Turtle Steps from A Hot Mess to a Triad of Mindful Focus

We all know what it feels like to be a hot mess. I’ve been there, you’ve been there. Sometimes we know how we got there and many times we end up there and wonder what the @#&$ happened?? How do we get from a hot mess to a triad of mindful focus?

So, what is a “triad of mindful focus”? The Harvard Business Review, in an article from December 2013 by author Daniel Goleman, states that focused leaders can cultivate a triad of focus which includes the following three containers: focusing on yourself, focusing on others, and focusing on the wider world. That sounds like mindfulness to me.

We can’t expect ourselves to be this well-balanced, three-legged stool all the time, can we? We are human. There are days we don’t get enough sleep, days we stayed up late the night before with a sick child, and days we help a neighbor and put off our own needs. We sometimes take on too much, and if you are a leader in any way, shape, or form (main do-er in your home), as Goleman says in his article, “Every leader needs to cultivate this triad of awareness, in abundance and in the proper balance, because a failure to focus inward leaves you rudderless, a failure to focus on others renders you clueless, and a failure to focus outward may leave you blindsided.”

Focusing on yourself with turtle steps means taking small amounts of quiet time to check in with your body. What is going on in there? Goleman explains, “Gut feelings are messages from the insula and the amygdala, which the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, of the University of Southern California, calls somatic markers. Those messages are sensations that something “feels” right or wrong. Somatic markers simplify decision making by guiding our attention toward better options.”

One of my Soto Zen Buddhist teachers, Tim Burkett, coined the phrase “turtle practice” when speaking about sitting meditation. Sitting Zazen (Zen Meditation) is turtle practice. We don’t try to reach the finish like a hare in a race. This is a life-long practice that takes gentle awareness, patience, and compassion. Sitting or walking meditation, a quiet walk in the woods, focusing on breathing, and taking in what is arising inside are habits that can be fine-tuned to notice the insula and amygdala messages. To be a leader or responsive person in the world, we need to know where we stand, what we need, and how we feel. Only then can we be better at showing up for and focusing on others.

Focusing on others - Empathy and compassion are the legs of the stool in the triad of mindful focus. In Mahayana Buddhism the directive is compassion, and the liberation of all beings. Mahayana Buddhist choose to keep coming back to body and breath, to keep returning to this earth as Bodhisattvas (beings of compassion) until all beings are free from suffering.

Goleman states that empathy has three branches:

cognitive empathy – the ability to understand another person’s perspective
emotional empathy – the ability to feel what someone else feels
empathic concern – the ability to sense what another person needs from you

Cognitive empathy requires that you first intuit, know, and be with what you are feeling. It would be impossible for you to try and understand another person’s perspective if you were not able to identify feelings within yourself. To build and strengthen this skillset it is important to take turtle steps to minimize distractions.

When life is filled with radio, TV, social media, or other desires that tend to distract us, there is no time to ask ourselves, “how do I feel?”. Have you ever asked someone the question, “How do you feel?” and the response is, “I feel so busy.” Or, “I feel like my coworker isn’t doing her share of the work.” These responses do not use any feelings words. They are stating thoughts that have underlying feelings, and the responder has not identified what those feelings are. This is all too common in our society because we don’t value feelings as much as we value thoughts. Funny, when our whole existence is about feelings: We desire this item, we are averse to that thing, we feel squeamish in that situation, and we feel comfortable in another. We pair up with people who “get” us. People who feel how we feel or can empathize with our feelings. Feelings are at the core of our being.

Zazen, the Soto Zen Buddhist sitting meditation, instructs students to sit facing a wall with an upright spine, hips above knees, and a downward gaze and just sit. Just be. Don’t do anything other than what your body does naturally...breathe. Notice what arises. Many times, what we notice is a lot of thoughts – a lot! Our mind won’t be quiet about the past, the future, our likes, our dislikes, the neighbor’s beautiful yard, or mom’s critical tone of voice. When that happens, we then think we can’t meditate. Often in this situation, people give up and feel as if they failed.

They haven’t.

We can begin again. We can take turtle steps towards “just sitting”. We can take turtle steps towards just being with whatever is arising in the moment. We can take turtle steps towards noticing what we are feeling and being with whatever that is. There’s this moment, and then there’s the next.

Emotional empathy is the vibe you get when you walk into a room or when you encounter a new person or a familiar person. What is that? That is the amygdala and insula sending out their feelers, checking in with others. Emotional empathy helps you to feel what others are feeling and feel that way, too. As human beings this is important because it connects us to others. However, we can’t be emotionally empathic if we don’t understand our own feelings.

Studies have shown that people on the autism spectrum might have more emotional empathy than people who are not on the spectrum. They are, many times, overwhelmed by the feelings of others because they pick up on feelings more easily than others. This can cause anxiety and confusion. It’s important to be careful with emotional empathy, to know yourself, and your feelings enough to be able to distinguish between which feelings are yours and which are picked up from others.

Empathetic concern is an application of emotional empathy. It is how you discern what people feel and what they need from you. Empathetic concern is an action step, like compassion. We use our awareness of our feelings and the sensations in our body. and, since we have taken turtle steps towards being with them, we can apply our awareness to others, having a motivating concern for them.

Using our awareness, or mindfulness, we can focus on the wider world. This reminds me of the opening of the Al-Anon Declaration that says, “Let it begin with me…. When anyone, anywhere reaches out for help… LET IT BEGIN WITH ME.” We cannot focus on the wider world until we have done the hard work on ourselves. Moving from a “Hot Mess” to a Triad of Mindful Focus takes work. Having that well-balanced stool takes time, and it takes turtle steps. Keep moving –slowly, or in this case, keep sitting, keep returning to your breath, and keep peeling the layers within, accepting them just as they are. What we get good at through meditation is acceptance of how things are, just as they are in the moment. We see our thoughts. We see our judgment. We see our sadness. We see our joy. We cultivate the ability to be with all of that and accept it all.

What an amazing tool to bring into the world.

What an amazing gift to unwrap and give to the wider world.

Let it begin with me.

Try Zen Buddhist Meditation with Carrie Garcia

Carrie Garcia is an RYT 500 yoga and meditation teacher and Success Coach. She is certified in yoga through Lifespan Yoga with specialized training in vinyasa, yin, and Rainbow Yoga. Carrie creates spaces for people to share movement, mindfulness, and laughter. She grew up in Minnesota, immersed in music and watching her mother practice yoga from a library book. She has been practicing meditation since 1992 and was ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 2022. Carrie brings her passion for yoga and mindfulness to adults and youth with an intention to decrease racism, bullying, isolation, and anxiety and to increase compassion, connection, and well-being.

Carrie is deeply grateful to her amazing teachers including Gopala Yaffa (Rainbow Yoga); Francoise Freedman (Birthlight - fertility to school-age yoga, and Street Yoga trauma-sensitive yoga); Michelle Pietrzak-Wegner (yin yoga); Amelia Ruth (vinyasa/power yoga); Michael Moore (Iyengar yoga), and Ben Connelly (Soto Zen Buddhist Priest at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center). And she is grateful to the many wonderful human beings who she has met in elevators, on the streets, and on mountaintops – all her teachers.