There was a recent MYRIAD (My Resilience in Adolescence) study that looked to see if a School-based Mindfulness (SBMT) curriculum was worth rolling out to schools across the UK; the findings were that it didn’t make any really difference and that most of the children found it boring.

This study has raised a couple of concerns for me, and it’s not about the study itself, it’s mainly about how it was reported and that the people who create these curriculums seem to have no clue about mental health and how best to manage it.

What drew my attention to this study was an article on the BBC website with the headline ‘School mindfulness lessons don’t work for teenagers, study says’ the article goes on to say, ‘Giving teenagers mindfulness lessons at school to boost wellbeing is largely a waste of time, a major UK study has found’.

I’ve read some of the findings (well, what I could understand anyway) and my problem is that the BBC article was rather misleading.  The MYRIAD study was not looking at mindfulness as a whole, it’s aim was to see if this SBMT curriculum works; from what I’ve read they are saying that it’s this particular curriculum that doesn’t work.

I was checking Facebook this morning and came across a video of an interview with Al Pacino, I think it was from 1983, and he was asked ‘Are you tough?’

His response was that he didn’t know.

‘Getting through life you’ve gotta be tough I guess; we’re all tough.’ He said ‘How do you mean tough’ he asked the interviewer.

‘Coping’ was the response.

‘I think what comes from toughness is because you’re trying to cover something usually sensitivity, certain vulnerability, that’s toughness.’

We all deserve joy in our lives, but finding it isn’t always easy. Here’s a 10 minute video on the importance of finding JOY and why we need to give it more of our attention.