we discovered was really interesting.
The people who undertook the training showed some improvements in mindfulness and resilience. But the more Mind Time they put in each day, the more significant change occurred across a variety of areas.
As practice times went up, so too did improvements in resilience, collaboration, agility, perspective taking, aspects of empathy and mindfulness. Their levels of personal distress reduced. They reported an increased capacity for self-awareness and self-management, especially around their ability to regulate emotions, see alternative perspectives and ‘reframe’ potentially difficult or stressful situations both at home and at work.
They also reported enhanced sleep, reduced stress levels and improved work–life balance, as well as increased confidence in the face of difficult situations.
But how much Mind Time was ‘enough’? We observed a simple rule at work.
Those people who had done, on average, 10 minutes or more per day over the eight-week period experienced significantly greater improvements in their levels of mindfulness and resilience than those who practised less than that.
Increasing your AIM can change your mind and change your life. Our research, and experience of teaching thousands of people over many years shows that you can increase your AIM by practising some simple techniques. But, as so often in life, the benefits come with practising these techniques on a regular basis. Just like learning a musical instrument, it turns out that changing our minds takes practice. Daily practice. That’s good news, because it is achievable. And the even better news is that we know how much time we need to devote to that practice to make a real difference.
On our research programmes we found that with less than 10 minutes a day, there is some change, but not much. But at 10 minutes or more per day, changes really start to kick in. This is an important finding.
Think about it. Just 10 minutes – and you begin to change your mind.
To put this into perspective, let’s do the maths.
If you’re currently getting the UK average of around 6.8 hours’ sleep a day (as opposed to the 7.7 hours on average that most of us think we need), that means you’re awake for 17.2 hours each day.1 That’s 1,032 minutes. Ten minutes of Mind Time per day therefore represents less than 1 per cent of your waking hours.
Just under 1 per cent of your time given over to Mind Time and using AIM can significantly improve your life. Moreover, we know from our own experience and from what people tell us, the better you become at working with AIM the more that will improve the lives of those around you too.
Here’s another point. The more practice that participants in our research project did, the more they changed. But significant change started at 10 minutes. If they did less, they didn’t get much change. So we encourage you to get going and to do at least 10 minutes of Mind Time each day. If you can do more, that would be even better. But we found that you’re unlikely to get very much benefit if you do less.
The Mind Time practices we taught them allowed our research participants to experience AIM over and over again. So much so, that it began to be habitual. The three aspects of AIM – allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness – became instinctive.
Let’s take a closer look now at the three elements, so that we can help you to build them with practice.
ALLOWING
Allowing involves approaching a situation with an attitude of openness and kindness to yourself and others. It’s not about being passive or giving up; it is about facing up to what is actually going on in each passing moment and using our energy more productively, rather than wasting it wishing things were other than they are.
Amy is an enthusiastic, but understandably tired, mother of three young children who worked with us for a couple of months to improve her AIM. Absolutely committed to her role as a mother, she wanted to be able to cope with juggling family life with work life, which was also very important to her. She explained allowing like this:
‘It’s that ability to let a few things go more easily, and not worry excessively about them. Take it as what it is. There’s also the deeper recognition that there are things you just can’t change. Then the best option is to go towards them and be with them.’
Without allowing, our criticism of others and ourselves crushes our ability to inquire and observe what is really happening.
Take the case of Matt, a father who came to us for help. We’ve known Matt for a few years and although we met him in the context of his work initially, the most important thing for him is his family and how he can be a ‘good dad’.
Matt’s teenage daughter was getting into trouble at school – and it was getting worse. His levels of anxiety had reached a critical point. Every time she got into trouble, he would fly off the handle. That left him feeling thoroughly ineffective as a dad. He had no idea how to get through to her. He was having trouble sleeping and found himself constantly ruminating over the issue. That began to put his marriage under strain as he and his wife began to blame each other for their daughter’s behaviour.
We saw how Matt’s situation was affecting his work when we observed him during a team meeting. When he stood up to present an update on how his part of the business was doing, his body language and tone of voice gave away how exhausted and anxious he was. He couldn’t meet the eyes of his audience and we saw how he struggled to remember details and answer questions clearly. He stumbled his way through the presentation and left his team awkwardly wondering how to respond.
Talking with Matt afterwards, we asked what had been going through his mind as he stood up to make his presentation.
‘I just knew it wouldn’t go well. I felt so exhausted, so nervous. There was this voice going on in my head – “You’re not going to do well … you’re not going to do well …” so I didn’t. The more I felt it was going badly, the angrier I got with myself. I told myself, “Pull yourself together!” The more I did that, the angrier I got with myself and the tenser I became. The tenser I got, the angrier I got. I kept thinking, “You’re really letting yourself and everyone else down.” I guess it’s no surprise that I did.’
Things were undeniably tough for Matt and it would have been great if he could somehow have been more open with his colleagues and asked them for help. But that’s not always possible in every workplace. What would also have helped, though, would have been if he had been able to hear the voice in his head and react to it with compassion, rather than anger. In Matt’s case, though, on hearing the voice he became angrier and, as a result, heaped even more pressure on himself.
Do you recognise this sort of voice? One of the people attending a course we led described it as the Poison Parrot that sits on your shoulder – whispering undermining words in your ear.
If he’d been able to see in that moment that the thought ‘You’re not going to do well’ was just a thought, not ‘truth’. And then if he could have met that thought with compassion and acceptance – ‘Oh yes, there’s that thought again. It’s just a thought – it’s allowed …’ – then things might have gone differently. He might have been able to regulate his emotional state a little better. That might have given him the opportunity to breathe just a little bit more, to look up a little more, to settle a bit more, and to begin to inquire into what was going on.
That might have made the difference.
