Not long ago, a story about basketball star Charles Barkley and his friendship with a cat litter scientist in Iowa went viral. Barkley met the late Lin Wang in the bar of a Sacramento hotel where he was giving a speech. The two struck up a conversation that lasted hours. Then, they had dinner together and talked for hours more. Over the years, the friendship deepened as Barkley and Lin spent more and more time hanging out together. When Barkley’s mother died, Lin flew to the funeral. And when Lin died last year, Barkley gave a eulogy.

It’s certainly surprising that a famous basketball star would befriend someone so far out of the limelight as Lin. And that’s undoubtedly one of the reasons why their odd-duck union captivated millions. But more than that, Barkley and Lin’s story is about a heartfelt friendship – built on time spent talking face-to-face and doing things together.

In the age of social media, full of well connected, but not necessarily intimate virtual friendships, Barkley and Lin’s relationship seems special if not rare.

It’s difficult to tease out the cause and effect social media has on our “real” friendships. Loneliness, though, has become an epidemic in the digital age. And how technology and social media change how we relate to each other isn’t always for the better. (See previous blogs on Loneliness and FOMO below.)

A UCLA study, for example, showed that children’s social skills might be declining as they spend more time on devices and less time interacting with others face-to-face. The study showed that these effects apparently subside if the kids lay off their devices for five days or more.

But another review of 72 studies by University of Michigan researchers found that empathy among college students has decreased 40% over the past 30 years, with the most dramatic changes occurring in the past decade when cell phones became omnipresent. Cell phones have become a ubiquitous presence in our in person get-togethers. Nearly 90% of cell phone owners say they use their devices during social gatherings, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s despite the fact that most of us say using cell phones when we’re together hurts the quality of our relationships.

“Our little devices are so psychologically powerful that they don’t just change what we do, they change who we are,” says Sherry Turkle, a sociologist and MIT professor, in her TED talk:  “Alone, but Connected.”

Turkle has spent 30 years studying how technology is transforming our relationships. More recently, she’s noted the worrisome trend of how technology is making us forget what’s important in life – namely intimate conversations.

“Face-to-face conversation is one of the most humanizing and human things we do,” Turkle says.

Spending time digitally talking to others is quick, convenient and seemingly personal. Most of us agree, however, that it’s a poor substitute for a heart-to-heart with a friend over a cup of coffee or on a long walk.

One of the subtler affects of social media’s relational influence might be that it distorts our expectations of how long it takes for “real” friendships to evolve. Social media instantly connects us to others, but lasting, reliable friendships take time to develop. Close friendships, like a saplings, need nurturing.

Research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships shows that you need to spend 50 hours with someone to create a casual friendship; 90 hours with someone to become “real” friends and 200 hours to become close friends.

Metrics like that will likely appeal to digital natives. But it might be more meaningful to be mindful of how much time you spend on social media connecting with digital BFFs versus how much time you spend doing things face-to-face with others. Apparently, we could all stand to socialize a bit more. Jeffrey Hall, the University of Kansas professor behind the friendship research, says we spend a paltry 41 minutes a day socializing.

All of it’s worth an experiment: Try spending more time in the real world doing real things with real friends and notice how you feel. However you feel in the moment, it’s likely that you won’t regret cultivating friendships that have the potential for more intimacy than Instagram. After all, a digital BFF is a poor substitute for a face-to-face friend when you need a shoulder to cry on or a warm embrace.

This blog originally appeared on eMindful.com

On My Mind

Famed relational therapist Esther Perel once asked an audience attending one of her talks: “Is the last thing you do before you go to bed to stroke your phone?”

As the audience laughed, she asked two other questions that silenced the crowd: “Is the first thing you do in the morning to stroke your phone? And are you doing this when someone is lying in bed next to you?”

 “That’s F…cked up,” Perel said pointedly.  “That has to change. This is not O.K.”

Borrowing a term from psychologist Pauline Boss, Perel explained that devoting our attention to our iPhone in the presence of another creates “ambiguous loss” or the sense that someone is physically there, but psychologically unavailable. The term once described relationships with Alzheimer’s patients. Now, it describes all of us when we become absorbed in our cell phones while in the presence of loved ones, friends or even acquaintances.

Perel says the unspoken message of this behavior is that you don’t matter. And I can’t think of anything good that happens when you telegraph to someone else that they don’t matter.

To hear more of Perel’s thoughts about cultivating relational intelligence, listen to her talk at Summit LA18 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFwWvr1YUjA

The other day I walked across the street and knocked on the door of a neighbor to ask her over for a friendly game of ping-pong. Her partner had died recently after a long battle with cancer and I thought she might like the company. It was a small act of kindness and community.

It also was something that, embarrassingly, I had to prod myself to do. It’s so easy these days to keep to ourselves – busy with work and family and continually entertained by our devices. So much so, that we often forget we live in neighborhoods amongst others. None of us are the better for it.

For decades, sociologists have been concerned about the decline of community and, more recently, the epidemic of loneliness in the U.S. (See previous blog below.)

Ask yourself: Do you go to PTA meetings or neighborhood block parties? Are you part of a civic organization or maybe a book club? Do you vote?

If you answered “no” to any of those questions you’re like many of us who no longer have the inclination to be part of our communities. And that’s a problem.                                                

Years ago, Harvard University Professor Robert Putnam wrote a now classic book called “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Communities.” In it Putnam chronicled waning participation in organizations such as Elks Lodges, churches and bowling leagues as well as diminishing voter turnout. The decline began trending downward after World War II and has continued as we’ve become a more mobile and, perhaps, a more personally distant culture.

Today, nearly a third of people say they don’t interact with their neighbors, down from fewer than a quarter four decades ago. Meanwhile, societal distrust and divisiveness have increased.  Two years ago, the U.S. Congress held hearings on the state of so-called “social capital” or the health of relationships within American communities to launch research into the causes of the country’s fraying social fabric. Shrinking communities not only have profound effects on individuals, but they also have ramifications for how well government and society function.

Above all else, though, lack of community matters because as human beings we desperately need each other to be mentally, physically and emotionally healthy.

Attending a meeting to find out what’s happening in your neighborhood, volunteering at your local school or even taking a mindfulness class fosters social connection that unifies us and forms the foundation of our well-being.

Researchers from Brigham Young University, for example, analyzed 150 studies that tracked social support and health outcomes among 300,000 people. After combing through the data, they concluded that people with strong social ties had a 50% greater chance of survival than those who lacked vibrant social networks. 

Having robust social connections is as beneficial for long-term survival as quitting a 15-cigarette a day smoking habit, researchers concluded.

Our desire to belong is, in fact, primal. There’s a reason why we evolved in tight-knit tribal communities. They helped us survive and propagate. They also brought us joy. And, yet, today the need for belonging often gets short shrift as we battle long commutes, work hard and spend more of our leisure time alone and online. 

One of the striking things I’ve witnessed teaching mindfulness over the years is the sense of community that forms in my classes. Even in silence, there is connection and belonging. Discussions after periods of practice create bonds among group members that lead to personal insights and friendship. At the end of a class series, a common lament from students is how much they’ll miss being a part of the group. 

Mindfulness is fairly integral to creating community – not just in a class setting, but in daily life, too. We can use the awareness we develop through mindfulness practice, for example, to notice just how robust our social connections are and whether or not they need to be strengthened. Mindfulness also invites us to drop distractions and bring our full attention to those we do connect with, deepening the ties that bind us together and creating a stronger web of social support.

While creating community takes a bit of time and intention, it might be easier to do than you think. You could ask a neighbor to go for a walk. You could throw a pot luck or organize a book club. You could go to a PTA meeting and give yourself permission to leave early if you’re too tired after a long day at work. By doing so, you might find a few new friends to share in your life. More than that, you might realize that you’re not alone and that you belong. 

On My Mind

How do you define success? The answer to that question is as unique and diverse as every individual living on the planet is. Every so often, though, it’s worth bringing some mindfulness to your definition of success. How much of your answer is fully yours? How much is influenced by your family, your peers, your culture? To prompt a reflection, read the thought-provoking quote below from environmentalist and Oberlin College professor David Orr. 

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

Highly Entertaining

We’re all connected as the saying goes. And, yet, it’s often difficult to get our minds around such a universal truth until we see it demonstrated. Click on the link below to watch a enlightening video entitled: “How Wolves Heal Rivers.” Next time, when you doubt that we’re all part of each other’s existence imagine you hear a wolf howling.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

We live in contradictory times. Thanks to technology we’ve never been more socially connected. And, yet, despite our constant digital contact, loneliness is an epidemic.

Plenty of us feel isolated and blue at times. In small doses loneliness, like hunger, serves as an evolutionary prompt to fulfill a need – in this case for social connection. But there’s more and more evidence that loneliness is becoming less of a fleeting phase that motivates us to go out to dinner with a friend and more of a chronic state that poses serious health risks.

Nearly half of Americans say they sometimes or always feel left out, according to a survey of 20,000 people last year from healthcare provider Cigna. Even more troubling, is that more than half of people surveyed said that no one knows them well. One in four said they feel isolated. It’s not just happening in the U.S. After launching a governmental program last year to combat the phenomena and appointing a rather forlornly named Minister for Loneliness, the U.K.’s former Prime Minister Theresa May said that loneliness is the greatest health challenge of our time.

To be clear, loneliness isn’t about being alone. Just ask any introvert who loves to while away the hours reading a good book or going for a hike alone. Sometimes solitude is a salve for extroverts, too.

In contrast, loneliness descends when we feel rejected, empty and alienated from others. All of which, can happen in the midst of crowded subway or at a party. Loneliness is a complex state of mind that can lead to debilitating emotions such as depression and health issues such as an increased risk for heart attacks, strokes and cancer. According to a study by Brigham Young University, loneliness is on par with obesity and smoking in shortening life expectancy.

Why are we feeling so lonesome?

There’s no single answer. More of us are getting married later. More of us work alone as part of the “gig” economy. Many organizations that once fostered meaningful bonds between us – churches, civic groups, bowling leagues- are no longer as prominent in our lives. And while social media connects us, it also disconnects us. How many times have you felt more isolated rather than less as you’ve scrolled on social media through photos of friends that you’re not with at events you’re not attending?

It seems meeting face-to-face with others would be fix for loneliness. Maybe joining a bowling league, going back to church or starting up conversations with the grocery store clerk are good ideas. Certainly, all of that helps.

But experts say the solution to loneliness is more layered than that. Research shows, for example, that the brains of chronically lonely people have entered into self-preservation mode and are more alert to perceived threats. Lonely people are more sensitive, for example, to negative social outcomes. As a result, social situations can sometimes seem threatening.

The late University of Chicago psychologist and loneliness expert John Cacioppo suggested that one way of helping lonely people is to change their perceptions of others and to enter into reciprocal relationships by volunteering, for example. Being kind to others also helps with loneliness, he said.

The suggestion that changing our perceptions and being kind to others could relieve loneliness led me to wonder whether the mindfulness practice of loving-kindness could alleviate our collective sense of isolation. There’s only a smattering of research that suggests loving kindness practice enhances social connection and none that I know of that relates specifically to loneliness.

But maybe we don’t need reams of data to prove an experiential point. The purpose of loving-kindness practice, which entails visualizing people in your mind’s eye and silently sending them phrases of goodwill, is designed to make us feel more connected. Research shows seven weeks of loving kindness practice increases positive emotions such as hope, love, joy, interest and awe while reducing negative emotions. Experiencing more positive emotions protects us against despair if not against loneliness.

The wonderful thing about mindfulness is that you don’t have to take anyone’s word for it. Experiment with loving kindness on your own. Give it some time and notice how the practice makes you feel. Do you feel more connected? Less lonely? Here are some basic instructions for a simple loving kindness practice that you can do as a stand-alone exercise or before or at the end of a mindfulness meditation. It’s not important you feel anything as you practice. The intention is to plant the seeds of kindness and nurture them through the practice so that they can grow in your daily life and, maybe, make you feel less lonely.

• Find a comfortable chair to sit in. Take a few slow, purposeful breaths. As your breath settles, feel the rising and falling of your breathing in your chest and connect to your heart.
• Call to mind an image of someone you love. It’s helpful if your relationship with this person or being is uncomplicated and easy. You can even call to mind a beloved pet. Silently recite the phrases: “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.”
• Now, call to mind an image of yourself and silently recite these phrases: “May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease.” As you say the phrases imagine yourself receiving them.
• Next, call to mind someone you don’t know well but might see in the course of your day – a store clerk or a neighbor. Connect again with the sensations of your breathing in your chest and silently extend the phrases to them: “May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.”

This blog originally appeared on eMindful.com

On My Mind

The documentary the Biggest Little Farm (now available on DVD and streaming) is worth watching for multiple reasons – for the eyeful of bucolic scenery, for the harkening back to a simpler way of life and for the meaningful lessons on ecology and sustainability. The film’s also worth watching for the subtle life lessons it offers. All of which remind me of the value of practicing mindfulness and, in particular, the value of the attentional stance of observation.

Often, for example, when we’re confronted with a problem we forget to simply observe and allow our understanding of the obstacle to unfold. Instead, we go into reactionary solution mode. Sometimes this yields results. Other times it makes the problem worse.

You can watch the trailer to the film here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8. And if you’re really curious, you can visit Apricot Lane Farms in Moorpark, Ca. https://www.apricotlanefarms.com/

Upcoming Classes

My next six-week series of UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Practices class: Mindfulness in Daily Life begins in Santa Monica begins tomorrow, Sept. 12th at 7 pm. There few spaces open for those of you who are spontaneous. If not, make a mental note that I’ll be teaching mindfulness again in Santa Monica in January.

You can learn more about the class register on my website under the classes tab. Registration for January will open up in November. https://kellybarron.com/classes/

Managing Transitions Mindfully

Some months ago, I ran into a neighbor and we stopped to chat. I asked about her daughter who would soon be off to college, noting what an exciting time it must be for her. Then, moments later, my dear neighbor began to cry. Through unexpected tears, she told me just how much she was going to miss her beloved daughter.

The truth of change is never more forceful than during life’s inevitable transitions. Whether they’re welcome or not, transitions hurl us into an uncertain future often while we’re still longing for the security of the past.

Some of life’s major changes happen with metronomic predictability. We leave for college. Land our first job. Maybe we get married and then have children. Of course, life can be wildly unpredictable and some changes are as unwanted as food poisoning. We lose our job, a loved one dies or we become ill. Transitions also can arrive like the tide, slowly creeping up on us until one day we realize that our career or marriage no longer fulfills us. We need to make a bold change.

All of it brings uncertainty that’s roiling with a gamut of uncomfortable feelings, thoughts and physical sensations. Even if a change is expected and welcome, we can still be beset with anxiety, self-doubt and fear.

I experienced all of these things – as have plenty of other women I’m assume- when navigating pregnancy, birth and eventual motherhood. My daughter is now 16. But I remember the transition to motherhood as if…as they say…it was yesterday.

That’s the thing about transitions. They’re landmarks in our lives and as such we deserve to be present for them, to experience them fully and to become wiser for having weathered them.

Being mindful in the midst of transitions can help us move through them with more clarity, insight and even kindness. While we think of mindfulness as a practice, it’s also a worldview replete with attitudes that can help us shoulder life’s vicissitudes. One hallmark of mindfulness that’s particularly helpful during the uncertainty of change is curiosity.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert once described curiosity as a gentle, forgiving friend who taps you on the shoulder lightly and invites you to turn your head a quarter of an inch to look at something more closely.

Why would we want to look more closely at one of life’s thorny transitions?

Because while we can’t make queasy feelings about change go away, we can work with them – not only so that they become less painful, but also so that we can learn and grow from them. Rather than become subsumed or immobilized by the fear of change, curiosity encourages us to stay open to the feelings, thoughts and sensations that arise and allow understanding to unfold.

Through the lens of curiosity anxiety and fear become pliable. We can, for example, become curious about how it feels in our body when fear arises. We can notice the storylines and images that accompany it. We can observe how the phenomena of fear moves through us and – like everything thing else in life – eventually changes.

None of this will make the discomfort of change go away. Mindfulness is not a magic wand. But if we bring our full, loving attention to the moments our discomfort arises, we’ll discover that our fear, or whatever else we might be feeling, isn’t monolithic. Depending upon the circumstances, we might begin to think that something good can come from an unwanted change. By relying on the friend of curiosity, we might also learn where the next stone on the path of change will lead us.

Lately, I find myself thinking self-referentially about my neighbor. I wonder how I’ll feel when the predictable transition of my own daughter leaving home for college arrives. I don’t know if my Mom felt depressed or gleeful when my sister and I left the house for good. If she were still alive, I would ask her how she felt and how she managed that traverse. I do know that unburdened by the responsibility of hands-on parenting, she began a career as an art teacher and that her love of art sustained her well into her 80s.

That’s another thing about transitions. While they force us to let go of the familiar, they often compel us to create something entirely and, hopefully, wonderfully new.

This blog post originally appeared on eMindful.com

On My Mind

I highly recommend keeping a copy of Mary Oliver’s book Devotions, a collection of the late poet’s work, on your bedside table. Oliver, one of the most well-known and adored poets in America, never fails to transport me from the routine of my day. Her accessibility as well as her ability to find the sacred in nature never made Oliver a darling of critics. But throughout her work, she reminds us of something essential: The importance of attention. Often, it’s when reading one of Oliver’s poems that I’m reminded of how much I miss when I don’t pay attention to nature’s subtle gifts or even the gift of my own life. Oliver wrote: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

Highly Entertaining

In the age of Amazon Prime – where everything from dried figs to Converse sneakers – can be instantly delivered to your doorstep – it’s easy to forget that some things take time, attention and enormous skill to create. Click on the link below to watch a video on how master metalsmith Seth Gould spent two years making an intricate lockbox. See if you can borrow some of Gould’s attention to detail the next time you create something – whether it’s a tossed salad, a piece of art or a hand-written letter. https://uncrate.com/video/forged-and-filed/

Upcoming Classes

My next UCLA MAPs I Mindful Awareness Practices class begins Thursday, Sept. 12th from 7 to 9 p.m. in Santa Monica. The six-week series, which ends Oct. 17th, is a great way to begin a mindfulness practice or renew one after a long, lazy summer. I’d love to see you there!

For more information and to register go to: https://kellybarron.com/classes/

To read previous newsletters go to: https://kellybarron.com/blog/

https://www.kellybarron.com/753-2/

 

Whenever I find my mind wandering and unfavorably comparing what I’m doing, or worse my entire life, to someone else’s a quote from Teddy Roosevelt floats into my head.

I know. It’s odd to rely on the 26^th president of the United States for comfort. But Teddy wisely reminds me that:

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Granted, Teddy didn’t have to contend with Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat – to name just a few of the social media giants that prompt Fear of Missing Out or FOMO. He wasn’t lured to look at selfies of friends living it up on wild boar hunts in Borneo while he attended to the drudgery of running the nation. But he instinctively knew that losing our focus and fearing what we think we might be missing out on was a trap that could ensnare us in self-loathing, lament and loneliness.

Nowadays, FOMO is an undeniably real phenomenon fostered by social media use and capitalized upon by marketers to sell us everything from Uber rides to watches.

As many as 70 percent of adult Millenials fear missing out on something marvelous happening somewhere they’re not, according to a study from JWT Intelligence Communications. And the rest of us who are either younger and older than Millenials have bouts of FOMO, too.

In case you’re one of the outliers who has never experienced it, FOMO is that niggling anxiety that arises when you feel that something exciting or interesting is happening elsewhere while you’re at home paying bills. It’s that sour feeling in your stomach when you’re on Facebook and see a picture of your friends whooping it up at the bottom of the ski run in Mammoth, Ca. It’s the envy you feel when a colleague texts you a picture of herself on a white sand beach in Bermuda with the tag line: “Wish you were here!”

The reality is that we often serve ourselves a steady diet of FOMO when we mindlessly swipe, click and binge on our devices. American adults spend as much as 11 hours a day on computers, tablets and smart phones, according to the market research group Nielson. The average amount of time spent daily on social media nets out to about two hours, according to Stastista, another market research firm. Much of the time we’re unaware of the FOMO fallout from staring at so many screens. If you feel mildly disgusted after a social media session- a bit as if you’ve eaten an entire bag of sour gummies – blame FOMO.

But don’t be too hard on yourself. Social media giants notoriously designed their platforms to hook into our brain’s reward center and keep us clicking away. Many tech companies are now trying to help us break our bad device habits. Apple, for example, offers a screen time feature that lets you know just how much time you spend on various apps, websites etc.

That’s helpful. But there’s a decidedly less high-tech way to avoid FOMO and that’s by practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment, on purpose, without judgment. And in the face of FOMO, it’s a powerful ally. We can use mindfulness to purposefully engage in social media, to notice how it makes us feel and to appreciate everything that’s already in our lives – even the small moments that aren’t Instagram worthy.

Here are three ways to apply mindfulness to your social media use:

Think of Social Media as a Substance: Viewing social media as substance can help us engage with it more mindfully. We all know how we feel after having too many margaritas. And, for most of us, that’s reason enough to use some restraint when drinking. But we often don’t consider using the same sort of restraint while using social media. It might serve us well to do so. Studies show that when we mindlessly engage with social media it can heighten our anxiety and depress us. Being deliberate about our social media use can be the difference between feeling digitally hungover or happily entertained and even more deeply connected to each other.

Pay Attention to Your Body: There’s an expression that says the body doesn’t lie. If we tune in to how we physically feel in any given moment, we often can get a sense of how we’re emotionally fairing. While using social media check in with your body. Does your body feel heavy or drained? Do you notice a sour feeling in your gut or tightness in your chest? If so, investigate the sensations a bit further and see if they’re connected to an emotional state. Do you feel anxious or a bit blue? Over time, such physical check ins can give you a somatic roadmap that quickly directs you to how you’re feeling, letting you know if it’s time to log off or if your time online has been well spent.

Savor the Small and the Good: Few of us will ever post a picture of ourselves having a nice chat with a neighbor or going for a quiet walk alone in the park. But these are often the moments that make us feel good on a daily basis. Sure, a trip to Paris would be nice. But whenever you feel FOMO creeping up on you, stop, take a breath and redirect your attention to the smallest thing you have to be grateful for in the present moment. Right now, for example, the feeling of the keyboard under my fingertips is as pleasant as playing a piano sonata. My chair is comfortable. And, my cat Peter, who is soundly sleeping at my feet, is the picture of peace. You can have Paris. Right now, this moment, in all its plainness is pretty hard to beat.

This blog post first appeared on eMindful.com

Highly Entertaining

Admit it. It’s often difficult to celebrate in the success of others. Sometimes when others succeed – even those close to us – an embarrassing amount of envy can arise within the best of us. This is why in classical mindfulness teachings there’s a practice that cultivates “sympathetic joy” or the ability to delight in the good fortune of others. Sharing in the joy of others not only benefits them, but us as well as. It turns out that our happiness expands in proportion to our ability to care and connect to those around us. One of the best examples I’ve seen recently of shared joy comes courtesy of the UCLA Women’s Gymnastics team and their celebration of teammate Katelyn Ohashi’s exuberant, perfect 10 floor routine. Watch the following video and notice feelings of shared joy arise as you, too, celebrate Ohashi’s success. Watch again and pay particular attention to how Ohashi’s teammates delight in her triumph. Next time you feel envious, think of them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ic7RNS4Dfo

Upcoming Classes

My next UCLA MapsI class begins on March 14th from 7 pm to 9 pm at Hari’s RIE Studio in Santa Monica. The six-week class series is a wonderful way to begin a mindfulness practice or renew an existing one. Many students repeat the class as it’s a supportive way to continue to deepen and explore their meditation practice. You can sign up on my website under the Classes tab or on UCLA. Bring a friend.

For more information and to register go to: https://kellybarron.com/classes/

To read previous newsletters go to: https://kellybarron.com/blog/