In early November of this year, I recently heard a story that was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle on December 15, 2005, yes, I know almost 12 years ago! I was so taken with it I thought I would share it during Thanksgiving week. The story was about a female humpback whale that had become entangled in massively long crab traps and lines. Apparently the 50-foot whale was weighed down by hundreds of pounds of yards of line rope wrapped around her tail, her torso and fins, and a line tugging in her mouth. She was struggling to rise to the surface of the ocean to occasionally breathe. She was tiring and as her strength waned, she would not survive.
A nearby fisherman spotted her and radioed in a plea for help from an environmental group. Thus, a rescue team of divers came and they determined the only way to save her was to untangle her from the ropes. This mission was dangerous, as one slap of her tail could easily kill a rescuer. Because the ropes were so tight due to her straining to get up to the surface for air, the divers had to use curved knives to cut the rope away from her body. They worked for hours to free her, encircling her body working on the ropes. After hours, she was eventually freed. When she was free of the ropes, the rescuers say she swam in circles around them, like joyous victory laps. Then, amazingly enough, she swam up to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushing them gently around to thank them. The divers watched as this huge animal went up to each diver and repeated this gesture. Some of the divers said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The rescuer who cut the rope from her mouth said that her eye followed him the entire time he was there, and he said that as a result of that experience, he will never be the same. After she was finished, she swam away. I thought this story was amazing. I have seen animals caught and the moment they are free they immediately flee as fast as they can away from humans. So, what about this whale? Obviously, she did not do this. She was indeed, thanking each and every diver for rescuing her, before she took off into the ocean, her home. After hearing this story, I thought how apropos it was for Thanksgiving. We have all, no doubt, been tangled up in hundreds of pounds of nets and ropes before, metaphorically speaking, and have needed someone to help us by cutting those ropes and freeing us. Have we thanked those in our lives that helped us during those times? What about the less serious times, when we just needed a listening ear or even a hug and “It is going to be all right.” I hope you will think about those people in your life, your divers and rescuers, and others who are always there for you no matter what, for the good times, the bad times, and in between times. For those people whom you support and who support you, growing together in your relationship along this journey called life. I thank the people in my life that support me, who love me, and who have cut the ropes for me when I needed help. This Thanksgiving, I hope you will thank those who have rescued you as well. Let us all be as grateful as that whale this Thanksgiving Day.
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The other day, I was thinking about my life and a problem I had. I was trying to solve the problem as quickly and efficiently as possible, but this problem was quite complex. As I continued to think about this problem, a song came on the radio. I began to sing the lyrics and as I sang, I was in the moment. I was not only singing, but also paying attention to the meaning of the song.
"Let it Be" by the Beatles When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be And in my hour of darkness She is standing right in front of me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, let it be Whisper words of wisdom, let it be And when the broken-hearted people Living in the world agree There will be an answer, let it be For though they may be parted There is still a chance that they will see There will be an answer, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, let it be Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, let it be Ah, let it be, yeah, let it be Whisper words of wisdom, let it be And when the night is cloudy There is still a light that shines on me Shine on until tomorrow, let it be I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, yeah, let it be Oh, there will be an answer, let it be Let it be, let it be Let it be, yeah, let it be Whisper words of wisdom, let it be I felt somehow comforted by the lyrics of this song. And thought about them carefully, realizing that they were words that could help me with my problem. "Let it be." Three simple words, yet so powerful. This song captured my attention because I thought how perfectly it represented one way that we can live our life to stay psychologically healthy. As humans, we frequently try to problem solve all the time in hopes of resolving problems and/or making them go away. Sometimes, however, that isn't a possibility. Why? Because sometimes we are NOT in CONTROL of the problem or the solution. Perhaps even OFTEN we are not in control of the problem or solution. Then what do we do? So many times the words "let it be, let it be" are the perfect "solution" for your problem. We have to let it be and accept what is. When you accept what is, I believe that you carry it softly with you, or allow it to follow along side of you, as opposed to letting it go, which implies that you are walking away, putting distance between you and the problem, throwing the problem out, or pushing it away. Most likely doing all those behaviors with the hope that you won't ever see or think about that problem again! The difficulty with letting go, however, is that your mind will have thoughts, your mind will generate emotions, and your body will have sensations that you can not control. These will conjure up the problem that you thought you let go of. The more you try to avoid, the more you actually have the problem. This is one of the main tenets of ACT, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, developed by Steven C. Hayes. Thus, I believe it is so much more difficult to let it go, than to let it be. Let it be implies that you know that the problem exists, that you accept that it exists, and you carry it softly or acknowledge its presence. You do this all the while living your life, setting goals towards your values, and doing what is important to you. This takes far less energy than your mind fighting the letting go process that takes so much energy. Why not take the path let it be? When you are able to do this, you will find that you are at peace and able to live your life with resilience. Addendum: After I finished writing this reflection, although not yet posted, I turned on the Pandora. The song that played next was "Let it Be". I smiled, decided no more revisions, and thought "I just need to post this!" Ok, I will admit it. I am a self-disclosed rule follower. I am the one that follows the rules. Well, almost all of the time. I like to think that I follow rules, only if they make sense. I don't just blindly follow rules. But, for whatever the reason, I can almost always find one good reason to follow a rule. My kids know this about me. A perfect example is when I read to them the rules that were on a sign while on vacation many years ago, with the expectation that my children would follow them. I could tell they weren't all that happy that I noticed the sign. I heard a few groans and one of the children asked "Why are you such a rule follower, Mom?" So, rules. I think rules are good. Why? Well first, rules set expectations on behavior. Second, they bring order into life. Third, consequences are a product of rules. Fourth, rules often engender respect for others, including respect of others' feelings and property. If we didn't have rules, our world would be chaos. Chaos would ensue on the roads, in the schools, in stores, watching parades, at public venues, at work; the list is endless. And yes, even and maybe more importantly, chaos in your homes! We do have rules in our house; some have names. You all know the "Golden Rule": Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rules specific to our family include: the "Two Way Street Rule": Life is a two way street. In other words, a family member needs to contribute to the functioning family unit in order to reap the benefits of being in the family unit. There was also the "Car Seat Rule" (when the children were young): A child sits in the same place every time s/he gets in the car until the next seat rotation. This rule cut down on all the bickering every time the children jumped into the car. As it turned out, there was rarely a rotation, which I noticed indicated that children do like routines. But then we also developed the "Donut Rule"! This rule goes like this: if the family has community food that is in discrete portions allotted to each family member, then you have 24 hours to eat your portion or after that, it is fair game for anyone else to consume! You laugh? Well, this is serious business. It started out with a box of donuts in the car on a family vacation. One of my children became upset that his second donut was eaten by someone else--many, many hours after the donuts had arrived on the scene. Still, the child thought this was unfair. We had plenty of time to discuss this on our lengthy car ride home across states. So we came up with "The Donut Rule." It worked so well, that we have since generalized it to all different types of food. The food could be anything from egg rolls, to chicken wings, to pieces of cake. The fact that the entire family participated in the development of that rule helped to ensure their compliance. Our rules provide structure, expectations, understanding, and provide consequences. I also like to think that they generate respect, compassion, empathy; decreases conflict, stress and anxiety. Did I mention decreases conflict? The rules can also ensure that your food will be yours for 24 hours! In our home nothing is stagnant, so rules are informally reviewed and changed as needed to fit the fluid nature of the growth in development of our family. In general, I like rules. For me, having rules and enforcing rules is a good thing. With my family, I can't imagine life without our rules. I will say that now, my family sees the value in having rules--most of the time, and making sure they are enforced as well! Rules....What do you think? Do you like them? When I was a senior in high school, I found myself and others walking through a valley, facing an extremely difficult situation. I still remember vividly my encounter with my high school English teacher and the ensuing conversation. She said, "Susan, life is full of peaks and valleys. Every person will experience peaks and valleys in their life. You just happen to be experiencing a valley earlier than most. You will get through this and go on to experience peaks in your lifetime." I never forgot those wise words. In fact, I took them to heart. I realized that I could not change the difficult situation; indeed, I had to accept it. So, I accepted it and did my best to help others through it as well. I held onto hope during that difficult time, but what I hoped for changed over time. I came to a conclusion that if I persevered, like my teacher said, I would experience peaks in my life and I wanted to! As a result, I knew I had to persevere through this difficult time to reach that goal. Later, I realized that there were underlying meanings in those words of wisdom from my teacher. My wise teacher was not only talking about resilience, but she was also giving me hope. How powerful that combination was and continues to be in my life! As a result of that experience and other reasons, I decided I wanted to become a psychologist. After high school, I went to college and graduate schools and earned my degrees, culminating in a Ph.D. and licensure as a psychologist. I married, began my career, traveled, and had children. I did experience peaks! How I rejoiced in those experiences! During those times, I thought of the wisdom of my high school teacher. In addition, I also experienced the plateaus of everyday experiences that were routine; day in and day out experiences of which life is made of and for which I was also grateful. I also experienced the typical valleys that everyone encounters in life. Every time that happened, I also thought of my high school teacher. I made a decision to be resilient and to have hope for the future -- to walk through the valley, with support as needed, but to always keep moving forward, and to always persevere. I continue to keep moving forward, only looking back to learn from those walks through the valleys. Those valleys provided me with the opportunity to be resilient --to gain insight, to learn, to persevere, to have hope, to reach that next plateau, to be content, to be grateful, and to be open to that next peak experience. I hope that for you too. An aha moment....The Oxford dictionary defines an aha moment as a moment of sudden insight or discovery. Have you ever experienced an aha moment? If you have, you know it! It comes to you in a flash! The insight can be so overwhelming it may feel like you are being knocked over. Then, of course, there may be the emotion that can often accompany the insight. Those emotions can definitely be overwhelming. Aha moments happen when you are not trying to problem solve analytically nor consciously. What triggers an aha moment? I don't know. In my experience, aha moments have come out of no where, hence, the very definition of! At other times, they may have been precipitated by experiencing a deep emotion, and then unwittingly the mind, or perhaps the unconscious, responds. I don't know. I just know that these moments happen. Recently, I have had two significant aha moments. Moments that came out of the blue, and seemed completely unrelated. They occurred about 2 weeks apart. Both of those aha moments came as quite a shock. The insight gained was nothing that I was consciously seeking. Not only had I not been looking for an answer; indeed, I had not even acknowledged that there was a need for additional insight, let alone an explanation to a problem. The mind is truly amazing . All of a sudden, one of these insights came seemingly out of nowhere; a discovery, a piece of knowledge. Once I was conscious of this knowledge, there was no turning back. So I proceeded to process this discovery and deal with the information accordingly, which I knew was 100 percent accurate. I had no doubt about the veracity of this particular insight. Still, I decided to check it out, anyway, with a close, but objective person in my life that I knew could confirm or deny my aha moment. I held my breath as I asked the question, and voila, this person confirmed my insight. What I thought was fascinating was that she had known my discovery for years, and I had never seen it. You've heard the expression that "one can not see the forest through the trees", well, it was akin to that! Then, quite coincidentally that day, although not entirely surprising, I came across an article about these moments on the internet! Of course, I read the article. Information on aha moments is fascinating. Rick Nauert, Ph.D. in March 2016, wrote a brief article about research done at the University of Drexel regarding aha moments, "Aha Moments are Usually on the Money". The bottom line of the study indicated that the results based on experiments found that aha moments, or sudden insights are much more efficient and accurate in providing solutions to problems than say, traditional analytical problem solving. Aha moments lead to better outcomes pertaining to the problem resolution. Almost by definition, I would add that aha moments also provide insight into situations that are or can be unconscious for the individual, i.e. the individual doesn't even know that a problem exists, but the mind is indeed working on such a problem! But of course, that would be a difficult experiment to design! The researchers found that insights "are powerful for unstructured problem solving". Clearly, the mind knows best. The problem, no pun intended, as I see it, is that you can never predict when one of these aha moments will surface. Once you experience, perhaps a major aha moment, you may then experience a cascade of insights (or what I might coin, the terms micro-aha moments or micro-insights) that are related to one specific aha moment. If your aha moment has huge ramifications, then many micro-insights may proceed to come forth in the same unconscious way. I can only explain this as the mind takes the major insight that has been gained and applies it to other situations or relationships and keeps sorting "data", emotions and experiences, and then provides a subset of micro-aha moments! Because the process occurs below the level of awareness, in the unconscious, it is not prone to analysis and altercation as is the analytical process of problem solving. Thus, the aha insight gained is more accurate and thorough. It may not be 100 percent accurate all the time, but research shows that insight gained from aha moments is certainly more accurate than the problem solving counterpart. I would think that this would hold for micro-insights as well. In general, however, aha moments don't seem to occur too frequently. As a result, you can't realistically rely on these moments to solve your problems. Consequently, you must engage in a conscious process of problem solving or of understanding yourself, especially if you have time constraints. The need for this kind of understanding is more immediate. I do think that if you want to experience a similar process of aha moments to make your life better--to gain insight into yourself, insight into your family, your relationships, and into your life, there is actually something you can do to capture a parallel process. I believe that psychotherapy can actually emulate this process, but in a more structured way. A psychologist can help you increase your self awareness, Such awareness can lead to improvement in your well-being, and particularly to your self esteem. If you feel better and view yourself more positively, you will be able to identify your needs, and then to make better choices to meet your needs. You will also have an easier time identifying your values and then deciding if you want to change your behavior (if change is needed) to align your behavior with your values. I find aha moments to be fascinating and quite frankly, life changing. In addition, I do believe, that finding a psychologist with whom you can develop an authentic relationship, can also facilitate a parallel process. This process can also result in aha moments, albeit a slightly different process perhaps than completely unstructured ones. Thus, psychotherapy is a process that can also uncover insight, thereby increasing self awareness. Whether this process is experienced as resulting in a pure, unstructured aha moment or not, it is a process that can be, and is, quite frankly, life changing. So, here's to experiencing aha moments in your life, whatever the process! |
AuthorSusan Kent-Arce, Ph. D. is a licensed psychologist in the Dallas, TX area whose goal is to make peoples' lives better by partnering with them to discover resilience and give them hope and skills to live their best lives. Archives
November 2017
Categories"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
Charles Darwin |