The Mindful Workplace by Chaskalson Michael

Author:Chaskalson, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2011-08-23T16:00:00+00:00

One can seek to address these tendencies explicitly – seeking evidence for or against their truth – or, as the MBSR course does, one can address them implicitly. Rather than dealing with individual unhelpful thoughts, the MBSR programme helps participants to recognize their thoughts as thoughts and to discover new ways of dealing with those that are unhelpful. The upshot of this is not only that they can find new ways of dealing with distressing thoughts, but also that they may become more flexible in their approach – more able to sit with difficulty and consequently more creative.

Valuable though it may be to recognize thoughts as thoughts, that is not the whole story. You might recognize the pattern of negative thoughts – see them for what they are – but beneath them, at a deeper level of the mind, there is going to be a set of feelings that gave rise to the thoughts in the first place. Such feelings often persist on the edge of awareness long after the thoughts that arose from them have passed out of awareness.10 Taking this into account, the following exercise describes a routine for dealing with unhelpful patterns of thought.

Try this:

Working with Unhelpful Thoughts

When you find yourself caught up in unhelpful patterns of thought, try doing a mindful minute to gain some calm and steadiness. Then:

1. Acknowledge the thoughts for what they are. It may be helpful to put a label on them. ‘There I go running my self-critical tape again’, or ‘Here I go judging others again’, or ‘Planning, I’m just doing my usual, anxious, over-planning … ’ Just sit for a moment or two, gently acknowledging what’s going on at the level of thoughts.

2. Now turn your attention to your body and see what’s there at the level of feelings. Check out your directly sensed bodily experience. Maybe there’s a slight feeling of anger present, or maybe sadness, anxiety or any other feeling. Just acknowledge whatever is present at the level of feelings. And if there’s not much going on there, just be aware of that.

3. Now see what’s present in physical sensation. Maybe your shoulders feel tense or your jaw is clenching. Perhaps there’s a tightening in your hands or across your brow. Again, just gently acknowledge what’s there, bringing an attitude of warm, kindly curiosity to what you find. And sit with those sensations for a few moments, exploring them, breathing with them, just letting them be.

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