“How would your life be different if…you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…you look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.” -Steve Maraboli
A key aspect of mindfulness practice is non-judging, that is letting things be as they are without making value judgements about them, e.g. good or bad, safe or dangerous etc. This by itself is quite liberating allowing the individual to look at things with a completely open mind. This, in turn, can empower the people to look again at how they’ve been interpreting the occurrences in their lives and perhaps coming to a new conclusion as to their meaning. This is termed cognitive reappraisal and is simply rethinking about how you’ve been interpreting life events..
Incorrect or biased appraisals of everyday or unusual events and interactions with people are characteristic of a variety of mental illnesses. They will tend to interpret even innocuous events as reflective of personal weaknesses. A very effective psychotherapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, was developed specifically to reprogram thinking to reappraise events. For example, a depressed patient might interpret being turned down for a job as evidence of their worthlessness. A cognitive reappraisal might result in the individual rethinking this interpretation and seeing that the decision was appropriate as the job would not have been right for them and they would have been unhappy in it. Hence, cognitive reappraisal is a key process in emotion regulation and in turn mental well-being.
Mindfulness has been previously shown to be associated with improved cognitive reappraisal (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/rethink-your-emotions/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/20/regulate-emotions-with-mindfulness/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/10/take-command-and-control-of-your-emotions/). In today’s Research News article “State Mindfulness during Meditation Predicts Enhanced Cognitive Reappraisal”
Garland and colleagues investigated the effect of brief mindfulness training on students’ states of mindfulness and their associations with cognitive reappraisal. They found that the brief mindfulness training indeed increased levels of mindfulness, particularly non-reactivity and the higher the levels of mindfulness the higher the levels of cognitive reappraisal. The more mindful the individual the more likely they were to rethink their interpretations of events.
Mindful non-reactivity represents the ability to experience events, including negative events, and not react to them, but rather just experience them as they are. By not reacting to events the individual is better able to look objectively at the event and reappraise their usual ways of interpreting them. In other words non-reactivity liberates the individual to rethink how their looking at things. It cannot be overemphasized how important this is for mental well-being. The individual can break out of overlearned patterns of thought that produce or reinforce negative feelings about themselves. They can then appraise things that occur with distance and logic, objectively interpreting the event. This goes a long way toward relieving worry, anxiety, rumination, depression, and low self-worth.
So, be mindful and think again.
“Successful men and women will always redirect the course of negative thoughts and situations into advantageous ones. What if you were able to start flipping obstacles into opportunities? To see breakdowns as breakthroughs?” – Thai Nguyen
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies