Mindfulness & Motivation in Daily Life

1. Mindfulness & Motivation in Daily Life Insights and Provocations Jackson Kytle HealthCare Chaplaincy

2. A bit of context … • Focus on psychological involvement in daily life • An experience not often examined • Worrying is not examining HealthCare Chaplaincy

3. My purposes today … • Focus your attention on the quality of psychological experience in human existence, especially your own • Put some concepts in play that help us think about motivation and about daily life • Share my insights and questions • Ask us to think about how we think, how the mind processes experience HealthCare Chaplaincy

4. This is a sampler … HealthCare Chaplaincy

5. Swimming in the current … • William James and the “stream of consciousness” • Heading bobbing in the current, can we get to the bank to rest and reflect? HealthCare Chaplaincy

6. Three Problematics in Daily Life … • Self-motivation • Learning • Quality of lived experience, especially as shaped by self-motivation and learning HealthCare Chaplaincy

7. INSIGHT • For most people, lived experience is, well, bumpy • Managing self-motivation is a daily project • So is managing the monkey mind HealthCare Chaplaincy

8. INSIGHT • We cannot easily control the Fordist production systems in which we must work. • We can control the ideas we bring to making sense of lived experience. HealthCare Chaplaincy

9. Four Facets of Mindfulness HealthCare Chaplaincy

10. To appreciate how the human mind works when it comes to managing a life To be critical of the concepts and theories—mind sets—we have inherited To create moments of psychological involvement to add quality to daily life To create moments for reflection in a busy life and for connecting human actions to an ethical life project Learning … HealthCare Chaplaincy

11. INSIGHT • Human beings are marvelouspattern-seeking, meaning-makers • Some elements shared with other species • We see the world in chunks, small and large! HealthCare Chaplaincy

12. patterns frames mental models mind sets stereotypes naïve theories Terms vary for this adaptive advantage … HealthCare Chaplaincy

13. INSIGHT At the same time, a mind set can be wrong! HealthCare Chaplaincy

14. INSIGHT Another limit to human meaning-making … when we move through the life world as if sleep walking HealthCare Chaplaincy

15. Listen to Maxine Greene “[If] teachers today are to initiate young people into an ethical existence, they themselves must attend more fully than they normally have to their own lives and its requirements; they have to break with the mechanical life, to overcome their own submergence in the habitual, even in what they conceive to be the virtuous, and ask the ‘why’ with which learning and moral reasoning begin.” HealthCare Chaplaincy

16. Maxine read Alfred Schutz … • Social phenomenologist, once at The New School • He wrote about becoming “awake-in-the-world” – an complex ideal that Greene put to good, consistent use HealthCare Chaplaincy

17. “Pursuit involvement” on the ancient savannah, or the modern mall Mind and body are focused, behavior is purposeful If not scared to death, mood can be positive with lively fantasies Contrast being half awake in the world to … HealthCare Chaplaincy

18. Pursuits are, variously … • Fun! • Limit the vision of other pursuits • Expose our minds to manipulation by corporate interests HealthCare Chaplaincy

19. Listen to John Dewey … “We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.” HealthCare Chaplaincy

20. Personal examples of involving experiences … • When playing or listening to music • When playing a sport • When meeting a new friend HealthCare Chaplaincy

21. When doing something risky When participating in a true belief group When teaching When alone in a strange natural environment HealthCare Chaplaincy

22. INSIGHT We humans learn to manipulate psychological experience all day long from that first coffee to settling down with a book or television before bed. HealthCare Chaplaincy

23. Let’s switch gears … we need concepts! • The nature of psychological experience, motivation, and daily life are old, old topics in human affairs. • We join the conversation late. HealthCare Chaplaincy

24. Abraham Maslow’s work … • Wanted a humanistic psychology, avoiding the reductionism of behaviorism and the “negativism” of existentialism • Wanted to focus on growth, being, and self-actualization, not deficiency • His methods—interviews and questionnaires of psychologically healthy people HealthCare Chaplaincy

25. Characteristics of Maslow’s peak experience • Sense of wholeness, an integrating experience • Critical judgment suspended, loss of ego centeredness • Clear perception • Perception of beauty and goodness, if not awe HealthCare Chaplaincy

26. and … • Sense of self as active, responsible, bigger and stronger • Feeling of gratitude • Disorientation in time and space after the peak experience • Sometimes the onset of the experience is unexpected, sudden, as if by surprise HealthCare Chaplaincy

27. Underlying all the claims … • Perception seems changed for a short period • Mood becomes positive, which generalizes to most evaluations • A powerful psychological experience! • Sometimes the result is “high tension and excitement” • At other times, a “plateau experience” defined by “peacefulness, quietness, the feeling of stillness.” HealthCare Chaplaincy

28. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Theory of Flow • Chaos, a natural and uncomfortable state which consciousness returns to if not ordered by human action • Wanted people to control psychological experience because events are less under control • Flow = “total involvement with life” … “heart, will, and mind” joined together … “in effortless action” • Nearly identical psychological experience to Maslow’s peak experience HealthCare Chaplaincy

29. His methods … • Started with a Maslow-like method of interviewing people with flow experiences • Created the Experience Sampling Method, using pagers and programmable watches, timed to go off eight times a day at random intervals HealthCare Chaplaincy

30. Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow • Learn to focus on and improve quality of psychological experience • Flow most likely under three conditions: • Clear purposes • Relevant feedback on performance • Challenge and skills are in balance • Attention becomes ordered and invested HealthCare Chaplaincy

31. Listen to Ellen Langer … • Most activities are neither positive nor negative in tone – what matters is what we invest in them. (Very Jamesian!) • Need to challenge “premature cognitive commitments” • Students develop a fear of negative criticism and pursue the “illusion of the correct answer.” HealthCare Chaplaincy

32. Langer continued … • To increase mindful learning: • focus on questions • on learning as a process, and • on self-regulation • To increase unmindful learning: • focus on answers • on learning as outcomes, and • on expert authority HealthCare Chaplaincy

33. Three Dimensions of Psychological Experience … • Mood • Attention • Awareness or consciousness HealthCare Chaplaincy

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35. INSIGHT A critical distinction is needed … • Psychological involvement • Social engagement HealthCare Chaplaincy

36. Listen to Thich Nhat Hanh … • Ethical responsibility to live authentically and take care of others • To try to control wandering attention, the “monkey mind” • Focus on breathing in meditation HealthCare Chaplaincy

37. Don’t feed the monkey … HealthCare Chaplaincy

38. THE LIFE PROJECT … Life as a project -- a long, bumpy search to become an authentic human being whose actions are guided by ethical purposes HealthCare Chaplaincy

39. ONE LAST INSIGHT Motivation, learning and environmental demand —an intimate, dynamic connection! HealthCare Chaplaincy

40. DAILY DEMAND ENVIRONMENT PEER GROUP PERSON MENTORS REFLECTION TOOLS WORK TASKS BUILT ENVIRONMENT HealthCare Chaplaincy

41. Three practical implications … • To change direction in a behavior or life, change the group you belong to – let the group socialize you. • Challenge the brain-mind-body to do its work by seeking demand environs. • As we get older, we need to increase demand environments and predicaments. HealthCare Chaplaincy

42. See my website: www.wanttolearn.org Give me your email address if you would like a copy of my talking points and slides. Email me at: jkytle@healthcarechaplaincy.org/ Book signing shortly. Thank you! HealthCare Chaplaincy