Mindfulness

Mindfulness
Others’ happiness helps you too

We can’t always have something to celebrate for ourselves when our emotional mood is low. But taking pleasure in the good fortune of other people can help lift the gloom. It is, if you like, a way to light a candle in the darkness.

This often neglected approach is part of the philosophy behind mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we practice it today, is derived from Buddhist philosophy and one traditional Buddhist approach, called Mudita,  expresses this idea.

Positive Empathy

In Western psychology it is called positive empathy. Empathy means appreciating or understanding or sensing how another person feels.  Often we bring this  into play when we sense that another person is suffering.

In positive empathy, or Mudita, we bring our awareness to another person’s happiness, joy or pleasure. We then allow ourselves to share that happiness.

Reward centres

We know from research that taking pleasure in another person’s happiness and wishing them well activates reward centres in the brain so that we ourselves feel rewarded.

Cultivating joy has always been a somewhat unacknowledged part of Buddhist philosophy. One way to cultivate that the joy, especially when there isn’t much of it in your own day, is to feel joyful for someone else’s good fortune.

Try this:

Call to mind someone you know and like and think of that person receiving good news or in some other way having an experience that brings them happiness. Let your awareness rest on their happiness for a little while. Say silently to them, Be happy, be well. Now think of the fact that people all over the world are experiencing moments of happiness just now. They also have unpleasant experiences, just like you, but right now they’re having a moment of happiness. Now say silently to them, Be happy, be well.

Try repeating this practice for a few minutes a few times a day.  it’s an act of friendship towards other people that will also benefit you.

It’s also a form of compassion towards other people and of self compassion.

To build on this:

My online course True Friend, on self-compassion will introduce you to this and other ways to help you feel better about yourself as well as others. Payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all.

True Friend
26/03/2025

Mindfulness
Breathe for a better reaction

Fast, constricted, shallow breathing is one of the ways in which stressful events express themselves in how we breathe. They express stress without reversing it.However, we can learn to turn this process around and use our breathing to change our relationship to the event. As Cyndi Lee, a yoga teacher and author, says, “Rather than allowing our response to an event affect our breathing, we can learn instead to let our breathing change our relationship to the event.”Create a breakWhen we return our awareness to calm breathing, even for a few minutes, we are creating a break in the cycle of reactivity.We are giving ourselves space to calm down, to clear our minds and to gain some perspective. We are also sending a signal to our body and brain that we that we can handle the situation.By returning our awareness to calm breathing, we are not ignoring or avoiding the event, but rather we are taking care of ourselves in the midst of what’s going on. We are showing ourselves some kindness and compassion.A better responseWe are also opening ourselves to the possibility of responding to the event in a more constructive and creative way, rather than impulsively or defensively.Try: Do some calm breathing right now for a few minutes or even a minute or even half a minute in the awareness that this is you taking care of yourself. You can do this anytime and anywhere, whenever you feel stressed or overwhelmed by an event.Notice how your breathing changes your relationship to the event and how you feel afterwards. Breathing is not only essential for survival – it can also be a friend for life.How to breathe calmly?Slow breathing through your nose while noticing your belly rising and falling will activate the calming part of your nervous system.Mindful breathing is a key aspect of the overall practice of mindfulness. Bring mindfulness into your life, or revive your mindfulness practice with my Easy Mindfulness online course. Payment is by donation so it is affordable to all. More information

Easy Mindfulness
11/12/2024

Mindfulness
A breath for calm: simple de-stressing

“Take a breath” has become a cliché – but taking a breath the right way can indeed calm you down. The fundamental way to do this is to breathe slowly through your nose but as if you were breathing with your belly. Be aware of the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe through your nose.

Calming the nervous system

What this does is to activate the calming part of your nervous system. It’s called the parasympathetic nervous system but I think of it as the calming part. It’s necessary because we’ve also got the “up and at ’em” nervous system which is the sympathetic nervous system – that’s necessary for dealing with threats, for throwing ourselves into an action and so on. But we need to be able to come down from that, to rest – which is where the calming part comes it and indeed people sometimes describe it with the phrase “rest and digest.”

Your breath is a marvellous free resource which does much more than keeping us alive. Try these exercises and see how they feel.

Learn more about mindfulness in my online course Easy Mindfulness. Payment is by donation.

Easy Mindfulness
30/10/2024

Mindfulness
Resilience, a soft skill not a hard shell

We hear a lot about resilience and with good reason. Perhaps we see it as putting up a hard shell to repel life’s misfortunes. But resilience isn’t necessarily a matter of toughing it out.

It’s often a matter of being kind to yourself – It’s a soft skill – and of treating yourself in a way that gets you through experiences in good shape.

Mindful awareness

So one aspect of resilience, for instance, might be mindful awareness. This means stepping aside from rumination, from going endlessly, over and over and over whatever it is that is troubling you. Coming into present moment awareness can give you a break from that and can give you space for other things in your life.

Self compassion

Another aspect is self compassion, which means being kind to yourself, treating yourself like a friend. This could include thinking back to times when you successfully got through difficulties, and realising that you can do that again.

It’s also a matter of realising that many other people are going through difficulties as well at the same time as you. This in itself can be comforting.

Affirmation

A third aspect of resilience – more of a tool for resilience, really – is to use an affirmation. There’s nothing mystical or magical about this. An affirmation is a better thought than the one you would otherwise be having.

Many people use the affirmation ‘Not happening now.’ Suppose you find your mind occupied by a disagreement at work and suppose these thoughts are interfering with your time for rest and recreation. Saying ‘Not happening now’ can help redirect your awareness to something different, in this case to that rest and recreation you need to help you to get through tough times. You may even find that solutions come into your mind following rest and recreation – but that’s a bonus.

Other affirmations include ‘This too will pass’ or ‘Whatever happens, I’ll handle it.’

So think of resilience as a form self care. It’s not about being a wave crashing against the rocks. It’s more like being a stream that can make its way between the rocks to a quieter place.

Learn more about self compassion in my online course True Friend. Payment is by donation.

True Friend
19/09/2024

Mindfulness
Feelings – unwanted, maybe not negative

Many of us   label our emotions as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’, depending on how they make us feel. However, this can lead to a rigid and judgmental attitude towards our own feelings, which can make them harder to cope with.

A more helpful way to think about our emotions is to see them as ‘wanted’ or ‘unwanted’, depending on the context and the outcome they produce.

The Power of Small

In their book The Power of Small, Aisling and Trish Leonard-Curtin explain how this shift in perspective can help us to relate to our emotions more skilfully and compassionately. They argue that no emotion is inherently negative or positive, but rather that each emotion has a function and a message for us.

For example, fear is usually an unwanted emotion, because it makes us feel anxious and uncomfortable. However, fear is not negative in itself, because it alerts us to potential threats and motivates us to take action to protect ourselves.

Regrets

Similarly, regret is often an unwanted emotion, because it makes us feel guilty and sad about something we did or didn’t do in the past. However, regret is not negative either, because it can help us to learn from our mistakes and to behave differently in the future, such as being more compassionate or honest.

By thinking of our emotions as wanted or unwanted, rather than positive or negative, we can avoid judging ourselves harshly for having certain feelings. We can also acknowledge the value and meaning of each emotion, even if we don’t like it.

They just ‘are’

As the authors of The Power of Small say, “Emotions are not good or bad; they just are.”

This perspective can help us to accept our emotions as they are, without trying to suppress or avoid them, and to respond to them in constructive ways that enhance our well-being.

Self compassion helps us to relate well to unwanted emotions. Learn more in my online  course True Friend Payment is by donation so it is affordable to all. More information

True Friend
05/09/2024

Mindfulness
Spotting unexpected happiness

Noticing fleeting feelings of happiness and well-being as I go through my day is to me one of the main benefits of mindfulness.

If you take the time to tune in to your feelings as you go about your business you will find those little, unexplained feelings of happiness appearing from time to time.

Or maybe the explanation is obvious – you’re with someone whose presence makes you happy, you’re doing a piece of work that gives you a sense of satisfaction or you’re anticipating something pleasant from later in the day.

I especially like those little, unexplained feelings I mentioned above, though. I suppose it’s like getting to feel happy for a little while without having to work for it!

These feelings pass as all feelings do. But while they are with me I want to notice and enjoy them.

Dismissing happiness

I think we often dismiss these unexplained feelings. We we want to move on quickly to the current problem.

Here’s the strange thing: we are probably working on the current problem in order to feel happy or to avoid unhappiness – yet when a little random happiness comes along we seem to say ‘please get out of my way, I am too busy figuring out how to be happy to pay attention to you.’

Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

It may all have something to do with the defensive side of the brain. As Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman write in Mindfulness for Health, “… the mind focuses on pain and suffering with laser sharpness …” 

And sometimes we dismiss happiness when it seems illogical.

For instance, I once noticed that I felt happy when I was walking through the rain on a cold autumn day. That’s illogical – I don’t like cold rain – but I accepted it as a mysterious bonus and enjoyed the happiness.

The experience taught me that when I’m in a good mood it isn’t always because life got better; when I’m in a low mood it isn’t always because life got worse.

Moods flow through all of us like water in a stream. So make the most of the ones you like while they’re with you; and know the ones you don’t like will pass.

Mindfulness of good moods

To me the key here is to be mindful enough to spot your good moods when they come along.

Very often you can do this through cultivating physical awareness. For some of us a good mood or a sense of happiness is a feeling located between rib cage and tummy. For others it might show itself in a different way.

When we spot feelings of happiness we don’t need to search for an explanation for them; it may even be better not to search. That might be like pulling the petals off a beautiful flower – in doing so you destroy its beauty.

Mistakes

Don’t make the mistake of saying ‘Well, there’s no logical reason why I should feel happy right now’ and dismissing it. Remember that walk in the rain I mentioned at the start? The happiness, though illogical, was worth having.

And watch out for the mistake of saying, ‘well, I have this feeling of happiness but, really, isn’t there something I should be worrying about?’ Yes there probably is, but why ruin this fleeting feeling of happiness?

Welcome it in

We spend much of our lives trying to be happy and to experience wellbeing. Sometimes our efforts work and sometimes they don’t. But when happiness and the sensation of wellbeing come apparently of their own accord let’s welcome them in. The sensation will leave soon – it comes and goes – but at least be mindful of it and enjoy it while it’s here.

My online course, Easy Mindfulness, has helped many participants to cultivate present moment awareness and to improve their quality of life. Payment is by donation.

 

10/07/2024

Mindfulness
Watch out for detrimental thinking

Most of us go around thinking thoughts detrimental to our own happiness, Ayya Khema points out in Know where you’re going.

In other words we get lost in thoughts which repeat fears, anxieties, regrets and resentments. Very often these concern issues we can no longer do anything about because they are in the past or because they haven’t yet happened. In mindfulness we try to get good at coming out of this painful mind-wandering whenever we notice we are lost in it. We do this by shifting awareness to whatever is going on in the present moment, even if that is just to our own breathing.  

Acceptance

We can also come out of painful mind-wandering by accepting what we have to accept (perhaps a loss we’ve sustained) or that isn’t worth fighting (rain when we wanted sunshine, say). This isn’t to say that we should never entertain negative thoughts. Life contains plenty of painful events that need attention or that have had a strong impact and continue to affect us for some time.   It’s making a habit of getting lost in gloom that we have to look out for – and because one of the brain’s primary functions is to keep us out of trouble, we very easily slip into thinking about threats in the future or losses from the past. This includes going over painful events from which we have already, so to speak, sucked the marrow dry. And it includes exaggerated, upsetting thoughts about the future which so often don’t turn out the way we feared.   Too much of this can have a very detrimental effect on a person’s well-being and quality of life.  

Return to awareness

But when we’re mindful we can spot what’s going on and we can return to awareness of the actual reality around us or even to doing some logical planning (as opposed to fantasising) about future events.

We return to that awareness as I said above by bringing our attention to our breath, to our body or to what we are physically doing.

This is well worth practising and the more you practise the better you will be at it. Stepping out of automatic pessimistic thinking is one of the great gifts of mindfulness.

  • Ayya Khema, born in Berlin in 1923 was a Buddhist teacher. Her Jewish family escaped the Nazi persecution. She was best known for promoting the position of women in Buddhism. She was the author of many books. She died in 1997.

My online course Easy Mindfulness will help you make mindfulness part of your daily life and contains lots of material you can download and keep.

03/07/2024

Mindfulness
Gratitude isn’t just good manners – it’s good for you too

We are often urged to practise gratitude to improve our well-being? But does this have any backing in social science? Yes it does and I outlined some examples in my Irish Times column (the column is behind a paywall so here are the relevant extracts) :

“A series of studies reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003 found that people benefitted from spending time deliberately reflecting on what they felt grateful for.

Benefits

“Benefits included a more optimistic outlook – helpful in many domains of life and, in one group, more time spent exercising. Those who practised gratitude were also more likely to help others. Engaging in the gratitude reflection every day for fifteen minutes had a stronger effect than doing so once a week.

“One of the groups studied was made up of adults with neuromuscular diseases. Participants in this group who practised gratitude also found felt more positive than controls, they had less negative feeling, they slept better and woke up more refreshed. The study covered a period of only a few weeks so the results are impressive.

Teenagers

“In a more recent, longer, study, researchers at California State University found children, aged 10-14, who had grown up to be grateful experienced many benefits. The researchers measured the gratitude levels at the start and end of a 4-year period to establish who were the most grateful. Those in the most grateful twenty per cent had a greater sense of meaning, were more satisfied with their lives, were more happy and hopeful and had fewer negative emotions or symptoms of depression. For more see http://bit.ly/gratefulteens

 

“What all these findings seem to suggest is that cultivating gratitude improves your wellbeing in many ways and that this applies even if you have challenging health conditions.”

How to do it?

How to cultivate gratitude? Try making a mental or written list daily of what you are grateful for. This could include items from today or yesterday or from years ago. If you want to take a really long view you could include events that happened before you were born – for instance a favour that made a big difference in the life of a grandparent and, consequently, to you.

You could write a letter of gratitude to someone for what they have done for you or meant to you – writing such a letter boosts your mood – even if you never post it.

You could divide your life into three sections (dividing your age by three is an easy way to do this) and reflect on something you feel grateful for in each time period.

See if you can feel that gratitude in your heart or tummy areas – these areas connect to the emotional parts of the brain and so can help deepen your sense of gratitude.

In whatever way you’d prefer to do it, try cultivating gratitude in your life and I think you’ll be glad you did it.

Mindfulness helps us to cultivate gratitude – take a look at my  Easy Mindfulness  online course which has 15 lessons you can do whenever you like.

 

21/06/2024

Mindfulness
Negativity – it’s not all bad

People involved in wellness sometimes make the mistake of giving the impression that anything negative is bad and that we should aim to feel positive all the time. But that’s not realistic.

Negative feelings often are telling us something that we need to know.

Something you need to do

For instance, if you feel anxious about a particular undone task, maybe there is something you need to do about it.

If you feel guilty, maybe there’s something that you did that wasn’t right, and that you need to try to put right if you can.

If you feel bored, maybe you need to do something different in your day or in your life.

But the key thing is not to get lost in it, not to be overwhelmed by it. We need to be able to step back and see if there’s anything useful here.

If there is, the question then is what could I do about it?

If there isn’t anything useful, you can try to change your focus to something else. For example, feeling very negative over things that happened in the past that you can’t do anything at all about now often isn’t a very useful thing to do. And in such a case, you would try to change your focus to something else.

Mindfulness and stepping back

Mindfulness practice makes it easier to do all of these things. Mindfulness helps you develop the skill of stepping back, through the repeated practice of coming back into the present moment. And that makes it much easier to see what is useful and what is not useful.

That awareness then helps you to, as I said, move your focus to something else; or wait for the feeling to pass by itself; or if there’s something you can do about the issue, to do that something.

So negativity is not always negative, especially when it’s coupled with mindfulness

My Easy Mindfulness online course (15 lessons in your own time)can help you develop that vital skill of stepping back. Payment is by donation, so you can afford it. Learn more here.

Image by LeoHoHo

 

29/05/2024

Mindfulness
Take those everyday grievances off repeat

I’m sure that like the rest of us, you have repeated a phone number to yourself over and over to memorise it until you can write it down.

Consider that when we repeat dissatisfactions to ourselves over and over we are doing the same thing – keeping them alive in our memory.

Oh, I’m not happy with the weather today. I’m not happy with the time that that meeting has been moved to. I’m not happy with the service here tonight.

Keeping dissatisfactions alive

We keep our dissatisfactions alive by repeating them to ourselves endlessly, just as if we were repeating a number that we wanted to remember.

That’s a pity because after all, most of our day to day dissatisfactions are forgettable if we don’t work hard at remembering them.

Better to move on from them instead of insisting on upsetting ourselves over trivial things.

Trivialities

Life has plenty of serious and painful challenges to deal with. Why load trivial dissatisfactions on top of them?

As they say in Recovery International: There is no right or wrong in the trivialities of daily life.

So do yourself a favour – take your list of everyday grievances off repeat.

Mindfulness emphasises the importance of Acceptance – take a look at my  Easy Mindfulness  online course which has 15 lessons you can do whenever you like. 

17/04/2024

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