Engage Your World
Emotional Reactivity
In this episode, Carol S. Hyman explores how we can kick our addiction to believing everything we think. This is an essential step in making friends with our minds, which ultimately influences how we treat others. If we practice this, we can evolve from having a fixed mind to an open one. This work begins by learning to recognize, and be skeptical, when we feel very certain that we are right.
Other People
In this episode Carol S. Hyman asks us to question our habitual response to those we don’t agree with. Whenever we ask ourselves, “How could anyone possibly believe that?” instead of filling in the blank with a story about someone’s stupidity or cruelty, we might try getting really, genuinely curious. To get some practice at doing this, Carol offers an exercise using memory and imagination to become agents of change.
Unpacking Baggage
In this episode Carol S. Hyman invites us to question some conventional wisdom that allows us to avoid dealing with things that make us uncomfortable. If, as trauma theory suggests, Adverse Childhood Experiences often lead to us disconnecting from ourselves, mindfulness opens up the possibility of reconnecting. To explore how this can help us heal, Carol offers an exercise using memory and bodily sensation to unpack our traumatic baggage.
Meditation in Action
In this excerpt from a talk given at Shambhala Pittsburgh, Carol S. Hyman responds to a question from the audience about how to not get bombarded at a new job. She reminds us that we can’t control the things that people and life throw at us, but through mindfulness we can learn to control our reaction. Carol advocates for the stop, drop and roll method. She also discusses the gap that exists between stimulus and response.
*Carol misspoke — the title of of Viktor Frankl’s book is actually Man’s Search for Meaning