The Importance of Practice
Earlier this session, you wrote down the main reasons you said you were interested in Mindful Mood Balance. Please look back at that list now.
This program can help to change these patterns. For many people, these patterns have been around for a long time and may have become habits. Changing habits requires learning new skills. This takes time and effort. Whether you will benefit from this program depends in large part on your willingness to do home practice between your Mindful Mood Balance sessions. The home practice will take about 45 minutes a day, 6 days of the week for 8 weeks.
Adopting a Wait & See Attitude
The approach taken to developing the skills in this program resembles gardening—you prepare the earth, plant the seeds, water and then wait for the results. It’s not a quick fix and doesn’t promise instant results. This is because changing well-established habits of mind requires a lot of time and effort. You may recognize this experience if you’ve ever taken antidepressants, where often there is little benefit until you have been taking them for some time.
We ask only that you bring an attitude of patience and persistence to what will be asked of you, working at it, and accepting the possibility that the fruits of your efforts may not show up right away.
The Power of Practice
Training in awareness can help reduce depressive symptoms and prevent future depression.
Paying attention in this way will allow you to get in touch with aspects of life that otherwise may just slide by you, both the enjoyable and the difficult. Missing out on the enjoyable means that life isn’t as rich as it might be. Not being aware of the difficult means that depression can creep up on you when your mind’s elsewhere.
The wandering mind can be particularly dangerous when you feel blue because automatic thoughts and memories can easily pull you back into depression. That is why it is helpful to know what is going on in your stream of thoughts and to be able to disengage from them intentionally. Home practice is one of the ways to sharpen these skills in your life.