Five insights about changing your mind
What happens when you slow down and start paying attention? Conversations with Northeastern experts reveal how meditation can change the way you experience everyday life.
What’s going through your mind right now?
Maybe a list of groceries — remember the cilantro, check if the watermelons are good, grab a baguette. Perhaps the song “Baby Shark” is stuck in your head after your toddler has played it on repeat. Or maybe it’s that itchy tag tickling your neck. How can you tear it off without ruining your outfit?
As Northeastern University psychology professor Laura Dudley put it, “we’re all here in this moment, but we’re not always here in our minds because our thoughts are taking us into the past.” Getting stuck playing out future scenarios is also common, she added.
Dudley calls it “time-traveling” — and not the fun kind.
Thoughts bookend the day — you wake up with to-do lists, unwritten emails and future conversations running through your mind and drift off to sleep replaying everything you should have done differently. Meanwhile, there’s a whole day going by in between — and it’s easy to miss it.
That’s where mindfulness —- the practice of paying attention to the present moment — comes in.
Meditation is one of many ways to cultivate it, typically by sitting quietly and focusing on your breath. No need to burn incense or twist into side crow or one-legged king pigeon pose unless you want to — just show up as you are.
For generations, meditation has helped people change their own minds.
Northeastern Global News talked to psychology professor Aaron Daniels, who leads meditations at the Sacred Space, a center devoted to spirituality. Dudley, who brings her experience as a behavioral scientist to the practice, also shared her thoughts.
Here are five insights on meditation from the conversations.
Changing your mind starts with slowing down. Don’t worry about liking what you find.
You have to slow down enough to notice what your mind is doing in the first place, both experts said.
That’s easier said than done in a world that rewards doing fifteen things at once. The truth is, the mind isn’t actually built for it.
Think you can multitask? Think again.
Dudley said what looks like multitasking is actually rapid toggling between tasks, without doing any all that well.
Instead, mindfulness involves focusing on one at a time.
You might be surprised by what you miss while chasing every ping and notification.
“It’s not the big things that bring us joy, it’s the little things,” Dudley said.
And it’s not just about noticing the good stuff.
Daniels talked about bringing mindfulness to trauma. Rather than “positive thinking” your way out, the idea is to recognize the past for what it was, gaining freedom through awareness.
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Your thoughts aren’t you. Neither are the labels you’re given.
Sometimes it feels like even your devices have inside knowledge into who you are. Your Apple Watch knows how many steps you log by noontime. Your email completes your thoughts with uncanny accuracy.
But how much of it is authentic?
Daniels talked about the way clutching to labels creates suffering, pulling you into a space of “I ought to be. I have to be. I need to be.”
The same can happen when you grasp your thoughts too tightly — an idea that also runs through behavioral science, which sees it as a major source of distress.
A noontime meditation practiced at the Sacred Space helps participants let go of attachment to thoughts and labels alike.
It’s all about returning to the breath, Daniels explained.
“In that moment, I’m just my breath … I’m not brand loyalty … I’m not where I come from,” he said.
A wandering mind isn’t “failure.”
Those just dipping their toes into the practice of meditation worry they failed if their mind wanders.
It helps to remember that getting to know your mind — in all its wanderlust — is part of the practice.
“We allow sensations and emotions and thoughts to bubble up and we don’t clutch onto them,” Daniels said.
Let the mind do what it does as you bring it back to the present without judgment, the experts suggested.
A “good” meditation might not feel good — and if you don’t like silence, you’re not alone.
Dudley brought up a study where people chose to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit quietly for 15 minutes, simply to fill the silence.
She said doomscrolling, the practice of consuming negative content online, is similar.
While not physically painful, it fills empty moments with virtual zaps— content that sparks anxiety, irritation or fear. Many will take them over just sitting with their thoughts.
But meditation itself doesn’t necessarily feel good either. Dudley’s first attempt left her feeling “sluggish and tired and irritated by the experience.” Sitting with that irritation and deciding to stick with the practice ultimately taught her to be less reactive.
“I started to notice I was responding thoughtfully versus having that kind of knee jerk reaction to things that might have irritated me before,” she said.
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The benefits kick in after you get off the cushion (if you’re on one).
Meditation is a long game — it takes time, the experts said.
But time is also one of the biggest barriers to starting a practice: people think they don’t have it, they said. For example, parents may see meditation as a luxury they can’t afford.
Dudley reframed the issue.
Meditation benefits aren’t just for you — they’re for everyone around you, she said, adding that when her kids ask if she’d meditated, it’s their way of saying, “You seem a little grumpy.”
The fact they notice the difference means the proof is in the pudding: it works.
