It’s the inner critic that lives in our heads that is constantly judging ourselves and others. This inner critic doesn’t make us feel good and can keep us stuck in cycles of stress, anxiety, depression and addiction. So why do we let this auto-judge run rampant? The reality is most the time we’re not aware enough to keep it in check and even when we are we don’t know what to do about it.

Here’s one trick to get your self-judgments in check:

The first thing you need to develop before gaining freedom from the inner critic is an awareness or acknowledgment of it. That allows a space to sit between your awareness and the judgment itself. In this space you find perspective, clarity and regain the choice to engage a healthier response. This moment is what I call The Now Effect.

Once you’re sitting in that space you can choose to count the judgments that arise.

Note right now if your mind is making a judgment about this idea before even trying it out. That’s numero uno. Great job!

This may sound silly, but counting your judgments has a specific effect. It not only widens the space between your awareness and the judgment itself, but it also impersonalizes it. When you impersonalize something you stop identifying with it and so it loses its hold on you.

One thing we know is that as you intentionally practice and repeat something it starts to become automatic.

Here are two ways to get your judgments in check:

1. Toward others – It may be easier to start this process noticing judgments of others. Get these in check by setting an intention right now to count your judgments toward other people for one day.
2. Toward yourself – The next day count self-judgments.

Your mind may wander from this practice at times and that’s perfectly fine. The moment you notice you’ve wandered is a moment of clarity, a moment of mindfulness where you can choose to gently redirect your intentions back to the practice. That’s the Now Effect in action.

Don’t be enslaved by your judgments, give this a shot and let your experience be your guiding teacher.

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

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If you guessed the jack hammer, you’re right. But why is it that our brains are drawn toward what’s annoying or negative more than what’s pleasant and positive? And how can we rebalance this automatic nature of our minds?

This is a tricky one. It’s been well established that our brains have an automatic negativity bias. In the animal kingdom the magic rule was, as author of Just One Thing Rick Hanson puts it, “Every day, eat lunch, but don’t be lunch.” Those people whose minds were not primed to immediately target danger didn’t pass their genes on through the evolutionary chain. So our brains, over time, became more deeply ingrained with the bias toward focusing on threats and negativity.

An awareness of this bias alone can help you with the old adage “Don’t believe everything you think.”

Simply the knowledge that your thoughts are more inclined toward the negative primes your mind to begin to question these thoughts as they come. For example, in a moment you find your mind swirling on negative details you may start to also have a thought arise, “my mind has a bias toward the negative.” This thought pops you into a mindful space, a moment of clarity and choice that I call The Now Effect.

In this space you will have the awareness to ask the question “Is this thought true? What evidence do I have for this thought? Is there another way I can see this situation?” This opens the door to see opportunities and possibilities you never knew existed.

As we intentionally practice and repeat having these experiences they get stored as implicit memories. These are the memories that influence our immediate snap judgments and decision making from moment-to-moment.

So imagine a time where you get caught in a swirl of automatic negative thinking about the future, yourself, or the past and seconds later an awareness comes over you like a moment of grace allowing you to break free from this cycle and into a space of choice to be your own best friend in that moment instead of a reactive enemy.

The truth is, just reading this right now has already primed your mind to see these moments of choice to break free from the confines and unhealthy habitual patterns in the mind and into a space of choice, possibility and freedom.  As intentionally practice this, you’ll literally retrain the auto-pilot of the mind toward healthier and more effective ways of responding to life, this is one of the greatest gifts of the Now Effect.

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

Man with jackhammer photo available from Shutterstock.

In 2005, I conducted a national study in an effort to see if people could in fact cultivate what I called “sacred moments” and see what effect that had on their stress and well-being. Lo and behold, in practicing 5 minutes a day for 5 days a week, for 3 weeks, there was a significant positive effect in stress reduction and well-being. What was so fascinating to me was that for many it allowed them to touch a sense of spirituality when they felt they had never been able to do this before.

A quote from one participant:

“[I experienced sacred moments] through this process. I never noticed any Spiritual moments before this. [The words] unique holy and worthy of reverence was not within the scope of my intellectual reaction of things. To be able to pray was something that I was not willing to [do]. What I like about [the sacred moment practice] is it allowed me to explore spirituality in a nonthreatening manner and for me that was special and unique.”

If you want to give it a spin, here were the same instructions the participants were given:

1. Choose an object - This object should represent something special, precious, or sacred to them. Almost anything can be sanctified and considered a sacred thing. According to Emile Durkheim (1915), known as one of the originators of modern sociology, “By sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word anything can be sacred” (p. 52).
2. Mindful Check-In - Begin each practice by taking a few moment to be conscious of the breath and then slowly bring attention to the physical body, thoughts and feelings, hearing, seeing, tasting, and smelling. Just be aware of whatever you notice.
3. The Sacred Object - After the mindful check-in, gently shift attention to the sacred object and being open to what was sacred in the moment. There was no maximum time specified for this exercise. Instructions to participants permitted them to go longer than the suggested 5 minutes and asked them to simply make a log of the time.

Cultivating this practice is a very personal experience and at the same time sacred moments are shared by millions around the world.

As always, don’t take my word for it; go into this practice with a beginner’s mind, letting your judgments reside at bay, and just noticing whatever arises for you in the moment.

Please share your thoughts, emotions, and stories below. You interactions provide a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Stones photo available from Shutterstock.

Some people call this a mid-life crisis, but it can happen at all different times of life. What’s missing?

Albert Einstein once said:

“Try not to become a man of success but rather a man of value.”

Today we’re driving our kids more than ever to be “successful.” But what does this really mean? Somewhere along the line we’ve become confused as a culture and lost sight of what really matters. The test is simple, what makes us feel good? Not in a hedonistic way, but more in line with the Greek term eudaimonia. This can be translated more as a meaningful happiness.

So what’s missing? An understanding of personal values. The key question is: What do you believe is important in life? Is it helping other people, being honest, working hard, being compassionate, spending time with family or people in your community, or maybe being mindful?

This isn’t just a cursory question, it’s one to take seriously and then take an inventory of your life seeing where it lives and where it’s missing.

What would your life look like if you were actually living in accordance with what you valued? Visualize this and let it be your guide toward a happier life.

Sometimes life can truly be that simple.

Sometimes you’re living your values and not even taking a moment to be mindful of it. Think about where in your day to day you are actually living in the way you think is most important.

Right now, stop what you’re doing and take a minute to look forward toward the rest of the day. Where are you living your values? Where is an opportunity to stop in line with them more?

Take this moment to live as if it mattered.

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

Einstein’s formula photo available from Shutterstock

Self-inflicted attention deficit disorder, exhaustion, lack of focus, reduced health, and burnout. This leads to lower job satisfaction, morale, and productivity. Hardly the results we want.

Did you know that over 50% of the workforce in the US says Job Stress is a major problem in life? This is twice as much as ten years ago. We also have 50% greater healthcare expenditures and corporations are losing over $300 Billion annually because of work-related stress! What’s going on here?

In an age of so much distraction, the old approach of time management at work is being thrown out the window in favor of attention management. Mindfulness is a practical way to get this.  Just think, how has the inability to control attention gotten in the way at work for you (not to mention in your personal relationships)? We’re often spending time worrying about a multiple future projects or dwelling on regrets of past ones. This makes it difficult to really concentrate on a task or another person at work. When we multi-task, we are paying attention to many things and while this may seem like a good thing, we’re actually losing quality, efficiency, and time.

Corporate America has started to take action, with companies like Google, Apple, Aetna, Nexterra, Intel, Twitter, Facebook and many others leading the way integrating mindfulness into the workplace. Many of them are harnessing the power of technology to bring mindfulness to their workforce to help them reduce stress, increase focus and be more productive.

Smartphone applications have come out to help us take advantage of technology to integrate more of this into our daily lives.

For example, if you have an iPhone, you can get many Mindfulness Apps that are available to integrate mindfulness into your life. The Mindful Solutions at Work Program just got released that introduces simple practices to integrate into your day, keeps track of your practices, and even sends email reminders of how you’re doing to help you stay on the path.

Here’s a fun 2 minute video that shows you how this works in daily life.  

One of the major reasons that corporate America is grabbing onto this is because the science is there that backs it up.

Now we can all let our experience be our best teacher. As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interactions create a living wisdom for us all to benefit from. 

Woman with a laptop photo available from Shutterstock.

I’m not saying that being straddled with large student loans and the inability to get a job isn’t a real stressor. But today more parents are finding themselves wondering if they made a mistake in not focusing more on the non-achievement oriented things in life that lead to simple pleasures and happiness.

If we take a step back we might see that some of our happiest times are those where we slow down and become mindful of the simple things in life. As we pay attention to our bodies, we can be grateful for the ability to see, hear, smell, taste and touch (or for most of these if one is missing). Some of my happiest moments are those where my family and I didn’t leave our house at all and played together, ate together and rested together.

Becoming mindful of the life around us is completely free and can help you regulate emotions during difficult times, create more flexibility and creativity in decision making, cultivate resilient feelings like gratitude, empathy and compassion and open you up to things that you can enjoy in life.

I’m not advocating for getting rid of achievement or ditching any ideals or efforts to get hired, but more to open the mind to the idea that we are active participants in our own health and well-being despite the more difficult conditions.

This may be a lesson to the rest of us whose kids are not yet in college that making achievement in school the primary focus may be something to reconsider. In what ways may it be important to broaden the scope of what really matters in life to be finding value in the simple things?

In the words of the late Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff–and it’s all small stuff  “Be grateful for the good times and graceful during the more difficult times.”

A little mindfulness can help us during these times and bring our kids up to realize this piece of wisdom.

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

Young woman photo available from Shuterstock.

The places we work and the people we surround ourselves with are likely not trying to put mindfulness at the forefront of their lives. We’re also looking for that perfect quiet time to sit, stand or lie down and practice intentionally, paying attention to the present moment with fresh eyes. Sometimes we get restless, agitated, bored or begin to doubt ourselves that we can ever truly be mindful and so we reactively avoid it.

The following is a quote by the 15^th century Indian poet Kabir that I love to bring up again and again because it gets underneath these obstacles and drops us into mindfulness.

“Wherever you are, that is the entry point.”

This is it, the underlying truth behind mindfulness. If the intention is to bring awareness to the direct experience of the present moment, with fresh eyes, then life itself becomes the practice.

This is a core teaching I bring up when I speak with clients, groups, and it’s even one of the fundamental principles in the Training Ground section of The Now Effect.

What’s so powerful about understanding that wherever you are that is the entry point is that it frees us of this false belief that we need to be in a certain head space to train our minds toward mindfulness. In the moments you are doubting, agitated, restless or bored, these are the entry points to the present moment.

I often ask the question, “How does it feel in your body?” This allows it to be an entry point. If we can bring a curious awareness to the sensation that’s there we are present with it. This is a 180 degree shift from what we would normally do which is to avoid what is unpleasant and as a result, we inevitably become enslaved by that mind trap.

What if we changed the way we saw the uncomfortable feelings that drive us away from our intentions. What if instead of trying to get away from them we saw these as parts of ourselves that are now anchors to the present moment. They are entry points into a space of choice, possibility, opportunity and freedom. This is The Now Effect.

When we use them as entry points we also send the message internally that we’re worth paying attention to. One thing we know from learning theory is that what we practice and repeat in life we get more of. The more we turn away from ourselves in difficult moments, the more we water the ideas in our mind that we’re not worth paying attention to, in other words, watering the seeds of unworthiness.

What can you do to remember that no matter what is happening in your life at any given moment, that is what you can practice being mindful with?

Maybe it would help to write down the quote and put it up at work or a home. Perhaps putting it as the background on your phone, we all know how often we look at those nowadays. Or maybe it would help to stay connected through an online community that reminds you of these important mindful lessons.

Be intentional right now and consider a way to create that 180 degree shift and change what drives you away from the present moments of your life into supports that remind you to be present.

As a little gift I’ll leave you with a practice. If you have 10-minutes go ahead and engage with this now, training your mind in mindfulness.

Enjoy!

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

Businesswoman photo available from Shutterstock.

A number of people continue to write in with stories. If you have a story, continue writing in and as long as there are good stories that teach the rest of us how mindfulness can work in our lives, I will choose from them from time to time to post on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

Of course those that get chosen can also send me a link that I’ll include in the post where people can learn more about them.

Here’s a wonderful story that teaches us the wisdom behind slowing down in life by Angeliki:

I had a moment of mindfulness yesterday morning. I was working from home, planning my busy day, stressing out about everything, trying to solve all sorts of problems that are going on in my life. I felt restless and I couldn’t concentrate on my work. And then, I looked outside and I saw the sun peeking through the tall trees and everything went quite in my head and I spent a few moments meditating on that image. It was like I connected back with the present moment and I “fell awake” again.

When things become challenging, when life throws unexpected events my mind goes back to previously well travelled paths, to old familiar ways of thinking. I realized that it needs a lot of practice and determination to override the normal tendencies of our mind to label, problem solve, multi-task and ruminate constantly. I’m still a work in progress.

So, I’d like to thank my brain for doing what it’s supposed to be doing and for trying to help me out but I’d rather take a different path this time. I’ll slow down. I’ll slow down so that I can accomplish everything and enjoy the process along the way. I want to give my best self to every single project and not just a fraction of my stressed self.

I decided the sunlight every morning will act as a reminder that I won’t rush through the day, I’ll do one thing at a time and I’ll enjoy my time doing it.

When we intentionally choose to slow down in life, we can’t help but to take in more of the life that is unfolding moment to moment.

Take this as a challenge today, slightly slow down in the things you’re doing, whether it’s walking to your car, eating your food, or even talking to a friend. See what you notice, let your experience be your best teacher.

Image of trees from Shutterstock.

In that moment he said he felt incredibly connected and the worries that had surrounded him before seemed to drift away as a feeling of belonging arose. Belonging is the essence of well-being.

In his latest book, Your True Home Thich Nhat Hanh describes it best:

“Suppose I hold a leaf in my hand. What do you see?

A leaf is a leaf; it is not a flower. But in fact, when we look

deeply in to the leaf, we can see many things. We can see

the plant, we can see the sunshine, we can see the clouds,

we can see the earth. When we utter the word leaf, we

have to be aware that a leaf is made of non-leaf elements.

If we remove the non-leaf elements, such as the sunshine,

the clouds, and the soil, there will be no leaf left. So it is

with our bodies and ourselves. We’re not the same as, nor

are we separate from, other beings. We’re connected to

everything, and everything is alive.”

What’s the wisdom in this for the rest of us?

Connection is all around us, but most of the time we’re so busy living on auto-pilot that we miss out on it. I would argue that one of the greatest epidemics of today is a sense of disconnection.

Even Mother Theresa said:

“The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging.”

Our greatest work may just be to incline our minds toward the connection that is always there. Perhaps we can do a little practice that runs along the lines of Thich Nhat Hanh’s writing.

If you can for a moment, put your lens of judgment aside of whether this is something that is for you or not, you will give yourself the opportunity to let your experience be your teacher as you engage in the following 5-step connection practice.

1. Whether you’re at work or at home, allow yourself to view some form of nature, let’s use a tree of leaf as an example.
2. Take a few deep breaths.
3. Bring a beginner’s mind to what you see. This is the idea of seeing as if for the very first time.
4. Bring awareness to the elements that make up the leaf. Consider the interaction of the sun, rain, air, and soil that make up this leaf. Consider how you are also made up of these same elements. Repeat to yourself, “Just like me.”
5. Feel the sense of connection and how that feels in your body.

To make this more informal and see how it can weave into your daily life, the next time you see a leaf, tree, or even a person, say to yourself, “Just like me” and see what arises.

It’s well documented at this point that connection is the root of well-being and disconnection is the root of dis-ease.  When we think about it at the core of feeling anxious, depressed, addicted or in the throws of trauma is a feeling of disconnection. Understanding that connection isn’t just a trait, but a skill that can be cultivated is understanding that you are an active participant in your health and well-being. Don’t let your snap judgments keep you from opening up to what could be beneficial to you. Give it a try.

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

Photo by William Warby, available under a Creative Commons attribution license.

Read this first and then practice to get a front row seat into how your mind works:

1. Close your eyes and begin to open the mind to just hearing sounds
2. Notice the thoughts that begin to comment on or create stories around the sounds
3. Notice how the mind wants to move away from or toward certain sounds
4. Become aware of how all sounds come and go
5. As it ends be aware of how your body feels

Okay, now practice for 1 minute.

After you practice here is the famous question…drum roll…What did you notice about your mind?

For me, I often notice the transient nature of sounds, which is just a basic fact of life when it comes to all things whether its thoughts, emotions, sensations, sounds, or tastes. It’s the famous saying, “This too shall pass.”

I also notice that my mind starts making associations around the sounds, if an airplane flies overhead, I see a picture of an airplane in my mind and perhaps a story around the last or next flight I’m going to be on begins to replay or rehearse. Of course this is going to happen; there are billions of connections in the brain occurring at any given moment, so a lot of associations that can be made.

I also notice that my body gets tense when my mind doesn’t like certain sounds and opens up when I hear sounds I do like.

Usually by the end my body is often calm, showing me that when I’m aware of the present moment it can often have a calming effect.

How does this give us a brief insight into everything?

When you come to think of it the mind reacts in the same way to everything. There’s always a stimulus, whether it’s a new project at work, a fight with your friend, or the feeling of the sunshine splashing on your face on a cool fall day. The mind then reacts with a story about that stimulus that then leads to new feeling states.

If you know this, it can help pop you out of the auto-pilot reaction and not take your reactions too seriously. When we get tangled up in anxiety about the future, grief about the past or rage full anger about something we think somebody else thinks, we can recognize that our mind is just doing what it always does, hooking into some stimulus, creating a story around it, and getting us going. One thing we also know is that whatever feeling is here will come and go, just like sounds.

The thing to do is then anchor yourself to something in the present moment and that can even be the feeling itself. Become curious about it, let it be your teacher just like the sounds into the transient nature of all things. Allow it to show you that if you can use it as an anchor to the present moment, you can experience more freedom in your life.

And that’s a brief insight into everything.

Please share your thoughts and experiences below. Allow this to be a community where we learn from one another.

Photo by mikeyskatie, available under a Creative Commons attribution license.