Mindfulness meditation: not as hokey as it looks
The world of experimental psychology can be a dry place: all those ethics committees, control groups, and peer-reviewed, cautiously expressed findings. Not so the world of popular psychology and self-help, where stunning breakthroughs in the quest for human happiness seem to tumble in their hundreds out of every new book. “Two years ago,” writes Dr Joe Vitale in Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System For Wealth, Health, Peace and More, “I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients—without ever seeing any of them.” Lest anyone doubt Vitale’s bona fides, note he has a PhD—and not from some stuffy traditionalist university, either, but from the University of Metaphysics in Arizona.
It’s outlandish tales like Vitale’s, of course, that help fuel widespread cynicism about the multimillion-pound global self-help industry. In the unregulated world outside psychology labs and therapists’ consulting rooms, wild and untested claims rub shoulders with advice so platitudinous and commonsensical it hardly seems worth reading. The resulting hostility from people who think of themselves as smart and non-gullible (you too, huh?) is entirely understandable. But it’s also unfortunate. In dismissing self-help in its entirety, we risk surrendering a hugely important topic to some of the sketchiest people around—and missing out on some real wisdom hiding amid the nonsense.
The basic tenets of self-help hardly make this argument easy to propose. Its governing philosophy remains “positive thinking”—largely unchanged since the 1930s—even though numerous studies now suggest such strenuous efforts at thought control can have a counterproductive effect on mood. The governing political ideology remains a thinly-disguised libertarian individualism: after all, if happiness, wealth and success can be chosen by anyone with the self-belief to want them, isn’t economic or emotional suffering the fault of the sufferer—for not trying hard enough? (US author Larry Winget wrote a book called You’re Broke Because You Want To Be, and more than one guru has suggested that victims of crime or abuse have only their problematic mindsets to blame.) Meanwhile, the governing standard of scientific evidence remains… well, there isn’t one, really.
Yet even before the recent flourishing of a more scientifically grounded “positive psychology,” some self-help authors—even some of the cheesiest-sounding ones—were providing a service that hasn’t always been easy to find elsewhere. Psychotherapy can be time-consuming and expensive, often beset by stigma and embarrassment, while even the most supportive friends aren’t limitlessly patient, nor even necessarily that wise.
Here are some self-help success stories: Feeling Good (1980) by David Burns, a layperson’s introduction to cognitive-behavioural therapy, has been shown in studies to have an effect comparable to medication or therapy; some credit it with saving them from suicide. Susan Jeffers’s bestseller Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway embodies an anti-positive-thinking message—stop exerting so much effort trying to eradicate negative thoughts; focus instead on learning how to act alongside them—that has found clinical support. These are far from isolated examples.
Researching the world of popular psychology, it soon becomes clear that an unfortunately syrupy, Oprah-esque manner of expression isn’t necessarily an indicator of bad advice; sometimes the best insights sound the most saccharine. Keeping a “gratitude journal” has been shown by several studies to be an effective means of combating the natural tendency for the good things in our lives to stop delivering pleasure as we grow accustomed to them. Mindfulness meditation, though too often advertised using stock photographs of impossibly serene-looking women sitting cross-legged on tropical beaches, is a useful technique for improving focus and becoming less easily thrown off course by negative moods. Meanwhile, many of the techniques emerging from the online culture of “lifehacking”—anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way—offer modest but beneficial ideas. Forget ten-step techniques and secret Hawaiian systems; have you tried addressing procrastination by getting a kitchen timer and trying the Pomodoro Technique—timed 25-minute bursts of work followed by five-minute breaks? It’s a one-off tip, unrelated to any grand philosophy of happiness. But perhaps this gets at something profound about happiness: modest, effective tools may be far more valuable than seductive yet ultimately frustrating grand philosophies.
Yes, the sweeping promises made by many celebrity gurus rarely deliver—and can sometimes make things worse. But this need not mean there’s no wisdom lurking behind those lurid covers. Reading sceptically, picking and choosing, deciding what works, is surely self-help in its truest sense. The self-help urge—the urge to discover how to be a better human—is a noble one; too important to be abandoned either to cynicism or gullibility. Scared to step into those parts of the bookshop you’d dismissed as beneath you? Feel the fear. Do it anyway.
The world of experimental psychology can be a dry place: all those ethics committees, control groups, and peer-reviewed, cautiously expressed findings. Not so the world of popular psychology and self-help, where stunning breakthroughs in the quest for human happiness seem to tumble in their hundreds out of every new book. “Two years ago,” writes Dr Joe Vitale in Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System For Wealth, Health, Peace and More, “I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients—without ever seeing any of them.” Lest anyone doubt Vitale’s bona fides, note he has a PhD—and not from some stuffy traditionalist university, either, but from the University of Metaphysics in Arizona.
It’s outlandish tales like Vitale’s, of course, that help fuel widespread cynicism about the multimillion-pound global self-help industry. In the unregulated world outside psychology labs and therapists’ consulting rooms, wild and untested claims rub shoulders with advice so platitudinous and commonsensical it hardly seems worth reading. The resulting hostility from people who think of themselves as smart and non-gullible (you too, huh?) is entirely understandable. But it’s also unfortunate. In dismissing self-help in its entirety, we risk surrendering a hugely important topic to some of the sketchiest people around—and missing out on some real wisdom hiding amid the nonsense.
The basic tenets of self-help hardly make this argument easy to propose. Its governing philosophy remains “positive thinking”—largely unchanged since the 1930s—even though numerous studies now suggest such strenuous efforts at thought control can have a counterproductive effect on mood. The governing political ideology remains a thinly-disguised libertarian individualism: after all, if happiness, wealth and success can be chosen by anyone with the self-belief to want them, isn’t economic or emotional suffering the fault of the sufferer—for not trying hard enough? (US author Larry Winget wrote a book called You’re Broke Because You Want To Be, and more than one guru has suggested that victims of crime or abuse have only their problematic mindsets to blame.) Meanwhile, the governing standard of scientific evidence remains… well, there isn’t one, really.
Yet even before the recent flourishing of a more scientifically grounded “positive psychology,” some self-help authors—even some of the cheesiest-sounding ones—were providing a service that hasn’t always been easy to find elsewhere. Psychotherapy can be time-consuming and expensive, often beset by stigma and embarrassment, while even the most supportive friends aren’t limitlessly patient, nor even necessarily that wise.
Here are some self-help success stories: Feeling Good (1980) by David Burns, a layperson’s introduction to cognitive-behavioural therapy, has been shown in studies to have an effect comparable to medication or therapy; some credit it with saving them from suicide. Susan Jeffers’s bestseller Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway embodies an anti-positive-thinking message—stop exerting so much effort trying to eradicate negative thoughts; focus instead on learning how to act alongside them—that has found clinical support. These are far from isolated examples.
Researching the world of popular psychology, it soon becomes clear that an unfortunately syrupy, Oprah-esque manner of expression isn’t necessarily an indicator of bad advice; sometimes the best insights sound the most saccharine. Keeping a “gratitude journal” has been shown by several studies to be an effective means of combating the natural tendency for the good things in our lives to stop delivering pleasure as we grow accustomed to them. Mindfulness meditation, though too often advertised using stock photographs of impossibly serene-looking women sitting cross-legged on tropical beaches, is a useful technique for improving focus and becoming less easily thrown off course by negative moods. Meanwhile, many of the techniques emerging from the online culture of “lifehacking”—anything that solves an everyday problem in a clever or non-obvious way—offer modest but beneficial ideas. Forget ten-step techniques and secret Hawaiian systems; have you tried addressing procrastination by getting a kitchen timer and trying the Pomodoro Technique—timed 25-minute bursts of work followed by five-minute breaks? It’s a one-off tip, unrelated to any grand philosophy of happiness. But perhaps this gets at something profound about happiness: modest, effective tools may be far more valuable than seductive yet ultimately frustrating grand philosophies.
Yes, the sweeping promises made by many celebrity gurus rarely deliver—and can sometimes make things worse. But this need not mean there’s no wisdom lurking behind those lurid covers. Reading sceptically, picking and choosing, deciding what works, is surely self-help in its truest sense. The self-help urge—the urge to discover how to be a better human—is a noble one; too important to be abandoned either to cynicism or gullibility. Scared to step into those parts of the bookshop you’d dismissed as beneath you? Feel the fear. Do it anyway.
