The foci of my ruminations for the past month have been the connections between meditation, social and emotional intelligence, and metacognition, which is the awareness of one's own thought processes. A key insight I have gained is that emotional and social intelligence are the corollaries of metacognition in the realm of the heart-- the high-level skills that enable true understanding and mastery. And meditating mindfully develops insight into each of these areas.
How does it do all that? It's quite simple. Mindfulness meditation is simply the act of becoming aware of the processes of own's one consciousness, which includes any physical, emotional, and cognitive stimulus that reaches the level of awareness. Every appearance in consciousness is perfect fodder for mindfulness, whether it be a sensation such as pain, sleepiness, sound, or visual stimuli, an emotion like anxiety or happiness, or a thought like a thing on today's to-do list or something stupid you said yesterday. And therein lies the secret to why mindfulness benefits people across so many different domains. With practice, meditators become more sensitive to their own emotional, physical, and cognitive states, which creates a question where before there had not been one: is this the state of being in which I want to remain? Or put differently: If this were my last day on earth, is this what I would want occupying my time and attention? Without this awareness, we remain lost in thought and at the mercy of our mercurial moods.
Of course, sometimes you have to do the laundry, take out the trash, and call in to that meeting. But even the mundane can be lived in with a beautiful, open state of awareness and sensitivity. I often see this in Mindy. When I call to check in with her at home, she is almost always eager to connect and open to deeper conversation. And the same holds with her when friends and family call-- if they need an empathetic ear, they know they can count on Mindy to provide it. Over the course of her life, she has cultivated this posture of empathetic openness even with fraught relationships, which I've been deeply impressed by time and again. And a little envious of-- but I'm starting to improve in that area, thanks to her influence.
Another cornerstone of emotional intelligence is the ability to delay gratification, which is something I can remember possessing even as a young child. No doubt this capacity played a large role in getting me where I am today-- it's been shown to be more strongly correlated with educational, social, and professional success than just about any other factor. This was one of the main points of the book by Daniel Goleman I just finished, Emotional Intelligence. Another, related point is that the security of attachments in the first four years of life exerts outsized influence on the rest of one's emotional life. So-- thanks, mom and dad! Knowing the kinds of people you were / are, I know you got me off to a great start, even though I don't remember it!
There were many other insights to be gleaned from that book, so check it out if you haven't read it. He gives a nice overview of the neurology of emotions, has a great chapter-length summary of John Gottman's research on healthy relationships, and gives helpful tips on how to navigate the workplace in an emotionally intelligent manner. But the highlights of the book for me were his prescriptions on training children in emotional intelligence both at home and school. If you're a parent or teacher, the last two chapters of the book are a must-read.
One of the modalities he touches upon is meditation-- specifically, its benefits upon children's ability to pay attention in school. Having just listened to Sam Harris interview him on the "Making Sense" podcast, I know that in the 24 years since he wrote the book, Goleman has seen and been impressed by the range of benefits of meditation. If he were to revise the book, no doubt meditation would assume a much more prominent role in his discussion.
So with all that said about meditation, I've finally started doing it in earnest. So far, I haven't missed a day this month. I've found Sam Harris' Waking Up app to be invaluable in training me how to think about meditation. In particular his progression into more advanced topics is incredibly well thought-out, and he has a clear, consistent, and concise way of communicating ideas that is right up my alley. Convinced yet? You should be! Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
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