Can a 10 Minute Mindfulness Exercise Make a Difference?

As January takes hold and the dark nights and bad weather overwhelm us, it’s easy to end up feeling a bit low. It’s peak time for illness, divorce, and depression….sigh.

Which is why it could be an excellent time to try out a simple mindfulness exercise which could give you a huge mood boost!

I have written before about the many benefits of mindfulness (see Mindfulness and Stress). There is a growing body of bona fide research demonstrating how mindfulness can help with all sorts of stress and depression. In Your Happiness Audit there is a link to a book I highly recommend which will give you some of the sources of that research if you’d like to know more.

But reading about it is one thing, hearing it another, so I’m really pleased to share this BBC link with you for a ten minute mindfulness exercise that it very easy to do and may just become a good habit for 2012. It was part of a happiness challenge the BBC were promoting last year and it’s perfect to do in a spare ten minutes when sitting at your desk. I frequently recommend this to women when coaching and we do a modified version on my women’s courses. It’s not for everyone but if it works for you you’ve discovered a great resource for life!

Here is the link to BBC Happiness/Health/Mindfulness.

Why not try it for just one week and see how you get on? And please do share your experiences with us!

Photo Credit: Tosaporn Boonyarangkul

Take Once a Day, Every day!

How often do you treat yourself? How often do you release that inner child and simply have fun and play? On holiday? When you have friends around?

Most of us probably don’t do it enough. Psychologist Dr Nick Bayliss says we ought to be doing it every day. Twenty minutes each day of ‘time out’ time can make you feel great!

20 Minutes of Fun

So, here’s your challenge for the rest of the week. Take 20 minutes and fill it with doing something you love. Be as spontaneous as possible. Maybe you’ll resurrect your old piano skills and tinkle up and down the ivories? Perhaps you’ll pick up your old sketch book? Make a cake? Or simply be and stare at the trees noticing the changes Nature is bringing?

Try it out and let me know how you get on! And do share your favourite 20 minutes of fun time! (if you can…) You could spend your twenty minutes day dreaming! Check out this post on Dream and be Happy!

Photo Credit: Melbia

How to Deal With the Bad Stuff!

It would be a funny old life if we were happy all the time, yet that is a goal we often strive for. We wish it for our children “I just want them to be happy”. Or we say “I just want to be happy again”

Of course happiness is rather wonderful but if were happy all the time we’d probably not know it. We know we’re happy because we’ve had the lows as contrast.

Make Peace With Your Past

Your past is a chapter already written; you can’t change it. For good or ill it’s brought where you are today. Sometimes we can find ourselves dwelling on the negative parts of our past, focussing our energies backwards. Make peace with your past. Accept it for what it was and acknowledge that it’s made you the woman you are today. The troubled times have strengthened you and the happy times have enriched you.

Your challenges and joys have all made you who you are today, and will continue to do so. Accept your past and embrace your present. Savour the smallest of joys and live mindfully.

Enjoy your day!

Photo Credit: TyniuzC

Your Friday Happiness Audit!

Happiness is very subjective and hard to define. What makes one person happy does not make everyone happy. But you probably know what makes you happy.

Unfortunately we’re not always good at recognising when we’re happy and living in that moment. We do seem to be quite good though, at remembering the less than fabby things and trotting them out in our heads, often. Which can give them a bigger place than they deserve in our memories.

Research on Depression

The *latest research on managing severe depression is quite clear. Dwelling on what is wrong makes you worse and reinforces the tendency towards more depression. Talking about what ails you makes it worse.  Therapy which focusses on your problems, on what is wrong with your life, is unhelpful.

Happiness Tip

So here’s my tip for this week end. You know how to make yourself feel sad – think sad things. You know how to make yourself feel better, think happy things! It’s as complicatedly simple as that. Like everything you need to practise and retrain your brain from it’s habitual path of dwelling on what went wrong. As you finish up the week ask yourself:

How many good things have happened to me this week?

How many times have I smiled?

What makes me feel good?

Have a great time!

Want more? Take a look at Nostalgia Makes You Happy

*Check out ‘Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression‘ by Segal, Williams & Teasedale

Photo Credit: Cynthia Turek

Be Happy All The Time? No Thanks!

Regular readers of this blog will know that I do not promote the school of perpetual happiness – that way madness lies! Well, for me anyway…

When I was about 17, a friend sent me a postcard of the type very popular then, which read:

‘Into every life a little rain must fall’. It was accompanied by a kitschy drawing.

I can remember thinking,” Oh I hope not!” But, umpteen years on from that seventeen year old girl, I am very grateful for my periods of rain. They have taught me the meaning of happiness, contentment, and living in the moment.

Happiness means many different things to each of us, and the older I get, the more happiness I seem to find unbidden in the strangest of places (another benefit of ageing!). Like love, you can’t use it all up.

People often say to me that my posts are always so positive, always upbeat, and am I like that? Obviously I’m not all the time. Things get to me the same as everyone else and I have had my fair share of problems. But I know dwelling on what doesn’t work is a very good way to make yourself miserable. So when I am down, I dip into my happiness bank and pull out a happy memory to make me smile, and my mood soon alters.

I often ask my ‘inspirational women‘ when are you happiest? Today I’m asking you! Please tell me, When are you happiest?

Nostalgia Makes You Happy!

Have you ever thought about nostalgia as ‘mental time travel‘? That’s the rather delightful expression Fred Bryant, professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago, uses to describe having nostalgic thoughts. He says it increases feelings of well being if you can get in touch with good feelings from the past and bring those feelings into the present.

Editing

It doesn’t seem to matter, in terms of increasing our well being, if we edit those memories a little. It may be more about how it feels to think about those times, the sense of fulfilment, or love, and that could be quite different from what we felt originally.

Bank of Memories

Professor Bryant’s research into this topic has shown that we can increase our day to day happiness by practising a a deliberate kind of positive reminiscence, and savouring our memories. In fact, building a bank of memories to be drawn on at any time. And part of putting deposits into that memory bank is to be very aware of your feelings at the time you are experiencing them… living in the moment and being mindful when you are having good experiences.

Women and Men and Nostalgia

Says Professor Bryant:
“Men tend to reminisce about the past as a form of escapism, but women are better at drawing on past experiences to help them with a current dilemma.” We use our memories to remind us of our strengths and to think about how we have coped in previous situations. I use this technique often on my training courses for women

I’ve written about the happiness bank before so it’s great to see the research backs it up. What’s going into your happiness bank today?