Researchers James Harter, Frank Schmidt, and Corey Keyes discuss these corporate wellness programs in their paper “Well-being in the Workplace and its Relationship to Business Outcomes: A Review of the Gallup Studies.” This post will discuss the highlights of their paper. Here they are:

1. Around ⅕ of adult life satisfaction is related to work satisfaction. 

This statistic simply highlights the importance of work in overall life. As we know, work plays a major part in life; research shows that the routines, supervision, and complexity of work can impact a person’s sense of control. Employers should be concerned with work satisfaction as well because talent acquisition is a lengthy and expensive process. Not to mention that in this competitive job market, people are looking for companies that care about their employees well-being and growth. 

2. Positive emotions result in positive workplace results. 

According to the research, “depression can filter cognition, particularly when complex cognition is needed, like that in most work environments,” (Harter, Schmidt, and Keyes). This research has also shown that people with depression or in depressed mood states have a more limited cognitive ability. On the flip side, positive emotional states can help to increase the effectiveness of their own personal capabilities. Joy, interest, contentment, and love were named the top four positive emotions more directly related to business outcomes. Managers play an important role in developing and maintaining these emotions. When managers have more personal connections with their employees, they are able to improve the work culture. Furthermore, these positive emotions allow employees to cognitively function more effectively. 

3. Employees should feel engaged and have a sense of belonging at their company.

People want to feel like their contributions to the company are actually making a difference. When people’s skills and talents are being utilized, they feel more respected and have a higher sense of satisfaction for their work. Positive reinforcement about the quality of their work also helps employees feel like they have room for development at their company. Allowing employees to voice their opinions makes them feel more connected to the overall mission of the organization. In fact, employee engagement makes companies more successful. 

4. Making friends at work can equal more successful working groups.

Everyone enjoys having friends. Friends help to make any situation more enjoyable. It is incredibly important for employees to make friends at work. Friendships at work can help to reduce stress or other negative emotions related to a project. Managers play an important role in this as well because they can create opportunities for social interactions between co-workers. Friendships at work can make the work more fun and more fulfilling. According to the research, “the positive emotions that occur through friendships (love-caring) at work, likely build resources that reinforce creativity and communication,” (Harter, Schmidt, and Keyes). So the next time you see your employees chatting for a while in the break room, maybe consider allowing them to continue developing their friendship instead of telling them to get back to work. 

All of this information is to say that workplace wellbeing correlates closely with the success of businesses as well as the overall well-being of their employees. Managers can help to make or break a person’s experience at a company. Managers also play a huge role in how satisfied employees are at their company. As we spend more and more time at work, our focus on our personal well-being can diminish. That is why it is imperative that we focus on our well-being at work as well. 

If you are interested in learning more about this topic or how you can implement wellbeing into your own lifestyle, contact Greg Murray at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com for more information. 

The past year of my life saw a lot of change. None of it felt monumentous, special, transformative, or like it was “meant to be.” It was simply constant and uncomfortable, like a dull headache. And the only side effect was vague sense of confusion and detachment, at least in the midst of it. Looking back, I can see how enduring so much change had worn me down and exhausted me in a way I’d never been before.

As we slowly emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, this feeling of exhaustion is shared by many. We’ve just experienced a heightened version of what happens to us every day, often subtle and behind the scenes: change. More specifically, uncontrollable change. 

Now more than ever, I feel completely at the mercy of change. At one point, this feeling would have bothered me. But I no longer see the point in resisting life’s perpetual cycle of loss and gain.

I have always wanted to control my trajectory in life, as is human nature. Unfortunately, every new phase of life feels like starting at square one. Transitions are exhausting, and each one seems just as scary as the last. 

Still, there are ways we can train our minds to navigate change. Immunity to Change (ITC) coaching was developed at Harvard by developmental psychologist Robert Kegan and teaches you a step-by-step method for understanding and overcoming your barriers to change.  According to ITC, our fears and beliefs make up a psychological immune system that prevents us from changing even when we know we want it more than anything in the world.  

Completing my own ITC map helped me get to the root of my resistance to change, particularly as it has affected my life most recently. There are behaviors I have been struggling to change, negative thoughts I haven’t been able to reason with, and fears that have kept me from taking action to better myself. 

Collectively, these things were getting in the way of me reaching my goals. It was like I had taken apart a slow-running computer and discovered faulty wiring. It was refreshing to realize that I could reprogram my thoughts the same way I might reprogram a machine.

Being alive can feel like sitting in a rowboat without oars. Tides change and we follow. We are constantly pulled from places of security and comfort to new horizons. More often than we’d like, we are pulled from something good to something that could never be as good, or so we’re convinced.

Change is the only constant in life.

I have always been partial to seasons of change.

I tilt my head to see

branches jostled by wind

and leaves drained of color,

each erupting into its respective dance. 

A familiar chill touches my face and hands

kissing with lovely contrast 

the warmth in my stomach and chest –

an enchanting reminder 

that I am never safe.

Every love of mine 

will shrivel with time.

We start lush and green and close,

but in the face of the wind

we darken and wither and fall.

Still, I smile because 

there is something 

enchanting 

about a passing leaf

dancing on the winds of change.

My blood cools with a 

deep, eternal peace 

as I think to myself,

“in loss

we will always be freed.”

Despite its perpetual presence in my life, change has always felt intimidating to me. 

Think about the dizzying fear you might feel before ending a relationship, confronting a family member, or leaving a stable job. In each of these cases, making a decision to enact change is not the first catalyst; it is the inevitable result of a changed situation. 

Initially, this relationship or commitment benefited you. You needed something from it. It was the right place to be at the time. But now, something has shifted. You know it’s time to quit or leave. It’s natural to feel angry. After all, you liked how things were before. Why did they have to change? Why didn’t you get a say in it?

It’s difficult to accept that we’re unable to control when and how life happens to us. But one thing is certain: we have no choice but to behave in accordance with change. We must follow the inevitable spin of the compass.

Loss of a Girl

In a dream

I stood at the end of a long dock

surrounded by fog

before an old steel ship 

that would take me 

to my future.

“Are you ready to board?”

droned a voice from above.

I squinted up to see who spoke, when

a gaping wind blew from the water 

and howled all around me.

That’s when I noticed

the ocean and sky

were the same 

bottomless 

gray.

Palms clammy,

I turned back to shore and saw

several rays of sun 

trickle through the fog, but 

they could not reach me.

Faint music and laughter echoed 

from deep in the shrouded beach.

The shore, the shore.

“I don’t want to go,” 

I called up to the voice that beckoned me.

“Let me stay as I am-”

Before I finished speaking, 

a steel deck moaned beneath my feet 

as I watched as the last of the shoreline 

was swallowed by fog.

You aren’t in control of your situation, and change is a jarring reminder of that. But you are in control of when and how you respond to it.

Still, sometimes it takes us months or years from the time we know a change needs to be made and the time we enact it.  We are in denial of the necessity of the change.  We may feel sadness and not give it time to pass, or we may feel anxiety because we’ve buried our sadness. Avoiding negative emotions only gives them more power psychologically. In the end, if we face our changes earlier, the emotions can be less intimidating and even enjoyable to move through. This is exactly what ITC helps with. It builds awareness of these mechanisms and reduces this time frame spent denying change.

There is a scene in the television series Fleabag that opened my eyes to an uncomfortable truth. The protagonist, Fleabag, asks her therapist what she should do about her feelings for her priest. Her therapist responds with:

“You already know what you’re going to do. Everybody does. You’ve already decided what you’re going to do.”

I had to pause the show when she said that. Suddenly, I felt like I was being sucked backward, revisiting every time I’d asked a friend, family member, or my own therapist for advice. In retrospect, the resolutions to those problems had been predictable.

I already knew, deep down, what I was going to do before I did it. 

Usually, if I was asking for advice, it was to confirm or evaluate the decision I had already made. I would use the opinions of others to get a read on my situation. How difficult did they think my decision would be to carry out? What did they think about the kind of person it made me? 

I strained to remember a time where I “debated” a choice that I hadn’t already secretly reached a conclusion on. But I couldn’t.

However, that doesn’t mean I was doing the wrong thing. 

Delaying change is a survival instinct based on fear.

The longer we let a problem be a problem and debate what to do about it, the longer we get to keep living in our current story. And we want to keep living in the story. Even misery is less daunting than uncharted territory. The healing that changes bring sounds great in theory, but in reality, it can be uncomfortable and uproot key components of our lives.

When you can’t see past the horizon, it seems there is no plot or story in that direction. With nothing to propel you forward, you may feel you’re better off staying where you are.

What could be worse than being trapped in perpetual pain and grief? 

The answer is nothing. 

We fear periods of transition because we fear detachment and feelings of indefinite emptiness. 

A recent loss sent me to an emotional low-point. I confided in a friend who offered me a quote to help me understand what I was going through: 

“Grief is love with nowhere to go.”

My problem was that I was being faced with nothingness. Here is how I coped.

Stargazer

Anything I could 

write or say

about love is cliche 

so I will state this fact :

I am gazing 

through the stratosphere

into the Milky Way galaxy tonight.

Bashful, she hides from the city lights

behind a black curtain and 

teases me with

a single glowing dot.

So here I sit.

The cosmos – infinite and 

magnificent and awesome 

are winking at me – limited and 

wretched and 

small.

But I reject their gesture

and this is why :

the only thing 

that might light me up tonight 

is you

beside me, speculating 

whether that wink 

is a planet or star. 

So I submit to your absence 

and let it swallow me 

in oblivion and

apathy.  

Instead of dealing with my grief and sadness, I had settled for apathy. I would rather feel nothing than acknowledge reality. This is a fear response, and it is a common one.

Every major transition I’ve endured has convinced me that whatever awaited me was intrusive and unsafe. When I moved to New York at a young age, the city seemed so massive and alienating that I felt nauseous just walking down the street. I remember thinking if I stayed there even a week longer, it would be too long. I had to escape the city and retreat to safety.

Over the course of a couple of years, that feeling evolved and eventually faded. The process of change proved itself trustworthy. The long, slow, process of making New York my home has become an integral part of who I am now. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So how can we overcome our aversion to uncertainty and embrace the process of change?

First, you have to understand that your sense of comfort and certainty, essentially the worldview that’s keeping you where you are, is malleable. 

Our fears are driven by underlying assumptions, which more often than not, are not rooted in our current reality. We decide what “truths” to believe in, not the other way around.

To understand our underlying assumptions, we must first identify our fears and commitments.

Our goals reflect desired self-images that are only obtainable through change, but fear inhibits us from enacting change and reaching those goals. 

It is crucial to identify what our specific fears are. Ask yourself, if I’m not doing something that could help me reach my goal, why am I afraid to do it? And if I am doing something that gets in the way of me reaching my goal, why am I afraid to do the opposite of that?

For example, you might have trouble saying “no” because you’re afraid others will reject you if you do.

Acknowledging what you’re afraid of is not easy. We hide these fears from ourselves, but they permeate everything that we do. 

When we don’t identify our fears, they emerge in other areas. They affect our identity, emotions, and behaviors in ways we don’t fully understand. You might feel a sense of disconnect from yourself, or general dissatisfaction and unease in your life and relationships. 

This happened to me recently. I had felt detached for a while, but it took me a long time to understand why. By the time I was ready to admit that I was scared, my fear had become deeply rooted in my life and who I was.

series of realizations

these things may seem small,

but

I have not sent a text 

with an exclamation point 

in so long,

nor have I assumed the best 

in a stranger 

or friend

and I can’t remember 

the last time I laughed 

with enough verve

to disrupt 

a room full

of strangers

also, I think maybe,

lately,

I like myself better 

when I’m watching TV

I suppose the truth is,

if I drop this charade,

I am no longer living

I am only afraid

Once you’ve identified your fears, they can lead you to identify your commitments. We are all committed to doing things that prevent us from achieving our goals. Those commitments evolve from our fears.

For example, you might be afraid of saying “no” and facing social rejection because you’re committed to having people like you. 

These commitments can feel impossible to shake. Certain habits and impulses are so deeply rooted in who we are that letting them go requires a whole shift in identity. In that sense, we can’t force ourselves to be authentically “over” something before we’re ready. So what inspires us to want to be over it?

Left to their own devices, people often don’t change until a narrative has played itself out. If you’re committed to making someone like you, you won’t give up until the pain is no longer worth it. Or, you have to genuintely believe that they’ll never accept you so you feel motivated to look elsewhere for validation. But getting to this place can take months or even years.

This is how it has felt for me.

giving up

it feels like 

reaching down to scratch an itch

only to find that itch has gone

recalling a sad thing

to find sorrow does not surpass the thought

peering into an empty room

to find it plenty full of air

shrugging with a sigh

a hollow victory cry

I suppose I am 

giving up

on you, I have 

given up

Sometimes, sitting with dissatisfaction and pain is important. It doesn’t always need to be corrected immediately. Eventually, we will tire of chasing a dead end and holding ourselves back. 

But we can’t always wait around until we “feel up to” changing. When our fears and commitments escalate to the point where they interfere with our happiness, growth, and progress, we need to move on. 

This is where our underlying assumptions come into play. You will know you’ve identified an underlying assumption if it justifies both your fears and commitments.

For example, if I am afraid of saying no and having others reject me because I am committed to having people like me, then my big assumption is: ”If I am not seen as friendly and accommodating, then people will lose their respect for me.”

Identifying and changing our underlying assumptions is the first step to embracing change.

But how do we combat our big assumptions? Even if we know something isn’t true, we often can’t surpass it on a deeper level.

I often find myself stuck in cycles of dissatisfaction because I’m not ready to let go of fear and false expectations.

Sliding Sand

With a thoughtless thought 

I reach for the thing I want 

In this moment where it’s not

Sigh once more because

Life is a cycle, an 

Endless collision of hope with reality 

Waves crashing into the shore 

Trying to claw their way up 

To Utopia 

Towering cliffs of crystal that

Glisten above the sand 

I went through a period of very low self-esteem in college. It felt like reality was distorted. My self-perception was so negative that I hardly recognized myself. I remember going about my day feeling like I might melt into the walls. I wasn’t at peace in my own body.

I knew that I was sick. I understood that my negative thoughts were not “actually” true, but I still couldn’t shake them. I thought I would never get better, but I did.

Here’s how it happened.

better

better

happened

I didn’t have to 

look for it 

reach for it

let go 

lift myself up 

push through 

or

try

it just happened 

like sitting up 

and smiling 

to the hum of silence 

inside me.

“It takes time” might be the least comforting platitude you can offer someone who is struggling to heal. But time is essential to processing emotions. 

After you’ve done the cognitive work of understanding the fears, commitments, and assumptions that are getting in your way, you still might feel hung up emotionally. That’s okay. You might feel like nothing has changed, but it has. You are aware of what’s happening internally and driving your behaviors. 

The ITC Map is just the first exercise in the process. It helped me to uncover and realize all of these things. Later on, I learned how to observe my assumptions more closely, dig deep into my past to understand their origins, make a plan of action for change, and eventually, hold myself accountable to those changes.  Learn about the entire process further or take the initiative and create your map today.  Don’t be afraid to take the leap, change is always good.  

This debate has gone on since time immemorial, and only one thing is for sure: happiness is subjective. It’s the results of numerous factors like an individual’s experience, values, culture, and more that culminate in a positive emotional state. This explains why happiness looks and feels different to everyone.

With Lisa Feldman Barret’s groundbreaking research on emotion, we can learn that happiness can look differently for everyone.  Growing up, I never understood the girls screaming and crying for their favorite boy band at a concert. Their faces were flushed from screaming and voices practically half gone before the end of the act. I remember wondering if those girls were happier or more excited to be there than me simply because of their ecstatic expression. I even questioned my own happiness and why I did not react the same even when I felt deep-rooted joy. The honest answer, supported by the latest neuroscience, is there is no right or wrong way to experience happiness because our bodies and mind process these experiences differently. At that moment, I was experiencing happiness as a relaxed state of mind while they experienced it as an utter outpour of emotion. 

There are two main views of happiness: hedonic and eudaimonia.

What is Hedonic Happiness?

The concept of hedonic happiness can be traced to as early as fourth century B.C. by the popular Greek philosopher Aristippus. Hedonic happiness suggests that the ultimate goal in life is to maximize pleasure. Psychologists apply the term “pleasure” to both the body and mind. By maximizing your pleasure, you minimize your pain. This view of happiness is popularized by American culture. Hedonism has become synonymous with the best way to achieve happiness in our society. It is often associated with outwardly showing joy and being social to define a person’s happiness. Those previously mentioned screaming girls at their favorite concert embody how American culture has defined hedonic happiness. 

What is Eudaimonic Happiness? 

In contrast, eudaimonic happiness argues that you are happiness comes from living a meaningful life. The term “eudaimonia” in Greek translates to “good” and “self,” which shows that happiness is influenced by morality and virtue, not just selfish desires. Much like hedonism, the idea of eudaimonia happiness dates back to fourth century B.C. and was popularized by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle believes that achieving happiness came from living a virtuous life. Other popular philosophers like Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Kant supported this idea of happiness because it focuses on self-actualization. As individuals continue to strive for personal growth and be their best selves, this naturally gave their lives a deeper purpose.

The Flourishing Model coined by Corey Keyes combines emotional well-being, social well-being, and psychological well-being to determine if an individual is flourishing. Keyes notes that mental health exists on a scale from flourishing to languishing. The model identifies the necessary emotional, social, and psychological aspects that make up a flourishing lifestyle. In fact, it is estimated that only 23% of people in the United States are classified as flourishing. In order to meet these requirements, an individual has to have one of the three traits from the emotional well-being segment and six of the eleven traits from the social and psychological category. Where do you fall on the continuum?

Like anything else in life, you need a healthy balance of hedonic and eudaimonic outlooks. It has been mentioned that hedonic behaviors have been linked to an increase of overall positive emotions and attitudes in an individual while reducing negative emotions, stress, and depression. On the other hand, eudaimonic behavior can provide elevated experiences and create a more meaningful lifestyle. Hedonic and eudaimonic contribute to different aspects of well-being, so a person needs a combination of lifestyles to maximize happiness.

My idea of happiness is likely drastically different from yours, and I find that beautiful. At the same time, two people can experience the exact same moment yet react vastly differently, just like at the concert. Human beings often become obsessed with the search for happiness and how to achieve it. In reality, happiness is fleeting; it is a temporary state of being, so when you achieve it, you need to express however you feel right. Whether that be screaming and crying for your favorite boy band or simply sitting back and enjoying the view.

If you enjoyed this perspective on happiness, please read our other blogs on the latest research in psychology and neuroscience.  Check out our 1:1 coaching page to explore your options to begin a personal transformation journey today. 

Recently, I ruminated with a friend about the tireless monotony that had overtaken our lives since we graduated college. Our grievances might sound familiar to you: perpetual overstimulation and anxiety, a feeling of being trapped on a hamster wheel of hyperstimulation and menial to-do’s. 

The irony is that, despite our tireless efforts, we had become less productive than ever. We were afraid to rest and waste time, yet we surrendered hours a day to our phones, absorbing quick-form content and managing loose ties with friends.

And worst of all, it all felt utterly meaningless. My friend let out an exasperated sigh and said something that broke my heart. 

“There has to be more than this.” 

At one time, I would have assured her that there was. I would have insisted that a new mindset or fresh routine could make things better.

But now, I didn’t know how to respond. Hers is a common sentiment shared by many people trapped in the nine-to-five grind. We get up, go to work, eat, sleep, repeat, and live for those few moments during the evening or weekend when we might experience something meaningful.

What distinguishes those rare moments that we wait all week for? The answer eluded me. Meaningful moments had become so sparse, so few and far between, that I was ready to give up. Maybe I could go backpacking through Europe or something.

Instead, one fateful Saturday night, I stumbled into Manhattan’s Chelsea market looking like the living dead. The week had wafted past me again, and I was beyond discouraged. Eventually, I found myself in a tiny bookstore. I perused the shelves, glassy-eyed and disenchanted, until a book caught my eye: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. I skimmed the first page and felt like I’d just been handed a glass of cold water after eight days in the desert.

The introduction of the book addressed my problem with eerie specificity. The author, Jenny Odell, suggested that many of us live in a state of anxiety because:

“We still recognize that much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the “off time” that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.”

This seemed to be an answer to my question, a potential definition of meaning to hold onto. 

I had become disenchanted with the concept of meaning. The harder I worked to forge connections, the more I sought opportunities to make memories and invest myself in satisfying work, the more hollow it all seemed. 

I no longer trusted I could engineer a meaningful life through sheer force of will. Until now, I hadn’t considered that perhaps my life was too engineered. There was no more room for the unexpected, for discomfort, for newness.

Desperate for salvation and convinced I’d just found my bible, I purchased the book and hurried home. This was a fresh wave of inspiration, and it came along at a perfect time. 

Lately, my life had become modernized to an uncanny degree. Many of us are aware that we live in an attention economy, where human attention is a scarce commodity and information is managed to reflect that. Because our attention is in high demand, it is constantly pulled in every which way. As a result, we are overstimulated, irritable, and overprotective of our attention.

This scarcity mindset leads us to view our own attention as a resource and are wary to spend it on anything deemed “unproductive.” In other words, existing in and of itself is a waste of time. We no longer observe just for the sake of observing, because we expect a return on the investment of our attention. That’s why it feels nearly impossible to sit in silence and take in our regular, unextraordinary surroundings, and why practices like meditation, for many of us, seem unrealistic.

In the attention economy, identity and societal value is tied to output. To survive this reality and optimize our limited resources, we live with our heads down and our lives tightly engineered. We digitally compartmentalize and manage all areas of life to optimize efficiency at the cost of nuance, newness, and unpredictability. 

This looks slightly different for all of us, but here is how it manifested for me. On a typical day, I’d listen to a podcast while I made breakfast, stuff my ears with headphones during my daily commute (or any time I left the house), check social media throughout the day at work, watch HBO on my lunch break, and unwind before falling asleep by scrolling online.

If I saw something beautiful in the real world, I’d whip out my phone to take a picture. If I had a thought, I’d post about it to make it tangible. If I craved connection, I’d open an app to feel like I was surrounded by others. I never had to take my nose out of my phone, hear the monotonous and meaningless sounds of the city I lived in, or talk to anyone I didn’t want to speak with. 

To manage friendships, I kept a list in my phone of people to stay in contact with. Periodically, I’d comb through the list and reach out to make plans with each person like checking off a to-do list. Tragically, I had no motivation or energy to follow through on those plans. Even friendship felt like a chore.

I had become irritable and highly intolerant of minor disturbances or anything that could get in the way of my comfort. And I was deeply unhappy.

Whenever I did stumble upon moments of unpredictability or nuance, I had nothing left to give. It felt like all the juice was squeezed out of my brain. How could I ever be present in the world if I kept squeezing myself dry of attention? 

To buy my way out of inconvenience, discomfort, and challenges, I was experiencing a skeletal version of what day-to-day life should be. 

Maybe my attempts to make my life more bearable were the very reasons it had become unbearable.

Odell advocates for reconnecting with the physical world, and essentially “being useless,” as a form of rebellion against the attention economy. Inspired by her idea, I constructed a potential solution to my problem: 

I would embark on a mini-quest to regain ownership over my lived experience, my sense of time and place, and a sense of meaning in my day-to-day-life. And ideally, I would find some stable form of happiness.

I conjured up a set of rules to live by for one week. 

You may have heard of dopamine fasting, the practice of temporarily abstaining from addictive experiences to reset the brain’s reward system. At its most extreme, dopamine fasting involves abstaining from any source of pleasure, even socializing. 

Instead, I would engage in a selective dopamine fast. Essentially, I would be on digital detox. My rules were as follows:

• No headphones when I walk in the street, or in stores, or at work.
• No social media (this included any app I’d scroll on to pass time).
• Commit an hour before falling asleep to something non-digital.
• Eat without watching television or listening to a podcast.
• Watch no more than one episode of Game of Thrones each day (I’d been on a bender).

The rules were simple and manageable, but I was surprisingly nervous. I couldn’t muster enough willpower for a 24 hour juice cleanse, much less a week-long cleanse from social media. And more than anything, I was afraid of boredom, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. So I told myself to lean into it. What was the worst that could happen?

For one week, I set aside my reservations and dove in. 

On the first night of the detox, I laid down in bed without my phone and looked around my room. A small, shapely patch of moonlight washed my bed sheets silver. I reached out to touch the cloth. I was amazed to think that the light on my fingers was bouncing off a giant rock in the sky and came from the same sun that, in that moment, greeted a family on the other side of the world as they ate breakfast. I was utterly mesmerized by this one small patch of light, yet it did absolutely nothing of importance aside from lighting my sheets. So I laid there, happy to do nothing with it.

My first walk without headphones happened to be on a beautiful day. I left my noise-cancelling airpods in a drawer and felt antsy as I prepared to leave. How long could I stay outside in the world without them? It felt as if I was preparing to jump into cold water. The irrational intensity of that feeling startled me.

However, when I stepped outside, all anxiety dissolved. The world suddenly had context. Birds chirped, car engines hummed, feet shuffled on concrete. Every smell led to its source. Each was specific, as were the people on the sidewalk. I received new information everywhere I went – bits of conversation, people singing to themselves, others talking on phones. 

Usually, everything I saw in the world would connect back to a thought I was already having. I would navigate the streets lost in a song I’d listened to a hundred times, thinking about my own life and repeating tired narratives in my head. 

I used to project my own thoughts, emotions, and life story onto everything I saw. Now, that process was reversed. Everything I saw led to unpredictable thoughts and feelings. It was such a relief not to be the main character. I felt a sense of anonymity as I absorbed the world, almost omnipresent.

Later in the week, I walked through Central Park. As I waited to cross the bike path, I heard a hoof scrape the ground to my left – a horse tied to a carriage. The light turned green and the crowd dispersed, but I stayed behind. I took in the animal’s stature. His muscles twitched as he huffed. He swung his heavy head and I felt the heat radiate from his body. Even his smell was powerful. It made me feel small. 

A few blocks later, I meandered past a baseball field and metal clanking caught my attention – a ball striking a bat. I paused to watch the game. The players’ joy was contagious – young men and women in their twenties, kicking up dust in the sun. I remember thinking it felt bizarre to see something so meditative and suburban in the heart of New York. 

Once again, I found myself completely content to passively observe something that had no tangible potential and no relevance to my life. That feeling had started to become familiar, and I craved more of it.

Despite these moments of elation, I was intermittently at war with my dopamine addiction. 

The most difficult were the in-between moments and transitions. 

In periods of undefined silence, those that led to nothing and served no purpose, I’d look at my phone and be faced with emptiness. I had deleted the source of my notifications. The stillness was eerie and uncomfortable. 

I felt an overwhelming urge to re-download Instagram or Snapchat, just to have an inflow of information or communication from the outside world. I was startled by how strong and urgent this impulse was. I felt like I was being held underwater, desperately thrashing to break the surface for air.

Over the course of the week, that impulse weakened. And it had been replaced by a serenity I hadn’t felt in a long time.

I was tempted to call this new feeling happiness. 

Happiness is not a universal emotion, it’s a subjective idea that we each define for ourselves. We receive hedonic happiness through experiences of pleasure and enjoyment. But we can also achieve eudaimonic happiness through purposeful and meaningful experiences. Researchers have called attention to the serious consequences on mental health when one pays too much attention to hedonic happiness.

Often, we identify happiness hedonically, when we “feel good.” And I did “feel good” when I reconnected with the physical world. But that wasn’t the only thing determining my happiness.

Breaking out of my habits required conscious, deliberate effort. Odell identifies several capitalist priorities that fuel the attention economy, and before I started my detox, I was at the mercy of them all.

• Efficiency, or the pursuit of a “frictionless” experience.
• Productivity, in which we need to constantly create value in our lives.
• Progress, which is how we justify valuing economic growth and advancing technology over all else.

According to social psychologist Steven Hitlin, our personal identity is made up of values that we hold dearly.  In rejecting these priorities, I adopted a new value system as part of my identity for a period of time. I was no longer concerned with avoiding messiness or friction in my day-to-day-life. I had surrendered my need to forge any sort of value or progress with my actions. I placed more value on the tangible and the ordinary, and less value on myself. This made me feel more powerful, more productive, and more grounded.

Now, I saw myself as undefinable, free, untethered, and in a sense, anonymous. This was a massive relief.

Prior to the detox, I had been riding on the crest of an identity wave and avoided exploring the depths of who I am – something that is much more murky, ever-changing and difficult to define. I needed to do this in order to maintain a web of peripheral online connections. I communicated through the guise of an online brand, one that I had complete and utter control over. 

However, complete control comes at a price.

Identity is an integral part of experiencing happiness. Jessica Leveto’s research on identity and happiness shows that when we successfully enact an identity in social interaction, we feel happy and are more likely to implement that identity in future interactions. This is how identity verification leads to identity formation.

When a majority of our social interactions are micromanaged and controlled online, we act as both participant and judge. This does not allow for unexpected and authentic feedback, and it negates our ability to change and grow meaningfully in response. In the end, it is dissatisfactory.

Before the detox, the immediate dopamine hit I’d get from a higher number of online interactions had surpassed most of the dopamine I received in my in-person interactions. They had become hollow and performative, because that was the skill I’d been practicing. No wonder I’d felt like a shell of myself. I wasn’t embracing my own authenticity. And therefore, the people around me couldn’t either. 

In my case, when the tools to manage an online identity brand were removed, the result was a staggering integrity of self. 

Reconnecting with the physical world reminded me that I was a free agent capable of learning, growing, and collaborating with others. This also affected my relationship with the physical world. I was surprised to find that my self-esteem improved when I was in a state of being malleable and open to everything around me. When I felt elated, anxious, depressed, and even when I felt nothing, I felt it fully. And feeling deeply made me feel beautiful.

I have come to recognize “meaning” as connections with others that change or verify the self. Now more than ever, I am convinced that meaning is entirely a product of the world around me. And that world cannot be controlled at will. It is chaotic, and from the right vantage point, that chaos is beautiful.

In neglecting the often harsh and unpredictable nature of the world, I’d limited my perception of reality to the contents of my own psyche. 

This happens to us as we get older. By nature, the more we learn, the less we crave. We start to prioritize answers, simplicity, and efficiency over nuance and unpredictability. 

Living in this state of escapism is a way to self-medicate when life becomes unbearable. But the paradox is that, in reality, the safe internal worlds we create are often more unbearable than the real one. 

In her book, Odell points out that withholding attention from social media requires valuing people and the natural world as subjects with inherent value. I have found there is power in revering the tangible world in this way. 

After all, everything that made me who I am today came from somewhere else, not from me.

I moved to New York at the age of eighteen, and I was paralyzed by loneliness and depression. I spent countless nights in stairwells or wandering the streets alone, overcome with anger that my pain had not subsided. Weeks felt like years, and eventually, years felt like a lifetime. When would it get better? Hadn’t I suffered enough?

Now, my experiences in the city at that raw age, and the people I eventually grew close to, mean more to me than anything else – even the sad parts, like the night I snuck into a dirty bar with a large group of people who didn’t care or notice when I left early with a stranger who also didn’t want to be there. We walked by the river until sunrise and talked about things we wished would happen to us. We aren’t friends now. Still, I look back fondly on that.

I tend to feel entitled to peace after I endure struggle or suffering. But I’ve realized that there is no exchange to be made, no debts to settle, and no fairness in being alive.

This was the trap I’d set for myself: an expectation that I should be happy (or “feel” happy most of the time) and that things should ultimately “work out.” It is an enticing thought, a world where we can exist in comfort and pleasure, safe in the stronghold of our own minds – minds that have been hardened and wizened to the world.

I have realized that, in essence, this is a false way to live. We need unpredictability and novelty. We need to be wrong, and we need to hurt. 

Perhaps, then, meaning is the result of struggle. After all, life is a journey to be felt. Who are we to neglect pain and sorrow in pursuit of elation and joy?

I am glad I wandered into a bookstore and stumbled upon that book. I am glad that I felt so low because that lowness propelled me to make a change, and that change gave me a valuable revelation: happiness can result from peacefully responding to new and unpredictable circumstances. 

Before this experiment, my definitions of happiness and meaning were much more restrictive.  I was convinced that both could be achieved through sheer will and careful life planning. But the very effort I’d been putting into “trying” to be happy was the cause of my grief. I am tired of living with my head down, waiting for the pain to pay off.

You might recall how it felt to be a child and embark on new experiences with optimism and a lack of responsibility for what might happen. Every day, children have faith that the world will give them something. They don’t need to predict it or expend any effort to engineer a certain outcome. We can take a lesson from them.

Now that my mini-quest has come to an end, I have no desire to return to my old habits. As I surrender the all-or-nothing approach to digital engagement, I anticipate it will be a daily struggle to strike a balance that does not compromise my connection to the physical world. Ultimately, my new goal is to stop relying on digital tools to cope or avoid discomfort. I would rather experience my ups and downs, and experience them fully.

But here is one thing I am now certain of. All the meaning I need waits dutifully for me, in the world, its people, and its chaos. I will get the most out of it by being how I am: completely at its mercy, a vulnerable observer of my own chaotic, ever-changing experience.

There is a certain thrill that people get from taking personality tests.  The thought that you can finally know who you are on a deeper level and understand how your profile interacts with other people’s is very appealing.  Unfortunately, personality tests are about as accurate as your astrology sign or your destined Hogwarts house (Slytherin all the way).  This blog discusses why you’re much better off examining your identity and making gradual changes in your beliefs and your relationships in order to become the person you want to be, instead of becoming preoccupied with your personality.

Psychologists espousing the Five Factor model of personality have long claimed that personality development is determined by genetic factors.  Although this has been invalidated, this long standing claim has led to a public understanding of personality as something real and inherent, something that you are born with.  This misinformation is further reinforced when parents observe that their children turn out with very different personalities even though they were raised in the same households with the same philosophies.  All of this, combined with the pop psychology industry of personality tests, has created a cultural mythology started by bad science. 

I was so excited to see this narrative changing as I listened to the latest episode of The Psychology Podcast with Scott Barry Kaufman, where cognitive neuroscientist Christian Jarrett discusses his new book, “Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change.”  Jarrett and Kaufman brilliantly laid out the science on personality and discussed a few topics that stood out to me:

1.       The impact of identity on personality is very clear.  Identity consists of our values and beliefs about ourselves and the world at large (personal identity), the roles we play in life (role identity), and the groups we are a part of (group & social identity).  Take a second to reflect upon the things you value, the actions you regularly perform, and the people with whom you associate.  Imagine how much of this determines your behavior on a day to day basis.  Jarret mentions the findings from Social Investment Theory as a recognition of this.  With all of this evidence, it makes me wonder how much value there is in psychologists continuing to analyze personality at all?  Why not focus on identity?

2.       Biology does play an important, causal role which I understand much better now after listening to the podcast.  According to Jarret and Kaufman, people have a biological predisposition for sensitivity to their environment that can end up determining how much interaction they choose to have with others (extroversion/introversion) or their level of emotionality (neuroticism). 

Click here for a primer on the difference between identity and personality

How Does Identity Determine Personality?

There were many points in the podcast where Kaufman and Jarrett pointed out the effect of identity on personality, but they rarely used the term identity.  Below I will break down a few specific instances and explain how they acknowledge identity as being the causal factor in shaping a person’s personality.  As mentioned, identity is further categorized into personal identity, role identities, and group & social identities.  With quotes from Jarret and Kaufman, I will demonstrate how each of these determines your personality. 

Personal Identity Determines Personality

“He changed his values and his beliefs and changed his personality.”

In the podcast, Jarrett discusses the example of peace activist Majid Nawaz who was formerly a radical extremist who advocated for the killing of homosexuals and was eventually jailed for terrorism.  In prison he educated himself and completely changed his beliefs and values and is now an important player in the counter-extremism movement.  There is a large body of research that shows that values make up the core of our personal identity.   This, as well as other research on personality change, makes the important point that people are capable of radical change.  The key takeaway here is that your values and beliefs about yourself and the world around you make up your personal identity which determines how you interact with others (which some psychologists will refer to as personality).  Many of my coaching clients would be deemed “agreeable” and “introverted” by personality psychologists.  They accommodate others, shy away from conflict, and end up with unmet needs.  With a little bit of coaching and identity work, they quickly shed those fears and are able to change their personalities.

Role Identity Determines Personality 

“The roles we take on in life shape us.  We get feedback on how we’re expected to behave and this shapes our personality.”

“Our personalities are to a large degree affected by our relationships with our friends, and the roles we play in our friend group.” 

The other two quotes from the podcast above refer to a person’s role identity.  They describe how the social roles we adopt have expected behaviors attached to them, and when we are positively reinforced for having performed those behaviors, it molds how we think of ourselves and how we behave in the future.  This, in fact, is precisely the explanatory basis of motivation and behavior in Identity Theory, and it is a mistake, in my opinion, to refer to this as personality.  

To say that our personality plays a causal role in our behavior is a bit of a misnomer since personality is a descriptive measure.  Personality psychologists are simply noticing the patterned behavior and labeling it.  Focusing too heavily on personality also disregards the fact that we are aligning our behavior to fit with our identity goals.  Many are further misled by the notion that personality is genetically determined rather than thinking about the root cause of behavior and motivation, which is social interaction.

Let’s take an example of a person who becomes a teacher.  They want to leave a positive impact on future generations and hold deeply the values of humanism in their personal identity.  Their profession demands that they be very outgoing and extroverted during the day in order to impact as many students as possible.  It would be incorrect to say that this person is a good teacher because they’re extroverted.  Implementing the classic definition of extroversion and saying that this person is extroverted because they gain energy from being around people, is also wrong.  In truth, they are gaining energy because they are fulfilling their identity motives.  The outgoingness is a requirement of the role-identity.  You can think about how this example holds true for you in the many roles you play in your family and friend groups, and then consider which of your identities is most prominent. 

The podcast also discusses how parents have little influence on their child’s personality formation.  As I mentioned earlier, this common observation reinforces the myth of the genetic determinacy of personality.  If a parent doesn’t impact their child’s personality then it must be a case of nature over nurture!  In reality, as Jarrett and Kaufman reveal, it is a child’s role in their friend group that has a much more significant impact on their behavior.  Again, role identity motives are forming the basis of what is commonly understood as personality

Group and Social Identity Determine Personality

Not covered in the podcast is how a person’s group and social identities also determine motivation and behavior.  While personal identity is about how we differ from others, and role identity focuses on the things that we do, group and social identities revolve around how we are similar to others.  The easiest example is the social construction of gender.  Being gendered as a male in society results in a person fulfilling masculine expectations like expressing more anger than sadness or fear.  Similarly, we judge a woman as hostile or aggressive if she exerts too much anger or dominance while the same behavior from a male would often be rewarded.  This has now been called into public attention thanks to the feminist movement, and been discussed in depth by social psychologists.  This phenomena is explained well by symbolic interactionism’s Affect Control Theory which states that society attaches affective meanings to identities, and individuals perform behaviors to fit those expectations in social situations.  I look forward to focusing on this theory in my doctoral studies and later applying it in my coaching.

Importantly, while I maintain that identity is the primary causal factor in determining a person’s motivation and behavior, the podcast also helped me understand the key role that biology plays in the phenomena.

The Role of Biology

Proponents of the Five Factor Theory (FFT) of personality have espoused that personality is genetically determined.  For example, FFT claims that people become more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic in early adulthood due to a natural biological process.  Psychologists have recently challenged this theory by showing that this phenomenon is more likely due to cultural factors rather than biology or genetics.  Those researchers speculated that this significant personality change happens when young adults take on professional identities, and data confirmed that this shift in personality happened earlier in cultures with earlier onset of adult role-responsibilities. 

As Kaufman and Jarrett discuss, however, biology does play an important role in determining behavior.  Traits like extroversion and neuroticism, it seems, boil down to a person’s predisposed inclinations for stimulation tolerance.  This means that if a person is more sensitive to stimulation, they will naturally display behavior associated with neuroticism and introversion.  Rather than connecting this to personality, I believe that this can be explained much more appropriately in terms of a person being “highly-sensitive,” or with the explanation of orchid vs dandelion children, which is also discussed on the podcast.  Again, personality psychology is descriptive rather than explanatory, so it is a fallacy to say that a person is sensitive because they are introverted and neurotic, and far more accurate to say that some psychologists will label them as introverted and neurotic because they are sensitive. 

While I wish they gave more recognition to the centrality of identity in motivation and behavior, Jarrett and Kaufman focus on the fact that we are highly malleable, which I wholeheartedly agree with.  With some reflection and effort, we can consciously construct our identities.  Unfortunately, most people are led to believe that they have naturally existing personalities, and that these patterns are out of their control.  This leads to blind trust in things like Meyers Briggs and the enneagram, and reduces people’s ability to change.  The personality measures become self-fulfilling prophecies!  With all of this evidence that identity determines our motivation and behavior, it’s time to drop the personality charade and start acknowledging the deep impact that identity has on how we think, what we care about, who we fall in love with, and what we choose to dedicate our lives to.  

For more insights on personality and identity, check out our previous blog on the topic.  You can also read on our other blogs that cover topics like emotion, relationships, and communication.  Don’t hesitate to reach out to me at Greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com to begin a journey of personal transformation today.

Here are five tools you can use to help you navigate these differences with your partner: 

1. Be clear. One person’s definition of Catholicism might be different from their partner’s, or one partner might want to raise their kids a certain way. Don’t leave things open for interpretation with your partner. Be clear that being Catholic means going to mass every Sunday or be clear that you want to enroll your child in music lessons until they are 18. Most importantly, think about the “why” behind your desires and be sure to express this. This will help your partner understand your desires more fully and avoid a negotiation based on black and white positions.

2. Experiment. Be open to learning more about your partner’s beliefs. If you share different faiths, go to their place of worship with them. Remember that experimentation and exposure is not a promise to convert to their beliefs but a chance to understand their viewpoints better. This is applicable to more than just religious differences. If you come from different cultures, it is important to expose your partner to your traditions and practices. Sharing your experience with them will help them to get more comfortable and allow them to be more understanding of your perspectives/wishes. 

3. Prioritize each other’s desires. Try your best to make their priorities your priorities as well. If it is super important to your partner that you go to a 7 am breakfast with their family, make it a priority (even if you like to sleep in on the weekends. Don’t make up excuses. Just go and embrace it. Show your partner that you both are a team regardless of the differences you share. 

4. Find the humor. Don’t take yourself too seriously. It is very easy to get caught up in the stress of it all. Remember that it is okay to joke with your partner about their beliefs and practices. Tease them (within reason of course). Find the humor in your situation. Laughing with your partner will help to ease the stress of your differences. A little playful banter can help make these topics easier to discuss in the long run. 

5. Find the balance. Talk about everything. Lay out your non-negotiables and discuss the topics you have some flexibility with. Be clear and be specific about what you want. Explain your boundaries to your partner. Find a way to compromise and meet in the middle. Put in a valid effort, the same effort you would want them to give to you. Embrace your differences and make it a strength through active communication and listening. You will not be able to get everything you want and neither will they. Finding a happy medium will make your relationship more successful. 

If you enjoyed learning about tips to navigate different belief systems in your relationship, check out our other posts about communication and difficult conversations. If you are interested in learning more about navigating complex relationships in a constructive and healthy way, contact Greg Murray at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com. 

Mindfulness meditation helps us delve deeper into the mind and reflect openly and honestly about our thoughts and emotions.  It also has tremendous benefits for improving things like attention span, pain tolerance, and emotional reactivity.  Mindfulness involves watching and observing thoughts and emotions without judgment and without attaching to them; you are letting those thoughts come and go as if they were waves on the beach. If we keep having repetitive thoughts, the task is not to rid the mind of those thoughts.  Instead focus your energy on detaching from them and observing them as they cycle through, and develop a curiosity about where these thoughts are coming from.  

By noticing the patterns of our minds, we will be more empowered to break those unhealthy thought cycles.  In addition, if we practice mindfulness, we can soon realize that these thoughts are propelled from outside of our consciousness and control, and as psychologist Robert Wright points out, that these thoughts are propelled by emotions.  

But where do the emotions come from?  According to social and evolutionary psychologists, emotions are tools for social communication and feedback and arise for evaluative purposes between identities in interaction. Perhaps, while meditating, someone observes that they are constantly thinking about their schoolwork, and this is driven by anxiety.  After continuing to sit, and those thoughts pass, thoughts of the destruction of the environment begin to dominate their mind, fueled by feelings of anger and sadness.  In this simple example, they can see that the student role identity and environmental personal identity are very prominent in their life.  If someone is having thought and emotion patterns that are maladaptive and unhealthy, reflecting on their identity using the tools of mindfulness meditation is key to beginning the identity reconstruction process.  As you will see next, mindfulness comes in many forms, but there are some common principles that you can learn in order to start right away. 

The three keys of mindfulness meditation. 

Mindfulness can be practiced in various ways, from honing in on the breath to mantra-focused repetition to walking in nature.  I encourage you to try out different methods, but no matter what, the key tenets of mindfulness remain the same, and you must internalize them.  They are intention, attention, and attitude.     

1. Your intention is to cultivate awareness and keep returning to it once it is lost
2. Pay attention to what is occurring in the present moment, and observe your thoughts, feelings, and sensations as they arise.
3. Keep an attitude that is non-judgmental, curious, and kind

Having trouble? This could be why.

In our resistance to meditation, we can also learn about how we escape from unpleasant feelings.  If, while meditating, you are driven to check social media or eat chocolate, for example, this is a clear sign that you are avoiding an emotion.  Many people have a very hard time facing certain emotions while meditating and while this could be due to many reasons, something that is consistently true for early meditators is the fear and resistance to the notion that we have a self, and not that we are ourselves.  In order to succeed in mindfulness meditation, you have to accept that you do not have complete control over your thoughts and emotions and that your conscious self is, at best, a manager doing his best to keep up.  Taking a step back through mindfulness, then, is like giving yourself a break at the water cooler so you can get back to work with more clarity.  Since mindfulness is all about nonattachment, clinging to the idea that you control your thoughts and emotions will make mindfulness meditation impossible.    

Stick with it!

The good thing about sticking with mindfulness and overcoming the urge to check social media or eat some chocolate is that this simple practice will make you more resilient in everyday life as well.  We gain a new ability to “ride the wave” of intense emotions like anxiety, fear, and anger until they subside.  Soon, those waves become smaller and smaller.  The most important thing is to stay with it! 

If you enjoyed what you read and you are interested in how this practice can help you in your own personal life, contact me at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com. I am a highly recommended personal development coach and can teach you the benefits of this practice and the best ways to implement it in your everyday life. If you are interested in learning more about other styles of meditation, check out our blog series on mediation!

We can achieve this increase in positive energy through a special type of meditation called loving-kindness meditation. General meditative practices require that you keep a clear and empty mind without lingering on any specific thoughts. Loving-kindness meditation, on the other hand, focuses on mentally spreading love and kindness to both yourself and others. This can include family, friends, strangers, and the universe as a whole. 

Research has been conducted on the benefits of this type of meditation with promising results in a variety of different areas: 

• Chronic Pain: primary research from the Harvard Review of Psychology stated that studies show initial results that loving-kindness meditation is beneficial in treating chronic pain and borderline personality disorder
• Emotion Management: studies have shown that loving-kindness meditation is useful in treating anxiety, anger, the stresses of long-term caregiving, and relationship conflict. Other research shows that this type of meditation can activate parts of the brain that are responsible for empathy. This will help you to increase positivity in your thought processes. 
• Decreases implicit biases: research has shown that you can decrease your implicit biases against minorities after only six weeks of practice. 
• No risks: you will not lose anything from trying this practice. There are no negative side effects or harm associated with the technique. All it takes is a few minutes out of your day. 

How to practice: 

1. Find a nice quiet place to sit or lay down. Make sure you are comfortable. Sit on a cushion or lay on a mat. Close your eyes, relax your body into the ground, and begin to take deep breaths. 
2. You can start by loving yourself. Create feelings of warmth and love in the body. Begin to internalize phrases like I am loved. I love myself. I am healthy and whole. I am worthy. May I be protected from harm or evil. I am happy. Make sure to really embrace these sentences. Take them into your heart and body. Feel and believe them deeply.
3. Move on to sharing the love with those you are close to. These loved ones can be family and close friends. Imagine the love in your body as a glowing yellow-white light. Focus on your loved ones and envision the light traveling to them. Let the light cover their entire body. Envision them covered in your love. You can internally send positivity their way with phrases like May you be happy. May you be loved. May you be healthy and whole. You are worthy. 
4. You can repeat this process with strangers. You can send love to the world. Use the same processes as you did on your loved ones but this time, direct the energy to the world as a whole. Wish the world love and kindness for everyone in it. Imagine your glowing light of love enveloping the entire Earth. 
5. You can also receive love. You can imagine everyone that has ever loved you surrounding you and sharing their love with you. Focus on internalizing and accepting their love into your heart. Let yourself feel full and overflowing with the love from others. 
6. Go at your own pace. Do what feels right for you in the moment. Take your time and focus on that positive, loving, and kind internal energy. 
7. Bring your attention back to your breath and whenever you are ready, you can bring awareness back to the body and open your eyes. 

If you enjoyed what you read and you are interested in how this practice can help you in your own personal life, contact Greg Murray at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com. Greg is an excellent coach and can teach you the benefits of this practice/how best to implement it for you. If you are interested in learning more about meditation, check our out blog series on mediation!

In order to check in on your body and relieve some of that hidden tension, we can practice something called body scan meditation. During this practice, you use your mind to scan your entire body in order to bring awareness to the various aches and pains. As you become aware of the problem areas, you can do things to help relieve the pain and give those areas special attention. This is different from other styles of meditation because it draws the focus specifically on your internal bodily sensations. Rather than the goal being a clear mind, this method requires a focus on the internal sensations of specific parts of your body. 

Benefits

1. Reducing stress: Just by doing this practice once a day, you can reduce the amount of stress that your body is holding within it. This stress reduction will manifest in better physical health including things like less inflammation, better sleep, and more energy. 
2. Injury prevention: This is also a good technique to employ before you begin a workout or a yoga practice so that you can keep in mind which areas of your body need a little extra attention during your exercise session. You can exercise more caution when working on an area where you felt some pain during your body scan
3. Chronic pain management: If you suffer from chronic pain, nothing can undo the fact that your pain exists. What this meditation process can change is how you view the pain and reduce the side effects of it like depression or anxiety. See our post on emotion construction which explains the link between discomfort and suffering.
4. Better sleep: Do you constantly lay in bed trying to go to sleep but can’t because your mind is too busy? This technique allows you to get more in-tuned with your body, clear your mind of busy thoughts, and focus simply on the state of your body in the present. By focusing on the tired state of your body, you will be able to fall asleep easier and sleep better. (Author’s note: It used to take me 2-3 hours to fall asleep at night and doing this practice helped me to get that number down to 15-30 minutes!)

How To Do Body Scan Meditation

1. Find somewhere comfortable. I like to lay down on my bed or a yoga mat. Relax your body fully and let you back sink into the ground for a neutral spine. Sitting is an alternative option as well but laying down is more beneficial is you are trying to relax before bed. 
2. Breathe. Take some deep breaths and begin to clear your head of any thoughts. Let your attention rest solely on your breath. 
3. Start with your toes. Bring attention to your toes and feet. Observe how they feel. Are they tired? Sore? Acknowledge how your feet feel and continue to breathe into the tension if there is any.
4. Visualize your pain evaporating. As you notice and acknowledge the tensions/pains in your body, imagine the air you breathe in to be a magical healer that will evaporate anything negative in your body. As you breathe out, visualize all of the toxins, negative energy, and pain leaving your body. This will help you to take control of your own body and facilitate your own healing. 
5.  Scan your whole body. After you have finished scanning your feet, move up to your calves and shins. Then your knees. Continue up your body until you reach your face and head. Make sure you pay attention to all the little muscles in your face as well! Those can hold more tension than we know. Be specific and intentional about where you choose to scan. The more specific you are, the greater attention you can focus on a holistic healing and relaxation practice. 

If you enjoyed what you learned about in this post, check out our other posts on meditation. Contact Greg Murray at greg@adaptiveedgecoaching.com for more insight on how to apply this technique in your own life! 

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

Over 2,500 years ago, the great Lao Tzu encouraged us to take a step back and watch our lives so that we may understand how deeply our beliefs affect our destiny.  Yet, how many of us take time every day to be silent and look within?  I have seen significant improvement in my quality of life from regular meditation, and more and more of my clients are finding it to be life changing as well.  Instead of running away from our troubling thoughts and emotions, meditation empowers us to ride out the wave until the storm subsides. 

The effects of mediation on one’s mental health come, in large part, from it’s dual focus on presence and transcendence.  The value of presence cannot be understated.  Presence is the opposite of worry and rumination which are highly associated with anxiety and depression.   One cannot ruminate about the past or worry about the future while meditating.  We also realize that the brain is like a muscle in that the more you practice, the stronger your ability to live in the moment.  Studies show that 15 minutes of meditation a day is all it takes to improve focus and reduce anxiety.  In addition, meditation is linked to transcendence.  Transcendence is defined as the existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level.  Experts in deep meditation practices, particularly transcendental meditation, achieve out of body experiences and long lasting sensations of ecstasy that are not accessible by other means.  

Mediation also helps us in our everyday lives and responsibilities.  Have you ever been frustrated by an inability to concentrate?  I know that there have been times in my life where I feel like I am unable to complete full thoughts and process information.  This is highly distressing.  Prominent  medical narratives could lead someone in this situation to believe that they have an attention deficit disorder.  For me, meditation proved successful in honing my ability to concentrate.  Studies show that meditation reduces activity in the Default Mode Network (DMN).  This area of the brain is associated with mind-wandering and rumination which is highly correlated with the suffering I was experiencing. Mediation was the key for me to be able to gain more control over my biological and conscious mind. 

The DMN is also considered the “me” center because it is responsible for self-referential thoughts.  Not unexpected then, that psychologist Robert Wright, in his groundbreaking book “Why Buddhism is True” lays out how mindfulness meditation leads one to the deep and liberating realization that the buddhist principles of non-self are true.  Simplified, non-self is the notion that what we think of as “ourself” is simply a concept, and that our true essence of consciousness lies beyond that.  We have written about the latest research in neuroscience by Lisa Feldman Barret that also supports this.  Through meditation, we learn that thoughts and emotions are tied to identity, and that all of this is completely malleable.  Since learning about developmental psychology and meditation I have completely reinvented myself and my emotional experience.  Through my coaching practice, I hope to bring these life changing experiences to others.  

In this upcoming series on meditation, we will focus on 4 unique styles of meditation that can improve your life to a great degree.  They are: 

• Body Scan Meditation 
• Mindfulness Meditation (with a focus on chronic pain)
• Transcendental Meditation 
• Loving-Kindness Meditation

We will tell you about the history and philosophy of each style, what makes it unique, its benefits, and step-by-step instructions on how you can incorporate it into your life.  

If you are looking to improve your mental health, concentration levels, and connection with your body and sense of spirituality, then meditation is a great vehicle to take you there.  Read up on our other blogs on emotion and psychology and don’t hesitate to reach out to Greg@adaptiveedgecoaching to begin your journey of personal transformation today.