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Gratitude – something to be thankful for

By Therese Sheedy on July 7, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Yes life is difficult, challenging and demanding. People at every turn seem to want that little bit more of us. We can feel that we are being pulled in all directions and then our head steps in and pulls us in another one! So what is there to be grateful about?

It is easy to get caught up in the demands of daily living. We know intuitively that we are grateful for lots of things. If asked we can often rattle off a list of things we are grateful for – a place to sleep, food, warmth, people we love, perhaps a good job.

So what do you have to be grateful for and how often do you call it to mind?

According to research, (Park & Peterson 2006; Park, Peterson & Seligman 2004), gratitude is one of the strengths most robustly associated with life satisfaction, leading to higher levels of social integration (Froh, Bono & Emmons 2010).

However gratitude can look differently for different people.

It may be a sense of wonder or appreciation; it may be expressed through optimism or sharing; it may be thanking an individual, a group, a nation, a higher power.

Gratitude is savouring, a deep understanding that this needs to be noticed and not taken for granted.

Gratitude and its expression can become an antidote to envy, hostility, fear, irritation or worry.

How does gratitude fit into Mindfulness? To put it simply, in order to be grateful we need to be present moment focused. We need to firstly notice how our life is today and express an appreciation to what has contributed to that.

Remember our minds are tuned to a negativity bias. We needed this to keep ourselves alive, however, in today’s society this negativity can just bring us down. It can keep us from experiencing the whole nature of our interactions throughout our day. It can keep us stuck on what’s going wrong and we can replay these things over and over in our minds.

Developing a focus on the positive and supportive things that happen to us in our day can tone down our negativity and help us enjoy life more.

In How to Train a Wild Elephant, Jan Chozen Bays suggests we “turn the unhappy mind toward discovering even one thing it can be grateful for.”

During the day you can notice and take mental notes of things to add to your gratitude list. This develops a form of ongoing gratitude.

Gratitude is so much more than saying ‘thank you’ as it has multiple benefits.

People who show gratitude consistently are happier, more energetic, more hopeful and experience more positive emotions. They are more helpful, empathic, more forgiving and less materialistic. They are less likely to be depressed, anxious or lonely.

Letting people know that we appreciate what they have done also has untold impacts on their levels of wellbeing and also our own.

It is interesting how we feel better when we actually express our gratitude rather than just think it. We need to actually let people know that we are grateful. We need to show them. Most people I know, well actually all of the people I know, can’t read minds, so we need to let them know.

In her work on happiness and wellbeing, Sonja Lyubomirsky points to eight ways gratitude boosts happiness; grateful thinking leads to savouring positive experiences; showing appreciation boosts self-worth and self-esteem; gratitude helps us cope with stress and trauma; expressing gratitude leads to more prosocial behaviour; gratitude can build social bonds, strengthen existing relationships and nurture new ones; being grateful reduces negative comparisons with others that keep us unsettled and envious; because it is such a positive experience it is incompatible with negative emotions; and finally, being grateful reduces our adaptation to pleasant things so that we continually see when new events are positive and don’t become blase about events, relationships and life.

There are several paths to developing gratitude and finding your own pathway is vital.

If you enjoy writing you might like to start a Gratitude Journal where you can spend a regular time each day, week or month, reflect on your life and list perhaps between three to five things you are grateful for. I always encourage people to look so much further than the immediate such as food and shelter, which of course we need to be grateful for. But to look beyond, looking for what has helped you this day live your life to its fullest. For example when we need to vote in Australia, I reflect on how grateful I am that I live in a country that encourages everyone to participate, including women, which doesn’t happen automatically in some countries in the world. Immediately I am grateful to live in my country and lining up, waiting to vote doesn’t seem so onerous.

You might like to try a gratitude substitution – replacing an ungrateful thought (eg: my sister/brother/partner forgot my birthday) with a grateful thought (but they are always there to listen and support me).

You could find a gratitude partner and share gratitude lists with them.

If you are at work find ways to let others know how much you appreciate their contribution to the workplace, or your specific role or to the team

As a customer you may like to let someone who has served you well how much you appreciate their attitude and expertise.

Think more broadly, you may like to offer your home to help out with accommodation for someone; show people visiting your city around; offer a ride to someone to save them driving to the same venue as you.

Write a gratitude letter to someone who has been an influential person in your life. Express what they have done that has impacted on you. Describe in detail what they did and exactly how your life is the better for their part in it. You don’t have to send it but imagine how it would feel to know you had made a positive impact on someone’s life. If possible you may want to deliver the letter by hand.

A gratitude visit may be to take the time and visit a person you would like to thank and tell them in person, or call them via the phone or internet.

Whatever way you choose to show your gratitude, keep it fresh for yourself. Choose a strategy that best suits you and you will enjoy, and will hold its meaning for you.

This habit has staying power, people who have practised gratitude lists of three good things each day for only a week have shown to still be reaping the positive emotions six months later.

Remember a new habit takes time to develop, so keep practising. Train your mind to notice things and then it will become second nature to be grateful and therefore happier.

“Gratitude is when memory is stored in the heart and not in the mind” Lionel Hampton.

Be your own ‘best’ friend

By Therese Sheedy on June 30, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Would you be your own best friend? Do you want to be happy but think your way out of it?

Do you hear things in your head about you that you would want others to say about you?
If your friend said what you hear in your head would you still want them as a friend?

Quite often our thoughts are not our ‘best’ friend. In fact quite often our thoughts keep us stuck in depression, anxiety, inaction, self-hate even self-pity.

We may think we need to be critical of ourselves, to keep ourselves motivated or else we may become lazy or self-indulgent.

Because we think something does this make it true? Does it make it right? Necessary? Accurate? – Probably not. Ever had a thought that was wrong? I have!

Our thinking is very useful. Thinking helps us problem solve, understand complex concepts, determine if we like or don’t like something – all very useful skills.

However when we believe something, we can assume we are right, this can get in the way of our listening to others. It may even put our relationships at risk as we move to defend our position.

Can you let go of the need to be right? Could being kind be better than being right?

Being Mindful means we can become aware of the type of thinking we have attached to. Mindfulness can allow us to ‘view’ our thoughts just like waves on the ocean, coming and going with the deep, peaceful, calmness hidden below.

Becoming an observer of the words in your head is the first step to becoming aware of the power of your words on yourself and on others.

Our interactions with others start in our thoughts. If we express doubt in ourselves we will likely restrict our contributions to others. We can become angry and uncaring because our focus is turned inward not outward.

If you reduce self-criticism and develop self-compassion this will transfer into your relationships with others. If you love yourself you will express that love in your interactions with others.

When we are aware we can become involved to ensure that our words manifest our true intentions. That we are saying what we truly believe and we are being the person we want to be.

Our Mindfulness Challenge for this week is to notice our words. Our words in our heads – our thoughts – and our words to others.

Be conscious to say only what you mean with gentleness knowing that our words ‘land’ on others.

Avoid using words to speak against yourself or others. Be loyal to those who are absent.

Use your words to be kind to yourself – be your ‘best’ friend. No need to point out your faults, you already know them! Look for when you are being at your fabulous best and honour that by taking notice of it and savouring it.

These may be small, seemingly insignificant moments that we often let slip by. Notice when you are bringing peace and calm to others and you will in turn feel that way as well.

Speak and act from deep within the ocean (your values) not being tossed about by the swell and the crashing waves (your thoughts).

Practice self-kindness – don’t beat yourself up for not coping, or not getting something right, or for not being perfect. Develop the ability to cope by comforting yourself when you are hurting or in need of care.

Relate to your mistakes or shortcomings like a ‘best’ friend would, with tolerance, understanding and love, understanding that perfection is not only unattainable but boring and over-rated.

Resist comparing how you feel on the inside to how others present on the outside. We know that everyone suffers in some way.

Be kind to yourself and watch out for times to be your own cheer squad – but you will need to be present to notice it otherwise you just might miss it.

Beginner’s Mind

By Therese Sheedy on June 15, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Ever felt that today is just another day?

Been here before, done that?

Or perhaps feel like nothing is exciting, challenging or worthwhile?

Many times our lives can appear mundane – we get up, go to work; come home, go to bed. Or we look after children all day; day in, day out; go to school – nothing seems to change; or many other configurations of everyday life and nothing is different.

As a result we can start to feel like we are experts in our lives because after all what is there not to be an expert in, everything seems to be the same. We live it, we know it.

This is the development of what is often known as the ‘experts mind’.

When we feel this way we can try to distract ourselves by engaging in endless activities, looking for sensory experiences to help us feel alive, or by pursuing wealth, power and fame (and FB friends).

Eventually reality confronts us, and we can then become quite disheartened, depressed even anxious. Other mental health issues can settle in.

So why not look at reality in the first place and resolve to have a new perspective? Mindfulness helps us create our own happiness by exploring the present moment as if it hasn’t happened before – because it hasn’t.

When we come to the realization that the past no longer exists and the future hasn’t arrived yet, we can grow our understanding that the present is, at the same time, something we cannot hold on to for it is always changing, unfolding, revealing. The famous Matthieu Ricard writes “cultivating mindfulness does not mean that you should not take into account the lessons of the past or make plans for the future; rather it is a matter of living clearly in the present experience that includes them” (p67 The Art of Meditation).

We usually approach a situation with our ‘expert’s mind’. “I’ve been through this before, I know what is going to happen” or “I’m not going to let others determine things for me, I know what needs to happen because I have all the answers, I need to control this situation”. The expert’s mind closes us off to opportunities, opportunities for things to be different.

The Beginner’s Mind however is open. Open to new experiences at every moment
If we bring a ‘beginner’s mind’ to each situation, we open ourselves to options for how things may be. A beginner’s mind says “I have never been at this point in my life before, be open to what is here and now, be open to what I can be and what others can teach me”.

It is like a child learning to walk. The child falls down and gets back up, not one time but many times. Even though the child is an ‘expert’ at sitting or crawling, it pushes itself to see what can be possible, to get up and walk.

A Beginner’s Mind resolves to not judge. To put away the word ‘should’. I have a saying that I don’t ‘should’ on myself or ‘should’ on others!

A Beginner’s Mind says I have wisdom and know my values but I let go of expectations of common sense.

A Beginner’s Mind says I have never been at this juncture in my life with such awareness and ability, what can unfold, what can I do, what can I understand of this?

How exciting would it be to walk down your street for the first time again? To walk into a meeting and listen with fresh ears? To watch your children eat, play and learn? To truly be with a long term friend or partner and hear them for who they are today, here and now?

This is the challenge and blessing of the Beginner’s Mind – see what happens.

Waterflow – soothing the agitated mind

By Therese Sheedy on April 21, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Have you ever noticed that water is everywhere? Water is our essence; it is our life force, our connection to plants and animals, to our environment, even to ourselves.

Water keeps us alive and is relevant to everything we do each day.

If you think about water and our planet, you will realize that the same precious water has been cycling through our ecological system for millions of years.

It is amazing how water can conform to the shape of any vessel, and even though it is transparent, it can take on a vast array of colours. In most spiritual traditions water symbolizes purity, clarity and calmness.

Yet in the western world we take water for granted. We waste it by letting taps run without attending to them, or we stand in the shower for ages while our minds go off problem solving, fantasizing, replaying conversations or hurts from the past. We use water for play, even art.

We rarely even think about this amazing life-giving force until there is no water like when we experience drought, or too much water such as floods or snow and ice. Perhaps there is a problem to solve like a leaking roof or a parched throat to soothe.

We are encouraged to drink water for our health and brain development. It helps keep us healthy and our minds clearer. We use it to cleanse our skin from germs and bacteria. We cook with it, clean with it. We wash our clothes, dishes, and cars, even our houses with it.

We know instinctively that water is healing. If our body is harmed we may wash a wound with water to cleanse it. When our minds are harmed or under pressure we may find a pool or pond and watch it, or stand in the shower and notice the therapeutic water run down our body, or soak in a tub to rejuvenate our spirit.

When we start to notice water we can tune in to its movement, its flow. Watching water can soothe an agitated mind.

Jan Chozen Bays suggests that when muddy water is poured into a glass and left to sit undisturbed, the dirt and the water separate. The mud sits in the bottom and the water becomes clear again. When we sit in mindfulness we can let our muddied mind become clearer, we need to resist from continually shaking things up by keeping our minds busy.

This week’s Mindfulness challenge is to notice water in your environment. Watch the fall and flow of water as it leaves the tap and runs into your glass or the sink.

Feel water on your skin. As the seasons are changing, tune in, notice water moving as the snow melts in the northern hemisphere and as the rains start in the southern hemisphere.

You may like to try a water meditation. Fill a bathtub with water, light a candle and gently lay in the soothing water, aware that the water is healing, soothing, restoring. You may even like to express your invitation to the water to help you, soothe your tired body and calm your busy mind. When you have finished give thanks to yourself for taking the opportunity to nourish yourself with water and thank the planet for providing you with this life-giving force.

Be present in your environment and notice where you can see, hear, feel, taste, sense water. In your home, your office, on your journeys around your city. Notice the flow, the sound, the reflection, the movement. Allow your mind to take in the environment here and now, for what it is, without wanting it to be any other way, and just see how water can connect you to other people, to the environment, to millions of years.

Notice the unusual

By Therese Sheedy on April 7, 2014 in Mindful Musings

The other day I was stopped at traffic lights and I noticed a man dressed like a busker, baggy pants, check shirt, he was walking, I thought to cross the road with the pedestrian lights. Then I noticed a woman also dressed a little unusually also crossing at the lights walking toward him.

They stopped in the middle and faced the stopped traffic. The woman had a violin and started playing. The man pulled out three balls from his pocket and started juggling.

When the lights changed, they tipped their invisible hats to the cars and to each other, walked back to their respective sides and the traffic moved on.

I watch, enjoying the performance, grateful that someone had thought to bring a bit of cheer into my life. And then I wondered – how many people in the stopped traffic actually noticed these impromptu entertainers? How many people were either looking at their phones, or too busy in their heads worrying about life, like the traffic, to notice what was right in front of their noses?

The joy in watching this performance was quite incredible. I felt that positive emotion for the rest of the day. I can also feel it now by retelling the story, this is part of savouring.

So what? some might say.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has spent many years researching the science behind positivity through the experience of positive emotion. She has found that science supports the connection between positive emotions and the presence of safety, satisfaction, success and good health.

She highlights that positivity is a means, not an end. A means to allowing us as humans to, what she refers to as, ‘Broaden and Build’. Fredrickson proposes that negative emotions, either from outside the self or from within, narrow our ideas about possibilities, and positive emotions do the opposite.

Positive emotions can broaden our ideas about what is possible, opening our awareness to a wider range of thoughts. We then increase the possibility to being creative, to explore and to learn, thus we broaden our minds and our hearts and build our resources to how we interact with our world.

Unfortunately we more than often, go about our daily lives so caught up in our heads, following our mental ‘to do’ lists, that we can miss opportunities to experience positivity, such as the impromptu traffic lights performance.

This week’s mindfulness challenge is to look for the unusual in your environment and notice your response to it. No need to explain to yourself why what is happening is happening, remember that mindfulness is about acceptance – it is the way it is.

The observing mind will pick up unusual connections, actions, sounds, sights and respond with curiosity and interest.

Notice buildings as you move around the city, or on your morning walk look for unusual things in your neighbourhood. Watch children or pets and notice their nuances as they haven’t been socialised into judgment.

Allow yourself the freedom from the prison of your mind to experience the world around you. You might be surprised that something unusual might be just waiting for you to notice and discover it!

I would love to hear what unusual delights you come across, so share it with us. If you can, take a picture to savour the moment, and share it with others.

Stay present, moment by moment!

You’re body is here – now where is your mind?

By Therese Sheedy on March 31, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Does life keep rolling along and some days you wish the world would stop for a while just so that you can catch up?

We often juggle demands from different domains – work, school, family, friends, community, sport. Each of these wanting us to be there, fully aware of what is happening, fully aware of the demands that they need met and fully committed.

Getting out the door in the mornings can be a chore when family demands are great and often charged with emotion.

Coming back home can also be a challenge when we have spent our time focused on others, deadlines, problems or being creative.

How do you successfully stop one area of your life and start another area without one ‘bleeding’ into the other?

Recently I have been reading Adam Fraser’s book The Third Space, where he talks about working with people on getting the small stuff in life right.

We are all happy to put time into the big things in life – planning a holiday, applying for that special job, organising a special occasion. Getting the big things right may take time and energy but they are often easier than getting the day-to-day things right. Things like teaching a child (even a pet) the ‘rules of the house’; organising with your partner who will be responsible for household chores or family duties; getting a family organised for school and then getting yourself through morning peak hour to arrive on time at work.

How do you ‘show up’ mentally for the demands of the day? Transitioning with ease from one demand to the next can be tricky.

This week’s challenge is to notice transition times. What space do you have available to you and then how will you use it?

Look at your drive either to or from work, school, sport or even to care for someone. Decide on two different points in the trip, use a landmark like a specific set of traffic lights or bridge or building. Up to that point allow yourself to think about where you are coming from. Firstly get into either your car or public transport and notice where you are. Notice that you are not at home anymore. Notice the colours, shapes, movement, textures of this new environment. Naturally as minds do, yours will wander. Encourage the wandering to focus back to where you have been (yes I know, mindfulness is about being present but minds don’t always know that!).

Then notice the first predetermined point in the journey. This is the point where you let go of thinking, worrying, replaying the past and get here and now! Stay focused using your senses including your breath. Breathe out. Then take a few slow breaths remembering to breathe out for as long as you can to mark the awareness.

At the next predetermined point , closer to your destination, start to prepare yourself for arriving. Imagine the people, the colours, the environment you are going in to. As you arrive again notice your surroundings, pay attention to how you are moving, what you are holding, the feel of your body in motion.

Coming home one of the transition strategies I use is to get changed out of my work clothes and into my house clothes fairly soon after I get home. My jewellery comes off and so does the day and all its demands. While changing I notice the room I am in, the air around me, touching the clothes, listening to the sounds of my home environment. Without judgment, expectation, I am here and so is my mind.

It is wonderful to consciously complete one activity and consciously start another. Being present in all domains of your life will bring so much more enjoyment and give you a chance to bring your skills, talents, strengths and love.

There is always a moment for you to stop one activity and start another, whether that be moving from one domain into the next, moving from travelling into a domain. The most important thing is to become aware of opportunities for transitions, even micro-transitions to occur.

Poetry in Motion

By Therese Sheedy on March 17, 2014 in Mindful Musings

Mindfulness asks us to tune-in and pay attention and yet some of the things that happen everyday go past us unnoticed.

Take movement or motion for example. We often take movement for granted and go about our daily lives not noticing it unless it causes us difficulties like it hurts to move a certain way, or we notice a car moving so we wait to cross the road or perhaps something moves toward us quickly and our reflexes are sparked and we flinch or get out of the way.

Movement requires energy of some kind. Energy in the environment moves plants and trees. The rotation of the earth moves the ocean and our gravitational pull causing the moon to orbit the earth and other movements as a planet.

A mother notices the movement of a child within the womb and as movements change she is aware of the unborn child’s development and growth.

So many things move in our environment: water moves, cars and trains rock and roll, bicycles glide and our bodies move along with them.

Sometimes our energy is low and so our movements are laboured, stiff and difficult. It is times like these that we tend to slow down or even cease our movements.

Movements and energy can be closely connected to our emotional states. When we get the ‘can’t be bothered’ feeling, we can restrict our own movement. We become lethargic and can become housebound or bed-bound. Behaviour activation tells us that if we move even when we don’t feel like it, we will activate our energy source which in turn can impact on changing our emotional states.

This week’s Mindfulness Challenge is to notice and sense movement in your world.

Notice the movement of others. How they move when they walk, step or stand. When someone greets us they may move toward us, nod their head, wink their eye, reach out their hand or put their arms around us. Perhaps you can notice the movement of a child or an animal playing, stretching, scratching, preening.

Notice the movement of objects such as planes banking to turn, washing blowing on the line, flags fluttering, doors opening or closing, machinery operating, balls rolling or falling, even the cursor on a computer monitor.

Movement in the environment can be like poetry in motion – birds flying, trees swaying, frogs hopping, leaves rustling.

Sense your own movement – heart beating, body walking or reaching, hair moving, eyes blinking or turning to focus, breath moving in the body, legs lifting and carrying your body, arms swinging, the sway of your body, getting up from sitting or lying down, tingling sensations moving through your arms, legs, head standing your hairs on end.

Feel the flow of movements as you stretch and then release.

Notice how the mind doesn’t need to get consciously involved for us to move. You may notice that through the movement of our nose we can smell flowers, cooking, the sea.

Perhaps you can even notice the intention to move before it actually happens!

Of course the body moves when we dance or exercise and we can see our muscles flexing and contracting, working to support us. But we move in so many ways – getting up in the morning, getting dressed, eating, preparing food, domestic chores, getting to work, writing – notice the flow of the pen onto the paper. We ask our bodies to do so many complex tasks and don’t even notice it unless there is pain there preventing us from moving.

Watch with curiosity. You may remember the scene in the film American Beauty watching the bag move in the wind. Bring your ‘beginner’s mind’ to noticing movement and see this movement for the first time, without judgment or expectation. After all you have never been in this moment before and never before experienced this movement at this time.

Tune in to the energy that is needed to move us and our environment. Notice how we can harness that energy, how we contribute to that energy. Notice the links between ourselves, the environment and the world around us.

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