Tag: mindful

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

Grow the Habit of Mindfulness

“Practice makes perfect” – a truism but particularly relevant to developing mindfulness.

People who know about habit forming suggest three basic steps to develop a habit:

  1. focus on one small and simple behaviour
  2. build the habit into your daily routine/structure of your day
  3. frequently revisit your motivation (s) for growing the habit of mindfulness.

Start simple and develop more complex behaviours as you master an initial starting point.  If you are trying to do something complex at the outset and trying to maintain the behaviour, you can easily become discouraged.  However, if you start simply and achieve mastery, this will add to your motivation.  You will avoid discouragement and frustration this way.

If you structure the new behaviour into you daily routine, you are more likely to be able to sustain the mindfulness practice.  So if it is something you do first thing in the morning, then each time you wake up you are reminded to undertake the behaviour.  One of the participants in the Search Inside Yourself leadership program decided to do mindful breathing whenever he put the jug on for a cup of coffee. I have started the practice of using open awareness first thing in the morning when I make my first cup of tea.  Providing an inbuilt structure (timing & location) to a mindfulness practice helps to embed it into your daily life.

It is important to maintain your motivation when the going gets tough or there are things that distract you from your practice.  One way to do this is to write down the reasons why you want to engage in the mindfulness practice.  As you begin to practice, you will find that you will be able to add to your motivation list because you have experienced some positive benefits that you had not alluded to earlier in the practice cycle. Some people even develop a personal mantra to help their motivation, e.g. “be mindful, be my best”.

Mindfulness is within everyone’s reach but each person is different. So a particular mindfulness practice may appeal to one person and not another.  You need to find somewhere to start (or extend) that suits your personal preference and lifestyle.

There are many pathways to mindfulness – mindful breathing, mindful eating, meditation, open awareness, reflective listening, yoga, and Tai Chi – to name a few.  Start somewhere and grow mindfulness from that point.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com