This week looks at mindfulness, a nonjudgmental awareness of the present reality – our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and environment. In a mindful state, we aren't thinking about the past or future but fully attuned to the now.
Matt Killingsworth: Want to be happier? Stay in the moment. Killingsworth's data shows that people are less happy when their minds are wandering. This is true even if we're doing unsatisfying activities like commuting, and even if we're thinking of neutral or pleasant things.
When our mind wanders during meditation, a group of brain areas called the "default mode network" activates. As we refocus our attention on the breath, the executive brain network takes over. Experienced meditators who repeat this process thousands of times start to show differences in the brain. They develop more connection between the self-focused part of the default mode network and brain regions for disengaging attention. Over time, meditation improves working memory, fluid intelligence, and standardized test scores.
We have the power within us to stop feeling reactive and overwhelmed, if only we cultivate it.
There are many different types of mindfulness techniques, including breathing, sitting, and walking meditations; loving-kindness meditation; the body scan; and yoga. Meditations train the mind to cultivate a certain state, often relaxation.
The goal of meditation is to become awake. In fact, the Chinese character for mindfulness means "presence of heart."
When we get caught up in our thoughts we do not truly experience the world through our senses. When we cultivate awareness, we see that our consciousness has no center or boundary.
Various types of meditation and mindfulness practices have been shown to promote coping; increase positive emotions (like compassion) and life satisfaction.
A three-month meditation training program boosted telomerase activity, indicating longer telemores and perhaps a longer life expectancy.
Mindfulness literally changes our brains, making some areas more responsive, interconnected, and dense. In particular, these are areas related to empathy (the insula); memory, emotion, and emotion regulation.
Mindfulness shapes our brain by increasing gray matter in areas related to attention, learning, self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and compassion.
Studies of Richie Davidson at CIHM show changes in gene expression after 8 hours of meditating in the lab. Meditation can have an effect on which of our genes are activated, changing us mentally and physically.
Another study of the eight-week MBSR program showed increases in gray matter in three brain regions: the hippocampus (for learning, memory, and emotion regulation); the temporoparietal junction and posterior cingulate cortex (empathy); and the cerebellum (emotion regulation).
Yoga is a good form of meditation since it includes physical exercise.
Students became less aggressive and less oppositional to teachers, and were sent to the principal less often. Plus, they had more positive emotions and became more attentive, optimistic, and introspective. Another study showed that teaching mindfulness to teens with ADHD reduces their anxiety and increases their focus.
Mindfulness at work means noticing and examining the habits of behavior, thinking, and feeling that we've created. Sometimes, what appears to be a problem is only a problem because of the expectations or feelings we attach to it, not the reality itself.
Police and soldiers are being trained in mindfulness. One study of Marine reservists found that those who had trained in mindfulness had better cognitive performance and less stress. For police, the goal of these programs is to help them be less reactive and more thoughtfully responsive, less aggressive and more assertive.
How to cultivate self-compassion, flow, and optimism while warding off perfectionism, materialism, and frazzle. We'll also look at how setting the right goals can make us happier.
We know that meditation shapes the brain, thickening areas like the insula and prefrontal cortex (areas used to observe our inner state and control attention, respectively). Routine meditators also retain more brain cells, while the rest of us lose 4% of ours as we age. These are all examples of how the mind can affect the brain, strengthening and connecting brain areas and releasing different chemicals. We also know that changes in the physical brain can affect our thoughts, emotions, and memory.
So how do we exploit this two-way pathway? We can change our minds by changing our brains by changing our minds. By scanning the world for little positive moments and savoring them, like a jewel or a warm light entering us, we can kick off changes in the brain that will make us happier not just today but down the road as well.
Toxic patterns of thought include:
Cultivating an optimistic pattern of thinking – where we believe the future will be socially desirable, good, and pleasurable – is good for our health and happiness. Optimistic people have higher subjective well-being, positive emotions, and vagal tone.
Satisficing may seem to generate sub-optimal outcomes, but in fact it frees up our decision-making power for the more important choices. To become a satisficer, define your criteria for any given choice and stop looking when those criteria are met.
Participants in a study who got to pick between two photographs were happier if they didn't have a few days to change their mind.
Mindfulness and the other techniques discussed help put us in better touch with reality so we can see things clearly and act from there.
Creating supportive, understanding, and caring inner voices.
3 components of self-compassion:
We still need voices giving constructive criticism.
Self-esteem and self-compassion might seem like opposites, but they actually go hand in hand. Self-compassionate people tend to have higher self-esteem. The pursuit of self-esteem is the desire to be special or above average. Self-compassion, on the other hand, starts with accepting ourselves despite our flaws. Self-compassionate people who got neutral feedback about their speaking skills were more likely to attribute it to their personality.
Self-compassionate people tend to be more wise, emotionally intelligent, curious and exploratory, optimistic, and happy. They tend to take more personal initiative and have better relationships, perhaps because they are more empathic, altruistic, and forgiving.
Flow is an intrinsically rewarding state of mind that comes when we're intensely engaged in an activity. With our hyper-focus, we can lose track of time and forget completely about ourselves and the environment around us. In flow, we tend to be more creative and productive.
Depending on the skills we have and the challenge we're confronted with, we may be in a state of boredom, flow, or "frazzle." In flow, we actually have moderate stress. Boredom is a state of low stress, where we try to focus but cannot. In frazzle, we're stressed but performing poorly because we're distracted by negative emotions.
While being motivated by grades puts students at risk for cheating, depression, and drug abuse, the internal motivation of flow would have extraordinary benefits. Several studies have found that flow in a course makes students more likely to sign up for another course in that field or even major in it, and flow is also correlated with good grades.
To encourage more flow at school, we need to spark students' internal motivation. For example, students tend to be more engaged when taking tests or working individually or in groups – active activities – rather than passively listening to lectures or watching videos. Students are more motivated to learn when they feel in control and challenged to do something that's relevant to real life, with a supportive teacher standing by.
The Montessori method is one example of bringing more flow into the classroom. Students pick their own tasks and go at their own pace, and grade levels are intermixed. A study of Montessori found that students have less distraction and more positive emotion, energy, internal motivation, and flow.
For group flow participants should feel in control and autonomous, but flexible and responsive to the other members' contributions.
We're happier if we pursue "intrinsic" goals that are inherently valuable. These goals involve basic psychological needs around autonomy, competence, and connection to others. In contrast, extrinsic goals (like fame) are instrumental, pursued in order to get something else (like approval from others).
Beyond that, goals that also benefit the well-being of other people will give us a happiness boost.
Occurs when, thanks to other people, something good happens to us that we don't necessarily earn or deserve.
Gratitude is linked to more cooperation, generosity, compassion, and happier relationships.
We recognize that there's some good in the world. Because it's always directed at something outside ourselves, it's also a recognition that we're dependent on others.
There are two types of gratitude: a momentary feeling we experience when someone benefits us, and a more long-term mindset, where we see everything in life as a gift.
Keeping a gratitude journal is beneficial.
Research on grateful people has found that friends rate them as more supportive, kind, and helpful. As one study showed, gratitude is even more effective than a good mood in getting people to help others.
Grateful people and people who train to be more grateful experience more happiness and pro-sociality.
Gratitude helps us not only see more of the good in life but also get more benefit out of it as we savor the experience.
Grateful people have stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure. They also sleep longer and feel more refreshed in the morning.
Grateful people are more helpful, generous, compassionate, forgiving, and outgoing.
Gratitude discourages us from taking things for granted.
In addition to the gratitude journal, we can cultivate gratitude by simply counting our blessings (in our head) daily.
We can compare the current situation to the worst time in our life to feel better.
To reframe a experience, we can start by thinking about how we learned and became a better person. Although painful, it may have brought out some of our virtues or shown us what we have to be grateful for. Post-traumatic growth.
Researchers call gratitude the "find, remind, and bind emotion": it helps us find people to form relationships with, remind us of their good qualities, and bind us closer to them.
Gratitude journaling trains our minds to notice good things, interpret situations positively, and think about positive events from the past.
When we feel gratitude, it's an indication that other people are acting properly toward us; it encourages us to return the kindness and express gratitude ourselves, reinforcing the moral behavior.
Gratitude strengthens our relationships several ways. We simply like grateful people, perhaps because they seem happier and more likely to help us. And they do help us, whether we have been kind to them before or not. Grateful people are more likely to want to work in groups (vs. alone), and they include others even at a cost to themselves.
Division of labour works better when no ones effort is taken for granted. Couples who feel appreciated by their partners resent the division of labor less and feel more satisfied in their relationships. Trying the others tasks for a week increases understanding.
On one hand, we may have trouble practicing gratitude because we run into tensions with our daily habits or personality. Gratitude goes against individualism, narcissism, materialism, and feelings of entitlement. Simply feeling too stressed and busy can also get in the way.
We might also have reservations about gratitude because we worry it will make us complacent or over-accommodating.
Another barrier is adaptation, but it turns out we adapt more to things than experiences. Over time we become happier with experiences we've had, while we become less happy about things we've acquired.
We might think that there's nothing we can do to feel more grateful. But in fact, gratitude is a deliberate way of thinking.
Gratitude does not make us complacent and inactive.
Besides the gratitude letter and the gratitude journal, we can become more grateful in our daily lives by saying thank you more and trying to appreciate and savor positive experiences.
Very grateful people:
As children get older, the objects of their gratitude change: from basic things (like sharing food or cleaning up) to people meeting their psychological needs (like sharing or teaching them something) to socio-emotional things (like inclusion, support, and encouragement). The things they're grateful for also start to overlap more with the ways they're generous toward others, indicating the cultivation of empathy.
Middle school students who keep a gratitude journal experience more optimism, satisfaction with school, and life satisfaction, as well as fewer negative emotions and physical complaints.
Students who do gratitude visits have more positive emotions up to two months later.
Adolescents who feel grateful tend to help others and feel like they're using their strengths to contribute to society.
To foster gratitude in young people, we can teach them to notice other people's intentions when they give or offer help, as well as the costs those people may incur. We can also teach them to value the benefits they receive as gifts, not things they're entitled to.
Being grateful in a relationship reminds us how valuable the other person is, encourages us to do something nice for them, and increases our overall satisfaction with the relationship. To infuse your relationships with gratitude, fight off the tendency to take things for granted and notice the other person's actions, and show your gratitude in a genuine way.
Gratitude actually creates a cycle of generosity. When we feel grateful, we want to stay in the relationship and work to maintain it with caring and attentive listening. Our partner then feels appreciated and grateful, and the cycle begins again.
Five tips for cultivating gratitude at work:
We feel awe when we're faced with something greater than ourselves that we can't comprehend with our current knowledge.
One study found that people feeling awe (induced by looking up at huge trees) felt less self-important and less entitled, and acted kinder and more generous.
As for spirituality, studies show that spiritual people are happier and less depressed. Why? The common answer is that spiritual people have strong communities, and it might also be because they have more experiences of awe.
Various studies out of Stanford have shown that awe makes us feel like we have more time on our hands, even more than feelings of happiness do.
Awe decreases cytokine levels which boosts health.
We laugh in response to contradictory pieces of information, reinforcing our curiosity and desire to learn. Laughter improves social relations by signaling playfulness and cooperation.
Laughter calms the cardiovascular system, decreases blood pressure, and enhances immune function.
Laughter can bring partners, strangers, and even adversaries closer together.
Rats laugh when playing, anticipating play, or anticipating reward.
Play correlates with creativity, learning, and solving problems. It also boosts social connectedness and well-being while lowering stress. One investigation into people prone to pathological violence found that they never played when they were young.
Studies have shown that play-oriented early childhood programs improve IQ, and play preschool decreases anxiety and boosts creativity and positive attitudes toward school.
As kids get older, play has different functions:
To cultivate more play, parents can schedule time for it, give kids more choice of what to do, and actually model it by playing themselves. Schools should put more value on recess and bring play into the classroom with more creative activities and less teaching to the test. And communities can set up more playgrounds.
Narratives are symbolic structures we use to make sense of our lives, and there are two main types:
Stories that hold our attention tend to follow similar patterns, starting with something surprising, increasing tension and difficulties, and ending with a thought-provoking climax.
Once we find activities that boost happiness, the next step is to figure out which activities work for which people. Research so far has shown that various factors make a difference:
Happiness practices work better when we are told they are effective.
When we're choosing happiness practices, we should think about our personality and life circumstances. Extroverts may enjoy more social activities, while incredibly busy people should find practices that don't take much time.
One preliminary way to measure whether an activity is a good fit is to see how much "self-determined motivation" we have to perform it. Self-determined motivation involves five factors:
After nine week of "The Science of Happiness," here are the key lessons that Dacher Keltner and Emiliana Simon-Thomas hope you'll take away:
They also encourage us to reflect on questions like these:
Updated on 2020-07-22.