happiness – Page 5 – Grow Mindfulness

Making Meaning for Well-Being

Viktor Frankl, a survivor of four years in German concentration camps, wrote a landmark book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In the book he argues that our most fundamental drive is a search for meaning rather than a search for pleasure. He demonstrated in his life in the concentration camp and through his research, that while suffering is an integral part of life, we can find meaning in it. Subsequent research has confirmed that searching for meaning and pursuing meaningful actions develops personal well-being.

Joaquín García-Alandete, writing in The European Journal of Counselling Psychology (2015), reported the results of his research that demonstrated that the relationship between meaning in life and psychological well-being was significant. Michael Steger and colleagues found in their research that the search for meaning is present in all stages of life and that realising meaning in life contributed to well-being. Conversely, the absence of meaning in the latter stages of life contributed to a reduced sense of well-being.

Dr. Paul Wong maintains that meaning contributes to well-being by enhancing positive feelings, reducing depression and building hope and resilience in the face of adverse and stressful circumstances. Michael Steger and Joo Yeon Shin argue that happiness and meaning become more imperative in our technological age characterised by an anxiety epidemic, choice overload, constant demand for adaption and an ever-increasing pace of life.

Making meaning- aligning our actions with what is meaningful for us

The search for meaning alone does not guarantee well-being. Dr. Pninit Russo-Netzer found in her research that the key to well-being was prioritizing meaning within our lives. This ultimately means doing things that align with our purpose in life and that give meaning to our life.

Achieving insight into our life’s purpose and realising alignment through our actions is a lifetime pursuit that is aided by mindfulness. Pninit suggests that as we develop self-awareness, we can reflect on our action choices and test them for alignment with our values and their impact on our well-being … and make appropriate adjustments.

Pninit argues that our simple everyday actions can be the pathway to well-being because they enable us to cultivate meaning in our lives on a daily basis. We can effectively build meaning into our lives by giving priority to aligning our choices with our values and life purpose. Just the simple, conscious act of building a collage of meaningful photos can reinforce what matters to us, build a renewed sense of purpose and increase our energy for prioritizing meaning in our lives.

Dr. Paul Wong maintains that it is not enough to believe our life is meaningful and then indulge in a lifestyle that does not contribute value to society in a way that is unique to ourselves, to our core knowledge and skills. A life that consists solely in the individual pursuit of pleasure and or power is wasteful and is devoid of meaning – a reality that is born out daily in the lives of celebrities in the fields of sport, cinema and music.

As we grow in mindfulness through a focus on our purpose and what is meaningful in our life, we can achieve a sense of well-being that assists us to live more fully and to deal with the ups and downs of life. Mindfulness meditation and reflection enable us to assess the alignment between what we value and what we do – to determine how well we are prioritizing meaning in our life. These mindful activities help us to deepen our sense of meaning – and consequent well-being – through our everyday activities.

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Happiness Through Mindful Eating

Megrette Fletcher reminds us that mindful eating can be a source of happiness in multiple ways. Mindful eating not only brings physical health benefits through improved digestion but also mental and emotional benefits through savoring the senses, enjoying the pleasure of eating tasty food, experiencing gratitude for the food that we have and enjoying the company of others.

The happiness benefits of mindful eating

When we are conscious enough to eat mindfully, we can be more in tune with our senses. This involves not only taste but other senses as well. We can enjoy the smell of freshly cooked food with the different aromas of spices, sauces and the core ingredients. We can experience the benefits of texture through touch as well as through our mouths (maybe this is why cooking shows put so much emphasis on incorporating different textures in our cooking). Sight plays a key role in mindful eating as we learn to appreciate presentation, including the varying colours of different foods and the artful colour matching. Sounds when eating, too, can play a role in our experience of happiness during mindful eating (providing they are experienced as pleasant, such as the crunch sound from eating pork crackling).

We can enjoy the pleasure of stopping from the busyness of our work and other responsibilities and savour the moment. There is a sense of satisfaction that derives from stopping, focusing and experiencing the moment – increasing our awareness that we are enjoying good food. There is also a sense of accomplishment when we can concentrate on the act of eating itself.

There are clear mental health benefits and positive emotions elicited when we express gratitude for the food we eat. Gratitude can emerge when we are mindful of the good fortune of having food to eat, enjoying plenitude (where many in the world have insufficient food) and experiencing quality ingredients and inventive cooking.

Being mindful of the company we enjoy when we eat is a key element in the happiness experienced through mindful eating. We can experience the pleasure of eating as a family on a regular basis or on special occasions where the extended family gets together. We can enjoy the company of colleagues and friends with whom we share a breakfast, lunch or dinner meal or just a cup of coffee. The experience of positive relationships enriches our lives and this benefit is accentuated when we mindfully share a meal together.

An article on the mindful.org website offers 7 reminders for mindful eating. The article provides seven practical ways to eat mindfully to experience nourishment of the mind and emotions, as well as of the body.

As we grow in mindfulness and awareness of the moment through mindful eating, we can experience genuine happiness and joy, enhance our positive mental state and develop a deep sense of gratitude for all that we are privileged to experience in life.

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

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Developing Inclusion through Mindfulness

In a previous post, I discussed the six core traits of inclusive leadership and acknowledged the role that mindfulness plays in developing inclusion in our thoughts and behaviour. In this post, I would like to develop this theme further.

Inclusion involves openness and receptivity to what is different and diverse. It is the foundation of real knowledge, insight and wisdom. It involves more than being sensitive to diversity but also valuing and embracing it. So, it entails not only a way of thinking but also a way of being in the world.

Through mindfulness, we can become aware of our implicit biases and emotional responses to people who are different from us. We are then better able to manage our habituated responses and increase our response ability.

So much of our bias is unconscious and conditioned by our social, cultural, geographical and educational environments and associated experiences. One way into our biases is through meditation on our emotional reactions to people and situations that challenge our view or perspective of the world. Our feelings of discomfort can portend our inner bias and raise awareness of our tendencies to exclusivity.

If we can stop ourselves from reacting automatically, breathe deeply and consciously, notice and name our feelings, we can respond more appropriately and, eventually, act in a more proactive and inclusive manner. If we reflect on the pattern of our thoughts and actions when we meditate, we can isolate negative emotional responses to a particular person or group. Having identified the stimulus and the nature of our reaction, we are better placed to manage our response.

When we reflect through meditation on our thoughts in particular situations, we can more readily isolate our assumptions and stereotypes and understand how they are impacting our behaviour. Through this increased self-awareness, we are better able to develop inclusive thoughts and actions.

Research has demonstrated that loving kindness meditation, which typically incorporates self-compassion and compassion towards others, can mitigate unconscious bias. This approach to developing mindfulness places increased emphasis on similarities and entails expressing desire for increased well-being, happiness, equanimity and resilience for others. Development of positive intentions towards others builds an inclusive frame of reference and affirmation of diversity.

As we grow in mindfulness, we see our biases in a clearer light, understand their impact on our behaviour and become more open and able to adopt inclusive behaviour. Developing inclusion in our words and actions can be achieved through mindfulness if we consciously employ meditations that invoke acceptance and inclusion.

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

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Exploring Your Personal Vision

I previously discussed the need for a personal vision as a leader in an organisational context. But what if you do not have an organisational leadership role? The benefits of a personal set of values and a clear personal vision apply to you as well.

The power of vision is that it attracts support and resources, helps you to integrate the diverse aspects of your life and enables you to notice things that would otherwise pass you by. Lou Tice, author of Smart Talk for Achieving Your Potential, spoke eloquently about the power of vision and argued in Smart Talk that:

You will never accomplish all that you dream, but you will seldom accomplish anything that you don’t envision first.

Vision is like a magnet pulling ideas, people and energy towards you – enabling you to achieve a unique contribution to your community and the world at large.

A personal vision helps you to ride the waves of life, with its ups and downs, highs and lows. It provides some form of protection against the temptation to be your lesser self when pressured to give into the expediency of the moment and say or do something that is hurtful or harmful to yourself and/or others.

Discovering your vision and values through meditation

The Mindful Movement provides one of the many meditations that help you clarify what it is you value and how best to formulate a personal vision that can evolve over time as circumstances change and you become better equipped to pursue what flows from your uniqueness and life experiences. Their guided meditation helps you to Discover your Values and your Vision of your Ideal Self.

This meditation provides an ideal way to become grounded first through a process of progressive body scanning and muscle relaxation. This frees your mind to be open to the potentiality of your uniqueness. It helps still the negative thoughts that can act as a barrier to developing and pursuing a vision.

In establishing a personal vision, you are sowing the seeds for happiness in your life because it opens up the possibility of doing something meaningful beyond yourself through using your unique set of knowledge, skills and life experiences.

As you grow in mindfulness, you will be able to gain a clearer view of your personal vision, realise your potentiality and experience a deeper happiness in contributing something worthwhile to your community and the world at large.

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

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Cultivating Awareness of Others through Mindfulness

In the previous post, I mentioned the triad of awareness – awareness of self, awareness of others and awareness of the world around us. In this post, I want to focus on awareness of others.

It is very difficult to be aware of others and thoughtful towards them in the busyness of our daily lives and the incessant distractions posed by disruptive marketing. Our attention is continuously pulled away from inner awareness and awareness of others.

Our lack of awareness of others is often displayed in our blind spots – we are impervious to the effects of our words and actions on others. It takes a conscious effort to get in touch with our core blind spot which may be blinding us to the needs of others in particular situations – whether at work, at home, or in the community.

Awareness of others requires that we move away from self-absorption. We can become so immersed in our own feelings – pain, anxiety, sadness, boredom – that we are not aware of the feelings and pain of others. We can also be so lost in our thoughts – planning, analysing, critiquing – that there is no room for thoughts of others.

Mindfulness to cultivate awareness of others

Mindfulness meditation is a way to break out of the trap of self-absorption – what Jon Kabat-Zinn describes as thinking that we are the centre of the world. With conscious and consistent meditation practice, we can increase our awareness of, and empathy towards, others around us.

Loving kindness meditation, for example, enables us to think about others and express the desire for them to experience wellness and happiness. It takes us outside our self to thoughts about others and their needs and desires.

A simple related exercise is to recall a situation that has occurred that has caused pain and suffering for someone else or a group of people and place yourself in their situation – “What would they be feeling if they have just lost their child through an accident?” As you engage in empathetic consideration of the people involved – family, friends, colleagues – you can extend the desire for them to manage their grief and to eventually experience equanimity. If you were to do this daily, this could help to cultivate awareness of others.

Forgiveness meditation is a way to take ourselves beyond focus on our own pain and hurt from an interaction with someone else, to thinking about and feeling for the other person in the interaction. It takes considerable awareness to move beyond our own sense of pain and righteousness to reflect on what happened for the other person. Forgiveness meditation is a powerful way to move beyond self-absorption to awareness of others.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can cultivate awareness of others – awareness of their pain, thoughts and needs. We can move beyond being self-absorbed to being thoughtful of, and considerate towards, others.

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

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Living the Present Moment

The present moment is all we have – this very moment is our life. Yet we spend so much time being someplace else. We are thinking about what we have to do or wishing that our life was different. We can be caught up in the emotions of envy, disappointment or regret and overlook what is happening now.

So often we look forward to an activity with a friend or colleague and yet when the moment arrives, we are thinking of something else – our focus is elsewhere other than the present moment. When we can be really in the present moment we can savour being alone, being with someone we value and appreciate, experiencing the joy of our child’s development and happiness, or the beauty of the nature that surrounds us.

The role of meditation practice – bringing us back to the present moment

In one of her many meditation podcasts, Tara Brach coaxes us to show up fully for our life experiences, instead of being absorbed by our busyness. She encourages us to be with our mind and our body in the moment.

Meditation practice trains us to bring our attention back to the present moment again and again. It helps us to develop the discipline to stop our minds wandering or entertaining thoughts that take us away from the moment that we are experiencing, whatever form it takes.

If we can maintain meditation practice over a sustained period with a degree of frequency, we can begin to find that we tend to stop ourselves in the course of some experience and remind ourselves to savour the moment. This present-mindedness can grow and develop and embrace more of our life and our interactions with others. We can learn progressively to be truly present to ourselves and others.

As Tara points out the starting point is often getting in touch with our own bodies and our bodily sensations – whether it is the sensation of warmth or cold, tightness or softening, retracting or expanding. What we develop through being in the present moment is gratitude and appreciation and we can experience joy and happiness through the process. Tara describes what we develop through meditation practice in these words:

The art of appreciation and showing up for our life and living with more connection and gratitude.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can appreciate each moment and savour more of our life, instead of letting the present moment continuously pass us by. Through regular and persistent meditation, we develop the art of bringing ourselves back to what we are experiencing in the moment.

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

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Being Mindful of the Past and the Future

Mindfulness is about being present in the moment and doing so in a way that is open to, and accepting of, whatever is the reality of our lives. It means not resisting our lives but approaching our lives with curiosity and a willingness to be with the present moment.

We often hear in the context of mindfulness that it is important not to be lost in the past (which leads to depression) or in the future (which leads to anxiety). However, the past and the future have a positive role to play in our lives.

Mindful of the past

The opposite to being mindful of the past is to be always living in the past – obsessing about what might have been, what we could have done. It is replaying in our head the negative things we have done or experienced – going over and over them so that the past controls us. We can become obsessed about the past and stuck on what happened, unable to let go. This inevitably leads to disappointment, frustration, sadness, resentment and depression.

Being mindful of the past can involve a positive approach to life. If we reflect on our actions and the outcomes, intended and unintended, we can learn from this process, if it is done in a non-judgmental way. Through reflection, we can really grow in self-awareness and self-management, because we can recognise the negative triggers, our responses and alternative ways of acting and being-in-the-world.

When we engage in gratitude meditation we can revisit in a positive way what has happened for us in the past. We can appreciate the skills we have developed, the opportunities to acquire qualifications, the support of our parents/siblings/friends, the synchronicity that flowed from our focus, and the opportunities that opened up for us because of our life circumstances.

Mindful of the future

Approaching the future mindlessly can involve obsessing about the negative things that can potentially happen in our lives. The word “potentially” is used consciously here- much of what we imagine will never happen. We can easily get into a spiral of negative thoughts that leads to catastrophising- envisaging the worst possible outcome. Unfortunately, our minds have a negative bias but we can train our minds to be positive in outlook and open to opportunities that may come our way. A morbid fixation on the future can only lead to fear, worry and anxiety and destroy our potential for happiness in the present.

We need to attend to the future and this can be healthy and positive. We have to plan ahead for many things such as getting to work, what to wear, what to focus on for the day, what we will have for dinner, what social events we will engage in on the weekend and our upcoming holiday. Such planning and thoughts about the future are natural. However, if we become overly concerned about what might happen or how our life will turn out in the future, we can enter a negative anxiety spiral.

Being mindful of the future requires a healthy approach to planning (not planning obsessively) and a willingness to accept what arises in our lives despite our very best plans. It also means not being controlled by the expectations of others or our own expectations of how things might work out.

A meditation on the past and the future

Tara Brach provides a meditation podcast on exploring the past and the future. In the meditation she encourages you to notice any tension in your body arising from thoughts about the past or the future. She suggests that you do not entertain these thoughts but let them pass by like the train as you wait at the station. Her advice is to continuously come back to the focus of your meditation, such as your breathing or sounds that surround you, whenever your mind wanders into the past or the present.

Tara suggests too that if you are focusing on sounds, you could try to tune into the furthest sound you can hear and to rest in the sense of expansiveness that results. The primary goal, however, is to rest fully in the present.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and meditation, we can become mindful of the past and the future and avoid being captured by either. We can extract from the past and the future positive thoughts and avoid dwelling on the negative which can lead to sadness and unhappiness. We can learn to happily appreciate the present moment – the summation of our past and the positive potentiality of our future.

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

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The Freedom of Possibilities Versus The Tyranny of Expectations

Phillip Moffitt, author of Emotional Chaos to Clarity, writes comprehensively in a blog post about the tyranny of expectations. He suggests that expectations lock us into a limited future with a fixed view of desired outcomes. We have expectations of ourselves and of others and they, in turn, have expectations of us.

In contrast, possibilities arise in the present moment if we are tuned into what is happening in the here and now. If we are present to our situation, whatever it may be, we are able to tap our imagination and intellect, achieve clarity about the situation and come up with creative options.

Expectations can tie us to a particular outcome and lead to disappointment when that outcome is not realised. Even when the desired outcome is achieved, we can feel dissatisfied that it did not meet our expectations in terms of happiness, joy or success. This results in what John describes as the tyranny of expectations and he illustrates this by giving an example of a woman held captive by her expectations:

Our discussion revealed that she repeatedly experienced being disappointed whenever she actually got what she sought. In response, she would create new expectations, and the cycle would repeat itself.

No one is free from expectations, even yogis who can become trapped by their expectations of what they will achieve through sustained meditation practice. They can become attached to a desired outcome, so much so that they defeat the very purpose of meditation which is to be in-the-moment with whatever is present in their lives.

John suggests that some people go to the other extreme and give up on expectations for fear of being disappointed – they do not pursue their values in day-to-day living. They can experience depression as well as anger and frustration.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditating on our expectations in any given situation, we can learn to understand ourselves and to realise the very powerful role that expectations can play in our lives. Working from the possibilities of the present moment, we can reduce the power of expectations and realise true happiness.

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

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Nurturing the Seeds of Happiness

In the sixth week of the online, Power of Awareness Course, Tara Brach talked about nourishing the seeds of happiness. This followed a video session on the standing meditation which an article in the Huffington Post describes as an established Buddhist approach.

Nurturing the moment requires being in the present, aware of what is happening within and outside ourselves. As Tara points out, there are so many times during the day where we can experience some form of positive feeling – whether it be happiness, calm, appreciation, serenity, blessed, full of wonder, amazed, free, thankful, delighted or joyous.

Yet, because of the negativity bias of our brains – an evolutionary bias – we let these positive feelings wane or slip by and focus instead on the negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, dread, suspiciousness, nervousness, alarmed or scared. We often dwell on the negative emotions and do not reinforce the positivity in our lives by savoring the moments of positive feelings.

Tara suggests that this focus on the negative is endemic in our society today:

Our attention fixates on what might go wrong and we are really imprinted – imprinted by experiences that bring up fear or pain and we are inclined to look for them.

Tara argues that we have a “happiness setpoint” that is biologically and biochemically conditioned, and that acts as a happiness thermostat to keep the lid on our happiness level. To offset this bias towards the negative in our lives, we need to learn to savor the positive moments.

Savoring the moments of happiness

The best way to build a positive outlook on life is to savor the moments when we experience positive feelings. I have written previously about specific things in your life that you can savour – your child’s development, friendship, your achievements and rewards, the space of being alone or the freedom of boredom.

In this current post, we are not focusing on a particular situation or person in our lives, but on the experience of happiness, in whatever form it takes. However, it takes practice to overcome the entrenched habit of fixation on the negative and, in turn, establish “a new setpoint for our wellbeing”.

Tara suggests that one way to do this is through “conscious savoring” of the many pleasant feelings that we experience throughout our day. In her words, “it is a commitment to pause when you are experiencing goodness or happiness or wonder or appreciation or joy or peace”. The stimulus could be a sunrise over the mirror-like water, a pleasant recollection, the cool breeze on your face or the song of a newly arrived bird in the backyard.

You can savor the moment of happiness by pausing, stopping what you are doing momentarily, and breathing in the pleasure of the moment by taking a couple of deep, conscious breaths. You can dwell with care and gratitude on the positive feelings you are experiencing, rather than rushing into another activity that may lead to anxiousness. This is very much a process of reflection-in-action.

As we grow in mindfulness through savoring the many different moments of happiness that occur in our lives, we become more aware of the richness of these feelings and the peace that resides within, and we learn to enrich our wellbeing through nurturing the seeds of happiness.

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Forgiveness Meditation

Forgiveness meditation embraces three aspects of forgiveness – forgiving ourselves, forgiving someone else who hurt us and asking for forgiveness from someone we have hurt. These can be combined in one meditation or undertaken as separate meditations because of the level of emotion potentially involved.

A combined forgiveness meditation is offered by Diana Winston who provides this half-hour meditation through the weekly meditation podcast series produced by the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Diana is Director of Mindfulness Education at the Center. The combined approach to forgiveness meditation could be appropriate where you have been involved in a divorce or relationship breakup – where both parties have hurt each other over time, culminating in the ending of the relationship.

Diana’s meditation, as with other forgiveness meditations, flows through a series of phases – mindful breathing, body scan, silent meditation – before focusing on each of the aspects of forgiveness. These initial phases are designed to lower the level of physical and emotional agitation experienced when people are practicing forgiveness meditation.

Whether we are forgiving ourselves or others who have hurt us or asking for forgiveness from someone else, our physical and emotional responses are heightened.

Forgiving yourself

This is often the hardest forgiveness meditation to do, however, it is the foundation of giving forgiveness to, and seeking forgiveness from, others. We carry so much baggage in terms of “beating up on ourselves” for past actions, thoughts or omissions. This self-blame and self-loathing can undermine our sense of calm and equanimity. The starting point is to acknowledge that being human means that we will act or think in ways that will hurt somebody, whether consciously or unconsciously. It is not possible to go through life without acting or thinking in ways that we later regret because of their adverse impact on someone else.

We can remain stuck in the mire of self-loathing or acknowledge that we are human and will make mistakes. The “forgiving self” meditation enables us to express the simple statement, “I forgive myself”. This may take time, and frequent meditations, to be experienced as real, but persistence pays and we will gradually be able to tone down our negative thoughts and feelings.

Forgiving others who hurt you

The focus on this aspect of forgiveness meditation is on clearing the resentment, or even hatred, towards another person who has hurt us by their words, actions or omissions. We can carry this hurt like a virus that infects our daily life and manifests itself in unpredictable and undesirable ways. Resentment can eat away at us and erode our self-esteem, our self-confidence and effectiveness in whatever role(s) we have in life.

Sometimes resentment towards others for past words or actions can be projected onto another person who acts as a trigger to set us off a train of negative thoughts and feelings. One example of this is where we have been subjected to constant criticism by a significant person in our life, which makes us super-sensitive to criticism by others, whether real or only perceived.

When we fail to forgive others for past hurts, it is as if we are carrying the past forward to today and contaminating the present. We keep the hurt alive, and even intensify it, by not letting go. In an article on forgiveness, Elisha Goldstein quotes the famous statement by Lily Tomlin, Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past. In the forgiveness article, Elisha also offers a brief forgiveness meditation practice designed to help people to let go of hurt and resentment.

Seeking forgiveness from those you have hurt

Invariably, we have hurt others by our words, actions and inaction. We can carry around the burden of guilt or do something to release this burden. Forgiveness meditation gives us the opportunity to address this guilt and awareness of the hurt to another person. By focusing on our feelings and being empathetic towards the person who has been hurt by us, we can release ourselves from the chains of guilt, while acknowledging the hurt we have caused. Otherwise, we will be burdened by the guilt and our life will be weighed down so that we are disabled in terms of experiencing the freedom of the moment.

A “seeking-for-forgiveness” meditation entails focusing on the person you have hurt and the pain you have caused them, while saying the words, “I have hurt you by my words and actions, I now seek your forgiveness”. While engaging in this meditation, it is important to treat yourself with kindness (no matter how much you have hurt the other person, consciously of unconsciously). You do not have to say the words to the other person who you have hurt – the readiness to do this may occur a lot later or the opportunity may never occur.

For each of the forgiveness meditations, you can get in touch with what is going on inside you – your thoughts, feelings and bodily reactions. As you grow in mindfulness, and persist with the forgiveness meditation practice, you will have an increased sense of calm, happiness, freedom and peace. You will also experience greater empathy towards others and be kinder to yourself.

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

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