Mindful ActivityWant to boost your mindfulness? Try this quick mindfulness activity to discover how to be more present and mindful.
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Mindfulness is the state of being aware and accepting of your thoughts and emotions by staying in the present moment. Recent research suggests that engaging in mindfulness can contribute to improved mental-health and well-being, perhaps through the process of increasing awareness and acceptance of emotions. So let's give mindfulness a try to see if it's a good fit for you.
Mindfulness Activity:
In the next activity, you will do a mindfulness mediation and practice pulling your minds back to the present when it begins to wander. The mediation will take approximately 10 minutes. So please make sure you are seated comfortably.
When you are done, reflect on your experience below to better understand whether this was a useful strategy for you (mindfulness is not always the best strategy for everyone, so don't feel bad if it's not for you).
How did mindfulness affect you?Thank you to everyone who submitted your responses to this activity! We can now share some common themes that emerged among our community.
Of all the emotional activities on this website, the results from this one were the most shocking to me. I knew from the academic research that mindfulness was difficult for some people. But among the Berkeley Well-Being Institute community, mindfulness proved to be a very challenging activity. Among our users, we found that the majority of people were aware and accepting of their emotions. But regardless of this, when we asked if your emotions were overwhelming to you while doing this activity:
That means that while doing mindfulness, you can be both aware and accepting of your emotions and still be overwhelmed by them. For those of you who Agreed or Strongly Agreed that your emotions were overwhelming while doing this activity, I strongly suggest that you focus on building other happiness skills—there are plenty of other ways to boost your well-being. After you build other skills, mindfulness is likely to become easier and more beneficial. |
About Dr. Tchiki Davis
Dr. Davis is founder of The Berkeley Well-Being Institute. After getting her PhD in psychology at Berkeley, she started creating online content & programs to boost well-being—some of these have reached more than a million people. As author of Outsmart Your Smartphone, and contributor to Psychology Today, The Greater Good Science Center, and Shine Text, Dr. Davis aims to share her insights on happiness & health with people all across the world. Learn more about Dr. Davis.
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