GET INTO THE RIGHT FRAME OF MIND
Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
—EPICURUS
We may not always be able to control our circumstances, but we have significant control over our responses to our circumstances. Because our experience of stress is heavily dependent on the way we choose to think about our stressors, we can considerably reduce feelings of stress by cultivating attitudes that support serenity, that focus on the positive, and that help us use our resources. This chapter will focus on strategies for understanding and maintaining such attitudes; such strategies include journaling, practicing optimism, and cultivating gratitude.
One Grade, Two Perspectives
Taylor took a challenging test and received a C–. This was the first test in his first semester of college, yet he made several projections about the future based on this grade. “I’m in over my head here. I didn’t study enough, and obviously I’m not cut out for this class. In fact, I’m probably going to do poorly in most of my classes here! I wonder if I’m even college material. Maybe I should just give up now.”
Francis took the same test and received the same grade. He was a freshman taking his first test, and he, too, made a few projections. “Wow, this is a lower grade than I had expected. I didn’t study enough, and obviously I’ll have to work harder. This is just one test, though, and I’ll do better on the next ones, and I can pull my grade up easily. I’ll do better in my other classes, too. I’m sure everyone bombs a test or two during their first semester. I’m sure this is just a fluke, but I’ll study harder on future tests, just in case.”
The differences in their reactions fall along the lines of typical optimists and pessimists. The way they interpreted the same event differed enormously, and their motivation and resulting behavior were quite different as well. The way optimists minimize their failures and maximize their successes—and the way pessimists do the opposite—has an impact on their stress levels and the degree of success they find in life.
The Importance of Frame of Mind
When many people think about stress management, they think about how to cut down or control the stressors they face in their lives. While there are ways to minimize or reduce the number of stressors (as we will discuss in Key 7), it is not always possible to eliminate all stressors, nor is it desirable (as we learned in Key 1). Often we may find ourselves in situations where we cannot change our circumstances, or at least not right away.
This is why our frame of mind is so important—we can control our responses to our circumstances, even when we cannot control our circumstances. In exerting such control, we can lessen the negative elements of experiencing stress. This one crucial strategy that is available to everyone could be a stress relief plan in itself, and it has been for many people who have had to accept lifestyle factors that are stressful and beyond their control. Let’s look at why.
How Mental Factors Affect Our Experience of Stress
Potential stressors surround us constantly. Some of these stressors affect us more than others, and some of them affect some people more than they affect others. There is a pivotal factor that determines which stressors affect which people and to what degree: perception. The body’s stress response is triggered by perceived threats to our health and safety, and each of us may perceive things somewhat differently. It has long been observed that two people can experience the same situation and react completely differently: One driver may react to a traffic jam with stress and rage, while the driver in the next car may accept the possibility of being late and choose to relax and listen to the radio. Two people may face the same challenge and deadline at work; by the end one may feel overwhelmed and burned out, while the other is invigorated and excited at the project’s completion. It is important to understand how these differences arise and to see how this understanding can be put to good use in keeping us relaxed in the face of potential stressors. It is vital to know, first, that one factor that we all share can make the difference between triggering our stress response and allowing us to remain in a relaxed state. In the following section I describe and elaborate on this factor.
One Pivotal Perception
As we noted in the Introduction, when we face a situation whose demands we believe we cannot meet, we feel stress. This means that in a given situation, if there are requirements that are taxing but we are able to meet them with a moderate amount of effort, we may feel challenged or invigorated. If a situation demands resources or abilities we do not possess, we generally feel stressed, especially if there are heavy consequences from failing to meet these demands. If we are able to meet a challenge we face, we experience it as just that—a challenge. We may feel excited, but we generally do not feel stressed. If we calculate that a challenge we face is beyond what we are able to manage, we may experience that challenge as threatening—to our physical safety, our standing in a community, our ability to meet our financial or relationship needs, or even our very sense of self. This is the main factor that determines whether we experience something as stressful or not: our perception of a situation as a threat or as a challenge. Several personal factors may influence whether a given situation is perceived as threatening or challenging, but when the mind perceives a threat, the body responds with a stress response. The following factors influence whether something is experienced as threatening or challenging.
Inborn Traits
As personality psychology—and virtually any parent of more than one child—can tell you, certain personality characteristics are innate. Psychologists refer to the “Big Five” personality factors as the key features that can be measured practically from birth: openness to new experiences, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and neuroticism. Where we stand with these five basic factors can affect how we react to what we experience in a multitude of ways. Someone who is an introvert may feel threatened by giving a presentation, even to a small group of people, when a similar challenge would be experienced as fun by an extrovert. Someone high in conscientiousness may feel stressed by a large and important assignment at work because this individual may gauge that he or she cannot satisfactorily complete the job in the allotted time, whereas someone who is less committed to doing an above-average job may feel less stress. Conversely, the same conscientious person may feel less stress in the long run because he or she has produced better work—this may lead to greater success in life and the resources that come with this, and lead away from the negative consequences that can come from a shoddy job. These factors affect how we behave, and they also affect how we feel and what we perceive; the traits are part of who we are and part of how stressed we feel.
While these five traits are inborn, we do have some control over how strongly we experience them, and to what degree they express themselves in our personality. While someone with a high level of introversion may never become the life of the party, as will someone who has a strong predisposition toward extroversion, psychologists estimate that we can alter our set point for happiness by about 40–50%, and this may be an accurate estimate for these traits as well. With practice, we can shape our natural tendencies to such a point that we will tend to see and react to things differently. We can shape the traits that we were born with.
Available Resources
Because our perception of stress pivots on our estimated ability to meet the demands we face, our beliefs about our resources can greatly influence our experience of stress. I use the words our beliefs about our resources because we often have greater internal and external resources than we believe we possess. These resources—from physical resources such as tools and possessions; to social resources such as friends who are able to lend support; to internal resources such as energy, intelligence, or personal resilience—can help us in many ways, but we need to be aware of them before we can use them. If we have a greater ability to meet a challenge than we believe we do, we will still experience stress, because it is our estimation that we cannot meet this particular challenge. (If we overestimate our resources, this can lead to stress as well, as we may realize too late that we are in over our heads.) Being aware of the personal resources you do and do not possess can help you to accurately appraise your situation and to experience stress only when it is warranted. Strengthening your resources can diminish stress as well. Because we all have our own unique set of resources, we may respond in unique ways to the same potential stressor.
Past Experiences
Early in life, we started learning from our experiences, and these lessons shaped how we think about ourselves and the world around us. The assumptions we made about the world then continue to affect what we think and experience into the present. Those who experience early trauma may be sensitive to certain experiences now, so that related experiences in the present can cause stress that may not be felt by most other people in the same situation. (Conversely, the same person may have developed particular strengths in response to facing the trauma and recovering from it, and these strengths may add an extra dimension of resilience and diminish feelings of stress.) We may have encountered certain challenges in the past that we could not meet, and as a result we may have developed a sense of helplessness that takes over in similar situations we face now. By contrast, we may have developed a sense of self-confidence from early successes that translates into feelings of resourcefulness now. The experiences we have had and, more important, what we have come to believe from these experiences, affect how stressed we feel today.
Habitual Attitudes
As we build on our experiences, we get used to certain thought patterns, and they come to define us. Just as we may find ourselves at home after an end-of-day commute without remembering the specific turns we took because the route has become automatic, we may automatically respond with familiar thought patterns out of habit.
If, for example, we have had early experiences of rejection after an argument with a loved one and decide from this that conflict leads to loss, we may become much more stressed by conflicts than someone who has found that resolving conflict tends to lead to a healthier relationship in the future. A belief that conflict leads to rejection may translate into habitual thought patterns of anger, avoidance, or at least negative reactions when conflict threatens to arise—and all these can bring stress. Seeking out conflict is not necessarily a good idea in many situations, but accepting and working through conflict in a respectful way can be beneficial for relationships, and those who have developed habitual thought patterns that support this may experience not only a greater number of healthy relationships, but also less stress within those relationships.
Examining your habitual thought patterns and challenging them can enable you to choose your responses to the potential stressors you face. While it takes time to change habits—and habits of thought are no different from other lifestyle habits—it is very possible and well worth the effort to do so.
What Thought Patterns Contribute to Stress?
Understanding how thoughts may contribute to stress is an important step, and realizing that it is possible to change these thoughts is another valuable one. However, before we are able to change our thought patterns to better support stress relief, it is crucial to be able to identify the thought patterns that are commonly the most damaging—and the most empowering—so we can make changes that really count. The following thought patterns can have the greatest impact on stress levels.
Pessimism and Optimism
People often think that pessimism is characterized by seeing the glass as half empty and optimism by seeing it as half full, meaning that pessimists will more often notice the negatives in a situation while optimists focus on the positive, sometimes to a fault. This is partially true, but the defining features of optimism and pessimism are a little more complex than that. Your tendency toward pessimism or optimism is linked to your explanatory style, or the way you explain to yourself what you experience. When it comes to explanatory style, optimists and pessimists are opposites. When positive events occur, optimists tend to process these situations within the framework of three main assumptions:
• Optimists credit themselves with everything that goes right in their lives.
• Optimists take one success as evidence that more success is imminent.
• Optimists assume that the effects of their successes will be lasting.
Pessimists tend to be ruled by the opposite:
• Pessimists attribute positive events to chance or other factors outside themselves.
• Pessimists believe that successes in their lives are isolated incidents.
• Pessimists believe that their successes will be short lived.
When it comes to negative events, optimists and pessimists switch places and tend to process these events in opposite ways, with optimists believing them to be short lived, isolated, and caused by factors outside of themselves, while pessimists believe that negative events will have lasting effects, are indicative of more negative events to come, and are somehow the pessimist’s fault.
These very different patterns of perception lie at the root of an optimist’s propensity to see the positive in a situation and a pessimist’s tendency to point out the negative. Optimists believe that they will succeed, so they tend to celebrate their successes, see opportunities everywhere, and trust in their own abilities—all things that lead to a greater belief in personal resources and a reduced experience of stress. Pessimists may sometimes find themselves more prepared (because, seeing potential problems, they are more likely to create backup plans), but they also see fewer opportunities, believe in themselves less, and expect the worst. Pessimists are more stressed for good reason.
While people (especially those prone to pessimism) may guess that optimists are seeing only what they want to see, research backs up the reality that optimists really do have it better. And more interestingly, it’s been found that optimists aren’t happier because they have better lives; rather, they see these benefits because of their optimistic way of seeing the world. Specifically, optimists tend to enjoy better emotional health, increased longevity, greater success in life, and, of course, less stress. One study examined the impact of optimism, as well as positive affect (being in a good mood) and social support, and were able to discern that these factors had an impact on physical health measured at 17% and an impact on psychological health of 33%! This further underscores the importance of positive thinking, happiness, and having supportive people in your life.
Pessimists, on the other hand, not only miss out on the happiness that optimists enjoy, but also experience poorer health, according to several studies. Pessimists tend to have a higher incidence of contracting infectious diseases and have poorer overall health and earlier mortality. They also enjoy less success in life than do their more optimistic counterparts. Pessimistic thinking patterns can be subtle, but it is worth identifying and eliminating them, because this can lead to a much more positive experience in life.
Cognitive Distortions
Because of all of the factors that go into our perceptions of stress—habitual thoughts patterns, past experiences, inborn traits, and more—maintaining true objectivity is extremely difficult, if not impossible. There are specific ways in which people tend to distort what they see around them; these are our brain’s way of protecting our ego, but they can cause stress. Psychologist Aaron T. Beck identified this phenomenon and coined the term cognitive distortions. These distortions can help us momentarily avoid the emotional pain of viewing ourselves as responsible for less-than-perfect circumstances or of noticing disappointing events that are happening to us, but the distortions leave us feeling hopeless, victimized, angry, and stressed. Most of us have a tendency toward a few of these, and becoming more aware of them can help us recognize them when we are using them, and start to make changes in how we think. The following are common cognitive distortions and examples of each:
• All-or-nothing thinking. Using extremes in thought, with no gray area. “It’s not just a bad day, it’s the worst day ever.”
• Overgeneralization. Taking isolated events and assuming that all future events will be the same. “It’s not just one frustrating day, this always happens.”
• Mental filter. Glossing over the positive. “It’s not a few negative things happening, it’s a whole day of nothing but bad experiences.”
• Disqualifying the positive. Treating positive events as flukes and giving more weight to the negative. “There is no ‘bright side’ because nothing good could come out of this.”
• Jumping to conclusions. Deciding what to believe and then looking for evidence to support assumptions, rather than letting the evidence lead to a logical conclusion. “Because a few things went wrong, everything else will go wrong, too, and somebody must have wanted this to happen on purpose.”
• Magnification and minimization. Blowing things out of proportion or failing to assign events the significance they deserve. “This is the end of the world,” or “It’s nothing.”
• Emotional reasoning. Taking emotions as facts. “I’m feeling angry with you, therefore you must be wrong.”
• Should statements. Living by a rigid set of rules and believing that others need to live by these inflexible rules as well. “They should know what I want without my having to ask.”
• Labeling and mislabeling. Placing negative, often inaccurate labels on oneself and others. “You’re just a whiner.”
• Personalization. Blaming oneself or others for events that are outside one’s control. “You ruined my day.”
Cognitive distortions can lead to greater stress in several ways: They promote conflict in relationships, keep us feeling bad (notice how many of the examples above are associated with a pessimistic explanatory style), and keep us focused on what we cannot control instead of what we can. Becoming more aware of cognitive distortions that creep into your life can help you loosen their hold, feel more empowered, and experience less stress.
Rumination
Have you ever been upset about something and just could not get it out of your head? What begins as an attempt to find a solution to a problem can slide into rumination, whereby people obsess over stressful, negative situations, playing and replaying them in their heads, but without finding solutions. Rumination is actually a combination of reflection and brooding; reflection on a problem can lead to a solution, but brooding is associated with greater levels of stress and a more negative mood. This kind of thinking can be quite stressful, as it exacerbates feelings of helplessness, frustration, and hurt. Aside from being associated with a more negative and stressed frame of mind, fruitless rumination is linked to less proactive behavior (being stuck in a negative situation), self-sabotaging behaviors (such as binge eating), and even health issues such as hypertension. If you find yourself trapped in a state of rumination, it is most certainly affecting your stress levels and quite possibly your health.
An Important Caveat
It would be stating a fallacy to claim that all stress is entirely a matter of perception. Certain experiences are perceived as stressful when they demand from us more than we are able to give. Situations that are uncontrollable, that require abilities we do not possess, or that keep us overloaded for long periods of time tend to take a physical and psychological toll regardless of our perceptions. This has been documented by research and is important to point out because often people who understand the role of mindset may feel that they are failing in their positive-thinking strategies or related methods if they find themselves feeling any effects of stress at all. It is critical to remember that practicing these techniques and getting into the right frame of mind for stress relief can have a significant impact on our experience of stress, but the effects of stress may not be entirely eliminated through this one key strategy alone. If you feel a reduction in stress but your experience of stress is not entirely eliminated right away, continue to celebrate your progress and do not give up. When we use strategies to change our mindset, we generally feel less stressed, and this reduction in stress can free up energy to enact other changes that you will read about in this book. While this strategy alone may not erase all stress, it still presents a powerful way to relieve stress, and, alone or with other stress relievers, it can make the difference between healthy and unhealthy levels of stress.
Key Points to Remember
To sum up the important factors to remember when it comes to thinking styles and their impact on stress, the following are critical points to keep in mind:
• We can control our responses to circumstances, even when the circumstances themselves are beyond our control. In doing so, we can greatly lessen our negative experience of stress.
• Whether or not our stress response is triggered depends on whether we perceive a situation as a potential threat to our physical, emotional, or psychological safety.
• Not everyone experiences potential stressors the same way; we do not all find the same things universally stressful.
• Our perception of stress can be unique depending on inborn traits, available resources, past experiences, and habitual thought patterns, each of which can influence how we react and how stressed we feel in different situations.
• Certain thought patterns, particularly pessimism, cognitive distortions, and rumination, can be damaging to your peace of mind, and even your health.
• Some situations, even when not perceived as “stressful,” take a toll. While changing your thought patterns does not eliminate all stress (and no strategy can do this entirely), it can produce significant positive changes in your outlook and experience, which can lead to other positive changes.
Activities to Try
Because it is possible (and advisable) to examine our own thought processes and change the habitual thinking patterns that create stress in our lives, there is plenty of reason for optimism. Simply becoming aware of how such factors as pessimism, rumination, cognitive distortions, and other thinking patterns affect your life is the first step toward loosening their negative effects on you. Once you become aware of how these ways of thinking can color your experience, you may begin to automatically notice and challenge them. However, if you take your awareness to the next level through action, you reduce the likelihood that you will gradually forget what you have learned and remain in the same patterns of thought and behavior. The thought-changing exercises below can cement your learning, translate into lasting changes, and have a strong impact on your stress levels.
Thought Stopping
Now that you may be aware of a few thought patterns that you want to change, it is important to remember that it is possible to alter these patterns of thinking that may feel automatic. It will, however, take time and some effort. As we think in a similar way repeatedly, the brain becomes accustomed to following this familiar path, just as we may drive home from work every day without giving much thought to which turns to take—it feels automatic. An important step in changing your undesirable habitual thought patterns is to learn to catch yourself and stop when you find that you are traveling down this well-worn path. Thought-stopping exercises can help you to become more aware of what you are thinking and stop yourself from continuing with these thoughts. The following thought-stopping exercises can help you to substitute pessimistic thinking patterns for optimistic ones, shift ruminative thinking to more present-focused thoughts, or disrupt other ingrained thinking patterns that you would like to stop.
Rubber Band Snap
The rubber-band-snap technique is an old technique designed to pair a negative stimulus—the minor pain you feel when you are stung by a rubber band snapping against your skin—with your unwanted thoughts, so that in time, those thoughts carry a negative association and you are motivated to avoid them. The strategy is simple:
1. Wear a rubber band on your wrist.
2. When you find yourself indulging in a thought pattern that you would like to avoid, pull the rubber band away from your skin and let it snap back and sting you.
3. Repeat as necessary.
The rubber-band-snap technique allows you to control the intensity of the negative feeling you feel and acts as both a reminder (seeing the rubber band on your wrist can remind you of your goals), and a deterrent (constant band snaps will becoming annoying at best and may even cause minor pain). This technique has helped many people give up a multitude of negative habits over the years. After a short time, you likely won’t need this technique anymore.
“Stop” Thinking
If you are more visually oriented, are opposed to discomfort, or simply don’t want to be seen wearing a rubber band on your wrist, this similar technique may be more appropriate for you. Visualize a stop sign in your mind—the more detailed, the better. You may use a standard traffic sign, or you may imagine a sign of your own with bright words, a red hand, or anything else that means stop for you. As you find yourself engaging in one of the thought patterns you are hoping to eliminate, envision this image as soon as you catch yourself, and change your focus. This technique is more powerful than merely catching yourself and switching your focus, because you are creating a stronger and more memorable stimulus to connect with the habit you are trying to drop. This may more effectively help you to shift your focus as well, as it will no doubt be a quite different thought from the one you were thinking.
Take a Deep Breath
A few generations ago, it became popular for people to count to 10 when they felt overwhelmed or angry, as a way to collect themselves and shift their focus. This strategy was popular then and is still useful today because it works. However, taking deep breaths for a count of 10 can have the same effect and elicit the positive benefits of relaxation breathing, without the attention-provoking behavior of counting aloud. Deep breathing can relax the body and oxygenate the blood, clear the mind, and even reverse the body’s stress response. Here are some tips to remember:
• As you breathe, relax your shoulders and breathe from your diaphragm. Your shoulders should stay where they are—not moving up and down with each breath—and your belly should expand and contract as you breathe.
• To regulate the speed of your breathing, mentally count to 3 on the inhale, and 5 on the exhale. This lengthens your breaths naturally and shifts your focus inward.
• When you feel your mind clearing after a few seconds, choose a thinking pattern that you would prefer to make habitual.
• Pair these mini-breathing sessions with longer meditation and breathing sessions, and you will gain more robust benefits, as your body will remember the relaxed state you experience in those longer sessions and return to this state more quickly and easily.
That’s it. It is as easy as it sounds; you just have to remember to do it.
Journaling
Writing in a journal (or typing your thoughts on your keyboard) can bring some fantastic benefits. Journaling has been associated with decreased symptoms of asthma, arthritis, and several other health conditions. It has also been linked with improved cognitive functioning, decreased depressive symptoms, increased immunity, and reduced levels of stress. Journaling has been recommended by therapists, health practitioners, and coaches as a route to stress relief and inner change. The following journaling techniques can be quite helpful for getting into the right frame of mind, as well as for general stress relief.
Emotional-Processing Journal
Journals that are meant for the processing of emotions can supply an outlet for venting negative feelings and can be a forum for processing emotions and brainstorming solutions. The exploration questions in this chapter could be successfully processed through this type of journaling. The following are some tips for maintaining an emotional-processing journal:
• Don’t feel obligated to write every day, but do so if it works easily for you. If you set journaling goals for yourself that you can’t maintain, it becomes tempting to give up the practice.
• Write about your positive and negative feelings, but be sure to also spend time focused on finding solutions. Studies show that this is the most beneficial strategy for this type of journaling, and it can help you to avoid falling into a pattern of rumination.
• Write about what you feel and why you feel it. If this starts to bring up experiences that are more intense than you believe you can deal with alone, you may want to explore these emotions with the support of a therapist.
Gratitude Journal
While gratitude journals have always been around, they have become much more popular in the past 2 decades and have even been the focus of research in the fields of positive psychology and health psychology. Studies show not only that gratitude journals can increase levels of happiness, but also that this type of journaling can even lift the symptoms of depression. The benefits are found to be greatest when you do the following:
• Write about three things each day. Write about what they are and why you appreciate them. They could be events that happened, actions you took, or people in your life.
• Write about your feelings surrounding these things.
• Write at the end of the day, if possible, reflecting on what has happened on that particular day. This works well because it encourages you to think throughout the day about what you are grateful for and can include in your journal, and it helps you to get into a good frame of mind before you fall asleep.
Mindfulness
Meditation has long been popular in the Eastern world, and it is now gaining traction worldwide as an effective route to stress relief. Now that the field of health psychology is yielding solid research that prove the effectiveness of meditation and mindfulness practices, therapists, coaches, and doctors are recommending these activities for patients and clients who need to learn to relieve stress. Aside from the purely physical benefits of slowed breathing and a relaxed body, the psychological benefits delivered by a peaceful, present-focused mind have been proved many times over. The following mindfulness exercises can help you to learn to clear your mind of negative, ruminative thoughts. With practice, obtaining a clear mind becomes automatic.
Mini-meditation
Mini-meditation works in much the same way as the breathing exercise mentioned earlier in this section and for similar reasons. While meditation has been shown to produce the greatest benefit when performed in sessions of 20 minutes or longer, 5-minute and even shorter meditations can clear the mind and can allow practitioners who meditate fairly frequently to quickly get back into a familiar place of inner peace. Mini-meditation can be practiced in a few simple steps:
1. Breathe deeply and slowly, relaxing your shoulders and expanding and contracting your belly with each breath. (For more detailed instructions on this, see the earlier section on breathing exercises.)
2. Clear your mind of all thoughts as you focus on your breathing.
3. As thoughts drift into your mind, gently redirect your focus back to your breathing.
One important point to remember, especially if you have a tendency for perfectionism, is that it is natural for thoughts to drift into your mind; this happens even with those who have been practicing for many years. When this happens, it does not mean you have failed in your practice. The idea is to gently redirect your attention as it happens. If you find yourself feeling bad, try to instead congratulate yourself for noticing that your mind has wandered, as you shift your focus back to your breathing.
Thought-Stopping Exercise
This meditation practice is similar to mini-meditation and, like mini-meditation, may be practiced for a few minutes, or it can be practiced for an hour or more. The main difference with this meditation is that there is slightly more engagement with the thoughts that may drift into your mind. Many people who find it difficult to let go of their thoughts enjoy this exercise, because the thoughts are briefly addressed before being set aside. This exercise also provides practice in detaching from thinking patterns and experiencing them more as an observer might, rather than becoming immersed in them or even fully engaged. This skill can help you to detach from negative thought patterns throughout your daily life. Here is how it works:
1. Go to a quiet place, get into a comfortable position, and fall into a deep, relaxed breathing pattern.
2. Focus on your breathing and remain in the present moment.
3. As thoughts drift into your mind, briefly label them—judgment, worry, question, or whatever type of thought it is. You may even stay with the singular label thinking.
4. Repeat, and continue your meditation for as long as you wish or until the alarm goes off, if you have set one.
This practice can help you to feel less invested in your thoughts and to become more aware that your thoughts can be controlled by you.
Chocolate Meditation
This popular practice is often taught in 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) courses, which are proved to lessen the severity of stress and a multitude of other health-related issues, including anxiety disorders, depression, relationship issues, sleep problems, eating disorders, and more. The chocolate meditation is also popular because it is delicious. (Don’t worry, the benefits of a small amount of dark chocolate outweigh the detriments for most people.) The following are some quick tips on how to practice chocolate meditation:
1. Hold a small piece of dark chocolate between your thumb and forefinger.
2. Take it in with all your senses. Smell it. Experience how it feels pressed against your fingers: Is it soft, cool, starting to melt? Study the color and texture, and really notice how it looks and how your hand looks holding it. Spend as much time as possible noticing the details.
3. As you raise the chocolate to your mouth, experience how your arm feels as it bends, how your clothing feels rubbing against your skin (if you are wearing sleeves) or how your skin feels (if you are not) as you bend your arm. Experience the feel of the chocolate as it touches your mouth.
4. As you begin to eat the chocolate, take a tiny bite first, and let the chocolate melt in your mouth.
5. Continue to experience this slowly, with this level of focus on the present, until the small piece of chocolate is gone.
This is a brief exercise designed to help you to experience the benefits and practice of a novel type of mindfulness meditation, derived from MBSR. In an MBSR class, the event of enjoying chocolate meditation may be more thorough and effective, but practicing it yourself can be useful in relieving stress. Practice this type of meditation daily, and you will find it easier to clear your mind of negative thoughts and focus on the present moment.
Questions to Ask Yourself
• Think of the last success you had in your life, or one that stands out particularly clearly in your mind. On a piece of paper, describe what you said to yourself to explain how you achieved this success. What factors contributed to your success, and how did this success influence your expectations for the future? When you are finished, read over the description and pay close attention to how you attribute your success to the relevant factors, referencing what you know now about explanatory style.
° Do you lean toward optimism or pessimism?
° If you lean toward pessimism, what are some realistic ways in which you might change your focus to make it more optimistic?
° What is one important idea to remember when you meet your next success?
• Complete the preceding exercise, but instead of writing about a success, write about a time when you experienced disappointment with something you attempted.
° According to the guidelines of explanatory style, would you classify your reaction as optimistic or pessimistic?
° If you lean toward pessimism, how might you realistically change your self-talk to ease up on yourself and take a more optimistic view?
° What one salient point would help you to remain more optimistic in the face of future setbacks?
• When you find yourself falling short of your goals, or encountering a frustration or disappointment in life, do you tend to take what you can and learn from the experience, and then move forward? Or do you find yourself reacting with one of the following responses (or another, similar response): putting the experience out of your mind without really thinking about it and moving forward as though it didn’t happen, beating yourself up over the “failure” and backing away from future challenges, blaming others and getting angry? Think of specific times in your life that you have encountered situations like these, and reflect on how you handled these experiences.
° Has your response changed over the years? If so, how?
° Would you like your response to change? If so, in what way?
° What key idea can you keep in mind to encourage yourself to handle these disappointments in the healthiest way possible for you?
Evaluate Your Answers
Simply asking yourself these questions and exploring your answers can help you make progress toward changing your thought patterns, through raising your own awareness of where you are now and where you would like to go. Think carefully about each question, and ponder what your answers are telling you about yourself. Which areas of thinking would you like to change? When you identify where you are in your process and where you would like to go, see if you can identify the most pressing thought habit that you would like to change, based on how you would like to be thinking in the future. Then practice one or two of the activities listed in this chapter, and work your way to a more positive, less stressed frame of mind. In time, these new thought habits will become automatic.