This is the positive psychology podcast episode 41
Welcome to the positive psychology podcast bringing your ear buds the science of the good life
And now your host kristen Trumpy
Okay today
Ryan Niemiec is returning to the show he is a
psychologist, coach, author and he works for the VIA Institute on character his latest book is
Mindfulness and Character Strengths: A Practical Guide to Flourishing. Today, we will discuss mindfulness.
Thanks for returning to the podcast, Ryan.
Yes, well thanks for having me Kristen. This is always a lot of fun with you. Thank you.
Thank you, so lots of people have probably heard of mindfulness, but could you define it for us?
Sure yeah, and that actually is a can be a fairly complicated question. I'll try to make it
You know try to is understandable as possible
but it's a little complicated because mindfulness has become so popular in the world today and
It's popular across countries. It's popular from a research perspective from a practice perspective
It's even in the common lingo in many many countries and so then and that's wonderful in some ways
But then in other ways it can be
Damaging a bit for the study of mindfulness
Because then everybody is defining mindfulness a little bit differently so if you ask
the Dalai Lama the Dalai Lama will define it in one way, and then a scientist or
Define it in another way tip not Han defines it in another way Jon kabat-zinn and so on and then
What are we really studying if we're all defining it in different ways and so researchers realize this in the early
2000s and so they many different researchers gathered it was around 20 or so mindfulness scientists and they scoured the
research on mindfulness and the traditional work on mindfulness and
What people were saying on a practice and research level and they really the intention was to come up with an operational definition?
So a consensual
definition that everybody could go by so we know what it is that we're studying with when when people talk about mindfulness and
So I'll go ahead and tell you that definition. It's actually a two-part definition that they came up with and
It goes like this that mindfulness is the self-regulation of our attention is
part one
with an attitude of
curiosity
openness and acceptance
I'll just say a little bit about each of those so this first part
self-regulation of attention so that means that if a person is practicing mindfulness in some way
They're taking control of their attention, and they're placing it somewhere you know with their control, so they're self-regulating it
They're maybe. They're putting their attention on
Their loved ones face as they're talking to them or maybe they're putting their attention on their breathing
Or maybe they're putting it on a beautiful forest landscape or maybe they're putting it on one of their problems you know
But they're taking control of the attention in some way
And then the second part of the mindfulness definition that the researchers came up with is that?
When you're putting your attention on that thing. What is your approach to it? Well it's to be open to what's going on there
It's to be curious about
It and to be accepting and so those are actually literally their exact words in this in the scientific article
And I think it's nice good
It's very practical and easy to understand when it's kind of broken down that way
So we're being open to what's going on in the present moment
We're being curious about it kind of wanting to explore it wanting to understand what's going on
With what we're putting our attention on and then finally we're being accepting of it
We're accepting that this is how things are in this particular present moment not that five seconds later
It's not going to be different not that it's it's permanent in the present moment
But just in this exact second with what I'm putting my attention on I can accept that I can bring an acceptance attitude to that
So that's the definition that
That many researchers now go by
Okay, thanks for
Outlining it so clearly
So what are the benefits of mindfulness?
Well there are many benefits that researchers are finding
just to give you a
little scope of the landscape 4 on the research and mindfulness you know back in
Night in the 1980s there were a few articles on
mindfulness and on the benefits of mindfulness in the 1990s there was you know maybe you know 40 or 50 and now
in
2015 there are literally over 50 new publications every single month on mindfulness and so that amounts to
Five or six hundred new papers every single year that come out and so many of these are actually outlining the benefits of mindfulness
So it's really
too many to mention, but in general
It can be broken down into a category of
helping people to manage problems and
Helping people to create greater well-being
You know of course we can break those down into all sorts of different nuances like
Managing the people people's a problem with recurrent depression or with
Panic disorder or certain things like that or just managing conflicts and their relationships, so that's kind of one category
It's kind of managing problems
You know you know working through psychological struggles and so on physical struggles, and then other category is kind of around expanding ones conciousness
kind of building well-being and so that's where mindfulness is connected with greater happiness and
engagement and things like that
Okay, now meditation gets thrown into the mix a lot
And I have this inkling that sometimes people might confuse the two a little bit, so
What's the difference between mindfulness and meditation or what's the relationship between the two?
Yeah, it's a it's a good question, and it's one that
That isn't as clear as
Mindfulness, you know the mindfulness. I was able to kind of really easily mention the two part definition and
with meditation I mean that word has been thrown around in so many different ways and there isn't an operational definition to just
Meditation so it's a bit more of a generic word you know I think of it
Relating to specific practices that people might have which can build mindfulness
so
In some ways can be the more narrow word you know so it's it's that
we're going to to practice a particular meditation where we're going to to try to build our love within ourselves or
We're going to practice a meditation on our breathing and whenever our mind wanders. We're going to bring it back
You know enough and of course depending on if you
Ascribe to a particular religious practice their meditations talked about in different religious traditions, and those have their own break downs all the world religions
Use it to want in one way shape or another to help to kind of people to tap deeper into their
Religious and spiritual experiences so in that sense it kind of depends on the audience, and who you're asking, but my you know minute
Mindfulness is one type of meditation
So where we're trying to practice that aspect of becoming more regulated with our attention and being open and curious
About our present moment about our bodies about our mind about our breath
Yeah, so
That would be one way to begin to think about that distinction then so when we when we do meditate
It's helping us to become more mindful
Thanks for clarifying that
Just actually last week one of my apprentices we talked about meditation briefly, and he said well
It doesn't work for me because I can't empty my mind, and I keep hearing that all the time, so I'm sure you do
Too do you have any thoughts on that oh?
Yeah
Yeah, it's so many thoughts actually that I that was one of the catalysts for writing a book on on on this on this topic
You know that as you know Kristin's called mindfulness and character strengths
You know there's many catalysts for why I wanted to put mindfulness and character strengths together and to write about it
Yeah, so I?
People many people will will struggle with having some kind of meditation practice or a mindfulness practice
or for that matter any practice that requires any kind of
Self-regulation like maybe a relaxation of practice or via feedback or self-hypnosis, I mean even like exercising and you know eating well
I mean all these things require
self-regulation
cultivating a good using many different character strengths
And and there's many misconceptions about about mindfulness and meditation so people do
sometimes think oh
I if I'm if my mind wanders at all you know if it seems like I have lots of thoughts in my mind
I can't get rid of them, then it's just not for me
You know it's for those other people that practice five hours a day, but but not for me
I'm too busy for this or doesn't work
and in really that
Is just a total misconception that people have and it's unfortunate because then they don't get to see the fruits and the benefits of meditation
so really
what I what I suggest to people is to begin to look to name those things as
Obstacles that are coming up so if a person says well
I'm I don't have time to meditate which is one of the most common obstacles
Or I forgot to medicate meditate which is a second most common obstacle or the one you mentioned?
Which would be in the top three which is that my mind wanders too much or too much clutter in my mind?
It's another it's an obstacle. It's something that's getting in the way of that person becoming present to their
Selves to their mind to their loved ones it's getting in the way of their present moment
But it's so if so if we see it as an obstacle
Then that means that we can see that obstacle as an opportunity as something that we can learn from and grow from
Rather than seeing it as something. That's that barrier that means
it's it's too big of a wall that I can't climb over so it's just not for me, so so we then I
Then at least ask people to look at their highest most core strengths
You know that we call character strengths or signature strengths
What are those qualities that are best in you you know some people are uniquely high in bravery or?
perseverance or gratitude or
kindness or teamwork or
prudence or
Creativity curiosity and so on there's 24 core character strengths so the idea is what how can you use your highest strengths to?
overcome that obstacle or to manage that obstacle
And so that's something that most people in the meditation and mindfulness world don't talk about and it's a it brings a whole new dimension
to the practice suddenly people then
Bringing more of who they are into their mindfulness practice then they want to do it if they're really high in gratitude then
And they want to get some kind of mindfulness practice going then they start their practice with uh, you know
maybe two minutes of gratitude before they
Spend their time focusing on their breathing or they are maybe they're really high in zest
So maybe the avenue of mindfulness for them is to do walking meditation rather than sitting and following their breath
So it's about kind of each
individual kind of working with
themselves to meld their best qualities and what they're willing to do with the actual practice
Rather than getting locked into I've got to sit in a certain way sit in a certain
Posture for a certain amount of time and I've got to do it by following my breath
And that's the only way to do it, but instead I try to be really flexible with how they how people think about this
You know I love this because for me
It's weird like I had very good experiences with meditation a couple of years back. They it helped me instantly, but then I somehow
Never ever had the desire to do it again and then but then I kind of figured out that this whole attention
regulating mechanism
What worked for me was actually through writing you know through trying to become a better writer
I would walk around and try to notice things because you can't really generalize especially if you're writing fiction
You can't generalize you have to characterize
Characters and I remember back then the world's you know it. I felt like I was
Reborn, I know this sounds a little bit crazy
But it is that that's how I felt you know walking around and suddenly seeing how rich and detailed the world was
So I I didn't really you know connect this to mindfulness or anything until I did my master's in positive psychology, but then I thought
They always talk about
meditation, but they're not talking about you know using
creativity or using sports is another thing that I feel I'm very focused and very good with my intention when I'm playing soccer and
And I've actually found that these things they do translate into my real life
So I feel that after you know learning some fundamentals about writing
I found that I'm you know of course not comparable to some Zen masters someone, but I pretty happy with my ability to control my
Attention so I'm really happy that you kind of opened that door which I just felt wasn't there before
What's a really beautiful example actually a set of beautiful examples that you noted and you're really getting at this aspect that we could call
Mindful living so it's kind of about bringing that those same principles self regulation of our attention and that
Attitude of curiosity openness acceptance bringing those those principles to whatever it is that we're doing
So you're talking about bringing it right into your into your daily life
Whether it's with sport or whether it's with writing or walking in a certain way
And if we're bringing those principles in and we're aware of our body as we're moving in the movement of the pen
aware of our thoughts and we're having all sorts of different thoughts as we're coming up with ideas in the writing process then we're
Practicing mindfulness, and that's why mindfulness. We can really kind of demystify it for people because
right now people could be be
using mindful listening
So they could be paying close attention to what's being said
Kind of really listen and clearly lit really being present to what's being said or they could be kind of doing somewhat of a mind
Mindless listening like some people might be listening right now, but also
You know checking their email and kind of surfing online and only maybe 20% listening and so that wouldn't be quite mindful listening
So the idea is that no matter what it is that we're doing we can we can bring it?
Bring mindfulness to it same thing with brushing our teeth
We can bring mindfulness to that mundane activity we can bring it to
Feeding our dog or our cat or a pet we can bring it to
eating lunch to brewing coffee
You know to anything anything in our life becomes an opportunity to bring mindfulness
And then as you and I were speaking also we could bring our character strengths. We're giving both of them to that everyday experience
So what experiences? Did you have using mindfulness based strengths practice with your clients?
You know any differences compared to for example traditional mindfulness training. Did you notice any differences or how is that working out?
Yeah, well it it seems to be working out really well
Not only just my own personal experiences, which is just you know a study of one you know
But but also the the experiences of people across different cultures
So when originally putting together the program called mindfulness based strength practice, which is you know basically a?
manualized program that brings mindfulness and character strengths together I
had people in various different cultures on
pilot this eight-week program with with populations
And and you know study it and look at how it worked you know in their particular culture with their
population and kind of in then gave me feedback
And suggested changes and so on and that's actually what then informed
What's in the latter third of the mindfulness and character strengths book? It's a manual for that
mindfulness based strength practice program
And what I and those others and in subsequent?
People who have been looking at mindfulness based strength practice have found is that it does bring together those?
Those those benefits like greater well-being and better engagement with one's life
Helping people to have a greater sense of purpose
And meaning in these kinds of things which you know most mindfulness programs are gonna gonna bring forth
You know I think obvious an obvious
contribution of mindfulness of a strength practice is gonna be the the character strengths element, so it's gonna be the element of helping people to
Know more about who they are so it's gonna be this link with positive identity so that's gonna be something that's gonna be
pretty strong with the mdsp
There's gonna be this aspect of greater strengths use and being more savvy with how we use our character strengths that we can be mindful
With how we apply our strengths in our daily life
And whether we you know to manage not using too much or too little of a strength in a particular situation
So there's these kinds of benefits, and then I would also mentioned um
There's kind of two standout benefits, and I'm not saying that nbsp is the only thing on the planet that creates these benefits
But I think they're pretty novel and good contributions of mdsp and we'll see if the research you know continues to bear this out
But I've noticed this in the many different groups, and and what other people have reported and that is that
Nbsp seems to be particularly good at helping people to improve positive relationships
As one and the other is managing problems, and so I'll talk about each briefly so that so the positive relationships
Benefit is this aspect of when we're bringing forth our best qualities our strengths
And we're bringing it in where we're bringing that careful awareness and attention to it in our life
there seems to be this benefit where we then care and tune in more to other people and we begin to
create stronger
Connections with them you know we begin to be a little bit more fair a little bit more forgiving
And you know we begin to use these ingredients that actually nurture positive relationships
And we're doing it by literally tapping into those ingredients
Character strengths and using mindfulness as a support as a as a tool for doing that
So that's one and I mean I could tell you stories about how you know it's like one
I remember one guy in an MB SP program
This was about week six or so and I was asking people what you know
What are your findings so far and and this?
experience and he raised his hand and he shared with the group that he had been estranged as
estranged so hadn't been in communication with his son for 15 or 20 years and
That this mindfulness based strength practice program got him to
Realize gosh. I have these incredible strengths within me of fairness and kindness and social intelligence
But yet I'm not using them very well in my life
I mean, maybe I'm using them a little bit at work, and I'm doing some good with projects
But I'm not using them with where it matters so much, which is my own family my son, and yeah, there's reasons
Why my son and I have been disconnected and so on but you know?
But that's not how I want my life to be I and so this man then said that he
Because of the program because he was cultivating strengths and mindfulness he began to reconnect with his son
And he reached out to him and now they have a regular communication. You know they began to email
Every other day or so and talking on the phone about once a week
So a pretty dramatic change from not talking for 15 to 20 years
So there's the in in when I ask people after they complete nbsp and when people ask people in those cultures
What are your experiences when you complete nbsp?
Do you find that there was any benefit to one of your relationships did this program caused that?
And people most people not everybody but most people say yes
And then they can given a specific example of how one of their relationships improved
maybe they became a more mindful listener with their spouse maybe they
Connect it better with a work colleague or their boss
Maybe they just establish some new friendships, but there seems to be that that powerful benefit
And then the other side is there seems to be a good benefit with managing problems so helping people to really to reframe
problems you know we can get locked into problems and get lost within problems and difficulties and
psychological and physical disorders and we can begin to
Get so lost that that's all we see
but then if we have tools like mindfulness and character strengths it helps us to step out and
To move out of that prison that our problems can create for us
And we begin to see them in a different way and character strengths provide that lens or that language for reframing problems
And we begin to see other people in a different way and see ourselves in a different way
so I think that the program helps with that end of things as well I
Also found in my research
Which had absolutely nothing to do with your work that I was looking at character
well basically strengths use in daily life and
The most I mean people are very different, and I did the qualitative studies
So it's not you know something that I can generalize or anything
but
The the one thing that people seem to have in common who struggled was that they were not able to step out of
You know basically their stream of consciousness to even remember or to to remember to use their character strings?
So when you when I you know around that time?
I heard about your book and your work, and and I just thought this is so interesting and it actually
Mindfulness, I feel like in it enables
The use of character strengths, and I think you know I'm excited about this work for different reasons
And it's not you know just
I mean that would be enough it would be interesting enough to kind of say you're combining it mindfulness and character strengths
But what excites me even more is that I feel that actually in a weird way
We have sold you know strengths and stuff a little bit short because we're portraying it as this
You know do this intervention for a week or two and then you're fine?
And I just always felt like no it's a way of life and the biggest benefits the most transformative
effects they happen when we kind of integrate the different concepts in psychology, and you've done this beautifully and
And that's just you know something that I feel we kind of need to go into looking at all right
Maybe it's not just a question of do strengths. You know does this intervention work. It's more like alright
How can we create the kind of conditions for different people?
What concepts need to be combined so I feel like you have you have I don't know
Pioneered a lot of things doing this I feel at least and similar with what you did with movies
You know I was simply excited about that so I hope others will follow your lead honestly
Well, thank you, and I think it's really well said about the aspect with with character strengths and mindfulness that these really are
ongoing processes and
Experiences within us that we can cultivate and yeah there might be some
Immediate initial benefit if people do an exercise or an intervention that's mindfulness or strengths you know alone, but but yeah there seems to be
It there it seems to be particularly important for people to kind of keep it as a mindset that they just can
inhabit for the rest of their life and in
Keeping a humility to it that that we never really fully get it so it like you said it isn't just do it for two
Weeks, and then that's kind of it, but it's something like you know I'll do it for those couple weeks
But then keep going for the rest of my life that this is just gonna be
Incorporated in just just like I need to get movement in my daily life. You know or exercise movement
I need to eat. You know fairly. Well you know for the rest of my life. Maybe not perfectly but fairly well
You know we need to to bring a sense of mindfulness and character strengths not perfectly, but you know fairly well
uh if you know to really
have a
Life of flourishing and where we can manage things in a fairly
savvy way with good equanimity and so on
Okay, so last question. What can a listener do right now to take a step towards improving their mindfulness you?
Know I think that the first step actually is a phrase that I sometimes called catch AAP
ASAP
And that stands for catch your autopilot as soon as possible
Catch your autopilot as soon as possible you know and that's the start of mindfulness and that anybody can do it
literally the
Second as we're talking and then can do it as soon as we're done talking and then can do it for the rest of their
Life and it's a lifelong journey
And what it means is that is first? We have to really almost be humble to the fact that our
Minds so easily go off into autopilot. You know we do have stream of consciousness 'as we do have
Pathways of thinking where we can be thinking of 10 things at once and we do process huge amounts of information
In in seconds that we're not even aware of so there's so much going on in our mind so our minds
Quickly go off in autopilot, and they think about different things, and they drive us in different directions
and we often don't even know that that's happening and
So a key first step is just to be aware of our thinking that way and to be aware that gosh
I do go off into autopilot in it and that's totally normal. That's what all minds
Do even the the most brilliant of mindfulness minds if it's the Dalai Lama tick not Han and others?
you know their minds go off an autopilot - you know even you know they might be particularly good at bringing it back and they
May be pretty good at managing it
You know because of all their practice, but it's just a normal part of human nature
So the idea is if we want to practice moving toward mindfulness in some way
Then the idea is we got to catch our automatic pilot, and we'd catch it
you know as soon as
Possible and as soon as possible because then we take a little bit more control of our life, and we can say okay
Do I actually want to keep keep off in autopilot because sometimes we might we might want to keep?
Keep going in autopilot and just maybe it Spurs some creativity because autopilot is sometimes good it
Helps us to kind of decompress it. Helps us to be sometimes
It's a weekend, but it but it's better when we're making that decision. It's where we say you know
I want to go on autopilot on purpose
Rather than our minds just always doing it
And we don't even know that we're gone half the time so that would be my suggestion is catch your autopilot as soon as possible
Whether you're with your children with your significant other with a friend
washing dishes
walking in the park working hard at your computer, or at a team meeting catch your auto pilot as soon as possible and
And then step two might be in and you might come back to the present moment if that suits you in that particular situation
Okay, so where can listeners find more find out more about you
About me
Well they could
Go to you know. There's a couple of different sites. I mean you know there's certainly the via character site, so
Wwvv I a character org?
Which isn't so much about me. I mean, I'm listed on there, but it's more about character strengths
You know either is my own website, which I haven't really done much to maintain
but there is a Ryan meemic dot-com website that has a little bit more info on me and a
lot of free articles that people can can upload and
some information there
so that's just the spelling of my name Ryan Nima comm
And of course I would encourage people if their interests in these topics to to get the mindfulness in character strengths book which you can
easily get on Amazon it comes with a
a CD of meditations on mindfulness and character strikes and
People can get it in a Kindle version
And then get those files as mp4 files so kind of different resources like that. I guess the final thing
I would say in terms of me is I do a blog on Psychology Today
the name of the blog itself is called what matters most question mark what matters most and
and so I tried to write about once a week an article on mindfulness and character strengths or some other positive psychology topic in a
User-friendly way that also has some Reese bent to it or reflects the research
So that's kind of another another resource for people
Okay, great. Thanks a lot Ryan
My pleasure Kristen always great to talk to you. Thank you bye-bye
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