Character Strengths, Mindfulness & Mental Health: A Live Conversation with Dr. Tayyab Rashid
Hi everyone, welcome. It’s lovely to see you today. We’re going to go ahead and give a few minutes for everyone to join. And while we’re doing that, go ahead and share where you’re calling in from, what location, and also uh go ahead and pick one character strength that you’re hoping to engage for this conversation. We’ve got a lot of responses coming in from California to Massachusetts, Brazil, Sweden, Cincinnati, that’s where Via is located. Hi, good to see you today. Calling from the same location. uh England, Germany, West Virginia, Mexico, Chicago, Estonia, people from all over. Beautiful. I think we have each continent represented. We’re still waiting for people from Antarctica, though. So, I we have to do something to recruit them better. Seen some strengths in here, too. spirituality, creativity. Love it. Hoping to focus on hope. I’m right there with you. So, um, all of that to say, let’s go ahead and get started. Uh, today’s conversation is on character strengths, mindfulness, and mental health, uh, with Dr. Ryan Neimik um who is VIA’s chief science and education officer, psychologist, researcher, and the creator of mindfulnessbased strengths practice. Hello, Ryan. Hello. Great to be here. Thanks, Sarah. And then we’ll uh also welcome Dr. Ta Rashid today. I’m super excited to have him join us. He is a licensed clinical and school psychologist, associate faculty at Harvard’s human flourishing program and president-elect at IPA, the international positive psychology association. So, welcome Taab. Thank you so much, Sarah. My pleasure. Lovely. Lovely. Okay, so uh Ryan, I’ll go ahead and pass it to you um if you want to get us started with our mindfulness practice. Thanks, Sarah. And I have to use my self-regulation immediately right now because I I just want to go in uh and start talking about Taab and how amazing he is in in so many ways. But I’m going to use my self-regulation and uh move us into the practice and I’ll say a little bit uh about Tayab in a moment. Um so, uh the practice that we’ll do here is a short practice that comes out of the MBSP program. Uh and this practice is called the character strengths breathing space. And so it’s a it’s a practice that integrates the core elements of mindfulness uh as reflected in three core character strengths that are central to the definition the official definition the scientific definition of mindfulness and to what mindfulness practice actually is. Uh the three strengths are curiosity, self-regulation and perspective. Um so you know this is the type of practice you know we’ll do it here in like um two minutes two three minutes. uh but you could expand it, make it 10 minutes, 20 minutes or an hour or you could uh uh contract it down to 10 seconds um you know to to suit your needs and how you’re applying uh this work in daily life. So I will invite the bell and just guide us through this practice here. So, I invite you with your eyes open or closed to just find a a spot to focus in on or to close your eyes and look inward. And I invite you first to just take on a posture of strength. So whether your eyes are open or closed, whether you’re sitting or standing right now, see if you can embody strength. Rather than me telling you you should sit this way or stand this way or had this posture or put your hands this way. Instead, you decide what’s going to feel strong and solid for you right now. and bringing your attention to right now and allowing your strength of curiosity to unfold. You have this strength to be curious and open to pursue novelty and new things to ask questions. So you have that in you. So allow that to unleash right now on the present moment. Being curious about your body in this moment. Your mind in this moment. Curious about where your mind is trailing off to. Curious about the sensations in your body. your feet, stomach, back. Curious about sounds flowing in your room. Curious about your best qualities, your character strengths. So in this curiosity phase of this character strengths breathing space just allowing your mind to flow in whatever direction you like but to be curious as this happens. And the second phase we’ll move into now is self-regulation. So the idea now is to gather everything up that you are noticing and just focus in on one thing, one stimulus that’s constant in your environment or in yourself and that is your breath. So this is where we take control of our attention to feel the inhale and to feel the exhale of our breath. So this is your self-regulation strength. Whether you’re high in the strength or it’s a middle strength for you or it’s a lower strength for you doesn’t matter. You can still use this strength to come back to your in, back to your out of your breathing. Your mind wanders away. You self-regulate back to your breath. Your mind wanders away a h 100 times. You bring your mind back a h 100 times. Perhaps realizing that you’re ever so gently strengthening your self-regulation by doing this. And from your self-regulation, we can expand our awareness to the third strength of perspective. This means to take the bigger picture, to feel your breathing, but to also sense your own wholeness, your whole body and mind and spirit. The bigger picture of where you’re sitting or standing. Not just in this room or this office, but wider and wider perspective. the city or town you’re in, the state, the country, and our shared planet. So breathing with this bigger picture, feeling your whole body, not just one part to be curious about, but the whole body and mind. And breathe with that wider perspective for two or three more breaths. And as you orient back to the room, knowing that you’re carrying these strengths with you. So perhaps even stronger now, carrying your curiosity, your self-regulation, and your perspective. So that practice called the character strengths breathing space is uh one of 30 or so practices that’s in the MBSP program, the mindfulness based strength practice program. Uh and Via asked me just to to say uh a little bit about that program uh uh right now. So the MBSP program is an 8-week manualized program that integrates the best science and practice of mindfulness with the best science and practice of character strengths. And I say the best because it it continuously uh updates. So rather than a static um approach to to something that is just it’s just there and it doesn’t change. It’s uh new research uh can inform uh changes in the program and new practices and so on. Um the MBSP program is uh empirically validated. Um, and that’s a pretty strong phrase to say because in our field of positive psychology, there’s not many empirically validated programs. There’s a lot of evidence-based programs and probably almost everything is evidence-based because um because that just means that you’re doing a gratitude intervention or something on positive emotions or resilience or whatever it is with some knowledge of the research with some uh being informed uh with that evidence in what you’re doing and you’re adapting it. uh but empirically validated is sort of a a next level. It means there’s a a body of evidence um that uh is has come from multiple sources and continues to support the positive outcomes of that thing. So MBSP is an empirically validated program in that way. Um, without uh spending an hour reviewing all the research on it, I’ll say that it’s now been compared head-to-head with the most popular mindfulness program on the planet, which is called MBSR, mindfulness based stress reduction. Um, uh, in five studies uh, that I’m aware of and in four of them are published. uh and MBSP has has surpassed MBSR in every one of them in terms of the different outcomes for different well-being benefits to um workplace outcomes especially such as uh better productivity and so on. Um there’s NBSP studies uh of uh uh with pregnant women to uh in the school setting to the university setting uh for uh adversity and stress uh for building positive relationships which we think is a pretty special unique finding about MBSP that it really impacts people’s relationships in a good way. Um and then helping them with their suffering with their stress. So that’s a quick little overview of of MBSP. Um I’ll give another statistic on transformative experiences that people report from MBSP um later on in the interview um with Tai. Um so with that perhaps in mind, we we are going to be talking about mindfulness and character strengths and particularly zeroing in on a topic that should be important to every single person on the planet, which is mental health. Um, and just so you know, we think about mental health not just in the stereotypical way like in many cultures in the United States, but but maybe maybe everywhere the the stereotype of when people say mental health, they immediately think of mental illness and they immediately think, oh, so you’re in mental health, so that means you help people with depression, anxiety, and trauma and so on. And yes, that’s part of it, but then we’re missing another huge part. We’re missing the mental health part. And Tayab will go into this, but we really see character strengths as mental health itself. Character strengths are mental health. Um, and so that’s important in addition to character strengths to help you with depression or isolation, uh, anxiety and so on. Okay. So that leads me to Taab, uh, who is, uh, a renowned figure in our field of positive psychology. And, uh, I’m sure you recognize his name and it’s and it’s why you’re here. And so, so thank you for being here for that. I see a lot of nods already for you, Taab. Um, and a lot of thumbs up. Um, so Taab and I actually I’ve known Taab more than I’ve known any other person in the field. Uh, actually I was thinking about this. So before I joined VIA, I think he’s maybe the only person that I had a relationship with and collaboration with before I joined VIA in ’09. So, Taab and I go back to probably 2007 uh when we were collaborating on movies and positive psychology at the movies and uh and character strengths uh and and his work with positive psychotherapy and so on. Um and uh he and I have just had such a a wonderful friendship and collegiality from me being in his home uh eating uh Pakistani food cooked by his wife who’s a scientist uh as well to he and I co-presenting to he and I writing an article that we’ll drop in the chat on strong mindfulness which was one of the first uh articles on mindfulness and strengths from I don’t know 10 12 15 years ago to our collaborations at IPA to um discussions on spirituality and meaning in life to MBSP work to VIA stuff. I mean he’s on our VIA faculty, you know, there’s 10 people on our VIA faculty that are high level prestigious practitioners. So he’s one of those people. He’s on the VIA board of directors uh which helps to guide the organization’s mission and vision. So Taab is kind of everywhere. Uh and he literally sometimes is everywhere in like working in this country or that country, but he’s absolutely everywhere with VIA. And so it’s uh it’s a great honor and a privilege for me to be able to just say what I just said and I get little bit of chills just saying it because I’m I’m excited about it. Um and it’s so great to have you here Tyab. So um rather than giving you a chance to respond uh in your humble way I because you’re always very humble about everything. Let let me just launch into a question and then you could take it however you like. But um so let’s just start with a general question of from your view. You know why do character strengths and mindfulness relate to mental health? Thank you uh Ryan. Um I will only suff suffice to say uh via has been the backbone of my therapeutic work and it’s been the therapeutic backbone of lots of things I’ve done. Um so so let’s get to the questions. So people are here. Um I have five reasons I thought about this questions because you sent me a couple of days ago. Uh the the number one reason is uh I can see that 184 people are on this call total. Uh none of us have a neutral brain. All of us are veered towards most likely towards more negativity. Uh so we don’t have neutral brains. are somehow the the evolutionary architecture has provided us prepared us to attend to negativity uh much more than positivity. Uh so we think about negative things far more than positive things. Even though the positives from studies after studies show have equal veence equal uh in many ways however you want to slice up the pie of positive and negative experience they are same in many ways. Uh but somehow our attention goes towards negativity far more because of evolutionary biases. So I think um what mindfulness does and the language of character strength does that it provides a clear unbiased because there’s a negativity bias. So it provides a clear unbiased recognition of our own strengths and let me underscore strengths of others. We are 7 plus billion people. We cannot exist if we do not uh notice, acknowledge, celebrate and work with strengths of others. So I think this is very important. The first reason is the the negativity bias. Uh the character strength provides us a way to focus on also on our positive things. Secondly, look at the um core qualities of mindfulness which is observation, self-observation, acceptance, uh non-judgmental uh and also being detached. Uh these are all essential characteristics of good mental health. You can you can put these qualities on any therapeutic map, any therapeutic scheme, CBT, uh even psychonamic psychotherapy, uh acceptance uh uh commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, these are core elements. What the most important one, the most re the the treatment that has received most empirical evidence, CBT. What does CBT does? It teaches us to be more systematic observers to understand what where we have contributed to a problem and where other has to be non-judgmental to be bit empirical socratic reasoning that is wonderfully provided by the process of mindfulness. The third one is my favorite one. As most of you uh might be uh uh aware that as a clinical psychologist I spend a bulk of my time in understanding why my client why Joe’s and Amas and Ahmeds or Lees of the world are stuck on certain things from childhood traumas to to things that happened a week ago. So their preoccupation um c is is a huge issue in mental health because they re replay that uh negative episode so many times called rumination. So I think the attachment part where where mindfulness beautifully comes in the mental health uh sphere is that how and why we are attached to certain experiences certain emotions certain situations and mindfulness allows us to sort of untangle that uh thing that attachment that preoccupation uh um Ryan was and I have taken a course with Ryan and so such a beautiful experience and I’ll talk about it later on talked about um curiosity, mindfulness and perspective. So if you think about the what character strength and mindfulness bring to mental health is that the for mental uh mindfulness fundamentally is self-regulation. It regulates our attention where we want to invest our our attention. So, so I think if I could fix two or three things in my clients, um, one is sleep, one is their activity with nature and third is their self-regulations about certain emotions. How to deal with with there are always 187 people you all of us have a difficult person difficult situations which you know derails us and so so let’s say negativity bias was the first reason core attributes of mindfulness second attachment and self-regulation the last one uh uh for me is very important and there I struggle a lot in while doing therapy with my clients and that is in the moment in the moment resilience. I can work with my clients, give them sheets, give them strategies, give them so many, you know, tips, but most important is when the actual moment comes with a difficult boss, with a with the argument with a spouse, the argument with the your teenage or with many other people, it’s the in the- moment. So fundamentally mindfulness is in the moment. It’s learning in the moment. So when you you work from the perspective framework of mind mindfulness, you equip your clients that how to land in the moment, how to deal with the problem at hand. Uh I call it uh I learned from uh my my wonderful teacher Karen Ray and Jane Gillum. Uh they call it RTR realtime resilience. And there’s no better way of learning RTR realtime resilience than mindfulness. So I will I’ll stop here. Uh Ryan, these are the five reasons I think are very important that make the association between mindfulness and mental health. Thank you. It’s such a beautiful overview and and we could stop there everybody. So, we’re done, you know, that that there’s so much wisdom in in all of those points and and people could run with any one of them uh to have an impact in their practice. Um, and ju just one of the things I was thinking of when you when you shared that um you you mentioned, let me wrote down the phrase. Um, uh, it was something something like, oh, when you said essential characteristics of mental health, I was thinking like, man, if anybody here was to do an AI, uh, Google search right now and type in what are the essential characteristics of mental health and you’d probably get this nice comprehensive list and then the character strengths would be part of that list. They might not use the exact words, but there’d be synonyms, there’d be connections, and certainly they could be pathways to each one. So perhaps that’s a blog article or two for some of the people on on the call here. But um but thank you. So another question I have for you then Taab uh is I I know that we have a large number of people right now that are on this call or listening to the recording that are practitioners. So they’re psychologists, they’re social workers, they’re counselors, they’re coaches, they’re executive coaches working with uh employees and managers and CEOs. They’re teachers helping students um maybe even parents helping children. So lots of ways we could be a practitioner in this work. Um and that’s often the most common question we get is what are the best practices? What are what are the concrete practices we can do? So I want to just pose that to you to be able to offer your wisdom to everybody of you know what what are two or three you know examples or practices for applying character strengths and mindfulness to improve mental health. Excellent question and a very simple uh rather than giving you oh I’m rather than if my audience are waiting for a uh for a discovery or for a grand sort of theme my answer is simple mindfulness and share the moment with your clients. So uh the two protocol treatments that I’ve worked um in last uh 20 years um and the latest one I published I’ll show you this one strengthbased resilience every session I it’s in the protocol and you can use it in in educational and clinical settings every session especially it’s a group session um begin with the mindfulness practice and ends with it. So it’s what it does is it provides that cushion it prepares uh I will use the the some of you might be familiar with Barbara Friedickson’s work that her uh broaden and build theory u when we cultivate positive em when we experience positive emotions our attentional channels open up and we are able to build we’re able to view reality much better. So because this is a very intense work with my clients. So it’s very important for me to prepare them. So just a five to brief mindfulness practice at the beginning of your session individual group. group is always better because in because you can you can discuss it and people can learn from each other but I have done lots even with individuals even sometimes during the sessions say let’s take a um let’s take a you know uh moment and let’s see where we are especially when uh my clients are describing something very uh emotionally taxing emotionally it’s it’s a traumatic memory So, so I, so I think it’s it’s a very simple practice. Um, but then I also think uh it’s yes, the second strategy I use is as much as I adhere to a structured mindfulness practice, I’m also opening my clients to have mindfulness as a philosophy, as an orientation towards life. So there is mindfulness going on throughout the session. For example, um take self-regulation. As I said, Ryan started our practice with self self-regulation. What is self-regulation? As a strength, self-regulation is better managing your emotions, understanding your emotions and also others. Uh and also finding out what’s the most critical behavior, what we call in therapy impulse control. So, so you discuss these ideas with selfre of self-regulation and where you going to bring the mindfulness is always elicit problems. As I said, we are always geared towards problems. So my go rather than just directly going towards strengths, Ryan, I ask my clients, what are the five things that are that are disturbing you, perturbing you, what are the things that kept you preoccupied? your negativity bias was uh lens was antennas were high and they tell and then you start discussing them from how can we we use mindfulness um I’ll I’ll give you a very quick example during co I was working with a client has has bipolar issues and absolutely very very fed up with all the restrictions and I was doing therapy from this this very room uh they just couldn’t uh understand uh uh mindfulness. So rather than giving them u a mindfulness um uh a structured exercise I asked them they loved biking that was the only thing which province and different parts of the world were allowing very few things we could do. So he was allowed to go on bike ride and he had a mobile phone. So I said whenever we discussed seven different routes um they can explore and every route I said uh what you would stop by and take a picture of something that you’re curious about something that that you like nature people anything uh and it became such a engaging activity so what basically I was we were not sitting down and you know closing our eyes and doing mindfulness But in this case we were using curiosity, gratitude, love of nature uh and also building their their self-regulation uh in in so many things. Uh the second one example I will give you and then uh I’ll we’ll you can move to the next question because I’m mindful I I would like to answer the questions. I had a client for many years um Ryan she was um we tried our best but we couldn’t find any um way to even understand what is the issue looks like there was some horrific abuse went in the childhood uh this was a young bright u female from a ethnic background and they just did not believe in therapy every time they would come to therapy it was a crisis is they have attempted to end their life couple of times and uh I was at loss. I had psychiatrist number of health professionals even family involved because I was is worried about their safety somehow. uh what Ryan you were talking about the language of character strengths without even using character strings one of their their quote unquote suicidal note was written so prolifically that uh when they were discharged from hospital I said uh uh let’s call them Marina Marina you wrote such a it’s very emotionally moving powerful it’s yes tragic like um have you think about writing? No. And every second word from subsequently was F and all colorful language you can you’re smart you can understand. Somehow I didn’t let go of it. Next time next crisis happened I also again they wrote something um it was in a in a snippet they wrote to someone else actually but it was forwarded to me because of uh care of circle of care provision. I I very much very clearly I knew this person is very creative, very introspective um and also very angry and I said one day I said um uh she just came I remember that day they they came to my office standing they didn’t want to sit they wanted a note from me for whatever issue was and they said and I said um I’m just Marina would wait for a day when you will you will take this as seriously because you can write beautifully and your writing can be so therapeutic uh and all the anger all the frustrations that you have against the world this could be your cognitive meditation you can meditate by writing and uh I’m waiting for the day when I will be standing in the line and you had written your first book and I will be waiting for you to sign it uh the client disappeared. I you know often happens they leave they don’t tell and I’m leaving therapy. Um I had uh moved to Australia a couple of years ago to take a position at University of Melbourne and I received a LinkedIn message. They somehow found me. This is years after just to let you know I’ve graduated and second message there was couple of strings of message. Thank you for keeping me alive. I’ve written my first book. I don’t need to know anything else folks. So I think this is the way we if you want to have the binoculars, your antennas ready to spot the strengths and let people decide, let their agency work on it. Uh they will surprise you always. No, clinical science is very murky, very it’s not pretty. But the communion that I created with her standing face to face and looking in her eyes and say I will wait for the day I don’t know the no I don’t know name of the book I don’t want to interact with them because many legal and ethical issues but just that thing and again folks there’s no therapy here all I was doing was crisis management but what I was able to say that if you can focus which is kind regulate your attention to your creative to your strengths, things can happen. So, I I think I can go on and on. Thank you. Yeah, that’s Well, I’m still feeling the uh the emotion and the the the chills from that story. It’s such a beautiful story and thanks for giving that gift to all of us. And to that client that then shared with you, thanks to them as well. That’s so beautiful and beautiful what you did in in seeing them, seeing who they are, seeing their character strengths and and taking it from there. How how beautiful. Uh and I hadn’t heard that story before uh from you and maybe it’s one of the first times you’ve said it, but it’s it’s so beautiful. Well, um let me ask you one more question and then we’re going to um see what Sarah has riled up from all the different uh questions from uh from all of you that sent in questions ahead of time and puts questions also in the chat. Um so maybe one more question Taob is um well let me let me set it up uh briefly u I wanted to ask you about um MBSP mindfulness based strength practice. I know you’ve taken MBSP and you spoke about the different work you’ve done with mindfulness and with character strengths. Um and you know we shared a little bit at the beginning some of the some some data points and research findings on MBSP. One thing I didn’t share was the impact uh of MBSP on participants in terms of their transformational experiences like that people have uh transformational experiences during the MBSP program that they attribute were caused by MBSP and we’ve collected uh people’s uh reports on how frequently that happens because I’ve been I’ve noticed it over the years but I we never actually collected information from people’s reports on and uh so in uh we’ve collected I think uh we’ve asked 20 130 people something like that and um 92% have the people that take the MBSP program uh experienced transformation or reported to um some of them were minor transformations like minor positive transformations uh that was I think 59% and uh onethird of people uh report a major positive personal or professional transformation um you know the kind of thing that’s like a major uh mindset shift maybe similar to what your what your client experienc But um so I just wanted to have that as a little leadin to to ask you then about anything that you might share about your well first of all if there’s any comment on why that is. Why might there be so many people reporting you know those kind of you know novel and powerful transformational experiences and anything you might say about your experience in the program. Thank you Ryan. As I have already described, I’ve never done therapy, rarely done therapy where there’s no which sessions doesn’t have element of mindfulness. Almost all of my groups begin all sessions begin and end with mindfulness. I also as I said uh character strengths are therapeutic backbone of my work. So it was not a any you I didn’t need to think much but I think I bit took a bit late uh that you had created a structure of combining integrating both the mindfulness and character strengths so I took it last fall and I’m will share a very personal story a transformative one uh as I just started the the course um I um I work with very tough of communities currently. Um that includes refugees um families who are marginalized. Um so I am work going towards uh to a to a client and the client had to be specific in a program for me to do the assessment and some therapeutic work. They are often not there. So the manager of that that center said I will call you whenever uh the client is there. So I received a call around 10:00 a.m. on uh one um Wednesday morning and uh 15 20 minutes later I did not know I had a bike accident because I was biking there and I had a concussion. Um 6 hours later when I woke up I was told that I had a severe concussion. I was unconscious for a very brief period but I don’t have any memory. So and I was very very lucky to survive that. So as my as my rehabilitation process is going on I think one of the most wonderful experience Ryan I didn’t tell you this but I think I did write in my review was to have this weekly session which I did not miss uh except for one I did not miss um because it was such a wonderful community from understanding uh what is my autopilot uh how character strengths um uh can be utilized in a mindful way and what are the obstacles day in day out there are lots of obstacles so I learned that but most important thing cran that I learned from the being in the program was the gratitude folks every one of you 175 are tabs that’s not my expression it’s an expression by a client of mine she said we are all temporarily aabled bodies ies temporarily abled bodies and it is a miracle that we are alive compared to everything else that has happened in history and going on now. Uh we are well healthy and we can survive and we can be happy. So the most important thing uh for me was gratitude that I survived that that contestion that accident and for me the infrastructure of that um gratitude how to incorporate was provided by MBS. So that was personal story and it just happened that I was taking because I had signed up for the course and this concussion happened. Um so it was absolutely wonderful. Um now one quick anecdote um how it it impacted me professionally as a therapist. Um Ryan and my my former mentor Dr. McGrath are working on golden mean inventory in Mbass. I think uh Ryan it’s session six or seven which is focused on um uh unbalance on golden mean which is a very personally interesting topic to me for years. Uh this is how you want to use your strengths in a balanced way. So I will end my my answer on this quick anecdote. So I was working with a client um later on once I recovered I started working uh he’s in mid mid uh 60s very very well accomplished worked in many uh areas um and he’s a content creator he has huge following on online for whatever they do and he said uh I just don’t know why I’m getting angry why I’m getting angry so much and uh so because I was taking MBA SP and I was also aware of the balance and mean of strengths um I asked him to take uh uh golden bean inventory which either is available or Ryan can tell you how you you can take that and um it turned out to be he had already taken BI was also he’s also very much interested in positive psychology his top two strengths were um uh kindness and fairness because he’s and very strong opinions and bec and that actually brought him this I think close to half a million uh viewership on various platforms because he can say things very clearly very very uh very concisely but also very uh opinionated in that sense. what he was doing is um by when we discussed Jeremiah results we discussed that he’s also bringing that fairness with his family and being getting angry so quickly because this is either right or wrong black and white thinking so what GMI scores does is they take give you your scores in three domains work study relationship and life goals and then we saw that where he’s using his strengths optimally where he’s using over uh too much and where how can he bring balance. Um he recently wrote me that um um so one of the therapeutic ploy that I was able to use from because of MBS participation in MBSC and and golden mean inventory was uh rather use your strength when you are especially in argumentative situation with your friends and with family rather than interrogation use an exploration. Often time we get into these tangles when we we we start interrogating our loved ones, our friends. If we take a step back and become more curious and explore not interrogate uh that shift that mental shift really helped him and I said all second ploy that second therapeutic technique that I use is ask them why did they do don’t ask why did they do this ask them what what was going on in your mind what was going on others mind because the why is causation question and it often leads to these oh this that I’m right you’re wrong that causation chain leads to and that and then when he sort of meditated on it and he said that was the issue rather shift your focus folks who are listening rather than asking why question ask what questions because what questions are opening questions those are questions which will help you to explore thing to be more curious rather than being a detective. Beautiful. Thanks so much, Tyab. Yeah, this is all about exploration for sure and thanks for sharing those stories. So, so powerful. Um, I want to turn it to to Sarah now. There’s lots of questions that have come in and Sarah, what are you populating key themes of of a certain question to bring up and uh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wish we could just stay in this moment a little bit longer. Um, just thank you so much, Ty, for sharing. Um, I felt like I really personally connected with several things that you brought up. So, um, to keep it moving, uh, we received so many questions. I’m thinking there’s a couple of them that we can hit before we wrap up today. So, I think this might be kind of a quick fun one to start with. Uh, Sammy writes in, “As an ADHD coach, many of my clients are resistant to the word mindfulness. I often frame this as the power of the pause.” So, she’s wondering, “Is there any other language that you use that helps folks accept and try mindfulness?” Excellent question because I do a lot of mindful uh ADHD assessments and when I’m coaching clients and especially families, uh I’m looking for two things. One is before I go to switch the language is your career royal question is I’m also exploring using the language of strengths using the framework of strengths what things the person has a has symptoms of ADHD uh where they are able to focus because trust me most if not all are also able to focus sometimes we call it hyperfocus okay so that actually is a good point for you that if you’re able to focus on this what will help you to bring focus to that. Secondly, I you are absolutely right. Many many uh folks don’t uh for some reason either it’s religious or it’s sort of they call it it’s cultish uh word mindfulness. So I don’t use the word mindfulness and I said mindfulness I you you walk them through okay let’s let’s breathe let’s sense. So I use the word centering a lot and um when I’m working in schools or in community centers if possible I walk with them because without again lots of considerations about confidentiality but if I able to you walk with them and that is walking meditation so you you don’t use the word and then also slowing down the the the breathing when you’re you’re centering. So it’s not the language, it’s the experience. And then also the second part is with this gentleman that I talked about uh in mid60s very successful content no interest in my in mindfulness what we use I think I also mentioned earlier on I said let’s do very very critical thinker so it’s he likes to think very cognitive in other words. So I said let’s do cognitive meditation. Uh so if you don’t want to do med um uh mindfulness uh would do be open to cognitive meditation and it’s not that you’re sit we’ll just put the things out and see what is happening um what’s leading to it socratic questioning so all of your smart folks who are in coaching in in mental health you know and you can get these techniques it’s the real question is the process how you want to bring these uh uh techniques to that person I’ll I’ll end my answer I create that intervention a new for every client because I need to know where they are so I rather yes these are some skills and strategies but working with them it has to be collaborative it has to be um uh it has to be breaking uh open rather than forcing them so when you want to break when you want to hear them and in that process you will build the relationship and you will see oh this person may not be able to do the meditation but this person will be able to do this. Thank you Tab. Um I think let’s go with one more question. Do just a couple more minutes and then we’ll announce our giveaway winner. Um, so Patty wrote in saying, “I’ve noticed that a main struggle in therapy in a therapy session is trying to structure the content, i.e. integrating mindfulness practices. When the client wants to guide their session, i.e. event, how would you suggest a therapist approach this challenge?” And I think um Eileen also wrote in saying um how do you maintain mindfulness in a moment when situations are not in your control? So, um, one part of that is when you’re working in a therapy session and you want to guide the client, um, in the right way, how do you address that challenge? And I think that could be considered a situation that’s out of your control as well. So, I’ll repost those in the chat. Excellent. Uh, I don’t think so I have very good answers. This is such a good question. Um, but a couple of uh, reflections and and thoughts. One is um, the key word in your question was guiding. For me the client is guiding because if I would do anything where the client will feel that they they are not listening to me they are not ready to be guided whatever way they want to tell you the story or wherever they want to go. Uh you’re going to have the rupture in relationship which is very difficult to recover. So I would uh sacrifice techniques and strategies over saving the relationship because if I can save the relationship I can come back to techniques. So that’s that’s a key thing is so secondly as I said it’s slightly easier when you’re doing a group because when you’re doing a group it’s structured and you give them outline you set the expectations that we’ll be doing mindfulness and you can do it in however way you want to do it. If you don’t want to do it and you want to just doodle at complete freedom. So I think when you also give you don’t does the top uh uh uh force things from the top um uh you are you are honoring um their choices and trust me once the once a person says that I have more lat more flexibility in uh during my sessions or during my work with this person they will slowly slowly give up that control. You don’t know where the control was developed because maybe it was a parental issue from the past. Maybe they felt so much uh controlled by the the teachers, by the environment they were living, by the cultural expectations. So there is also understanding um when you if you’re patient enough, you will understand where that is coming from. So bottom line is I give especially in the beginning part of therapy guide. I let them guide me. I I think that’s such a great answer, Ty. Thank you. And I just want to build off of that. Um um if if the client is venting a lot, I would wonder about the therapist or the coach asking the the person to be mindful of what’s going on in their body as they’re venting. So like in the moment, how how what’s going on? What are you tuned into? Are you feeling the tension in your jaw? Are you feeling your heart beating? And what’s going through your mind? You know what? And so, like, it’s kind of training them to be mindful. You know, they’re not wanting to leave their venting. So, like Tab’s saying, going with that, the client’s guiding it. And then mindfulness of the thoughts, of the feelings. There’d be lots of emotions there. And then, of course, bringing in the strengths. You know, what strengths maybe are you underusing right now that you could bring forth? What strengths are you using? And they’re a little bit unbalanced. Maybe what are you overusing? Um, yeah. So, such a great question and great piece to explore. Yeah. And and and one more thing, uh Ryan, I’m also mindful that we think as coaches, as as therapists, as mental health professionals, even teachers and parents, we can fix everything. Let’s use this. Let’s use our strength, character, strength to humility. Folks, we can’t. Sometimes the problems have developed over decades and there are psychos, social, cultural, economic issues. So I I am very comfortable in saying that I don’t have answers. What Ryan you was pointing out was great that sometimes you bring the focus in the moment. Go back to my in real time resilience. This is a real time processing happening and say you know we have discussed this couple of time and I noticed this is uh this is just my observation. I may be wrong. be very humble, be very respectful that you have discussed this many many times. Um I’m I’m wondering what it happens because you’re also spending money and effort and this and uh is this what and they say this is so and trust me there are some there this client who say you know I don’t need to do I don’t want you to do anything just let me do it and and that’s completely fine as long as it’s okay with you as I said we need to be humble and let the agency and choice of our clients and also don’t come with expectation that you’re going to fix everything and with everyone. Love that. Thank you, Tyab. Um, great answer. I know we could go on and on and on. Um, and I want to make sure we save a little bit of time. So, I was waiting till the end to um, pick the name just to make sure um, you’re here. And um I’m going to go ahead. Just give me one minute. Okay. And I’m going to share my screen. I’m typing in the name as we speak. Um so I love a little uh you know energy behind the the announcement. Okay. Um so I’m going to go ahead and share my screen. Um and um thank you so much everyone. Okay, drum roll. Um, so gonna go ahead and uh, Hatam Ahmad. Um, hopefully I pronounced that. Um, if you are here, I think that you are. Um, you have won eight weeks with Dr. Ryan Neck at his MBSP course in September. So, um, I have I have your email. I assume you signed up. I have your name. If you’re here, you can come off mute. Um if not, you can send me a message or I’ll send you a message. Um but um super fun. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. That’s awesome. This is the first time I feel like we’ve done something like this and so um excited to um welcome someone else into the group. There are 28 other individuals signed up for this September course and we know it always gets good um when there are more people. So I just wanted to take a quick moment to share the MBSP program. There’s QR codes um if you’re interested in something more personal the 8week courses with Ryan in September. And if you’re looking for something where you can um add a credential to your skill set and start to share this program with others, uh we do have the MBSP certification, which Ryan has um announced a second cohort this year. So, um if you’re interested, take a picture. Uh email our team programs via character.org. We’d be happy to help you um to find your next step. And then I’ll just say one more time, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Uh Dr. Ryan Neimik, Dr. Ty Rasheed, it was amazing um to have you. And um if you want to have any final words before we wrap up today, I’ll open it up. My final words would be a thank you to you Ryan for thinking about this to Sara and Alicia and everyone at VIA. Uh they’re kind like home. Uh and my apologies. So folks, I’m just scroll down on the in the chat some absolutely wonderful questions. Um we don’t have time and maybe uh we can think with Ryan how to uh respond to those questions or maybe have a follow-up session because sometimes you don’t need to hear me just ask the questions and uh hear my halfbaked or even quarterbaked baked answers. uh because we I believe in collective wisdom and thank you again. Yeah, I just want to say thank you Taab. Yeah, such a a meaningful experience. Everything that I had hoped it would be. So very grateful to you and uh thanks to all of you for for being here and just a reminder that your character strengths are your mental health. Love that. Love that. Everyone, thanks again for joining. Uh we’ll follow up with the recording and some uh highlights from this session. Tyog shared so many good insights, so I’ll make sure to put that in the email so you can reference and come back to it. Um,
Discover how character strengths and mindfulness work together to enhance mental health in this inspiring live conversation with Dr. Tayyab Rashid and Dr. Ryan Niemiec. Together, they explore the science, share practical examples, and reveal how the Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) can transform lives — helping people thrive emotionally, relationally, and psychologically.
Featuring:
🔹 Dr. Tayyab Rashid – Licensed Clinical and School Psychologist, Associate Faculty at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program & President-Elect, IPPA
🔹 Dr. Ryan Niemiec – Chief Science Officer at VIA, Psychologist, author, and creator of the Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice Program
You’ll learn :
✅ 5 science-backed ways character strengths and mindfulness work together to support mental health
✅ Practical examples of applying these tools to improve well-being
✅ How the Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP) has been a transformative experience for Tayyab personally
🌟 Learn more about the 8-week MBSP Course: https://www.viacharacter.org/courses/mindfulness-based-strengths-practice
🌟 Become Certified to teach MBSP: https://www.viacharacter.org/courses/mbsp-certification
🌟 Discover the dual role of character strengths in supporting mental health: https://assets.ctfassets.net/ham3h61ph2oq/1pRq9GFE15RfSXGJpwDDTX/802f3c0be39cd5418bc2a4317718cf65/Mental_health___CS_-_Niemiec__2023___1_.pdf
In this webinar, we cover:
0:00 Introduction
2:50 Guided Mindfulness Practice – Dr. Ryan Niemiec
11:00 What is Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practice (MBSP)?
13:45 Exploring the Connection: Mindfulness & Mental Health
14:55 Introducing Dr. Tayyab Rashid
16:44 Q1: How do character strengths and mindfulness work together to support mental health?
24:38 Q2: Real-life examples of applying character strengths & mindfulness to improve mental health
35:20 Q3: How was MBSP a transformative experience for you personally?
45:15 Audience Q&A
#characterstrengths #mindfulness #mentalhealth #positivepsychology #wellbeing
Subscribe to VIA’s Youtube Channel: /@viastrengths
Learn more about VIA Insitute: https://www.viacharacter.org/
Linkedin: /via-institute-on-character
Instagram: /viastrengths
About VIA Institute: Headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, The VIA Institute on Character is a global non-profit organization that empowers people worldwide through the science and practice of character strengths. The VIA Survey, available in 46 languages, has helped nearly 35 million discover the best in themselves and apply their strengths to enhance well-being, relationships, and performance. With 10,000 people taking the VIA Survey daily, it is the most frequently taken and most popular peer-reviewed scientific test of personality or strengths worldwide.