Grist for the Mill

The world is in a state of change, be it permanent or temporary, and we are all experiencing the effects of this shift in one way or another. I need not comment on the particulars of the time, I’m sure your news sources are doing enough of that as it is. What I would like to do however, is offer up something that I have drawn an incredible amount of peacefulness and meaning from. I first heard it coined by Ram Dass as “grist for the mill”. The idea suggests that life’s happenings, be them positive or negative, and your reactions to them, can all be used as a vehicle to get you to a level of virtuous character. By looking at your reactions to the people cutting you off in traffic, to the way your significant other said that comment, or your discomfort towards the current situation, you are enabling yourself to first recognize where the “work” lays, and to subsequently start to change that reaction.

We all have a rough idea of the reactions we’d like to change in ourselves, maybe we have a short fuse, or we find ourselves offering advice when a friend just needs to be heard, or we take out our stress on our loved ones. These are all proxies for something larger; expectation and attachment. I’d like to look deeply at the expectation side of things in this weeks blog.

“When we are expecting a positive outcome, any other outcome is almost always a cause for discomfort, and when we are expecting a negative outcome, we are primed to experience something negative.”

The power of expectation has been shown to have an immense effect on our experiences, be it our increased perception of pain following a warning of soon impending pain (when compared to random pain, pain that we expect tends to be perceived as more painful), the incredible discomfort during a presentation after being up all night in distress (e.g., expectation of a presentation going poorly will increase the perception of it going poorly), or even our affected performance on tests after being told a population we belong to typically performs poorly on. This may be due to our brain and it’s incredible ability to imagine how things will unfold (with a nice dose of once-protective negative bias of course), which will actually turn on and prime the stress response (I have a blog all about the HPA- axis, if you haven’t, go jump over and give that a read if you’d like to dive deeper into this stress response). Essentially, expectation can have a large effect on our experiences simply because our top-down  cortical structures are TELLING us that the experience will go negatively. By entertaining the idea that an experience can go badly is priming and prepping those fight or flight responses. I think its important to note that sometimes this can be very beneficial, like before a big game, getting hyped up can improve performance (for well practiced athletes). The important difference here is expectation, not the stress response itself, although the expectation is the wave in which that response rides in on. This is where our expectations can be our “grist” for the mill; the stuff that we use to build up something we’re proud of!

If we can adopt the psychology that sees life and it’s perceived negatives (and positives) as all grist for the mill, we can start to work with our life and develop a deeper sense of curiosity, and to map some purpose onto those negatives happenings.

So what exactly might this look like?

I think the simplest and most obvious location of “work” lays in what “triggers” us. Think back to those examples I called on before, lets go with the way the comment was said by your SO/sibling/friend/etc. You could be having a discussion about politics or religion and someone counters your point with a seemingly ad hominem response and you immediately start to feel the heat well up inside you, you begin to take a big breath into your neck and chest before unloading a barrage of reactive responses. That moment just before you start to berate your conversation partner is where this psychology that we’re talking about can really influence the experience. Instead of being washed away by the biological responses to the perceived threat we just received (can you believe someone could disagree with YOU?! The gall!), we notice the reaction; the heat, the growing anger, the sudden shift of your opinion of that person, etc, but instead of leaning into it, we notice it, and respond as authentically as possible: “I think I understand your point, what do you think of X then”? It’s that brief pause, recognition, and calmness that will have an immensely positive impact on your interactions, reactions, and life. When we can get just ahead of our reactions, we are much closer to the driver’s seat, feel more in control of our lives, and are creating evidence for the person we are set to become.

It’s when we adopt an attitude of curiosity towards our reactions that we can really start to see the effect expectation can have on our experiences. When we are expecting a positive outcome, any other outcome is almost always a cause for discomfort, and when we are expecting a negative outcome, we are primed to experience something negative. Curiosity is the antidote to pervasive expectations that lead to negative experiences. By bringing playful curiosity into your life you will enable yourself to approach life with a sense of discovery. Applying the attitude that all of life’s happenings can be used to help develop your ability to react in ways that you are proud of is a very powerful adjustment you can make.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy

- Our Blue Sky Minds