The Amazing, Tumultuous, Wild, Wonderful, Teenage Brain

Adolescence is as much a perplexing time of life as it is an amazing one. Running roughly between the ages of twelve and twenty- four (yes, into our mid-twenties!), adolescence is known across cultures as a time of great challenge for both adolescents and the adults who support them. Because it can be so challenging for everyone involved, I hope to offer support to both sides of the generational divide. If you are an adolescent, my hope is that the information I am offering will help you make your way through the at times painful, at other times thrilling personal journey that is adolescence. If you are the parent of an adolescent, or a teacher, a counselor, an athletic coach, or a mentor who works with adolescents, my hope is that these explorations will help you help the adolescent in your life not just survive but thrive through this incredibly formative time.

In recent years, surprising discoveries from brain imaging studies have revealed changes in the structure and function of the brain during adolescence. Interpretations of these studies lead to a very different story than the old raging-hormone view of the teenage brain. A commonly stated but not quite accurate view often presented by the media is that the brain’s master control center, the prefrontal cortex, at the forward part of the frontal lobe, is simply not mature until the end of adolescence. This “immaturity” of the brain’s prefrontal cortex “explains immature teenage behavior.” This simple story, while easy to grasp, is not quite consistent with the research findings and misses an essential issue.

Instead of viewing the adolescent stage of brain development as merely a process of maturation, of leaving behind outmoded or non useful ways of thinking and transitioning to adult maturity, it is actually more accurate and more useful to see it as a vital and necessary part of our individual and our collective lives. Adolescence is not a stage to simply get over; it is a stage of life to cultivate well. This new and important take-home message, inspired by the emerging sciences, suggests that the changes that occur in the adolescent brain are not merely about “maturity” versus “immaturity,” but rather are vitally important developmental changes that enable certain new abilities to emerge. These new abilities are crucial for both the individual and our species.

Why should this matter to us, whether we are teens, in our twenties, or older? It matters because if we see the adolescent period as just a time to wade through, a time to endure, we’ll miss out on taking very important steps to optimize the essence of adolescence.

Yes, there are challenges in staying open to the “work” of adolescence. Important opportunities for expansion and development during this time can be associated with stress for teens and for the parents who love them. For example, the pushing away from family that adolescents tend to do can be seen as a necessary process enabling them to leave home. This courage to move out and away is created by the brain’s reward circuits becoming increasingly active and inspiring teens to seek novelty even in the face of the unfamiliar as they move out into the world. After all, the familiar can be safe and predictable, while the unfamiliar can be unpredictable and filled with potential danger. One historical view for us as social mammals is that if older adolescents did not leave home and move away from local family members, our species would have too much chance of inbreeding and our genetics would suffer. And for our broader human story, adolescents’ moving out and exploring the larger world allows our human family to be far more adaptive in the world as the generations unfold. Our individual and our collective lives depend on this adolescent push away.

What we are coming to see is that there is a crucial set of brain changes during our adolescence creating new powers, new possibilities, and new purposes fueling the adolescent mind and relationships that simply did not exist like this in childhood. These positive potentials are often hidden from view and yet they can be uncovered and used more effectively and more wisely when we know how to find them and how to cultivate them. We can learn to use cutting edge science to make the most of the adolescent period of life. It’s a pay-it-forward investment for everyone involved.

For the teen, the growth of the body itself, with alterations in physiology, hormones, sexual organs, and the architectural changes in the brain, also can contribute to our understanding of adolescence as an important period of transformation. Changing emotions revolutionize how we feel as teens inside, making more complex the ways of processing information and our ideas about the self and others, and even creating huge developmental shifts and transitions in the inner sense of who we are and who we can become. This is how a sense of identity shifts and evolves throughout adolescence.

From the inside, these changes can become overwhelming, and we may even lose our way, and feel that life is just “too much” to navigate at times. From the outside, such changes may at times seem like we are lost and “out of control.” Our adolescent years can be challenging for sure. But the great news is that with increased self-awareness of our emotional and social lives, and with an increased understanding of the brain’s structure and function, the powerful positive effects of the complex changes that occur during adolescence can be harnessed with the proper approach and understanding.

Myths

There are a few myths surrounding adolescence that science now clearly shows us are simply not true. And even worse than being wrong, these false beliefs can actually make life more difficult for adolescents and adults alike. So let’s bust these myths right now.

1. Raging Hormones Make You Crazy

One of the most powerful myths surrounding adolescence is that raging hormones cause teenagers to “go mad” or “lose their minds.” That’s simply false. Hormones do increase during this period, but it is not the hormones that determine what goes on in adolescence. We now know that what adolescents experience is primarily the result of changes in the development of the brain. Knowing about these changes can help life flow more smoothly for you as an adolescent or for you as an adult with adolescents in your world.

2. You Just Need to Grow Up

Another myth is that adolescence is simply a time of immaturity and teens just need to “grow up.” With such a restricted view of the situation, it’s no surprise that adolescence is seen as something that everyone just needs to endure, to somehow survive and leave behind with as few battle scars as possible. Yes, being an adolescent can be confusing and terrifying as so many things are new and often intense. And for adults, what adolescents do may seem confounding and even senseless. Believe me, as the father of two adolescents, I know. The view that adolescence is something we all just need to endure is very limiting. To the contrary, adolescents don’t just need to survive adolescence; they can thrive because of this important period of their lives. What do I mean by this? A central idea that we’ll discuss is that, in very key ways, the “work” of adolescence—the testing of boundaries, the passion to explore what is unknown and exciting—can lay the stage for the development of core character traits that will enable adolescents to go on to lead great lives of adventure and purpose.

3. Strive for Total Independence

A third myth is that growing up during adolescence requires moving from dependence on adults to total independence from them. While there is a natural and necessary push toward independence from the adults who raised us, adolescents still benefit from relationships with adults. The healthy move to adulthood is toward interdependence, not complete “do-it-yourself” isolation. The nature of the bonds that adolescents have with their parents as attachment figures changes, and friends become more important during this period. Ultimately, we learn to move from needing others’ care during childhood, to pushing away from our parents and other adults and learning to lean more on our peers during adolescence, to then learning to both give care and receive help from others. That’s interdependence.

When we get beyond the myths, we are able to see the real truths they mask, and life for adolescents, and the adults in their lives, gets a whole lot better.

Unfortunately, what others believe about us can shape how we see ourselves and how we behave. This is especially true when it comes to teens and how they “receive” commonly held negative attitudes that many adults project (whether directly or indirectly)—that teens are “out of control,” or “lazy” or “unfocused.” Studies show that when teachers were told that certain students had “limited intelligence,” these students performed worse than other students whose teachers were not similarly informed. But when teachers were informed that these same students had exceptional abilities, the students showed marked improvement in their test scores. Adolescents who are absorbing negative messages about who they are and what is expected of them may sink to that level instead of realizing their true potential. Adolescence is not a period of being “crazy” or “immature.” It is an essential time of emotional intensity, social engagement, and creativity. This is the essence of how we “ought” to be, of what we are capable of, and of what we need as individuals and as a human family.

The Benefits and Challenges of Adolescence

The essential features of adolescence emerge because of healthy, natural changes in the brain. Since the brain influences both our minds and our relationships, knowing about the brain can help us with our inner experience and our social connections to others. During the teen years, our minds change in the way we remember, think, reason, focus attention, make decisions, and relate to others. From around age twelve to twenty-four, there is a burst of growth and maturation taking place as never before in our lives. Understanding the nature of these changes can help us create a more positive and productive life journey.

Life is on fire when we hit our teens. While the adolescent years may be challenging, the changes in the brain that help support the unique emergence of the adolescent mind can create qualities in us that help not only during our adolescent years, if used wisely, but also as we enter adulthood and live fully as an adult. How we navigate the adolescent years has a direct impact on how we’ll live the rest of our lives. Those creative qualities also can help our larger world, offering new insights and innovations that naturally emerge from the push back against the status quo and the energy of the teen years.

For every new way of thinking and feeling and behaving with its positive potential, there is also a possible downside. Yet there is a way to learn how to make the most of the important positive qualities of the teenage mind during adolescence and to use those qualities well in the adult years that come later.

Brain changes during the early teen years set up four qualities of our minds during adolescence: novelty seeking, social engagement, increased emotional intensity, and creative exploration. There are changes in the fundamental circuits of the brain that make the adolescent period different from childhood. Each of these changes is necessary to create the important shifts that happen in our thinking, feeling, interacting, and decision-making during adolescence.

NOVELTY SEEKING emerges from an increased drive for rewards in the circuits of the adolescent brain that creates the inner motivation to try something new and feel life more fully, creating more engagement in life.

Downside: Sensation seeking and risk taking that overemphasize the thrill and downplay the risk resulting in dangerous behaviors and injury. Impulsivity can make an idea turn into an action with a pause to reflect on the consequences.

Upside: Being open to change and living passionately develop into a fascination for life and a drive to design new ways of doing things and living with a sense of adventure.

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT enhances peer connectedness and creates new friendships.

Downside: Teens isolated from adults and surrounded only by other teens have increased-risk behavior, and the total rejection of adults and adult knowledge and reasoning increases those risks.

Upside: The drive for social connection leads to the creation of supportive relationships that are the research-proven best predictors of well-being, longevity, and happiness throughout the life span.

INCREASED EMOTIONAL INTENSITY gives an enhanced vitality to life.

Downside: Intense emotion may rule the day, leading to impulsivity, moodiness, and extreme sometimes unhelpful reactivity.

Upside: Life lived with emotional intensity can be filled with energy and a sense of vital drive that give an exuberance and zest for being alive on the planet.

CREATIVE EXPLORATION with an expanded sense of consciousness. An adolescent’s new conceptual thinking and abstract reasoning allow questioning of the status quo, approaching problems with “out of the box” strategies, the creation of new ideas, and the emergence of innovation.

Downside: Searching for the meaning of life during the teen years can lead to a crisis of identity, vulnerability to peer pressure, and a lack of direction and purpose.

Upside: If the mind can hold on to thinking and imagining and perceiving the world in new ways within consciousness, of creatively exploring the spectrum of experiences that are possible, the sense of being in a rut that can sometimes pervade adult life can be minimized and instead an experience of the “ordinary being extraordinary” can be cultivated. Not a bad strategy for living a full life!

Excerpted from Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain by Dr. Daniel Siegel. Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Siegel. Excerpted by permission of Tarcher/ Penguin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

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Young Minds

Three teenagers—who have all practiced mindfulness through iBme*—talk about how meditation has helped them.

Nathan Worthen, 19

The teen years can be a frightening, dark time. I’ve had friends go every which way—depressed, wild, in trouble. I’ve had some of that too. When you pass the puberty line, the change is so overwhelming it hits like a truck. Hormones bring on emotions that attack from every direction, and you also have so much more intellectual capacity than you did when you were child. You have so many more thoughts and feelings about what’s going on around you. It sometimes makes you want to hide from the world or indulge yourself.

When adults lead with words but not by example, it’s less effective. You see them as authority figures instructing instead of living their own lives. The great thing about the mindfulness teachers I’ve had during my retreats is that they’re always learning, developing their minds. I’m inspired to follow that example. My biggest challenge is to be more generous to myself. The retreats have helped me stop thinking of myself as an idiot if I slip up. Being a teenager is trial and error time. There are a lot of mistakes to be made, but when you learn to rebound from them, it makes you stronger.

Ben Painter, 18

I’m president of the student body at Middlesex School, Concord, Massachusetts. We incorporate a mindfulness class into the curriculum—every freshman takes it and can keep doing it later on.

The biggest challenge in my life is managing time. There’s a lot of pressure: the tough college application process; having as many extracurricular activities as possible; art or community service or whatever. I play tennis and I do giant slalom skiing. Balancing all these things with homework, it’s definitely a struggle.

I didn’t come to mindfulness because of emotional struggle, but more because it helps me with my aspirations and ambitions. I’m a self-motivated guy, so I have pressure coming from within. If I’m tense or nervous before a game or test, I do a short mindfulness practice or a body scan. It’s nice to listen to my body more, instead of only thinking of the tasks I have coming up. Taking a little time to be in the moment has helped me deal better with pressure—it relaxes me. I feel like I do a lot better on tests too. It’s taught me to be more present with friends when hanging out. Not always on my phone.

Through mindfulness I’ve learned that it’s not about achieving everything, it’s about having a good attitude, taking it in stride, and doing better the next time around.

Casey Oparowski, 18

Girls get distorted ideas of how they’re supposed to look and act, the roles they’re supposed to play. It’s sad. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve felt like if I don’t do something profound or have a claim to fame I don’t matter that much. I have to earn being valued. But shouldn’t we just see that inherently we are all valuable?

I feel like teens’ natural curiosity gets pushed down. We’re not encouraged to explore for ourselves, but just accept the truth—but the “truth” we’re getting is mixed up. I left high school and started going to a homeschooling co-op. I’ve been creating my own curriculum, studying a lot by myself, and doing workshops. I do theatre, and I’m interning for a publishing company. I do graphic design and social media stuff there.

I can totally credit the teen retreats for teaching me how to feel without being ashamed of what I’m feeling. If I can settle down my mind and see my direct experience—and also see what kind of stories I put onto those experiences, what opinions and beliefs—I can see past them. I can see that they aren’t true. I’ve witnessed it in so many other teens at the retreats. When people become conscious of what’s actually happening, without any sugarcoating, letting go of opinions and biases, just looking at things as they actually are, that’s where change starts.

*Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme) offers mindfulness retreats for teens throughout the U.S.

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Dr. Dan Siegel: Why I Wanted to Write Brainstorm

The experience of raising his own children and grappling with the fascinating changes adolescence brings inspired the psychiatrist to investigate the radical changes happening in young brains. He wishes he knew what he knows now when his children were teenagers.

Mindful: Why do you think Brainstorm has become so popular?

Dan Siegel: I’m guessing because it’s refreshing news. We’ve been dealing with this period of life in very negative ways, and it’s time to shift the conversation and make use of some helpful scientific understanding.

MF: What motivated you to write the book?

DS: When my children left their teenage years, I wanted to try to understand all the experiences we’d had as a family. I started looking at the popular literature and found a lot of material was insulting to adolescents. There was nothing to help parents or adolescents learn about the new discoveries in the science of the adolescent brain.

MF: If you knew what you know now, would you have done anything differently?

DS: I sure learned a lot researching this book. As a result, I imagine I would have been more patient with my own adolescents, more spacious in my own mind, so that when they pushed against me, I wouldn’t have taken it as personally. When you understand that nature has created changes in the adolescent brain that prepare the child to move from soaking in the knowledge of the world from adults to pushing them back, you have more understanding and appreciation. You see just how much they’re remodeling their brains to see the world through new eyes.

MF: What can an adolescent learn from this book?

DS: An adolescent can learn about what’s going on in their brains in ways they haven’t been taught before. It can debunk the destructive and disempowering myths they’re subject to. Knowing that their brain is going through necessary and positive changes can empower them to face the struggles that come with the quest to find their identity, their place in the world, with more selfunderstanding. In seeing the drive of the brain to explore new things, for example, they may see both the benefit and the risk. As a result, they may find their way toward choices that lessen the risk. If you want the thrill of going fast, for example, you probably don’t want to do it in cars on highways while drinking.

MF: Yet parents are so often the boundary setters.

DS: Quite right. That’s the big challenge. When you say, “Under no circumstance do I want you to do X” to an adolescent, X becomes the very thing they want to do. If an adult—a parent, a teacher, a coach—can embrace their adolescent’s biological need to push back, they can frame things differently. Adults too often assume adolescents are stupid, that they don’t have the capability to develop and follow an inner compass, that they have to be protected from themselves.

MF: How do you do things differently, then?

DS: First off, treat them as people who have the capability to develop an inner compass. It’s just that their brain deemphasizes the downside of risks. By exploring risk with them, you can help foster the development of the compass they will follow in making decisions throughout their life—far preferable to trying to make the decisions for them. That short-circuits the process of moving from dependence to interdependence.

You can also encourage practices that cultivate what I call “mindsight,” the ability to see or know the mind, and I suggest a number in Brainstorm. It’s possible to cultivate a spaciousness of mind that allows us to take in whatever is arising from others and inside ourselves with more openness and presence. And that can help us all navigate this period well—and revive some of the spirit of adolescent exploration when we find it lacking later in life.

This article originally appeared in the June 2014 of Mindful magazine.

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All in the Same Boat

A 7-Minute Mindfulness Practice to Shift out of “Doing” Mode

The ability to recognize and disengage from self-perpetuating patterns of ruminative, negative thought is a core mindfulness skill. The basic tool to shift mental gears is the intentional use of attention and awareness. By choosing what we are going to attend to, and how we are going to attend to it, we place our hand on the lever that enables us to change mental gears.

When can we find opportunities to cultivate “being mode”? In principle, this mode of mind can be practiced in all situations. In being mode, the mind has nothing to do, nowhere to go and can focus fully on moment-by-moment experience, allowing us to be fully present and aware of whatever is here, right now. But the tendency to enter “doing mode” is pervasive, where the present moment is boiled down to a narrow, one-dimensional focus: “What does this have to say about my progress in reaching my goals?”

We can learn to switch out of automatic pilot by bringing our awareness to the present moment.

The doing mode has a strong tendency to keep itself going and to reassert itself once the mind has switched to another mode of processing. It is particularly important, therefore, that the mode to which the mind switches after disengaging from driven–doing be incompatible and inconsistent with that mode, in the same way that it is not possible to be in forward and reverse gears in a car at one and the same time. Being mode is an ideal candidate for such an initial, alternative mode into which to switch.

In the end, we need to balance being and doing mode in our lives. Whether it is because the culture we live in exalts doing, or because driven–doing is often propelled by automatic, well-worn routines, it can easily crowd out other ways of being with one’s experience. We can learn to switch out of automatic pilot by bringing our awareness to the present moment. When we do this, we start to see that we have a choice, and this is often the first step in taking care of ourselves differently in the face of sad moods.

To practice shifting into being mode, try this 7-minute guided practice called Two Ways of Knowing from The Mindful Way Workbook by John Teasdale.

Two Ways of Knowing: A 7-Minute Practice to Shift out of “Doing” and into “Being”

Begin this practice by settling yourself in a chair with both feet flat on the floor. If it feels okay close the eyes.

Thinking About:

• In this first part of the practice you’re invited to take a few minutes to think about your feet without looking at them.
• What thoughts come to mind when you think about your feet? Perhaps there are judgments about your feet. How much you like them? How much you dislike them?
• Perhaps there are thoughts about how you’d like them to be different. Maybe thoughts come to mind about the places your feet have taken you. Perhaps thoughts about problems they may have caused you.
• What thoughts come to mind for you?
• There’s no need to control your thoughts in anyway. Just let the thinking unfold naturally. Taking your time. Taking a few minutes now simply to let thoughts arise.

Shift into Being:

• And now, for the second part of this practice, the invitation is to gently bring your attention down the legs into the feet, sensing your feet directly without looking at them.
• Allowing your awareness to sink into your feet and fill them from the inside to the outside, from the bones, right out to the surface of the skin, perhaps sensing the many small bones within the feet, maybe feeling the sensations of touch on the skin, the sensations in the soles of the feet, the sense of touch and pressure where the feet make contact with the floor. Perhaps exploring with your awareness the boundary between the feet on the floor.
• And now, if you will, clenching your toes, drawing them in as close as you can, being aware of the sensations in the toes, the soles, and the body of each foot. Directly sensing the pressure in the toes, feeling the tightness in the muscles, the coming and going of sensations throughout the feet, ankles, and legs.
• And now, just relaxing the toes, keeping the awareness in your feet and noticing any changes in the sensations in the feet and toes as they relax.
• Before changing your position, taking a few moments to get a sense of the body as a whole.

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Awakening Consciousness in Shadowy Times - Tara Brach

Awakening Consciousness in Shadowy Times –

On both individual and societal levels, suffering arises from the unseen, unfelt parts of our psyche. This talk looks at two interrelated ways of practice that help us to awaken from a limiting self-sense characterized by “something is wrong with me, or you.”  In addition to guided meditations, our time includes sharing from participants.

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Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence (12:36 min) - Tara Brach

Guided Meditation: Relaxing Back into Presence –

When we are stressed, our body and mind contract, and energetically we resist the life in the present moment. This meditation helps de-condition the stress reaction by guiding us to relax open from thoughts, relax physical tension, and gently relax back over and over into living presence.

Free download of Tara’s 10 min meditation:
“Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease”
when you join her email list.

photo: Jon McRay

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1-Minute Grounding Meditation

We’re in Valley Forge National Park, sitting on this amazing tree that’s still alive but lying on the ground, with these deep exposed roots. It’s a great place to practice meditation, a grounding meditation.

There are days when we feel flustered and unrooted, there are times when we feel like we’re just living in our head. Well, it’s easy just a policy, even for a minute, and practice some deep breathing with your feet on the ground.

1-Minute Grounding Meditation

• Take a seat with your feet on the ground
• Take a deep breath in. Feel your body as you inhale.
  
• Take a long breath out. Notice your body as you exhale.
  
• Follow your breath in and out.
  
• Rest your mind on your belly or your chest or at your nostrils. 
• Just be aware as you breathe in and aware as you breathe out.

 

The tree we were sitting under is that small yellow spot in the middle of the above panoramic image of Valley Forge National Park.

 

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Why We’re Hardwired to Armor Our Hearts

Compassion: it feels like a real response to the world we live in particularly to those who have been through a lot. You’ve got two choices: Either we armor our hearts for fear of ever being hurt again, or we make a more courageous decision. We have those resources.

The path to me seems like it’s about transforming obstacles into doorways, which is good for us who have had a lot of obstacles—lots of doorways. And I really do think those doorways lead us home.

I think there’s a hundred ways to practice compassion on a daily basis whether it’s pain in the body, the people in our lives, or our world that seems at war with itself sometimes. The way compassion works in my practice is when we bring that care to difficulty, to pain, to challenges, when we bring that open heart, there’s a tenderness that just naturally arises. Because the truth is that we do care, already. After all my failed strategies, the truth remains that I care. So we open up to our difficulties instead of closing off to them.

It starts with this shift. The message from the mind, for me, is that something has to be done, so I immediately want to go into action. But the message from the body is something needs to be felt, maybe.

Engaging the Compassionate Response

So how do we tend to this inner experience? How do we get intimate with the things that we’re hardwired to push away? How do we show up and bear witness to not only our own humanity but the humanity that we’re surrounded by? And I think that’s the miracle of compassion for me—it’s an alchemy from the things that I’ve always kept at a distance out of self protection to things that I can bring in and tend to.

One of my friends said it so beautifully. He was talking about our friendship and he goes, “Look man, wherever you cut the cake, I’ll be there singing Happy Birthday.” That’s what we’re doing with this practice—whatever’s happening, can we just befriend our experience?

One of my friends said it so beautifully. He was talking about our friendship and he goes, “Look man, wherever you cut the cake, I’ll be there singing Happy Birthday.” I just thought that was so beautiful, and that’s what we’re doing with this practice—whatever’s happening man, sometimes it’s cool, sometimes it’s difficult, and can we just befriend our experience? So we’re looking for this compassionate response, but the compassionate response can only really arise when we tend to the pain. As long as we keep it at a distance, it’s hard for it to arise because it really comes out of the heart, and we don’t have access to the heart because we’re armored up, so part of this is just softening and really tending to the difficulties—our own, and the people around us.

The compassionate response can only really arise when we tend to the pain. As long as we keep it at a distance, it’s hard for it to arise because it really comes out of the heart, and we don’t have access to the heart because we’re armored up, so part of this is just softening and really tending to the difficulties—our own, and the people around us.

I know for me, personally, I was lost in the shadows of a frightened and confused mind for a long time. I acted with a certain kind of blindness, you could say. Some sort of self-protection, twisted through the distorted lens of ignorance and fear. I acted like I didn’t have any relatives. And it was a really lonely outlook. So I have no idea what the people around me are going through. I take some solace in the words of Longfellow who said: “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

So what is a compassionate response to what we’ve been carrying, to what we see in the world? Sometimes it’s easier to practice on the world and then bring it home to ourselves. A lot of us are good at giving, but can we bring it home? Growing up, I was a really tender-hearted little guy, and I thought my heart was something I was supposed to hide from the world. I did my best to armor up. But now I feel like my heart is my greatest gift to the world, so how do I hold this world deep in my heart and offer it up every day as much as I can to the conditions that I find myself in? I would say the practice, for me, is about widening the range of experience that I can meet with a generous heart.

Compassion as Self-Care

When I find myself a little overwhelmed by what’s happening inside of me, I really try to take solace in the sensations themselves. A lot of the times, for me, the overwhelming part is the stories about it, and the stories are just looping, and they are echoes and they can last a really long time. I can tend to the sensations, like the sensation of a broken heart. I went through a divorce and it was like, “Wow, what is the sensation here!” And sometimes it felt like a white-hot poker in my chest and even that could have been overwhelming. So we do take care of ourselves, we do walk ourselves through it—sometimes I can only put my toe in it, sometimes I can cannonball in, but other times I’ve gotta be a little more careful and say, “alright, opening slowly,” and slowly melting that armor around the heart. So it’s not about just ripping our heart open in every moment, it’s about, “Okay, how do I care for me, and everybody else?”—we’re all in this together.

Loving-Kindness Meditation

Here’s a loving-kindness practice from developmental behavioral specialist and mindfulness author Mark Bertin, MD, that can help us extend compassion to ourselves, those around us, and the larger world.

1. Find a comfortable, stable position, either seated or lying down, and observe several breaths. Notice how you’re feeling while letting go of striving or effort to feel otherwise. You cannot force yourself to feel relaxed, nonjudgmental, or anything else in particular. Let yourself simply feel whatever you feel.

2. Next, picture your child. Imagine what you most wish for him. This unbounded affection, deeper than any surface emotions, has traditionally been encompassed within four phrases: “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you feel safe. May you live your life with ease.” Use these phrases or any that capture your deepest wishes, and silently repeat them at a comfortable pace, timed to your breathing.

3. Continue repeating these wishes for your child, reminding yourself of your deepest intentions: “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you feel safe. May you live your life with ease.”

4. After several minutes, move on to yourself. Your inner critic may resist. Yet in spite of all your seeming mistakes, you have the same rights as anyone: “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I feel safe. May I live my life with ease.” Without any sort of demand, offer yourself the some wishes for well-being you extended to your child.

5. After several minutes, imagine a close friend or someone unconditionally supportive, a person for whom you have almost entirely positive feelings. This person also desires happiness, whether going through a stretch of relative ease or more acutely in need of your emotional support. If no one comes to mind, that’s fine and quite common; just continue with the practice for yourself.

6. After a few minutes have passed, move on to a neutral person, a stranger, someone you see around but don’t really know—maybe someone at a local store or gas station, or who works nearby. Extend the some wishes to this neutral person without judging whatever you actually feel or aiming to push yourself. You’re simply paying attention in this way.

7. Now think of a difficult person—not the most difficult, but someone you’ve disagreed with in a smaller way. Your perspectives differ and you must firmly take care of yourself, yet this difficult person’s actions are also driven by a wish for happiness. If this person found relief from his own suffering, it’s likely that his behavior would change. If it’s easier, include yourself: “May we both be happy. May we both be healthy. May we both feel safe. May we both live our lives with ease.”

8. Next, picture your entire family for a while: “May all of us be happy. May all of us be healthy. May all of us feel safe. May we all live our lives with ease.”

9. Finally, if you like, extend the some wishes to everyone in this world. In an unforced way, send this compassionate wish for well-being to anyone you imagine, anywhere.

10. As this practice becomes comfortable for you, you can use it to combat everyday stress. If you feel unmoored, lost, or pulled in different directions, take a moment to wish yourself peace, just as you’d comfort a friend. If your child frustrates you and you lose your temper, briefly practice this meditation for his sake and your own. Remind yourself of your child’s desire for happiness and your own wishes for the same, whatever he may have done.

Reprinted with permission: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Copyright © 2015 by Mark Bertin, from Mindful Parenting for ADHD

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The Difference Between “Being” and “Doing”

The activities of the mind are related to patterns of brain activity. Different mental activities, such as reading a book, painting a picture, or talking to a loved one, each involve different patterns of interaction between networks of nerve cells in the brain. The networks involved in one activity are often different from those involved in another activity. Networks can also be linked together in different patterns. If we looked into the brain, we would see shifting patterns in the activity of networks and in their connections with each other as the mind moves from one task to another. For a while, one pattern predominates, then a shift occurs, so brain networks that previously interacted in one pattern now do so in a different configuration. Over time, we would see the different activities of the mind reflected in continually shifting and evolving patterns of interaction between brain networks.

If we looked long enough, we would see that a limited number of core patterns of brain activity and interaction seem to crop up as recurring features in a wide variety of different mental activities. These core patterns reflect some basic “modes of mind.”

We can think of these modes of mind as loosely analogous to the gears of a car. Just as each gear has a particular use (starting, accelerating, cruising, etc.), so each mode of mind has its own particular characteristics and functions. Over the course of a day, as the mind switches from one kind of activity to another, the underlying mode of mind changes—a little like the way that a car, driven through a busy city, there will be a continuous series of changes from one gear to another. And in much the same way a car can only be in one gear at a time, when the mind is in certain modes, it will not be in other modes at the same time.

Our continued dwelling on how we are not as we would like to be just makes us feel worse, taking us even further from our desired goal. This, in turn only serves to confirm our view that we are not the kind of person we feel we need to be in order to be happy.

The fact that a limited number of fundamental modes of mind underpin a wide variety of mental activities has important implications. It opens a way for us to use aspects of everyday experience to learn new ways to relate to the kind of mind states that lead to rumination. We can think of mindfulness training as a way to learn how to become more aware of your mode of mind (“mental gear”) at any moment, and the skills to disengage from unhelpful modes of mind and to engage more helpful modes. We might describe this as learning to shift mental gears. In practice, this task often comes down to recognizing two main modes in which the mind operates, and learning the skills to move from one to the other. These two modes are known as “doing” and “being.”

The “Doing” Mode

The ruminative state of mind is actually a variant of a much more general mode of mind that has been called the “doing” mode. The job of this mode of mind is to get things done—to achieve particular goals that the mind has set. These goals could relate to the external world—to make a meal, build a house, or travel to the moon—or to the internal world of self—to feel happy, not make mistakes, never be depressed again, or be a good person. The basic strategy to achieve such goals involves something we call the “discrepancy monitor”: a process that continually monitors and evaluates our current situation against a model or standard—an idea of what is desired, required, expected, or feared. Once this discrepancy monitor is switched on, it will find mismatches between how things are and how we think they should be. That is its job. Registering these mismatches motivates further attempts to reduce these discrepancies. But, crucially, dwelling on how things are not as we want them to be can, naturally enough, create further negative mood. In this way, our attempts to solve a “problem” by endlessly thinking about it can keep us locked into the state of mind from which we are doing our best to escape.

How the Discrepancy Monitor Works:
1) First we create an idea of how we want things to be, or how we think they should be.

2) Next, we compare that with our idea of how things are right now.

3) If there is a difference between how things are and how we want them to be, then we generate thoughts and actions to try to close the gap.

4) We monitor progress to see whether the gap is increasing or decreasing, and adjust our actions accordingly.

5) We know we have reached our goal when our idea of how things are coincides with our idea of how we want them to be.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this doing mode. In fact, quite the reverse: This approach has worked brilliantly as a general strategy for solving problems and achieving goals in the impersonal, external world—whether those goals be as humble as buying all the items on our weekly shopping list or as lofty as building a pyramid. It is natural, then, that we should turn to this same doing mode when things are not as we would like them to be in our personal, internal worlds—our feelings and thoughts, or the kind of person we see ourselves to be. And this is where things can go terribly wrong.

But before we go on to describe how, it is important to forestall any possible misunderstanding. We are in no way suggesting that the doing mode necessarily causes problems—it does not. It is only when, doing mode “volunteers for a job it can’t do” that problems arise. In many, many, areas of our lives, doing mode volunteers for a job it can do, and our lives are the better for it. To make the distinction clearer, we call problematic applications of this mode driven–doing, as opposed to the more general doing.

In being mode, the mind has “nothing to do, nowhere to go” and can focus fully on moment-by-moment experience, allowing us to be fully present and aware of whatever is here, right now.

If action can be taken straightaway to reduce a discrepancy, and the action is successful, there is no problem. But what if we cannot find any effective actions, and our attempts to think up possible solutions get nowhere? With an external problem we might simply give up and get on with some other aspect of our lives. But once the self becomes involved, it is much more difficult simply to let go of the goals we have set.

For example, if we are upset because a long-standing relationship has just ended, there will be many potential discrepancies between our current reality and how we wish things to be. We may wish for restoration of the relationship, or for the start of another relationship. Most likely, we also wish we were not so upset. There may be solutions we could find. But what if we begin to feel that we are bound to end up alone, concluding that there is, in us, some basic failure, a person that caused the relationship to fail? This conclusion suggests no ready solution, and the discrepancy remains. And yet we cannot let go because we have such a central need not to be this kind of person—what could be more important to us than our own sense of identity?

The result of all this is that the mind continues to process information in doing mode, going round and round, dwelling on the discrepancy and rehearsing possible ways to reduce it. And our continued dwelling on how we are not as we would like to be just makes us feel worse, taking us even further from our desired goal. This, in turn only serves to confirm our view that we are not the kind of person we feel we need to be in order to be happy.

The mind will continue to focus in this way until the discrepancy is reduced or some more immediately urgent task takes the focus of the mind elsewhere, only to return to the unresolved discrepancy once one has dealt with the other task. When the doing mode is working on internal, self-related goals like this, we can more accurately call it the “driven–doing” mode.

If we look closely, we will see the driven–doing mode in action in very many areas of our lives. Whenever there is a sense of “have to,” “must,” “should,” “ought,” or “need to,” we can suspect the presence of doing mode.

In doing mode, by contrast, this wonderful multidimensional complexity of experience is boiled down to a narrow, one-dimensional focus: What does this have to say about my progress in reaching my goals?

How else might we recognize the driven–doing mode subjectively? Its most common feature is a recurring sense of unsatisfactoriness, reflecting the fact that the mind is focused on processing mismatches between how we need things to be and how they actually are. Driven–doing mode also involves a sense of continuously monitoring and checking up on progress toward reducing the gap between these two states (“How well am I doing?”). Why? Because where no immediate action can be taken to reduce discrepancies, the only thing the mind can do is continue to work on its ideas about how things are and how they should be, in the hope of finding a way to reduce the gap between them. This it will do over and over again.

In this situation, because the “currency” with which the mind is working consists of thoughts about current situations, desired situations, explanations for the discrepancies between them, and possible ways to reduce those discrepancies, these thoughts and concepts will be experienced mentally as “real” rather than simply as events in the mind. Equally, the mind will not be fully tuned in to the full actuality of present experience. It will be so preoccupied with analyzing the past or anticipating the future that the present is given a low priority. In this case, we are only aware of the present in a very narrow sense: The only interest in it is to monitor success or failure at meeting goals. The broader sense of the present, in what might be called its “full multidimensional splendor,” is missed.

Driven–doing underlies many of our reactions to everyday emotional experiences—we habitually turn to this mode to free ourselves from many kinds of unwanted emotion. It follows that we can use such everyday emotional experiences, and other reflections of the general driven–doing mode of mind, as training opportunities to learn skills that enable us to recognize and disengage from this mode.

Let us consider an alternative mode of mind, “being.”

THE “BEING” MODE

The full richness of the mode of “being” is not easily conveyed in words—its flavor is best appreciated directly, experientially. In many ways, it is the opposite of the driven–doing mode. The driven-doing mode is goal-oriented, motivated to reduce the gap between how things are and how we think we need them to be; our attention is narrowly focused on these discrepancies between actual and desired states. By contrast, the being mode is not devoted to achieving particular goals. In this mode, there is no need to emphasize discrepancy-based processing or constantly to monitor and evaluate (“How am I doing in meeting my goals?”). Instead, the focus of the being mode is “accepting” and “allowing” what is, without any immediate pressure to change it.

“Allowing” arises naturally when there is no goal or standard to be reached, and no need to evaluate experience in order to reduce discrepancies between actual and desired states. This also means that attention is no longer focused narrowly on only those aspects of the present that are directly related to goal achievement; in being mode, the experience of the moment can be processed in its full depth, width, and richness.

Doing mode involves thinking about the present, the future, and the past, relating to each through a veil of concepts. Being mode, on the other hand, is characterized by direct, immediate, intimate experience of the present.

Doing and Being differ in their time focus. In doing, we often need to work out the likely future consequences of different actions, anticipate what might happen if we reach our goal, or look back to memories of times when we have dealt with similar situations to get ideas for how to proceed now. As a result, in doing mode, the mind often travels forward to the future or back to the past, and the experience is one of not actually being “here” in the present much of the time. By contrast, in being mode, the mind has “nothing to do, nowhere to go” and can focus fully on moment-by-moment experience, allowing us to be fully present and aware of whatever is here, right now. Doing mode involves thinking about the present, the future, and the past, relating to each through a veil of concepts. Being mode, on the other hand, is characterized by direct, immediate, intimate experience of the present.

The being mode involves a shift in our relation to thoughts and feelings. In doing mode, conceptual thinking is a core vehicle through which the mind seeks to achieve the goals to which this mode of mind is dedicated. This means, as we have seen, that thoughts are seen as a valid and accurate reflection of reality and are closely linked to action. In doing mode, the relationship to feelings is primarily one of evaluating them as “good things” to hang on to or “bad things” to get rid of. Making feelings into goal-related objects in this way effectively crystallizes the view that they have an independent and enduring reality.

By contrast, in being mode, the relation to thoughts and feelings is much the same as that to sounds or other aspects of moment-by-moment experience. Thoughts and feelings are seen as simply passing events in the mind that arise, become objects of awareness, and then pass away. In the being mode, feelings do not so immediately trigger old habits of action in the mind or body directed at hanging on to pleasant feelings or getting rid of unpleasant feelings. There is a greater ability to tolerate uncomfortable emotional states. In the same way, thoughts such as “do this, do that” do not necessarily automatically link to related actions, but we can relate to them simply as events in the mind.

“Allowing” arises naturally when there is no goal or standard to be reached, and no need to evaluate experience in order to reduce discrepancies between actual and desired states.

In being mode, there is a sense of freedom and freshness as experience unfolds in new ways. We can be responsive to the richness and complexity of the unique patterns that each moment presents. In doing mode, by contrast, this wonderful multidimensional complexity of experience is boiled down to a narrow, one-dimensional focus: What does this have to say about my progress in reaching my goals? Discrepancies between actual and goal states then trigger fairly well-worn, general-purpose habits of mind that may have worked well enough in other situations. But, as we have seen, when, in the driven–doing mode, the goal is to be rid of certain emotional states, these habits can backfire and lead to perpetuation rather than cessation of unwanted mind states.

Clearly, doing and being are fundamentally different modes of mind. Before drawing out the implications of this difference, it is important that we be very clear on one point: Being mode is not a special state in which all activity has to stop. Doing or being are both modes of mind that can accompany any activity or lack of activity. Recall that we gave a particular name to the type of doing mode that causes problems— “driven–doing”—and this point may become clearer.

For example, it is possible for one to try to meditate with so much focus on being someone who gets into a deeply relaxed state that if anything interrupts it, one feels angry and frustrated. That would be meditating in a driven–doing mode rather than a being mode because the meditation is “driven” by the need to become a relaxed person. Or take another example: It is your turn to do the dishes and there is no way out of it. No one is going to rescue you from this chore. If you do the dishes with the aim of finishing them as quickly as possible to get on to the next activity and are then interrupted, there will be frustration, since your goal has been thwarted. But if you accept that the dishes have to be done and approach the activity in being mode, then the activity exists for its own sake in its own time. An interruption is simply treated as something that presents a choice about what to do at that moment rather than as a source of frustration.

Next week we’ll post a practice called “‘Two Ways of Knowing” that helps us work with the doing and being modes.

This article was adapted from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, by Zindel V. Segal, Ph.D., C.Psych.

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The Seventy-Ninth Organ

I love my gadgets and my social media. But often I find myself checking my phone in the morning before I’ve even checked in with myself or my loved ones in person. How often have you tapped the glowing screen of your iPhone before getting out of bed in the morning? Where is your phone right now? How do you feel when you don’t know where it is? Do you usually keep it in your pocket, your bag, your desk, another room?

At the 2013 Wisdom 2.0 conference, a presenter from Google gave a simple demonstration. I’ve adapted it into the following practice, called the Seventy-Ninth Organ. Try it with your kids, but also try it with your adult friends and colleagues.

Thee human body has seventy-eight organs. We need each of them to do its job to keep us alive and keep our physical system at equilibrium. If one were removed, we’d feel a sharp pain, and quickly our biological systems would be thrown out of balance.

These days, most of us also have a seventy-ninth organ, an external organ known as the smartphone. Here’s a short practice for being more mindful with your phone:

A Mindful Cell Phone Practice:

• Take out your phone now (if you don’t have it in your hand already).
• Don’t turn it on.
• Just notice how it feels in your hand.
• Notice your emotions, your urges, your body’s response as you hold it—its familiar size, shape, and weight, suited to your hands.
• Now find someone near you.
• Turn on your phone and mindfully notice how you feel as the screen lights up.
• Hand your phone to your partner.
• Ask yourself these questions and be honest with your answers:
  1) How did it feel when you were asked to hand your phone to someone else?
  2) How did it feel to actually hand it to them?
  3) How do you feel when they are holding your phone?
• After a moment, get your phone back.
• Take a moment and reflect with your partner on this practice. What happened for you, and why do you think it did?

The goal here isn’t to resist or fight technology, but to make an ally of technology.

Consider those times you reach for your phone as an opportunity for a short mindfulness practice to check in with yourself.

The beeps and buzzes of our devices can also be reminders to take a breath or check in with ourselves. Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist and writer, suggests sometimes not shutting off the cell phone when you meditate. Instead, just sit in meditation and notice the body’s and the mind’s reactions to each beep and buzz of the phone, the stories and urges and emotions as they arise.

Just sit in meditation and notice the body’s and the mind’s reactions to each beep and buzz of the phone, the stories and urges and emotions as they arise.

We can also build subtle reminders into our devices, such as making the background wallpaper some kind of reminder to breathe or check in. How many times a day do we type a password into our devices? This too can be a reminder to be mindful if we make our password breathe or pause.

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9 Ways Mindfulness Reduces Stress

You’ve probably heard that mindfulness helps reduce stress. But how does being mindful actually help you do that?

Mounting scientific evidence from hundreds of universities—including dedicated centers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in the United States and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom—strongly suggests that mindfulness not only reduces stress but also gently builds an inner strength so that future stressors have less impact on our happiness and physical well-being. Here are some of the ways mindfulness helps you with stress.

Mindfulness not only reduces stress but also gently builds an inner strength so that future stressors have less impact on our happiness and physical well-being.

1. You become more aware of your thoughts. You can then step back from them and not take them so literally. That way, your stress response is not initiated in the first place.

2. You don’t immediately react to a situation. Instead, you have a moment to pause and then use your “wise mind” to come up with the best solution. Mindfulness helps you do this through the mindful exercises.

3. Mindfulness switches on your “being” mode of mind, which is associated with relaxation. Your “doing” mode of mind is associated with action and the stress response.

4. You are more aware and sensitive to the needs of your body. You may notice pains earlier and can then take appropriate action.

5. You are more aware of the emotions of others. As your emotional intelligence rises, you are less likely to get into conflict.

6. Your level of care and compassion for yourself and others rises. This compassionate mind soothes you and inhibits your stress response.

7. Mindfulness practice reduces activity in the part of your brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is central to switching on your stress response, so effectively, your background level of stress is reduced.

8. You are better able to focus. So you complete your work more efficiently, you have a greater sense of well-being, and this reduces the stress response. You are more likely to get into “the zone” or “flow,” as it’s termed in psychology by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

9. You can switch your attitude to the stress. Rather than just seeing the negative consequences of feeling stressed, mindfulness offers you the space to think differently about the stress itself. Observing how the increased pressure helps energize you has a positive effect on your body and mind.

A Meditation Practice for Responding to Your Stress

1. Bring to mind a current challenge in your life that is the cause of some stress. A situation that you’re willing to work with at the moment. Not your biggest challenge but not so small that it causes no stress at all. A 3 on a scale of 1–10 is a good guide.

2. Bring the situation vividly to mind. Imagine being in the situation and all the difficulties associated with it.

3. Notice whether you can feel the stress in your body. Physical tension, faster heart rate, a little bit of sweating, butterflies in your stomach, tightness in the back or shoulders or jaw, perhaps. Look out for your stress signals.

4. Tune in to your emotions. Notice how you feel. Label that emotion if you can, and be aware of where you feel the emotion, exactly, in your body. Just try to spot it as best you can. The more precisely you can locate the emotion and the more you notice about the sensation, the better. With time and experience, you’ll keep getting better at this.

5. Bring mindful attitudes to the emotion. These include curiosity, friendliness, and acceptance.

6. Try placing your hand on the location of the sensation—a friendly hand representing kindness. Do it the way you would place your hand on the injured knee of a child, with care and affection.

7. Feel the sensation together with your breathing. This can promote a present-moment awareness and mindful attitudes to your experience.

8. When you’re ready, bring this meditation to a close.

This article was adapted from Shamash Alidina’s book The Mindful Way Through Stress

Want to help create a happier world? Check out Shamash’s HappierWorldConference.com in London on 5th November.

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A Guided Breathing Meditation to Cultivate Awareness

This practice is a breathing meditation. We focus on breathing not because there’s anything special about it but because that physical sensation of breathing is always there. Throughout the practice, you may find yourself caught up in thoughts, emotions, sounds—wherever your mind goes, simply come back again to the next breath. If you’re distracted the entire time and come back just once, that’s perfect.

1) Sit comfortably, finding a stable position you can maintain for a while, either on the floor or in a chair. Close your eyes if you like, or leave them open and gaze downward toward the floor.

2) Draw attention to the physical sensation of breathing, perhaps noticing the always-present rising and falling of your abdomen or chest, or perhaps the air moving in and out through your nose or mouth. With each breath, bring attention to these sensations. If you like, mentally note, “Breathing in… Breathing out.”

3) Many times over, you’ll get distracted by thoughts or feelings. You may feel distracted more often than not. That’s normal. There’s no need to block or eliminate thinking or anything else. Without giving yourself a hard time or expecting anything different, when you discover that your attention has wandered, notice whatever has distracted you and then come back to the breath.

4) Practice pausing before making any physical adjustments, such as moving your body or scratching an itch. With intention, shift at a moment you choose, allowing space between what you experience and what you choose to do.

5) You may find your mind wandering constantly, caught up in a whirlwind—that’s normal, too. Instead of wrestling with or engaging with those thoughts as much, practice observing, noting wherever your attention has been, and then returning to the physical sensation of breathing. 

6) Let go of any sense of trying to make something happen. For these few minutes, create an opportunity to not plan or fix or whatever else is your habit. Exert enough effort to sustain this practice, but without causing yourself mental strain. Seek balance in this way; if you find yourself mostly daydreaming and off in fantasy, devote a little extra effort to maintaining your focus.

7) Breathing in and breathing out, return your attention to the breath each time it wanders elsewhere.

8) Continue to practice observing without needing to react. Just sit and pay attention as best as you are able. As hard as it is to maintain, that’s all that there is. Come back over and over again, without judgement or expectation.

9) When you’re ready, gently open your eyes. Take a moment and notice any sounds in the environment. Notice how your body feels right now. Notice your thoughts and emotions. Pausing for a moment, decide how you’d like to continue on with your day.

Reprinted with permission: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Copyright © 2015 by Mark Bertin, from Mindful Parenting for ADHD

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Four Ways to Overcome Self-Defeating Thoughts

What gives you a sense of self-worth?

Data from my well-being survey recently revealed that positive self-views (or feeling good about oneself, a general belief that we are good, worthwhile human beings) were the best predictor of happiness—even more so than 19 other emotional processes including gratitude and strong personal relationships. Positive self-views emerge from self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-worth, among other things.

When we feel bad about ourselves, we unconsciously act in ways that end up confirming our beliefs.

Why are positive self-views so essential to well-being? Because these views not only affect how we feel; they also affect our thoughts and behaviors. When we feel bad about ourselves, we unconsciously act in ways that end up confirming our beliefs. For example, if we feel like we are not good enough for a good relationship, a good job, or financial stability, we stop pursuing these goals with the intensity required to reach them, or we sabotage ourselves along the way.

So how do we break out of the negative cycle? Below I highlight four ways that you can start to promote positive self-views and begin to change the patterns of your life.

1. Figure out your needs

When we don’t feel good about ourselves, it’s easy to think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us; it feels deeply rooted and unchangeable. In reality, though, we may have failed to clarify (and then pursue) exactly what would make us feel like a person that we could love.

When we don’t feel good about ourselves, it feels deeply rooted and unchangeable. People tend to feel badly about themselves when they feel powerless to get their needs met—so you can start this process by figuring out what your needs are.

People tend to feel badly about themselves when they feel powerless to get their needs met—so you can start this process by figuring out what your needs are. But be careful: It’s important that we don’t start demanding that the people in our lives fulfill our every want. Rather, clarify for yourself what you need. What people, places, or experiences are must-haves to live a fulfilling life? What aspects of your life—if removed—would leave you without a sense of purpose? Really think carefully about this and try not to consider others’ needs right now.

Now, every person has different needs. For example, many people feel that they need to have children; this is one of those things that they need to do in this life to feel whole. Other people need to travel. I personally need to love what I do for a living. Without this, my life would feel meaningless to me. But everyone is different.

If you’re having a hard time figuring out your needs, just reflect on times in your life when you weren’t thriving. What was missing?

2. Live authentically

You figured out your needs already, right? If your needs are being met, this step is easy. Just keep them in mind, and don’t stray too far from living a life that is authentically yours.

But what if your needs aren’t being met? You have to start thinking about how you will communicate your needs, how you will start creating a life that meets your needs, and what you will do if people in your life can’t meet those needs.

This step was really hard for me. I discovered that some of my core needs were not being met. It was easier in many ways to just go with the flow than to be more direct about exactly what I needed and exactly what would happen in the future if those needs weren’t met. I drew some scary lines in the sand and clarified for myself exactly what my deal breakers were—deal breakers for my friendships, my marriage, and my work life. At the same time, I discovered that I had been pushing to get my wants met, even though they were not so important. I prioritized, focused, and communicated my needs with brutal honesty, and I let everything else go.

It’s funny how standing up for yourself and living a life that is authentically yours generates positive self-views. I now have more positive views of myself because I pushed for what matters to me. It was terrifying to put myself first, but it was worth it.

3. Forgive yourself

Now that you understand your needs and have a plan for getting them met, you are on your way to feeling that sense of self-assuredness that comes from having control over your own life. You’re moving in the right direction. But what about those past mistakes? You know, those things you’re not so proud of? Almost everyone has said something hurtful, forgotten an important event, or betrayed someone they love.

To develop positive self-views, you must keep in mind that everyone makes mistakes.

We have to remember that our mistakes do not define us. They do not make us good people or bad people. If we learn and grow from them, then they make us better people. To develop positive self-views, you must keep in mind that everyone makes mistakes. Forgive yourself, and give yourself credit for trying not to make the same mistakes again.

4. Celebrate your quirks

Each of us is one of a kind. When we cherish our eccentricities and celebrate our flaws, we begin to develop a deep love for ourselves just as we are. Instead of focusing on all the things wrong with us, self-celebration enables us to derive deep satisfaction from being uniquely us. Practice self-celebration by enjoying your awkward laugh or poking fun at your inability to remember people’s names. Or you can do as I do, and smile big for pictures to show off your buck tooth.

While celebrating your quirks, don’t forget to keep growing. Keep your eyes and ears open to the people you trust. Listen when they tell you that you have work to do on yourself. It doesn’t make you bad, just human. People you care about will be the ones that help you distinguish between flaws that need acceptance and flaws that need fixing. (Remember, you want others to get their needs met, too.) This part is crucial, and it keeps us from sliding out of self-love and into complacency.

In sum, feeling positively about ourselves takes effort. But by changing our views, we can change our lives.

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.

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Reflection: Deepening the Truths We Share (8:32 min) - Tara Brach

Reflection: Deepening the Truths We Share –

Our capacity for love grows as we practice deepening the truths we share with each other. This short reflection offers guidance in how to bring your presence and heart to truth telling.

Listen to the full talk here:
Seeking What’s True  – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 3)

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Seeking What’s True – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 3) - Tara Brach

Seeking What’s True  – Within Ourselves, Beyond Our Self, With Each Other – (Part 3)

The ground of the spiritual path is realizing the nature of reality and living our lives from this awakened heart and mind. The first of this three-part series examines the process of radical self-honesty – the non-judgmental recognition of what’s going on inside us, and especially what has been outside of our conscious awareness. The second talk deepens this process with the practices of self-inquiry, looking directly into the one who is seeking truth. The third part explores the challenges and blessings of honesty in our relationships.

photo: Shell Fischer

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Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment (19:01 min) - Tara Brach

Meditation: Relaxing Back and Saying Yes to the Moment –

When we are stressed, our conditioning is to tighten our body. We tense against our moment to moment experience.  This meditation is a powerful practice of de-conditioning this reactivity by learning to relax back into presence, and to respond to difficulty by  saying “yes.” Through relaxing back and saying “yes,” we discover our heart’s capacity for unconditional love.

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How to Free Yourself from Your Personal Stories

To feel unworthy is to suffer. It feels like you’re flawed and must conceal your faultiness from others or risk being shunned. But concealing, pretending, and holding yourself apart from others tends to make you feel alienated and then interpret these feelings as proof that you’re flawed. This is a vicious cycle of self-doubts and self-judgments that separates you from others and prevents you from feeling whole and complete. Though you may be stuck in this self-concept, it’s far more arbitrary and malleable than you may think. Mindfulness and self-compassion allow you to see and acknowledge the tenderness and pain in your story without falling under the delusion that the story defines who you are. It may be your story, but it isn’t you.

Exercise: AWARE

An effective way of working with self-stories is summed up in the acronym AWARE, which stands for allow, witness, acknowledge, release, and ease up.

Allow all of your thoughts and feelings to come and go as they will.
This will help you soften your reactions to whatever comes up for you in the space of mindful awareness. Allowing is a kind and curious attitude that enables you to look more deeply into your stories and learn from them rather than becoming entranced by them or trying to block them, both of which will just leave you more stuck. By allowing your experience in this way, you can learn to accept all thoughts as vehicles for insight rather than as proof of anything, including any inherent unworthiness or inadequacy. Allowing enables you to recognize that a thought is just a thought, whether you like it or not.

Witness the narrative with which you construct your sense of self.
Sometimes you’re the one who has acted: “I did…” “I should have…” “I shouldn’t have…” “I wish I could have…” Sometimes you’re the one who has been acted upon: “Somebody did this or that to me.” “Everyone ignored me.” “People always…” “No one ever…” Either way, it drones on and on as long as you indulge it. From the perspective of mindful awareness, you can witness the habitual ways your mind creates the narrative-based self without identifying with them. Witnessing is curious and nonjudging. It doesn’t cling to or avoid anything. With this tool you can look more deeply into even very painful events with your heart wide open. Just as an emergency room physician looks deep into a wound without flinching and finds the shard at its core, you may discover things you no longer need to carry or blame yourself for.

When you use allowing, witnessing, and acknowledging to see the storyteller at work, you can finally stop identifying with the self created by your stories. You don’t have to believe everything you think. Why stay in a prison of self when the door is wide open? Let everything go. Let everything be.

Acknowledge what you experience happening in stories you tell about yourself.
Practice sitting quietly and observing whatever arises. Note the physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions you experience as they come and go. Use simple phrases to acknowledge your experience, such as “worrying,” “planning,” “thinking,” and so on. Is there a character you are attempting to create or assassinate? Notice any repetitive or habitual elements through which you create the narrative-based self. Is there a theme? Is the storyteller cruel or kind, brilliant or blind? Are there familiar judgments? Are there familiar longings? Acknowledge all that you notice.

Release the self-concepts that you’ve fabricated with these old stories and concepts.
Disidentify from your habitual and familiar ways of thinking of yourself. Fame, shame, loss, gain, pleasure, and pain are all transient experiences, not attributes of self. When you use allowing, witnessing, and acknowledging to see the storyteller at work, you can finally stop identifying with the self created by your stories. You don’t have to believe everything you think. Why stay in a prison of self when the door is wide open? Let everything go. Let everything be.

Ease up and emerge from this trance of unworthiness.
When you’re stuck in a self-concept of inadequacy and unworthiness, a great deal of your self-talk involves comments about how you’re doing, looking, or performing, and so much of this internal dialogue calls forth comparisons to others and judgments about yourself. This is neither necessary nor skillful, and it’s never any fun. Everything isn’t about you. Plus, when you’re caught up in thoughts about yourself, you’re missing what’s actually happening in each irreplaceable moment of your life.

Allowing, witnessing, acknowledging, releasing, and easing up are primary skills in meditation practice and will also serve you well in the unfolding moments of your life—at work, at home, with friends, and in everything you do, particularly when you notice that your self-talk has become critical and unkind. The AWARE practice can become a way of life that helps you grow a little freer each time you practice it.

This article was adapted from Dr. Bob Stahl’s and Steve Flowers’ book, Living with Your Heart Wide Open.

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