Mindfulness Courses

Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Gladness liberates the mind

Gladness liberates the mind, or so the Buddha is supposed to have said.

It liberates the mind from rumination and negativity during the time that you are feeling glad.

What do I feel glad about?

So it’s a good practice to ask yourself as you go through your day, what do I have to feel glad about? When you find it, allow yourself some moments to appreciate it.

Often you’ll experience the feeling of gladness as a physical sensation in your stomach or in your heart area. Some people feel it just below the bottom of their rib cage.

Sometimes if you are working on a difficult project it can be helpful to pause now and then to ask ‘what do I have to feel glad about?’ This can lighten the burden while you work on more challenging issues.

A physical sensation

Also, as I mentioned above, the feeling. of gladness is often physical – so enjoy it as physical – don’t analyse it to bits. Enjoy it while it’s there.

I like how the benefits of gladness or happiness are expressed on the Action for Happiness website:

“Scientist Barbara Fredrickson and her colleagues found that fleeting momentary experiences of pleasant emotions broaden our perceptual fields, causing us to literally see more; to be more open and trusting of others; recognise people from other cultures better; see more options; be more open to ideas; more likely to adapt, and be better at creative problem-solving.”

You can read an article by Barbara Fredrickson on Great Good Magazine.

So, what do you have to feel glad about?

 

Mindfulness helps us to fully appreciate gladness. My Easy Mindfulness online course will help you to make this valuable practice part of your daily life – without lengthy meditations. Payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

Easy Mindfulness
29/08/2024

Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Give help? Yes. Ask for help? No way.

When I was a counselling student, one of my teachers told us that one way to get closer to someone in a long term relationship is to ask them for their help with issues, problems, tasks and so on. Asking recognises the partner’s knowledge and this will do more to bring them close to you than going around acting as if you know everything yourself.
So the benefits of asking for help include more than getting things done.
Reflecting on this, I realised that most of us are willing to extend a helping hand to other people, but very often we’re really reluctant to ask for help ourselves.

Two kinds of people?

As the author Brené Brown writes in Gifts of Imperfection, it’s as if we’ve divided the world into those who offer help and those who need help.

But the truth is that we are both. Nobody gets through a life without large dollops of help. Indeed, it’s a key principle of the philosophy behind mindfulness that everything requires the input and effort of many people: the very shoes on which you walk required, from the creation of the raw materials to the finished product, the work of people you will never see.

What do you need?

Pause and consider: What help do you need that you haven’t been asking for? And if asking for help improves relationships, can you do that more often – even if you already know everything?!
What if fear is an issue? How would you overcome the fear of asking for help? I think, be ok with feeling the fear. Then ask for help in small things, even in things you don’t need help with – maybe asked for and listening to the other person’s opinion. Move on from there – it gets easier.

My True Friend self compassion online course can make it easier to ask for help as you feel better about yourself.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

23/05/2024

Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Don’t feed the demons

Painful emotions often pass by in a fairly short time if you devote your attention to something else in the moment.

This isn’t always true, of course, but it’s true often enough to be useful.

Giving energy to the demons

We need to remember that if we dwell excessively on negative emotions, it’s like giving them energy that helps them to grow into what Dr. Russ Harris in The Happiness Trap calls ‘giant dangerous demons.’

Don’t feed the demons

So just remember: don’t feed the demons. Try shifting your awareness to something else and I think you’ll find that very often that helps the emotion to pass by much more quickly.

My True Friend self compassion online course can help you see yourself in a more tolerant way.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

31/01/2024

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Acceptance, hard to define but worth doing

Acceptance is very difficult to define.

One way of looking at it is that it means not struggling with realities that you cannot change, but saving your energy for those that you can change.

Past or future

And that could be accepting something from the past, perhaps something that will never be resolved. Or it could be something that’s coming up in the future that you’re going to have to go through anyway, that you wish you didn’t have to go through. And accepting it will make the whole experience much easier.

Good at change

Curiously, people who are good at accepting things also tends to be very good at changing things. And that’s possibly because they save their energies for those things that they can change.

Not rushing to judgment

Another way of looking at acceptance is to say that it means not rushing to judgment,  just pausing to take in the reality of the situation.

If you explore acceptance, if you give it some effort, I think you will find that it’s one of the most beneficial aspects of mindfulness.

Video edited from my Easy Mindfulness course.

My Easy Mindfulness course can help you to appreciate and practise acceptance among the many aspects of mindfulness.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

My book ‘Acceptance – create change and move forward’ can be pre-ordered here.

24/01/2024

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
The flawed person got it done!

We all have flaws and despite our efforts to get rid of them we usually go on having flaws. They’re not always the same flaws though often they are.

Credit for what worked

But we’ve also had successes in our lives and we need to remember that these were also brought about by a person with flaws. If you’re wondering who that person is, look in the mirror.

A defence system

In many respects you could think of yourself as a defence system, always looking out for what might go wrong. But when all we can see are the imperfect things about ourselves, we are not seeing the complete picture.

We need to give ourselves the credit also for what worked and for what we, flawed as we are, brought about.

My True Friend self compassion course can help us to stop being unfair to ourselves. It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

17/01/2024

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Try positive version thinking

When you can think positively about things, this tends to increase your sense of well being and happiness. But sometimes it’s hard to do that. Maybe many aspects of a day are not so positive.

What’s a positive version?

One approach you could try is what I would call positive version thinking. Here you say, well, the day looks pretty negative and I don’t see how I can feel at all positive about it. But maybe there is a positive version of today as well. Perhaps it will also include things that can make feel good, a favourite activity or talking to a favourite person for instance.

So that’s a positive version of today, and I can allow that into my awareness also. You don’t have to convince yourself that this is a really wonderful, fantastic day, but you are allowing yourself to see also the positive version of it.

Relationships too

And that can be true of relationships also – so-and-so is really annoying me at the moment but there are also lots of good things about him or her that I can include in my awareness, my judgment, my attitude.

Try it, especially when you are feeling down and/or grumpy.

Ask, what’s positive in the day that I can bring in alongside the negative?

Video edited from my one hour presentation on happiness in December 2021.

My True Friend course can help you to build compassion for yourself – to be a friend to yourself whatever happens.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

11/01/2024

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Know your purpose, know your feelings, do what needs to be done

“Know your purpose, know your feelings, do what needs to be done.”

An anti-anxiety therapy

In that formula, which I am going to call a “direction,” a Japanese psychiatrist, Dr. Shoma Morita, summed up his therapy a century ago. It’s a very simple direction, but many people have found it useful. His approach gives us a way to work with the inevitability of anxiety. It’s about being guided by your purposes without denying your feelings.

The steps

So, you work out what is your purpose for the next hour, for today, for this year or this week, and then acknowledge your feelings about that. Feelings need to be acknowledged, so acknowledge the feelings. See if they have anything useful to tell you. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t. And having done that, then do what you need to do next, to bring about your purpose.
Perhaps you need to take a flight but you are nervous about flying; or you need to attend an interview but you are nervous of being judged; or you need to make a phone call but you are nervous about voice calls (this is very common nowadays especially in people who  hardly ever make voice calls but use some form of texting). Acknowledge that nervousness without having it dictate to you. Then work out the steps you need to take, and begin. For example go onto the airline website; make a list of questions you might be asked at the interview; or look up the telephone number of  whoever you need to ring.
Many people find it helpful to repeat the direction: “Know your purpose, know your feelings, do what needs to be done.”

It’s simple – try it

So that’s the direction that’s been used by millions of people over the past century. It’s very simple and I suggest you try it a few times today. “Know your purpose, know your feelings, do what needs to be done.”

My Easy Mindfulness course can help you to live in a more purposeful way through the practice of mindfulness.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

20/12/2023

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Breathing to see choices

Sometimes when we get caught up in thoughts, we can actually fail to see our choices.

That’s because we go around and around in circles, ruminating, often on things that are negative or scary from past or future. Or we build up our own stress levels ‘awfulising’ about something that’s coming up – a challenging piece of work perhaps. It then becomes so easy to see only the thoughts and not the reality of what else we could do.

Breathe mindfully

A little mindful breathing can help. I’m talking about something as simple as:

– breathing in for a count of four,
– holding your breath for a count of four,
– then breathing out for a count of four.

What it does

Just a little exercise like that can break down the chain of thought and rumination and can help you to see choices that were always there – but which you just didn’t see because you were lost in the tunnel of rumination.

Breathing in awareness can get you out of that tunnel.

 

My Easy Mindfulness course can help you spot rumination and to get yourself out of that tunnel.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

 

17/11/2023

Kindfulness  ·  Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Drop self-attacking language

 

Watch out for the use of attack language where you’re attacking yourself, calling yourself a ‘failure’ or ‘stupid’ or anything of that sort.

It’s the very opposite to self compassion – and we need to give ourselves self compassion in this often hard world.

We sometimes – maybe often – use attack language like that to ourselves when we get something wrong, something as simple as dropping a spoon!

But watch out for that kind of language because it doesn’t really do anything except make you feel worse.

I don’t talk to myself like that anymore

You could instead redirect your attention to dealing with what just happened and you might also say something to yourself like ‘I don’t talk to myself like that anymore.’

The use of this self-attacking language is something that people often do outside of awareness almost, especially if they are used to talking to themselves in that harsh way.

When you practise mindfulness you can spot that language so much more easily.  If you need to know more about mindfulness this post will help.

Self-attacking language can make people feel very down and it’s not really justified.

It doesn’t help you in your life – so remember:

I don’t talk to myself like that anymore.

Video edited from a self-compassion presentation.

My True Friend course can help you to build compassion for yourself – to be a friend to yourself whatever happens.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

My book Kindfulness can also help you drop the self-attacking habit. 

07/11/2023

Sometimes yes, sometimes no
Mindfulness  ·  Mindfulness Courses
Sometimes yes, sometimes no

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

That’s an attitude I really like from a Japanese mindfulness based approach. called constructive living.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no

Are you successful? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Are you a happy person? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Are you a good partner? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Softer judgments

I think that the use of that phrase helps to soften our judgments of ourselves as human beings who make mistakes and don’t get it right all the time. So remember it and try it out.

Does it work? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

 

My True Friend self compassion online course can help you see yourself in a more tolerant ay.  It’s an  online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more

Page image Johnathan Kaufman on Unsplash

10/02/2022

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