Ce n’est pas souvent facile mais voici quelques astuces qui peuvent vous faciliter la tâche.
The term mindfulness means many things to many people, but at it’s core, mindfulness is the habit of being aware without thinking. While much of our days and lives are spent in a problem-solving and analytical mental gear (judging, predicting, comparing, evaluating, assessing, worrying, etc.), mindfulness is about cultivating a second mental gear that involves simply being aware of and noticing our own minds and the world around us. There are two primary ways to cultivate mindfulness: a traditional mindfulness meditation practice and Ordinary Mindfulness.
Why it’s important.
By cultivating mindfulness, we are strengthening two essential mental muscles that are often neglected because of our bussyiness-obsessed lifestyles: Meta-cognition and attentional shifting.
- Meta-cognition is the ability to take perspective and watch our own minds at work. In doing so, we can detach our sense of self from the content of our thoughts and emotions — a fundamental skill for mental health.
- Attentional shifting is the ability to deliberately re-focus our attention away from one object and onto another, the value of which should be immediately apparent to anyone who’s ever found themselves caught in a worry loop or unable to stop ruminating on past mistakes.
Why it’s hard.
Strangely, one of the most common things that derails people from cultivating mindfulness is that it’s pretty boring, often disappointingly so. Mindfulness is so trendy these days and has been so hyped up that many of us come to it with unreasonable expectations that it will profoundly change our lives after a few deep breaths. And when it doesn’t, we can quickly become disillusioned. In reality, cultivating mindfulness is the psychological equivalent of exercising regularly or brushing your teeth — powerful but kinda boring. Set your expectations accordingly.
Resources:
Sit Like a Buddha: A Pocket Guide to Meditation by Lodro Rinzler
Waking Up. A Podcast from neuroscientist and long-time meditator Sam Harris. See episodes 63 and 111 which are about mindfulness and meditation.
Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright
I’ve also written several articles on mindfulness:
- No Seriously, What is Mindfulness?
- Ordinary Mindfulness
- How to Start a Mindfulness Practice that Lasts
2. Maintaining a Consistent Organizational System
What is it?
An organizational system is an external (i.e. not in your head) strategy and plan for keeping track of what we need to do and accomplish. Whether we’re a student, CEO, Stay-at-Home Mom/Dad, or a avante garde sculpture artist, we all need some way to keep track of what’s important to us and have a reliable plan for making those things happen with some degree of efficiency and punctuality.
Why it’s important.
Ultimately, creating and maintaining something as stodgy sounding as an organizational system is really about living your life according to your values and highest aspirations rather than the passing whims of the moment. By creating and maintaining a reliable organizational system, we give ourselves the best possible chance of efficiently processing the day-to-day Have-Tos in our lives so that we have the time and energy to focus on the Want-Tos (the things that really matter to us).
Why it’s hard.
Many of us don’t end up sticking with an organizational system for two reasons, both of which have to do with goodness-of-fit:
- We choose an organizational system that looks appealing but isn’t really a good fit for our current life situation or the way we tend to think. If in you’re an old-fashioned pen and paper kind of person, don’t feel like you need a fancy productivity app just because that’s what all the cool kids are doing these day. A day planner and a few hanging file folders can work beautifully.
- We don’t think to, or aren’t sure how to, adapt an organizational system to our unique needs and personalities. Even if we choose a system that is roughly a good fit for us, it’s a near certainty that it still won’t be a good fit out of the box. When you’re learning about a new organizational system, make sure to read it with an eye toward, “How would this fit with my life and how could I modify it to fit better?”
Resources:
To my mind, David Allen’s book Getting Things Done is still the gold standard for an effective organizational system, primarily because he does such a good job of articulating the fundamental principles of effective organization, not just the technical details.
Tiago Forte is a younger, more technology-focused thinker in this space, and his work on building a second brain (via Evernote) is excellent.
3. Assertiveness
What is it?
Assertiveness is all about setting effective and healthy boundaries for what we do and don’t want in our lives. It’s about asking for what we want or need, setting clear limits on what we will not tolerate, and being willing to follow through on the consequences of having our boundaries violated. In short, assertiveness is the capacity to be direct and straightforward in what we say and do.
Why it’s important.
When we aren’t able or willing to be assertive, we end up living other people’s lives rather than our own. In addition to the obvious downside of not living the life we want or believe in, a lack of assertiveness has two major negative consequences:
- It erodes our self-confidence and self-efficacy. By constantly deferring what we want in favor of what we think others want, we’re training our brains to believe that we’re not as important as others. This is a recipe for chronic dissatisfaction with our lives and even depression.
- It makes us chronically anxious. I won’t get into the mechanics of how this happens, but it’s enough to say that in my clinical experience as a psychologist and therapist, I rarely see a client who struggles with major anxiety who doesn’t also have significant difficulty being assertive in some aspect of their life.
Why it’s hard.
Many of us were raised in environments where indirect communication was the norm (e.g.: sarcasm, teasing, guilt-tripping, hint-hinting, etc.). And when it wasn’t indirect, it often swung to the other end of the communication spectrum and became aggressive (shouting, threatening, verbal abuse, etc.). Consequently, we may not have had much exposure to a healthier alternative — Assertive Communication. And even if we try to communicate assertively, it can feel awkward and strange, so we revert back to what feels more normal and comfortable.
