Mindful Rewrites - Mindfulness Builds Resistance

Have you failed at something and then beat yourself up relentlessly with negative judgements about yourself?

Have you failed at something and then withdrawn from trying again because of fear?  

Do you suffer from self-abuse of harsh judgements about yourself?

How can Mindfulness help you build resilience? 

Maya Angelou wrote an essay about the day she lost her first job at age 16. She describes the way she dressed up and landed a job at a fast food restaurant. Unfortunately, her tenure at the job was short-lived, and after a brief stint she was fired. Her mother came home to find her on her bed, crying hysterically. When her mother understood what had happened, she told Maya, “FIRED…FIRED…why Maya, fired is just a word so get your clothes on and go back out and look for another job."

Mindful Rewrite

Maya’s mother was teaching her daughter the lesson that a word is just a word. Noticing the words we say to ourselves with compassionate, nonjudgmental awareness allows us to step back and look at our assumptions. Maya could not see past the word "fired." 

Research shows that those who deal best with stress are resilient. They do not marinate in negative words and harsh judgments. Philippe Goldin, director of the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience project in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University, works with people with mind-worries who cannot escape negative thoughts and emotions. His research shows that mindfulness mediation helps change the way the brain responds to negative thoughts. After eight weeks of mindfulness training, participants have greater activity in the brain network associated with processing information when they reflect on negative self-inflicted statements. Although they pay more attention to words they say to themselves, they report less anxiety and worry.

According to Goldin, mindfulness meditation teaches people how to handle distressing thoughts. By labeling thoughts without judgment they can step back and detach from distressing emotions. Brain scans indicate that the ability to witness thoughts without self-judgment leads to lasting positive changes in the brain.

Maya Angelou learned a mindful process from her Mother that can be summarized by the acronym NOW.

N is Notice. He was able to notice her harsh conclusions.

O is for Opportunity. Maya had an opportunity to rewrite the way she talked to herself.

W is for Within. By noticing her inner dialogue, Maya had a chance to change her thinking and subsequently her actions.

PRACTICE

Neuroscientist Wayne Drevets observes that in the brain practice makes permanent, so the more often you practice non-judgmental detachment from thoughts, the stronger the connections in your brain. However, there are benefits from as little as 10 minutes a day of mindfulness meditation, so you can start now by noticing your thoughts. Removing judgmental labels helps you take positive action.

Notice and label the times that you OVERGENERALIZE as Maya did. She saw being fired as a permanent label instead of learning experience. Use a scale from 0-10, look at what you learned from the experience as well as what went wrong. Our minds are often fused with the past or critical internal thoughts. You can break the spell of words.

Observing negative thoughts allows you to question the validity of ALL or NOTHING labels like “stupid” or “failure.” When you apply compassion, you may notice that this was how someone talked to you in the past, and that you can now chose to talk to yourself as you would a friend.

Take a few moments and allow thoughts to come and go and see what you notice without attachment. If you have trouble letting go of a thought, notice that. You can imagine putting the thought on a small boat and watching it float away, or that the thought is enveloped in a bubble that you allow to drift away from you…drifting away, drifting away. You may find this helps you feel calmer as you acknowledge the thoughts in your mind change with your attention. There is no right way to do this--if you are stuck in a thought, notice that--then shift attention back to your breathing; letting go, letting be...