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Academic literacies Internships Skills Team

Can Mindfulness Help Your Studies?

Joanna Rawnsley

A student reading a book, looking clearly stressed. Perhaps mindfulness can help them?
Image from: Pixabay: mindfulness

Stella Cottrell thinks so. Cottrell is the author of Mindfulness for Students (2018) which isn’t only a book explaining what mindfulness is and how it can be useful, but it’s also full of exercises which can help you learn how to be mindful.

What do you think of when you hear the term “being mindful”?

You may scoff thinking it’s some mumbo jumbo about meditation and spiritual healing. You wouldn’t be wrong, it is to do with meditation, but there is a reason mindfulness has been practiced throughout the world for at least 2500 years. It helps build your awareness and makes you more focussed. It can teach you techniques to help you in stressful situations and prevent you from becoming overwhelmed. These techniques can also help with productivity, therefore can be very helpful for students.

What is Mindfulness?

A student meditating. Meditation is a fantastic way to stay in the moment, keep perspective and practice mindfulness. The student is sat on a pier overlooking a lake - the scene is clearly relaxing.
Image from: Pixabay: mindfulness

Cottrell simplifies it by not simply telling you but showing you by having you do an exercise – something we will do at the end of this post. For now, I’ll tell you this, to experience mindfulness first you must stop. Stop moving, stop doing and simply be in the moment. Take time out of your day, even if it’s five minutes to do nothing but be aware of your surroundings, your mind and body.  

To become mindful, you are asked to simply observe, but this doesn’t mean you must stop thinking. As we know this is almost impossible, and a misconception of mindfulness and meditation. You don’t need to stop thinking but become aware of your thoughts. For example, if you were sat listening to your surroundings and thoughts emerged, you acknowledge them and then refocus on your listening.

As I previously said, the techniques you learn as you become more mindful not only help with your mental wellbeing, but also your productivity. You learn how to refocus your attention, not become as easily distracted and enjoy your studies. Yes, enjoy them.

How can mindfulness help with studying?

A student is biting their pencil while working on a computer. They are clearly stressed with their studies.
Image from: Pixabay: Study

Firstly, you want to start every day mindfully. Don’t worry this is incredibly simple and you will no doubt forget to do it sometimes to begin with but creating a new habit can take time. Be persistent and don’t get annoyed with yourself for forgetting. Just tell yourself you’ll remember next time and be proud of yourself for doing so.

At the beginning of each day, you want to do a meditation or mindfulness exercise, like sitting concentrating on your breathing or listening to your surroundings for 5-10 minutes. If you are unable to do this, you can bring the exercise to an activity such as brushing your teeth or even as you travel to campus. When doing this exercise set the tone of the day, what will you be doing and what do you want to get out of your day. By doing this first thing you are more likely to continue having this mindset throughout the day.

Speaking of the structure of your day, try and set time aside for meditation and/or mindfulness exercises. Again, this could be simply doing a 5-minute breathing exercise to help your concentration. It is also advised to do these before lectures and study sessions. If you’re self-conscious about doing this in public, you could go to the chapel in Larkin or find a quiet place away from crowded areas.

When it comes to your study time you can also learn how to have a mindfulness approach to this time.

As first years we are, usually, eager to get started and excited about our studies, but as we realise how tough our studies can be at times our relationship with them may change and become more negative. We want to change our relationship with studying and how we think – yes this is still about being mindful. Being mindful, as I’ve said previously is becoming more aware of our thoughts and feelings and asking ourselves why we may feel negatively at times. Change how you communicate about studying.

Do you have an essay coming up that you’d rather not write? Before you start your assignment why not sit for a moment and think about how this could be enjoyable. Is the topic something you’re interested in, have you enjoyed learning about specific things related to it, what are they? Does this essay relate to something you want to do in future? Try not to divert from your assignment by daydreaming about the future though, set a 5-minute timer and allow yourself this space to feel positive about the assignment. You’ll find yourself enjoying your study time a lot more if you go into it positively.

Continue learning how to be mindful

I have only touched the surface of mindfulness in this post, but I hope you have found something useful here. If you wish to learn more about how mindfulness can help your studies, I highly recommend Stella Cottrell’s book, Mindfulness for Students. It is full of exercises you can do to help with studying.

A mindful exercise

Set a timer for 5-minutes.

Close your eyes and smile gently to loosen your face muscles, then relax your face.

Bring your awareness to any sounds you hear, don’t describe them just notice them.

If you notice your mind beginning to wander, try not to get irritated or annoyed, simply bring your awareness back to what you hear.

When the timer goes off, open your eyes, stand up and stretch.

Now you can go about the rest of your day. Have a good one and remember to stay hydrated.  

Joanna has also written an excellent post on Looking After Your Well-being Whilst at University which links well to this topic.

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Digital literacies Skills Team TechItUpTuesday

Stress and anxiety – our digital wellbeing

#TechItUpTuesday

Halloween Edition

As it’s approaching Halloween I thought it appropriate to theme this week’s post on digital wellbeing and some of the fears that may be caused by the digital world. Namely stress and anxiety which may sometimes feel as if it is coming out of nowhere (a bit like a flying pumpkin), but is likely in part due to our developments in the digital world. Whilst technology has many major benefits there are some downsides when it comes to our mental wellbeing.

Distraction

Problem

One of the biggest impacts on our digital wellbeing is our phone usage the persistent messages and notifications mean that we are constantly distracted by continuously checking our phones. A UK study found that we unlock our phones roughly 85 times a day, and use them for about five hours each day. This means we are unable to focus our attention and consolidate things into our memory, causing us to feel more and more ‘goldfish-like, which can be quite distressing in itself. 

Solution

So how can we avoid this? The most obvious choice is to turn off your phone although this can be difficult for some people and you may need to keep your phone on if you have responsibility for other people. So if you can’t turn off your phone there are ways you can minimize these distractions. You can temporarily hide your notifications by turning on do not disturb in the iPhone Control Centre or on an Android device by going to Digital Wellbeing and parental controls turning on Focus mode. Here are some instructions for how to do this on those devices. There will be similar instructions available online for other devices.

Not enought sleep

Problem

Another important aspect of our digital wellbeing is our usage of phones at bedtime. You get into bed intending to go to sleep, but you just want to check your phone to find out something unimportant like tomorrow’s weather or scroll through your feed. Then an hour later, there you are watching a totally random video about monkeys. Looking at our phones when we should be sleeping over-stimulates our brains, making it harder just to switch off, and exposes us to blue light from the screen. Research suggests that blue screen exposure can reduce melatonin production, which interrupts our circadian rhythm (sleep-waking cycles), making it harder for us to fall, and stay, asleep. Unfortunately, poor sleep tends to mean poorer resilience and higher levels of anxiety and stress.

Wide Awake Insomnia GIF by MOODMAN - Find & Share on GIPHY

Solution

The best solution as before is to turn your phone off and maybe do something else before bed like reading a book. However, if you really need to keep it on you can adjust your phone’s lighting using Bedtime Mode (Android) or as previously mentioned Do Not Disturb (iPhone).

Work/Life balance

Problem

While in the past there was often a clear boundary between where work-life ended, and home life began… this area is now very much grey. This may not be as much of a problem when you are a student but is something you must be aware of when entering the working world. Most of you will have your work emails on your phones meaning you are constantly available and contactable. This makes it very difficult for us to ever truly disengage from work and relax.

Fire Working GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Solution

  • Appoint a gatekeeper. Don’t have the willpower to self-regulate? Appoint a loved one as a technology gatekeeper. If you’re really struggling
  • Multiple profiles and accounts
  • Manage Your device
  • This is a more expensive option, you could consider getting two separate devices. One device is dedicated to work the other for your free time.

F.O.M.O

Problem

Fear Of Missing Out is essentially a type of social anxiety that arises from the fear that you are missing out on something; maybe an event, work or social opportunity, a communication, a connection, or just something that you might like be a part of.  So we want to be connected ‘just in case’. Many people probably have considered leaving social media but the majority decide not to, because of FOMO.  Ironically, the more connected we are, the more likely we are to experience FOMO because it is often caused by the posts we see on social media sites like Facebook. This leads us to believe our friends and acquaintances are having exciting and/or interesting experiences in our absence.

Homer Simpson Fear Of Missing Out GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Solution

  • Relish feeling out of the loop. Great things will sometimes happen when you aren’t out there and sometimes you’re not invited. But you are likely missing out on way more boring things than exciting. You just have to admit that sometimes you will miss out like everyone else and sometimes it’s nice just to have moments to yourself
  • Take a break from social media. Try staying offline for a day, a week, or maybe even a month and it will likely put in perspective what is really important. You will realize life is much the same only you are less worried about what other people are doing. If you wanted you could even go as far deleting you social media apps but that’s up to you.
  • Use software to prevent FOMO. There are Apps available such as Forest for iOS, Space for Android, RescueTime for Windows, or SelfControl for Mac. All these generate reports to help you see just how much time they spend online and set time limits. Most phones already have inbuilt features for checking screen time as you can see.

Social comparison

Problem

We can’t help but compare ourselves to others, and social comparison theory suggests that we use these comparisons to evaluate how we think and feel about ourselves. Social Media, encourages this, as it is full of information that can be used to rank our apparent social success (e.g. friends, likes, shares, followers).

These metrics are problematic because if we don’t get enough likes on something we post, or if someone has more likes or friends than us, it can make us feel inferior especially if one day you get a load of likes then the next barely any. It’s almost like you think you are getting a treat with all those likes but in fact, it’s a trick. Furthermore, the disparity between real life and what people post on social media means that we often see an extremely edited ‘highlight reel’ of people’s lives. This links back to FOMO with this false impression that others lead a more interesting life than yours but in reality, it has its ups and downs as it does for everyone.

Trick Or Treat Halloween GIF by Dunkin’ - Find & Share on GIPHY

Solution

We previously talked about limiting time spent online but there are more ways to prevent social comparison. Here are some boundaries you can put in place to protect yourself:

  • Unfollow any accounts that make you feel bad about yourself.
  • Set a timer that lets you scroll for 30 minutes. When time is up, step away.
  • Turn off your phone when you’re with your family and friends.
  • Don’t feel obligated to reply to every comment and message
  • When you feel a need to check social media, ask yourself why. Are you bored, uncomfortable or seeking affirmation?

I hope this has provided some useful information about your digital wellbeing and given you some helpful solutions to many of these issues. if you have time why not watch this video which explains many of the ways you can optimise your phone for your digital wellbeing.