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Brian McFadden

@findingthemiddleway

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Author.
Meditation practitioner.
Sport Psychology student.
This page is home to my field notes.
My poetry book, Moonflower, is out now 🔽

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the queen by @findingthemiddleway

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Yo. What up. Thanks for being here. I’m Brian. Finding the Middle Way is home to my field notes. I’m a writer, psychology student and meditation practitioner exploring mindfulness, simplicity and wisdom in everyday life.

#meditation #mindfulness #insight #health #mentalhealth #love #wisdom #easternphilosophy
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✌🏽 by @findingthemiddleway

Almost 3 years ago, I started this Jiu-Jitsu journey with my son, Fenix. We’ve trained in Florida, California and Texas during that stretch. Last night, I earned by blue belt.
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I’m told that this is just the beginning of what is designed to be a lifelong practice. But, I am proud of this accomplishment even though it’s a stepping stone on a long path.

I didn’t do this alone, either.

Cliff at @graciejiujitsubaymeadows in Jacksonville, Florida introduced me to the art of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu and really helped me understand the fundamentals in a practical fashion.

Then, @alexlamjiujitsu from @graciejiujitsulapalma in California introduced me to master cycle and live sparring. He instilled a guiding principle into my practice that I hope to retain: “Learn how to train forever.” In addition to being a technical genius at the art, he showed me what a true craftsman is in this modern age where the concept of apprenticeship is largely lost. @hd_jiujitsu taught me to “always face your problems, never run from them.” He also introduced me to flow rolling and how you can apply weight, leverage and precision all without losing control. @iamnelsonr showed me that keeping things light and fun are how you stay in the game for the long haul.

Lyle, in Katy, Texas, from @graciemaydecreek is teaching me the art of getting tapped (and how it’s not personal). His teaching style is showing me that to continuously learn, you must continually explore. Putting yourself in unfamiliar positions, places and situations are a chance to see what’s possible.

I couldn’t have done this without the support of my wife Charlie who either puts the kids down or watches them on her own 2-3 times per week. My brother Alfie who I rolled with for about a year in my garage who also helped me prep for my combatives test. My sister Sarah, who would take Fenix to his kids class or watch the kids when I would go to class and my wife wasn’t available.

Laslty, thanks to @gracieuniversityhq and all of the students. Without the student body and coaches, none of this would be possible. by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

Harmony is the norm.

But you have just trained yourself to only notice things that fall outside that scope. For example, you only notice an ambulance tending to two vehicles on the side of the highway, but you hardly ever appreciate the hours upon hours of flowing, crash-free traffic during your commutes to work. Or how about this: When was the last time you actively noticed that you didn’t have a headache?

Here’s the irony: harmony is so common that we stop seeing it.

Looking for harmony rewires our perspective and tilts our outlook toward altruism. Why does this even matter? For a few reasons.

First, being altruistic builds trust with others, which influences them to give back and pour into your life (Barclay, 2004; Barclay & Willer, 2007). Across psychology, neuroscience, and wisdom traditions, having good relationships is a key indicator for health and vitality (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010; Kok et al., 2013).

Second, altruism is registered in the brain as a reward more so than a withdrawal (Moll et al., 2006). This means that your brain positively responds to being generous towards others by moving you out of threat psychology and into harmony psychology (Inagaki & Eisenberger, 2012; Klimecki et al., 2014; Poulin et al., 2013).

Lastly, being altruistic moves you out of self-focused rumination (Cregg & Cheavens, 2023). Two key networks in your brain - the salience and executive networks - light up with altruistic action and dampen networks that are highly active in depressive states (Brewer et al., 2011; Hamilton et al., 2011; Kaiser et al., 2015; Weng et al., 2013).

This is not a new idea; you’ve just forgotten what it feels like to live altruistically.

There’s an enormous resistance to doing the obvious when it comes to being altruistic, and it’s not to be dismissed. However, take some time to realize the liability of the unlived potential of living in such a way. Are you willing to leave that on the table?

And if the answer is yes currently, what do you get in exchange for that deal? by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

From time to time, it is wise to ask yourself, “What is this frenzied pursuit that I’m on?”

Think about it: Where in your day-to-day life are you not encouraged to chase something? More money, a better body, a bigger home, supercharged productivity, enhanced attractiveness, and endless optimization. It seems innocuous, but perhaps that is only because the vast majority of people have not challenged it.

It seems and feels as though this state of being is birthed from a diminished perspective of how you see yourself.

Ancient wisdom and modern research may explain why.

There is a story of a temple that kept a great Buddha that appeared to be made of clay. Long ago, when an army was marching toward the village, the monks covered their most precious statue in plaster and mud so the invaders would pass it by. The temple was spared, but the monks who knew the secret did not survive, and for generations the Buddha sat plain and unremarkable. Then one day, as the statue was being moved, it slipped and cracked. That night a young monk came to check on it and saw a faint light glowing through the break. He picked up a chisel and began to chip away.

Beneath the clay, the Buddha was solid gold. It had been gold all along.

Modern science offers its own glimpse of the gold. In studies by psychologist Kiley Hamlin, babies as young as six months watched a puppet try to climb a hill while one character helped it and another pushed it down. Asked to choose, the babies overwhelmingly reached for the helper (Hamlin et al., 2007).

Before language, before culture, before anyone taught them, they leaned toward goodness.

One story ancient, one study modern, and both point to the same quiet truth. The belief that we are insufficient, that we are somehow lacking at our core, is the clay, not the statue. Yet we spend our lives chasing, as if wholeness must be built from scratch, when all along it was only buried.

The gold is already there. The work is not to add more, but to clear away what was never you.

References:
Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559 by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway

📝 by @findingthemiddleway