How to Test your Mindfulness

The ability to stay focused while being aware of our thoughts is called mindfulness. We usually live on a double-edged sword. When we are aware of our surroundings and thoughts, it is hard to stay mindful and focused. On the other hand, people who get too focused lose track of their surroundings. If we are mindful, we will be able to move past distractions and stay focused while being aware of what is happening around us. Achieving this balance is what is described as mindfulness. Once we reach this state, we can carry on our daily activities while also being conscious of what is going inside us.

Many pieces of research have also established that we use most of our waking hours being diverted and thinking about unimportant things. The lack of concentration also results from a lack of mindfulness. The mental skill of being mindful is becoming extremely important in our daily lives that are saturated with information. Mindfulness is equally, if not more, important than our emotional intelligence or technical skills. 

How To Track Mindfulness?

Many researchers and authors have reviewed the shreds of evidence of meditation on mindfulness. They have seen that meditation can affect mindfulness and create temporary or trait related changes in the brain. The existing research on meditation and mindfulness has seen some evidence which suggests that there are effects of meditation on the mind. 

Some tests have been developed to assess your mindfulness. These tests help us understand our degree of mindfulness. All such assessments work by understanding several patterns of mindfulness and whether they exist in you or not. Mindfulness training is also conducted by many organizations to fulfil our gaps. They provide a rating of mindfulness and also give recommendations to improve.

Questionnaire for Self-Reporting of Mindfulness

Researches on brain activity and its relation with day to day behaviour have led to the creation of personalized tools to track the level of mindfulness. One of the most common tools is a self-report questionnaire. These are also known as mindfulness intervention and are taken post a course or after a meditation retreat. The subjects are generally asked if they agree with several statements. These statements are chosen after many studies, and they cover different facets of mindfulness.

There are certain parameters that are checked using these tests. These help us to think about our behaviours and thoughts. Some of these areas described below:

• The ability to make good use of time by being efficient and effective in all tasks
• The ability to stay focused on tasks
• The ability to sleep well
• The ability to let go of upsetting incidents
• The ability to be present fully
• The ability to be comfortable in sitting still 
• The tendency to do multiple tasks at one time
• The awareness of what other people feel
• The awareness of how we feel
• The ability to stay calm in pressure
• The ability to accumulate mental energy and creativity

Are Such Tests A Good Measure Of Mindfulness?

Not all self-report measures can be trusted. So people consider their expected outcomes to find the best measures. There can be a lack of objectivity in some of the measures. This leads to the creation of criteria to judge them. The major requirements from these tools are that the scores generated should correlate with the quality and amount of mindfulness practice that is done by the subjects. There are some other requirements like the discriminant validity which means that the test scores should not correlate with the variables which do not have anything to do with mindfulness.

Certain questionnaires and tools will not do well on the above-mentioned criteria. The researches that are designed in a control intervention to compare mindfulness among various subjects will not stand well in the early world. These self-report questionnaires sometimes show a positive correlation between mindfulness and unrelated factors like binge drinking, which negates the trustworthiness of these tools.

The More Objective Methods

Certain research groups have devised more objective and robust measures of mindfulness. There are some simple behavioural tests that are focused on breath related meditation. The more skilled you are in mindfulness, the better you get at counting breaths or not losing count due to the wandering of the mind.

These tests have their own strengths as they are based on measurable fact. These counts will be either accurate or not, and there are no psychological biases in it. These test scores improve with training. Also, experienced meditators perform significantly better on such tests than those who just started. It is relatively much simple to generate feedback on the test using the software. It has thus become an important tool in the Mind-Body Training programs.

There are a few of these tools that are now used to assess the effect and the intensity of mindfulness. They are usually trustworthy and determine important parameters that enhance mindfulness. Such parameters are then added back to the programs to make them more effective. 

Measures to Enhance Mindful Meditation

Meditation is a practice that has the primary function of improving mindfulness over time. But it has some auxiliary functions too. Mindfulness can be achieved if we add it as a sense of challenge in meditation. This creates more interest in the practice. There are 3 conditions for a good flow in the context of mindfulness meditation as described below:

• One should have an immediate and clear goal that can be timed
• One should get immediate feedback with every session\
• There should be the right level of challenge that keeps you motivated enough but does not get you too stressed

Mindfulness meditation can be difficult to achieve if these factors are lacking. So it is vital to support these factors to achieve the most fruitful results and make mindful meditation possible.

The idea of the practice is to objectively measure the impact of meditation on the stillness of your mind and compare this to the previous experience. This will add a sense of challenge and consequence to your practice of mindfulness and will generate more interest in the practice. 

Mindful Relationships through Meditation 

Mindfulness is a practice that can take us through bad times. The practise of mindful meditation can help us to successfully paddle through such storms. This also helps us to be a stronger version of yourself once this storm has passed. The mental strength generated through mindful meditation can help us stay resilient to pain and trauma.

Of course, mindfulness is not the only tool to get you through a difficult experience. If you are going through an emotional turmoil, then surround yourself with positive people. This can help you tremendously in getting past a difficult phase. Many people have gotten over their addictions and anxiety issues after discovering mindfulness. The support of positive people definitely helps this practice.

It is okay to seek out such people outside our homes and circle. Creating a group of mindful people helps immensely as it increases our consciousness towards being mindful. This will immensely affect our happiness, resilience and success.