Unravel the intricate relationship between stress and storytelling. Explore how our narratives shape our stress responses, and how stress, in turn, influences the stories we tell ourselves and others. A journey into the heart of human psychology awaits.
Silent Retreat
The basic idea of a silent retreat is to see how quiet the mind can get when you stop feeding it entertainment, conversation, and daydreams.
- You notice what’s happening inside you and around you, and come back to that when you get distracted.
Stress is Born
The mind is an extremely powerful connect-the-dots machine
- It constantly and rapidly make associations between what it notices, triggering any one of a zillion memories or projections about the future
- Essentially, the mind is making stories: sequences of events, past or future, where you stand to gain or lose something
- Naturally, a certain desperation grows around the needs you face in these stories, which creates real stress, usually over nothing
Find the story, leave it unfinished
When you notice stress rising at some random moment, find the story.
- Many times a day, we end up ruminating on stressful, unresolvable narratives for completely random reasons-yet somehow it feels like important work is being done.
- Leave the narrative unfinished, and go back to what you were doing before the storytelling started.
