MINDFULNESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE - UNDERSTANDING THROUGH CASE STUDIES

What is being mindful?

How does training one to be mindful enhances one’s performance at work and at home .Being mindful is nothing but self awareness.This simply means, being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings , actionsand being accountable for the same. Practicing mindfulness through training will enable individuals to be aware of their thoughts and they will be able to correct the same towards positive/ realistic/ objective pathways.

Thoughts being the foundation for one’s feelings, which in turn are the channel for one to experience emotions, channelizing and training one’s thoughts towards the appropriate pathway will enable the individual to develop the skill of introspection. While introspection is essentially all about “ self”, this activity guides the individual towards identifying his dormant strengths , innate potentials , unused creativity and last but not the least, enhances his/ her objective reasoning abilities. As one develops this habit of “ looking within “ rather than “ looking outside” . With time, he / she begins to develop a greater sense of self responsibility with accountability. This skillthat he/ she develops ensures that the individual performshis role at workplace with a completely different frame of mind .

What is this “ skill” that any individual develops by being mindful?

·Less and less critical of both self and others – the perception changes from “ blame “ to“ lets solve the problem”

·Less and less usage of flight and fight response in times of stressand more usage of positive coping strategies to overcome the stress

·Better awareness to maintain the stress on the eustress spectrum

·Focus on colleagues’ ( team’s) strengths and developing strategies to highlight the same for the benefit of tasks at hand

Mindfulness in simplest terms is being aware of one’s thoughts and being aware of one’s environment.

The most beautiful fact about this practice is that when one is trained to apply to oneself, one is able to apply it at all spheres of one’s life and thus the transformation is holistic. This may best be explained with a few case studies.

CASE STUDY 1

AA was a young man in his thirtys, married and blessed with two children visitedtheHolisticHealthCentre to seek help to work on his past relationship. He had been in a relationship during his college , which was very comfortable for a couple of years but suddenly broke up for reasons unknown to him. AA later met another girl whom he dated and eventually married and was happy in his marriage. But AA felt that somewhere, the past still troubled him as in it seemed to be nagging him somewhere. As a result, he felt he was not giving his hundred percent to his marriage. During the intervention sessions, AA discovered that he felt victimised as it was the girl who had pursued him and it was she who had walked out of the relationship too. As the discussion progressed, he identified a similar pattern of experiencing victimisation at workplace. At workplace, AA realised that he was often let down by his team leader or his team members alternatively, frequently leaving him feel victimised.These, according to AA affected his performance significantly. The further sessions involved discussing and leading AA to identify the chain of events leading him to experience victimisation , his own limiting beliefs about how he “will be “ taken advantage of and how events in real life reinforced his limiting belief. Further sessions included helping him release this pattern, overcome his limiting belief and learn the skill of assertively handling his team and thus practically experience a change in his work environment and performance. As AA progressed through these sessions and worked on his present issue, he also healed himself of his old relationship as he broke through his limiting beliefs and old patterns . Thus , throughprofessionally guided sessions involving training to be mindful, AA was able to not only work on his past but also find a solution for his present blocks and thus bring about a significant change in his performance.

This case study enables one to infer the following :

a.Mindfulnesshelps to reach to the root cause of any presenting problem

b.Mindfulness is useful to learn and practice the skill of assertiveness

c.Mindfulness is so holistic that, by applying the same, one is able to work on more than just the issue which one was aware of.

CASE STUDY 2

BB introduced his sibling for coaching sessions. As a family member, he was suggested to undergo a session or two, in order to be able to effectively support his sibling at the home front. During the course of discussion, AA shared how, in order to maintain peace, he agreed to many of his sibling’s opinions but was always feeling uncomfortable within and he realised that probably this inner unease was causing his spurts of irrelevant anger . The coach and BB discussed the reasons behind his behaviour . The reasons that were identified :

1.BB felt his sibling would be displeased if he did not agree with her opinion

2.BB believed the key to ensure lasting relationships was to have least conflicts and the key to have least conflicts was to agree with the other in spite of internally not agreeing

3.BB also identified this as his pattern at work too. He realised many a time , on hindsight, he had felt his team could have performed much better, had he expressed his ideas which were different from the groups.

The then progressed to discuss the outcomes:

1.His sibling , invariably would become upset when “ his suggestions” didn’t work

2.Even though BB was able to avoid full blown conflicts with this strategy, he admitted a state of unease existedwithin him .

3.Many a time he regretted that his performance at work was not as it could be.

These discussion enabled BB to identify the core cause for him to adopt this style of problem solving which lay in his limiting belief with regard to maintaining relationships. The session went deeper to trace the origin of this belief and BB discovered that it was a learnt pattern from his mother. He recalled how in his childhood, his mother always remained silent whenever there were arguments / differences in opinion between his parents or between his grandmother and mother, his mother chose to remain silent and agree with the other and the arguments / fights always ended so. Once this discovery was made, BB learnt the following :

1.The present coping strategy was result of a faulty learning from his childhood regarding reducing conflicts and maintaining relationships.

2.It was a limiting belief that swallowing one’s opinions/ ideas resulted in peace

3.This coping strategyin reality was the cause for his inner conflict

4.This coping strategy stunted his use of his creativity and problem solving skills

5.Since this coping strategy was the result of a limiting belief imbibed in his childhood, it could now be changed with an expanding belief , based on his own life experiences.

6.Changing his belief system that had been imbibed in childhood enabled him to be more vocal about his ideas/ opinions and to his surprise, he found a change in his relationships both with his sibling as well as with his colleagues.

7.As BB began to voice his opinion and ideas , which did differ from what had been suggested, to his surprise he found that they did not create conflicts but instead they brought him more appreciation and acceptance as a leader.

CASE STUDY 3

CC and his wife approached the Holistic Wellness Practitioner for marital therapy. As the session progressed, the coach recognised that the lady seemed to be suffering from a personalitydisorder . As expected, she dropped out of therapy very soon. But CC continued with his sessions as he wished to save his marriage in spite of his wife suffering from a personality disorder and refusing to seek professional help for the same.

As the coach and he discussed his contribution to the marital disharmony,CC identified the following :

a.His wife exhibited certain odd behaviours and as a result, he had begun to perceive every action of hers with suspicion and this often led to verbal fights as she resisted them.

b.Since his wife was extremely rigid in her behaviour, household tasks took time. CC would get impatient and he had begun to complete most of the household tasks himself and this resulted in fatigue and exhaustion . This state once again led to fights.

c.He realised , over time , he had developed a strong opinion about his wife that even the most insignificant actions had started to trigger a reaction from him.

As his wife discontinued sessions, marital therapy could not be continued. But CC , by that time discovered that, due to his domestic unrest, he was facing problems at work. Hence he wished to continue his sessions for his own holistic growth and betterment. Since the sessions were commenced for marital disharmony and he had identified some issues on that front, the sessions continued from the same thread.

CC discovered :

1.He was quite judgemental and rigid by nature and this probably triggered fights as being judgemental and rigid cause him to be less tolerant .

2.He practiced less of delegation and this resulted in him getting overburdened . This self overburdening led to fatigue and temper outbursts.

3.With certain experiences, he had masked the person with her actions and as a result, he was unable to love or accept the person in his wife.

4.Many of these behaviours were reflected in his professional interactions too andwas cause of concern .

Following this discovery, CC was guided to work on :

a.His rigidity

b.His judgemental nature

c.His tendency to mask the person with his/ her action

d.His inability to delegate

a.He was helped understand the difference between flexibility and submissiveness. He also traced his pattern of rigidity to his strict upbringing , where in the rights and wrongs were very clearly demarcated with no space of pardon. He , at this stage was able to appreciate the demerits in the same and learnt how flexibility helped him to experience ease within and also ensured a healthier relationship with others.

b.In order to overcome his judgemental behaviour, he was helpedto develop objectivity. In order to be objective, he worked on his suppressed emotions , developed empathy and this helped him to become more objective. As he became more objective, his judgemental nature took a back seat.

c.As he began to focus on becoming more objective and flexible, he easily learnt to differentiate the person from the action and this strategy of “ lookingbeyond “ the person immediately reflected positive results at work.

d.He experienced difficulty in learning to delegate. For this he had to unlearn the limiting belief “ If you want it your way, do it yourself” . To unlearn this limiting belief, his flexibility helped him as he slowly began to accept life was colours and shades and not essentially black an white.Once thisrelearning happened that “ what is important is that the task be completed and result achieved and not necessarily “ my way”, delegation became an automatic process.

In his case mindfulness helped CC to :

1.Recognise his patterns that affected his work and personal life .

2.Helped him to evolve as a better human being

3.Helped him take accountability and responsibility for his past behaviour which resulted in certain consequences in his personal life

4.Bring significant changes in his performance at work with these changes.

These case studies may ring a bell for many, as these kind of experiences and events are common . Learning to be mindful helps to strengthen one’s coping skills. Are we willing to ?