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Six research-based strategies to help you overcome barriers to success 
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Two broad categories of results can sum up most people’s purposes for meditating. The first is to fully experience the present moment and to encounter thoughts and bodily sensations without judgment. The second is to enter a place of calmness away from the reactivity that can overwhelm us. One meditator sails into the maelstrom, the other seeks a temporary shelter from the storm. The most interesting thing is that each result comes from the same basic techniques. So what the meditator seeks, and how much time he or she is willing to put into it, determines the outcome.
ozziegontang's insight:
Dorothy Mitchell, a dear friend and professor of counseling for 30+ years at Long Beach State shared this which is on my wall as a reminder: Am I awake and fully present and living my life intentionally? I have always enjoyed this quote: If you want to live your dream; WAKE UP.
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Unsure where to begin with meditation? Let yoga instructor Steve Ross guide your thoughts and relax your mind with Dr. Oz and his wife Lisa.
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However, the practice is really meant to highlight this natural trajectory of the mind, and in doing so, it trains your attention systems to become more aware of the mental landscape at any given moment, and more adept at navigating it. With repeated practice, it doesn’t take so long to notice that you’ve slipped into some kind of rumination or daydream. It also becomes easier to drop your current train of thought and return your focus to the breath. Those who practice say that thoughts start to seem less “sticky”—they don’t have such a hold on you.. Via Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold's curator insight,
July 17, 2013 7:00 PM
An excellent short overview of the benefits of conscious metacognitive exercise -- the attentional side of infotention. There's a lot of touchy-feely and neurobollocks about metacognition and meditation lately. 
David McGavock's curator insight,
July 19, 2013 5:54 PM
"when people’s minds were wandering, they tended to be less happy, presumably because our thoughts often tend towards negative rumination or stress." That is presuming a lot since meditation affects our minds on so many levels. Familiarity with our thought process helps us to realize that we are not solid and that change/flux is the norm. It helps us realize that we have some control; albeit paradoxical control. Meditation slows our reactivity to people events and helps us appreciate our lives and other people. That's what I've experienced anyway.
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This statement by Jerry Harvey, author of The Abilene Paradox, captures what Pema Chhodron addresses in her talk on The Propensity To Be Bothered.
ozziegontang's insight:
The Blame Game. When I am angry, upset, bothered by someone or some event, I am more likely to place blame. Just some thoughts about: when the knife is in my back; why are my fingerprints on it? Ozzie
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Mindfulness At Work: 5 Tricks For A Healthier, Less Stressful Work Day
ozziegontang's insight:
A good read to help better understand how to integrate mindfulness into daily practice.
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ozziegontang's insight:
No need to add.. Read Annette Schmeling's insight. For those that have read Melanie's blog post, it is a good reminder and also a good piece to share with others inquiring about Mindfulness. Thomas Aquinas said when asked how do you explain the world. Explain the world in terms of God. The follow on question flowed quite naturally: How do you explain God. He said: You explain God in terms of complete and absolute Mystery. Lee Thayer's next book in process is on Mental Hygiene. All that we address and talk about are human explanations and interpretations. What we speak of as reality is something that we will never know as it is always seen through the eyes of the beholder. We say: I learn from my experience. What we mean is: I learn from my interpretations of my experience. I realize I may have the same near death experience as you and our interpretations of that experience may be polar opposite.
Annette Schmeling's curator insight,
June 20, 2013 8:46 AM
Greenberg provides basic concepts of mindfulness. A mindfulness practice fosters a deeper connection to self and grounds your very being in the present moment. In the Christian tradition centering prayer opens oneself to the presence of God within and deeply into the experience of the sacrament of the present moment. Learning to say 'Yes!' is an invitation to living beyond words, emotions, and thoughts and leading from within. 
Peter L Wiltshire's curator insight,
August 22, 2013 8:23 AM
Mindfulness is a way of being present to yourself and the present moment. It is also a process of becoming your true self.
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Which do you choose when these two positive processes collide?
ozziegontang's insight:
Want to thank Ryan for getting me out of my flow. We are realizing that we are mind/body/spirit. and it is so interesting to get caught in one area forgetting that we are not three different parts. I am a human or as Pat Murray would say quoting Wilfred Bion: We are herd/pack animals. George Sheehan MD often called the Mark Twain in running shoes reminded me: We are poets, philosophers, artists, saints, inventors. But first and foremost: Be a good animal. It is hard to move the body when I am in the flow in front of my computer screen. Trust, I can have a stand-up desk and I can have a treadmill stand-up desk. And as he reminded me: The brain, like heart, lungs, stomach and all vital organs are secondary organs. Each important for sustaining Life. My brain would like me to think that it is the most important. Hmmmmmm, who is telling me that story?
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The public and press devour news and books about ‘lit up’ neurons with gusto. Politicians have the bug, too, with Obama and Harper each launching $100-million research plans.
ozziegontang's curator insight,
June 13, 2013 1:23 AM
Looks like we have moved from pop-psychology to pop-neuroscience. The suggestion is that it might serve us better to learn about neuroscience by "reading the blogs of the Neurocritic, Neuroskeptic and Mind Hacks. ...Those are actual practicing neuroscientists who are experts in their respective fields."
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How Mindfulness Can Turn You On
ozziegontang's insight:
It is more about a love affair with life. Jon Kabat-Zinn shared:"Ultimately, I see mindfulness as a love affair -- with life, with reality and imagination, with the beauty of your own being, with your heart and body and mind, and with the world." A wonderful series of moments where mindfulness can be practiced and made part of one's love affair with life.
elysha lenkin's curator insight,
March 15, 2014 8:33 AM
Getting #mindful in the bedroom makes a major difference
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Renowned mindfulness meditation teacher and best-selling author Jon Kabat-Zinn speaks at UCSD Medical Center on the topic of "Coming to Our Senses", which is...
ozziegontang's insight:
A good listen on coming to Our Senses.
's comment June 11, 2013 2:19 PM
Thanks for sharing this Oz! \
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Guest talk: Ajahn Sujato - Mindfulness...Don't Even Bother http://t.co/UKFouVSfch #buddhism #spiritual #wisdom #peace #dharma #dhamma
ozziegontang's insight:
Live. Reflect. Be present. Servant Leader. Practice. Grateful. Appreciate.
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ozziegontang's insight:
It is all about awareness. It is about my awareness. Am I awake, fully aware and living my life intentionally? It is always about and will always be about choice. Thanks to Paul Childs for sharing.
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For older adults, loneliness is a major risk factor for health problems -- such as cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's -- and death. A new study offers the first evidence that mindfulness meditation reduces loneliness in older adults.
ozziegontang's insight:
Replacing loneliness with solitude.
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It's not so much: "Creating value in our lives and work requires the courage to delay immediate gratification" To me even more important: it requires time out to reflect. It requires times to allow the brain to rest so mind/body/spirit can from the quiet place within imagine the impossible...and create it. Ozzie Mindfulness.com
ozziegontang's insight:
It's not so much: "Creating value in our lives and work requires the courage to delay immediate gratification" To me even more important: it requires time out to reflect. It requires times to allow the brain to rest so mind/body/spirit can from the quiet place within imagine the impossible...and create it. Ozzie Mindfulness.com Would you please give me a time when the world was manageable? When has it ever been manageable? A statement from along the Camino that goes beyond food and is a good metaphor for Life: You order what you order; and you get what you get. I don't learn from my experiences. I learn from my interpretations of my experiences. Always have. Always will be. No matter what I order, I get what I get. In work my measure of performance is: Performance. I heard years ago a quote that has stayed with me: Be a non-anxious presence in an anxious world. There are a number of wonderful speakers to listen to from this February conference; Wisdom 2.0. I am wondering: Did my Wisdom 1.0 hold some awarenesses that I wasn't ready to hear? Truth be told the only think/thing I can manage is myself, and often I do a poor job at it. This is where many of the speakers share what they do to create their non-anxious presence. I know that anxiety and fear drive out my innovation and creativity. This is where a mindful approach begins. It is the spaces between the words and the quiet between the musical notes and the meditation, naps, breaks, vacations, more sleep between work and the "unmanageable" world that allow me to create what was never there before. Wisdom 2.0 is about technology. From the mind/brain barrier: Am I creating signal or noise? Maybe we are getting back to Wisdom-Ground Zero. A man of knowledge learns something everyday. A man of wisdom gives up something everyday. And how did you labor your thinking on this Labor Day weekend?
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Practicing mindfulness is not about trying to be a mindful person, it's about the moments.
ozziegontang's insight:
Elisha shares some thoughts about catching ourselves in the moment and being present to making a choice. Auto-pilot or cruise conrol is so easy as we move through out day. We forget that at each moment there is a choice point and routine erases that choice point. Everything is a choice, I just choose what I chose before. Lee Thayer in his writings http://bit.ly/115XERI says it well: My thinking influences my being. Who I am influences what I do. What I do creates my habits. And in the end the habits I create will create who I become.
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Historically, the majority of stressors facing humans were physical (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), requiring, in turn, a physical response. "We are not particularly splendid physical creatures," says David Spiegel, M.D., director of the Center on Stress and Health at Stanford School of Medicine, who explains that plenty of other animals can outrun us, overpower us, out-see us, out-smell us. "The only thing that has allowed us to explore the planet is the fact that we can respond effectively to threats." Via Maggie Rouman
ozziegontang's insight:
Without the stresses of life we would not be here today reading this article. The issue is that when I stress in situations that are not life threatening or overreact to situations and events that shoot a squirt of adreneline into my system 200 times a day, I am training myself to be anxious...almost all the time. I like to say: When this occurs I am swimming in an adreneline stew. When you stew me enough, my autoimmune system gets compromised. My normal and natural defenses wear down...andI wear out. The trick is to train myself to become a non-anxious presence in an anxious and overstressed world. The aphorism is: I learn from my experience. The trust should I look a little deeper is: I DO NOT learn from my experience. I LEARN from my interpretation of my experience. Two people can have the same experience. One sees it as a learning lesson, grows from it and continues on with life. Another person sees it as a horrible experience that they will never get over, and remain a victim of that experience for the rest of their life. This is where an attitude of gratitude and appreciation come in. Take a breath in, and then out. Move on to the next breath. I only have this moment.
Maggie Rouman's curator insight,
July 16, 2013 2:00 PM
It is important to understand how our brains and bodies react to stress. This article also includes an infographic. 
Shadow Quill 's curator insight,
July 31, 2013 11:11 PM
The evolution of the fight or flight response is no longer as adaptive as it once was
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Unsure where to begin with meditation? Let yoga instructor Steve Ross guide your thoughts and relax your mind with Dr. Oz and his wife Lisa.
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Instructing somebody to meditate -- to release or dis-identify with his or her thoughts -- is like trying to instruct somebody to instantly sneeze, or like telling someone just not to think, when the mind but built to do little else but that. Via Annette Schmeling, ozziegontang
ozziegontang's curator insight,
June 20, 2013 7:49 PM
What Ira shares is mirrored in understanding communication and communicating with understanding. It's not what we know that gets us in trouble. It's what we know that just ain't so that does.
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As I type this there are tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. This same thing happens when I read a poem, ...
ozziegontang's insight:
Virtuosity comes from doing something that others would say is impossible. The performance one witnesses is only a moment. And to achieve that moment it has taken a practice of being present and in the moment.When the impossible is achieved, it shows what is humanly possible and how limiting our self-limiting beliefs can be. Mindfulness is a practice.No words need to be said. No thoughts thought.
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The ancestor of every action is thought. -- Emerson Steve Robertson reminds us in this Huffington Report article Mindfulness and Monkey Mind: Our ...
ozziegontang's curator insight,
June 15, 2013 12:20 PM
Some of my thoughts after reading Steve Robertson's Mindfulness & Monkey Mind and how Lee's thoughts reflect that same Mindfulness when it comes to who is responsible in communication. My message in any medium is not a message if it is not accessed and interpreted by some person. My message is not a message if the receiver doesn't take my message into account. My message is not the message I intended if the other person interprets it other than the way I intended. So the learning lesson for me, if I am able to hear is: The one who interprets my message is always the one who is in control. So it is my responsibility as the receiver of the communication for getting the message the person speaking to me intended. My communication and all communication have consequences. Those consequences involve me and the other(s) who hear my communication.Those consequences are independent of intentions (mine or theirs, communication skills (mind or theirs) or whatever is going on in life (mine or theirs). This brings us back to my blog and the quotes from Lee on the metaphor of communication being like a virus. The Kalama Sutra said the same thing over 2500 years ago.
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ozziegontang's curator insight,
June 17, 2013 11:06 AM
A short question and answer with Abigail Marsh by Robin Stevens Payes on some the research behind and an understanding of how much and how little we know about Empathy. She shares: "Having compassion for other people goes away when you’re overly anxious. So learning to regulate your emotions is critical. We know that is particularly difficult during adolescence." This is what the UCSD Center for Mindfulness Conference in February: Bridgin the Hearts & Minds of Youth: Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, Education and Research. There was a wonderful session with Jon and Myla Kabat-Zinn on Mindful Parenting: Nurturing our Children, Growing Ourselves.
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My mind seems to be most quiet, most present, when I'm with my son. And, I'm at my best when we're outside.
ozziegontang's insight:
Nothing to add. Just to share Heidi's thought: "One of the many things we can learn from kids. Linger a little longer. Do what you’re doing. See what you see."
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Science Oxford Live March 2012. Professor Mark Williams from Oxford University delivers a lecture to the public about the science of mindfulness. Find Scienc...
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Mirabai Bush, a key adviser to Google's Search Inside Yourself curriculum, explores the role of mindfulness in negotiations with George Kohlrieser, an organizational psychologist and hostage negotiator.
ozziegontang's curator insight,
May 18, 2013 9:57 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOdnlVV_5Co
Lee Thayer's thoughts reflect that: Leaders are virtuoso question-askers because they care and use their questions to open themselves and others to new perspectives, alternatives and insights. Mindfulness in this role of leader influences others because it creates openness to what is possible. I am back to that statement that my daughters were raised on: If you want to know the future create it. We know that fear shuts down creativity and innovation. Being awake, aware and mindful allows me to be present and live my life intentionally and open to new possibilities. We are back to the foundation of Mindfulness: Practice. Gratitude, appreciation and being in the moment allows me to change my state of mind; body, thoughts, and emotions. At any moment what I do have is: Choice. Mindful and being present are a breath away. It is and will always be about: practice. |
Melanie has some wonderful articles and blog posts to share on her The Mindful Self-Express . This one: "What Truly Success People
Don't Tell You" is one.
The question is: Are what you are looking at barriers or stepping stones?
Like Mindfulness, Life is a practice. It is a practice of right thinking. With right thinking I become who I am. From who I am I do what I do. What I do creates my habits and then my habits continue to create me. It all starts with the way I think. Get my thinking right and I can get my life right.
Or as Diogenes said: "One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings."