Ep 189: How to Improve Your Mindfulness Quotient During the Holidays

Dr. Deb Butler: Welcome to Thinner Peace in Menopause and Beyond. This is Dr. Deb Butler, master life and weight coach, and as always, your coach. Today is episode number 189. I want to talk to you about your MQ. You know what it is now because I talked about it on the last episode, and now I’m going to talk about it a little bit more. Get you all ready for Thanksgiving. Stay tuned. 

Hi, there! The holidays are coming. The holidays are coming. And I think Thanksgiving is right around the corner, then right after that, we got Christmas. So we’ve got a lot of teachers helping us move along in our mindfulness movement, especially around food. And I think showing a lot of gratitude for this is the best thing that we can do. And this exact episode is more on what we talked about last time. So I let you in on my secret, on the MQ, your mindfulness quotient, right? We’re learning how to measure it now. And I used a quiz last time, so that you could decide where you were, and it was just one question. I thought I was going to ask you three but I ran out of time. 

So today, I’m going to ask you. I have a couple of more trick questions with different answers to help see you where you are on your own mindfulness quotient. And remember, we know that there is an IQ, which is your intelligence quotient, which of course is the total score derived from one of several standardized tests, designed to assess how smart somebody is or their intelligence. And then I talked about last time about an EQ, and this is nothing that I made up. But this is what Daniel Goleman came up with, that is the capability of individuals to recognize their own and other people’s emotions to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately. And to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and to adjust emotions to adapt to environment, or achieve one’s goals. And I think, probably most of you who I talk to have pretty good IQs and EQs. 

 Now, what I am introducing you to, which is where we are doing the work, is on your MQ, which is the mindfulness quotient. And your mindfulness intelligence, or your mindfulness quotient, is really, like mindfulness is a non-judgmental — really, the most important word there, ‘non-judgmental’, receptive mind state, in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Very, very important. Don’t suppress them, don’t deny them. You see that they are there, but you use the word detachment, which is what was in my last podcast — last 2 podcasts ago, where I talked a lot about detachment. And you know that we can’t ignore our pain and feel compassion at the same time.  

Mindfulness requires that we not be over-identified. That’s really the best, that we not be over-identified with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negative reactivity. And reactivity is the whole thing, right? So in order not to be reactive, you become aware of an emotion that you’re seeing or feeling, but you are objective about it because you are using a different part of your brain, prefrontal cortex or what many people call, “the observer mind.” You see yourself reacting but you are not the one that is reacting. I know that sounds so woo-woo when you’re not there, but it is the key to having a higher MQ. And since the holidays are so close, I’m using some questions and some trick answers to help you decide where you are in your own MQ. 

So last time, I gave you a question about what happens to you if you’re getting ready to go to a Thanksgiving party, and I asked you a question about, do you wait until you’re really really hungry to get there to eat? Or do you really take care of your hunger before you get there, so that it is managed when you get there? So that you can make intelligent – that’s using your IQ, really — using intelligent decisions because your body is not driving you. Right? 

And so, we went through all of that, and we talked a lot about the mindfulness answers. Now, I have a new question for you with some new multiple-choice answers. I’ll go over all three answers, I’ll tell you what the right answer is and why, using mindfulness to help you see why it is so helpful. 

So here’s my new question for you today to help you find out where your MQ is. You’re at a Thanksgiving table with your family, I know a lot of you will be doing that, and if you’re not with your family, good friends, whatever. But usually your family are your best teachers for bringing up most of your stuff. You’re sitting at the table and someone, let’s say it’s your sister — I’ve got three of them, so it can certainly happen to me, says something negative to you. 

Now, here’s your first answer: would you immediately feel anger pouring through your body, and you find yourself thinking “deadly thoughts” about this person, but you act as if all is well. And what you do instead, is you pour yourself an extra glass or two, or three, or four glasses of wine for starters. That’s your first answer. 

Now here’s your second choice for an answer: Instead of alcohol, as this anger is pouring through your body, you go and you get an extra 2 desserts. And what you tell yourself, “It’s the least that you can do for yourself. You poor, poor thing, and what a horrible family you have.” That’s your second choice. 

Now here’s your third choice: You take a deep breath. That right there might give you an idea that this is the right answer, but okay. You take a deep breath, you see what you’re thinking about and what was said, and you know that nobody creates your feelings. You create your own feelings by the way that you think. And the way that you want to think and feel right now is that you are in control of what goes into your mouth, and all of the food in the world isn’t going to make you change your feelings, or your thoughts, or change the situation with that person. But you control what goes in your mouth, what goes through your head, and in the end, what comes out of your mouth in terms of what you say. 

If you chose the first answer, that you decide that you’re so pissed off you can barely stand it, and so wine seems to be the answer. How many times do we think that “It’s a party. What the heck?” And so, wine becomes part of the party. But in reality, many times, we’re drinking for other reasons than joy. So, you remember, I told you many many times before: wine is a joy food. You can enjoy it sip by sip, by sip, and stop the minute you’re through enjoying it. But when you’re on your third and your fourth glass, my guess is that the mindfulness is out the window and the mindlessness is in. And at some level, you’re thinking that the only way you can have fun is by turning your back on yourself and not feeling anything. And so, what happens is that you wake up in the morning and think, “Oh my god, what did I do to myself?” And then you start the beating up of how you lost it. Right? 

And so the only person — the only person that suffers, is you. Not the person who said something negative to you at the party. You, for the way you talked to yourself and the way you treated yourself. Does that make sense to you?  

Now, some of us don’t like alcohol. So, what I said for the second choice was, instead of the alcohol, you just go for the extra desserts. And you tell yourself that “Oh honey, this will make you feel better. You poor poor thing. They’re so mean to you and you have such a horrible family.” Right? This is what you’re thinking to yourself. And that when you think you deserve this, this is one of the most common mindless thoughts that we have. “Oh my gosh, darling. You deserve it.” And what you do is you go and you eat one dessert after another, or you just keep eating way beyond your plus two, in the hopes that somehow this person that said this negative comment to you is going to suffer. 

Now you can’t have a high MQ and think this way and do this to yourself. Right? It’s impossible. This answer is not the answer that’s going to increase your MQ, if you didn’t realize that by now.  Eating too much and drinking too much because of your own negative emotion based on you thinking somebody else caused it. Blaming it on somebody else is never the answer to your self-control. Your self-control lies within your own mind and what you say. 

And so of course, the right answer is that when you become mindful of the negative emotion, even if you don’t know what you’re thinking, but you’re very very aware that you’re feeling very strongly in anger, and if you’ve been doing this podcast for a while, you might be able to rate how strong it feels in your body. Maybe it’s as strong as a negative 8, right? So you can have a negative 8 in your emotional hunger, and it is so easy for your body and mind to confuse that with a strong desire to eat. But because you took a deep breath, and because you’ve been learning so much, you become mindful and non-judgmental about what you’re actually seeing. And you realize that no matter how negative this felt to you, all the food in the world isn’t going to change that, it’s only going to make you feel worse. And that there are many other things that you can do or think that will actually help the situation. That’s a high MQ because you see what’s going on and you objectively see what you’re feeling — you feel, you can see that that feeling is really strong. You also can mindfully see that your physical hunger is, you’re not even physically hungry. You can see all this, right? Because you’re looking, you’re mindfully looking without reactivity. And it is when you’re in this place that you can make decisions that will be based on your own kindness to yourself, which is eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full. Deciding to enjoy a joy food or not, sip by sip, or bite by bite. 

Okay. So that’s one question and one scenario around the Thanksgiving dinner. Let me give you another one with some other possible answers. And once again, they will be multiple-choice and we’ll go through them. I’ll tell you what the correct MQ answer is and why. And see if that will give you more ideas on how you can become more mindful on your own Thanksgiving.  

Alright, so here’s my question. You have contributed some wonderful dishes for your Thanksgiving dinner. You’ve been cooking all day. You’ve been eating, you’ve been tasting your food with mindfulness going between the twos. Okay? You’re just making sure that you’re not hungry and you’re very aware of your eating so you’re not fogging. And notice that when you actually go sit down and eat the Thanksgiving dinner, you’re not hungry at all. You’re at a plus 2. Here’s the question: what do you do? What do you think? 

Alright. Here is your first possible answer. You can call it a) you think to yourself, it’s a holiday, so you’re going to eat anyway and even though for seconds because it is a holiday. That’s the first answer. 

Second answer: you don’t eat because you’re not hungry. But you enjoy yourself with your family without eating and you have a couple bites of this or that, and keep yourself at a two.  So, you try a couple of different things, a bite here, a bite there. But you really don’t eat very much of anything because you’re never very hungry. And you choose one joy food that looks absolutely delicious at the end of the meal. And you enjoy it bite by bite, and you stop the minute you’re done, which is maybe a quarter piece of pumpkin pies, what it ends up to be. That’s another possible answer. 

And here is the last possible answer. You drink three glasses of wine or more than you usually do, right? So this is your answer to sit down to Thanksgiving and you’re not hungry. So what do you do? What do you think? “Oh, I think I’ll have a few glasses of wine and I’ll try to work up an appetite.” And then what you do after you’ve had your three glasses of wine to work up an appetite is you go and you eat mindlessly and you’re not even knowing if you’re hungry or not. And you eat a lot of food and you really noticed that by the time you’re done, you’re at a very high number in physical hunger. That’s your third possible answer. 

So let me tell you right now that the first answer, that you tell yourself it’s a holiday and you eat anyway even though you’re not hungry is not the correct MQ answer. Why? Because you’re thinking things that are creating an action that you don’t want to do. Because you don’t want to eat when you’re not hungry, right? But you create a feeling or an urge that somehow you deserve this because it’s a holiday. And so, it becomes a mindless way of eating. 

Now the third answer where you decide to drink wine instead and you drink a lot more than usual, like three glasses to work up an appetite. Have you ever done that? I have. I have and I have eaten mindlessly, amazingly so. So if you do that, that is also not a very high MQ choice, right? Because you’re trying to create an appetite where there is none and you’re thinking somehow that the wine is going to help you leave your body, right? So you’re not even in connection with your body at all and then you leave it even more. Not a great MQ. 

So what is the answer to a high MQ? It’s hard to believe but if you’re not hungry, you don’t eat. That doesn’t mean that you don’t enjoy yourself with your family. And it really doesn’t even mean that you don’t have a bite of this or a bite of that. You get to taste everything. But you keep yourself at a plus two and then maybe at the end of the meal, you have a joy dessert. A joy eat, remember? A joy eat is that you enjoy every single bite and you stop the minute that you’re done. And maybe that means a quarter piece of pie, or a half a piece of pie. I can’t tell you how many joy eats, or how many of my clients who have done joy eats where they don’t have to eat very much to get the full enjoyment of one of these foods. But that is how that Thanksgiving dinner would look if you went in there not being very hungry, right?  You wouldn’t be telling yourself, “Oh you have to eat it because it’s Thanksgiving,” like one of the answers. Or you have to work up an appetite by drinking too much.  

Do you see how we use food and drink for everything but hunger or enjoyment? So that is the next question for you to think about. And that you know to create a higher MQ, in other words, without reacting, is by really pausing or taking a deep breath. If you’re in with a lot of people, that pause or deep breath is really what will help you become more mindful of your next step. Right? 

I think a lot of things that we think, we just think if something runs around our head, we believe it. But you know by now, just because a thought is up there, does not mean you believe it. And every single question that I gave you today, the two questions that I gave you today and I gave you three possible answers, every single answer that I gave you are all possible thoughts that are all running around in your mind at exactly the same time. So who gets in charge of choosing that? That’s called mindfulness, choosing the thought that will actually give you the best result and that you actually believe will be helpful for you. You have to believe it. 

And that’s why we do all this practice through these podcasts is I keep teaching you that just because you think it, doesn’t mean you have to believe it. But if you don’t believe it, it won’t work. So whatever thought you choose has to be something that you believe. 

Now let me give you a little hint. When you’re in the beginning of becoming more mindful, sometimes you can’t go to a thought that sounds beautiful like “I will never eat a joy food again that I don’t enjoy.” That may not be possible for you. But what you could say is “I’m in the process of learning that.” Right? So because if you can’t do it all the time, you are in the process of learning how to do it. And when you think that, it empowers you to believe it. 

And that’s where you have to start, and this is called baby steps or turtle steps. You don’t always go to the big step first, you do the little one. You do a thought that is not the best thought, but it’s also a better thought than you have. “I’m in the process.” Or even sometimes if you say, “Maybe I can do that.” Because maybe you can, as opposed to “I cannot do that.” Maybe you can. If you’ve been working with me and we’ve been talking for a while, there’s a good chance that maybe you can. 

So think about using “maybe” or “I’m in the process” as you’re using the holidays to become more mindful. Remember, it’s all about raising your MQ, your mindfulness quotient. And you want it to be as high, or higher than your IQ and your EQ. 

Before I end, I really want to make sure that if you’re loving my podcast — I know there is a lot of you out there who are because these podcasts are being downloaded a lot, thank you very much — I want you to go to drdebbutler.com/itunes and I want you to review this with 5 stars, if you love it. 5 stars because it’s what helps other people like you being able to hear this and listen. I like doing this but I like it because I can help people. And I can only help as many people as they can hear this. And the way that they hear this is by people like you, reviewing it and spreading the good words. 

So please go to drdebbutler.com/itunes. Review this. Thank you very much and until next week, I want you to be very very kind to yourself. Bye-bye! 

Dr. Michael Butler: To get a free copy of Dr. Deb’s companion workbook, with all the tools, home works, and discussions that she uses in her podcasts, with all her private clients, please go to drdebbutler.com/change. This will make it even easier to follow along with her in future broadcasts.