The Good Old Days

The Importance of Reminiscing


I'm sure by now most of you have seen the viral video going around with a father telling his children the story of "The Great Realization". If you haven't seen it (I've also linked in at the bottom), the video begins with children (off camera) asking their dad to read them the story about the virus again, and so he opens the book titled "The Great Realization". It tells the story of what life was like before the virus, and highlighted the things that we were all taking for granted, like time with our loved ones, running outside, playing board games at home, and cooking. How we lived in a society that was so wrapped up in material possessions and being incredibly busy that we seemed to forget the very things that actually make us happy. Our society was sick (and in many ways still is), but as the video states, you have to get sick in order to get better sometimes.

What would our world look like if we shifted our priorities away from wanting more money, a better job, better stuff, good looks, and a better partner to prioritizing having kindness, social connection, time affluence, mind control, and healthy practices in our lives instead? This period in time may just be the perfect moment for us to experience option B., and I believe it will be the gift we never realized we needed...

The Gift of Time

I came to the same conclusion as what was depicted in the "Great Realization" a couple of weeks ago when I wrote my post about what I called "The Great Slow Down". My idea of a successful day prior to the pandemic was seamlessly multi tasking calls, texts to friends, coordinating upcoming plans, driving back and forth to make sure Theo was walked, all while working straight through the day. There were no pauses, and the only time I got to practice my mindfulness was in the car listening to a podcast or audiobook. We are a society that is materially affluent but not time affluent, well..until now. One of the first things that I immediately realized at the start of quarantine was just how much I was sacrificing by choosing money over time. I started to have more time to just sit and appreciate a warm sunny day on my patio; taking a nice long shower; lighting a candle and reading a book; writing; painting; or how enjoying a nice glass of wine while listening to music all made me calmer and happier! There are a lot of things that will help us both decompress and experience positive benefits.

I know that the things I listed above sound like luxuries compared to the things we're obligated to do, but we do have the time now to add more of those types of things in to our day to provide us with a quick boost of happiness. This doesn't mean however that living a life of complete leisure is the way to go. Instead, it's about finding ways to fill your life with things that are meaningful, create flow, and that challenge us. Leisure focused activities make us more apathetic and bored than we think. Since our brain will make us naturally want these things though it means that most of us will have to do some serious reprioritization. Most of us are taught at an early age that if you want to be successful and earn a lot of money you have to work crazy hours to do it. You have the image of a lawyer or a doctor burned in to your head with them spending late hours in the office or crazy long shifts in the ER (don't get me wrong Grey's Anatomy definitely had me romanticizing that), and what is attached to having those coveted jobs...money of course! If you have more money you'll be able to buy nice things. We already know though that money is something that will not bring you happiness. In reality what will make us happier is having more time to do the things we love.

During this pandemic we are experiencing a windfall of time! While normally I would be talking to you about how money can actually do something good for once (I know shocker!), and that's buy you more time (by hiring someone to clean your house for example to remove an unpleasant task from your day), I won't be because we don't need to utilize that tool at the moment (albeit a very useful and important strategy that I will most likely talk about at some other time). Instead, I'm going to focus on how we can make the most out of the time we are given. Of course the reality is that we can't do every single thing we want to do even with the abundance of time we have been given, but we can learn how to want the things that will actually make us happier.

Staying in the Present

So...you've been gifted the gift of time and now you're finding that you're scrolling through Instagram while you are on a Zoom happy hour, or maybe you're not even on your phone but your mind is starting to wander to what snack you're going to make next. Even though you're doing something that builds social connection to the people you're talking to you're not really present, and even worse it may be that your mind is going to negative places filled with anxiety and fear about everything that is going on in the world. Hitting home? Well you're not alone in that, it turns out that our minds do something called mind-wandering 46.9% of the time! Mind-wandering is a shift in contents of thought away from an ongoing task and from events in the external environment to self-generated thoughts and feelings. This all happens in a very specific region of our brain known as the "default network", and it's incredibly efficient. That region of our brain will turn on within a fraction of a second during almost every single activity we do. There is a quote that says "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind.", and I believe it has been the root cause for much of our unhappiness in our society. The truth of the matter is that we can be given an abundance of extra time but we continually fail to enjoy and savor life in the present.

One of the greatest techniques for turning the most simple and mundane activities in to ones that will provide us with prolonged positive effects is savoring. Savoring's motto is "Just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate". It's all about really relishing the present moment by stepping outside of it to appreciate it. Those that can truly capture the present moment will often feel less anxiety and pain. Without savoring in our lives most moments will just fade in to the background, it takes a conscious effort however to appreciate those things and people and stop taking them for granted. It's important to remember that the present is all we have.

Not taking the people in my life for granted has always been incredibly important to me. Being present with them is a huge part of how I can not only show them that I appreciate them and their time, but is also a way that we can experience flow in our conversations. To do that we can do a couple of things:

  1. Focus your attention as closely as you can to the other person.
  2. Don't interrupt them, but ask quick follow up question such as:
    • "And then what happened?"
    • "Why did you think that?"
Even by doing those two things in conversation you will start to learn more about your friend or loved one. To effectively do this it also means removing all of the distractions when you are spending time with them. It's impossible for us to give our attention to someone 100% of the time, but chances are you are only quarantined with a couple of people right now, and I guarantee we can all do a little better at not taking especially those people for granted right now. 

It still may be the case though that we are struggling with our thoughts, and that is where the second habit that I'm going to talk about comes in to play. I bet you already guessed it...that habit is meditation.

Meditation

Meditation and I have had a rocky start. It is something that I always knew would be good for me to do and an important skill to have given how many times a day my mind would wander to really unpleasant thoughts that would be the source of all of my anxiety, but I never felt like I had enough time to dedicate to it, something else always got priority. Even though it only takes a couple minutes out of your day I couldn't quite grasp how creating literal pauses in my day would be one of the most important things for me to practice. Like with exercising, there are few things that will turn off all of those other thoughts that pop in to our heads within milliseconds of us starting a task like meditation can, but it will take real effort. Which is why it's called a "practice".  If you are skilled at it though you can actually stop mind-wandering. Meditation by definition is a practice of turning your attention away from distracting thoughts toward a single point of reference. Over time meditation can create big boosts in cognitive performance and can also increase your social closeness by meditating on love and kindness.

Last week in our coursework our homework was to meditate for at least 10 minutes every day. Since, as I mentioned, I'm incredibly inexperienced at meditating I knew that I had to start with guided meditations. There was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to sit in a room, close my eyes, and turn off all of my thoughts otherwise. So I found one of the 'Headspace' meditations on 'Spotify' that I have tried many times before, plopped myself down on my couch with my headphones in and closed my eyes. What happened next was truly amazing! Like I said this is a meditation I've listened to many times before, it focuses on your breath and gives you specific instructions on what to focus your attention to. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that all of my other thoughts were gone, but I would let them come in to my mind and then redirect myself back to the words in the meditation. Pretty soon I was feeling so relaxed that I actually fell asleep! Again not hard to imagine if you know me since I fall asleep so frequently, but I woke up just 10 minutes later and felt amazing. Every day since then I have done the same thing, as soon as my work day is done I get back to that couch or sit in my favorite chair, pop on a guided meditation and I'm on my way. Based on the meditation I'm listening to I can simply sit in my room, listen to the birds chirping, and be fully present. Theo's also gotten in to the habit of knowing when it's meditation time that it's time to sit on my lap and nap...clearly he's a very mindful pup! Studies show that mindfulness practices, like meditation, are critical to our well-being, cause us to flourish, and makes us more likely to experience deeper emotions.

Exercise: Choose one happy memory, sit down, relax, and try and picture that memory. Let your mind wander through the details of it. What emotions were you feeling? What exactly did you do in that moment? (Do not try to analyze it!). Do this 2x per week next week for at least 8 minutes at a time and note how you feel after. 


"Those Were the Days"

The above exercise uses our default network region of our brain. The same region that can quickly take us out of the present in a bad way is also responsible for transporting us to the past and future. This also allows us to combine both the benefits of savoring as well as meditation, because it causes us to step outside of an experience like in savoring while focusing on a specific reference point like in meditation.

I know that many of us are thinking about all of the good memories that we've had with our family and friends prior to quarantine, which is not a bad thing to do at all. In fact, studies show that if you share those memories with other people it will be accompanied by an abundance of positive emotions. So make a list of positive memories and choose one person to share about it with. Another great way to savor your memories is to create a photo album filled with all of your favorite moments. Review the album during less happy times and it will help you avoid getting used to the things that you have. Allowing ourselves to nurture our nostalgic feelings from time to time will help us realize how those moments enriched and brought meaning to our lives.

You don't have to only do this for things in the past, optimistic thinking about the best possible outcomes in the future will also heighten your enjoyment when those things do come to pass. I know this last bit is incredibly hard to do during a time with so much uncertainty, but I am truly optimistic when I think about how I'm able to focus on all of the things that will truly make me happier for a while, and how I'm able to nurture the relationships in my life. I have hope that by doing this our world is going to be more caring and empathetic, and that definitely gives me something to look forward to amidst all of the darkness surrounding us. If I had one wish right now it would be that no one ever took what they had for granted again. I know I'm going to do everything I can to make that a reality for my own life, and I hope you all will do the same.




"The How of Happiness" by Sonja Lyubomirsky










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