Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (29 page)
Read Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Online
Authors: Mark Williams,Danny Penman
The first theme of this chapter has been to bring you to greater awareness of the balance between depleting and nourishing activities, and to help you optimize this balance. The second theme develops the first, by coupling the Three-Minute Breathing Space with concrete action to make an immediate and meaningful difference to how you feel. The Breathing Space can be more than a means of reconnecting with your expanded awareness. It can also act as a powerful springboard to help you take skillful action.
You may have already experienced through your practice of mindfulness that the tint in the lenses through which you routinely see the world has, progressively, become more obvious, allowing you to survey reality with a bit more clarity. With this in mind, after “grounding” yourself through meditation you are in a better position to take skillful action. So this week, when you feel stressed, as always, take a breathing space first, then afterward consider what action you might take. This need not be productive in a business sense, or even in a personal sense, but should be something that just feels right and appropriate. It should not be impulsive or habitual but, rather, an activity that will actively enhance your life.
As we have already seen, often the most skillful course of action will be to remain mindful and let the situation resolve itself. However, during this week in particular, we’d like you to focus on taking a specific action that you can do almost as a behavioral experiment. We use the word “behavioral” to remind you that you do not have to
feel like
doing it—you just have to do it! This is because research has found that when our mood is low, our usual motivation process is reversed. Usually, in daily life, we are motivated to do something, then we do it. But when
mood is low, we have to do something
before
the motivation comes. Motivation follows action, rather than the other way around. You may have noticed this, for instance, if there has been a time when you almost decided not to go out with friends, saying, “I’m too tired; I won’t enjoy it,” and then discovered to your surprise that you had a great time. Curiously, although this may have happened many times, we find it difficult to learn from it because when our mood is low next time, its propaganda—blocking our memory from accessing positive times in the past, and telling us there is no point in doing anything now—is so strong that we are, once again, caught in its trap.
In summary, when you feel tired, unhappy, stressed or anxious, waiting until you feel motivated may not be the wisest course of action. You have to put the action first.
When mood is low, motivation follows action, rather than the other way around. When you put the action first, motivation follows.
So, after you have used the Breathing Space at times of stress this week, pause momentarily and ask yourself:
- What do I need for myself right now?
- How can I best take care of myself right now?
You have three options for skillful action:
- You can do something pleasurable.
- You can do something that will give you a sense of satisfaction or mastery over your life.
- Or you can continue acting mindfully.
Why these three options? Because the sort of exhaustion and stress that can be most undermining for your quality of life particularly affects these three: your capacity for enjoyment, your ability to keep on top of business and your motivation to be mindful. We’ll explore each in turn.
Doing something pleasurable
Exhaustion, stress and low mood ensure that instead of genuinely enjoying life, you experience “anhedonia”—that is, you can’t find
pleasure
in life. The things you used to enjoy now leave you cold—you feel as if a thick fog has put a barrier between you and simple pleasures, and few things seem rewarding any more. Research suggests that much of this is because the “reward centers” of the brain have become insensitive to the things that used to activate them. So gradually, by taking mindful action, you start, in small ways, to wake up these neglected pathways, selecting activities you used to enjoy or think you might now enjoy, and trying, as an experiment, to discover if they give you pleasure.
Enhancing feelings of mastery or control
Anxiety, stress, exhaustion and unhappiness reduce your sense of
control
over your life. Research over many years has found that when we feel out of control in one area of our life, this can spread like a virus affecting other areas too. We end up feeling inexplicably helpless, saying to ourselves, “There’s nothing I can do” or “I just don’t have the energy.”
When this “helplessness virus” kicks in it is extremely powerful, affecting even little things. So you can end up feeling like you don’t want to walk down the road to mail a letter or pay that bill, even though it might only take five minutes. It just lies there, accusing you each day, reminding you that you are not coping. Gradually, there is an accumulation of little things, and you seem to have lost control over the most
intimate aspect of your life. So, in gradual steps, you select tiny actions that
can
be done and, once done, they communicate with the deepest aspects of yourself that you are not as helpless as you thought.
Enhancing mindfulness
As you have seen throughout each week of this course, stress and exhaustion arise from (and contribute to) the Doing mode of mind that volunteers to help when you are stressed, but has the side effect of narrowing your life, paving it over with overthinking, striving, suppression of “weakness,” automatic pilot, mindless eating, mindless walking and, well, mindless everything really. So following the Breathing Space this week, you have another option—act mindfully and return to your senses: what do your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smell? What can you touch? What is your posture, your facial expression? What is right here, if you take a moment of mindful awareness?
Choosing actions—being specific
Choose what feels most appropriate. Some ideas are shown below, but don’t feel limited to them. Do what feels the best. Don’t feel guilty about doing something for the hell of it. And don’t expect miracles. See if you can carry out what you have planned as best you can. Putting extra pressure on yourself by expecting this to alter things dramatically may be unrealistic. Rather, activities are helpful experiments—done whether you feel like doing them or not—to rebuild your overall sense of pleasure, control and mindful awareness in the face of shifts in your mood.
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- Be kind to your body.
Have a nice hot bath; have a nap for thirty minutes or less;
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treat yourself to your favorite food without feeling guilty; have your favorite hot drink. - Engage in an enjoyable activity.
Go for a walk (maybe walk the dog for a friend); visit a friend; get together what you need so you can do your favorite hobby; do some gardening; get some exercise; phone a friend you have been out of contact with for a while; spend time with someone you like; bake a cake; go shopping; watch something funny or uplifting on TV; go to the movies; read something that gives you pleasure (not “serious” reading); listen to some music that you have not listened to in a
long while; do one of the Habit Releasers from a previous chapter.
What things can you add to this list?
| Being kind to my body | Enjoyable activities |
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These are sometimes difficult to do because they can seem to add to exhaustion, rather than relieve it. We suggest doing
small
amounts of an activity, and doing it as an
experiment
, specifically when you feel helpless or out of control. Try not to prejudge how you will feel after it is completed. Keep an open mind about whether doing the activity will be helpful in
any way. It may be something like cleaning a room in your house; clearing out a cupboard or drawer; writing a thank-you letter or other “catching-up” letters; paying a bill; doing something that you have been putting off; getting some exercise. If you like, break them down into smaller steps and only tackle one step at a time. It’s especially important to congratulate yourself whenever you complete a chosen task or even
part
of one. For example, if you resolve to clean a room, only do it for, say, five minutes rather than ten or twenty. Savor the feelings of satisfaction, achievement and control it gives you.
What things could you add to this list?
What gives me a sense of mastery, satisfaction, achievement or control?
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Whatever
you are doing, mindfulness is only one breath away. It is as easy as focusing your entire attention solely on what
you are already doing
right now
. In this way, see if it is possible to bring your mind to each present moment, for example: (“Now I am standing in a line … Now I can feel the basket in my hand … Now I’m walking forward … Now I’m reaching for my bag …” Be aware of your breathing as you do other things; be aware of the contact of your feet with the floor as you stand and as you walk. No one else need know that you are doing a mindfulness practice, and it could change your whole day.
The truth is that often, tiny changes in what you do—whether you feel like doi
ng them or not—can fundamentally alter the way you feel. You can become reenergized, destressed or have your spirits lifted by taking a few baby steps forward. For example, a short walk may dissolve exhaustion, a cup of tea may lift your spirits, or ten minutes reading your favorite magazine may reduce stress. Taking mindful action helps you to discover which activities most soothe your frantic nerves in moments of crisis. They may be unique to you and they will quite often seem like tiny steps—almost inconsequential tiptoes forward. However, when you couple these small actions with the Breathing Space meditation, you produce something of profound power and importance. This is something that each of us has to feel for ourselves; you may be told this a thousand times and shown all of the scientific evidence, but none of this will be anywhere near as powerful as actually sensing it for yourself (see box, opposite). And this is the core message of Week Seven:
Tiny actions can fundamentally alter your relationship to the world for the better.
Pick a few ordinary activities from your daily life that you can turn into “mindfulness bells,” that is, reminders to stop and attend. There’s a list below of things you might like to turn into bells. Why not photocopy this page and the next and stick them on your fridge as a gentle reminder?
- Preparing food Any food preparation is a great opportunity for mindfulness—vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch. Focus on the feel of the knife as it slices through vegetables of different texture, or the smell released as each vegetable is chopped.
- Eating Try having part of a meal in silence or without the distraction of TV or the radio. Really focus on the food—colors, shapes, perhaps thinking about how this food came to you, the sensations of eating. See how easily you taste the first mouthful and no other. What does the fourth mouthful taste like?
- Washing the dishes A great opportunity for exploring sensations, constantly coming back to the present moment, rinsing this dish, water flowing, sensation of temperature, etc.
- Driving Be aware of deciding where to focus your mind while you are driving. If you decide to focus on the upcoming meeting, etc., know that this is the decision you have made. If you decide to make your primary focus something other than the actual driving, notice how quickly you can shift driving into the foreground of your attention when the situation demands. Notice if you are leaving the actual act of driving too much in the background of your attention! Take some of your driving time to make your primary focus the driving—all the sensations, the movement of your
hands, feet and so on, the visual scanning you are doing, the shifting of your vision from close up to far away and so on. - Walking Pay attention to the actual sensations of walking; notice when the mind goes elsewhere and come back to “just walking.”
- Become a model citizen! When crossing the street, use the pedestrian signals as an opportunity to stand quietly and focus on your breath, rather than an opportunity to try to beat the lights.
- Red lights An opportunity to sit quietly, peacefully and be aware of your breath.
- Listening When you are listening, notice when you are not listening—when you start to think of something else, what you are going to say in response, etc. Come back to actually listening.