Mindfulness - the wonderful Calm app

 After my wife died I attended a eight week course on ‘mindfulness for stress’ and it was life changing. I had long wanted to learn mindfulness, but always put it on the back burner as a nice to have. However, I desperately needed help, it was no longer a nice to have, so I did it. 

I learnt how to meditate, use breathing techniques, self compassion, accept my sad situation, but learnt to be grateful for all the good things I still had in my life. I soon felt that I had more control over my life, that I could deal with my emotions better and then hope and my passion for living started to come back. 

After the training, initially I used the audio recordings from the course to continue my practice and then experimented with various apps. The app I kept coming back to was Calm, which I liked a lot.

The Independent summarised it as follows:-

Open the Calm app and you’ll immediately be greeted with the gentle sound of the outdoors. It varies from person to person, but we loved this touch and found it helped us on the path to relaxation (you can change it to rolling waves, pouring rain, crackling firewood or crickets). 

We loved Calm when we tested it previously, particularly its guided Daily Calm sessions, which helped us unwind and refocus our attention. But the app has bolstered its already-great offering this year, with the addition of a new daily meditation series called the Daily Trip. Narrated by Canadian author and meditation teacher Jeff Warren, the Daily Trip offers a more adventurous – and enjoyable – practice. We found we learned more in these daily sessions than any of the others we tested. 

If you fancy something a little different, you can also pick from exclusive music tracks engineered to help you focus, relax or sleep, including remixes from stars Sam Smith and Ellie Goulding. There are also several new celebrity-narrated “sleep stories”, with calming tales from the likes of former One Direction star Harry Styles, and actors Idris Elba, Cillian Murphy and Chiké Okonkwo. We got a childish pleasure out of these and found they helped us unwind in the evenings, bringing back the nostalgia of being read a bedtime story. 

The latest version of the app includes a new gratitude check-in feature, which we used to remind ourselves of the things we’re grateful for each day. With plenty of content and at just £28.99 for a subscription that lasts the whole year (there’s no monthly offer but that equates to just under £2.50 a month), we also think this app is great value.

My partner and I regularly use the sleep stories and they work, dare I say it, like a dream! We reckon we are getting at least 2 to 3 hours more sleep each night which makes a difference to our health and energy levels. We take in the daily calm and daily trip, love Tamara and Jeff. 

The following video is a little demo of what to expect from the Calm app.

In Search of Happiness

I've long believed that happiness is the most important driver of my health and wellness. I've witnessed this in myself, my family and friends and with the many teams I have worked with in my career as a coach. Happy teams and happy people perform way better than unhappy teams, so its worth investing in developing happiness.

I think happiness is something worth striving for but first lets differentiate happiness from pleasure. 

The Seven Key Differences: 

1. Pleasure is short-lived; happiness is long-lived.
2. Pleasure is visceral; happiness is ethereal.
3. Pleasure is taking; happiness is giving.
4. Pleasure can be achieved with substances; happiness cannot be achieved with substances.
5. Pleasure is experienced alone; happiness is experienced in social groups.
6. The extremes of pleasure all lead to addiction, whether they be substances or behaviors. Yet there’s no such thing as being addicted to too much happiness.
7. Finally and most importantly, pleasure is tied to dopamine (the pleasure biochemical/neurotransmitter), and happiness is tied to serotonin (the happiness biochemical/neurotransmitter).

-- Dr. Robert Lustig

Thinking long and hard as to what makes me feel happy, I have concluded that the following don't just give me short lived pleasure, rather they give me long term happiness.

• Practice Mindfulness - I got into mindfulness when my wife died, at a time of great sadness this was a lifeline. Learning self compassion, relaxation/ stress relief techniques, resilience and learning to live my life in the moment. Learning to be grateful for all the good things I still had in my life was a building block to finding happiness again. You can't just learn mindfulness, you have to live it, which means practice - practice - practice!

• Keep Fit and Healthy - Keeping moving through walking and other sports has kept me healthy, maintained my energy levels and it releases a lot of happy hormones into my body. Eating sensibly but enjoy a variety of recipies using good tasty ingredients. 

• Create Supportive Relationships- relationships are such an important part of happiness and need to be invested in, perhaps giving more than you receive, but not questioning the inbalance. For me a priceless gift is having a special love partner, and a group of family and non-family who will care for me, love me, who will challenge me and be there for me when I most need their support. People who will give, not just take and who I will willingly provide whatever support they may need ... unconditionally. A special mention must be made for having a pet, my lovely German Shepherd Dog Thandi and the unconditional love she gives me has contributed massively to my happiness.

• Enjoy Life - being able to, regardless of my circumstance, laugh, enjoy food and drink, travel, go to cinema and theatre. Enjoy tv and stay connected with the world. I remember when we lived in Cape Town, with two kids and not a lot of meney coming in via my job as an unqualified articled clerk. Somehow we always found a little money for a date night wine and food treat or once a month (or longer) head to the Harbour Cafe for a grilled crayfish (a lot more affordable then).

• Make a Difference - maybe randon acts of kindness, helping others with their problems. Helping people to develop and grow into better people. This is such a powerful force that makes everyone involved feel much happier. As a coach and trainer I have been blessed with being given a chance to help others reach their full potential.

• Develop a Growth Mindset - I think the Mindset is a wonderful way to appropach all of life. Grow your life by developing a sense of purpose, embrace your imperfections, building on failure, but always believe no matter what challenges are put in your path, that you can bouce back and learn. 

This is my model for happiness, because when I have good friends in my life, when I’m active and fit, when I meditate each day minimising my stress level, when I look at problems and just see opportunities to grow, and when I enjoy my life to the full and in what I do I look to add value to the lives of others. When that is all in place I feel very fulfilled and very happy.

I'm sure these six drivers, perhaps with a few modifications, apply to just about everyone. What I am going to set out to do is find Apps and Tips that could help people find their happiness, because we could all do with a little bit of help from time to time.