Mindfulness is big! And that in itself can be a barrier. We worry that if too many diverse benefits are claimed to flow from mindfulness then perhaps it is too good to be true, like the magic elixirs peddled by snake oil salesmen of old. And if too many practices are labelled as mindfulness then it can't be anything special. But perhaps the real barrier is that it isn't something you get from explanations of theory, it is something you can only experience by doing - a "praxis" you need to practice.
But why practice mindfulness? Most commonly it is positioned as being about well-being. But, to me, that is simply one subset of outcomes that may flow from the practice. I see mindfulness as essentially about intentional change - whether that is in well-being, in performance, in personal behaviour, or in relationships. I'd go further and say that mindfulness is essential to intentional change.
Mindfulness means paying more attention to what is really going on, both externally and internally. It takes us off "auto-pilot" so that (a) we become more aware of the choices we have in front of us and (b) we make our choice consciously rather than by unconscious reflex. In other words, we can act intentionally, with full awareness of our actions.
Conceptually this sounds simple - and it is. But it isn't easy! Neuro-biologically it means more processing in our Pre-Frontal Cortex (which is the part of the brain where we make conscious decisions based on our imagination of possible future consequences). Unfortunately, the PFC is a very energy (resource) hungry processor and our brain has evolved to try and avoid using it. Our tendency to be on auto-pilot most of the the time is actually a very energy efficient design! This tendency becomes even more extreme under stress (ie threat), when the chemicals produced literally shut down PFC processing as an unnecessary "luxury".
And this brings us back to the reason for practice. In a calm moment when we are not stressed, and when we are able to spend the energy on doing it - and often with someone else's help - we can all become mindful and plan to do things differently. But change only happens when we can take our intention into real-life and interrupt our reflex reaction "in the moment". This interruption is what needs practice. It literally builds new brain processing capability, in the same way that physical exercise builds new muscle.
So whatever you are trying to change, start a daily mindulness practice (eg go to http://mindfulnessatwork.com) and see what happens.
Showing posts with label 3.1 Mindfulness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3.1 Mindfulness. Show all posts
Coaching as reverse hypnosis
Although it's been a while since the last post, I am going to write about the same theme - perception!
What is prompting me is a recent conversation about whether the impact a particular programme has on participants is effectively a form of hypnosis, ie it is the programme leader's planted suggestion that creates particiapants' reactions.
What that set me thinking is that, as a coach, I am often carrying out what I could call reverse hypnosis. I am undoing the self-hypnosis that causes people to see things that are not actually there, but are simply creations of their own mind (ie their own particular psyche).
Because these illusiory creations are what stop people changing in practice. Their inability to do things differently is a perfectly rational (and sensible) response to what is sometimes to a completely irrational (false) perception. Once we have found a way to break their irrational perception, they have relatively little difficulty in doing things differently.
It's like if a stage hypnotist creates a suggestion to someone that an object is red hot, they will not touch it - in fact it would be insanely irrational for them to touch it. You would be reckless (and probably unsuccessful) if you tried to help someone overcome their reluctance to touching things they thought were red hot!
In the same way, if someone's psyche creates the illusion that a particular situation or person is highly dangerous, you would be reckless (and probably unsuccessful) if you tried to persuade them to ignore the obvious threat they can see. What you have to do is help them break the illusions of their self-hypnosis, so that that they no longer see self-suggested threats only genuine ones.
If you can do this, a different reaction seems so obvious that sometimes people are not even aware they have changed their behaviour. In their mind they continue simply to respond rationally to each situatioin or person that faces them.
But what has fundamentally changed is that they are now seeing reality rather than an illusion.
What is prompting me is a recent conversation about whether the impact a particular programme has on participants is effectively a form of hypnosis, ie it is the programme leader's planted suggestion that creates particiapants' reactions.
What that set me thinking is that, as a coach, I am often carrying out what I could call reverse hypnosis. I am undoing the self-hypnosis that causes people to see things that are not actually there, but are simply creations of their own mind (ie their own particular psyche).
Because these illusiory creations are what stop people changing in practice. Their inability to do things differently is a perfectly rational (and sensible) response to what is sometimes to a completely irrational (false) perception. Once we have found a way to break their irrational perception, they have relatively little difficulty in doing things differently.
It's like if a stage hypnotist creates a suggestion to someone that an object is red hot, they will not touch it - in fact it would be insanely irrational for them to touch it. You would be reckless (and probably unsuccessful) if you tried to help someone overcome their reluctance to touching things they thought were red hot!
In the same way, if someone's psyche creates the illusion that a particular situation or person is highly dangerous, you would be reckless (and probably unsuccessful) if you tried to persuade them to ignore the obvious threat they can see. What you have to do is help them break the illusions of their self-hypnosis, so that that they no longer see self-suggested threats only genuine ones.
If you can do this, a different reaction seems so obvious that sometimes people are not even aware they have changed their behaviour. In their mind they continue simply to respond rationally to each situatioin or person that faces them.
But what has fundamentally changed is that they are now seeing reality rather than an illusion.
Reflecting on mindfulness
This post is also prompted by the recent AC conference, this time inspired by a great session on mindfulness from Dr Michael Chaskalson. The more I find out about (and experience / practice) mindfulness meditation the more I understand why its popularity is growing so fast, and the more I see its value to us as coaches (as much as to our clients). Here are a few key take-aways from Michael's session.
I loved his de-bunking of the idea that mindfulness involves complicated techiniques or secret processes. Explaining the basic principles, he said "the main thing is just to be here" - by which he explained that he meant here in this moment, as opposed to "on autopilot" whilst we are thinking about some other moment in the past or the future. It's so simple - though it's not always easy. And, for me, it's so much what we need to do in coaching. When you can be fully present with your client, you find amazing things can happen very quickly (see an earlier post about doing 10 minute coaching sessions on a stand at this year's HRD conference).
I liked his clarity about the purpose of meditation: "mindfulness practice leads to an emergent property of mindfulness in everyday life". This echoes Dr Dan Siegel's definitions of the mind and the healthy mind. Siegel's definitions would explain mindfulness practice as like an exercise to make the mind healthier, in the same way physical exercise makes the body healthier. Must be a good thing!
Lastly, I found Michael's personal style in leading a breathing focused mindfulness exercise was very helpful to me. I often find it difficult to focus on my breathing without then taking conscious control of it, ie starting to consciously decide how deeply and how fast or slow I "should be" breathing. This is exactly why breathing focused meditation is such a good exercise for me - I can practice being with something and giving it full attention without immediately doing something to it. And it's easy to follow his guidance on how to turn the 10 minute breathing exercise into a "one minute meditation" for busy executives. Just start as usual... and stop after one minute.
I loved his de-bunking of the idea that mindfulness involves complicated techiniques or secret processes. Explaining the basic principles, he said "the main thing is just to be here" - by which he explained that he meant here in this moment, as opposed to "on autopilot" whilst we are thinking about some other moment in the past or the future. It's so simple - though it's not always easy. And, for me, it's so much what we need to do in coaching. When you can be fully present with your client, you find amazing things can happen very quickly (see an earlier post about doing 10 minute coaching sessions on a stand at this year's HRD conference).
I liked his clarity about the purpose of meditation: "mindfulness practice leads to an emergent property of mindfulness in everyday life". This echoes Dr Dan Siegel's definitions of the mind and the healthy mind. Siegel's definitions would explain mindfulness practice as like an exercise to make the mind healthier, in the same way physical exercise makes the body healthier. Must be a good thing!
Lastly, I found Michael's personal style in leading a breathing focused mindfulness exercise was very helpful to me. I often find it difficult to focus on my breathing without then taking conscious control of it, ie starting to consciously decide how deeply and how fast or slow I "should be" breathing. This is exactly why breathing focused meditation is such a good exercise for me - I can practice being with something and giving it full attention without immediately doing something to it. And it's easy to follow his guidance on how to turn the 10 minute breathing exercise into a "one minute meditation" for busy executives. Just start as usual... and stop after one minute.
Is the mind simply "a placeholder for the unknown"?
Last week I went to a mind-blowing 2 day lecture on the subject of "Why Psychotherapy Works" by Dan Siegel, a leading figure in the field of inter-personal neuro-biology and the author of Mindsight, The Mindful Brain, The Mindful Therapist and other titles. Of course, before this event, I couldn't explain what I mean by mind-blowing - I can now!
The first and most powerful thing Dan gave us was his definition of the mind. We all talk about it a lot, but what is it? As one of his psychiatrist colleagues put it to him, "we use this word simply as a placeholder for the unknown". To Dan Siegel the mind is:
(1) "A self-organising emergent process for regulation..." A terrible but well-established (and accurate) phrase borrowed from the field of complex systems theory (mathematics). The process continuously develops from the interaction of elements of the system, and loops back to regulate further interactions of these elements;
(2) "...of the flow of energy and (hence) information..." Again, not using energy to have some vague and mystical meaning, but referring for example to electrical energy passing along neurons in the brain, chemical energy used to transfer information across synapses, and kinetic energy used to transfer information from one person to another (in sound waves etc);
(3) "...within the body (brain and elsewhere) and relationships." This is the most elegant piece of the definition - once you accept the idea of looking at the mind in terms of energy and information flows, it is obvious that these do cross from one person to another. Psychologists (and coaches) have long understood the importance of relationships to the developing and adult psyche (ie the mind), but most other "scientific" approaches to the mind have excluded relationships by putting a hard boundary at our skin.
This definition alone (given in the first session before coffee on the first day) made the event worthwhile. But after coffee, Dan gave us his other fundamental definition, to answer the question: What is a healthy mind? He says that a well-functioning mind is one that is well integrated, not just metaphorically but structurally / physically. Things are integrated if they are both differentiated and linked - avoiding being either rigidly connected or chaotically disconnected. This is another wonderfully elegant definition - simple, yet incredibly powerful when you apply it to explain both what can go wrong and how you can improve things.
Using these two definitions as building blocks, the rest of the two days was a tour de force - bringing in ideas from fields as diverse as mindfulness meditation and quantum theory (for once talking about this with an accurate understanding - it's a pet hate of mine how many people use and abuse the ideas of quantum theory). Please do google Daniel Siegel to explore his work in more detail. Enjoy!
The first and most powerful thing Dan gave us was his definition of the mind. We all talk about it a lot, but what is it? As one of his psychiatrist colleagues put it to him, "we use this word simply as a placeholder for the unknown". To Dan Siegel the mind is:
(1) "A self-organising emergent process for regulation..." A terrible but well-established (and accurate) phrase borrowed from the field of complex systems theory (mathematics). The process continuously develops from the interaction of elements of the system, and loops back to regulate further interactions of these elements;
(2) "...of the flow of energy and (hence) information..." Again, not using energy to have some vague and mystical meaning, but referring for example to electrical energy passing along neurons in the brain, chemical energy used to transfer information across synapses, and kinetic energy used to transfer information from one person to another (in sound waves etc);
(3) "...within the body (brain and elsewhere) and relationships." This is the most elegant piece of the definition - once you accept the idea of looking at the mind in terms of energy and information flows, it is obvious that these do cross from one person to another. Psychologists (and coaches) have long understood the importance of relationships to the developing and adult psyche (ie the mind), but most other "scientific" approaches to the mind have excluded relationships by putting a hard boundary at our skin.
This definition alone (given in the first session before coffee on the first day) made the event worthwhile. But after coffee, Dan gave us his other fundamental definition, to answer the question: What is a healthy mind? He says that a well-functioning mind is one that is well integrated, not just metaphorically but structurally / physically. Things are integrated if they are both differentiated and linked - avoiding being either rigidly connected or chaotically disconnected. This is another wonderfully elegant definition - simple, yet incredibly powerful when you apply it to explain both what can go wrong and how you can improve things.
Using these two definitions as building blocks, the rest of the two days was a tour de force - bringing in ideas from fields as diverse as mindfulness meditation and quantum theory (for once talking about this with an accurate understanding - it's a pet hate of mine how many people use and abuse the ideas of quantum theory). Please do google Daniel Siegel to explore his work in more detail. Enjoy!
To improve thinking... try listening
I was talking last week to a friend who runs his own (non-coaching) business about taking time to think. He was explaining that things were going really well but that he was so busy he never felt he gave enough time to thinking about the strategy.
We talked about how the brain tries to avoid thinking (see earlier posts / David Rock: "Your Brain at Work") and also about the often-suggested idea of setting aside just 10 minutes each morning for some quality thinking. He said he'd tried that, but once he'd set aside the 10 minutes he hadn't known what he should start thinking about.
Hearing him talk, I had the sudden realisation that the way we talk about thinking doesn't communicate very well what we should be doing to improve its quality. Because the most powerful thinking isn't with the conscious brain, it is with the unconscious. And, in fact, you have to quieten the conscious brain to allow yourself to hear the creative thinking your unconscious brain has been working on. There's a great chapter in the recent book ":59 seconds" by Richard Wiseman which describes an empirical experiment to demonstrate this.
So 10 minutes quality thinking is really about 10 minutes quality listening... to yourself. Sometimes a coach can help with that listening process, especially if they understand the power of simply paying attention (see Nancy Kline: "Time to Think"). But the individual can also do it themselves. All it takes is regular practice! It may be another reason why practices such as mindfulness mediation, yoga, Tai Chi etc are growing in popularity. These practices are adopted not just for health or spiritual development, they can also help you think better.
So that is my thought for the day: quality thinking time should be renamed quality self-listening time.
We talked about how the brain tries to avoid thinking (see earlier posts / David Rock: "Your Brain at Work") and also about the often-suggested idea of setting aside just 10 minutes each morning for some quality thinking. He said he'd tried that, but once he'd set aside the 10 minutes he hadn't known what he should start thinking about.
Hearing him talk, I had the sudden realisation that the way we talk about thinking doesn't communicate very well what we should be doing to improve its quality. Because the most powerful thinking isn't with the conscious brain, it is with the unconscious. And, in fact, you have to quieten the conscious brain to allow yourself to hear the creative thinking your unconscious brain has been working on. There's a great chapter in the recent book ":59 seconds" by Richard Wiseman which describes an empirical experiment to demonstrate this.
So 10 minutes quality thinking is really about 10 minutes quality listening... to yourself. Sometimes a coach can help with that listening process, especially if they understand the power of simply paying attention (see Nancy Kline: "Time to Think"). But the individual can also do it themselves. All it takes is regular practice! It may be another reason why practices such as mindfulness mediation, yoga, Tai Chi etc are growing in popularity. These practices are adopted not just for health or spiritual development, they can also help you think better.
So that is my thought for the day: quality thinking time should be renamed quality self-listening time.
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