#62: I Know That I Am

I think meditation is awesome and holistic and life-altering for many reasons, but one of the top reasons in my opinion is that it can help me feel more peacefully present and content with my surroundings. I believe it can very naturally allow for deeper understanding and patience in me as well. My sister Jaime once said,  "When I notice myself getting annoyed easily or irritable with people or the circumstances around me, I realize I need to take better care of myself." And I think that that's true, and that meditation and deep breathing and simply being present can serve as that better care.. Thank you, Sasha! 

-  Amanda

Sasha Dichter      sdichter@acumen.org 

I Know That I Am... 

While on the road last week, I did a pretty good job of meditating each night. I’ve found this is the best way to overcome both jetlag and the buzzing distraction of being on the road.

Most nights, I did one of the guided mediations on my Insight Timer app. Near the end of my trip I found a guided meditation by Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn.

“OK,” I thought, “this is going to be some serious meditation!”

The foundation of this meditation, in the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, is the breath, and is paying attention to it by thinking, “When you breathe in, know that you are breathing in. When you breathe out, know that you are breathing out.” He must have said that fifty times in the meditation.

Really? I’ve done lots of meditations where I count my breaths, or focus on a thought or an emotion or an object. But “I know that I am breathing in?” Something about that from the great Zen master wasn’t what I was expecting. Still, I went with it, and the meditation turned out to be quite nice in its simplicity.

I didn’t think much more about it until today. I was walking from my parked car into the supermarket, needing to grab one last-minute item quickly for some houseguests that were coming over for Memorial Day. Conscious of time, I had a moment when I thought, “I know that I am putting the parking ticket into my back left pocket.”

Now, this may not seem like a big deal unless I say out loud that the supermarket parking ticket is the bane of my existence. Between getting my kids out of the car and making sure that they’re not endangering themselves in the parking lot, half the time I seem to misplace that ticket or find it in a pocket despite having no recollection that I’d put it there.

And today, while I wasn’t trying to do anything different, I knew exactly where it was because I was fully present to what I was doing in the moment I put it into my pocket.

When we lose a parking ticket, it’s pretty clear that we weren’t paying attention to where we put it when we got out of the car. In most other situations the feedback is a lot less obvious – how often have I thought, “what went wrong in that conversation was that I wasn’t paying attention to what was being said to me while it was being said?” How often do we actually notice that what’s missing isn’t the right analysis or people being aligned to the same goals, it’s simply that we, or the people around us, aren’t present to the conversation that is happening right at that moment?

I for one almost never notice it. I also am almost never just doing the dishes when I’m doing the dishes, I’m almost never just walking down the street when I walk down the street, I almost never am just saying hello when I meet someone.

Almost never, but not never. And that’s a start.

My ask of you today isn’t that you’ll share this blog post or talk about it. It is that you, before jumping to the next post or email, stop for a second and, for five (just five!) breaths, know that you are breathing in, and know that you are breathing out.

If it helps, imagine that you are joining thousands of other people who, right about now, have also reached the end of this post.

Please, begin.

Sasha's first-person bio:

As Acumen’s Chief Innovation Officer, I oversee Acumen’s three fastest-growing verticals: Lean Data, which brings customer voice into impact measurement; the Acumen Fellows Programs, with more than 400 Fellows globally; and +Acumen, the World’s School for Social change. I’ve also been blogging since 2008 and have written more than 1,000 blog posts on generosity, philanthropy and social change. I was the instigator behind Generosity Day and, frustrated with how nonprofits approach fundraising, I wrote the Manifesto for Nonprofit CEOs, a free resource that has been shared with thousands of nonprofit CEOs and Boards who care about making a difference.  I find I get the most joy from my work when I see someone around me change and grow.