Brady Johnson
Cedar City, Utah
Psychology
Creativity Track

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Streamlining Stress

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My EDGE Project was to learn more about stress, and how to combat it using mindfulness meditation.  The reason for this project is to gain knowledge about stress and explore ways to combat stress through mindfulness. For my EDGE Project I read Full Catastrophe Living and Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present Moment―and Your Life by Jon Kabat-Zinn and annotated and wrote my thoughts I had while reading about mindfulness. I also meditated on my own and after each session I wrote in and keep a journal of my thoughts and feelings of each session.

               

My inspiration for this project came in a positive psychology class.  I enjoyed learning about how to help people not just get back to baseline, but to increase happiness and reduce even more negative affect moods with mindfulness.  I wanted to learn more about meditation and mindfulness because it was so interesting to learn about, and I thought it could help myself and others.

 

This project just like any other had its challenges.  I found it very hard to start the process.  I hate reading, and it was a major part of my project.  I also hate writing about my thoughts and feelings, which was what I did every time before and after meditating.  The actual process of mediating was nice but the reading and writing made it hard to start, and made it hard to keep consistency.

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It was also hard to keep a schedule.  I started off wanting to meditate once a week, but soon realized that I needed to do it more often than that.  It was hard to get into a habit of doing it more often, especially if my journals that I kept started to feel repetitive.
 

I wanted to learn about meditation so that in the future I could potentially help those suffering from mood or anxiety disorders.  I could help them cope with stress and anxiety as well as just improving their health and giving them the tools to help themselves.  Instead of helping them get back to where they were, I can help them go beyond where they were.

 

This project helped me because I also wanted to help myself deal with stress and anxiety not just others.  I also wanted some experience so that I would be a better graduate school candidate over others.  With learning some extra tools, I could present myself better to graduate schools.  They will see that I am willing to try new things to help people, which in turn will help myself because it opens up opportunities for me.

 

“Mindfulness is a way of giving your life back to yourself”

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“Just as a sailor can position a sail to make the best use of the pressure of the wind to propel the boat.  You can’t sail straight into the wind, and if you only know how to sail with the wind at your back, you will go where the wind blows you.  But if you know how to use the winds energy and are patient, you can sometimes get where you want to go.  You can still be in control.”