Last month we began talking about the patterns of thought that can contribute to greater happiness. The first was gratitude. In this post, we will be looking at mindfulness, how you handle your inner critic, and mindset shifts.
Mindfulness can be described as doing what you are doing now, but more intentionally, with your thoughts on what you are doing, and with a non-judgmental stance. As one popular children’s book states: “When you walk, you walk, when you sit, you sit, when you play, you play.” Mindfulness is about gently bringing your thoughts and attention back to the present moment.
Mindfulness can be done through meditation, or it can be done actively, by focusing your attention and awareness on whatever it is you are doing, and immersing yourself fully in it; savoring the experience.
One example that I have both practiced and used in therapy is the raisin. You take a single raisin: you observe the raisin, take it in visually, smell the raisin, put it into your mouth and touch it with your tongue, explore all of the grooves and bumps, move it around your mouth, take a bite, notice the flavors, the texture changes, etc. If you pay attention and slow down, you will never think of raisins the same way again!
Other folks enjoy mindful walking; slowing down and paying attention to each foot: heel, arch, toe, switch. It is normal that your mind wanders and it doesn’t mean you are bad at mindfulness. The muscle of your awareness is built each time you gently bring your mind back to the present moment. I should know, I have been practicing for almost a year and I can get to about 3 minutes 30 seconds before I have to go do something that has popped into my head.
Guess who practices mindfulness based stress reduction? Beyonce. Also, LeBron James.
The next best place to focus your new mental thought-wrangling powers is your inner critic. It is very normal to have an internal voice that speaks up whenever you do something wrong. Often that voice says some pretty harsh things. If you take a moment to tune into your inner critic, you might find that the way you talk to yourself is much more critical than the way you would talk to a friend. One of the reasons we do this is because we have the mistaken belief that yelling at ourselves will motivate us to change our behavior.
The problem is that these mean statements do not actually improve our performance. In fact, studies have shown that these harsh internal statements reduce self-esteem and the chances that you will keep persisting in whatever you are trying to do. What’s more, being more compassionate towards yourself actually contributes to your ability to have more compassion for others.
You can begin to change and reduce the negative effect of your own inner critic. First by noticing it. Notice what it says and notice how it makes you feel. Next you can start to change this pattern by softening the way you talk to yourself. Coach yourself as if you were a friend of yours. Here are a couple of small tips you can try: If you speak to yourself in the second or third person, it can be easier to coach yourself with kindness (and easier to hear yourself and take in your own pep talk). An example of this might be: “Amanda, you can do this, surely this newsletter will turn out eventually!”
You can also start by adding the word “maybe,” “might,” or “possibly” to whatever negative thought you are having about yourself. “I might be a complete idiot!” It sounds ridiculous, but it definitely sounds better than “I am an idiot.” It’s important to remember that when it comes to changing the way your inner critic talks to yourself, you can soften by degrees.
Kristen Neff does great work on self-compassion. Here is a link to a quiz she developed to help you look more closely at the areas you might benefit from softening the way you view yourself: Take the Self-Compassion Test
Close cousins to our inner critic are our worries and ruminations. These are the thought patterns that focus on what “could” happen in the future, or what happened in the past. We tend to think that our worries will motivate us too. We worry about the way things will go in an attempt to make sure we don’t make mistakes, we ruminate on the ways we feel interactions went wrong in the past as a way to prevent future injury. It is a very human thing. The problem is when worry and rumination become repeated thought patterns, they do not have any benefit to us and instead are just a constant state of aimless vigilance that can lead to muscle tension, dread, and fatigue.
The thought exercises you can use to reduce worry are very similar: Engaging in mindfulness can help train your mind in the skill of letting go of thoughts, and engaging in more compassionate self-talk can help you coach yourself to a path that is helpful and grounded rather than inflated by the kinds of thought errors that occur when we are in a heightened state of mind (check out this list of common cognitive distortions: Cognitive Distortions Handout (uci.edu).
Finally, let’s take a moment for changing your mindset. Let’s talk about fixed mindset versus growth mindset! A fixed mindset is the belief that you are either good or bad at something, that we have a fixed set of traits that we can do, and another set that we can’t. We say things to ourselves like: “I’m not good at tennis.” or “Breathing skills don’t work for me.”
On the other hand, a growth mindset acknowledges that improved performance requires effort and practice. Laurie Santos tells the story of Roger Bannister, who ran the very first 4 minute mile at the Olympics in the 1950’s. Before then, everyone said that it was impossible to run a 4 minute mile. But after Roger Bannister did it, two more people that same year ALSO ran a 4 minute mile. What does this prove? That growth IS happening all the time, we just have to reach for it. If it is something that you want, you can use practice and effort to get it. A great little trick to add more growth mindset to your internal self-talk is to simply add the word “yet” to whatever it is that you cannot currently do.