Ghosts in the Machine
What’s lurking in your mind?
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung
Have you ever been in a meeting when all of a sudden, almost out of nowhere, you get struck with an emotion so sharp it nearly takes your breath away? If you are like me, you have had years of training on how to contain that emotion. At least in the middle of a meeting. But you FEEL it. Your face grows hot, your ears burn, hands tingle, throat tightens, or your stomach knots. Whatever the reaction unique to you, you know what I’m talking about. You get hijacked from out of the blue.
But is it really so out of the blue?
Jerry Colonna, the CEO Whisperer as he is called in the tech world, talks about emotions and thoughts that get in our way of being a great leader in his book Reboot. He describes emotions or reactions, feelings and responses that derail us, sometimes quite unexpectedly. And usually they surface at inopportune times, like that very important meeting where you find yourself getting angry over a comment or a look, or when you get a not so great review from your boss and you don’t react well to the news.
What’s happening here? Is this just normal human reaction to unpleasant events or is it something deeper?
Apparently, in the tech world, when coders need to make changes in software, they typically go into the software and just ADD code. They leave the old code in there because it’s often too much effort to remove. They don’t worry about the old code because the new code now runs the software.
This old code is called “The Ghost in the Machine.”
Something deep inside “clicked” for me when I read this. The old code in software is not a problem UNTIL IT INTERFERES WITH THE NEW CODE. I don’t know how often this happens in the coding world, but apparently it happens frequently enough to earn itself a label: the ghost.
As humans we have our own “ghosts in the machine” and by this I mean, all the emotions that are below the surface that we never dealt with at the time they first came up because of any number of reasons. Maybe we were too busy, had young children to care for, or thought we were being selfish to focus on emotion when so many people were suffering, starving, hurting in the world….. You get the point. Many of us thought that looking at every emotion was a huge waste of time, and maybe even a selfish act.
But, and here is a very large BUT, when we have emotions that are not acknowledged, they show up anyway. And usually they come to dinner when we have the most important guest at the table.
They refuse to be ignored. So dealing with our emotions is not only a good idea, ideally at the time they initially surface, but it’s the only way to become the most effective you can be as a (fill in the blank here).
As a leader, father, mother, sister, teacher, peer, trainer, student, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, friend, mentor, lover, coach, employee, employer….
How do we get in touch with our Ghosts?
There are several ways to become friends with our ghosts. You can find a good therapist who can help you uncover deeply buried feelings, you can ask for feedback from people you trust about how you are showing up and reacting. Or you can do some kind of meditation or mindfulness practice where you work with your emotions, sit with them, let them surface and play themselves out. There are many other ways to get in touch with what is happening inside, that place that we tend to wall off, especially if it’s not a pleasant one. I have used all three techniques above at various times, and the one I find most beneficial at this time in my life is meditation.
How Meditation Is Finding My Ghosts
First of all, disclaimer, I am relatively new to a daily meditation practice. I wrote an article recently called How Dan Harris Got Me to Meditate which talks about my new, almost reluctant practice. Dan Harris, news anchor and journalist calls himself a “fidgety skeptic” when it comes to meditation even though he’s had a practice for over ten years now. He had a major panic attack on primetime news one night in front of over 5 million viewers. This panic attack, his ghost in the machine, sent him scurrying off to therapy to figure out what the heck just happened.
Most of us will not have an experience quite that public, but I have had several moments during my career, and life, where I felt completely hijacked by my emotions that seemed to arise literally from nowhere. So, when I came across Colonna’s phrase about the Ghost in the Machine, I knew that was what was happening to me and I wanted to figure out what my ghosts were. And, if Dan Harris could do it, then maybe I could too.
So, I started to meditate. At first it was sitting for a couple of minutes. Five minutes maximum. I have a racing mind, and a restless body. I am more of a shark than a turtle. So I started slow, not wanting to set unrealistic goals. The first time I sat down and tried to be still, to just notice what was going on inside my head, it was like a clown parade was in town. It was noisy, and full of activity with bright lights and horns honking. Wow. It was really quite unbelievable. How was I getting anything done with all that noise inside my head?
After a few days of easing myself into this new “thing” I was calling meditation, I started to sit longer. Ten minutes. Could I do fifteen? That grew to twenty, then I worked up the courage to try 30 minutes. I did not think I could do it. That was a very long time to sit still doing nothing. I could not remember the last time I did nothing for 30 minutes. I am the kind of person who takes a book with me everywhere I go so I NEVER have downtime. For me, unproductive time is wasting time. I am the queen of efficiency, and there is no room for dilly dallying.
Guess what happened? I sat the whole 30 minutes without getting up. It wasn’t pretty, and I didn’t have any wildly enlightened moments. Except….it was good. I felt good, especially afterwards. I was calmer, my breathing was easier, my head felt lighter, and all those voices in my head were subdued. They didn’t go away, in fact they never really do, but they weren’t screaming at me either.
So how am I tackling my ghosts? On the ten percent happier podcast (Dan Harris), he interviews a meditation teacher by the name of Oren Jay Safer. Oren has a course on the App called “emotions” that has been incredibly helpful for me in finding, touching, being with those old emotions that are like old code in my machine. He teaches the ABC’s of emotions: awareness, balance and curiosity.
AWARENESS is simply tuning in to what comes up for you. This is something I have been practicing while sitting in meditation. I just “tune in” and let the emotion come up. Sometimes it takes me by surprise, but that is the whole point. The other day I felt this wave of anger over an event that occurred in childhood that I had almost forgotten about. Instead of calling it nonsense, or pushing it away, I just sat with it. I watched it, and paid attention, and let it be. It stayed with me for a while but eventually it subsided.
BALANCE is about not clinging to the emotion and letting it take you over, but also not shoving it away. It’s about staying with it, and noticing it. Depending on the kind of emotion, and its intensity, this can be a hard one to do. I recommend practicing with smaller emotions first, if you can.
CURIOSITY is having a more relaxed view of the emotion, being curious about it rather than judgmental. Instead of asking the emotion “why are you here?” you can think of it as interesting that you’re feeling kind of angry right now. You can wonder where it is coming from. I think curiosity is best paired with some self-compassion. Treat yourself like you would a very good friend. Ask into the emotion, be kind to yourself, and listen for what it will tell you.
I’m still an infant in my meditation practice. And it is a practice. I’m still learning about the ghosts in my machine and expect this will be something I will do the rest of my life. Just like physical exercise, this kind of “brain training” is really important for health. We spend so much time talking about how important exercise and good nutrition are, and so little time talking about the health benefits of exercising our minds. I join the small, but growing, army of people who are advocates for mindfulness. My old code is still in there, but I am learning how to read it. And this will help me be a better (insert title here).
