Living the Mindful Life

The following is an excerpt from my book: Eye of the Storm: How Mindful Leaders Can Transform Chaotic Workplaces.

Image: Ray Williams

Scientific Research on Mindfulness

More than 300 scientific studies have been completed on mindfulness, indicating its effectiveness and benefits. Here’s a sample of some of the most significant studies:

• Lasting emotional control. Mindfulness meditation may make us feel calmer while we’re doing it, but do these benefits spill over into everyday life? Gaelle Desbordes and colleagues published a study in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, in which they scanned the brains of people taking part in an 8-week meditation program, before and after the course. They found that meditation can help provide lasting emotional control, even when you are not meditating
• Cultivating compassion. In one study by Paul Condon and his colleagues, and published in Psychological Science, participants who had been meditating were given an undercover test of their compassion. They sat in a staged waiting area with two actors when another actor entered on crutches, pretending to be in great pain. The two actors sat next to the participants both ignored the person who was in pain, sending the unconscious signal not to intervene. Those who had been meditating, though, were 50% more likely to help the person in pain
• Changes in brain structures. Mindfulness meditation is such a powerful technique that, after only 8 weeks, the brain’s structure changes. Research findings published in Psychiatry Research. Compared with a control group, grey-matter density in the hippocampus — an area associated with learning and memory–was increased. The study’s lead author, Britta Hölzel, said: “It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life”
• Enhance cognitive functioning. How would you like your brain to work faster? Fadel Zeidan and colleagues found significant benefits for novice meditators from only 80 minutes of meditation over four days. Their study was published in Consciousness and Cognition. The authors concluded “that four days of meditation training can enhance the ability to sustain attention; benefits that have previously been reported with long-term meditators.” Improvements seen on the measures ranged from 15% to more than 50%.
• Sharpen concentration. At its heart, meditation is all about learning to concentrate, to have greater control over the spotlight of attention. An increasing body of studies now underlines the benefits of meditation for attention. For example, researchers Amishi Jha and colleagues conducted a study, published in Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Sciences, in which they sent 17 people who had not practiced meditation before they went on an 8-week training course in mindfulness-based stress reduction, a type of meditation. These 17 participants were then compared with a further 17 from a control group on a series of attentional measures. The results showed that those who had received training were better at focusing their attention than the control group.
• Personal growth. Through the work of neuroscientist Richard Davidson and others, we’ve learned that people who practice mindful meditation regularly have higher levels of activity in the left prefrontal cortex of the brain, an area which is associated with personal growth and meaning. Davidson has shown that mindfulness meditation changes the brain including the development of greater cognitive flexibility and creativity, well-being, emotional regulation and empathy.
• Better focus of attention. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and MIT reported from their studies of that mindfulness practitioners were far more able to “turn down the volume” on distracting information and focus their attention better than non-mindfulness practitioners.
• Greater cognitive and emotional control. A study by Kirk Brown and Richard Ryan at the University of Rochester and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that people high on a mindfulness scale were more aware of their unconscious processes and had more cognitive control and greater ability to shape what they do and what they say, than people lower on the mindfulness scale. They also reported a mindfulness experience was positively associated with clarity of emotional states and mood, as well as higher levels of psychological well-being.

What are the Elements of Mindfulness?

Mindfulness, both in its formal meditative form and its informal activity based form comprise a number of elements which interact together to produce powerful brain, heart and behavioral changes. Here’s a description of these elements:

1. Being Present. This means focusing your attention on whatever you are doing in the present moment. This implies you are not thinking about events or emotions from the past or in the future.
2. Paying Attention. Focusing 100% of your attention on whatever you are doing. The biggest single problem that contributes to mindlessness and prevents mindfulness is being on autopilot, which entails both not being present, and not noticing what you are actually engaged in.
3. Openness. This involves both being open-minded in thought processes and openhearted in emotional activity. Practicing curiosity, “beginner’s mind,” and non-judgment are central to this element.
4. Non-reactivity. Our brains are built to have you react automatically, without thinking. Mindfulness encourages you to respond to your experience rather than react to your thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness is a deliberate and intentional choice.
5. Acceptance. This involves more than accepting other people the way they are, or accepting an event that has already happened. Its focus is on accepting and not practicing judgment or self-criticism about the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and beliefs that you have, and understanding that they are simply those things only.
6. Compassion. This element involves practicing compassion, empathy and kindness towards others and particularly toward yourself.
7. Non-attachment. This element emphasizes avoidance of attaching meaning to thoughts and feelings, or connecting a given thought to a feeling. Instead, let a thought or feeling come in and pass without connecting it to anything, observing it exactly as they it is.

Mindfulness is more than meditative practice, although that is the necessary cornerstone. It’s also about a way of being and a way of living that can bring greater happiness, health and well-being. It’s about daily practices that permeate your work and personal life. It’s about building routines in your life that are as fundamental as brushing your teeth and breathing. Here’s a comprehensive list to tell if you’re becoming more mindful. Keep this list handy for regular reference and a progress check.

How To Tell if You Are Becoming More Mindful:

1. You notice that you are becoming less judgmental of yourself and others.
2. You develop curiosity about things that you used to deny or judge as “wrong,” “stupid,” or “impossible.”
3. You accept your partner, family members and friends just as they are and give up trying to change them, improve them or persuade them to your perspective.
4. You’re willing to admit you may not be right, and honestly want to hear others’ perspectives, rather than needing to prove they are “wrong”.
5. Your “black and white” opinions about the world soften and you become allowing/tolerant of differing views, cultures and societies.
6. You don’t spend most of your time thinking about the past or the future, but rather focus on the present.
7. You let go of the need for perfection and accept yourself as you are, including your imperfections.
8. You feel compassion for every living thing, even those who you don’t naturally “like”.
9. You are not reactive to others’ actions; they can’t push triggers or buttons in you that result in a lack of control over your emotions.
10. When you need to respond to others’ actions or words, you do so intentionally, thoughtfully and in control of your emotions.
11. You accept your emotions — including your negative emotions — and the “shadow” in yourself as being part of you, and don’t let that part rule you.
12. You are patient. You understand that all things must develop in their own time, and that you can’t “force” things to happen.
13. You have trust in yourself. You trust yourself, your intuition and your abilities, including your ability to get through everything.
14. You commit yourself to non-striving. You accept things that are happening in the moment just as they are supposed to be. You don’t spend time wishing things were different or trying to relive the past differently.
15. You don’t try to run away from pain, but rather embrace it as part of life, which will lessen its negative effect. You understand that suffering arises from your resistance to pain. You understand that whatever you resist persists.
16. You understand that consciously setting your intentions for your life, your thinking, and your behavior without being attached to outcomes is necessary to being mindful.
17. You are aware that body and mind are one, and that you are aware of your internal physical state at all times, but particularly during stressful times.
18. You focus on the things that you have with gratitude rather than focusing on the things you don’t have.
19. You accept the universe and that everything in it is constantly changing. Nothing lasts forever, and nothing stays the same.
20. You spend some private quiet time every day.
21. You practice self-compassion consistent with the compassion you show others.