Emotional Intelligence the Mindful Way

This Adam Grant post perfectly sums up and advocates for mindfulness. He states emotions are not our call to action but rather encourage us to spent time reflecting. Mindfulness is the pause and reflect time. 

In an article on Mindful.org, Kimberly Brown a meditation teacher, shares that mindfulness is not about fixing or eliminating emotions but rather learning to understand them.

When we take time to engage in mindful mediation we can learn to ask ourselves "what am I experiencing right now?" Each of us needs to learn how to feel and evaluate an emotion. Not all emotions are experienced in the same way, person to person. Anxiety looks vastly different from one person to the next. Emotions are highly subjective. Utilizing mindfulness to explore and evaluate emotions helps us to address our needs in a reflective not reactive way.

My house is a big Bluey house. If you are not familiar, check it out. 

Disney plus recently added new episodes. One called 'Stickbird' has a moment of mindfulness. Bluey teaches her younger sister Bingo about releasing anger from the body. At one point Bluey askes Bingo what she wanted to do with the anger now that it is out of her body. Bingo attempts to give it to Bluey. Bluey states she does not want it. Mindfulness teaches us how to release an emotion instead of holding on to it or giving it to others. These cute dogs toss the anger into the ocean. And as an adult you will catch the part where Bandit, the dad, utilizes the skill too.

This mindful activity is similar to a mindfulness I teach our younger students. It's called Pink Bubble. We put emotions into a pink bubble and release it into the air to float as far from us as possible. 

I believe these are examples of evaluating an emotion and experience not "fixing" the emotion. No one told Bingo not to be anger but rather showed/taught her how to find the anger within her and release it in a healthy and helpful way. Remember feelings are subjective and we all experience them differently but we can all learn how to handle them in a healthy manner. 

Another important thing to remember about emotions is that while they are different person to person, they can also be different experience to experience. The next time you are angry it might feel different from the last time you were angry.

 “When we bring a lens of awareness, we can often see that there are multiple parts to an emotion, and through direct experience we realize that they’re not monolithic—they are changing all the time, and that can help loosen their grip by showing that they’re more porous than we’d otherwise believed them to be,” says Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

This quote, I feel, helps us see yet another benefit of mindfulness. The awareness mindfulness brings to emotions is the understanding that emotions are porous and not monolithic. 

The more we utilize mindfulness to help us understand our emotions the more we help protect our brain from the negative effects of some strong emotions. Research has shown that mindful meditation builds a protection in the brain which helps slow and stop the damage caused by negative emotions. 

The use of both long term as well as short term mindfulness can help our brains. 

Every mindful moment in your class matters.

Perseverance when we aren't successful

This is Perseverance. It's not how many times we get knocked down, but rather how many times we get back up.(Tubthumping anyone?) Teaching ourselves and our students to have grit will help them be successful. 

Mindfulness is a great tool to help teach our students how to handle the emotions which inevitable arise in times of failure. We will not always be successful. Our students need to know about the times we have triumphed but also about the times we have failed.

Mindfulness helps us reframe the times in which we did not have success. It helps us look deeper into the 'why' we may have failed. I helps us become curious about it and explore new and different approaches. Mindfulness can help us learn gratitude for the small successes when we otherwise only see the big failures.

Some days you may not feel like engaging in mindfulness but it is a great way to build resilience, grit, and perseverance. 

As a school we utilize the mindfulness tool Inner Explorer. I wanted to share a school success. An example of teachers persevering and trying mindfulness.

As a school, this school year (to date) we have completed 10,819 minutes of mindfulness. That is over 180 hours!

You are amazing! If you feel knocked down today I hope this gets you back up again!

Mindful Grit is Perseverance

Perseverance. It is a great word. Saying it makes you feel driven. 

Grit. Similar to perseverance, is also a word that when you say it or think it, you feel it. 

If you have Grit, you Persevere. 

On her website KimRoberts.Co Kim shares " Perseverance seems super-human in the face of never-ending hold-up."

This is something which relates to many of us. When we are faced with a challenge we are unsure we can meet we feel that digging deep for grit and perseverance is a super-human task we cannot muster. The thought to keep going can be a daunting one. We just don't want to do it anymore, not when giving up seems so much easier.

On her website Kim also states that perseverance is showing-up. The beginning of perseverance is simply to show up.

Kim also shares two other things she feels are important parts to perseverance. She states that we need to set intentions. Know what you want to do. Set it as your intention. This gives you your  goal to work toward. This creates the plan. 

Before you show up and set your intentions Kim shares that you must first commit/recommit to a mindfulness meditation practice. 

Why? Good question. 

Research shows that mindfulness helps us develop grit. And as we have learned, grit is perseverance.

Mindfulness encourages us to act with awareness and intention. Awareness and intention have been shown to be predictors of consistency. These are all key aspects in developing grit. 

Mindfulness is an amazing tool which helps us navigate setbacks while sustaining interest and focus on a goal. 

Mindfulness helps us learn; better, calmer, and more productive ways to reevaluate a situation.

If we practice mindfulness we can learn to visualize a setback and work on positive ways to maintain expectations. 

Mindfulness keeps us in the moment, resets experiences, suspend judgment, address anxiety, gain control, and prevent catastrophizing. A daily mindfulness practice can also help us learn the difference between a downward spiral and an upward spiral. Mindfulness helps change our inner voice to one of encouragement and determination and can helps us keep commitments.

On his website RonRutland.com, Ron shares stories of his various journeys in life. One journey began June 20, 2013 and lasted 27 months. For 27 months Ron biked across 75 Countries with the goal of making it to the 2015 rugby world cup in England. 

Ron shares that he quite his corporate job, sold his belongs and started his bike journey in South Africa; just him, a backpack, and a bike.

As he shares about his experience Ron states that during his trip two things got him through; mindfulness and perseverance. Ron shares that he did not simply practice mindfulness but rather feels he became mindfulness and this built his perseverance.

With the start of a new year and many resolutions being made (and wanting to be kept...perseverance perhaps) let's set an intention toward mindfulness. 

To get us started I am sharing a quick mindfulness to help you take a break and find calm in your day.