Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

by Williams, Mark

  It was eleven-thirty at night and Marissa was struggling with her Breathing Space meditation. And today, of all days, she really needed a breathing space. She was desperate to calm down so she could get a good night’s sleep, but almost as soon as she’d begun her meditation, she was interrupted by the irritating buzz of a message arriving on her phone in the next room. She knew who it would be from: her boss at the unit where she worked; and she could guess what it would say: “Marissa—have you double-checked the end-of-year figures for the department’s budget?—Leanne.”

  Marissa’s manager never rested and saw no reason why anyone else should do so either. Marissa was at her wits’ end dealing with Leanne. She was someone who genuinely couldn’t see a distinction between her job and the rest of her life. The manager worked twelve-hour days and routinely bombarded people with texts and emails late at night. Some people had a life; Marissa’s boss had a smartphone. She was a walking management textbook who spoke all of the right jargon about “empowerment,” “cross-cutting strategies” and “thinking outside the box,” but somehow she never managed to put any of it into practice, particularly when it came to dealing with her subordinates. To her colleagues she seemed bad-tempered, aggressive and impulsive. To cap it all, she was becoming inefficient, forgetful and devoid of creativity. Her private life—such as it was—was equally chaotic. Her second husband had recently left her, and her seventeen-year-old daughter was a “disappointment” because of her devotion to art and drama, rather than to economics and business studies. Leanne was genuinely stunned that her daughter didn’t want a lucrative career on Wall Street and a life focused around designer clothes and expensive wines.

  It was easy to blame Leanne, but she was, of course, also a victim, unable to step outside of a punishing work schedule and a disintegrating private life.

  Ironically, Marissa had many of the same problems as Leanne until she’d discovered mindfulness two years previously. It was an epiphany. After years of unhappiness, stress and exhaustion, she’d learned to relax and had begun to live again. Mindfulness had improved her life no end, but she still had moments of high stress—usually when it came to dealing with Leanne’s demands. But at least she now knew how to handle them a little more skillfully.

  Marissa returned to her Breathing Space meditation. She sensed the tightness in her neck and shoulders, the pulse in her temples and her fast and shallow breathing. They were all signs that she was under intense pressure and, if she wasn’t careful, she’d soon become exhausted and quite possibly depressed too. The previous few weeks had been hellishly difficult, but she was determined not to be pulled back into the dark pit of the Exhaustion Funnel.

  As Marissa learned during her mindfulness classes, many of life’s problems, such as unhappiness, anxiety and stress, can be likened to drifting down a funnel of exhaustion that progressively drains away your life and energy.

  Exhaustion Funnel

  The Exhaustion Funnel

  Our colleague, Professor Marie Åsberg, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, is an expert on burnout. She uses the Exhaustion Funnel to describe how this can happen to any of us.

  The circle at the top represents how things are when we are living a full and balanced life. As things get busier, however, many of us tend to give things up to focus on what seems “important.” The circle narrows, illustrating the narrowing of our lives. But if the stress is still there, we give up more—and more. The circles narrow further.

  Notice that very often, the very first things we give up are those that nourish us the most but seem “optional.” The result is that we are increasingly left with only work or other stressors that often deplete our resources, and nothing to replenish or nourish us—and exhaustion is the result.

  Professor Åsberg suggests that those of us who continue downward furthest are likely to be those who are the most conscientious, those whose level of self-confidence is closely dependent on their performance at work, i.e., those who are often seen as the best workers, not the lazy ones. The diagram also shows the sequence of accumulating “symptoms” experienced by Marissa as she lived out her assumption that a social life was superfluous—the funnel narrowed and she became more and more exhausted.

  The funnel is created as you narrow the circle of your life to focus on solving your immediate problems. As you spiral down the funnel, you progressively give up more and more of the enjoyable things in life (which you come to see as optional) to make way for the more “important” things such as work. As you slide ever further down, you give up even more of the things that nourish you, leaving yourself increasingly exhausted, indecisive and unhappy. You are eventually spat out at the bottom, a shadow of your former self.

  It’s all too easy to get sucked into the Exhaustion Funnel. If you are overworked, or otherwise have too much on your plate, it’s entirely natural to make space by temporarily streamlining your life. This generally means giving up a hobby or part of your social life so that you can focus on your work; in Marissa’s case, this meant abandoning her weekly choir practice. But what she didn’t take into account was how nourishing the choir practice was for her soul. The weekly practice had become central to her life, but she’d bought into the idea that a social life was somehow optional, or even superfluous. In Marissa’s mind, her social life could be suspended when something more “important” came along. Although it seemed like a temporary fix to free up more time for work, it soon backfired. Without the weekly respite of choir practice, she gradually became less energized, creative and efficient. She ended up accomplishing less and taking more time to do so.

  To free up even more space for work, she abandoned her monthly book club, largely because she never had any spare time to read the novels she’d normally devour. This, too, soon backfired as she became still less efficient at work. So after a further few months, pressures of work once again forced her to put a little more of her life on hold. This time Marissa extended her working day by a couple of hours by enrolling her nine-year-old daughter in an after-school club. But this also had an unexpected downside. She soon started feeling guilty about seeing less and less of her daughter. The guilt often ate into her sleep and she became increasingly inefficient at work.

  Leanne came up with a solution: a laptop. This allowed Marissa to work when her daughter was watching her favorite TV programs. As you’d expect, this also meant that Marissa began working later into the night, analyzing spreadsheets and banging off emails so that her bosses could see her commitment. Needless to say, after a while something had to give, and this time it was her diet.

  Both Marissa and her daughter Ella loved the occasional takeout, but soon they were eating them night after night and becoming bored with the fatty, salty, low-nutrient food. But Marissa and her daughter hadn’t just given up wholesome food to save time cooking; they’d also lost something that often goes unnoticed: conversation. Long chats in the kitchen with her growing daughter gave way to the occasional exchange of gossip about TV soap characters in the commercial breaks. Inch by inch, Marissa was giving up all of the things she loved and that nourished her, for the thing she’d come to dislike: work. Not only had Marissa used to love her work; now it had become a trap for her, and it was draining away her life, leaving her exhausted and increasingly unhappy.

  Yet again her boss had a solution: a smartphone. Now she could even work in bed if she chose. At first, it was thrilling to be able to exchange high-powered emails and texts twenty-four hours a day. (Never mind that Leanne had once confided in Marissa that her second marriage had started to go downhill when she used her smartphone to complete and send off a report for work—on her honeymoon.) Marissa felt reinvigorated and empowered—that lasted for a few weeks. Then, it quickly became apparent that her bosses were all vying with each other by working later and later. It was clear that exchanging emails late at night made her colleagues and bosses feel important. Marissa was wiser than that, but was still unsure as to how she could escape the trap she’d been seduced in
to.

  In the end, it was an occupational therapist at the hospital where Marissa worked who sprung her free. The therapist was running a mindfulness course as part of a clinical trial to see whether meditation could help normally mentally healthy people to reduce their levels of job stress and become happier and more relaxed. It was only when Marissa began the course that it became obvious to her—and the therapist—that she was in pretty poor mental shape. During the pre-class interview, she was handed a sheet listing the most common symptoms of stress, depression and mental exhaustion. Marissa ended up checking most of the boxes. For Marissa, they included such things as:

  becoming increasingly bad-tempered or irritable

  a narrowing of her social life, or simply “not wanting to see people”

  not wanting to deal with such normal business as opening the mail, paying the bills, or returning phone calls

  becoming easily exhausted

  giving up on exercise

  postponing or overshooting deadlines

  changes in sleeping patterns (either sleeping too much or too little)

  changes in eating habits1

  Do any of these seem familiar to you?

  On the outside, Marissa had successfully maintained the façade of the busy, efficient worker, but deep inside she was crumbling under the strain. At first, she refused to believe she had a problem. She felt that all she needed was a few good nights’ sleep. The meditations she learned certainly allowed her to sleep, but as all of the other benefits of mindfulness began to accrue, Marissa realized just how close she’d come to a breakdown. Her life had almost completely trickled away down the Exhaustion Funnel.

  All work and no play?

  As Marissa’s experiences with the Funnel show, some activities are more than just relaxing or enjoyable—they actually nourish us at a far deeper level too. They help us to build up our resilience to life’s stresses and strains, but also to become more sensitive to life’s more beautiful nuances. Other activities deplete us. They drain away our energy, making us weaker and more vulnerable to the dips in life’s roller coaster ride. They also eat away at our capacity to enjoy life fully. Very quickly, these depleting activities can begin monopolizing our lives. And if we’re under pressure, the things that nourish us are gradually abandoned, almost without notice, driving us into the heart of the Exhaustion Funnel.

  Take this little test for yourself to see how much of your life is devoted to activities that nourish you and how much to those that deplete you. First, mentally run through the different activities that you do in a typical day. Feel free to close your eyes for a few moments to help bring these to mind. If you spend much of your day apparently doing the same thing, try breaking the activities down into smaller pieces, such as talking to colleagues, making coffee, filing, word processing and eating lunch. And what sort of things do you find yourself doing in a typical evening or weekend?2

  Now, write it all down, listing maybe between ten and fifteen activities of a typical day in a column on the left-hand side of your page.

  Activities you do in a typical day N/D

  When you have your list in front of you, ask yourself these questions:

  Of the things that you have written, which nourish you? What lifts your mood, energizes you, makes you feel calm and centered? What increases your sense of actually being alive and present, rather than merely existing? These are nourishing activities.

  Of the things that you have written, which deplete you? What pulls you down, drains away your energy, makes you feel tense and fragmented? What decreases your sense of actually being alive and present, what makes you feel that you are merely existing, or worse? These are depleting activities.

  Now, complete the exercise by putting an “N” for “nourishing” or a “D” for “depleting” on the right-hand side, corresponding to each activity. If an activity is both, put down your first reaction, or if you simply cannot choose, put N/D or D/N. You may find that you want to say, “It depends,” and, if so, it may be useful to notice what it depends on.

  The aim of this exercise is not to shock or unsettle you, but to give you an idea of the balance in your life between the things that nourish you and those that deplete you. The balance does not have to be perfect, as one nourishing activity that you love might easily outweigh any number of depleting ones. Nevertheless, it is wise to have at least a handful of nourishing activities (and preferably do at least one each day) to balance the depleting ones. This may be as simple as taking a long bath, reading a book, going for a brisk walk or indulging in your favorite hobby. The old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” contains more than a grain of truth. Many other societies have similar homilies. And in some cultures, doctors don’t ask, “When did you start to feel depressed?” but, “When did you stop dancing?’

  Learning to dance again

  Understanding how much of your life is devoted to depleting activities is one thing, but it’s also important to take action to either spend less time doing them or to devote more effort to nourishing pastimes. A central focus of Week Seven of the mindfulness course is devoted to taking action to redress the balance between the things that nourish you and those that deplete you.

  Step One: Rebalancing your daily life

  Spend a few minutes reflecting on how you can begin to redress the balance between the nourishing and depleting activities that you listed in the table earlier. Perhaps you can do this together with someone with whom you share your life—a family member or trusted work colleague, for example?

  There will be some aspects of your life that you simply cannot change for now. If, say, your job is the source of your difficulties, you might not have the luxury of being able to quit (even if you feel that this is the most appropriate solution). If you cannot fundamentally change a situation then you have two options. First, you can try, as best you can, to increase the time and gentle effort you devote to nourishing activities and to decrease the time and effort you give to depleting ones. Or second, you could try to approach the depleting ones in a different way, to practice being fully present with them, even if you find them boring or unpleasant. You could try to become fully mindful of them instead of judging them or wishing them away. By being present in more of your moments, and making mindful decisions about what you really want and need during those times, you can become progressively more accepting of the good and bad points of your day. You will also discover unexpected routes to happiness and fulfillment.

  Take the case of Beth. She was a clerk in the back office of a major bank—always, as she said, run off her feet with one thing after another. There was no obvious time for her to relax, let alone meditate. After a few weeks of mindfulness practice at home, she started to pay more attention to the busyness of her day. She noticed that tiny gaps opened up even at the most hectic times. For example, she realized she spent a lot of time trying to contact other parts of the company by phone or email to track down missing files. She’d often phone or email several times but get nowhere. This was one of the most annoying parts of her job—waiting for someone else to reply. She’d often find herself muttering angrily: “Why aren’t they at their desks—getting on with their jobs, like me!”

  Then, she had a light bulb moment: here was time that she could reclaim for herself; a moment of silence that she could use to ground and reconnect with herself. She started to use these gaps to take mini breathing spaces, in which she could mentally step back from the hubbub. After a while, she started to notice many other times when she could step back from the melee—for example, when waiting for her computer to start up each morning, waiting for the drinks machine to deliver her drink, walking to meetings or standing in line for sandwiches at lunchtime. Before this, she’d thought that mindfulness practice was best done when taking a lunch break or nipping outside for a coffee. Now, she found she could look for gaps throughout the day, times that could be used to transform her thoughts, feelings and behavior. It wasn’t necessary for her to increase dr
amatically the time she devoted to nourishing activities, or to reduce the amount she spent on depleting ones—she simply altered her relationship to those unavoidable depleting ones. She had begun to discover that even in the busiest days, there were “cracks” in what seemed an impenetrable wall of work.

  In her own way, Beth had found a way of “turning toward,” rather than escaping or avoiding her experiences. This is the mindfulness you have been learning too; to hold the difficult aspects of your daily life, as well as your beliefs or expectations about them, and to move in closer to them. This is what you’ve been learning during the previous six weeks of practice by focusing on your bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts.

  Now it’s time to draw up your own map that you can use to alter the balance between the depleting and nourishing things in your life. In the space on the following page, if you can, write down five ways in which you plan to alter the balance. Don’t worry if you can’t immediately think of five—just write in the extra ones when they occur to you later. Focus on the small things in life; this is a crucial part of the practice. Don’t write down “Give up work” or “Take up mountain climbing,” for example. Choose things that are easily achievable for you, such as “Take a coffee break every two hours,” “Walk the kids to school, rather than drive” or “Eat one less takeout meal each week and cook dinner instead.” You could try breaking down depleting things into smaller chunks as well. For example, clean a cupboard or tidy a corner of your desk for five minutes, rather than carrying on until it’s perfect. Or you might decide to finish work in a different way, turning off your computer a quarter of an hour earlier to give you time to consider what is on the agenda for tomorrow, rather than answering emails up to the last minute, then suddenly realizing you are late for whatever it is you planned to do after work. Note how sometimes it is possible to deal more skillfully with a depleting activity simply by leaving enough time to do it. See if it is possible to take a small pause before and after it, so it has its own space in your life. It also pays to bear in mind that what you find depleting is unique to you, so it is fine to focus on the things in your own life without comparing them to what others find nourishing or depleting.