Improve Satisfaction with Life and Psychological Well-Being with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“mindfulness dimensions had positive main effects on well-being beyond demographic variables such that those high in mindfulness enjoyed higher life satisfaction and psychological well-being.” – Yoshinori Sugiura
Over the last several decades, research and anecdotal experiences have accumulated an impressive evidential case that the development of mindfulness has positive benefits for the individual’s mental, physical, and spiritual life. Mindfulness appears to be beneficial both for healthy people and for people suffering from a myriad of mental and physical illnesses. It appears to be beneficial across ages, from children to the elderly. And it appears to be beneficial across genders, personalities, race, and ethnicity. The breadth and depth of benefits is unprecedented. There is no other treatment or practice that has been shown to come anyway near the range of mindfulness’ positive benefits.
One of the premiere measurement tools for mindfulness is the Five Factors of Mindfulness Questionnaire. It measures overall mindfulness and also five facets; observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-judgement, and non-reactivity. People differ and an individual can be high or low on any of these facets and any combination of facets. There is accumulating evidence of mindfulness facets are most predictive of good mental health. There is a need to step back and summarize what has been learned.
In today’s Research News article “Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Correlates of FFMQ Mindfulness Facets.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02684/full?utm_source=F-AAE&utm_medium=EMLF&utm_campaign=MRK_1184693_69_Psycho_20191217_arts_A), Mattes and colleagues reviewed, summarized, and performed a meta-analysis of the published research studies that correlated the 5 facets of mindfulness with any non-mindfulness outcome measure.
They report that the published research found that overall desirable (positive) outcomes were most strongly related to acting with awareness, non-judgement, and non-reactivity, while describing had significantly weaker relationships and observing had significantly the weakest relationships. They also found that overall undesirable (negative) outcomes were most strongly negatively related to describing, acting with awareness, non-judgement, and non-reactivity, while observing had significantly the weakest relationships. Finally, they report that acting with awareness had the significantly strongest positive relationship with satisfaction with life followed by non-judging, describing, and non-reacting, with observing having the significantly weakest relationship.
These results are correlational and as such conclusions about causation cannot be reached from these results alone. That being said, there are a very large number of manipulative studies that demonstrate that mindfulness is positively related to desirable outcomes, including satisfaction with life and negatively related to undesirable ones. So, it is reasonable to conclude that the results of the present analysis are indicative of causal relationships.
The present results, however, decompose mindfulness into its component facets. It suggests that acting with awareness, non-judgement, and non-reactivity are relative equal in increasing positive outcomes and decreasing negative outcomes, with the exception that acting with awareness produces significantly greater increases in satisfaction with life. This is suggestive that mindfulness in general produces well-being but when it comes to being happy with one’s life actions emanating from mindfulness are most important. This suggests that doing is more important than passivity in making our lives more satisfying.
It is interesting that the observing facet of mindfulness had the smallest impact on life satisfaction and reducing negative impacts of all the facets, but was equivalent to other facets in increasing the positive effects of mindfulness. Observing refers to noticing and attending to sensations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings. The findings then suggest that simply noticing undesirable, negative, experience is not effective in reducing them and this may be why observing is not highly impactful on satisfaction with life.
The describing facet of mindfulness reflects the propensity to label experience in words and this facet was the weakest in increasing positive outcomes, while equivalently effective in reducing negative outcomes. So, simply labelling positive events and feelings is not sufficient to enhance them, but this labelling is effective in reducing negative effects. This may reflect a greater awareness of when things are not going well which may be a prerequisite for dealing with the undesirable states.
Clearly, mindfulness improves life. Different aspects of mindfulness are differentially effective in improving different aspects of that improvement, with acting with awareness, non-judgement, and non-reactivity producing the greatest improvements while observing and describing producing the least improvements.
So, improve satisfaction with life and psychological well-being with mindfulness.
“The practice of mindfulness is an effective means of enhancing and maintaining optimal mental health and overall well-being, and can be implemented in every aspect of daily living.” Rezvan Ameli
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Mattes J (2019) Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Correlates of FFMQ Mindfulness Facets. Front. Psychol. 10:2684. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02684
Background: A number of meta-analyses of mindfulness have been performed, but few distinguished between different facets of mindfulness, despite it being known that facets of mindfulness behave differently in different populations; and most studied the outcome of interventions, which tend to involve additional ingredients besides mindfulness. Furthermore, there has recently been some concern regarding possible publication bias in mindfulness research.
Objective: Systematic review and meta-analysis of the relationship of different facets of mindfulness with various outcomes, taking into account possible moderators, and controlling for publication bias using a method appropriate given the substantial heterogeneity present.
Methods: Random effects meta-analysis with a number of robustness checks and estimation of the possible impact of publication bias on the results. Included are all studies that report correlations of outcomes with all five FFMQ facets, in English, French, German, or Spanish.
Study Registration: PROSPERO International prospective register of systematic reviews http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42016041863.
Results: For the designated primary measure (SWLS) estimated correlations were: 0.15 [0.07, 0.22] for the Observing facet, 0.31 [0.27, 0.36] for Describing, 0.35 [0.31, 0.38] for Acting-with-Awareness, 0.30 [0.10, 0.47] for Non-judging and 0.28 [0.18, 0.37] for Non-reacting. Grouping all desirable outcomes together, Describing has the highest zero-order (though not partial) correlation; Non-judging the highest effect on avoiding undesirable outcomes. Results seem to be reasonably robust even to severe publication bias.