The post 92Y Conversation with Nancy Colier and Rohan Gunatillake appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Most of us feel insecure in relationship from time to time.

But for some, it’s a chronic condition that never subsides. Insecurity in a relationship prevents us from speaking our truth, being genuine and honest with our partner and ourselves, and expressing what we really need and want. When we don’t trust the relationship, we control and contract our heart, to protect us from what we fear. As a result, the relationship…

Read more…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201609/how-overcome-feeling-insecure-in-your-relationship-0

The post How to Overcome Feeling Insecure in Your Relationship appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Eight years ago, as a Facebook newbie, I read a post in which my good friend announced that she had gotten up for an early bike ride and was now following the ride with a refreshing acai juice. The experience of reading her short post left me feeling bewildered and disturbed. It was inexplicable to me why a mature, intelligent adult would want to post such information to a public audience. I didn’t get it at any level, but I knew at that moment that life as I knew it was about to change in a radical, profound and as of yet, unknowable manner. I knew that we were all headed into an unfathomably . . . Read more .

The Power of Off: Your Best Self in a Virtual World

The post Your Best Self in a Virtual World appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Perhaps because I write a lot about technology, someone recently asked me if I think technology is somehow causing this increase in the verbal violence and overall bad behavior we are now witnessing.

In truth, technology is not creating our bad behavior or making us behave in the ways we are now behaving.  Rather, technology is simply making it easier and more acceptable for us to act out the most primitive aspects of who we already are.  Technology is the perfect partner and tool for our reptilian self.

Inherent in each one of us is a strong drive towards pleasure, instant gratification and comfort.  At the most primitive level, we are predisposed to judge, blame, and if at all possible, surrender responsibility. Our primitive nature inclines us towards distraction, entertainment, addiction and self-involvement. We see all of these primal tendencies being acted out on the public stage.

Technology is the snack food of choice for our reptilian self.  This is problematic for many reasons, the biggest of which being that our overfed reptilian self does not have the wisdom or maturity to lead us towards a state of wellbeing, which is where we want to be headed. At this time in history, we are bingeing on technology as if we were at a cruise ship buffet, allowing ourselves to behave like addicts, to become addicts—because we can and no one is going to stop us.

When we succumb to what’s easiest, we give up the satisfaction and confidence that comes from hard work and effort.  When we opt for immediate gratification, we miss out on the joy of process and determination.  When we indulge in constant distraction and entertainment, we are deprived of the meaning and excellence that presence and focus deliver.  When we live in the shallows, we forego the richness of depth.  When we judge, blame and attack, we are left to live in a soup of toxicity.  The nastiness we are seeing on the public stage right now is not leading us and not going to lead us to a state of fundamental wellbeing, or happiness for that matter.

Watching this election cycle, it is clear that we need to stop indulging and thereby strengthening our most primitive tendencies, drinking the Koolaid and tacitly agreeing that our sub-par behavior is okay. More than ever, we need to become aware of how we are feeding our reptilian nature with our devices, and what it is creating in our inner and outer worlds. We need to regain control of our primitive proclivities so that we can remember and start acting from our higher wisdom and more evolved self.  And, ultimately, so that we can redirect our species towards forward-moving evolution.

Read more on Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201609/is-technology-feeding-our-inner-reptile

The post Is Technology Feeding Our Inner Reptile? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

The post Is Technology Disempowering Us? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

In my communication with these parents, I suggested that we establish agreed upon limits on the technology, “time out” periods that would be the same for everyone in their tight group of friends. This way, none of the children would feel they were missing out on something when they were off technology, as everyone’s else’s phones would also be dark. I also recommended that we open a dialogue and create a united front on this issue, as the grown ups in this life situation, the ones in charge, perhaps to talk about what we can do to help our children develop the skills to be well in a world that is teaching them to be absent from where they are, absent from themselves, and to need perpetual entertainment just to be okay. What I wrote to the parents of my daughter’s friends was really a plea to take this issue seriously, to employ our greater wisdom and experience as adults and not allow our children to disappear into the virtual vacuum–to step in and protect our children’s ability to live in the present moment—the basis of all wellbeing.

I sent out six pleas. How many responses did I receive back? Zero.

I write a lot about personal technology and invariably, every time I do, I receive a similar comment in the feedback. The comment, boiled down, is this: technology is here to stay; get over it or learn to live with it. The fact that technology is here to stay is probably true, but the idea that we should get over or learn to live with it, regardless of what it is doing to us, to me, sounds like glorified passivity. The reality that not one parent responded to my note sounds like we have settled back into a kind of hopeless acceptance of where we are heading. Does the fact that technology is here to stay mean that we should allow our children and ourselves to disappear into a distracted unconsciousness?

The fact that technology is here to stay is precisely why we need to pay close attention to and make real choices about how we want to live with it and teach our children to live with it. As the human beings who are using this technology (not the other way around), we need to decide and enact how we want to incorporate technology into our lives, not just accept whatever is happening because it’s happening. Our purpose should be to take care of our own wellbeing, and not just assume that if we surrender, technology will protect our wellbeing. Learn to live with it should really read, learn how you want to live with it. We can’t and shouldn’t be passive, not when what’s at stake is how we live and who we are.

The post Have You Lost Your Child to the Smartphone? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

People traveling these days appear to be too preoccupied and distracted by their technology to be able to experience their travels, which is not the same thing as experiencing their phones while traveling, but rather actually living the unknown that travel offers. People now appear to be too absent from the actual experience of travel to be able to be deeply affected by or change as a result of it. Regardless of where we are in the world, we can now use our personal technology so as to never really have to leave home, change in any way, experience the unknown, or stretch outside our familiar sense of self. Whether or not our body is physically on the other side of the globe is increasingly irrelevant to our inner state. As long as we are situated and tethered inside our Smartphones, we are able to stay happily and safely inside our comfortable sameness.

Technology has changed the experience of traveling. With personal devices now our constant companions, the best parts of traveling have disappeared. Rest assured what’s been lost is not that we no longer wear ties and skirts on airplanes and wear sweat pants instead. Rather, what is no longer is the given that traveling will include meeting new people or even, living new experiences.

Before our personal technology became a part of every moment, traveling included a lot of down time, long stretches when we didn’t have much to do other than stare out a window, read a book, or maybe, strike up a conversation with a stranger. With travel came a lot of just being, with ourselves and others.

Travel used to take us out of the comfort and routine of our habits, put our sense of self in flux, and liberate us from our idea of who we are. Travel held the capacity to make us feel and experience ourselves differently. Separated from our normal life, untethered from all the things, roles and relationships by which we define our identity, we were free to be whoever we wanted to be. The present moment and who we were in it held great possibility for freshness and the unknown. Anything could happen when we traveled because we were less defined and confined, and thus more open to something new.

Furthermore, what made travel so special is that we had an unequaled opportunity to meet the people around us, who were often quite different from us. Meeting people wasn’t just an opportunity but more like a given, an inherent part of the travel experience and why we engaged in it. It was also, frequently, through the new people we met along the way that our travels were inspired and enriched. We may have gotten to know someone on a train who then told us of an aunt who had a bungalow in which we could stay, or of a local restaurant not to be missed, or a spectacular mountain trail. People along the way offered priceless travel and life experience, just as we shared our own. We connected not just to other flights, but to other human beings. It was often these other humans, who started out as strangers, but with whom we ended up sharing a meal, a journey, or even our life. Undoubtedly, some of the most interesting and important experiences in my own life have occurred because of the people I met through my journeys, and sometimes just because I spoke to the person sitting right next to me.

While it is very easy to use our devices to create a constant state of comfort and familiarity, there lies a great opportunity in travel and all experiences that pull us out of our usual circumstances. When we are willing to meet the unknown and possibly become someone different, allow ourselves to be affected by places and people we don’t know, we evolve and live—fully. The next time you are traveling, try an experiment: put your personal devices away and bring your attention to where you actually are. Notice your physical environment and the people in it. Feel what the air feels like in your new environment, listen to the sounds, see the colors, taste the flavors, smell the aromas; sync up your attention with where your body is in that moment. Notice too how your body feels in its new environment and if your sense of self is different in any way. Use your travels as a doorway to being where you are, In the process, you might also meet a new friend, have a fresh experience, or even find your self to have changed.

The post Has Personal Technology Killed the Magic of Travel? appeared first on Nancy Colier.

These scenarios may sound strange, but they are actually more common than you might imagine. With the advent of the digital age, our attention is almost always focused on some thing. We are playing a game, texting, researching, watching, talking, but always doing something, with our mind turned toward and engaged with something outside of ourselves. We treat our own undirected attention as a parent might treat their toddler on a long plane ride, frantically shoving activities and videos in front of his face until he either passes out or the ride comes to an end. We share this same fear of our own un-entertained adult mind.

What is disappearing from our lives is the gap, the space between things, what we used to call down time. Our attention is now almost always narrowed onto a task or activity and we are losing the spaces in which our attention is open, without a specific focus. People say that we are becoming unfocused as a society but in fact we are becoming hyper-focused, always looking at something and never just looking—without a specific object or goal of our gaze.

Open awareness, down time, the gap, whatever you call it, serves an important purpose in our lives. When I have a problem I can’t solve, I will often go for a walk and drop the problem altogether. Later that day, after not thinking about it for some time, the solution to the problem generally appears in my mind. I am not unique in this. Something is actually happening in that down time. The mind is putting things together, making associations, doing a different kind of work, one that happens outside our awareness. For many people, it is in the gaps that they have their best flashes of insight, as if we need to take our mind off of something in order to gain access to our intuition and really, to our everything.

So too, the mind needs recess periods in its day, like a child, when it can just run and play, jump from thing to thing and not have to direct its energy toward any particular thing. The mind needs to be able to flow freely from thought to thought or simply rest in no thought. The down time between tasks also allows our mind to rest. Gaps in the day give us time to just float about, space out or take a much-needed break from mind activity. This float time then allows us to re-boot our system and come back with renewed juice to bring to the next object of our attention. With our attention flipped on and at something all the time, we become mind-exhausted and while more time is spent focusing on tasks, we in fact become less productive qualitatively.
Furthermore, unfocused attention in our day allows us to spend time with ourselves, to make ourselves the focus of our attention. While not playing a game or engaging in a Google search, we can contemplate our own experience, check in with ourselves, and discover how we are doing in the middle of all this noise, this life. Now, because our attention is always focused on something else, we have ceased to be a destination for our own attention. But the media says that we are becoming pathological narcissists. Aren’t we focusing more on ourselves than ever? Yes, we are spending far more time reporting on ourselves, focusing on our identity, describing where we’ve been, what we are doing and so on, but at the same time, we are spending far less time actually being with ourselves, inside our own attention, asking and answering to our self. As a result of always having an external focus, we have, sadly, come to view being with ourselves, without something else to focus on, as a void, a panic-inducing non-place.

From a spiritual perspective, the spaces between—between tasks, between thoughts, between breaths, between all the objects of our attention, is profoundly important. This is the space we inhabit, or simply are, during meditation. It is in the spaces between thoughts that we connect with the awareness within which thought happens. It is in this open awareness that we gain a sense of detachment and freedom from the mind. When we lose the ability or opportunity to live in the gaps, we become slaves to the mind, and subsequently terrified of any time when the mind is not occupied. Gaps then become a kind of death—when we cannot feel our mind’s presence and thus cannot experience our own presence, as if we cease to exist. On the other hand, a deep and lasting confidence arises when we can tolerate and even enjoy open, undirected space, when being with just our self is not something to be feared.

Breaks from focused attention are beneficial in myriad ways. They bring insight, allow us to solve problems without trying, give our mind a chance to rest, and to play without an agenda. Gaps give us time to spend time with ourselves, to experience our own being, and to know ourselves as more than just what we are doing and thinking. Gaps give us the confidence to stop trying to out-run open space, escape down time, and ultimately, dodge ourselves.
In the digital age, we value action, information, entertainment, the stuff of mind, and we are encouraged to keep the mind busy at all times. Like most things these days, if we want to create down time, make space, we have to actively do it. Ironically, creating space to be unfocused now takes focused attention.

On a practical level, you can create down time in very small ways, by taking five minutes every day and consciously resisting the urge to give your mind something to chew on. When your mind tells you it’s time to play a game, email a friend, research a vacation, figure out a work problem, write a to-do list, ruminate on a relationship, just say “no, not now.” The mind will always search for something to attend to. You however, can practice being present without having an object of that presence, being aware without having to direct your awareness at something. Try it in short stretches, and notice what unfolds, and if you feel differently. Or, similarly, take a walk without your phone (or any device) and let your mind just wander, or slip away. Set aside times for an approved space out. Give yourself the gift of the gap, the privilege of the space that used to be built into life but is no longer.

As a result, you may not only feel less brain-weary, less mentally fatigued, but also you may discover a sense of internal spaciousness, and a wider and more panoramic view of life, which is not frantic and not dependent on external material to escape an internal void. With enough practice, your own presence may become a place unto itself, and you may discover that it is in the spaces between the objects of attention that you feel most spacious, whole, calm, and ultimately, well.

The post Has Technology Killed Down-Time? appeared first on Nancy Colier.