Well Endowed?

I'm finishing a book I bought last summer at a train station in Prague- International Best Seller Thinking Fast and Slow. It's an exploration of human decision-making based on the extraordinary life and career of Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman. I've found the entire book useful, but the concept I share to today is endowment.

 

               

             The second limb of yoga is observances(Niyama) and includes non-hoarding. If the freedom I felt backpacking hadn’t rid me of hoarding habits, my impromptu move to Dallas did. I suddenly possessed only the contents of the backseat of a small SUV. I was so withdrawn that most of what I owned lacked any semblance of sentimental value.  

It took a few months for me to unpack non-essentials. My best friend made a keep sake box my junior year; I opened the lid with hesitation. I blamed my worst qualities for the changes that separated then from now. One at a time I connected myself to moments captured in photographs. I rifled through faded tickets from concerts, sporting events, and movies I hadn’t remembered attending.

Most of the photos are now pinned to my wall. Until four o’clock today I proudly claimed the remaining contents of that keepsake box as the only items in my room not intended for regular use. As usually happens when I get an idea for my next post, God appeared with an authenticity challenge. Today he came in the form of my mother lovingly presenting me with another huge box of clothes from storage. So a night of overthinking awaits wrestling and prioritizing memories tied to the sundress I haven’t seen since a first date and the “hot” outfit I never wore even though my friends helped me pick it out.

      At some point I decided against being a psychologist, so if your level of skepticism requires statistical and experimental detail I strongly recommend you read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow for yourself. As a substitute yoga teacher and amateur blogger, I feel obligated to share one such experiment in which half a sample of participants was given coffee mugs. The price endowed participants reported for their university mug was higher on average than the value given by their mugless counterparts.

Most reading this didn’t need an illustration; we know we can be risk averse to the point of forfeiting potential gains. Risks can be unreasonable and loss is painful on a physiological level, but studies like this clearly show our cultural tendency to avoid even reasonable exchanges once we have considered something to be ours. Economic uncertainty certainly plays into my hoard of choice- stinginess; however research, including but not limited to Kahneman and his team's, demonstrates that experienced traders are less risk-adverse. 

Ideally a restrained yogi would be so rooted that the illusion of possession would lose its appeal, surrendering to the inevitable ebb and flow of wealth. Kahneman encourages us to adopt a less attached approach in our thinking as well. “How much do I want to have this mug, compared with the other things I could have instead?” We see probabilities more clearly without the emotional pressure of potential loss, clarity improves decision making, and confidence in our own decisions is the most reliable insurance policy.  

Scholarship Application

Please describe in your own words a success story. This can be something in a previous work environment or something personal. Attach additional pages if needed.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” –John Steinbeck

            I always had great grades in school and high marks on standardized tests. I had the best family ever, cool college friends, and supportive intimate relationships. After graduation my friends and family moved, a long term relationship failed, and future plans evaporated. I didn’t have the energy I was banking on to pursue a professional career in public health, and everything else I tried to do found a way to blow up in my face. I felt like I had lost twenty years of hard work in a year, so I stopped maintaining what little self-esteem I had left. I even began entertaining fantasies about ending my life, and that’s when Mom came and got me.

            I moved in with my aging grandmother across the street from my parents. I threw myself one-hundred-percent into a new job to escape my thoughts. This job became a walking mediation and eventually enabled me to regain financial independence. Sense of responsibility for my life returning, I joined the gym where I discovered yoga. My anatomical knowledge, religious streak, and physical ambition had been repurposed for my own healing.

            A year later, life is not perfect and neither am I, but I feel extremely blessed to enjoy its small triumphs and take its incoherencies less seriously. I get a little stronger and more consistent as I go and my growing capacity for compassion has improved every day. I expect to feel as though I have lost everything and everyone several more times in my life, but I’m finding it easier to avoid such thoughts- they make waste of now.

            Now I have more joy sharing this story with you than I would retelling my scholastic, nursing, or sales conquests. I composed this from my own new space. My bed is made, laundry done, with eight hours of work and an afternoon of climbing behind me. Ahead I have a shower, healthy dinner, and Game of Thrones mini-marathon with someone I respect and care about. I’m not the most impressive person I know, but I am good. I feel prepared for the next chapter in my life and hope it involves a career with Sunstone.    

"A Traveler Between Life and Death"

"And now I see with eye serene,

The very pulse of the machine.

A being breathing thoughtful breaths,

A traveler between life and death."

-William Wordsworth

 

Breathwork is by far the most useful part of my practice. If you're not taking advantage of your breath, then you should start now. Strong, flexiable, responsive lungs maximize performance by fueling the body efficiently. This awareness has the potential to empower everything we do.

 

Last summer a friend and I were taking a breather from a weekend rush. We were understaffed, stretching capacity, getting low on clean glasses, and it was my first July in Texas. I admitted that I couldn't have kept cool for the rest of the day if it wasn't for what I was just learning in yoga,

"It sounds a little out there, but in practice it's really cool. You can ALWAYS take a breath... like upside down, and balancing, and twisted, and self conscious... tired... or when it's one-million degrees and all you want to do is punch a customer in the face."

One of the initial benefits of my breathwork was the few seconds of quiet I found there to choose my battles more carefully. It's taken a third of my life to realize that a system balanced by restraint is the most responsible perspective from which to actively approach problems- especially those that are important to me.

 

Yoga warns us not to make inaction our goal because action never ceases. It's tempting to associate rigidity with wisdom to excuse ourselves from participating fully in our lives. If you strive to see life as a gift, this is not only a poor excuse but a self-indulgent and ungrateful one. In my experience, it only temporarily isolates me from my responsibilities and mostly stems from unwillingness to be compassionate towards the needs of others.   

 

Even if the world ends tomorrow, an oragnism's ability to adapt until then will be what defined it as a living thing. Fear will only inhibit our God-given ability to regulate ourselves in the face of whatever demands life throws our way. The key to escaping fear and living without regret is being so connected to every breath that we approach even our last from within The Temple of the Holy Spirit. My hope is that you find potential for growth in every moment including this one.