By: Natalie Johnson

Train wreck lives—lives of abject misery. Judge Frank Szymanski has spent nearly 20 years serving as a juvenile court judge in Detroit and has seen plenty of lives that would fit this description. As a juvenile court judge, he’s worked with teens found guilty of crimes and parents found responsible for abuse and neglect of their children. And generally, these individuals have been traumatized and are often addicted to alcohol or drugs. The choices they make are bad for themselves and those around them. Their “emotional home” is one of misery, and if something positive does happen in their lives, they promptly find a way to maintain their misery because anything other than that feels “uncomfortable.” Which leads to the question of what we need to do to free ourselves to really change. Judge Frank has spent years working to answer that question, helping others find a path to freedom. His work has raised some questions, and he’s found some answers. And so:

What if you were free? Really free. Free inside. The fact is, we are full of attachments to all kinds of things, to all sorts of desires. We want what our neighbors have. We want what the celebrities have. We tend to spend our days, nights, and lives wanting. We “attach” to all kinds of things, and our desire for things to be somehow different from what they are leaves us feeling unsatisfied. In the eyes of Buddhism, this is seen as the cause of all of our suffering. 

Ah, but what if we could step away from this? What if we could let go of these “attachments” to all our desires for things to be different than the way they are? This doesn’t mean we stop working to improve our lives and those around us. Only that we accept the way things are and revel in our lives as we work to make those changes. And that we accept that those changes might not happen exactly the way that we want them to, or may not happen as quickly as we want them to. That we accept that we are on a journey towards change and that every step is as it should be. 

We can live our lives “suffering” or we can be “living.” This is actually a choice, however, because so much of our thinking and living is done by habit, as a result of our unconscious programming, we don’t tend to recognize this as a choice. We don’t tend to wake up and say to ourselves that we are going to suffer today full of our attachments, but that is what happens as a result of our unconscious ‘attachment’ programming. “I wish I didn’t have to work today. I wish I was making twice as much as I’m making now. I wish I was living in…” – you name it. We can have all those thoughts. Is there any joy to be had in these thoughts? Research from the National Science Foundation states that we have thousands of thoughts each day, with 80% of them being negative and 95% repetitive. That’s a recipe for suffering. How can any of us expect to accomplish meaningful change if 95% of the time we are thinking the thoughts we’ve always been having?

Working to change our circumstances is excellent, and it’s great to be filled with motivation to do so. And yet the “attachment” to wanting things to be different remains problematic. If we accept that “things happen for a reason” or that they are as they are for our benefit, development, and growth, we can live with a sense of acceptance. We can accept that the changes we are working towards will occur as they should, without being tied to a specific result at a particular time. We can work with confidence without having a blind attachment to a specific outcome. 

Coaches and sports psychologists have adopted this approach to instill the right attitude in players competing at the highest level. They work to instill the belief that as long as we maintain focus and practice what we need, we will improve. This is the essence of what’s referred to as a “growth” mindset. The old approach was “winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” But these days we ask players to focus on the “process.” To practice the things that need to be practiced and know that if we practice and play the right way, the winning will come. This comes down to focusing on the things that we can control. We can control the way we practice and the way we play. We don’t control the outcome. The Serenity prayer is so instructive.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. 

So how do we manage this? How do we get to the point of recognition that right now we are exactly where we need to be and free ourselves from all those suffering thoughts of attachment? 

We have to address what is happening in our subconscious mind, and to do that, we need to train our minds. And this needs to be done on a daily basis.  The National Science Foundation’s research findings noted above make it clear that we have some real work to do. There are ancient practices, existing for thousands of years, that allow us to train our minds and rewire our brains to live without the burden of these “attachments.” Meditation, mindfulness work, visualization, and yoga are some of the practices that allow us to rewire our thinking. There are literally hundreds of research papers that confirm this. Successful people in the world do these things daily. 

So why don’t we all do this? The fact is, once we learn how to meditate, practice mindfulness, visualization, yoga, or tai chi, etc., we can experience significant improvements in well-being. We can practice these things daily for free for the rest of our lives. When we practice these things daily, we can really change who we are and how we look at the world. Our brain develops the ability to work more efficiently throughout the day through a phenomenon known as brain coherence. This increases the efficiency of our prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functions like planning and decision-making. We become less impulsive and reactionary, gaining control of our emotions. We become more compassionate, more accepting, and… we become free. Judge Frank is a frequent speaker for corporations, conferences, universities, etc., and is available for presentations. For more about Judge Frank, see judgefrank.com