How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [119]
DON'T WAIT: GET STARTED NOW
Twenty-one strategies—plus the first commandment: Thou shalt not get angry when you talk. It's a lot to remember, and you'll certainly need your partner to help you stay on track, but the rewards are great. I recommend that you post these strategies on your refrigerator and review them once a week.
The best time to practice these techniques is before a serious problem erupts. If you wait until underlying irritations build up, it may be too late, because the brain literally can become entrapped by its own production of anger. Remember, ongoing resentment can injure the very mechanisms in the brain that control destructive emotions.30 Fortunately, compassion and forgiveness can heal those damaged structures in the brain.31
So by all means, make meditation, compassion, and acceptance a part of your relational and marital life. It will make you feel more connected, closer, optimistic, and more tolerant of the differences that exist.32 And when you train yourself to be present, attentive, and conscientiously sensitive to your inner states of awareness, as well as to those of your partner, you will enhance the neural functioning of both of your brains.
PAY IT FORWARD
In closing this chapter, I would like to make one further suggestion, inspired by the book and movie Pay It Forward.33 In the novel, a high school teacher gives the following assignment to his class: “Think of an idea for world change, and put it into action.” One boy came up with the notion of doing a good deed for three people. In exchange for the help he gave, he asked that each one do a good deed for another three people. He believed that doing something helpful for others would eventually spread throughout the world.
Will such a concept work? I can't say for certain, but similar “pay it forward” strategies have worked. For example, a pastor at a Kansas City Unity Church came up with the idea of encouraging people to go twenty-one days without complaining.34 You wear a rubber bracelet to remind you of your goal, but each time you complain, you have to put the bracelet on the other wrist and begin your twenty-one days anew. The exercise is essentially an acceptance-and-compassion-based meditation, and it may sound easy, but it takes most people four to eight months to go twenty-one days without complaining. To date, more than five million individuals—including children—have participated in the experiment, and that, by any measure, is a positive step toward undermining irritability in the world.
Mark and I would like to ask you to “pay it forward” with Compassionate Communication. Introduce the exercise to three people, and practice it with them for fifteen minutes. That's just forty-five minutes of your time. Try it with a friend, your kid, or a colleague at work, and then ask him or her to pass it along to three others. At the very least, photocopy the instructions and hand them out to a dozen people, asking them to do the same—a legal, compassionate chain letter, so to speak. If you succeed, you will have introduced a little more relaxation, peace, and intimacy into the world. Or create your own exercise to enhance human kindness and acceptance and share it with as many people as you can.
P.S.: You get extra credit if you teach three people to arouse their precuneus by having them yawn ten times in a row. But be forewarned: It's harder than you might expect to get someone to consciously yawn, even though it's one of the most relaxing things you can do.
∗1 Substantial neurological and