This is just how things are right now

I’ve been practicing and teaching self-compassion for a long time now. My book on that topic, “This Difficult Thing of Being Human,” was published six years ago. (I hope you’ve read it. If you haven’t, I hope you will.)

My approach to practicing self-compassion hasn’t fundamentally changed in that time, but from time to time a particular approach will come into focus for me..

One of the things I’ve been finding helpful recently is simply saying to myself, when something unpleasant happens, “This is just how things are right now.”

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I’ll talk a bit more about that in a minute, but first I want to outline the way I usually practice self-compassion, so you have an overview of what I’m talking about.

“This is just how things are right now.” This phrase is a short-cut to radical acceptance.

Naturally you have to first notice that you’re suffering in some way. The word “suffering” can be misleading, because it conjures up strong states of distress, illness, etc. And those things could be included here, but essentially “suffering” covers any experience that’s uncomfortable in any way.

Here are three examples, taken from my own life, of how this has been useful.

Example 1

I’m meditating and I happen to be so tired that I’m dipping in and out of dreams.

Now, anyone who’s been meditating for a long time knows that we’re supposed to just accept that distraction and sleepiness happens. Sure, we can try and stay awake, but we don’t give ourselves a hard time for being tired.

And I always thought I didn’t. But I find that saying “This is just how things are right now” frees me from a subtle frustration that I hadn’t even realized was there. That frustration seems tied in to the immediate reflex, “I must try to stay awake!”

When I say to myself, “This is just how things are right now,” I no longer make any willed effort to stay awake. I just appreciate those times that I am conscious.

Oddly, this doesn’t make me go to sleep any more than I did before. It’s almost like “trying to stay awake” doesn’t really do anything anyway.

What it does do is to bring me more peace. I lose the sense that falling asleep is a bad thing. (And yet I don’t surrender to sleep. Weird!)

I now find I’m perfectly happy with the situation, which is that I’m meditating, and sometimes I fall asleep.

Even as I write this I think it sounds like I’m saying that I’m just giving in to sleep. But I’m not. I think it only sounds like that to me because this subtle striving has been part of my makeup for so long.

Example 2

I’m meditating and my youngest dog starts licking my hand. My other two dogs tend to ignore me when I’m meditating, but the youngest dog is a bit clingy. And she’s a licker.  When the other dogs lick me during meditation, which is only when I’m forced to meditate lying down, I don’t mind. But there’s something kind of gross about the way Pippa licks me. It’s slimy. I can find it annoying. I get irritated with her. I just want it to stop!

So I say “This is just how things are right now,” and instantly I don’t mind the licking. It’s still unpleasant, but I’m okay with it being unpleasant.

A whole layer of reaction gets removed, and I’m able to sit with equanimity. The licking continues, or doesn’t, and I just don’t mind.

Example 3

I’m feeling sad for some reason I can’t put my finger on. Of the three examples here, this one is potentially the most serious, because sadness can go on for a long time and after a while it can start to shade into depression.

But when I say to myself “This is just how things are right now,” immediately it’s like a weight has been lifted. The feelings of sadness are still there, but they’re very mild and I can happily live with them. There’s just a dull ache that doesn’t at all trouble me.

Because the sadness continues, my unconscious reactivity and resistance can creep back in. When this happens I keep reminding myself, this is just how things are right now. And every time, there’s the sense of a weight being removed.

Anyway, I’m finding this a very useful tool. I’ve been recommending it to a lot of my meditation students. This isn’t a new tool. In fact I wrote about it eight years ago.

Saying “This is just how things are right now” corresponds to the first three steps of my self-compassion process — 1) recognizing that suffering is present, 2) dropping the story, and 3) turning toward and accepting painful feelings. The acceptance stage is what it most resembles, but it implies the first two stages as well.

The fourth step in that process is offering kindness and reassurance to the suffering part of us. Usually I haven’t needed to do this. I guess the phrase itself — “This is just how things are right now” — itself provides reassurance.

So I toss this out there, as I tend to do, hoping that you, too, find it a useful shortcut for alleviating suffering.

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