May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The theme for 2019 builds on the 4Mind4Body theme from 2018, and includes an emphasis on spirituality and religion. One of the previous themes was “Live Your Life Well” which encouraged people to take responsibility for the prevention of mental health issues and informed the public that many mental health problems can be avoided by making positive lifestyle choices in the ways we act and think. In that vein I would like to offer some tips for using mindfulness practices to make a positive change in the way we act and think.
There is medical precedent for using mindfulness to improve mental health and even cope with conditions such as depression. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) was launched by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical center. It is a program that employs mindfulness mediation to alleviate various mental health issues. There is plenty of scholarly research put into MBSR, which shows the effectiveness of the program in coping with mental disorders. MBSR eventually led to mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), also at UMass. “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is designed to help people who suffer repeated bouts of depression and chronic unhappiness. It combines the ideas of cognitive therapy with meditative practices and attitudes based on the cultivation of mindfulness.”
For the uninitiated, your first question might be: what is mindfulness?
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is not Stuart Smalley making daily affirmations into a mirror. It’s not the Law of Attraction; you don’t “go to your garden and chant, ‘There’s no weeds, there’s no weeds, there’s no weeds,’ and think that that’s going to solve something.”
That’s what mindfulness is not. So what is it, then? Like many popular and wide-ranging topics, mindfulness has been defined differently by different people and sources.
According to Psychology Today, mindfulness is defined three ways:
- Mindfulness is letting go of taking things for granted.
- Mindfulness means to return to the present moment.
- Mindfulness is the self-regulation of attention with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and acceptance.
Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader and a respected voice in the mindfulness realm. He founded Plum Village in France and defines mindfulness as “the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment.” On Lion’s Roar, Nhat Hanh says “Mindfulness is the energy that helps us recognize the conditions of happiness that are already present in our lives.”
“The foundation of happiness is mindfulness. The basic condition for being happy is our consciousness of being happy. If we are not aware that we are happy, we are not really happy. When we have a toothache, we know that not having a toothache is a wonderful thing. But when we do not have a toothache, we are still not happy. A non-toothache is very pleasant. There are so many things that are enjoyable, but when we don’t practice mindfulness, we don’t appreciate them. When we practice mindfulness, we come to cherish these things and we learn how to protect them. By taking good care of the present moment, we take good care of the future. Working for peace in the future is to work for peace in the present moment.”
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn
To follow up with the idea of focusing on realizing we are happy, Nhat Hahn says “We often ask, “What’s wrong?” We should learn to ask, “What’s not wrong?”, And be in touch with that.” Dr. Mark Epstein, a graduate of Harvard College and the Harvard Medical School who integrates Buddhist and Freudian approaches to trauma, has said happiness is “more of the good stuff and less of the bad.”
“Only one thing determines how you feel: the way you communicate to yourself in that moment.” says Tony Robbins in Unleash the Power Within. Tony is a life coach; not the kind that lives in a van down by the river, but one that provides very powerful lessons for improving your life and outlook. A lot of his material focuses simply on how you react to and perceive the world and events around you. In Power to Shape Your Destiny, he advocates that “The language we attach to our experience becomes our experience.”
One of the biggest hurdles to many people’s mental health is the negative language they attach to themselves and their experiences.
Everything’s Not Awesome
At one point in The LEGO Movie 2, the good guys are locked in a storage bin. They think they’ll never be played with again. All of them except Lucy (aka Wild Style) lose hope and sink into depression.
Everything’s not awesome
Everything’s not cool
I am so depressed
Everything’s not awesome
What’s the point? There’s no hope
Awesomeness was a pipedream
Aye, my spirits be at the bottom of the seaStop, everyone, okay, just listen
Everything’s Not Awesome
Everything’s not awesome
But that doesn’t mean that it’s hopeless and bleak
Things can’t be awesome all of the time
It’s not realistic expectation
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try
To make everything awesome
In a less likely, unrealistic kind of way
We should maybe aim for not bad
‘Cause not bad, well that would be real great
Notice the words in the opening verses: “depressed”, “no hope”, “spirits be at the bottom of the sea.” These are a result of the characters’ negative perception of their situation. The language they use forms and reinforces those negative emotions. By focusing on how things aren’t awesome the characters will never be satisfied or happy. Compare that to the latter verse. It calls the expectation for everything to be awesome “not realistic”, then proceeds to build up the positive emotions from “not bad” to “real great.”
That change in state begins with Wild Style’s exclamation “Stop, everyone, okay, just listen.” Her advice to “stop” and “listen” is the basis for the practice of mindfulness, in particular meditation. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to change you way of thinking like the LEGO characters?
First, you’ll need to learn some four letter words.
Four Letter Words
“Meditation isn’t this soft, fluffy thing. You’re facing your stresses head-on. You’re kind of leaning into them. And it’s giving you the tools to do that more effectively, and to not be swept away by them.” So writes Dan Harris in his book Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics (10% Happier How-To). Harris “how to” book provides concrete techniques to follow up on his previous book’s exploration of why you should mediate (with the long-winded title 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works).
Two of the best techniques provided in Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics are four letter acronyms. The first acronym is R.A.I.N. It outlines the core steps in mindfulness meditation.
- R.A.I.N.
- Recognize: Identify any emotions that you are experiencing.
- Accept: Open yourself to the emotion and give yourself over to feeling and experiencing the emotion.
- Investigate: Explore the emotion in a relaxed and objective manner. See how its affects you physically. Try to identify the feedback loops that increase the emotion, particularly negative emotions.
- Non-identification: Don’t take the emotion personally. Instead of thinking “I am angry”, think “anger is happening.”
Non-identification is one of the most useful bits of emotional advice. Sitting Still Like a Frog, a mindfulness book for children and parents, says you are not your feelings, you have them. This helped my five year old son calm down at the end of the day when he was overly tired and frustrated. It’s a novel concept to be present with your feelings without getting swept up in them; that’s tough even (especially) for adults to do. This also ties in well with general parenting advice about helping children attach names to their feelings (recognize), which would be the first step toward understanding your feelings and detaching yourself from them.
The second four letter word is S.U.R.F. Dan Harris calls this “free-range R.A.I.N.” It’s a kind of meditation you put into action whenever you do feel an emotional urge rising.
- S.U.R.F.
- Stop: Notice when you have an urge and be able to pause before acting upon it.
- Understand: Be conscious enough to know when you are feeling an urge. Learn its shape and what sensations it causes in your body.
- Relax: Don’t act on the urge. Let it pass without fighting it.
- Freedom: Take satisfaction in letting the urge pass calmly. Notice and reinforce that feeling of mindfulness.
Boy, “stop” and “understand” sure sound like Wild Style’s advice to her fellow LEGO characters, doesn’t it? I think Wild Style might have a second calling in life as a meditation teacher.
A final example of these four letter acronyms comes from Bliss More: How to Succeed in Mediation Without Really Trying by Light Watkins. Light is a meditation teacher and his book is a good, easy to read introduction to the mechanics of meditation. His first four letter word pretty much mirrors Dan Harris’ R.A.I.N.
- E.A.S.Y.
- Embrace
- Accept
- Surrender
- Yield
Light also defines the opposite of E.A.S.Y. with his acronym H.A.R.D. This acronym includes four ways people fight the meditation process. Remember, these are things to avoid in your meditation.
- H.A.R.D.
- Holding your position
- Austerity
- Resistance
- Doubting the process
Both R.A.I.N. and E.A.S.Y. can be traced back to Buddhist teachings. Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh includes a chapter with a similar list of steps, but without the catchy four letter acronym.
- Recognize the feeling
- Become one with the feeling
- Calm the feeling
- Release the feeling
- Look deeply
Nhat Hahn summarizes the steps: “After recognizing your feeling, becoming one with it, calming it down, and releasing it, we can look deeply into its causes, which are often based on inaccurate perceptions. As soon as we understand the causes and nature of our feelings, they begin to transform themselves.”
Even Tony Robins has a set of four core concepts in Unleash the Power Within that could be applied to this process of handling emotions via meditation: Perception, Physiology, Rapport, Strategy. Perception involves being able to note your feelings. Physiology is connecting your body to your feelings. Rapport is akin to becoming one with your feelings. And strategy is being able to repeat the process when the feeling arises again.
So that’s the high level introduction to some mindfulness techniques. Now lets see how to handle specific emotions that can erode your mental health and well-being.
Having Enough
A prevalent issue in our consumer culture is the desire to always have more. As Courtney Carver of Be More With Less shared in a newsletter: “Many of us are on a quest for more — we give in to pressure every day, pressure from others and pressure we put on ourselves, to work more, own more, and get more done.” The problem, of course, is that if you always want more then you’ll never attain your goal. There will always be more work to do, more stuff to get done, more things to own. Attempting to have more is a Sisyphean task that creates a never-ending feedback loop. In short, in trying to get more you will never have enough.
John Bogle shared a fantastic story in his 2007 commencement address at Georgetown University.
Here’s how I recall the wonderful story that sets the theme for my remarks today: At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.”
Commencement Address by John C. Bogle, founder, The Vanguard Group
This sentiment about being content with “enough” is nothing new. Chapter 33 of the Tao Te Ching includes the couplet “If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.” By striving for more you will frame the world in a negative light. By accepting and appreciating what you already have you will frame the world in a positive way. Learning to be content, even happy, with what is right in front of you is one of the best lessons you can learn to improve your mental well-being.
The minimalist movement has wholeheartedly embraced this concept of having enough. Courtney Carver writes about “living in the land of enough.” The Minimalists write that minimalism allows you “to get rid of life’s excess so [you] can focus on what’s essential.” And Marie Kondō’s Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up spawned the Kon Marie method and a Netflix series that encourage people to hold on to only objects that “spark joy.” By simplifying your life and reducing your possessions you can learn to find the signal in the noise.
In Unleash the Power Within, Tony Robbins says “If you got to go to the Moon to feel a sense of adventure then you got a problem. If you can find adventure in a smile then you’re rich”. In his book, Money: Master the Game, Tony offers a similar thought: “So much of what makes us wealthy is free. The secret to wealth is gratitude. It’s not just what we achieve or accomplish. It’s what we appreciate. It’s not just the adventure of a cruise. It’s what we take the time to enjoy. You can find an adventure and joy in those you love, in the dancing eyes of your children, or the joyous faces of those you love. There are jackpots everywhere if you wake up to the beauty of your life today. So don’t vow to someday get beyond scarcity; start beyond it. Realize how lucky you are and all the wealth you possess in love, joy, opportunities, health, friends, and family. Don’t get rich. Start rich.”
If learning how to have enough is so important, then why do so many people keep trying to get more?
Keeping up with the Joneses
One of my favorite novels is Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. It’s a horror and suspense novel about tracking down a serial killer, but it includes some extremely insightful social satire, especially regarding online media. The following quote encapsulates one of the biggest, most insidious issues with social media.
Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It’s not the world that’s the stage – it’s social media, where you’re trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online…. Facebook is designed to make you insecure about the amazing better lives everyone else is having.
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes
It’s pretty clear how social media naturally makes people compare each other, usually negatively. While scrolling through your feed filled with pictures of fabulous vacation destinations, pristine houses, and loving families all smiling together, one can’t help but feel some jealousy. You naturally being to question your own life, and will usually start thinking you need more. It’s virtually impossible to be content with what you have when you constantly compare yourself to other people. This comparison game only gets worse since people share only the highlights of their lives, which can lead some people to continuously try to “one-up” each other.
Chapter 9 of the Tao Te Ching includes the couplet “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” Chapter 8 ends with “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.”
It can sound cliche, but the coolest people you know are probably the ones that don’t worry what other people think about them. Just like the pursuit for more will always lead to wanting more rather than having enough, comparing yourself to others and attempting to please everyone will never end (after all, you’re not pizza). You don’t want to end up like Pete the Cat before he realizes it’s cooler to just be you rather than bow to everyone else’s whims (or fashion sense).
All this comparing and competing and seeking approval can lead to the same thing that drives the Dark Side of the Force.
Handling Anger
Anger is one of the strongest emotions we regularly experience and one that we all wish we could avoid. There is a plethora of causes for anger (although hopefully we don’t all suffer the same trauma Anakin Skywalker experienced to drive him into becoming Darth Vader). Following the advice of R.A.I.N. and S.U.R.F, though, we can learn to examine that anger, learn how it affects our mind and body, and realize we don’t have to be angry when we can accept that anger happens.
Thich Nhat Hahn discusses anger extensively in Peace is Every Step. In his opinion, “Anger is rooted in our lack of understanding of ourselves and of the causes, deep-seated as well as immediate, that brought about this unpleasant state of affairs.” Very often when people get angry and explode, they aren’t even angry with the immediate incident. We all live stressful lives. Work, health, traffic, politics; it all adds up over time, even for the most serene person. When that person cuts you off during your commute, too many of us curse, make an obscene gesture, and try to otherwise ensure the offending driver sees our ire. But that is because we perceive every offense as a personal attack. That person cutting you off might not even have seen you, or has likely had a stressful day that caused him to act so rashly.
Taking a step back before letting rage consume you is the first step toward tackling anger. How many flame wars could be avoided online if people didn’t immediately jump in with their first angry reactions? As Nhat Hahn says in Peace is Every Step, “It is best if we do not listen to or look at the person whom we consider to be the cause of our anger. Like a fireman, we have to pour water on the blaze first and not waste time looking for the one who set the house on fire.” Instead of lashing out to a text, email, post, or verbal remark, take the time to pause. In many instances, you won’t even remember the perceived offense. But the time away from the cause of your anger will give yourself time to cool down and be more rational with your response.
Cooling off is easier said than done, of course. In our modern world we are dividing ourselves ever further into groups. Too many people react with a tribal mentality, as if everyone with a different opinion is an enemy. A lack of empathy leads to anger since people can’t or won’t try to understand their “enemy”.
“But how can we love our enemy? There is only one way – to understand him. We have to understand why he is that way, how he has come to be like that, why he does not see things the way we do. Understanding a person brings us the power to love and accept him. And the moment we love and accept him, he ceases to be our enemy. To “love our enemy” is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy.
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hahn
Many people also experience the double whammy of getting angry that they are angry. This at least shows some level of self examination but only compounds the problem with more anger. “If we become angry at our anger, we will have two angers at the same time. We only have to observe it with love and attention,” says Thich Nhat Hahn in Peace is Every Step. Remember, the trick is to catch the anger rising and examine it. You’re searching for understanding, not blame.
So, instead of fear leading to anger leading to hate, let understanding lead to love. As Nhat Hahn sums up, “When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry.”
All You Need is Love
One popular method for combating anger and instilling empathy is known as loving-kindness. It’s also known as “metta”, which is where the basketball player formerly named Ron Artest derived his current name of Metta World Peace.
The basic premise of loving-kindness is to focus on compassion for yourself and all beings. This can get entangled with the Buddhist belief of “inter-being”, which is a much bigger topic than I’ll discuss here but can be summed up amusingly by the Bill Hicks line “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.” If you accept the concept of inter-being then it’s a simple matter to wish for happiness for all beings since we’re all connected. In that case, to do as the Bible says and “love your neighbor as yourself” is just a matter of perception.
Sharon Salzberg is a leading voice in loving-kindness. Her interview on the Tim Ferriss podcast introduced me to the meditation. Her bubbly personality really helps sell the idea that loving everyone else will make you happy yourself.
And again, our friend Thich Nhat Hanh offers some sage advice for encouraging empathy and understanding, both of which aid in caring about and loving other people. In The Art of Communicating, he says “When we suffer less, when we have compassion for ourselves, we can more easily understand the suffering of another person and of the world. Then our communication with others will be based on the desire to understand rather than the desire to prove ourselves right or make ourselves feel better.”
Loving-kindness meditation is usually practiced by repeating a mantra. One that I picked up is “May you be happy. May you be safe and protected from harm. May you be healthy and strong. May you live with ease.” I usually start directing the words at myself, then my family, then my friends. Eventually I would move up to acquaintances and strangers, if I was following the totality of loving-kindess and expanding my compassion and benevolence to all beings.
Finding Peace
Thank you for taking the time to learn about mindfulness. Hopefully you picked up some tips and techniques to help improve your own mental health. Learning to recognize emotions such as anger and jealousy can go a long way toward ridding yourself of negative perceptions and thoughts. Eventually you can stop asking “What’s wrong?” and start asking “What’s not wrong?” as you gain the ability to appreciate what you already have in the present moment.
“Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away to enjoy the blue sky. We don’t have to leave our city or even our neighborhood to enjoy the eyes of a beautiful child. Even the air we breathe can be a source of joy.”
Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn
May you be happy and find peace in every step and every breath.
Book Recommendations
- 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works by Dan Harris
- The Art of Communicating by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Bliss More: How to Succeed in Mediation Without Really Trying by Light Watkins
- Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics (10% Happier How-To) by Dan Harris
- Peace is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Power to Shape Your Destiny by Tony Robbins
- Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids by Eline Snel
- Tao Te Ching: A New English Version by Stephen Mitchell
- Unleash the Power Within by Tony Robbins
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