Best way to stick with something hard: Accept that it's hard

There’s a great psychological misconception that greater motivation equals greater behavior change. Bot for many things - smoking, eating, drinking, browsing the internet - no matter how motivated to say no we are, it can still be hard to follow through. In past research, mindfulness has been linked to better success rates of quitting smoking. A recently published study examined what about mindfulness helped people stick to the hard task of quitting.

The measures the researchers looked at were: Observing, Describing, Acting With Awareness, Nonjudging, and Nonreactivity. Researchers found that the non-judging aspect uniquely predicted better likelihood of stay away from cigarettes up to 26 weeks after quitting. Non-judging is the practice of accepting our thoughts and feelings without evaluating them. Some example judgments might be: “Wow, this pain is really terrible. I wonder if this pain will ever end. Why do I deserve this? Why did I get myself into this position - I should have done x, y, or z. I’m so irresponsible. I don’t feel like anyone understands what I’m going through.” And so on. The mind has a fantastic way of taking a physical sensation and wrapping it up in a whole number of judgments and narratives.

Mindfulness is the practice of observing what comes up - the feelings of withdrawal, of wanting, the difficulty of saying no, even our own thoughts - and accepting that they’re there without judging them as good or bad, or needing them to stay or go away. Often when we drop the judgment around our experience, we gain more space to hold it and then let it pass.

Whether or not you’re trying to quit smoking, try it out for yourself and see what happens. What does it feel like to want that piece chocolate cake? What does it feel like to resist checking your email one more time before sitting down to start that project? See if you can accept whatever’s there without judging it. Research suggests that might just be the key to sticking with the action you really want to take.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

Dealing with your emotions: facebook v. mindfulness

It can be so tempting, when we feel upset, stressed, or sad, to try and comfort ourselves through eating, drinking, watching television, browsing the internet, or our own drug of choice. These things aren’t inherently bad, but they can be problematic when we become addicted to them, and when they prevent us from facing our experience and moving on. Distracting ourselves from our own negative emotions is not by any means a new phenomenon. However, the latest distraction addiction of the modern day is social media, especially big among teens, and younger adults.

Emotion focused coping is the psychology term used to describe this sort of coping - where we try and get rid of a negative experience by simply making the bad feeling go away. Research has found that this form of coping isn’t so effective in the long run, because we haven’t actually dealt with the source of our distress.

In many ways, mindfulness is the opposite of distraction. If distraction is bringing your attention away from your present experience, mindfulness is the practice of continually bringing your attention to your present experience (with non-judgment of course). Because of this, researchers decided to investigate the relationship between social media addiction and mindfulness.

Results showed, not surprisingly, that there is a strong negative correlation between mindfulness and social media addiction. Mindfulness and emotion focused coping were negatively correlated, while social media addiction and emotion focused coping were positively correlated. Finally, researches looked at emotional exhaustion, which is a major contributor to workplace burnout. They found a negative correlation between mindfulness and emotional exhaustion. Because this research was done with a one time questionnaire, we can't know the causal relationship between these variables. But it does indicate that when you're feeling upset and go to automatically open facebook, it might be worth it to take a few mindful breaths.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader

I need to write a paper: let's see how many other things can I think about.

You’re in college sitting at your desk. You're about to start writing a paper or study for an exam, when suddenly the following questions become very important: What should I eat for dinner? What did my roommate mean earlier by that comment? When is that exam for that other class? I didn’t do so well on the last assignment…. Have I called my mom yet? For undergraduate students (and really for all of us), mind wandering can keep us from from getting the important things done. A recent study at the University of Miami investigated whether a 7 week mindfulness training developed specifically for undergraduates would help increase students' focus, and reduce their mind wandering.

The experimenters tested students’ attention and working memory both before and after the 7 week training. Though there was no significant difference in working memory, there was a significant difference in student’s ability to focus and sustain their attention. While those in the control group actually got worse after the 7 weeks, those in the mindfulness training scored better on the attentional task as well as reported less mind wandering during the task. Trainings like this could be promising for undergraduate students, for whom so much of their academic success depends on their ability to sit down and focus. Right after they figure out what they're eating for dinner.


Keryn Breiterman-Loader