The Gap Chart is a very simple model of the mind.
From our environment, we get various sensations – the light reflected off the paper you’re reading this on, the sounds around you, the feeling of the chair you’re sitting in, maybe some lingering tastes from what you last ate or drank,….
Each of these sensations has qualities. A taste might be bitter or sweet. A light might be bright or dim. A touch might be rough or smooth. In particular, these qualities may be pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
A few weeks after completing an 8 week Resilient Mindfulness course, Matthew emailed me to say he'd just run a half marathon, and achieved a personal best (1 hour 21, exactly a minute off his previous PB).
What's remarkable about that?
He'd done no focussed training! He found that "amazing, and hard to explain."
So what was different?
I had an email from a subscriber to my email list recently. The writer, let's call him "Jim", wrote that, "My biggest challenge is self-compassion and self-kindness. I'm great at giving it to others but not myself."
Isn't that so common?
In case you're in the same situation, I thought you might like to see the resources I shared with Jim:
So it's finally happening. You've managed to get the time off work, travelled to this wonderful destination, and you're on holiday!
All you want to do is enjoy the place, the special people you're with, and this moment.... you're just starting to relax into it and.....
"Bing!" you find yourself thinking about work. Maybe something important you really want to say to someone. A great idea for that tricky project. Or some frustration with a colleague.
Of course, you really do want to be on holiday - so you fight these thoughts, try and enjoy the holiday... but the more you fight them, the more they fight back!
Been there? I know I have!
So what's the answer?
Last week I wrote about generosity and success - how givers are at both the top and bottom of the success charts. I mentioned that the successful givers differentiate themselves by taking a win-win attitude: they consider their own interests as well as the interests of the people they're giving to.
There's more to say on this - there are 3 specific mistakes that unsuccessful givers make, that keep them unsuccessful. Once again quoting Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, the unsuccessful givers are frequently:
Let's look at each of those in detail:
There are takers, matchers, and givers. Takers are people who are always out for their own gain. Matchers like to evenly match their giving and taking. Givers just give.
How do you think they compare?
According to Adam Grant, in his book Give and Take, the least successful are givers. Studies in the fields of engineering, medicine, and sales found givers earning 14% less than takers, being 100% more likely to be the victims of crime, and judged 22% less powerful and dominant.
Who is the most successful?
We normally think of mindfulness as an antidote to the difficult things in life.
But it's also relevant when things are going well, for example on holiday.
You see, our minds are wandering about 47% of the time. We pay good money to go away and get the finest experiences - the place, the weather, the food, and so on. But half the time we're not even there to enjoy these experience!
Does that matter? Well, a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. (And yes, it's the wandering that causes the unhappiness, not the other way round).
So, if you want to get the most enjoyment and happiness from your holiday, make sure you show up! In other words, be mindful.
What does that mean in practice?
One of my readers, let's call her Ann, emailed me about her "perfect storm of change."
She wrote about changes at work: regular messages on the intranet announcing "more change, more people losing their jobs, more of the surviving jobs being made unmanageable, more service being eroded, more things I value being destroyed ...."
She wrote about "a complete restructuring (closing clinics, merging departments and changing processes) so nobody knows who does what, or where to get support."
With the increased pressure on "survivors," Ann often feels overwhelmed by the floods of emails, many of which asking for even more of her time.
Ann is taking redundancy, which after all this is something of a relief - but still "sad and terrifying."
Then she wrote about her personal life too. She wrote about her Mum dying, clearing the house and going through generations of documents and collections. She described how the wider family relationships are changing now that her Mum isn't at the centre of all those networks.
Ann has been practising Mindfulness since 2013. How did it help her handle this "perfect storm of change?"
There’s a popular image of Mindfulness, that it’s about retreating inside yourself, quietening down and generally being rather feeble.
But I disagree.
So do the US Marines – their Mindfulness-based Mental Fitness Training programmes achieve excellent results.
Many organisations disagree too. Google, eBay, EY, HSBC, the UK Parliament, the UK National Health Service, Unilever, KPMG, Microsoft, Bupa, Intel, Procter & Gamble etc etc don’t train their leaders and staff in Mindfulness in order to make them weak. Quite the reverse: they realise that Mindfulness helps their employees to develop the strength needed to face the biggest challenges of the 21st Century workplace.
So how does Mindfulness make you stronger?
Mindfulness has tremendous benefits: it reduces stress while increasing clarity of mind, enjoyment, effectiveness and many other benefits.
But it does take time.
This article is for you if you’d love to practice Mindfulness, but simply can’t find the time.