October 2017 – Grow Mindfulness

Lifelong Learning Through Mindfulness

In their book, Organizational Change by Choice, Dexter Dunphy and Bob Dick quote an anonymous author who provides a very simple, behavioural description of the way we learn:

To look is one thing

To see what you look at is another

To understand what you see is a third

To learn from what you understand is something else

But to act on what you learn is all that really matters. (p.120)

The wisdom of this way of looking at learning was brought home to me during one of Bob Dick’s MBA classes that I attended many years ago (32 years ago to be exact). Bob was introducing us to the art of facilitating groups and understanding group dynamics. He formed us into groups and each person in a group was assigned an observation task to undertake while the group simultaneously discussed a controversial topic – in my group’s case, “Should people who drink and drive be jailed?”

We each had to look for and observe some aspect of the group’s behaviour, e.g. amount of eye contact, level of dissent in the group, non-verbal behaviour, the level of participation and how people built on other’s ideas. As the discussion progressed, it became quite heated and one of our group was showing signs non-verbally that he was becoming distressed by the discussion. However, the person who was supposed to look for non-verbal behaviour in the group was totally oblivious of this distress and kept on pushing his point that drink drivers should not be jailed. The distressed person finally got up and left the group. The person who was supposed to observe non-verbal behaviour, immediately asked the group, “What did he do that for?” It turned out that a friend of the distressed person had been killed by a drunken driver.

This experience really brought home to me very starkly that you can look and not see if you stop paying attention and lose focus on what you intend to observe. If you then do not see what is happening, you will be unable to understand another person’s behaviour. If you don’t understand the interaction, you will not learn how to adjust your own behaviour. In the final analysis, you will not act in a way that puts the desired learning into practice – in the case of my example, you will not be able to effectively facilitate group processes.

To look in a meaningful way requires focus, purposeful noticing and full attention. It is only then that we see in a way that enables learning. So while we may be looking at the same scene or object we will see different things.

Understanding what we see requires an uncluttered mind and the capacity to maintain focus. It is only through sustained seeing that we come to understand what we are actually looking at – to realise the impact of something for our lives and that of other people. Focused attention builds our understanding because we are better able to access our subconscious and realise the connections between things that we perceive now or have perceived in the past.

Learning from what you understand is another level of challenge in the quest for lifelong learning. Having understood something impacting our lives, we have to be able to think through the behavioural implications – its meaning for how we should act towards our self and/or others.

In the final analysis, what really matters is taking action in line with our understanding and learning – translating our learning into practice. As I discussed in a previous post, it is one thing to look for and read about mindfulness, it’s another to understand the benefits of mindfulness, but it is something else to learn from your understanding of mindfulness how you should behave and, all that matters, is engaging in mindful practice – taking action by being mindful in our everyday lives.

So, being mindful can help us to engage in lifelong learning – to look, see, understand, learn and act on our learning in our everyday lives. As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to focus, pay attention, gain insight and be conscious of what we are learning and what it means in our life. Ultimately, we are better able to achieve congruence – to line up our actions with our thoughts and words.

Image source: Courtesy of Mojpe on Pixabay

Seeing Mindfulness Everywhere – Awareness Grows with Practice

As we grow in mindfulness, we become more aware of the multiple ways mindfulness is manifested in other people’s words and actions.

We may be reading a novel and notice one of the characters tuning into their senses through open awareness or stopping to watch a sunset.

We could also come across the biography of a person who lives a life full of awareness and compassion for people who are suffering illness and are disadvantaged. Amanda McClelland’s autobiography, Emergencies Only, is one example of this. Her life story is a testament to her resilience and commitment in the face of unbelievable poverty, epidemics and natural disasters and evidences her mindfulness and extraordinary level of emotional intelligence.

We might also be listening to Eva Cassidy’s rendition of the song, Imagine, and notice John Lennon’s call to live for today, rather than dying for tomorrow:

Imagine all the people living for today.

As you listen to the singing of Eva Cassidy, you will also hear John Lennon’s expressed hope, Imagine all the people living in peace – a potential outcome of global mindfulness:

Whether we are observing others, reading or listening to music, we can become more conscious of mindfulness manifested in the lives of others and be reminded of the benefits of mindfulness for our own lives.

Image source: Courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Sustaining the Practice of Mindfulness: One Breath at a Time

You might have been inspired by a mindfulness workshop or the stories of other people who have experienced the benefits of mindfulness.

You could be convinced of these benefits by the neuroscience supporting mindfulness and just want to experience particular benefits yourself.

But all the knowledge, inspiration and desire alone will not help you to grow in mindfulness, if you don’t practice mindfulness. You have to learn how to maintain the motivation for mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is like any other skill area – you need to practice to master the process and make it an integral part of your life.

Chade-Meng Tan, one of the creators of Google’s Search Inside Yourself course in mindfulness and emotional intelligence, likens sustaining mindfulness practice to developing the habit of going to the gym:

It is the same with sustaining a mindfulness practice. You probably need some discipline in the beginning, but after a few months, you may notice dramatic changes in quality of life. You become happier, calmer, more emotionally resilient, more energetic, and people like you more because your positivity emanates onto them. You feel great about yourself. And again, once you reach that point, it is so compelling, you just cannot not practice anymore. (Search Inside Yourself: The Secret Path to Unbreakable Concentration, Complete Relaxation, Total Self-Control, p.56)

Over the last ten years, Google has trained more than 4,500 staff and managers in mindfulness and emotional intelligence through their Search Inside Yourself course. One thing the creators and facilitators of the course have learned is how to sustain mindfulness practice and realise its benefits.

Chade-Meng Tan shares his insights about a simple three-step process to sustain the practice of mindfulness:

find a buddy to check in with on a weekly basis to share your mindfulness experience and make yourself accountable
do less than you can manage so that it does not become onerous
take one mindful breath a day.

Chade-Meng Tan explains the last step more fully below:

I may be the laziest mindfulness instructor in the world because I tell my students all they need to commit to is one mindful breath a day. Just one. Breathe in and breathe out mindfully, and your commitment for the day is fulfilled; everything else is a bonus. (Search Inside Yourself, p.58)

Practice increases our consciousness of mindfulness and its benefits. It enables us to develop momentum that will help to sustain our commitment and motivation.

The secret is to develop a habit but start small with something that is easy to achieve. This enables us to get over the early hurdles where practice is experienced as a chore.

If you don’t persist past the early resistance stage, you won’t experience the benefits of mindfulness. So there is a lot of wisdom in starting with just one breath a day to grow mindfulness.

Image source: johnhain on Pixabay

What Will You Do With the Surplus in Your Life?

Seth Godin – the famous internet marketer, author and daily blogger – suggests that if we have personal safety, good health and food to sustain us, we are living with surplus in our lives – we have spare time and energy to devote to making a contribution to others and to the community at large.

In a recent blog post, he challenges us to think about how we will spend our surplus:

You have enough breathing room to devote an hour to watching TV, or having an argument you don’t need to have, or simply messing around online. You have time and leverage and technology and trust.

When you stop to think and reflect on your life, you begin to see what eats up your time. Some things become a compulsion – they take over your life. Meditation and other mindful practices can help you to see how you spend your time and help you to identify ways to expend the surplus that should be in your life.

Mindfulness also enables you to understand the leverage for change that you do have and to appreciate the trust that you have built up over time. Technology, itself, provides incredible leverage power and opportunities to build trust and relationships. So whatever your surplus situation, as Seth suggests, there is opportunity to contribute – rather than just consume.

When you move into semi-retirement as I am starting to do, you have even more surplus on your hands. It’s a challenge expressed eloquently by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners in their book, Don’t Retire, Rewire. They argue that on retirement you have to find creative ways to expend the energy that you previously used in your work environment. If you don’t find a way to use this surplus energy, your energy reserves can decline rapidly and you can also find that your life loses meaning.

When I confronted this challenge of using my surplus, I decided that a key way for me to contribute to others is to help people to grow in mindfulness through this blog and mindful workshops I run. This way of spending my surplus enables me to utilise the core skills I have developed over my life – writing, researching and facilitating workshops – to help others deal with the winds of change in their lives and to build resilience, wellness and mental health. Hopefully, it will also help others to overcome or stave off depression.

Of course, one of life’s lessons is that true happiness and fulfilment comes from helping others. While my plan is altruistic, it also has resounding benefits for me – it gives meaning to my life; helps me to learn, grow and develop my mind; keeps the need for personal mindful practice at the forefront of my mind; and staves off depression (that can be precipitated by loss of work identity).

So, how will you answer Seth’s challenge – what will you do with the surplus in your life?

Image source: Courtesy of fancycrave1 on Pixabay

The Winds of Change

One day I was observing some trees in the adjacent yard move in response to wind gusts that swirled around the yard.

It was like a choreographed performance. Some branches danced rhythmically, others moved chaotically and one tree had branches that swayed together slowly in time as if synchronised.

As I became aware of these movements in response to the winds of change, I was inspired to write the following poem:

Wind-blown trees

Dancing rhythmically

Chaotic movement

Swaying in unison

Different trees, different responses.

I was reminded of the different responses we have to change and the significant events that affect our lives, e.g. job changes or job losses.

Sometimes, we move with the change in our lives and take it in our stride while at other times the change creates chaos for us. If we have strong emotional support, we may be able to move with the change rather than resist its pressures.

When we have built up resilience through mindful practice, we are better able to withstand the impact of major changes in our lives. We are able to more readily bounce back from changes that unsettle us and upset our equilibrium.

The movement of trees in the face of wind symbolises how we can respond to change in our lives. We can welcome the change, be overcome by the chaos it can create or respond flexibly to its pressures. As we grow in mindfulness and experience the winds of change in our lives, we are better able to develop an appropriate response.

When we are buffeted by the winds of change, mindfulness helps us to respond constructuvely rather than destructively. It enables us to stay centred.

Assumptions Build Walls Between Us

Assumptions about differences can build walls between us. If we focus on what we assume are our differences, then we will emphasize what separates us, rather than what brings us together. More often than not, our assumptions are wrong.

In one of his novels, After Dark, Haruki Murakami describes the experience of one of his key characters, Takahashi, who was required to attend and audit cases in the criminal court as part of his legal studies. In the early stage of these visits to the court, Takahashi found that he could not relate to the people being charged with crime, their situation or their feelings – he would assume that “the ones on trial are not like me in any way”.

In speaking of this early experience of difference, Takahashi said, “Between the world they live in and the world I live in there’s this thick, high wall” (p. 96, emphasis added).

However, as he continued to attend the criminal court cases and listen to the testimonies and speeches, his assumption of the wall of difference between the accused and himself began to break down. Takahashi describes this experience of the crumbling of his assumptions:

“I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there is a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mâché. The second I leaned on it, I’d probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it’s that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of me, and we just haven’t noticed. That’s how I feel. It’s hard to put into words.” (p.97)

His assumption of a wall of difference between the accused and himself completely broke down when one of the defendants was sentenced to death by hanging. Takahashi found that he experienced a “deep emotional upset”, resulting in tremors going through his body and the inability to “stop shivering”. In spite of himself, and his early assumptions about a lack of things in common with the accused, he experienced a deep level of empathy.

There is a famous video made in Demark that explores what we have in common, rather than the ways we are different. The video, All That We Share, challenges our assumptions about differences and helps to break down the walls of intolerance.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop increased awareness about our assumptions that build walls between us. Being mindful of the damage our assumptions can create, leads us to challenge these assumptions and break down the walls that divide us.

Cover image source: Courtesy of hbieser on Pixabay

Reframing Assumptions

Our assumptions play a major role in our lives. They shape our perceptions, influence our emotions and affect our responses to people and events.

On one occasion, I was talking to a colleague who had been using a collaborative approach to undertake local economic development in a regional area. He was telling me about a community consultation meeting that he had conducted on the Sunday before. As he spoke, he became progressively more upset, agitated and frustrated.

When I asked him why he was so upset, he told me that the Mayor of the town had turned up to the meeting. He then proceeded to share his negative perception about his attendance – “Why was the Mayor at the meeting?”, “Why was he getting in the road of our project?”, “What was he hoping to gain by being there?”

When I asked about the Mayor’s behaviour during his participation in the meeting, it turned out that he had participated constructively like everyone else present. My colleague’s negative assumptions about the Mayor’s motivation and intentions were influencing his perception, his emotions and his response.

I suggested that he could actually think differently about the Mayor’s attendance – he could reframe his assumptions. I said that I do not know of many Mayors that would spend an entire day on a Sunday, away from their family, to attend a meeting that was entirely optional. I suggested that the Mayor could have attended the meeting because he was genuinely interested in local economic development and community welfare.

After thinking this through, my colleague started to see the Mayor’s attendance as a positive thing – a sign of support rather than an attempt to sabotage his own efforts. By challenging his assumptions, my colleague could reframe the event and the participation of the Mayor – he saw the person and the situation in a new light.

Our assumptions play out in every sphere of our lives – at work, at home, in the community – and operate at an unconscious level. As we grow in mindfulness and inner awareness, we are more likely to become aware of our assumptions and the negative impact they can have on our perception, our emotions and our responses to people and events.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay

Being Mindful of Social Learning and its Impact on Our Behaviour

Social learning is learned behaviour that results from observing, modelling and imitating others. We observe what others have done and note the consequences – this, in turn, influences our own behaviour.

We constantly seek to learn from others’ experiences through reviews on social media such as Facebook, Yelp, eBay and TripAdvisor. We want to know what people thought of a movie, a restaurant, a seller or an overseas destination.

The problem arises when we follow others behaviour uncritically. As Tali Sharot observes:

Our instinct is to imitate the choices of others, because we assume that others have information we do not. However, other people’s decisions can stem from considerations that are irrelevant to us. We need to be careful when following other’s choices, mindful that they may not be right for us. (Tali Sharot – The Influential Mind, 2017, p. 160; emphasis added)

As we grow in mindfulness we can become more discerning and better able to evaluate social learning and its impact on our own behaviour. Being mindful in this way enables us to reflect-in-action and change our behaviour when we are engaging in learned behaviour that we perceive may have undesirable outcomes.

Image Source: Courtesy of Bess-Hamiti on Pixabay

Do You Ever Stop to Watch the Sunset?

In a previous post, I discussed the benefits of being still – stopping the rush of our busy lives.

Sometimes, there is beauty before us and we fail to stop and look – we often do not see the sun setting on our day.

Each sunset produces an astonishing palette across the sky – a unique combination of colours and shapes that are often awe-inspiring. Every day we are offered a different vision as the sun sets. How often do you stop to see what is offered to you so freely?

We are so caught up with things to do that even if we want to stop to look at the sunset, we feel the pressure to keep moving and doing – we experience time pressure that shapes so much of how we live our lives.

Paulo Coelho, in his inimitable style, catches this tension perfectly when he describes how the central character in one of his books, Brida, experiences this challenge:

Whenever she sat still, just looking at something, she got the feeling that she was wasting precious time when she should be doing things or meeting people. She could be spending her time so much better, because there was still so much to learn. And yet, as the sun sunk lower on the horizon, and the clouds filled up with rays of gold and pink, Brida had the feeling that what she was struggling for in life was exactly this, to be able to sit one day and contemplate just such a sunset. (Brida, 2008, p.112)

Therein lies the challenge for us each day. We can stop and look at the sunset as a form of mindful practice or carry on with our busy lives. Each sunset offers us the opportunity to grow in open awareness and mindfulness.

Image Source: brigitteforum on Pixabay

Trees as Sources of Meditation

Every tree is different – it has its own aura, energy field, colour, shape, life story and natural beauty.

Individual trees can be a great source of meditation – they embody many of the dilemmas of human existence.

It’s Jacaranda time in Brisbane when these trees cover the city with their purple blossoms. It is also a time of dread for many children because it signals the approaching period of school exams.

I am reminded that some time ago I wrote a poem about Jacarandas when meditating on a particular tree.

The poem goes like this:

Radiant Beauty

Resplendent purple, a carpet of colour

Fully clothed in regal garment

Refreshing hue, eye-catching glow

Noticed from above and below

Radiant beauty, swiftly shed.

The Jacaranda tree was standing in the middle of a park covered in its distinctive purple blossoms – resplendent purple, fully clothed in regal garment.

Wherever you walk in Brisbane at this time of the year you will be walking below the refreshing hue and eye-catching glow of the Jacaranda. It’s an amazing sight when seen from below. It is even more amazing when seen from above –noticed from above and below. From the air, the whole city appears carpeted in purple.

One of the characteristics of this type of tree is that its purple blossoms last for such a short time – radiant beauty, swiftly shed. It is a constant reminder that human beauty is ephemeral – so transitory, yet pursued endlessly by many people as if it defines a person’s worth.

As the Jacaranda trees shed their purple blossoms, they create a carpet of colour as illustrated in the image below:

If we grow in mindfulness through meditation and other mindful practices, we will be able to see beyond transitory, external beauty and see the real essence of a person. We will learn to value each person’s uniqueness and their life story – just as we learn to value our own.

Image source:

Park Bench by Indy24 on Pixabay