Mindfulness makes you happier but you might be surprised at the reason why.
Research shows that it's not just something that can be seen.
Good feelings can make us healthier and improve the quality of our lives. But it's hard to change positive emotions because almost half of our happiness seems to be caused by our genes.
Some things, like practising gratitude, giving money to others, doing loving-kindness meditation, and practising mindfulness, have made people feel better. Mindfulness is a set of skills and a way of looking at life. It means paying attention to whatever is going on in the present moment and accepting and being open to whatever is happening inside or outside of you. Some studies have found that mindfulness programmes make people feel better, but we don't know why. A recent study tried to find out more about this issue.
Taking note of your experiences in the present
One way to practise mindfulness is to slow down and deliberately focus on different parts of your experience, such as what you feel in your body (e.g., body temperature, breathing, muscles), what you think in your thoughts, emotions, or senses (e.g., what you see, hear, taste, feel, or smell), or what is going on around you (e.g., listening mindfully to someone who is talking). When your mind wanders, you start to notice it and consciously try to bring it back to what you were focusing on. Monitoring is the act of directing attention on purpose.
Keeping track of what's going on in your life may make you happier by helping you slow down enough to enjoy things or notice more of the good stuff around you. You may start to see the trees and flowers more, appreciate how the sun feels on your skin, or take comfort in the loving look of your partner or child.
On the other hand, noticing both good and bad feelings as they happen may also make you more aware of bad feelings and sensations in your body, such as tension. Some thoughts or feelings may be unpleasant or hard to handle. Even if positive emotions are felt, they are quickly replaced by negative ones. So, just keeping track of things might not be enough to make us happier.
Accepting your own feelings and thoughts
Acceptance is the second part of being aware. Acceptance means letting your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and cravings be what they are and looking at them with kindness, gentleness, and an open mind. It is the middle way between ignoring your feelings and becoming too attached to them. When you give hard things time and space, they can become easier to deal with.
Acceptance is the opposite of both judging and holding on to things. When you judge and criticise yourself, you're not willing to accept that things are the way they are and can't be changed now. Clinging is when we don't let good things end, try to feel happy when we don't, or try to avoid life's natural pain and ups and downs.
Acceptance can make us feel better because it can change how we see things that stress us out, making them easier to deal with. We can be more open to the present moment and our natural feelings of contentment, interest, pride, joy, curiosity, and so on if we don't try to force our lives or experiences to be a certain way and judge less.
The Research
The researchers compared the effects of two different mindfulness training programmes: monitoring only (which taught only one skill) and monitoring plus acceptance (which taught both skills) with a control condition (no treatment or inactive treatment) in two studies with stressed adults from the community. In one study, mindfulness skills were taught in person, while in the other, skills were introduced through a smartphone app. Both positive and negative emotions were measured at the end of the day (using diaries) and at four random times each day (using smartphones) for three days before and after the study.
The results showed that all the active mindfulness interventions (monitoring only and monitoring plus acceptance) made people feel less bad about themselves before and after the study. Still, they had different effects on how good they felt. The monitoring + acceptance group had a much stronger effect on improving positive feelings than the monitoring only and control groups.
These results show that practising mindfulness may make us happier, but only if we learn to tolerate, make room for, and accept whatever experiences come up, instead of judging them, letting them define us, or running away from them. Maybe acceptance leads to a change in how we think, so we can stop worrying about what we don't have, what we should have done, or what might happen in the future. If you stop trying to control everything, you can take a deep breath and enjoy what you're doing right now:
Walking your dog.
Hugging your child.
Having lunch with a friend.
Doing something you find interesting.
Only part of the work is to become aware of your feelings, such as negative thoughts or tension in your body. You also need to practise letting those feelings and sensations be there without trying to get rid of them, worrying about them, letting them define you, or judging yourself for having them.
Taking in the Feeling
Here's an exercise to help you learn to accept things as they are:
If you are having trouble feeling something (like anger or sadness) that you don't want to feel, try to make room for that feeling. First, name the surface (e.g., "I'm angry"), and then notice where it is in your body (e.g., your chest). Try to be curious about the experience, letting the anger be there and seeing if it moves in your body if it goes down or up, if it's hot or cold, if it makes you feel big or small, and if it has any other qualities. Notice what you want to do when you're angry, like yell and scream, and realise that you can choose not to. Initially, you can just watch the urge to give yourself more time to think about what's happening before you act.
We all need a helping hand from time to time. Please share this post with as many people as possible. You never know who might need it.
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