Tag: decision making

Insights Into Meditation Practice

Tami Simon from Sounds True interviewed world-renowned meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg, about the nature of meditation.  The interview podcast titled, Beginning Anew, provided some valuable insights into meditation practice and its outcomes.  By way of illustration of the many applications of meditation, Sharon spoke of her meditation work with the Garrison Institute helping to develop a “culture of wellness” amongst domestic violence health care workers.  She also mentioned her meditation work with nurses and international refugee workers who experience vicarious trauma because of the trauma of others that they experience every day and feel isolated because of their inability to talk about the truly disturbing things they encounter.  Some of the insights into meditation practice from her interview are summarised below.

Insights into how we can become renewed through meditation practice

Sharon’s interview podcast provided considerable insight into the nature of meditation and its personal impacts – the longer and more consistently we practise meditation, the more profoundly we will experience these impacts:

  • Seeing possibilities – when we are caught up in our difficult emotions and seemingly trapped, we tend to experience “tunnel vision”.  In the face of disruptive change, which is ever-present, we tend to focus on the “endings” rather than the “new beginnings”.  We can also become obsessed with projecting an adverse future onto our mind’s screen.  We become locked in, unable to see possibilities and the potential for new beginnings – the ability to “begin anew”.  Meditation stills the mind and enables us to identify creative options – it releases our creativity in times of change and challenge.
  • Gaining understanding – Sharon highlights this dimensionof meditationby focusing on the difference between guilt and remorse.  Guilt in her words is a form of “lacerating self-hatred” where we beat up on ourselves for our mistakes, deficiencies and harmful behaviour.  We convince ourselves that we will never change but will continue to be hurtful towards others.  Remorse, on the other hand, is genuine sorrow for causing hurt to others together with the ability for self-forgiveness.   Understanding, developed through meditation, releases us from being “mired in the pain and exhaustion of guilt” and enables us to have the energy, motivation and will to change.  Sharon describes understanding as “a tremendous tool”.
  • Changing our perspective – if we focus only on the things that are wrong or missing in our lives, we will miss the things in front of us that generate well-being and possibilities.  If we get locked into a pattern of negativity, we will lack the ability to “see clearly” – we will not be in a position to “serve ourselves or others”.  Research at the HeartMath® Institute demonstrates that negative emotions creates chaos in our nervous system while positive emotions “can increase the brain’s ability to make good decisions”.  Sharon points out that focusing on the negative in any situation disables us while insight gained through meditation can “create change and the context for change”.

Reflection

We can become trapped in a created, negative reality with the perception of no way forward, and become trapped in guilt about our past words and actions.  Sharon maintains that as we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can open our eyes to possibilities, gain a real understanding of the difference between disabling guilt and enabling remorse and develop a perspective on change that enables us to move from negativity to positivity and sound decision making.  Sharon’s Insight Meditation Kit, developed with Joseph Goldstein, provides the tools and resources to help us remove hindrances to personal growth and develop the energy for personal change.

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Image by Ioannis Ioannidis from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution, Non-Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Cultivate a Non-Judgmental Mind

Our mind is continuously scanning and judging our environment for our own good – to keep us safe. However, these judgments are often ill-informed, made on inadequate information and distorted by our assumptions and prejudices. It takes conscious effort to still our mind and become open to what is within and outside of ourselves. Mindfulness meditation and other mindful practices can enable us to open our minds and find the space to develop non-judgmental awareness, self-compassion and connectedness.

The busy, judgmental mind

Our minds engage in an endless process of commenting on our daily experiences – identifying what we like and dislike; complaining about everything from the weather to the quality of service (on the train or bus, or by the shop assistant); assessing others as thoughtless or inconsiderate or insensitive or tactless; worrying about future events; or replaying past words and actions while indulging in regret, shame or remorse.

We make “snap judgments” that colour our perception of things around us and other people. We might consider the woman who cuts in on us in traffic an aggressive person (attribution of a trait), typical of someone who drives a Mercedes (a prejudice or bias) and motivated by the belief that “time is money” (assumption). The reality may be that the woman is normally a careful, thoughtful driver who on this occasion is rushing a very sick daughter to hospital or is trying to rescue a teenage daughter who is stranded on a railway station by herself at night.

The effects of our judgmental mind

The problem with our snap judgments is that they are often wrong and provide a distorted view of reality. They can become habituated and automatic – resulting in our filtering reality so that we do not see what is really going on with people and events in our life. As recent as last week, I assumed that a young woman in my workshop had become intentionally disengaged (based on observation of some non-verbal behaviour). It turned out that she was suffering from a migraine headache.

A judgmental mind is a closed mind – not open to new perceptions or interpretations. When we are judgmental, we fail to listen to others, closing ourselves off from new learning and insights; we block the pursuit of alternative options in our decision-making processes; or blind ourselves to our contribution to a situation that we consider unsatisfactory. A very simple example of this latter effect is forgetting that “we are traffic too“.

Our harshest critic

Our own minds are our harshest critic – we berate our self for an oversight; castigate our self for doing or saying something that we judge as “stupid”; become frustrated or exasperated by our inability to overcome some inappropriate/undesirable behaviour that makes our personal interactions more difficult; or indulge in negativity, only to feel remorse or disgust with our self afterwards.

Our internal talk and incessant inner commentary on our words and actions can become our default mode network blocking out the opportunity to see things anew, develop more successful personal strategies and build supportive relationships. This state of mind can lead to depression and/or anxiety.

Mindfulness meditation to cultivate a non-judgmental mind

Dr. Mark Bertin, a developmental paediatrician, argues that meditation increases our awareness of our self and others, enables us to “face reality” and to cope with life’s challenges with a degree of equanimity. Mark is the author of Mindful Parenting for ADHD.. He provides a range of mindfulness resources for parents, children and adults generally.

An especially useful resource is the 15-minute, guided meditation that Mark provides which he calls Nonjudgmental Awareness Practice. This mindfulness meditation begins with a focus on “something you don’t like that much about yourself, or that you wish you didn’t have”. He stresses the need to identify something that is not too stressful but that causes some degree of discomfort in your life, for whatever reason.

This meditation is simple, clear and highly supportive. I would strongly recommend this meditation for anyone, but especially for those who do not like a lot of talking during a guided meditation. It is the kind of mindfulness meditation that is easy to develop into a regular habit for significant benefit to yourself. Other forms of mindfulness practice that can help to defuse the self-critic are self-compassion meditation or meditations focused on self-forgiveness.

As we grow in mindfulness meditations that explore our judgmental mind and inner critic, we can learn to separate our thoughts from what is real; develop openness to the world around us and others’ ideas, perspectives and experiences; and develop deeper relationships and connectedness with others. The effect of regular mindfulness practice is calmness and equanimity.

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Image by Mingusin from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Improved Decision Making through Mindfulness Meditation

There are times when we have great difficulty making a decision.  We may be confused by the many options, daunted by the task and overly concerned about the outcomes.  Sometimes, if we are anxious, even relatively small decisions can leave us paralysed.

Decision making can be painful particularly if you can see multiple options and your anxiety grows with the inability to choose between them.  Sometimes this anxiety is driven by a perfectionist streak – we may want to make sure we make the right or perfect decision.  Unfortunately, this is rarely obtainable because we are often making decisions in the context of inadequate information.  The information we do have may be clouded by our emotions or attachment to a particular option or outcome.

Indecisiveness too can be compounded for different personality types.  For example, the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator suggests that people who have a Perceiving (“P”) type personality prefer to remain open and gather more information before making a decision, while the Judging (“J”) type personality likes to get things decided.  These personality traits can  lead either to an inability to make decisions or the habit of making hasty decisions to relieve the tension of decision making.

Improving decision making through mindfulness meditation

Diana Winston from MARC at UCLA provides a meditation podcast to enable improved decision making.  She suggests that we can use mindfulness to focus on our thoughts and emotions during the decision-making process.  In her view we can learn to be present to whatever decision making turns up for us.   We can use the principles of mindfulness to bring awareness to the discomfort of trying to make a decision.

Sometimes this will involve showing self-compassion towards ourselves – accepting that we cannot make the perfect decision, even with full information.  It requires acceptance of the fact that our decision making will be inadequate at times, but that this will provide the opportunity to learn and grow.   Mindfulness meditation can enable us to make the best decision possible at the time, uncontaminated by emotions that can cloud our judgement.

If we bring openness and curiosity to what we are experiencing during decision making, we can name our feelings and learn to control them.  We can better understand the patterns embedded in our decision-making processes.  For instance, we may find that once we have to make a decision, we automatically drop into negative thinking which generates anxiety about the possible outcomes.  Through mindfulness meditation we can learn to control these negative thoughts and focus on addressing the issue and the information available without our negative thinking confounding the issue.

If our thoughts keep wandering or negative thoughts intrude during the process of mindfulness meditation, focusing on sounds can help anchor us as listening is a natural process that we can do with minimal effort.  Listening to sounds can enable us to return to mindful decision making.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can learn more about the pattern of thoughts and emotions behind our decision making, bring them into the spotlight, and develop better self-management techniques so that our decision making is not delayed unduly or contaminated by negative thoughts and emotions.  We can learn to be more compassionate towards ourselves.  Mindful breathing can help us too to manage the tension of decision making.

 

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness for Leadership

In his presentation for the Mindfulness & Meditation Summit, Daniel Goleman discussed Altered Traits: The Benefits of Mindfulness for Leadership and Emotional Intelligence.  In this discussion, he drew on research that he described with his co-author Richard Davidson in their new book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.

Daniel is the author of a number of other books including, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence and Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

In talking about the impact of mindfulness on leadership capability, Daniel drew on a select number of research articles used within his last co-authored book.  These were articles that met the tests of rigorous research that he and Richard Davidson employed in their book.

He distinguished the results achieved for different levels of meditators – the beginners, the long-term meditators and the “Olympian” meditators (e.g. Buddhist monks and members of contemplative orders such as the Carmelite nuns and priests).

He contends from the associated research that the benefits of meditation deepen and broaden the longer and more frequently you engage in meditation practice.

However, beginner meditators can gain some benefits that positively impact leadership capability, whether directly or indirectly.

Some of these findings for beginner meditators are:

1. Ability to focus better

This outcome is the primary subject of his book, Focus.  Because meditation involves focusing your mind on a particular object, person or activity, it naturally builds the capacity to maintain attention and restore attention when a distracting thought occurs.  The resultant mental fitness is akin to physical fitness attained through exercise or gym work – instead of physical power or stamina, the meditator gains the power of concentration.

2. Better utilisation of working memory

Paying attention through meditation practice enhances short-term memory which enables better retention and utilisation of information, gained through perception, for the purpose of decision-making and guiding behaviour.

3. Handle stress better

Neuroscience shows that meditators are better able to handle stress because our automatic response via the amygdala is not triggered so readily and recovery is quicker – two elements that together determine resilience.

4.Growth in kindness and compassion

A well-established finding is that those who practice loving kindness/compassion meditation actually tune into others’ needs better and are more likely to help.  These benefits are relatively immediate and kindness and compassion are seen increasingly as traits that define successful leaders.

Long-term meditators achieve greater and more sustainable benefits such as increased concentration ability, enhanced capacity to pick up on emotional cues because they are more able to be present to the other person, greater calming effects (felt emotionally and experienced biologically) and a higher-level capacity that is described as meta-awareness (the ability to observe our own thoughts and feelings).

As we grow in mindfulness through regular and sustained practice of different forms of meditation, we are able to build our leadership skills and capability which we can employ in any arena of our lives – be it work, home or community.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of MemoryCatcher on Pixabay