As humans, we tend to hold on to pleasant experiences and push away unpleasant ones. This happens in various situations, including during meditation or mindfulness practice. However, when you’re preoccupied with the reaction to push something away, you’re no longer fully present in the here and now. Instead of resisting such an experience, there are other options: namely, investigating it. This helps you distinguish between the experience itself and your reaction to it. With this awareness, you can respond more consciously to an experience.

Freedom through Mindfulness

Imagine you’re meditating and you feel an itch. You can react to this in different ways. You can focus on the itch and scratch it, or you can delay this impulse. You can explore what happens then and return to focusing on your breath. Do you notice that the itch disappears? Itchiness comes and goes, just like everything in life. Curiously observing the itch is also an option; scratching is no longer the only possibility. Your belief that “I can only scratch” turns out to be incorrect, and you have learned something, gaining freedom. Mindfulness helps you explore new possibilities—not because they are better, but because you have more options. And more options mean more freedom.

Obstacles

Practicing being present in the here and now without judgment is not an easy task. Often, things get in the way of focusing well on the present moment. In mindfulness, these are called obstacles. Traditionally, five obstacles are described:

  1. Desire: During meditation, a desire may arise, for example, for something to drink or eat, for beautiful music, or the desire to stop.
  2. Aversion: You may become irritated by a disruption during meditation, the voice, wording, or pace of the guided meditation.
  3. Sleepiness: You notice that you’re feeling drowsy and keep nodding off during meditation, making it difficult to focus your attention.
  4. Restlessness: You notice that you can hardly keep your body or mind still, thoughts fly all over the place, and limbs want to move. Your attention is hard to maintain due to constant thoughts interrupting.
  5. Doubt: You may doubt whether mindfulness is right for you, or you wonder if you’re doing it correctly and if the exercise is worthwhile.

You have probably encountered one or more of these obstacles before. They can hinder you when your automatic pilot responds to them. It’s important to realize that you don’t choose the obstacles. You don’t choose desire, but you observe that you have this desire. These obstacles not only occur in mindfulness but also in your daily life. They are feelings or thoughts that can be present, and we’ve developed the habit of automatically reacting to them.

What can you do?

Obstacles are inevitable, and automatically reacting to them limits your freedom to deal with them differently. By learning to recognize them, you create space to respond to them in other ways. For example, you can let an obstacle be part of the experience without immediately reacting or needing to do something about it. With this conscious choice, you gain a bit of freedom. The mindfulness exercises help you practice with the obstacles you encounter, so that over time, you’ll become better at recognizing them in your daily life and learn to respond to them differently.

Sources:

 

The majority of your daily life and actions consist of unconscious behavior. Only a small part is conscious! Think about driving a car or riding a bike. Much of it happens on autopilot, without being fully aware of what you’re doing. The same can happen in your daily life; your thoughts can suddenly be miles away without you noticing.

Why Get Off the Autopilot?

When you live unconsciously and on autopilot, many moments pass you by. There is also a greater chance that you fall into old patterns that don’t serve you and may influence your mood or life. By being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, you create the possibility of choosing your responses freely. This helps you avoid old thought patterns and allows you to enjoy a situation more fully.

Practicing Attention

With mindfulness, you learn to increase your awareness, so you can respond to a situation with conscious choice instead of automatic reactions. You can do this by continually noticing where your attention is and redirecting it. Being attentive means being awake and alert. This process takes practice and may involve some trial and error. You need to remind yourself constantly to stay awake and mindful. But you can’t do it wrong! The intention and the process are what matters. It’s not important if you succeed or how often your mind wanders. You’re making the choice to take a break from your routines and check if you’re present in the moment.

How Do I Do It?

Body Scan

A good way to practice attention is with your body through a body scan. This exercise involves exploring everything in your body. When you direct your attention there, you’re no longer in your head and fully present in the now. You can find more explanation and a body scan exercise here.

Routine Task

Another exercise is to perform a routine task mindfully that you do daily. Choose one routine action each day for a week that you will do very consciously and mindfully, like brushing your teeth. Take your time. Concentrate on what you’re doing as you do it. Feel what you’re doing, describe what you’re doing, see, and smell, so you’re fully in the moment!

Exploring Pleasurable Activities

This exercise helps you become consciously aware of what’s happening at a specific moment and what’s going on within you. Can you be conscious of a pleasurable event while it’s happening? Ask yourself the following questions to focus your attention on the details of the experience:

  • What is happening that I find pleasant?
  • What is my physical reaction? What sensations do I feel in my body? Where do I feel this?
  • What is my emotional reaction? What feelings do I notice?
  • What is my mental reaction? What thoughts do I have?

Mindful Eating

You can train your attention and awareness by mindfully eating the first bite of one meal each day. This may sound easy, but experience shows that sometimes you’re halfway through your meal before you realize that the first bite should have been eaten mindfully. That’s okay. You noticed it! At that moment, just put down your utensils and start again. You can read more about mindful eating here.

“Living on autopilot

means you aren’t actually engaged in the moment,

so you’re missing out on life”

Sources

Mindfulness encompasses several fundamental concepts, known as pillars. These pillars can help you practice and develop mindfulness. They are described below:

1. Non-judgment

This is not easy because as humans, we tend to assign value to everything. We compare ourselves to others or to past experiences. Judging comes naturally. However, when you judge, you can no longer observe openly what is happening in the present moment. When you notice your feelings, see if you hold strong opinions that trigger certain emotions. Try to recognize judgments, accept them, and then let them go.

2. Patience

Practicing mindfulness doesn’t yield immediate results; it requires patience. The effects of mindfulness in your brain may only become evident after a few weeks. Allow yourself space to learn and be patient when you encounter impatience. During a mindfulness exercise, take a moment to check if you feel rushed to do it.

3. Endless new beginnings

Mindfulness is about your experience in the present moment, and you can always start over. If you become distracted, notice it, and simply begin again by redirecting your attention. The exercise is not a failure because distractions are part of it! You simply start again!

4. Trust

Having trust in practicing mindfulness is very helpful. You can consciously increase this trust by reading about mindfulness or listening to inspiring individuals. You can also experience trust in yourself by listening to your own voice and trusting your ability to learn mindfulness in your own way.

5. Non-striving

When practicing mindfulness, there’s no need to strive for something because everything you need is already there. This is a challenging paradox because you may be practicing mindfulness to achieve something, such as reducing stress. Try to recognize this and then let it go. When you focus on the future, it becomes impossible to be fully present in the present.

6. Acceptance

Acceptance helps things to be as they are in the present moment. When you find it difficult to accept what is unchangeable, a lot of energy is wasted on resistance. Acceptance is an active attitude where you begin by accepting the situation as it is. When you don’t waste energy on resistance, you can often see more clearly what you need. You can always ask yourself this question: “If I can’t change this, why should I invest energy in it?”

7. Letting go

Letting go is not easy. We want to hold on to pleasant experiences, but sometimes it’s challenging to let go of negative ones. This is where judgment may resurface: “I like this, so I want to keep it,” “I find this unpleasant, so I want to find its cause,” “I find this unpleasant, so I will ignore it.” However, letting go is not about suppressing or ignoring; it’s about allowing something to be without taking action. Challenge yourself to explore thoughts, sensations, sounds, feelings, or events, and then let them go.

8. Gentleness and kindness

Having a friendly attitude towards yourself and your experiences is helpful. Sometimes it helps to imagine that you’re teaching something to a young child, as it’s often easier to be kind to a child than to yourself as an adult. The best approach is with a gentle and friendly attitude. Maybe you have to explain the same thing a hundred times, or you fall into the same pattern a hundred times. You don’t have to blame yourself for that. By practicing a friendly attitude, you slowly develop more compassion for yourself and the people around you.

Sources

 

 

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a state of mind in which attention is consciously focused on experiencing body sensations, feelings, and thoughts, without responding to them. With meditation and mindfulness exercises you can easily reach this state. Mindfulness is effective against mental health problems and is regularly used to combat depressive and anxiety complaints.

A bit strange

It seems a bit strange of course. Doing some relaxation and breathing exercises for a while and your symptoms will decrease. That’s why scientists did some research to investigate what’s going on in the brain when you’re using mindfulness techniques. There are a few brain areas that are important with stress:

Brain Areas Involved in Stress

  • The prefrontal cortex: important for making decisions, social behavior, putting things into perspective, impulse control, and regulating emotions.
  • The hippocampus: important in memory.
  • The amygdala: important for controlling and processing emotions.

Prefrontal Cortex

Stress deactivates our prefrontal cortex, allowing us to respond more impulsively to situations. After all, we are not supposed to think for a few minutes on the pedestrian crossing when a car approaches us at full speed.

You may recognize that during stressful periods you are stimulated a little faster and seem to have less control. Then your prefrontal cortex is less active.

Mindfulness ensures that the prefrontal cortex becomes a little more awake and strengthens your ability to put things into perspective. You will regain a sense of control. In addition, the prefrontal cortex has an inhibitory effect on the cingulate cortex, a brain region that is involved in worrying and processing pain and emotions. The chaos of all those negative thoughts will eventually decrease!

Hippocampus

In addition, mindfulness ensures that your hippocampus becomes better at softening and changing connections with negative memories.

The blurring of a current experience by an old memory is called proactive interference. You can compare it to the situation where you read two similar stories and then want to tell someone the last read story. There is a high chance that you will accidentally add details from the first story to the second story. This is because your memory is trying to make certain connections between similar things. For example, we often tend to think back to a negative event in the past with certain triggers. Applying mindfulness will weaken those associations because your hippocampus can better distinguish. This means you are triggered less quickly!

Amygdala

The combination of the increase of activity in the prefrontal cortex and the strengthening of the hippocampus will eventually lead to a decrease in stress. They send a signal to the amygdala that it’s no longer necessary to respond with a load of negative emotions to certain events. The hippocampus recognizes an event and signals that it’s ‘safe’, the prefrontal cortex evaluates the situation and together they pass on to the amygdala that there’s no more reason to panic. By applying mindfulness techniques, the activity in the amygdala can decrease in just a few weeks already.

The combination of increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex and strengthening the hippocampus ultimately leads to a decrease in stress. The hippocampus recognizes the situation and signals that it is “safe”, the prefrontal cortex evaluates the situation. Together they tell the amygdala that there is no reason to panic anymore. By applying mindfulness techniques, the activity in the amygdala can decrease in just a few weeks already.

Sources:

American Mindfulness Research Association, Association for Psychological Science, Trainingsbureau voor mindfulness

 

 

A balanced life is essential for your well-being, but achieving and maintaining harmony and balance among all the things that are important to you and that you value can be a challenging task. Experiencing an imbalance in any area of your life can lead to feelings of dissatisfaction or even unhappiness. It’s also common to be unaware of such imbalances in your life.

This exercise is intended to provide insight into and map out what you personally find important in life and how satisfied you currently are in each area of life. It gives you a snapshot of your life and insight into whether your needs are being met. This way, you can make effective changes in areas that are important to you and contribute to a meaningful life, possibly with the guidance of your professional. You can also use this exercise to help determine your goals.

Use the table below to assist you with this. You can write down the table and fill it in.
First, write down how much you value each area of life, where 1 is not important at all and 10 is very important.
Then, give a rating from 1 to 10 for how satisfied you are in each area of life, where 1 is not satisfied at all and 10 is completely satisfied.

Areas of life How much do you value this area of life? (1-10) How satisfied are you in this area of life? (1-10)
Money & Finances
Career & Work
Health and Fitness
Fun and Recreation
Environment
Family
Friends
Relationships and Love
Personal Growth & Learning
Spirituality

After completing the exercise, reflect on the results, possibly with the help of your professional.
You can ask yourself the following questions to gain more insight and take steps:

  • What surprises you the most?
  • In which area(s) would you most like to see improvement?
  • How would a score of 10 look and feel?
  • With which category would you like to start?
  • What small steps can you take to improve your satisfaction?
  • Can a single change improve more than one area?

 

The treatment or coaching trajectory you will go through consists of several phases: the start-up, the trajectory itself, and the end. First, it’s essential to know what you can expect from your professional and the treatment. Additionally, it’s crucial to understand your personal contribution during each phase.

Start-up

When you decide to work on yourself, it’s essential to feel intrinsically motivated. This motivation can help you make changes, such as in your behaviour or way of thinking, during your trajectory and stay committed during difficult times. Take a moment to reflect on your motivation. What drives you to bring about a change in your life and work on personal growth? Your professional will also discuss this with you.

Setting goals

Setting clear goals is important and helpful to make your trajectory achievable and to keep yourself motivated. This allows you to evaluate whether you are on the right track during and at the end of the trajectory. Try to formulate your goals as specifically as possible. “I want to get better again” might be your ultimate goal, but it’s too generic in this case. What do you want to improve precisely? When would you be satisfied? What would you do or stop doing once you’ve achieved the goal? How would others notice the change? Is it also realistic? Clear expectations help guide the trajectory and prepare you from the beginning for the conclusion of the trajectory, so that you have the skills to continue independently. If you want to know more about setting goals, read further here.

During the trajectory

The sessions you have with your professional are meant to discuss important topics and explore together what changes might be needed. Then, you will work on these changes through exercises both during and outside the sessions, such as practicing changing your behaviour, assertiveness, or relaxation.

You might not be aware of it, but the majority of your progress happens outside the sessions! By actively engaging in exercises outside the sessions, you increase the likelihood of a successful trajectory. After all, your challenges also arise in your daily life outside the sessions, and the goal is for you to be able to continue independently after therapy. This means that active involvement during and outside the sessions is crucial. Through the NiceDay app, you will have close contact with your professional, where you can register exercises and chat.

Tracking your progress

To monitor your progress, you will discover measurements in the app. Those are two short questionnaires: “How are you doing?” and “How was the session?”. The purpose of these questions is to monitor your well-being and to provide you with the opportunity to share your opinion about the sessions and collaboration. This way, you can easily inform your professional about how you think the therapy is going, and you can continue to work together effectively or improve the collaboration.

Session notes

During the trajectory, it’s useful to create a report after each session about all the important topics discussed. You can do this in session notes. This helps remember what was discussed and you can easily find exercises and information when needed. You can discuss with your professional how to do this. For example, you can do it yourself first and then let the professional add comments to your notes, or you can both create your own notes. If you want more guidance on making your own notes, read more here.

You don’t have to do it alone

It can be a good idea to ask friends or family for support during your trajectory. You don’t have to do it alone! For instance, you can ask someone to join a session, have a talk with you after an intensive session, assist you with challenging exercises, support you during challenges, and motivate you when things seem tough.

Conclusion

After some time, your trajectory will end, and you will make arrangements with your professional for this. Your professional will discuss with you how long the treatment will last, so both of you know what to expect. The goal of the trajectory is often not to eliminate all complaints completely, but to teach you how to manage your life well again and give you the confidence to continue independently.

Part of the end is reflecting on what you’ve learned, what your strengths are, and what your pitfalls might be. If relevant, you and your professional will also explore what you can do to prevent a relapse and create a plan together.

After the trajectory is concluded, you can still use the NiceDay app independently! All your data will be saved, so you will still have access to your registrations and session notes. This way, you can check in with yourself from time to time, keep track of your feelings, review tips, or look back on your growth.

When there is intolerance of uncertainty, you will perceive uncertainty more quickly as threatening or intolerable, which can lead to tension. Excessive worrying may then become a strategy to mentally prepare for all possible outcomes, especially negative ones. When you excessively ruminate, you may believe that worrying is useful. For instance, you might think that by mentally preparing, you can prevent all problems from occurring. You may also see problems as more threatening or obstructive, feel hopeless quickly, or lack confidence in your ability to solve problems.

The Model of Intolerance of Uncertainty

The model consists of two components. The first part is about the trigger and its evaluation:

  • Trigger. This can be a new, unexpected, or unpredictable situation or event (e.g., a new colleague), but it can also be a thought or feeling (e.g., “I feel rushed; something will definitely go wrong soon!”).
  • Uncertainty. This means that you are not 100% certain about what will happen and, therefore, do not know whether the outcome will be positive or negative.
  • Viewing Uncertainty as Catastrophic. This means viewing uncertainty as something negative and, for example, being afraid that a catastrophe will occur, which you cannot handle, solve, or adequately prepare for.

The second part of the model concerns the responses that follow:

  • Ruminating. This is a mental strategy to cope with uncertainty. To be prepared, you start thinking about everything that could happen and its possible consequences.
  • Anxiety. This is the emotional and physical reaction. Sometimes it can even lead to feelings of panic.
  • Safety Behaviours. These are behaviours aimed at reducing anxiety or tension. They provide a sense of safety and protection. For example, preparing excessively or checking things excessively.

Intolerance of Uncertainty - model

There are three essential elements in the model that you should be aware of because you have an influence on them. For example, when you view uncertainty as catastrophic, you may overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes or lack confidence in your problem-solving abilities. Ruminating can also lead to a false sense of control and, at the same time, trigger new uncertainties. Lastly, safety behaviours may make you feel like you need “training wheels”, preventing you from developing the confidence that you can handle situations without relying on them. You also won’t discover if your prediction that things will go wrong is accurate if you don’t try doing things differently. When you are unable to apply safety behaviours, it becomes a new trigger once again.

Source

Bottesi, G., Ghisi, M., Carraro, E., Barclay, N., Payne, R., & Freeston, M. H. (2016). Revising the intolerance of uncertainty model of generalized anxiety disorder: evidence from UK and Italian undergraduate samples. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1723.

Take it one day at a time!

You may find it difficult to never smoke again. Tell yourself, “Today, I will not smoke!” Repeat the same tomorrow. This way, you’ll remain a non-smoker. Focus on solving today’s problems; don’t worry about tomorrow just yet.

Choose solutions that suit you in difficult situations:

  • Think ahead about what you can do if, for example, you’re invited to be around people who smoke. Stay for a shorter time or keep something else in your hands.
  • In the first few weeks, you can also avoid challenging situations altogether. For instance, don’t sit or stand near people who smoke.
  • If you don’t feel well, don’t stay at home, but do something else. Go for a walk or visit someone who doesn’t smoke.

Realize what you have already achieved:

  • Review how your health has already improved.
  • Don’t forget to reward yourself and take time to relax.
  • Calculate how much money you have saved by not smoking.

It’s important to stay positive in difficult situations. It can help to say one or more of the following statements out loud to yourself:

  • I can do very well without those cigarettes
  • It gets a little easier every day
  • Of course, I can do it too. Others have succeeded!
  • I am independent of those cigarettes
  • I can happily stay indoors while the rest goes out in the cold to smoke
  • Smoking is expensive. I can use the money somewhere else
  • Wonderful, my house smells fresh!
  • I can comfortably sit through an entire meeting
  • Mmm! Food tastes much better now that I’ve quit
  • Thank goodness, my bad breath is history
  • The toughest part is already over. I’ve put in so much effort, I’ll definitely persist!

Tip: Try to focus on the positive aspects of quitting smoking. Write down what’s going well and occasionally revisit your notes.

During challenging times, it can be helpful to take a moment to reflect on the reasons why you quit smoking.

Consider, for example:

  • Your family and friends
  • Your finances
  • Your appearance
  • Your freedom
  • Taking responsibility for your own life
  • Your role as an example
  • Wanting to achieve a healthier body