Focusing on Strengths Is an Exercise in Choosing Your Thoughts

We are all living in two worlds. One is a world of things. The other is a world of thoughts. The world of things is material, physical. The world of thoughts is immaterial, subtle. Each world has its own pleasures and miseries.

I like to think of life as a zip-line I can ride from the material to the immaterial when the going gets tough. I also ride my zip line out to the material when my thinking process needs taming. (Smell of coffee, taste of dried fish, finger tips on keyboard--thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky finger, fingertips are especially reassuring body spots--sound of running water, light of the computer screen. Okay. All is well here.) The idea of a zip-line adds a little whee to a subject that I worry will put you to sleep before I've had a chance to explain how it is possible to find a reliable happiness within us.

Attention can travel into increasing subtlety from the things outside us, to our body, emotions, and thoughts. Thought-choosing activities, such as focusing on strengths, zip us along that line in the direction of the subtle. When we choose our thoughts, we dis-identify with them. Choosing what to think, and dis-identifying from our thoughts, is inherently joyful.

Here is a little exercise to try. I want you to have an experience that will more clearly communicate what I mean when I say "inherently joyful."

First, ask yourself: What am I thinking?
Notice what you are thinking, and find words to label or describe your thoughts.

Then, ask yourself: What am I not thinking?
See what comes to mind.
Notice that now you are thinking it.

Choose a thought you particularly like, and think it.

Notice how it feels to choose what to think. This is not the admonishment to whistle a happy tune. It is an invitation to notice the feeling of choosing a happy tune. I am also interested in experiments choosing to whistle unhappy tunes. Feel free to write and let me know how that goes. My guess is that the choosing is the important part.

The Taittriya Upanishad provides a model that shows why thought choosing has the tendency to delight. It describes a five-layered model of human being called the Kosha Model. By choosing our thoughts, we realize that we are not our thoughts, and this realization lands us, identity-wise, in that silence that lies between thoughts. The Kosha Model calls this place the ananda-maya kosha, the joy layer. If we view ourselves as being comprised of layers, like an onion, the outermost  layer is the world our senses perceive, then the body, the emotions, the thoughts, and there, more subtle than thoughts, we find the layer of joy. This joy has a somewhat different flavor from the joys we experience engaging the world around us.

In the outside world of things, we are pleased when we get what we want. We are displeased when we do not get what we want. The outside world is a fleeting thing, full of loss. Stuff breaks; people die. And tend to be in it for themselves.

I do not remember where I read that "getting what we want" in the world is about a 50/50 proposition. I suspect it was The Art of Joyful Living by Swami Rama. The chapter "The Game of Black and White" in Alan Watts' The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are takes on this topic, too.  The idea is that the mind constantly balances our perception of dualities such as pain and pleasure, success and failure, winning and losing.

So, when we succeed, the mind moves the bar to keep us at a 50/50 ratio of success and failure. If a game is too easy, the mind loses interest in it.  I am recalling reading that the mind actually creates our experience of "reality" out of these perceived contrasts. This is a little bit different from the advice to seek balance. This is saying, well, you are going to have it anyway. This is saying, statistically, no matter what you do, the world will disappoint you half of the time. It is a normal thing to reach for success, and pleasure, and cool doohickeys. However, if we are investing all our happy chits in fame and doohickeys, we end up running in place.

So, here's what to do when your doohickey breaks, when your buddy moves far away, when someone else gets the girl.

Focusing on strengths is a more fully engaging thought-choosing exercise than the quickie I gave you above. Here again is basic strengths focusing:

1. Recall an experience that you would describe as good, one that you are proud of.

2. Ask yourself, "What positive trait did I bring to this experience?" Or ask yourself, "What is good about me that this experience shows?" Take your time finding the right words.

For many of us, thinking of our strengths is unfamiliar and takes some effort. That is good! It will pull our attention more to the task, and we will be landed more firmly in that happy place, the ananda-maya kosha. That happy place of identity that is more subtle than thoughts.

Notice how it feels to choose what to think.

Happy zipping!