mindfulness – Welcome to MAX

MAX Mindfulness: Those Darn ANTS!

By Dave Wine, President & CEO

A presenter on a recent webinar used the phrase “automatic negative thoughts” or ANTS for short, calling them the “ants” in our lives. I liked that phrase and it reminded me again of all the times it is so easy to “go there” throughout the day. Which is why staying mindful and giving conscious attention to our thoughts is so important.

How many times have you found yourself ‘less than happy’ throughout the day. Maybe you are stressed, your emotions become wound tight, there is sense of gloom and doom, certainly you might be feeling a long way from joy or enthusiasm. More than likely you have been attacked by the ants, those automatic negative thoughts. They not only are individual thoughts, they become patterns that shape and mold us daily but too easily add up to defining life for us. More often than not, it is the accumulation of a lot of little negative ants that create our moments and moods more than any one big thing.

What are some of our automatic negative thoughts? For each of us they are probably unique given our perceptions and experiences in life. But most of us automatically have ants related to sickness, finances, politics, religion, work, weather, and family. Our kids might do or say something that triggers an emotion and we go to “when will they ever grow up?” Or it might be your spouse that does that for you. You might be innocently watching TV and a political ad comes on and suddenly the joy seeps right out of you. Or every time you hear the word, Covid, ants start moving around in your mind. Weather is another key ant. If things are not the way we want them to be, our brains are hardwired to try and improve things. But we can’t change the weather (and most things), so the ants begin to crawl around in our minds disrupting our peace.

The key thing about ants is the word “automatic”. Our minds go there so fast we can’t even stop them! It is an automatic response we have built up to those things that disempower, frighten, or upset us, especially in our past. That’s why it is important to stop frequently throughout the day and do a check how we are feeling. Are you tight and constrained? Are you stressed? Are you depressed or feeling out of sorts? Has joy left? It could be all the ants moving around doing their thing in your mind.

The good news is that, just like you buy insecticides to deal with ants, we also have the power to deal with those ants in our minds. It is called paying attention, mindfulness, pregnant pauses – all those words and phrases you are probably tired of hearing about from me. But just taking those breaks to observe, feel, and monitor can make all the difference in how many ants you have crawling around uninvited that are bit by bit eating away at your joy. The ants may attack us before we know what is happening, but when they do we have the power to recognize what has been happening and we can change our minds and refocus our attention away from those ants.

Do away with the ANTS. Instead, intentionally adopt PETS (Positive Energetic Thoughts). They love you back and have your back!

David Wine

David is the President and CEO of the MAX enterprise, having served in that capacity since its formation in 2001. He has forty plus years of leadership experience in the business and faith-based worlds, being an ordained minister, having been elected to the highest position in his denomination, and receiving numerous awards and recognition for his leadership in the insurance industry. He currently serves on numerous boards in the church and insurance sectors. His hobbies include hiking, biking, skiing and snowshoeing as well as being an avid reader. David and his wife, Sharon, have three daughters, a son, and six grandchildren.

MAX Mindfulness: What Rocks are we Throwing?

by Dave Wine, President & CEO

I’m still a ‘boy’ at heart. I still love throwing rocks into lakes, rivers, and ponds. I love to try and make the biggest splash possible and then watching the ripples move outward. The fun part now is that I can throw much bigger rocks than my grandkids can and so I get their “wows” and look really strong! Right now they think that is cool! (Soon, they will be stronger than me and will show me up!)

Just as the size and type of rocks I throw create different ripples, so what we throw into our pond of awareness (life) creates different outcomes in our lives. That’s another way of saying we experience what we think. So something that is meaningful to me is asking each day what stones I want to throw into my pond today. Am I committed to throwing stones of unconditional love, peace, forgiveness, wholeness? Or will I throw more jagged and damaging stones (thoughts)? It is my choice.

If you watch ripples they continue in one direction until they reach something solid and then the ripples reverse and come back to where they first occurred. That’s true in our lives as well. What we ‘throw’ - the ripples we create - come back to us. If we choose thoughts of love, goodwill, and forgiveness; those same things will find their way back to us. If we choose attack, anger, or judgment those will be our return ripples. The universe is extremely fair - we get what we throw (or reap what we sow).

I love to throw rocks. As I get older, I realize choosing the right rocks to throw creates the best effect in ponds and in my life! And that creates wholeness in my life and in others' lives as well.

David Wine

David is the President and CEO of the MAX enterprise, having served in that capacity since its formation in 2001. He has forty plus years of leadership experience in the business and faith-based worlds, being an ordained minister, having been elected to the highest position in his denomination, and receiving numerous awards and recognition for his leadership in the insurance industry. He currently serves on numerous boards in the church and insurance sectors. His hobbies include hiking, biking, skiing, and snowshoeing as well as being an avid reader. David and his wife, Sharon, have three daughters, a son, and six grandchildren.

MAX Mindfulness: Stealing our Happiness Away…

I was visiting with a neighbor and they made the comment that it was a good weekend, the weather was nice, and they were happy. But then they said, “I know it can’t last.”

I’ve shared before about our brains being wired to look for what’s wrong or what needs to be improved or what danger lurks nearby. Our brains literally work against us trying to steal our happiness away. So we aren’t naturally ‘wired’ to look for what’s good and right and working well right now. Even if things are perceived to be working well right now we are always looking for things that might change for the worse, so that we miss the moment we are in.

There is yet another layer to our brains that causes us unrest or unease. When we are happy, we are always afraid that happiness won’t last, so we are also naturally wired to continue to seek more ways to be happy even when we are already happy. In short, that means again that we are missing the current moment of happiness because we are already looking for more of something in order to keep our happiness. So we get hit two ways when we are happy: We are afraid our happiness won’t last or shouldn’t last, and, at the same time our minds are way ahead of us trying to figure out new ways to keep us happy. Once again, we seldom live in the present moment now!

I’ve found that the current COVID stuff hits me in both of those contexts. If I’m feeling happy I catch myself and can easily go to ‘how is this ever going to end? or ‘I better not be happy given the givens right now’. Or I’m happy but I’m sure that can’t last in this context so I try to think of additional ways I can stay happy because I’m worried my happiness won’t last. If I’m already happy, why can’t I just enjoy that moment and live in that joy?! It is the only moment I’m guaranteed to ever have – the present one! We can enjoy more of our moments – that is where mindfulness comes in – paying attention to our thoughts and changing them. Simply practicing gratitude for the one moment or for those things we see or hear as we look around us, or for life itself, can all reverse the tendency of our minds to go to an unhappy place. In short, gratitude stops the brain's propensity to think us out of our happiness and keeps us centered on this moment now.

I can live in the moment. And I need to be aware of the hardwired aspects of my brain that are working against me. That awareness is the first step to longer enjoyment of anything that is working well for us right now. We have enough challenges right now so I want to make the most of my happy moments.

David Wine

MAX Mindfulness: Let them “off the hook”

by Dave Wine, President & CEO

There is one practice that, if done regularly, can change your life! It doesn’t take much time, it isn’t complicated (although it is not easy), and it is something you can easily fit into your schedule throughout each and every day. It is what I call “letting them off the hook”. The most debilitating baggage we carry in our lives is our resentments or grievances. Not just with others but with nearly everything we have and do in life. We are always judging things, events and others. We are measuring how much “happiness” they are giving us, how they are living their life compared to ours, who is doing things ‘right’ and who isn’t, whether our things are giving us what we intended, etc. etc. etc. As I’ve shared many times before it takes that ‘pregnant pause’ for us to stop long enough to recognize what our minds have been doing to sabotage our joy and peace. Since our minds naturally go to ‘judging and measuring’ it takes a practice, a mindful approach to break that habit.

So here’s the ‘easy yet very hard’ practice I’d invite you to try. You might even want to use something to remind you like a recurring daily message, email, alarm, or similar. Stop at frequent, yet brief intervals throughout the day. Focus on what you are feeling at the moment. If you are not at peace and feeling agitated or frustrated or down, you can bet that something is occurring in your mind that is causing you to feel resentment or a grievance. It could be your work, a phone call just made, an agent who just doesn’t get it, something that happened at home, someone wearing something your mind doesn’t like, a health issue, something someone said, and any number of other things our mind attaches to throughout the day. One of the ways we never deal with things is letting them sit at the edge of our minds, creating negative emotions, but never focusing on them. Focusing on them is actually helpful – bringing them to our consciousness so that we can release them. If we ignore and pretend they aren’t there, they will fester.

The very simple practice is to feel those, recognize those and then just say, “Dave, (if I’m your issue), I release you and let you off the hook.” Or “I feel my fears about my health but I am letting that off the hook.” “That person cut me off in traffic, but I am letting them off the hook.” “That person is wearing the ugliest sweater I’ve seen but I’m letting them off the hook.” “This task stinks but I’m letting it off the hook.” Or, for me this past year, “I hate the storms but I’m letting them off the hook.”

Why does this practice work? It allows you to feel and recognize an issue. That is important. But then it allows the next important step – to do an act of forgiveness and in this we are actually forgiving ourselves more than ‘the other’. It allows us to recognize that we alone, each of us, are responsible for our thoughts and feelings. No one else or thing is causing us to feel what we are feeling, regardless of how much we think otherwise. We are each responsible for our own thoughts. So bringing up our thoughts and then doing an act of release, forgiveness, ‘letting them off the hook’ is one of the most helpful practices we can do. It seems simple, almost too easy in its formula, yet I have found it works – it creates that needed space to own and lessen the impact of the many judgments and resentments we carry in our minds every single day. Of course, the hard part of the easy is to really ‘mean it’ – to be willing to ‘let off the hook’. But even if you don’t feel like it, try and pause, recognize the issue, and just say it to yourself, “I let you off the hook”. I think you might be surprised at how it lessens the edge of that thought.

David Wine

MAX Mindfulness: Mindful Perspective

by Dave Wine, President & CEO

Change your view and your perspective changes. I think of this often when I fly somewhere. When I am ‘on the ground’ driving in my car, my perspective is very limited. Roads and streets don’t seem to have any design - they seem haphazard. Communities are horizontally seen when driving so the ‘structure’ of the community is not seen. Trees, hills, buildings and other things block our view.

But then our plane ascends and suddenly my perspective is brand new. What was not seen before is now seen clearly. I can see why roads are built where they were, how the interchanges work, how the communities are laid out, how much more order there seems to be in the fields, farms, and towns. My perspective has changed and I see differently.

Perspective colors everything. That is why one of my favorite statements is “I could choose to see this differently.” No matter what we are seeing, feeling, thinking we could change our mind and change our perspective. The world we see is really up to us because we can choose to see differently. When something rocks our world, when things don’t go our way, when someone seems to be creating a problem for us, when work piles up, etc., there is always the possibility of changing our perspective. It is not easy stuff. Remember our brains are wired to look first for danger, problems and difficulties.

So it takes mindful attention, a willingness to pause just long enough to allow a new thought to come, asking things like, “is it true?”, “could this be seen differently?”, “what would love do or say?”, “who would I be without this thought?” The most powerful questions are ones that you think of that might help you the most. Sometimes you might think of yourself leaving the dance floor and walking up to the balcony and looking down at the dance of life to get more insight. Or flying above to look down on the issue. Just visualizing that will sometimes give your mind the pregnant pause needed to change a perspective.

The key point is that we are in charge of our thoughts - no one else. And our thoughts create our perspectives. And perspectives color the world as we see it. Doggone it! I’d much rather blame something or someone else!

David Wine

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