire of useful thoughts. We need certain thoughts if we are to center ourselves, specifically the dozen thoughts I’ll name shortly. For instance, we need to make use of the power of the phrase “I am completely stopping” when we find ourselves rushing around madly. We need to hear ourselves say “I expect nothing” before an important presentation, so as to make our points clearly, compassionately, and powerfully. Phrases of this sort are crucial components of a real centering program.
Many people grow frustrated in their attempts to use traditional solutions like yoga or meditation and conclude that they are doomed never to feel centered. Lucinda, a painter from Milwaukee, explained: “I’ve tried many things but nothing seems to keep me focused. Sometimes I feel that being centered is something that just happens to a fortunate few while the rest of us are doomed to wander around in a daze.”
Ten-second centering ends that frustration. It is quick, effective, easy to learn and easy to acquire. Let’s get going and look at its two main components, breathing and thinking.
Over the course of several weeks I’ll be providing a series of posts that will help you stay calm and centered in 2022. These posts are based on two of my books, Redesign Your Mind and Ten Zen Seconds. To learn more about the techniques I’ll be describing, please take a look at those two books.
—
