gratitude – Page 10 – Grow Mindfulness

Savoring Your Child’s Development

It comes naturally to savor the early development of our children, particularly the milestone moments. We can very easily experience gratitude, appreciation and delight with the first words spoken, the first time they crawled, or their first steps taken.

The intervening turbulent teens can dampen our enthusiasm and sense of gratitude and blind us to the opportunities to savor the moment in the child’s development. When they insist on walking on the other side of the road when “with” you, get into trouble at school or meet your questions with a shrug or grunt, it is more difficult to find the moment to savor.

It gets even more difficult when the influence of their peers starts to outweigh your influence as a parent – as you start to lose a sense of control as they insist on their independence. But there will be moments to savor if our vision is not clouded by negative thoughts and emotions.

One of these rare moments may be the expression of love and appreciation that may come in the form of a thoughtful birthday or Christmas present or some words written on a card that disclose a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that provides a very pleasant surprise. Certainly, a moment to savor.

Then there are those occasions when your normally mute teenager suffers from verbal diarrhoea when they are sitting next to you in the car as you take them to their favourite sporting or cultural event. The act of sitting side-by-side seems to generate a flood of information that you have waited so long to hear. A time to savor that sense of closeness and connection.

There will be lots of other moments in the life of your child that create delight and satisfaction, e.g. sporting, cultural or academic achievements; kindness and thoughtfulness shown to other children or adults – each represents a moment to savor.

However, as they grow older and move further away from us (either physically and/or psychologically) and develop new relationships and friends, it is very easy to overlook those precious moments that we could savor as an act of mindfulness.

There is the opportunity to appreciate that they have survived their teens and grown into young adults making their way in the world. There are those occasions when you glimpse how they have matured, the respect that other adults show towards them, their wisdom in decision making, the values that you admire, their concern for the environment or disadvantaged groups, their genuine consideration for others, their willingness and readiness to help out, the time they started to cook for themselves (and occasionally for you) or their manifestations of empathy and compassion. There are the successes that they achieve despite early setbacks and extreme difficulties. Each of these moments in a child’s development can be savored.

As we grow in mindfulness, we more easily see the opportunities to savor our child’s development. We are more able to make the most of those opportunities to develop a gratitude meditation. Our mindful experience of appreciation and gratitude can lead to a loving-kindness meditation for those who feel isolated and sad through the loss of a child. So, as we begin to develop the habit to savour the moment in our child’s development, we become more aware and connected to others.

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

Image source: courtesy of simple_tunchio on Pixabay

Savoring Friendship

Friendship is something we can take for granted until we lose a friend or move to another location or workplace and have to make new friends. Losing a friend, whatever the cause, can leave a hole in our lives – a sense that we have lost something of ourselves.

There is something special about a close friend – the ability to take up where you left off after many years, the capacity to share most subjects, the ready understanding of your quirks, easy tolerance of your idiosyncrasies and understanding-in-common from a shared history (however short or long the shared experience).

Barry Boyce discusses this feeling of being “in sync” in terms of the neuroscience notion of “brain coupling”, the experience of being “like one brain”. He goes on to elaborate:

I’m sure we have all felt that with a friend. The sheer joy of a shared laugh. The moments of listening when you need to be heard. The shoulder to cry on. Someone to share the ups and downs without caring which it is.

There is clearly something to savor in friendship – the ease of connection, the joy of “being with” someone, the ready tolerance, the sense that you are not alone (even if you have lost both your parents), the shared memories and stories, the emotional support and the supportive challenge that helps you to be a better person, parent, colleague or friend.

We need to take time out to value and savor these close friendships, whether they involve our life partner or people who live apart from us. Sometimes savoring may lead to a loving-kindness meditation to express appreciation or gratitude for the friendship or to reach out compassionately to a friend in need who may be struggling through health issues or some form of loss.

Then too there are the friendships that we experience every day that we do not consider to be close relationships. They may be supportive colleagues, the person serving us at the coffee shop, the owner of the newspaper shop or any number of acquaintances who we encounter regularly. We should savor their friendliness, helpfulness, willingness to engage in conversation and the way that they can “brighten our day”. These friendships are another form of human connection that enriches our lives – we can make them a source of mindful connection if we really savor the richness of being with them.

Even a simple smile for the person at the supermarket checkout counter can be an expression of appreciation and gratitude and a simple way to savor the moment through acknowledging their presence, friendship and assistance.

Savoring friendship does not always require loving-kindness meditation. As we grow in mindfulness, we can savor the moment when we experience friendship and be grateful of this gift that is often missing in the lives of people experiencing depression.

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

Image source: courtesy of cherylholt on Pixabay

Savoring Your Achievements and Rewards

In his recent article on savoring practices, Barry Bryce, editor of mindful.org, suggests that we could savour our achievements and associated rewards to develop our mindfulness.

So often we move from one form of achievement to another – we might be writing, developing, creating, encouraging, inspiring or contributing on an ongoing basis. These achievements can be in any arena of our lives – work, home or community. We become so busy “doing” that we fail to savor the moment and the achievement involved.

According to the living Oxford Dictionary, an achievement is:

A thing done successfully with effort, skill, or courage.

So an achievement is no mean feat – it is something requiring effort, skill and/or courage that has a successful outcome. It is interesting that many people when asked to share an achievement have difficulty identifying one. However, when helped to explore their work and life, they are sometimes able to list a number of achievements. This indicates that personal achievements are not “top of mind” and are rarely savored.

Savoring your achievements

Part of the problem is that people often think that acknowledging and/or sharing achievements is boasting – a term that has many negative connotations and a very strong association with stereotypes. While this perspective may prevent you from sharing your achievements publicly, it should not stop you from savoring them privately.

Savoring an achievement develops appreciation and gratitude for the gifts, skills, opportunities, resources and support that we so often take for granted. It can build self-confidence and self-efficacy (the belief in our capacity to successfully undertake a specific task). It enables us to grow in mindfulness as we increase our awareness in-the-moment of how we have used our skills, effort and/or courage to accomplish some outcome. If the intent of savoring the achievement is to express appreciation and gratitude, this deepens our mindful practice.

Savoring our own achievements builds a positive perspective, reduces the possibility of envy and helps us to acknowledge and appreciate the achievements of others.

Savoring your rewards

We can savor the rewards associated with our achievements by firstly identifying them and then appreciating them. Rewards may take the form of intrinsic satisfaction, external recognition, a sense of purpose and contribution, physical or monetary outcomes, positive emotions, or increased connection with other people and/or our community.

Rewards are reinforcing – they strengthen our self-belief, encourage us to further achievements and increase the likelihood that we will be successful again. Savoring rewards keeps these outcomes at the forefront of our minds and provides motivation for further achievement.

A personal reflection on savoring

In reflecting on what I have written above, I suddenly realised that I have been savoring achievement in one area of my life for many years – in playing tennis. During a game of tennis, I try to remember at least one shot that I executed very well and achieved what I set out to achieve. I now have a video archive in my head of numerous shots that I value as achievements – they involved the successful exercise of effort and skill, and sometimes, courage. I learnt early on in playing tennis that part of the mental game of tennis is to focus on what you do right, not what you do wrong. For me, one of the consistent rewards of these achievements, that I truly savor, is the sense of competence that I experience. Another reward that I savor is reinforcement of my ability to execute a specific shot very well, e.g. a half-volley, a topspin lob or a drive volley.

If you practice savoring your achievements and the associated rewards, you will grow in mindfulness and increase your ability to be fully present in the moment. The development of mindfulness brings its own rewards of calm, clarity, creativity and consideration of others.

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

Image source: courtesy of Pezibear on Pixabay

Savor the Moment

It is interesting that we are frequently exhorted to “seize the day” – to make the most of the moment for our personal advantage. It implies haste and possession – two primary descriptors of today’s fast-paced, “get ahead” world.

Barry Bryce, Editor-in-Chief of the Mindful Magazine and mindful.org, provides a very different exhortation in his article, Get Real with Everything: A Savoring Practice.

The article resulted from Barry’s commitment to maintain a savoring practice over a week-long period. Through this practice, he came to identify seven ways that we could actually savor the moment.

“Savor” is not a term in common usage today as it implies a counter-cultural orientation. The word in its American English form means:

To enjoy food or an experience slowly, in order to appreciate it as much as possible.

This is the meaning of “savor” behind Barry’s article. His encouragement to savor everything relates to not only experiences we view as positive but also to those that, on the surface, appear negative. Savoring these latter moments requires a positive stance – being able to perceive the positive in each situation irrespective of how it first appears.

In this post, I will concentrate on the first of those experiences that we normally view as positive – when things are good for us.

Savor the joy

Underpinning Barry’s orientation in the article is appreciation or gratitude for any experience in your life. This perspective not only requires slowing down, but also overcoming a “taken-for-granted” attitude.

Barry suggests that when things are going well, you would naturally be able to savor the resultant happiness and joy. He found that this was more difficult than he had imagined. This is partly because we take things for granted and because there are different levels of savoring. On the more immediate level, you can savor the smell of the flowers and trees, the rustle of the wind, the song of birds, the sight of a sunrise or sunset or the sheer joy of being able to walk or to do so in the fresh, open air.

At another level, that Barry refers to, is consciousness about your body and how it is naturally in-the-moment and in synch with what you are doing, e.g. walking. This is appreciation of the way our body parts work together in unison to enable the act of walking. I alluded to something similar in my recent article on developing mindfulness through tennis, when I expressed appreciation of the moment when the body and mind work in unison to assess the speed and spin of a tennis ball and to create a return tennis shot.

To savor the joy of the moment also entails overcoming the urge to “get somewhere” or to “do something” – both being obsessions of our times. As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, we spend so much time “doing” that we have lost the art of “being”.

Mindful walking and mindful eating are other forms of meditation that entail savoring the joy of our actions and sensations in-the-moment.

As we grow in mindfulness through savoring the moment we are able to enjoy a richer and more rewarding life, to value what we have at the most basic level and to experience real happiness and joy.

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

Image source: courtesy of MiguelRPerez on Pixabay

Awareness and Happiness

Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield, when talking about the power of awareness, identified happiness as a very significant outcome of awareness training. They explain this outcome in terms of three elements of awareness:

being present
overcoming negative bias
appreciation and gratitude

Being present

If we live in the present, we are not encumbered by anxiety and fear about the future or disappointment and depression about the past. “Now” is the focus and source of our wellbeing. Both Jack and Tara point out the Dalai Lama as a prime example of happiness and joy (despite suffering as a result of the loss of culture, freedom and religion by his beloved country of Tibet).

After publishing his book on happiness, the Dalai Lama was asked what was the happiest moment of his life, and he replied after considering the question, “I think now”. There is a stillness and calm and associated happiness with being able to be “in-the-now”.

Overcoming negative bias

Neuroscience has established that part of our genetic make-up is a negativity bias – we tend to see the negative in a situation and perceive threats even when there are none. In the past, this has served the human species well and helped our species to survive. Nowadays, it works against our happiness because we can easily overlook the positive and be blinded by a focus on what is wrong or not working out as we had planned.

As we grow in mindfulness and awareness, we are more readily able to focus on the positive in our lives and overcome our negative conditioning. We are also better able to evaluate potential stressors and see them for what they are. This opens us up to enjoying our life more and experiencing happiness more regularly.

Appreciation and gratitude

Awareness opens our minds and hearts and enables us to appreciate the good in our lives and express gratitude for what we have in terms of fitness and health, relationships, our lifestyle and our environment. We become increasingly conscious of what surrounds us and become more open to joy and happiness.

Appreciation and gratitude serve as barriers to envy and resentment which can so readily diminish our happiness and destroy joy in our lives.

Jack Kornfield explains how mindfulness practices and awareness training increase the capacity for happiness in our lives:

These practices and trainings are really an invitation to allow not only well-being, but the innate happiness that appreciates the sunset and the reflected colors in the windows as the sun goes down, or in the puddles there on the street and the splashes and the smiles of the children as they stomp in the water and the mystery of life.

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

Image source: courtesy of AbelEscobar on Pixabay

Creating a Mentally Healthy Workplace

If you revisit the previous post and listen to Goldie Hawn’s statement about the tools and skills that children are given in MindUP™ , you come to realise that she is creating the foundations for mentally healthy workplaces . As Goldie pointed out, she set about creating a new culture, conducive to world peace, by developing children as future leaders with dignity and humanity.

In their guide, Mental Health at Work, produced by Portner Press, the authors discuss the need to create a workplace culture that is conducive to developing and maintaining mental health in the workplace. What they identify as the elements that go into making a mentally healthy workplace culture align very well with Goldie’s focus and goals.

They also align very closely with the manager development work I have been doing over more than a decade with my colleague, Julie Cork. The Confident People Management Program that we have been facilitating for over 2,000 managers is a longitudinal, action learning program of four to six months focused on people management skills.

To create a culture that is conducive to mental health in the workplace, requires, fundamentally, an awareness of, and willingness to address, the basic needs of staff. Staff have three basic needs, (1) tell me what is expected of me, (2) give me honest feedback about how I am doing, and (3) provide me with the resources to meet the expectations of the job.

Job expectations

Clarity around job expectations is particularly critical for creating a workplace environment that is conducive to mental health. Much stress, conflict and mental illness is caused by unclear job expectations which are manifested in role confusion, role ambiguity and/or role overlap.

Communication of expectations should cover both performance expectations and behavioural expectations. Performance expectations, in terms of the quantity and quality of work to be done, have to be reasonable and not excessive. It is okay to establish high expectations as long as you enable negotiation of those expectations and provide the requisite level of support to achieve the desired outcomes.

The other aspect of job expectations is behavioural standards. It is one thing to communicate workplace values, e.g. professionalism, it is another thing to explain these values in behavioural terms so that staff understand what is required of them behaviourally. So for a value like professionalism, a manager would need to ask, “What does professionalism look like behaviourally in our workplace context?” (or, alternatively, “what would be considered unprofessional behaviour in our context?”).

Clarity around job expectations, both performance and behavioural, is a critical first step for a mentally healthy workplace.

Feedback

An essential component for a workplace culture that is conducive to mental health is regular feedback about performance and behaviour. This involves both positive and corrective feedback.

Positive feedback builds a person’s self-esteem and sense of self-efficacy. It respects and values their contribution and encourages positivity in the workplace.

Corrective feedback is designed to correct performance/ behaviour so that the staff member can meet the job expectations. If it is provided in a professional manner it can be generate respect – the focus being on the performance/ behaviour, not the person or their personality.

In both forms of feedback, it is important that the feedback is timely, specific, accurate and sincere.

Resources

It is unreasonable and damaging to mental health to provide staff with resources that are inadequate to enable them to meet job expectations – this includes the provision of training in both performance and behavioural requirements. In terms of assisting people who have mental health issues, it is important to provide access to independent, external health professionals to give adequate support for the individual involved. What is often overlooked is the need to train managers in how to deal with mental health issues in the workplace – resulting in managers experiencing undue stress and, potentially, burnout.

Listening for understanding

If a manager is to genuinely meet the needs of staff, they have to have skills in active listening. One component of this is empathetic listening skills – the ability to understand the emotions involved for the other person, to empathise with them and to work with them to help alleviate the associated pain where possible.

Being present

Underpinning the above elements of a healthy workplace culture is the capacity of a manager to be really present to their staff. Listening for understanding, communicating expectations and providing feedback (both positive and corrective), require the manager to be in-the-moment and really present to their staff.

As managers grow in mindfulness, they are better able to create workplace environments conducive to mental health. Kindness and gratitude form part of the emergent skill-set and these, in turn, contribute mental health and happiness, not only for staff but also for the manager.

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

Image source: Courtesy of johnhain on Pixabay

Post-Holiday Blues

If you have recently returned from a holiday away, the normal reaction is to focus on the loss resulting from your return home. You might miss the break away from work and home responsibilities, the free time, the opportunity to see new things, meet new people and have time to yourself.

People often feel sad at the end of a holiday, wishing they had made better use of their break, visited some particular attraction or brought a particular item of clothing that they really liked.

So we can experience depression by focusing on our recent past holiday which invariably “seemed to go all too quickly”.

You might also not be looking forward to the responsibilities of work, the time pressures, the repetition that is present in any job, the pressure to produce, unfinished business from the time before you went away and the inevitable conflict with one or more colleagues, staff or clients/ customers.

This focus, in turn, can make us anxious as we look to the future and all the demands we expect to be placed on us.

Alternatively, we can avoid depression and anxiety by focusing on the present moment, appreciating what we do have – health, home, family, work and friends.

We could express gratitude for the time we did have away, all the individual activities that brought joy and happiness, the highlights that we really value and the. companionship we enjoyed.

We could focus on the precious moments when we were able to stop and be mindful in the presence of nature’s stunning variety and beauty, the ingenuity of men and women, the artistry of sculptors and artists of long ago or the magnificence of architecture we observed.

We might also express empathy and compassion for those who had real loss and grief during the holiday period – the loss of family members through accidents or illness or suicide, the break-up of an intimate relationship or a fracture of the relationship with a son or daughter or other family member.

Appreciating what we do have, being grateful for what we were able to experience on our holiday and/or thinking empathetically about others and their loss, can take us outside of our self-focus and enable us to experience the richness of the present moment in our lives.

As we grow in mindfulness, we are better able to savour the present moment and avoid depression resulting from a focus on the past or anxiety arising from a focus on the future.

We can learn a lot from Holly Butcher who died on 4 January 2018, at the age of 27, from a rare form of cancer and had written a powerful letter just before her death which her family published on her Facebook page the day she died. Some of her comments are especially relevant for the topic of this blog post:

Those times you are whinging about ridiculous things (something I have noticed so much these past few months), just think about someone who is really facing a problem. Be grateful for your minor issue and get over it. It’s okay to acknowledge that something is annoying but try not to carry on about it and negatively effect other people’s days…

I hear people complaining about how terrible work is or about how hard it is to exercise – Be grateful you are physically able to. Work and exercise may seem like such trivial things … until your body doesn’t allow you to do either of them.

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

Happiness through Mindfulness

It seems very apt to be writing about happiness on New Year’s Day in Venice after enjoying the fireworks over the Canal Grande at midnight, surrounded by hundreds of happy people welcoming in the new year.

The happiness I am talking about here, though, is not a state precipitated by an event, occasion or the sight of fireworks.

I am talking about a state of mind that is felt at a person’s core. It is so deep that it is not unsettled by troubled waters that are stirred up by disappointments, loss or unrealised expectations.

It is resilient in the face of life’s challenges and rises above them. It does not cease to exist when circumstances change – it is persistent and constant.

In contrast, happiness that is only occasioned by an event can be lost when the event is over and people are no longer surrounded by the company of conviviality. This shallower kind of happiness is vulnerable to envy, depression and boredom from the banality of a routine life.

In the sobering moments of New Year’s Day, some people may realise that their life lacks real meaning or purpose. They will go through the routine of formulating resolutions to be broken, instead of developing new habits that will provide a deep sense of happiness and joy – habits such as daily mindful practice.

Goldie Hawn spoke of her abiding happiness and joy experienced through mindfulness and her desire to share this with educators and children. Her life is full of meaning and purpose.

To grow in mindfulness and achieve the attendant calm, clarity and abiding happiness requires practice and persistence – it does not come with an occasional mindful moment.

Regular mindful practice in a way that suits you and your lifestyle will increase your mindful moments and extend to other mindful practices, e.g .you might start with mindful breathing which could lead to mindful eating and/or walking. One mindful practice can grow out of another – and the growth can be exponential if you persist.

One mindful practice that contributes a deep sense of happiness is developing a gratitude journal or regularly expressing gratitude for who you are, what you have in life, the talents you have or the opportunities that you are given. It extends to being grateful for your friends, family and positive colleagues and associates.

You can explicitly provide positive feedback to anyone who has provided a service to you or shown you kindness. Developing an attitude of gratitude contributes to a state of happiness that is impervious to envy – the source of a lot of unhappiness in the world.

A deep sense of happiness is within reach as you grow in mindfulness through regular mindful practice, whatever form this takes.

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

Image source: courtesy of jill111 on Pixabay

The Potential of the Present Moment

As you develop your appreciation of the power of mindfulness to make a difference, you become increasingly aware of the potential of the present moment. In the present moment lies creativity, gratitude, zest for life, happiness and the capacity to love.

The famous Irish novelist, Cecilia Ahern, has her central character, Christine, describe the potential of the present moment when reflecting on her life experiences:

Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive. … Moments are precious; sometimes they linger and other times they’re fleeting, and yet so much could be done in them; you could change your mind, you could save a life and you could even fall in love. (How to Fall in Love, p.327)

Heather Bestel, in an email communication, expresses her growing appreciation of the present moment when she writes:

The longer I live the more I’ve come to understand that life is just a moment in time and space. It’s a moment to cherish, treasure, value and honour.

Heather works tirelessly through her blog, publications, videos and email communications to help women appreciate the present moment, to value themselves, overcome depression and find happiness in their daily lives.

She is an great example of making a difference through mindfulness and helping people to appreciate the power of the present moment.

The more you learn to reside in the present moment, the more you are able to realise its potential for improving the quality of your life and that of others. The present moment is the pathway to happiness, gratitude, creativity and wellness.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Dying for Tomorrow or Living Today?

In February 2016, news.com.au reported on the story of Jake Bailey who got out of his hospital bed to deliver his Captain’s address at the 2015 Christchurch Boys’ High School Prize Giving ceremony. Jake, in his final year, had been diagnosed with cancer and was on his fourth chemotherapy treatment when he left his hospital bed to give the speech.

Despite his illness, Jake passed the year 12 exams and expressed gratitude for the support he received from near and far. His speech is very moving and, at times, confronting. He makes the point that when you are confronted with death you are forced to reflect on who you are and what you are doing with your life. In his own words, Jake reminds us that we so often overlook the present because we are so focused on tomorrow:

I was dying for the weekends, I was dying for the school holidays. Before I knew it, I was dying.

Jake reminds us to be grateful for what we have and to live the present fully:

Here’s the thing – none of us get out of life alive. So be gallant, be great, be gracious, and be grateful for the opportunities that you have.

The full speech is available on YouTube and the video of his speech has been viewed by more than 1.7 million people at the time of writing this post.

Jake’s speech causes you to ask the question:

Are you dying for tomorrow or living today?

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com