Resolving¶

Resolution is the second stage of the attune-resolve-review process. After attuning, resolving means deciding what to do next.

Choosing healthy and appropriate resolutions¶

If we have already built healthy intuitions, then we can respond to situations in healthy ways by listening to our intuitions. Healthy intuitions come from having accurate understandings of situations along with healthy commitments. CL organizes commitments into six overall topics: presence, responsibility, curiosity, integrity, love and compassion, and vitality.

When intuitions do not direct us to clear next steps for a situation, we can use more deliberate practices and guidance to find resolutions. Hopefully, our intuitions will guide us to use those practices when appropriate.

Resolving constrictive and expansive feelings¶

Resolving applies not only to problems and feelings of constriction but also to expansive motivations. We resolve a dangerous situation by getting to safety and resolve a loss by honoring it with appropriate grieving. We can also resolve feelings of creative inspiration by making art, resolve feelings of curiosity by exploring and learning, and resolve feelings of joy by expressing our gratitude.

Emergencies¶

Strong feelings often come with a compulsive urgency. In those cases, we must assess whether the situation is a true emergency. Sometimes, the best resolution involves taking immediate action. We may need to escape immenent danger, treat an urgent medical condition, kick the ball into the goal, or tell someone we love them in what might be the last moment we see them.

If our intuitions are healthy, we will we feel a whole-body-OK to taking necessary emergency action and feel constriction about delaying. In some cases, we cannot afford even a moment of conscious consideration and need to act immediately, following our intuitions. Deliberate CL processing makes sense only when other action can safely wait.

Avoiding unhealthy compulsion¶

Too often, people feel compulsive urgency in situations that are not true emergencies. Of course, it's better to treat too many situations as emergencies than to fail to recognize a real emergency. So, we can accept erring toward urgency.

When we succeed at recognizing an overreaction (feelings of emergency when not truly appropriate), a good default resolution is to simply pause for a few slow, conscious breaths. In the next round of the ARR process, we might decide to go for a short walk, drink some water, do a longer meditation, write out our thoughts, or explore other ideas from the CL commitments. Often, resolution comes from finding acceptance and appreciation for the insights that came from our attuning.

Generally, CL calls for more deliberate, less-compulsive engagement. Most situations are not true emergencies. So, we usually do well to take time to process and gain perspective, engaging and intervening in things no more than necessary.

Resolving by more attuning¶

Often, a healthy resolution comes from simply doing more attuning. Sometimes, we aim to just be present, keeping a sort of pre-cognitive view for an extended time, taking everything in without interpretation. Other times, we might carefully investigate using some mental model or process such as checking for feelings of constriction or expansion. We might label patterns of thoughts and sensations as feelings like fear, anger, sleepiness, curiosity, gratitude, and so on.

Some words related to this cognitive style of attuning: assess, appraise, discern, describe, evaluate, inspect, interpret

Going with the flow, allowing mistakes¶

Of course, we will get to very few of our everday tasks if we pause and meditate before every action. Much of the time, we can simply follow our intuitions in immediately resolving each little thing that we attend to. Someone says hello, and we reply. We notice ourselves hunching and fix our posture. We feel thirsty and take a drink.

In the process of learning and calibrating, we must be willing to make mistakes. All we can do in each moment is listen to our intuitions and respond as best we can. We will then get to experience the results. Whatever happens, we can then review how it went and use the insights to inform our future choices and update our intuitions.

As we enhance our CL practice, we might spend more time carefully considering even minor everyday actions. As our skills grow, we can notice ever more subtle feelings and brief thoughts with less need to pause for dedicated focus time.

Looking forward, anticipating review¶

When considering resolution options, we can aim for successful outcomes in alignment with commitments and with minimal side-effects.

Before acting, we can imagine how things will work out. We can play out different options in our minds as a sort of simulated trial-and-error process. We can also ask ourselves how we predict the reviewing will go (one term for this is prospective retrospection — meaning we look ahead toward when we will be looking back). With practice, we can learn to sense when we are about to act inappropriately; we can ask, "am I gonna regret this?"

Addressing symptoms versus causes¶

There are many different layers in each situation, and there are times to engage more with superficial symptoms and times to focus on the more foundational causes.

Often enough, the healthiest resolutions address underlying issues. However, sometimes moderating the symptoms first helps us to relax and then find a better context for making plans to resolve the overall problem. Addressing symptoms directly can also be a fallback option when resolving an underlying problem seems infeasible. And if we don't know how to relax the symptoms directly, we can focus on building tolerance and mindful equanimity. We might focus on appreciating how an experience of pain can help us to more gratefully notice our pain-free times or help us be more compassionate with others when they experience pain.

When to move to reviewing¶

Effective resolutions release our energy enough to us to move on to reviewing. We resolve complex situations through repeating the attune-resolve-review process in a series of incremental steps.