elders! Listen to the truth! Run away! Save
yourself!” Even though we don’t understand
the words, we feel the preverbal power of
their ominous warning. And decades after we
first saw Psycho or Jaws, many of us will still
signal doom by mimicking the insistent bass
figure — Ba-dum! Ba-dum! — that means the
shark is attacking, or the repeated, screeching
violin note — Eek! Eek! Eek! Eek! — that
means Mother Bates is at it again.
Our inner music, which colors how we
experience our life the way a musical score
colors how we experience a film’s plot points,
is what’s known as feelings. As you confront
a challenge, you can color it with dread and
you’ll see it as dangerous, dreadful; if you
color it with excitement, you’ll see it as an
exciting opportunity. Most people, if made
to take a math test or do karaoke singing in
front of an audience, will report feeling
anxiety. But Harvard researchers, noting that
anxiety and excitement are both arousal states
with similar fight-or-flight symptoms (dry
mouth, tight throat, pounding pulse), have
found that saying “I’m excited!” just before
diving into the task reframes the experience
as excitement. Anxiety drops away and
performance improves.
Of course, a good film score exerts its effect
mainly by being subliminal, and so does our
inner emotional music. Again, the crucial step
is recognition. We need to notice the feelings
themselves, distinct from the mental stories we
associate with them. Like those arousal symp-
toms studied at Harvard, they’re not abstrac-
tions but physical sensations. They may be
subtle, so pay attention. Perhaps you’ll notice
that joy feels like a tingly effervescence around
your cranium or chest, or that depression
feels like a heavy sky pressing down on the
top of your head. Whatever it is, don’t try to
change it, and definitely don’t try to suppress
it. Just clearly notice the sensations, notice that
they’re only sensations, and then part of you,
the part doing the noticing, is already free.
Hitchcock himself, having mastered the
art of manipulating audiences with these
cinematic techniques, may have intuited what
can happen when we’re liberated from such
manipulation — and from self-manipulation.
An interviewer once asked him what his idea
of happiness was, and he responded, “A clear
horizon.” That’s about as good a description
as I’ve ever heard of the wonderful sense of
sparkling clarity and natural boundlessness
that we wake into when we stop scaring our-
selves. You’ve tried Boo! Now try Ahhhhhhh!
Dean Sluyter (DeanWords.com) teaches meditation
in Santa Monica and leads workshops throughout the
United States and beyond. His latest book is Fear Less:
Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction.
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