There is an increasing, and welcome, focus on the wellbing of students at university although a lot of it is focused on mindfulness practice. This comes in the form of yoga classes, mindfulness colour books, pet therapy and classical religious prayer. A whole industry of wellbeing has been created. Mindfulness works, but only some of the time. Those who spent centuries developing and practicing meditation and contemplation, long before the mental wellbeing benefits were recognized, did not merely use mindfulness techniques on their own. They did not put aside the cares of the world and just be mindful and nothing else. Indeed, the guidance was to only meditate for a maximum of 1/3rd of your life, 1/3rd being spent working and the remaining 1/3rd asleep! So, what really makes these mindfulness techniques work? They don’t work on their own, that is the challenge. They only yield their wellbeing benefits when the whole of one’s day is ‘sorted’. Trying to ‘mindfulness’ your way out of a stressful situation only digs you deeper into the stress. Mindfulness colouring books are no better than sticking your head in the sand.
How does mindfulness work? Mindfulness practice, meditation, prayer, whatever you wish to call it, is ‘rising above’ the confusion, chaos and stress of every minute of the day in order to get some perspective. You get to see the individual challenges of the day for what they are and develop a calm temperament towards them. But the coloring book, or 20mins of deep breathing, and other such moments of contemplation are only escapism is you are not also taking control of the rest of your life and making clear and positive choices about everything else. When you are positively acting on organizing the rest of your day, then the mindfulness practices become powerfully effective. Diarise. It’s lovely feeling like you can stick it to the man by having no diary, no plan for the day. After years of living in 35 minute chunks at school, broken up by the bell, the liberation of having no plan is uplifting. To a point. After a while, that freedom, that lack of structure becomes a problem known to those who devised mindfulness practice as ‘the demon of the noon-day’. Your mental health plummets badly because there is no structure. So, get a diary on your phone. Make appointments with your learning, and don’t let anything else replace that. If you have nothing in your diary, everyday activities and cares grow to fill that up. Lunch takes hours, shopping trips entire days. Don’t book in meetings with landlords or doctors when they tell you. Look at your diary, full of lectures and study sessions, and find a gap in your already full schedule. When your diary looks full, then pencil in your social life and mindfulness practice. • Use a diary app on your phone, so it’s always in your hands. • Have a motto; if its not in the diary, it doesn’t happen • Treat all classes and lectures as if they are as important as a doctors appointment Start a module at the end. In the first couple of weeks of a module, get the deadlines in the diary. Work backwards from there. Have a close look at what the assignment is. Have you completed this type of assignment before? If you have, estimate how much time you need- to research, to understand, to discuss, to write. Get that time blocked out in your diary. If you haven’t attempted this type of assessment before, double the amount of calendar space that you set aside. You will be expected to work with other students, so quickly get time in your diary where you agree to meet each other. Don’t cancel that time; there is a huge amount of learning to be gained from each other, even if it is just listening over a cup of coffee. • Start a module by finding out how it ends. • Keep notes on everything you do in the first few weeks, you don’t yet know what is relevant or not • Work backwards from the assignment deadline and plan out which days you will work on which assignment Family & friends’ crises The transition from home to an independent life at university, or even balancing family responsibilities with university study is stressful, but not the most challenging thing you will do in your life. Remember that thousands of other students are dealing with pretty much the same workload as you are. But family events and crises loom large in the mind of students. When there is nothing in your diary, and everything seems to be optional, a family crisis seems to be the most important thing in your life. It may be that you are only just becoming aware of the number of times a family has a crisis. Being able to continue your investment in your university studies and work around family events will be easier if you have already penciled in all the work you have to do. There is always a temptation, or even pressure from your family, to drop everything (because it’s not important) and rush home. With everything in your diary, and deadlines written in red, you will better able to make the decision for yourself whether that life event has to be dealt with immediately, or whether a bit of time and space will help everyone to see that event in its true perspective. • If a family crisis occurs, give it some time before you react. • Friends will always expect more of you than you can offer. Regular and boring Having no plan is exciting, exhilarating. But it’s also much more stressful than you imagine. Boring is good. Boring and regular activities help us to cope with the complexities of life. Doing things without having to think about them helps to free up our mind for more complex tasks. So knowing a piece of text off by heart (remember trying to learn your times tables?) means that we are better able to understand more difficult texts. Doing the same things at the same time everyday means that we are spending less of our precious mental energy on ordinary events, giving us more ‘headspace’ for the difficult stuff. Get up at the same time every day. Don’t think about getting up, just get up. Have a morning routine that you repeat every day, so you don’t have to think about what you have done, or what you have forgotten. Do the washing up, empty the bins, every day. Go to uni or to a place in your house set aside for study, every day, even if you don’t have classes. It’s boring, but it works. Schedule your mindfulness practice, whatever it is, every day. At the same times every day. Don’t skip them. • Write a list of all the daily tasks that you put off doing. Choose 5 to implement and put a poster up in your room with those tasks on • Don’t debate with yourself about whether to complete them more or not. If it’s on the poster, do it. Work it! The less exercise you get the more your body seizes up, becomes lethargic and painful. Those who developed mindfulness practices in past centuries always includes some form of physical movement into their routine. This didn’t just sit around staring at a candle for days on end. They designed hard physical labour or exercise into their day. Do something each day that involves being out of breath for 15 minutes. It doesn’t matter how unfit you are. If you are unfit, you won’t need to work very hard to be out of breath. If you are fit, then you will work harder at being out of breath. Just 15mins of breathlessness, whether that’s busting moves in a night club, walking briskly around campus or running for the bus. Get out of breath so that your blood is pumping around your body warming up all your muscles. That activity will help your studies, but also your mindfulness practice. • Choose 5 different activities that will get you out of breath for 15mins each day; the sillier the better! • Cycle through them, a different activity each day. • Choose to walk instead of getting a bus. Climb the stairs rather than get in a lift. Eat and fast, don’t eat fast. Yeah, we all eat, but students are not a ‘carbon based life form’, they are a ‘carb-based life form’. It’s cheap and easy to eat pasta. Pizza is quick. Bottled water is more convenient than tap. Making your diet more varied and inclusive of fruit and veg is well known. But those who developed mindfulness practices also knew about when to starve the body, and for how long. We have a tendency to graze nowadays because food is always nearby. We also eat when the sugars in our body wear off, and we think we are hungry. Choose a couple of days each week where you will eat as little and as simply as you possibly can. Make it a regular part of your diary. On those days, when you do eat; eat slowly and carefully. Think about the food, and where it has come from. When you turn on the tap, think about how marvelous it is that water is so clean and readily available. • Change your eating habits for two days a week. • Eat as little as you can, but don’t starve yourself • Eat simply, no processed food, drink only water. Putting this together. Mindfulness practice has to be the foundation of your mental health, not added on top of a chaotic and stressful time. When you have a diary, with all the important things noted down, you don’t need to try and remember them- all you have to do is remember to consult your diary. Doing basic things regularly, even if you don’t want to do them, puts those daily events in their true perspective. Family and friends will always demand more of your attention than you can give them. Put crises and traumatic events into perspective by not responding instantly and every time. A little time of waiting and thinking before you respond will help you help your family and friends better. Care for yourself by making your body do things like exercise and eat mindfully. When you have these sorted, pick up that mindfulness colouring book. and know that everything is in its rightful place. Then the mindfulness practice will have the benefits on your mental health that you expect. Your colouring-in might be better as well! • When the basic structure of your daily life is settled, then mindfulness practice becomes more effective • Try and make yourself physically tired, not just mentally tired • If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorAcademic, priest, family man and problem solver Archives
October 2023
Categories |