How to Find Your Purpose in Life

Do you have a sense of purpose?

For decades, psychologists have studied how long-term, meaningful goals develop over the span of our lives. The goals that foster a sense of purpose are ones that can potentially change the lives of other people, like launching an organization, researching disease, or teaching kids to read.

Indeed, a sense of purpose appears to have evolved in humans so that we can accomplish big things together—which may be why it’s linked to better physical and mental health. Purpose is adaptive, in an evolutionary sense. It helps both individuals and the species to survive.

Many seem to believe that purpose arises from your special gifts and sets you apart from other people—but that’s only part of the truth. It also grows from our connection to others, which is why a crisis of purpose is often a symptom of isolation.

Many seem to believe that purpose arises from your special gifts and sets you apart from other people—but that’s only part of the truth. It also grows from our connection to others, which is why a crisis of purpose is often a symptom of isolation. Once you find your path, you’ll almost certainly find others traveling along with you, hoping to reach the same destination—a community.

Here are six ways to overcome isolation and discover your purpose in life.

1. Read

In a 2010 paper, for example, Leslie Francis studied a group of nearly 26,000 teenagers throughout England and Wales—and found that those who read the Bible more tended to have a stronger sense of purpose. Secular reading seems to make a difference, as well. In a survey of empirical studies, Raymond A. Mar and colleagues found a link between reading poetry and fiction and a sense of purpose among adolescents. Reading connects us to people we’ll never know, across time and space—an experience that, research says, is linked to a sense of meaning and purpose. (Note: “Meaning” and “purpose” are linked but separate social-scientific constructs. Purpose is a part of meaning; meaning is a much broader concept that usually also includes value, efficacy, and self-worth.)

“Reading fiction might allow adolescents to reason about the whole lives of characters, giving them specific insight into an entire lifespan without having to have fully lived most of their own lives,” they suggest. By seeing purpose in the lives of other people, teens are more likely to see it in their own lives. In this sense, purpose is an act of the imagination.

Many people I interviewed for this article mentioned pivotal books or ideas they found in books.

The writing of historian W.E.B. Du Bois pushed social-justice activist Art McGee to embrace a specific vision of African-American identity and liberation. Journalist Michael Stoll found inspiration in the “social responsibility theory of journalism,” which he read about at Stanford University. “Basically, reporters and editors have not just the ability but also the duty to improve their community by being independent arbiters of problems that need solving,” he says. “It’s been my professional North Star ever since.” Spurred by this idea, Michael went on to launch an award-winning nonprofit news agency called The San Francisco Public Press.

So, if you’re feeling a crisis of purpose in your life, go to the bookstore or library or university. Find books that matter to you—and they might help you to see what matters in your own life.

2. Turn hurts into healing for others

Of course, finding purpose is not just an intellectual pursuit; it’s something we need to feel. That’s why it can grow out of suffering, both our own and others’.

Kezia Willingham was raised in poverty in Corvallis, Oregon, her family riven by domestic violence. “No one at school intervened or helped or supported my mother, myself, or my brother when I was growing up poor, ashamed, and sure that my existence was a mistake,” she says. “I was running the streets, skipping school, having sex with strangers, and abusing every drug I could get my hands on.”

When she was 16, Kezia enrolled at an alternative high school that “led me to believe I had options and a path out of poverty.” She made her way to college and was especially “drawn to the kids with ‘issues’”—kids like the one she had once been. She says:

I want the kids out there who grew up like me, to know they have futures ahead of them. I want them to know they are smart, even if they may not meet state academic standards. I want them to know that they are just as good and valuable as any other human who happens to be born into more privileged circumstances. Because they are. And there are so damn many messages telling them otherwise.

Sometimes, another person’s pain can lead us to purpose. When Christopher Pepper was a senior in high school, a “trembling, tearful friend” told him that she had been raped by a classmate. “I comforted as well as I could, and left that conversation vowing that I would do something to keep this from happening to others,” says Christopher. He kept that promise by becoming a Peer Rape Educator in college—and then a sex educator in San Francisco public schools.

Why do people like Kezia and Christopher seem to find purpose in suffering—while others are crushed by it? Part of the answer, as we’ll see next, might have to do with the emotions and behaviors we cultivate in ourselves.

3. Cultivate awe, gratitude, and altruism

Certain emotions and behaviors that promote health and well-being can also foster a sense of purpose—specifically, awe, gratitude, and altruism.

Several studies conducted by the Greater Good Science Center’s Dacher Keltner have shown that the experience of awe makes us feel connected to something larger than ourselves—and so can provide the emotional foundation for a sense of purpose.

Of course, awe all by itself won’t give you a purpose in life. It’s not enough to just feel like you’re a small part of something big; you also need to feel driven to make a positive impact on the world. That’s where gratitude and generosity come into play.

“It may seem counterintuitive to foster purpose by cultivating a grateful mindset, but it works,” writes psychologist Kendall Bronk, a leading expert on purpose. As research by William Damon, Robert Emmons, and others has found, children and adults who are able to count their blessings are much more likely to try to “contribute to the world beyond themselves.” This is probably because, if we can see how others make our world a better place, we’ll be more motivated to give something back.

Here we arrive at altruism. There’s little question, at this point, that helping others is associated with a meaningful, purposeful life. In one study, for example, Daryl Van Tongeren and colleagues found that people who engage in more altruistic behaviors, like volunteering or donating money, tend to have a greater sense of purpose in their lives.

Interestingly, gratitude and altruism seem to work together to generate meaning and purpose. In a second experiment, the researchers randomly assigned some participants to write letters of gratitude—and those people later reported a stronger sense of purpose. More recent work by Christina Karns and colleagues found that altruism and gratitude are neurologically linked, activating the same reward circuits in the brain.

4. Listen to what other people appreciate about you

Giving thanks can help you find your purpose. But you can also find purpose in what people thank you for.

Like Kezia Willingham, Shawn Taylor had a tough childhood—and he was also drawn to working with kids who had severe behavioral problems. Unlike her, however, he often felt like the work was a dead-end. “I thought I sucked at my chosen profession,” he says. Then, one day, a girl he’d worked with five years before contacted him.

“She detailed how I helped to change her life,” says Shawn—and she asked him to walk her down the aisle when she got married. Shawn hadn’t even thought about her, in all that time. “Something clicked and I knew this was my path. No specifics, but youth work was my purpose.”

The artists, writers, and musicians I interviewed often described how appreciation from others fueled their work. Dani Burlison never lacked a sense of purpose, and she toiled for years as a writer and social-justice activist in Santa Rosa, California. But when wildfires swept through her community, Dani discovered that her strengths were needed in a new way: “I’ve found that my networking and emergency response skills have been really helpful to my community, my students, and to firefighters!”

Although there is no research that directly explores how being thanked might fuel a sense of purpose, we do know that gratitude strengthens relationships—and those are often the source of our purpose, as many of these stories suggest.

5. Find and build community

Many people told me about finding purpose in family. In tandem with his reading, Art McGee found purpose—working for social and racial justice—in “love and respect for my hardworking father,” he says. “Working people like him deserved so much better.”As we see in Dani’s case, we can often find our sense of purpose in the people around us.

Environmental and social-justice organizer Jodi Sugerman-Brozan feels driven “to leave the world in a better place than I found it.” Becoming a mom “strengthened that purpose (it’s going to be their world, and their kids’ world),” she says. It “definitely influences how I parent (wanting to raise anti-racist, feminist, radical kids who will want to continue the fight and be leaders).”

Of course, our kids may not embrace our purpose. Amber Cantorna was raised by purpose-driven parents who were right-wing Christians. “My mom had us involved in stuff all the time, all within that conservative Christian bubble,” she says. This family and community fueled a strong sense of purpose in Amber: “To be a good Christian and role model. To be a blessing to other people.”

The trouble is that this underlying purpose involved making other people more like them. When she came out as a lesbian at age 27, Amber’s family and community swiftly and suddenly cast her out. This triggered a deep crisis of purpose—one that she resolved by finding a new faith community “that helped shape me and gave me a sense of belonging,” she says.

Often, the nobility of our purpose reflects the company we keep. The purpose that came from Amber’s parents was based on exclusion, as she discovered. There was no place—and no purpose—for her in that community once she embraced an identity they couldn’t accept. A new sense of purpose came with the new community and identity she helped to build, of gay and lesbian Christians.

If you’re having trouble remembering your purpose, take a look at the people around you. What do you have in common with them? What are they trying to be? What impact do you see them having on the world? Is that impact a positive one? Can you join with them in making that impact? What do they need? Can you give it them?

If the answers to those questions don’t inspire you, then you might need to find a new community—and with that, a new purpose may come.

6. Tell your story

Purpose often arises from curiosity about your own life. What obstacles have you encountered? What strengths helped you to overcome them? How did other people help you? How did your strengths help make life better for others?Reading can help you find your purpose—but so can writing,

“We all have the ability to make a narrative out of our own lives,” says Emily Esfahani Smith, author of the 2017 book The Power of Meaning. “It gives us clarity on our own lives, how to understand ourselves, and gives us a framework that goes beyond the day-to-day and basically helps us make sense of our experiences.”

That’s why Amber Cantorna wrote her memoir, Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God. At first depressed after losing everyone she loved, Amber soon discovered new strengths in herself—and she is using her book to help build a nonprofit organization called Beyond to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians in their coming-out process.

One 2008 study found that those who see meaning and purpose in their lives are able to tell a story of change and growth, where they managed to overcome the obstacles they encountered. In other words, creating a narrative like Amber’s can help us to see our own strengths and how applying those strengths can make a difference in the world, which increases our sense of self-efficacy.

This is a valuable reflective process to all people, but Amber took it one step further, by publishing her autobiography and turning it into a tool for social change. Today, Amber’s purpose is to help people like her feel less alone.

“My sense of purpose has grown a lot with my desire to share my story—and the realization that so many other people have shared my journey.”

 

This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

Start with a Purpose

3 Keys to Discovering Your Life’s Passion

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Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 2 of 3 - Tara Brach

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Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 2 of 3 ~

A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These three talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”

Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 1

photo: Janet Merrick

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Meditation is Mental Fitness — If You Do It This Way

Athletes get into “the zone.” Creatives tap into “flow state.” We may obtain a heightened sense of awareness in these moments, but they are exactly that: temporary. Once the rock climber comes down from the mountain, she snaps back into her “everyday sense of the world,” says psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman, discussing his recent book Altered Traits written with neuroscientist Richie Davidson.

In this video for BigThink, Goleman explores how we can bring the beneficial effects of those “altered states” into the everyday.

Through mediation, Goleman argues, we can create what he calls “altered traits.”

“Altered traits […] are lasting changes or transformations of being, and they come classically through having cultivated an altered state through meditation, which then has a consequence for how you are day-to-day—and that’s different than how you were before you tried the meditation.”

The key to developing the habit? Bringing the mind back, again and again:

“At some point, when you’re trying to do your meditation, your mind will wander. We’re wired that way. The key is: Do you notice that it wanders? Once you notice your mind has wandered off and you bring it back, you’re strengthening the circuitry for focus [and]attention.

The mind is a gym and meditation is a basic workout.

Goleman says research suggests seasoned meditators are better able to focus, staying on task despite distractions around them, and are more resilient—able to snap back from an angry outburst, for instance.

“Just like going to the gym and working out for years and years doing reps, you get bigger muscles and more strength and fitness, the same thing happens in the mind. The mind is a gym and meditation is a basic workout.”

Video: BigThink

Which Style of Meditation is Best for You?

Meditators Under the Microscope

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Mindful Kids Practice: Coming Back to the Positive

This guided meditation is from Mark Bertin, and it’s an eight-minute practice for noticing positive moments throughout the day.

One way our brain keeps us safe is by staying very focused on whatever seems wrong or off or dangerous. Sometimes, it’s important to notice that kind of thing: Take care of yourself or find someone you trust to help.

Sometimes, what happens instead is that we can’t stop thinking about something we don’t like. You may feel stressed by a test, or a friend, or your parents. It can be hard to let go of that kind of thought.  Sometimes, it takes practice to focus on the good stuff, too.

You may feel stressed by a test, or a friend, or your parents. It can be hard to let go of that kind of thought.  Sometimes, it takes practice to focus on the good stuff, too.

1) Lie down somewhere comfortable. Let your arms and legs fall to the ground. Close your eyes gently.

2) Start to notice how your body changes with each breath you take. Each time you breathe, your belly moves up, and your belly moves down. If it is easier, put a hand on your belly. Or if you want, put a stuffed animal there.

Each time you breathe, your belly moves. Your hand, or your toy, rises, and then falls. See if you can count ten breaths that way. Breathing in, one, breathing out, one. (Repeat for nine more inhales, and nine more exhales.)

When you lose count, don’t worry about it. That’s normal, and happens to everyone. Come back to whatever number you last remember.

3) Now, shift your attention to your day. Breathing in, focus on your breath as your belly goes up. Breathing out, focus on something that went well today.

With each breath: breathing in, noticing your belly move, and with each breath out, noticing something that went well today.

4) Now, picture something about yourself that makes you proud. Breathing in, focus on your belly moving. Breathing out, picture something that makes you proud about yourself. If nothing comes to mind, that sometimes happens. If that’s how you feel, picture what you’d wish for yourself instead.

5) Finally, bring someone to mind who makes you happy. Before we end, try one more practice. Breathing in, notice your belly move. And now, breathing out picture someone who makes you happy.

As you come to the end of this practice, take a few deep breaths, and start to wiggle your arms and legs. Pause and decide what you’d like to do next.

It’s normal to have thoughts that make us feel scared or bad. We should never ignore anything important, but it’s useful to focus on the rest of our lives too. Take a few minutes every day to notice what has gone well, and see what happens next.

 

 

A Mindfulness Practice for Preschoolers That Connects Kids to Nature

Mindfulness in Schools Can Provide a Lifeline for Teens

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How to Use Social Media Wisely and Mindfully

It was no one other than Facebook’s former vice president for user growth, Chamath Palihapitiya, who advised people to take a “hard break” from social media. “We have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said recently.

His comments echoed those of Facebook founding president Sean Parker. Social media provides a “social validation feedback loop (‘a little dopamine hit…because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post’),” he said. “That’s exactly the thing a hacker like myself would come up with because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Are their fears overblown? What is social media doing to us as individuals and as a society?

Since over 70 percent of American teens and adults are on Facebook and over 1.2 billion users visit the site daily—with the average person spending over 90 minutes a day on all social media platforms combined—it’s vital that we gain wisdom about the social media genie, because it’s not going back into the bottle. Our wish to connect with others and express ourselves may indeed come with unwanted side effects.

The problems with social media

Social media is, of course, far from being all bad. There are often tangible benefits that follow from social media use. Many of us log on to social media for a sense of belonging, self-expression, curiosity, or a desire to connect. Apps like Facebook and Twitter allow us to stay in touch with geographically dispersed family and friends, communicate with like-minded others around our interests, and join with an online community to advocate for causes dear to our hearts.

Honestly sharing about ourselves online can enhance our feelings of well-being and online social support, at least in the short term. Facebook communities can help break down the stigma and negative stereotypes of illness, while social media, in general, can “serve as a spring board” for the “more reclusive…into greater social integration,” one study suggested.

But Parker and Palihapitiya are on to something when they talk about the addictive and socially corrosive qualities of social media. Facebook “addiction” (yes, there’s a test for this) looks similar on an MRI scan in some ways to substance abuse and gambling addictions. Some users even go to extremes to chase the highs of likes and followers. Twenty-six-year-old Wu Yongning recently fell to his death in pursuit of selfies precariously taken atop skyscrapers.

Facebook can also exacerbate envy. Envy is nothing if not corrosive of the social fabric, turning friendship into rivalry, hostility, and grudges. Social media tugs at us to view each other’s “highlight reels,” and all too often, we feel ourselves lacking by comparison. This can fuel personal growth, if we can turn envy into admiration, inspiration, and self-compassion; but, instead, it often causes us to feel dissatisfied with ourselves and others.

For example, a 2013 study by Ethan Kross and colleagues showed quite definitively that the more time young adults spent on Facebook, the worse off they felt. Participants were texted five times daily for two weeks to answer questions about their well-being, direct social contact, and Facebook use. The people who spent more time on Facebook felt significantly worse later on, even after controlling for other factors such as depression and loneliness.

Interestingly, those spending significant time on Facebook, but also engaging in moderate or high levels of direct social contact, still reported worsening well-being. The authors hypothesized that the comparisons and negative emotions triggered by Facebook were carried into real-world contact, perhaps damaging the healing power of in-person relationships.

More recently, Holly Shakya and Nicholas Christakis studied 5,208 adult Facebook users over two years, measuring life satisfaction and mental and physical health over time. All these outcomes were worse with greater Facebook use, and the way people used Facebook (e.g., passive or active use, liking, clicking, or posting) didn’t seem to matter.

“Exposure to the carefully curated images from others’ lives leads to negative self-comparison, and the sheer quantity of social media interaction may detract from more meaningful real-life experiences,” the researchers concluded.

How to rein in social media overuse

So, what can we do to manage the downsides of social media? One idea is to log out of Facebook completely and take that “hard break.” Researcher Morten Tromholt of Denmark found that after taking a one-week break from Facebook, people had higher life satisfaction and positive emotions compared to people who stayed connected. The effect was especially pronounced for “heavy Facebook users, passive Facebook users, and users who tend to envy others on Facebook.”

Some people I’ve spoken with find ways of cleaning up their newsfeeds—from hiding everyone but their closest friends to “liking” only reputable news, information, and entertainment sources.

We can also become more mindful and curious about social media’s effects on our minds and hearts, weighing the good and bad. We should ask ourselves how social media makes us feel and behave, and decide whether we need to limit our exposure to social media altogether (by logging out or deactivating our accounts) or simply modify our social media environment. Some people I’ve spoken with find ways of cleaning up their newsfeeds—from hiding everyone but their closest friends to “liking” only reputable news, information, and entertainment sources.

Knowing how social media affects our relationships, we might limit social media interactions to those that support real-world relationships. Instead of lurking or passively scrolling through a never-ending bevy of posts, we can stop to ask ourselves important questions, like What are my intentions? and What is this online realm doing to me and my relationships?

We each have to come to our own individual decisions about social media use, based on our own personal experience. Grounding ourselves in the research helps us weigh the good and bad and make those decisions. Though the genie is out of the bottle, we may find, as Shakya and Christakis put it, that “online social interactions are no substitute for the real thing,” and that in-person, healthy relationships are vital to society and our own individual well-being. We would do well to remember that truth and not put all our eggs in the social media basket.

This article is adapted from Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks (Pacific Heart Books, 2017, 412 pages). This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

The Hidden Cost of Phone Addiction

Take Control of Your Tech Habits

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When the News Makes Us Miserable: Remembering a Fuller Presence and Larger Truth - Tara Brach

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When the News Makes Us Miserable:
Remembering a Fuller Presence and Larger Truth

People ask me regularly about how spiritual practice can guide us in responding to the state of our society. They tell me that while the teachings of compassion are alive and helpful in other parts of their lives, they seem out of reach when they read the headlines each day. In a recent e-mail from one of our DC community Spiritual Friends groups, members asked:

• How do we stay compassionate when it feels like so much harm is being caused to vulnerable people?
• Isn’t acceptance a kind of complacency? Isn’t “letting go” like condoning?
• How do we call on meditation practice when we’ve become fearful, angry and disheartened at the hatefulness and viciousness that is so evident in our society?

I’ve had many waves of anger, fear and aversion in reaction to the harm being perpetrated in our society. In my own practice, it helps to keep starting right where I am, not judging my own reactions, thinking “I shouldn’t feel this.” Rather than trying to let go of these feelings, I often reflect that “this belongs,” it’s the inner weather of the moment. Then I can feel the fear or aversion with acceptance and kindness.

This also allows me to listen to the message of the emotions. Reactions of horror and outrage can be healthy and intelligent. They alert us to the very real suffering around us and they help move us toward action. When we accept and mindfully open to these emotions, they unfold to reveal the deep caring that is underneath. But this doesn’t happen if our minds fixate on stories of bad other. If we are lost in our stories, we are lost in our own egoic reactivity. To listen to the emotions and respond from our most awake heart, we need to make the U-Turn, coming out of stories and back to our vulnerability and our tender heart.

I often tell the story of a person walking in the woods and coming upon a little dog. The dog seems harmless enough, but when they reach out to pet the dog, it growls and lunges at them. The immediate response is fear and anger, but then they notice that the dog has its leg caught in a trap and compassion begins to rise up in the place of the anger. Once we see how our own leg is in a trap and hold our experience with self-compassion, it becomes easier to see how others might be caught, too – causing suffering, because they are suffering.

One misunderstanding is that acceptance and compassion amount to condoning, complacency, or resignation. On the contrary, true acceptance is a courageous willingness to face reality as it is right now, and compassion brings tenderness to the life of the moment. Only with this radically allowing and tender presence can we respond from our full intelligence and heart.

Of course, in the darkest of days, it is often not possible to open to what’s going on inside us with a compassionate presence. Again, we simply start where we are, bringing mindful recognition and acceptance to our closed hearts—this, too, belongs. Our intention to pay attention, our intention to be kind, will eventually allow our heart to relax open.

Consciousness is evolving. Even amidst the great limbic outbreak of our current times, we can also witness a growing interest in awakening awareness, in spiritual practice and in living aligned with our hearts. There is a dialectic at work: Suffering is necessary to fuel transformation.

In a small group meeting at a recent meditation retreat, some women shared their stories of pain and trauma caused by sexual harassment. One male who was participating said sadly, “When are these guys going to wake up and stop hurting people?” A few days later, after listening to Oprah give her speech at the Golden Globes, he had a rush of realization: “This is the turning point. We’re in a defining moment, and need to pay attention! The victims are speaking out and allies are awakening. There is hope for today and, perhaps, tomorrow.”

There is hope. Ultimately, the sacred feminine—the wisdom and love that cherishes life—is unfolding and flowering in our collective awareness. Compassion and forgiveness are increasingly researched, trained in, practiced. There’s no turning back this awakening. In time, the shadow emotions will transmute into an increasingly pure expression of our wise hearts.

Finally, it’s essential to respond actively whenever possible and to stay in good touch with others who care. Our shared caring is what keeps hope alive in difficult times—it’s the strongest medicine. Here’s a quote from contemporary Bodhisattva, Fred Rogers:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.

We are not alone. People all over the globe share the same longing for a more loving, just, and peaceful world. People everywhere are opening to the sense of our true belonging with each other and all of life.

May the suffering of our times awaken our deepest understanding and compassion;
and may we respond in a way that serves healing and freedom.

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Gratitude For a Fresh Start

We’re here, it’s the beginning of 2018, and, somehow, it feels like a fresh start. Funny how an artificial construct like the calendar can help us refresh our outlook. That’s also a key element in mindfulness practice. Awareness of breathing makes a fresh start available in every moment. Seems pretty simple but I’m finding it particularly uplifting when all around are invitations to old habits, especially acrimony and blame.

Before launching into what we can look for in 2018, I want to start the year by specifically thanking all of you who helped make our end of 2017 funding campaign a success. As a nonprofit, your support is both critical and inspiring. Not only does a successful funding campaign mean that 2017 ended on a high note, but it importantly sets us up to be strong and energized to expand our efforts in 2018. Fresh start. Thank you all!

As for 2018, If you thought the popularity of mindfulness entering the mainstream reached its peak, just wait. The pace is quickening, and the signs are that it’s normalizing, meaning it’s not just the early adopters anymore. It’s January and I’ve already heard from many places where the work is expanding, including Nashville KY schools and major institutions within both the US and Canadian governments (more on those in the future). And on Thursday of this week, I’ll be at Ivy Child International on a panel discussing how to make Boston a Mindful City. (somebody please tell those drivers!)

All of these give us an indication of how mindfulness is shaping up in 2018, and what to look for. Mindfulness training is reaching deeper into the community, and its applications are more focused on addressing social challenges. We’ll see innovative offerings that weave mindfulness practices into our lives in novel ways that can address deep habit change.

These are critical areas of society where mindfulness has taken root and where mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to produce scalable benefits.

How will Mindful fit into that? One way is that we will expand and deepen our content, consulting, and support for those bringing the wide variety of mindfulness practices into education and healthcare. These are critical areas of society where mindfulness has taken root and where mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to produce scalable benefits.

We plan on supporting this momentum by creating Mindful content specifically for these communities and finding ways to make it more widely available to those working in the front-lines in our schools and healthcare facilities.

In the world of education, that means creating more, and more advanced, mindfulness content for teachers, and making it available to them for free. Teachers are the driving force in bringing mindfulness into education, and they need our support. I recently heard from a leading mindfulness advocate in one of the US’s largest education systems that mindfulness is in 1 out of 4 of their classrooms but there’s no centralized mindfulness program. It’s all coming from the teachers (and principals) who’ve initiative their own training through programs like Mindful Schools, the Momentous Institute, or CARE for Teachers, among others, and then brought mindfulness into their classroom.

Part of their challenge is that there’s no money in the school systems for new programs. Schools are under tremendous financial pressure, and when something happens in our schools everyone wants a part of it. We want our initiatives to sidestep these obstacles to bringing benefit to teachers and their classrooms.

So that’s one major part of our fresh start in 2018: to expand our mindfulness in education initiative to create more free content for teachers and educators, to provide them with mindfulness practices that are easy to integrate into their already busy lives, and material they can use in their classrooms. And we’ll do it by partnering and collaborating with many other for- and nonprofit organizations who share this vision and are doing wonderful work in the field.

We’re energized by and committed to this vision. If you’ve got any fresh ideas about how we can work together to help make this happen, let me hear from you.

 

Mindfulness Feeds the Roots

 

Leaning Into the Mindfulness Momentum

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Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 1 - Tara Brach

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Freedom from Othering: Undoing the Myths that Imprison Us – Part 1 ~

A primary source of our suffering is the conditioning to create “bad other,” or “inferior other.” This same conditioning leads us to creating a bad self and turn on ourselves. These two talks explore how we subscribe to societal myths and beliefs that perpetuate this “bad othering,” and “bad selfing.” They then guide us in bring a healing attention that can reveal the goodness that lives through all beings, and our innate connectedness. A core teaching is, “the boundary to who we include in our hearts is the boundary to our freedom.”

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Why Loving-Kindness Takes Time: Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society, offers a “Guided Lovingkindness Meditation” — Sending loving-kindess to people we feel neutral towards as well as those we have difficult feelings towards. 

The Path to Loving-Kindness: Choose Your Phrases

Loving-kindness is meant to be done in the easiest way possible so that the experience springs forth most gently, most naturally. To do it in the most easiest way possible means first to use phrases that are personally meaningful. The traditional phrases as are taught, at least this one classical translation of them, begins with oneself:

May I be free from danger, may I know safety. Danger in that sense is both inner danger from the force of certain mind states, and outer danger. So, May I be free from danger. May I have mental happiness. May I have physical happiness. May I have ease of well-being—which means may I not have to struggle terribly, day by day, with livelihood, with family issues.

Let your mind rest in the phrases. You can be aware of the phrases either with the breath or just in themselves—the focus of the attention is the phrases. Let your mind rest within them. The feelings will come and go.

May I be free from danger, may I have mental happiness, but really, you should use any phrases that are powerful for you. They need to be meaningful not just in a very temporary way—May I get to this course okay—but something profound that you would wish for yourself and wish for others. Thoughts are very important in doing loving-kindness—not to struggle to get a certain kind of feeling. Let your mind rest in the phrases. You can be aware of the phrases either with the breath or just in themselves—the focus of the attention is the phrases. Let your mind rest within them. The feelings will come and go.

Sometimes it will feel quite glorious, it will be extraordinary.

Sometimes, many times, it will be very very ordinary, very dry or very mechanical—but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that nothing is happening or that it’s not working. What’s important is to do it, is to form that intention in the mind because we’re uniting the power of loving-kindness and the power of intention and that is what will produce the effect of that free flow of loving-kindness.

Loving-Kindness Takes Time

The first time that I ever did loving-kindness practice was without a teacher. We first opened up the center; a group of us decided to do a self retreat here for a month and I had never done loving-kindness before although I had heard about it. I thought it was a perfect opportunity to do it.

I sat up in my room and I knew that it was done in successive stages and I began by dedicating a week of sending myself loving-kindness. All day long, I would go around the building—sitting in my room, sitting in the hall—saying the whole thing, may I be happy, may I be peaceful, may I be liberated, and I felt absolutely nothing.

At the end of the week, something happened to someone in the community and a number of us, quite unexpectedly, had to leave the retreat. Then I felt doubly bad—not only did nothing happen but I never even got beyond myself, which was really selfish.

I was running around upstairs in the flurry of having to leave. I was standing in one of the bathrooms and I dropped a jar of something, which shattered into a thousand pieces. The very first thought that came up in my mind was: “You are really a klutz, but I love you.” And I thought, “Oh wow! Look at that.” All those hours, all those phrases where I was just dry and mechanical and I felt like nothing was happening. It was happening. It just took a while for me to sense the flowering of that and it was so spontaneous that it was quite wonderful. So: Not to struggle, to try to make something happen. Let it happen. It will happen.

Our job, so to speak, is just to say those phrases, to say them knowing what they mean but without trying to fabricate a feeling, without putting that overlay on top of it, of stress. Let your mind rest in the phrases, and let the phrases be meaningful to you.

I’d like to talk about sending a loving-kindness to the neutral person and a little bit about sending loving-kindness to somebody who we have difficulty with as we send a message to a neutral person.

Sending Loving-Kindness to the Neutral Party

The first task of course is to find one—sometimes that’s very interesting. I find that very often as soon as we either meet somebody or even think about them, if we haven’t met them, we have a judgment about them: I like them I don’t like them.

If you can find a neutral person, sometimes there’s a great refreshment in sending them loving-kindness because there’s no story about them.

See if you can understand that this person wants to be happy just as each one of us wants to be happy and open, extend that force of loving-kindness towards them.

Sending Loving-Kindness to the Difficult Party

After we do that for a little while, move on, just briefly, to sending loving-kindness to somebody that we have difficulty with. This is a very interesting place because it’s very difficult. It’s a very powerful place because that person, in some ways, symbolizes the difference between love or loving-kindness, which is conditional, and that which is on uncondition that which goes beyond having our desires met, having affection returned, having people treat us well. It is that person that defines the line between that which is finite and that which is infinite. Yet it’s not easy. Very often to think of this person and you enmity, or anger, or fear, whatever. As a suggestion, when we begin that part of the practice, in the spirit of doing it in the easiest way possible, it’s probably better to start with somebody where there’s mild irritation rather than the person who has hurt you most in your life.

And slowly begin to open in levels of difficulty. Sometimes when we send loving-kindness to a difficult person, we do feel all of these other feelings, like anger. If possible, see if you can let go of it. Return the recitation of the phrases. If it’s too strong, then you can drop the loving-kindness. Pay careful attention to the feeling until it begins to subside some, very much with the sense of compassion for oneself: You don’t need to judge it. Now when you can you can pick up the loving-kindness again, perhaps with an easier person.

Guided Loving-Kindness Practice

To begin, take a comfortable seated position. Let’s begin by sitting comfortably, closing your eyes.

Find phrases you’d like to use to offer good wishes. Taking a few deep breaths, relaxing the body, finding the phrases that reflect what you wish most deeply for yourself. Very gently repeat them.

Bring someone to mind who’s been kind to you. If you have someone come to mind who has been a benefactor to help in some way, for whom you feel respect or gratitude, either hold an image of that person, or say their names in your mind. Direct that force of loving-kindness towards them, wishing them safety, happiness, and peace. Very gently, one phrase at a time, let the mind rest in the phrase.

And if a good friend comes to mind, someone who you care about, there’s mutual caring, hold a sense of this person, direct the phrases towards them, wishing for their happiness and their well-being.

Bring a neutral person to mind. Ideally it would be somebody here of course because you have an opportunity to run into them, to observe how a feeling of loving-kindness develops over the course of time. If someone here of if not here then someone in your life who you don’t have a strong sense of liking or disliking. See if you can bring that person to mind. Extend the feeling of loving-kindness towards them— just as we all want to be happy, so this person also wants to be happy. If nobody comes to mind in this category, then you can just stay with a good friend.

If it feels workable, bring to mind someone with whom you experience difficulty. If there’s somebody that you have difficulty with, perhaps not very grave difficulty at this point—someone with whom there’s conflict, there’s tension. There’s unease, there’s dislike. Remembering that his person, too, just wants to happy—that out of ignorance, we all make mistakes that create harm or suffering, and that causing suffering inevitably will bring suffering to that person. See if you can extend that force of loving-kindness towards them. To send loving-kindness does not mean that we approve or condone all actions, it means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect or unskillful and still not lose the connection.

To send loving-kindness does not mean that we approve or condone all actions, it means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect or unskillful and still not lose the connection.

Calling someone to mind with whom there’s difficulty, repeating the phrases towards them. If you can find one good thing about this person, in the midst of everything else, if you focus on that one good thing, just reflect on it for a moment, you’ll find that there’s a feeling of drawing closer, opening up, and all the rest can be seen in that light.

If you can’t find even one good thing about this person, you can reflect on their wish to be happy.

Expand your awareness to all beings, everywhere, without distinction, without exclusion. May all beings be free from danger, may they have mental happiness, may they have physical happiness, may they have ease of well-being.

All living beings: may they be free from danger, may they have mental happiness, may they have physical happiness, may they have ease of well-being.

All creatures, known or unknown, near or far, some we like, some we don’t like, some we’re neutral towards.

All individuals… happy, suffering, causing suffering. Still they have this wish to be happy, to be free. May it be so. And all those in existence. Every being, all places, may they be able to realize the fruits of just what it is that we wish for ourselves.

 

 

Adapted from a talk from Sharon Salzberg at the Insight Meditation Society. Listen to the full talk.

 

 

A Loving-Kindness Meditation to Boost Compassion

Don’t Fall into the Self-Esteem Trap: Try a Little Self-Kindness

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Associate Web Editor

Mindful magazine and its digital equivalent, mindful.org, are looking for an Associate Web Editor to join their digital team. The organization’s mission is to support the work being done in the field of mindfulness, creating new opportunities by telling stories, connecting people, providing vital information, and catalyzing key events and initiatives, and making mindfulness and its practice a routine part of North American society. The Associate Web Editor, working with a small team of digital professionals in the area of editorial, will help serve this goal by creating content posts for Mindful.org, overseeing newsletter production, and scheduling social media posts. This is a permanent full-time position.

Working under the direction of the Editor, Mindful Digital, the Associate Web Editor will broadly be responsible for:

• Building and scheduling article posts
• Formatting posts for SEO
• Searching for and formatting images
• Participate in production of special projects with other departments
• Writing articles for the website
• Regularly feeding website with content from the latest issue of the print magazine
• Writing and scheduling all social media posts
• Overseeing and contributing to production of email newsletter campaigns
• Assist with production of mobile edition
  

The Associate Web Editor will report to the Editor, Mindful Digital and work under the direction of the Deputy Editor, Mindful Digital.

Specific Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in English, Journalism, or Communications
• Strong writing skills — able to write for daily deadlines
• Content management system experience; specifically WordPress and mobile platform MAZ
• Experience and enthusiasm for posting to social media platforms including: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google-Plus
• Knowledge of HTML and experience with image editing, Photoshop preferred
• Knowledge of SEO and  social media best practices, including calls to action, hashtags, and tagging as well as experience using social media management platforms such as Hootsuite and Buffer
• Facility with email and newsletter tool Mailchimp
• Familiarity with web and social analytics

The Foundation for a Mindful Society (Mindful), an independent non-profit located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is dedicated to inspiring, guiding and connecting anyone who wants to explore mindfulness—to enjoy better health, more caring relationships, and a more compassionate society. We use our media and community building expertise as the publishers of Mindful magazine and mindful.org to accomplish this.

Salary is $27,000 to 30,000 (CAD). Candidates must be eligible to work in Canada.

Deadline for Applications: February 9, 2018.

Apply by email with “Associate Web Editor” in the subject line and attaching covering letter and resume to Cindy Littlefair at cindy@mindful.org

 

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Meditation: Receiving Life with an Open Awareness (20:45 min.) - Tara Brach

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Meditation: Receiving Life with an Open Awareness ~

We begin with listening and then bring a receptive attention to experience the life of the body. We then open the attention to the whole field of sensations and sound, and rest in the openness and presence that includes all the changing currents of experience.

 

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Stop Mindlessly Going Through Your Work Day

How often have you looked at the clock stunned because even though you’ve been scrambling all morning, it’s now noon and you have no idea where the time went or what you’ve actually accomplished? There are sound reasons why it’s so hard for us to stay focused — and fortunately there’s research that shows what we can do about it.

One of the most effective tactics for staying on task is to bring purpose to each moment of your work. That might sound daunting — and it does take work — but mindlessly performing tasks (think about slogging through emails or conducting meetings on autopilot) is a recipe for inefficiency, disengagement, and even poor health. On the other hand, the benefits to our productivity, well-being, and health of having a clear sense of purpose — even in our most trivial tasks — are well established. In one study of 106 male employees at a large Japanese IT firm, a higher sense of purpose as well as a sense of interdependence with coworkers was correlated with lower inflammation as well as a higher viral resistance in the bodies of the workers. Research has also shown a connection between a sense of purpose in our personal lives, and benefits including lower hypertension; reduced risk of stroke and Alzheimer’s disease; and even increased longevity.

If we are clear about what we are meant to be tackling from moment to moment, and understand what our work amounts to, our sense of purpose increases and our stress decreases. To accomplish this, we need to constantly track where we are putting our attention. This tracking is known as meta-cognition, which is a practice that allows us to tap into a sense of purpose within what might seem like the most menial of tasks. Think of this as turning on your own internal project manager.

If we are clear about what we are meant to be tackling from moment to moment, and understand what our work amounts to, our sense of purpose increases and our stress decreases.

This isn’t always easy to do — our mind is easily pulled away from the task, conversation, or challenge at hand, especially if we find it uncomfortable — but you can improve your ability to do it with practice. For those who already take time to meditate at work, tracking your attention allows you to take what you practice in meditation and apply it to your most basic tasks.

The goal is to bring a clarity of purpose to every moment and every task, or at least a higher percentage of them (let’s not try to make ourselves crazy). Here’s how.

Act on purpose. The first step is to understand how your daily work connects to both your personal goals and the goals of the organization. Ideally you already have a sense of this and have even talked about it with your manager. But if you haven’t, it’s not too late.

Let’s start with personal goals. What do you love? What are you good at? And, of course, what were you hired to do? Get clear on why you are in this particular job, what your trajectory looks like, and how you can apply your talents to support your career aspiration. You can employ the principles of job crafting to do this: take stock of your role and reflect on which aspects of it play to your strengths.

Now for the organization’s goals. How does your job map to the overall goals of the company? You can assess this by articulating for yourself how your job contributes to the end game. For example, you may not be responsible for managing the bottom line, but you could make a list of ways that your daily decisions and contributions impact the company’s profitability. Making this tangible connection can be both clarifying and empowering.

Once you’ve done this for yourself, sit down with your boss to discuss the connections you’ve made and get their input. They may have insight into your strengths, role, and the organization’s goals that will strengthen those connections.

Map your plan. Like most people, you likely have dozens of tasks that you can be doing, so you need to understand which tasks, in what sequence, will amount to the greatest output. Create a roadmap where you identify which tasks are critical and which are less immediate. Then estimate how long it might take you to accomplish each task. With this information you can plot out your work so you know what you should be focusing on and when.

Fridays are a good time to check in with your internal project manager. How well were you able to bring your attention to each task? Did you execute the plan that you laid out for the week, bringing a sense of purpose to each activity? Remember, though, that your roadmap isn’t meant to be written in stone. In fact, planning and honing your attention should equip you with the confidence to jettison a plan, say no, cancel, or delegate if necessary so that you can consistently focus your time where it will best serve your end-goals.

By naming your distractions — and the root cause of them — you can catch yourself and return your attention to those tasks on your priority list that will produce a greater sense of meaning.

Uproot your distractions. When you don’t know exactly where you should be focusing your attention, it’s easy to seek out tasks that bring an immediate sense of accomplishment but don’t actually amount to progress against your goals. For example, you may be in the habit of checking and responding to email before tackling other projects or you might focus on your inbox simply because you’re not sure what to do next. Or maybe you’re letting yourself get pulled into other people’s meetings and projects because you’re falling prey to what David Grady, TED speaker and creator of the viral video on ineffective conference meetings, calls “mindless accept syndrome.” Of course being generous to and collaborating with your coworkers is good, but not when it takes you away from what you should be working on.

By naming your distractions — and the root cause of them — you can catch yourself and return your attention to those tasks on your priority list that will produce a greater sense of meaning.

It’s too easy to allow entire days to pass in a blur without being able to articulate what you’ve actually done. Instead, realize that your days are made up of thousands of discrete moments passing before you and you can consciously choose to make the most of them. Knowing what you are doing and why allows you to not only feel accomplishment in doing your work well, but also gives you a more fulfilling sense that your days actually matter.

 

This article originally appeared on hbr.org, the website of the Harvard Business Review. View the original article.

 

4 Ways to Follow Your Inner Compass

Manage Your Attention, Not Your Time

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6 Ways to Rev Up Your Workout Resolutions

Getting healthy and staying fit in 2018 may not be as hard as you think. Consider adopting these tried-and-true solutions. Doing so may give you a boost of inspiration when the winter cold lures you toward the couch.

1) Find a buddy

Make a commitment to exercise with a friend or coworker once or twice per week. It helps to choose someone you wouldn’t want to disappoint. This will hold you accountable and improve the likelihood of staying consistent. Besides, working out with a friend makes sweating more fun.

2) Turn on the tunes

In a 2013 study, researchers showed that pumping up the music while we exercise significantly improves our mood. Listening to inspiring tunes while exercising also distracts you from fatigue and motivates you to work out longer and harder. Plug in, tune in, and turn it up.

3) Prepare

To maintain your routine, plan ahead. On Sunday evening, grab your calendar and schedule your daily workouts for the week. Add all possible types of exercise, including walking the dog, trips to the gym, and dancing with friends. Plan your ideal schedule in detail, then hold that schedule lightly. As we know, sick kids and jammed traffic easily get in the way of our best-laid plans.

4) Get outside

It’s often said that if you need to solve a problem, go out for a walk. Get some fresh air, clear your mind, and you’re likely to return home with your answer. Especially during the shorter days of winter, spending time outside can improve focus, reduce symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and lower stress levels. Bundle up!

5) Sign up for a class

Facing a work-out during the cold, dark winter months can be disheartening. Doing it on your own makes exercising even more daunting. The antidote to lonely miles on the treadmill is to register for a series of classes. Find a yoga or rock-climbing class—or hit the dance floor. Make your work-out social, and you’re more likely to have fun and stay motivated.

Make your work-out social, and you’re more likely to have fun and stay motivated.

6) If you can’t get outside, then turn up the lights.

Research shows exercising under bright lights lifts our moods, especially in the winter months when daylight hours are limited. Gyms are great for keeping the floods on. If you exercise at home, be sure to head for the brightest room in the house.

 

 

This article appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine in a featured article titled, “Winter Got You Down? Move Around!“

 

 

Winter Got You Down? Move Around!

How to Cut Yourself Some S.L.A.C.K. and Kick Some A** In the New Year

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Winter Got You Down? Move Around!

When you’re faced with short days and chilly temperatures, you may find the couch calling out to you ever more loudly. Research indicates, though, that hibernating during winter isn’t such a good idea. According to the Mayo Clinic, diminished sunlight can cause levels of serotonin (the feel-good hormone) to drop, exacerbating our low motivation as we feel more tired and hungry. Being sedentary during winter may also trigger those prone to depression and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). The good news? A Harvard Medical School study suggests that exercise boosts both mood and health, especially during the colder, darker days of winter.

If you tend to head for your jammies, not your running shoes, try shifting your attitude. Like a coach, positive attitudes can give you the “go get ’em” encouragement to stay in the game. Here are a few tactics to help keep you—and your attitude—light and bright this winter.

Start Small and Build

Exercising consistently can be challenging.

If you’re ready to take on an active lifestyle, remember that you don’t need to run a marathon tomorrow. You don’t even need to run. Start with a daily walk. Be steady. It’s better to do something active every day—even if it is just a little bit—than nothing at all. Consistent exercise builds momentum, and that builds on itself. At some point, your workout will become a habit and you won’t have to think about it as much. Over time, with commitment and consistency, you’ll increase your laps in the pool, the speed of your walk, and the weight you use for squats. You keep building from wherever you are.

Set an Intention

As you start, take a moment to set a clear intention, which can be like a compass: It directs your mind, keeping you motivated and focused. Strong intentions will bring about strong results. Here are a few examples of powerful intentions:

I am going for a run to clear my head.

During this yoga class I will be kind to myself.

On my walk, I’ll let these prickly thoughts fly.

I’m going swimming to increase my strength.

I won’t judge myself during this weight training class.

Listen to Your Body

Your body speaks to you in the language of sensation. The problem is that we’re often stuck in our heads and don’t hear when our body asks us to change what we’re doing. Start paying attention to the coolness, heat, tingling, or throbbing you feel when you exercise. Doing so will help you tune in to when you need to modify, hold steady, or pick up the intensity.

During your next vigorous workout, notice the sensations: your muscles burning toward the end of your walk or run, the sense of expansion during a deep yoga pose, or the fire in your legs during those last few squats. Your body is getting stronger. There’s also the sensation that is not so sweet: It can be a sharp pain or, conversely, numbness. These are signals that you’re overtaxing your body and need to back off or modify what you are doing. To know the difference, you’ll need to pay attention. While it can be empowering to push past our limitations, it’s equally important to be mindful of them.

Be Kind, Light, and Non-Judgy

Nike has been telling us for a few decades to “Just Do It.” We could add, “But be nice about it.” You don’t have to beat yourself up to get moving every day. Try talking to yourself as a supportive soccer coach would talk to a first-grader. Maintain a cheerful “You’ve got this” attitude, and give yourself a pat on the back when your workout is over.

Being too serious about exercising takes the joy out of movement. The last thing you need is to get stressed about exercising.

Being too serious about exercising takes the joy out of movement. If you can keep your sense of humor about the whole thing, you may find yourself going longer and harder. Laugh at your mistakes. Pause to take in the view. Cheer yourself on: “I think I can, I think I can.” Be flexible with your schedule. While exercising daily sounds good, schedules can change on a dime. The last thing you need is to get stressed about exercising. The goal is to be consistent, not a slave to your workout schedule.

Your body feels different from day to day. Some days you may rock and roll, other days you may only crawl. Acknowledge your highs and lows. If you can, commit to moving a little bit. This is how you build consistency and momentum. Negative self-talk will just drain your energy. Start where you are. Let go of what you can’t do. Embrace what you can.

Nike has been telling us for a few decades to “Just Do It.” We could add, “But be nice about it.” You don’t have to beat yourself up to get moving.

Savor the Post-Exercise Glow

Remember how amazing you felt the last time you hit the gym or took a hike in the woods? How clear and calm you felt after your last yoga class? Exercise can settle your mind. It can make you feel refreshed from head to toe. It helps to dissolve tension in places you may not have realized were tense. You want to remember this feeling. The next time you exercise, pause for a few minutes afterward. Sit down or lie down to fully savor the post-exercise glow. It may be all you need to get yourself on the track tomorrow.

Welcome Stress

Your body gets used to moving at a certain level. After a few months of consistently walking three miles, it takes less energy and effort. But you won’t get stronger if you keep walking the same distance at the same speed. This is where stress comes in: It’s not only good but essential for getting fit and healthy. We build strength, endurance, and agility by incrementally adding resistance, repetition, or duration. Muscles grow stronger when they’re repeatedly challenged at their maximum capacity, causing the thin strands of muscle fiber to tear. In the day or two following this stress, the muscle fibers repair themselves by binding back together in a way that enables them to handle a heavier load. We grow stronger by stressing a system and letting it adapt to be able to handle a higher capacity.

Calm the Body, Calm the Mind

Have you ever noticed that when your body feels tired, it’s hard to focus? When your body feels tense, there’s a good chance your mind feels tense, too. The state of your body reflects the state of your mind. A good walk clears away the mental cobwebs. A well-paced run can settle an agitated mood. Flying down a wide-open stretch of road on a bicycle can lift a heavy heart. Moving your body stirs stuff up and shakes things out in a way that nothing else can. Energize your body, and you’ll energize your mind. Calm your body, and you’ll calm your mind.

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Cross Training 101: Four Ways to Mix Up Your Movement

The best way to keep your exercise routine fresh is to avoid getting stuck in a rut of doing the same workout every time. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends healthy adults include a variety of exercises including weight lifting, stretching and balance exercises, and movement to increase your heart rate.

Cross-training is key. Variety in workouts makes moving fun and is essential to building stronger muscles. While you may be tempted to simply do your favorite exercise seven days a week, opening your mind to new workout styles will do more to improve your health and fitness in 2018. Experiment with a few types of cross-training activities until you find what works best for you.

With some ideas to get you started, here are the main categories of exercise:

1. Cardio Activities: These include brisk walking, running, biking, swimming, rowing, dancing, and any other exercises that get your heart pumping. All of these are great ways to boost metabolism, build endurance, and settle your body and mind after a busy day.
2. Holistic Training: Commonly called mind–body exercises, these include hatha yoga, qigong, tai chi, Pilates, and other alignment-based practices like Feldenkrais Method and Alexander Technique. These holistic disciplines focus on balancing physical and mental energy and healing physical imbalances.
3. Strength Training: Adding resistance or weight to any type of exercise increases anaerobic endurance (shorter, high-intensity exercises that don’t require oxygen to generate force), while strengthening your muscles and bones. Try using free weights or machines at the gym, buy a resistance band to use at home, or hit the floor for push-ups and sit-ups.
4. Lifestyle Activities: Have you considered gardening, climbing the stairs, playing with your dog, child-care, and even cleaning as exercise? Well, they are! Enjoy movement through these moderately intensive activities, and you’ll find yourself exercising all day.

We can stave off the winter blahs by not only staying active, but also mixing up our routines and having more fun as we exercise. Try spicing up your exercise routine with cross-training. It’s easy: Plan out your week of exercise with your go-to workouts. Then round out your plan with 2–3 new ways to move every week. Here’s to new opportunities to stay fit in 2018.

This article appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.

Mindful Movement to Nourish Your Spine

Winter Blues

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