Tag: Mindfulness

Mindfulness

The multitasking epidemic

Issy Martin

Modern society applauds the multitasker. The more plates we can spin simultaneously, the bigger the pat on the back. Did you manage to do the online shop while helping your child with their homework, answering a couple of work emails, emptying the dishwasher and feeding the cat? Our frantic, relentlessly competitive, modern culture holds you in high esteem. Well done you.

Except that multi-tasking isn’t the magic mode that cultural expectations and our incessant inner critic would have us believe, according to research conducted at Standford University by Clifford Ivar Nass.

Nass describes our generation as suffering from an epidemic of multitasking. The biggest multitaskers among us will typically switch between at least four different tasks at any one time.

The adrenalin, cortisol and dopamine that course through our body when we keep another ball in the air, tricks our mind into thinking that we have increased our productivity. However, as Nass and his research team demonstrated, multitasking decreases productivity by 60%

While the juggle may seem to work for us at first, it is ultimately unsustainable. Multiple tasks battle for our attention, each one distracting us from another. Not only does this chaos of distraction decrease our productivity, it also decreases our IQ. We find it harder to remember things, and we are more likely to make mistakes.

Inevitably the dance of multitasking leads us away from meaningful connection. We are too irritable, too busy, too distracted. Creativity, and people, are kept at a distance, lest they disturb the plates are spinning with such desperation it can start to feel like the plates are spinning us.

So what can we do to protect ourselves from this epidemic of multitasking?

In their book Ikigai. The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, Héctor García and Francesc Miralles propose various strategies for fostering a state of flow – the antithesis to multitasking. Many of their suggestions are useful, even when we have no specific task on which we need to focus, as they serve to bring us back to the present, something a wealth of research has shown to improve our mental health.

  • Don’t look at a screen for the first hour you’re awake and the last hour before you go to sleep.
  • Turn off your phone when you wish to focus on a specific task.
  • Designate one day a week to turn off all devices.
  • Read and respond to email only once or twice a day.
  • Practice mindfulness or other meditative techniques, or simply get out for a walk as this help you return to the present when you find yourself getting distracted.

Turning down the distractions and quietening the noise of our busy lives and gifting each thing that we do with our undivided attention can help us find our natural flow, our Ikigai. Once we shift our focus away from the past and future, and situate our whole selves in the present moment there is no place for anxiety and so more space for a steady flow of progress towards where we would like to be.

A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.

Albert Einstein

References

García, H., & Miralles, F. (2017). Ikigai. The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. London: Penguin Random House.

Mindfulness

Pausing thought

Issy Martin

In Solution Focused Hypnotherapy we talk about how frequently we experience some form of trance in our everyday lives. Some of this daydream-like thinking can be positive. We can lose ourselves in memories of entertaining times we have spent with our friends. We become absorbed by the imagined reality of a holiday we’re looking forward to.

But unless we practice otherwise, most of us spend most of the time in negative trance. In negative trance we are criticising ourselves for something we did or didn’t do or say; or we are criticising someone else for something they did or didn’t do or say. In negative trance we are plotting, scheming, just-in-case-ing, imagining the worst and mapping out possible ways around it.

This negative inner dialogue comes with a heaped side order of anxiety, frustration, guilt, anger, and a bunch of other unpleasant emotions that spike our body’s natural stress response. When this happens our brain pumps our bodies full of stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, which in turn serve to maximise both our mental and our physical discomfort. The gates to our intellectual brains slam shut and we get locked inside our emotional primitive minds where every negative thought becomes absolutely, irrationally, unbearably, horrendous.

In his book Waking Up, neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris refers to this rumination, both positive and negative, as “the trance of discursive thinking“, to which the antidote is meditation.

In Solution Focused Hypnotherapy we combine solution focused therapy and hypnotic trance to reassure and guide our conscious minds towards a place of peace, where, just for a little while, they let go of their grip, and the inner dialogue quietens, the never-ending thought train draws to a temporary halt.

It is in this meditative state of trance that we can enjoy, as Harris describes “a mind undisturbed by worry, merely open like the sky.”

And with our minds open, as Psychiatrist and Clinical Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson pointed out, we become much more receptive to ideas and understanding. We are more able to accept positive suggestions without our conscious minds jumping in to disagree.

When we press pause on the overwhelming blare of constant thought, especially the criticism, judgements, assumptions, and fears, we allow our minds space to breathe. To relax. To reduce our stress levels enough to unlock the door back into our intellectual minds where we can find perspective, reason, rationale and balance.

Mindfulness

Is mindfulness selfish?

Issy Martin

One of the criticisms often levelled at meditative practices, like self-hypnosis, is that they are selfish. Too introspective, too inward-looking. Drawing our attention away from all the bad things happening in the world that we should be out there trying to fix. Encouraging us to settle, to embrace inadequacies. To sit cross legged in a bubble of peace while everything around us collapses. 

In 2017, Psychiatrist Dr Alison Gray of the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggested that solitary meditative practices can cause us to become more self-centred (Petter, 2017). Instead, Dr Gray encouraged us to seek out a community with whom we can practice mindfulness.

However, as COVID-19 isolates much of the world in their own homes, away from their support networks and away from their communities, these solitary meditative practices can be a useful tool in lowering our anxiety, building our resilience, and connecting with our inner resources. Gifting ourselves some time each day to nurture our minds, release anxiety and embrace the present moment can be a powerful antidote to the feelings of frustration and helplessness brought about by the lockdown. We are locked down, but our minds don’t have to be.

Embracing mindfulness to protect our mental health can be far from selfish. As neuroscientist, philosopher and best-selling author Sam Harris writes in his book Waking Up, meditating alone doesn’t necessarily equate with self-centredness; in fact, it can amount to precisely the opposite: “One can […] spend long periods of time in contemplative solitude for the purpose of becoming a better person in the world – having better relationships, being more honest and compassionate and, therefore, more helpful to one’s fellow human beings.”

We don’t need to feel guilty for prioritising our inner peace sometimes, even while those around us are struggling, as we have more to offer them when we ourselves are calm and centred. As Sam Harris argues “The world is in desperate need of improvement – in global terms, freedom and prosperity remain the exception – and yet, this doesn’t mean we need to be miserable while we work for the common good.”

References

Petter, O. (2017, December 29). Mindfulness could be making you selfish, psychiatrist warns. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/mindfulness-selfish-mediation-psychiatrist-dr-alison-gray-a8133106.html

Harris, S. (2014). Waking up. Simon & Schuster.

Mindfulness

Daydreaming

Issy Martin

In Solution Focused Hypnotherapy, we strive to break through inaccurate and media-fuelled misunderstandings of what trance is. We emphasise its normalcy, its ordinariness, as something fundamentally, and very basically, human. We talk about how we experience trance every day, several times a day, when we daydream while doing something relatively monotonous that doesn’t occupy much brain space, like washing up, or driving somewhere very familiar.

And yet, daydreaming itself is something that has been scorned, ridiculed, and undervalued, almost as much as trance. The unreachable windows of Victorian school buildings are monuments to education’s efforts to drill out our natural inclination to daydream. Society teaches us from a young age that daydreaming is inconvenient, a waste of time, something we are reprimanded for doing.

So we train ourselves to measure our day by its productivity and shake off our reveries as quickly as we can. We get increasingly good at doing this, so that by the time we are adults we inevitably feel lost, out of touch with our inner self, at a loss as to who we are, because we have spent so little time stopping to listen, to process, to understand.

In The School of Life: An Emotional Education (2019), Alain de Botton eloquently captures with his words, both the unfortunate reputation, and the significant value, of daydreaming:

“THE IMPORTANCE OF STARING OUT OF THE WINDOW

We tend to reproach ourselves for staring out of the window. Most of the time we are supposed to be working, or studying , or ticking things off a to-do-list. It can seem almost the definition of wasted time, It appears to produce nothing, to serve no purpose. We equate it with boredom, distraction, futility. The act of cupping our chin in our hands near a pane of glass and letting our eyes drift in the middle distance does not enjoy high prestige. We don’t go around saying, ‘I had a great day today. The high point was staring out of the window.’ But maybe, in a better society, this is exactly what people would quietly say to one another.
The point of staring out of a window is, paradoxically, not to find out what is going on outside. It is, rather, an exercise in discovering the contents of our own minds. It is easy to imagine we know what we think, what we feel and what’s going on in our heads. But we rarely do entirely. There’s a huge amount of what makes us who we are that circulates unexplored and unused. It’s potential lies untapped. It is shy and doesn’t emerge under the pressure of direct questioning. If we do it right, staring out of the window offers a way for us to be alert to the quieter suggestions and perspectives of our deeper selves.”

Mindfulness

Back to nature

Issy Martin

In Solution Focused Hypnotherapy we talk about the creation of anxiety through negative thinking. Negative thoughts about the future, about what might happen. Negative thoughts about the past. About what did, or didn’t happen, and why.

This forward-thinking, backward-thinking machine can be incredibly difficult to switch off. Our subconscious minds get stuck in fight, flight or freeze mode, and our conscious minds, if they get a look-in, rationalise (incorrectly) that what we’re doing is productive thinking.

This constant back and forth can feel like being on a never-ending Pirate Ship ride, and the physical symptoms can be remarkably similar. Nausea, headache, dizziness, confusion…

So if you’re struggling to switch off, and if you can, get out. Immerse yourself in nature. Breathe. And ask yourself,

What can I hear?

What can I see?

What can I smell?

What can I touch?