This is a great book! I need to reread it to internalize all the ideas that have been expressed. It covers how mindfulness can help us reach a state of undistracted joy.
Need to read it again. The book has delivered much more than what it has promised on it's cover. The author makes a strong case on how mindfulness can help us across various area of life including addiction, distraction, relationships, experienceing flow, etc., grounded in scientific research. The fMRI studies in the book convinced me that much of the claims in the book are not overblown (while some anecdote's on how easy it was for someone to quit smoking still maybe). I will read the book again to internalize the ideas better.
(rewrite from notes)
If you don't understand why smokers smoke, try this exercise. Sit for 1 hour without twitching a muscle (other than ones associated with breathing of course). You get the feeling "just move a litte, it's no bigge" -- this is exactly how nicotine addicts feel.
This is an exercise you can try, to help training yourself to be robust to future addictions.
CBT: top-down control. Mindfulness: bottom-up control. Mindfulness helps us estimate the expected returns of a behaviour intuitively, instead of just the immediate reward.
The goal is not to let our negative desires go away as quickly as possible. The goal is to only observe them clearly and ride the wave in the process.
Getting obsessive thought pattern in control using RAIN:
- Recognize / relax into what is arising
- Accept / allow it to be there
- Investigate bolidly sensations, emotion and thoughts
- Note what is happening from moment to moment + Non identification (don't identify yourself with the feelings, let them be there without judgement or panic)
Noting pratice: just note whatever you're feeling. The act of observing will change what's being observed.
Craving dies down over time if you don't give in to it (or distract yourself), but instead use mindfulness to see it clearly.
Buddist's equivalent: stimulus -> craving -> behavior -> birth (of self-identity) -> memory ("me")
Each time you fall prey to the trigger -> behaviour -> reward loop, the reinforcement is becoming stronger.
Experiment: people give up 17% of the money to talk about themselves. Nucleus accumbens is the brain region associated with addiction (smoking / cocanie addiciton) and also lights up when we talk about ourselves. Talking about ourselves is rewarding, and doing is obsessively might be equivalent to getting hooked on drugs.
NA's activity is correlated with FB use.
Research: preference for online social interaction correlated with reduced self-worth and social withdrawal. Because when we see others embellishing their lives, we might not feel good about our own.
Reward during addiciton is associated with dopamine in the brain. When we closely observe, dopamine isn't directly correlated with happy (and can often be correlated with negative feelings: being high is associalted with agitated, paranoid, edgy, restless). We mistakenly see these things as happiness. We can use mindfulness to get out of this loop.
Intermittent reinforcement leads to the strongest stickiest type of learning. If you know you get emails only every 3 hours, you're less likely to be addicted. There's less dopamine firing because you can predict it more accurately. If you have inconsistent rewards which are intermittenet, there's more dopamine and you're more likely to be addicted.
Thinking into the future when you're bored often doesn't help. You're at risk of possibly triggering stressors about which you cannot do anything in the present. And often, even pleasant memories don't make you happier than how you'd feel by focusing on the present (shown in a study).
Study: "A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind" by self-reports from notifications triggered on an iPhone.
We can control our behaviour through top-down control from system 2. However, the risk is that it is the first system to bail out when we're tired or hungry. And we have limited will-power to use system 2 to contrain our behavkiour in a day.
It's important to keep our system 2 fed, in case we want to achieve anything consistently. It can be done by getting enough sleep, eating well, getting some exericse, etc.
We are all addicted to thinking (about ourselves?)! Because thinking is one way to trigger dopamine hit, we do it repeatedly. The events in our past with high dopamine hits are what we remember. Especially the happy one, we relive them through thinking.
Thinking is not the problem, but it is when we get caught up in it. Eg. athelete who loses lead because of thinking what she needs to be careful of.
Studies show that depressed people, when given a choice, choose to trigger sad emotions.
When people are idle, the area that lights up is called the default mode network. This is also the area that lights up during self-reference. In experience meditators, there is decreased activity in these regions. This can be done real time and it extensively validated.
Studies show his PCC activity in choise justification, OCD, emotional processing, craving, guilt, etc., Seems like it's one way to suffer.
Meditators train themselves to see experiences for what they are without judgement. Novices get caught up in the experiences and go along for the ride (which can lead to suffering).
Being deeply in love with someone can be just as dangerous and addictive. It's repeated thinking about the person, without being able to pull back from it whne you like. If we're caught up in love, we could crash and burn.
PCC also fires about whne you think about romatic partners. Higher PCC implies obsession with someone. More mature love that secure is causes less PCC activity.
Meta, the loving kindness meditation also leads to a reduction in the PCC activity.
Love, cocaine addicts have high PCC activity whereas meta has low PCC activity.
Excitement (happens when we imagine one romantic fantasy after the other; it leaves us craving for more) vs happiness. We learn to repeat behaviours that lead to high dopamine responses (it happens for stress, excitement, etc.,). (not sure what I'm saying here)
Both pleasant and unpleasant thoughts leave us with the same feeling, the craving for more, a kind of restlessness. We need to learn to see the difference between excitement and joy.
Mindfulness helps us see more clearly what we're getting from our actions. To see clearly if we're being rewards or not. Excitement leads to restlessness. Just being curious and attentive about our present experience can be a source of immense joy, joy that isn't addictive and that wouldn't keep you seeking for more.
Meditators don't penalize other people for being unfair. They clearly see that this serves no end. (kinda looking at others as robots actually helps?) They realize that being a jerk causes pain to both parties.
Anger is draining and all consuming, it's the opposite of peace. Letting go of anger can make focus much easier.
Expecting things from others when we help is exhausting. Helping with no strings attached is a truly happy experience. Selfless giving offers intrinsic reward.
Flow can be achieved only when you're inherently enjoying the activity, and not seeing it as a means to an end.
If we stop wondering or worrying whether we can do a task, as long as it is within our skillset, it gets done.
Environmental conditions for flow:
- Don't beat yourself up. Don't take it personally when you mess up.
- Take it slow. Learn from first principles. Don't be in a hurry.
- Quality over quantity. Fewer hours of quality work is much better.
Doing activities that enable flow state can lead to a much more satisfying life than watching TV or getting high. These state enable us to be more engaged with the world instead of less.
Empathy can be draining only when you take other's suffering personally. Seeing suffering clearly doesn't drain up energy.
Each time we don't resist a bad pattern, we're digging further into the groove. c