A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

The more you starting paying attention to yourself and those around you, the more you start realizing that most of us are living in a state of a rushing routine that doesn’t seem to have an end. Well, there is an end, but as the introductory story in The Now Effect points out it’s better to get that clarity now. Recently Maria Shriver gave a talk at USC telling graduates that she feels like we are out of control and asks people to learn how to pause to save our nation.

Here are some things she said about the power of pause:

Pausing allows you to take a beat — to take a breath in your life. As everybody else is rushing around like a lunatic out there, I dare you to do the opposite.

PAUSE — and take the time to find out, what’s important to you. Find out what you love, what’s real and true to you — so it can infuse and inform your work and make it your own.

PAUSE — before you report something you don’t know is absolutely true, something you haven’t corroborated with not just one, but two sources, as I was taught. And make sure that they’re two reliable sources.

PAUSE — before you put a rumor out there as fact. Just because you read it or saw it on TV or the Web — no matter how many times — doesn’t mean it’s true. Don’t just pass on garbage because you want to be first. There’s no glory in being first with garbage.

PAUSE — before you hit the “send” button and forward a picture that could ruin someone’s life — or write something nasty on someone’s Wall because you think it’s funny or clever. Believe me, it isn’t.

PAUSE — before you make judgments about people’s personal or professional decisions.

PAUSE — before you join in and disparage someone’s sexuality or intellectual ability.

PAUSE — before forwarding the untrue and inflammatory tidbits that have made it so difficult for would-be public servants and their families to step up and lead. Edmund Hillary once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

The dare today is to pause and check in with yourself. You can do this by just asking yourself, “What’s here right now?” Check in with your body, your emotions and your thoughts.

Set a note on your calendar to “Just Pause” and ask yourself “Where is my mind right now? What is important to pay attention to?”

Create a sign and put it in your workplace, “Pause,” and see what happens.

Read some books that remind you of this. I was sitting with a friend the other night who told me that after reading The Now Effect he notices himself pausing and appreciating many aspects of life more often.

Take this moment right now to pause with this 2-minute video below doing a Mindful Check-In from The Now Effect. Bookmark it and keep coming back to it. Enjoy.

Simply make it a practice to pause. Remember if you don’t plan it, it will be less likely to happen.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

A constant struggle and dissonance with our imperfections may very well be the number 1 issue concerning self-esteem, which opens the door to greater stress, anxiety and depression.

Yes, you can quote me on that. We all have self-esteem issues and the media feeds it. When some of us were young, we felt like we had to be perfect in order to get positive attention or love from our parents. Others became enthralled with the media and airbrushed pictures of models showing what a “normal” body looks like. Or maybe it was the billboards and cartoon commercials showing how happy children were when they had a particular expensive toy that many of us didn’t have.

In some way the message is that we’re defective, deficient and imperfect.

Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher Dogen Zenji has a wonderful quote:

“To be in harmony with the wholeness of things is not to have anxiety over imperfections.”

The newsflash is that we are ALL imperfect and that is okay. Dogen Zenji’s quote tells us that to cultivate a sense of harmony, peace and happiness in our lives, we must create peace with our imperfections.

As is said in The Now Effect, “we are all perfectly imperfect.”

I just want to clarify that this does not mean that we’re becoming complacent and not making plans to move toward mental and physical health. This simply means to understand that we are all imperfect and to begin practicing kindness, instead of fear and hate, toward your imperfections when they arise. Then you can make a plan to improve things and engage with that plan.

OK, so let’s get practical. How does this work in our daily lives?

1. Acceptance - The first step is to accept the fact that you are imperfect as we all are.
2. ANTS - The automatic negative thoughts (ANTS) may arise “yes, but I have many more imperfections than most people.” If and/or when this happens, notice that as an automatic, habitual thought pattern (because that is what it is), let it be and bring your attention to this third step.
3. Re-parenting with kindness - Bring kindness to the moment. Bring your attention to the feeling that is there right now. It is likely a physical feeling that is connected to an emotion. Possibly an emotion of shame, disgust, fear, sadness, or anger. Put your hand where the feeling is and imagine it as a little baby; maybe even imagine yourself as a little baby or little boy or girl. Now say to this part of yourself, “I care about your pain and I love you just the way you are.” Or use whatever words fit for you. You can do this for 30 seconds or 30 minutes. Whatever feels right for you in the moment.

Note: Be aware of any judgments that arise right now, such as “this is dumb” or “This is lame, I could never do this.” These automatic negative thoughts (ANTS) are habitual patterns of the mind that have been with you for quite some time. That’s all they are.  Notice them, and bring attention back to practicing kindness with the pain.

The instructions here may seem simple, but this is not necessarily an easy practice. It is a practice; sometimes you will be able to do it, other times you may not. When you are not able, that is OK.  You can always come back to it another time. Notice the thoughts that come tell you that you can’t do it, practice noticing them just as habitual mind-traps and come back to it again when you’re ready.

Try this out for yourself, this is a path toward greater healing and self-esteem.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories, and questions below. Your interactions create a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

I often quote the Abraham Joshua Heschel saying: “Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.” This quote simply epitomizes how our brains work and why, over time, the things that seemed so interesting or captivating start to lose their luster.

Of course we get disconnected from what matters in life; it’s the way we’re wired. The question is, how do we train our brains to pop out of this auto-pilot and into a space of awareness where the choice points lie to reconnect to what’s most meaningful?

The answer is as close as you can possibly imagine. In fact, it’s right here, right now.  I want to give you something very practical to do during the day that is a practice coined by my dear friend and colleague, Bob Stahl, PhD and is found in The Now Effect: How a Mindful Moment Can Change the Rest of Your Life.

The term is called Mindful Check-In and it’s worth scheduling a least a few times per day as an experiment. People who I have worked with who have taken this seriously have reported a real difference in their stress, ability to focus and sense of compassion toward themselves throughout the day. As we begin to direct our actions more often with our intentions, we’re actually living a more meaningful life.

Here is a guided video of The Mindful Check-in, one of 14 different short guided mindfulness videos woven throughout the book. Give yourself the luxury to just pause for 2 minutes and practice being here for your life:

Again, try and practice this a few times a day as an experiment to break out of your daily routine, just checking in with your mind and body. What do you notice? After practicing this for one week, what comes up for you?

As always, please don’t take my word for it, try this out for yourself to gain insight from your own experience.

Please share your thoughts, questions, and stories below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Before reading this blog post, take 10 seconds to take a few deep breaths, be aware of your body here and create a moment of being present. Now, read over this poem twice before moving on.

Here is a poem by 13^th century Sufi Poet, Rumi,:

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the door sill
Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

Right now is an opportunity (which is really available to us at any moment) to recognize that we may be starting this moment off from a place of auto-pilot, falling into the same old habitual styles of thinking and behaving that we’re really wanting to change. This might mean engaging in habits that don’t serve your health and well-being (e.g., drinking/eating too much, isolating, too much TV, too much digital interaction) or with habitual ways of thinking (e.g., negative self talk).

Rumi reminds us that “the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” This reminds us that right from the morning time, we can break out of our habitual tendencies and become present. We don’t need to fall back into the “same old, same old.”

What is it that you really want? Re-mind yourself of it and “don’t go back to sleep.”

However, he notes how that moment of awareness and choice is very subtle, we touch the ability to change, going “back and forth across the doorsill.”

He reminds us that the doorsill is there,  it’s “round and open,” deep down we can feel it and may have even tasted it.

Sometimes it takes a reminder like this, to put us into a space of awareness where we can see the doorsill, see the hope, to make a change. This momentary awareness of clarity and choice is The Now Effect in action. When we have the experience of making the change, this allows us to trust ourselves that we can indeed do it.

This burns into our short term memory and as we intentionally practice and repeat this it starts to become automatic. We’ll still cross back and forth across the doorsill from time to time, but over time, with practice, we’ll be more awake and cross over less and less.

Give yourself the gift of crossing the doorsill and not “going back to sleep.”

Please share your thoughts, stories, and questions below. Your interaction here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

In a recent study out of the Journal of Communication, researchers showed how media multitasking not only makes for poorer cognitive performance, but perhaps points to why, despite increasing our stress and making us less effective at home and work, we still do it.

The study found that there is an emotional boost when we engage in media multitasking. One thing we know about emotions is that they often guide our subconscious decision making. You might wonder why you say, “Okay, today I won’t text and drive,” or “I’m really going to focus on this project today,” only to find yourself falling back into the media multitasking trap; repeatedly checking twitter, Facebook and your text messages. Your conscious mind is not in the driver’s seat.

In a past blog post explaining why habits are so hard to break, Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, explains the dopamine kick that comes our way in the face of addictive substances. This dopamine drives our behavior toward whatever the gratifying substance is. In other words, there is a physiological and emotional gratification that we receive as we move toward the substance.

There are a few things we can do to raise our abilities to effectively integrate and manage this media in our lives, and I highlight these in The Now Effect:

1. Acceptance – Accept the reality that your brain is often making decisions for you on a subconscious level and you’re not often consciously in control. You can use the serenity prayer; it certainly applies. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”
2. Control your environment – Now that you understand that your subconscious mind makes most of the decisions, you can do certain things to influence it. Turn the phone off or maybe the ringer. The addictive behavior is so strong that you may not even be able to do that. Put up some signs in your work place or home that reminds you to be present to what you’re doing. Surround yourself with materials on mindfulness.
3. Forgive and invite – Every time you notice yourself unintentionally multitasking with unimportant and non-urgent tasks, no need to be harsh on yourself, which only gets you further from a focused attention.  Just forgive yourself for the time gone by, recognize that you’re present, and in this “choice point,” make the decision to refocus.

Integrate these 3 steps into your life and you’ll be on your way to breaking the bad habits and more effectively harnessing the power of the technology that’s available today.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com