The Art of Noticing: Being Mindful of How the Losses of Life Affect Our Hearts

Life guarantees us two things: change and loss, together they make up the unpredictable rhythm of life. They also exert tremendous pressure on the soul. If we don't stop long enough to notice, we'll wake up one day and wonder why the light's gone out of our eyes, and why passion is but a distant memory. All the losses in our lives are significant, and each has shaped our beliefs about life, God and the world around us, that's why it's critical to recognize them, no matter how insignificant they may appear. Because most of us equate loss primarily with death, we're unaware of how abstract losses like shattered dreams, and unmet expectations can have serious long-range consequences on our hearts.

Hakuna Matata Don't Matter

Hakuna Matata may have worked for Pumbaa and Timon in the Disney movie, Lion King, but the "don't worry be happy" mentality many of us have adopted to avoid pain doesn't always work. In fact, it can shut down our hearts to healing. Because we are created as three dimensional beings: body, soul and spirit, we need to teach our clients to take inventory of how the losses in their lives have impacted them at each of these levels. As a therapist, I teach people the "art of noticing" by asking them to pay attention to the thoughts, feelings and physical sensations that accompany their pain. Noticing helps us connect to that pain; a very important first step in this process.

How Loss Affects Us: Body, Soul and Spirit

Noticing how we experience grief will include developing an awareness of both the internal and external responses to our losses. Later, noticing will help us gain perspective and hope for the future, and allow us to see the gains that have accompanied our losses. External noticing requires that we stop long enough to realize how what is going on in the outside world is impacting our mind, emotions and physical body. External cues impact what we tell ourselves about our life and our losses. Those messages spill over from our soul into our physical bodies, so that we may experience tense muscles, stomach pain, nausea, anxiety or depression. The internal expressions of grief require us to pay attention to the host of emotions that can accompany loss. At first, many of us feel only numbness. As the heart begins to thaw under the frozen layers of pain, we can slowly begin to identify a broad range of emotions, ranging from sadness to acute sorrow. The key here is that we notice what these feelings are trying to tell us about the condition of our heart.

Facing the Music

The journey through grief must begin here, cultivating these gifts of noticing and putting words to our pain. Grief is not our enemy. Restoration will come, but only as we find the courage to face and identify our losses. Pain, and suffering can profoundly change us, and not always for the good. That's why the book of Proverbs warns us: "Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life" (Proverbs 4:23). So how do we guard our hearts? By paying close attention to what is happening to them as the issues of life unfold. The art of noticing allows us to recognize that we are in a battle for our very lives, and if we are going to survive the assault, we must make difficult choices and take deliberate and intentional action. In order to reclaim our hearts, we must be willing to enter the battleground and face the silent scream of our own souls.

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