The other night I was listening to a podcast called Speaking of Psychology. It was episode 131 – How meditation can help you live a flourishing life. The guest was Richard Davidson, PhD. Dr. Davidson is the professor of psychology at William James and Vilas Research. He is also the director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Davidson has spent his entire career studying how our brains and our emotions are intertwined. He has published hundreds of articles and books. Needless to say, he is an expert on how our brains process emotions. During this podcast he discussed how meditation can be used to live a flourishing life.
Meditation is a Set of Tools
Dr. Davidson compared meditation to sports in that there are several different meditation practices. He also stated the Western world is only aware of a tiny sliver of the different types of meditation that exists. According to him meditation literally means to familiarize. He discussed how this means we familiarize ourselves with our own minds. The different types of meditation are tools we can use to aid in this process of self-discovery. There are analytic mediations that focus on using thinking and reasoning to understand our minds. Mediation provides a basic tool set to regulate ourselves. As we start to utilize these tools, we start to learn the fundamentals of wellbeing and living a flourishing life.
Four Pillars of Wellbeing
In Dr. Davidson’s reasoning there are four pillars of wellbeing. They are awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. These four pillars form the framework for his research and scientific work. His research has found that each of these qualities can be learned and helps to change our brains.
- Awareness – allows us to regulate our attention. This is where mindfulness comes into play. Dr. Davidson also includes what he calls meta-awareness in this category. An example of meta-awareness is when you realize your attention has wondered from what you were focusing on. Then you bring your attention back to the object or subject of focus. For example, you are listening to someone, and you realize you stopped listening to them in the middle of the conversation because your mind wandered somewhere else.
- Connection – involves the qualities of our relationships. Part of having healthy relationships includes cultivating gratitude, empathy, appreciation, and benevolence.
- Insight – is about becoming curious about ourselves and drives us toward self-discovery. We all have a perception of who we are. Some have a positive perception and others have a negative perception. The truth of who we truly are though usually lies somewhere in the middle. We can make a conscious choice to start moving closer to the positive end of the spectrum.
- Purpose – permits us to discover our sense of purpose and understand our sense of direction in life. Once we have that understanding we can start to model our daily behavior to align with that sense of direction. I look at this more as we start to find meaning and purpose in our everyday tasks such as washing the dishes or mowing the grass. Learning this one skill will have a profound effect on your sense of wellbeing.
The Flourishing Life
As the discussion progressed Dr. Davidson started to describe what a flourishing life would look like after learning the four pillars of wellbeing. One of the first benefits he mentioned is, the brains of those who have been meditating for a while and incorporated it into their life, age slower. They also have better brain health overall. The circuits in the brain are strengthened. Dr. Davidson stated it only takes 7 hours of mediation for our brains to change. That is two weeks of meditating for 30 minutes a day. Having better brains means we are able to pay attention for longer, have more independent though, and are able to control our minds and regulate our emotions. In essence we stay mentally sharper longer and are able to control ourselves better. These two benefits of meditation effect how we interact with other people. We are able to more easily choose how we treat people. The kinder and more compassionate we treat others, the more positive interactions they are going to have with us.
Conclusion
The key take away I have from listening to this podcast is that in order to have a flourishing life we have to have control over ourselves. This means we have to have control over our thoughts and emotions. We all have been guilty of loosing our temper or spiraling in self-doubt. Meditation gives us the tools we need to become aware of these characteristics and consciously change them. As we start to gain control over ourselves and behavior, we start to become empowered to shape our daily lives to reflect who we want to be. This spills over into our relationships with other people. They benefit from the new and improved us. Before you know it, we are happier and able to better handle the unexpected things life throws at us. In my opinion this is exactly what living a flourishing life is all about.