9-Dots Exercise by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Mindfulness Training by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The 9-Dots Exercise Mindfulness Training

The 9-dots exercise invites us to practice, Nonjudging, Patience, and a Beginners Mind.  Below is an arrangement of nine dots. You are to connect up all the dots by making four straight lines without lifting your pencil. Below is an arrangement of nine dots.

We are to connect up all the dots by making four straight lines without lifting your pencil. Without retracing along any line. Thinking outside of the box. At this point, the mind can experience distress. The more solutions you try that don’t work. The more frustrated you can become.

The Next Week

When we go over it in class the following week. We ask all those people who do not know the answer to watch carefully what their reaction is. When all of a sudden they “see” the solution when a volunteer draws it on the blackboard.

When you see or discover for yourself the solution to this problem. Especially after you have been struggling with it for a while. There is usually an “aha!” experience at the moment of discovery. This is associated with the realization. That the solution lies in extending the lines you draw beyond the imaginary square that the dots make.

The problem as stated does not prevent you from going outside the dots. But the “normal” tendency is to see the nine-dot square pattern as the field of the problem. Rather than seeing the dots in the context of the paper. Recognizing that the field of the problem is the whole surface that contains the dots.

The 9-Dots Exercise Solution

If you isolate the nine dots by themselves as the domain of the problem. Because of the automatic way in which you perceive things and think about them. You will never find a satisfactory solution to this problem. As a consequence, you may wind up blaming yourself for being stupid or getting angry at the problem and proclaiming it impossible or foolish. All the while you are putting your energy in the wrong place. You are not seeing the full domain of the problem. You are missing the larger context.

The problem of the nine dots suggests. That we may need to take a broader view of certain problems if we hope to solve them. This approach involves asking ourselves what the extent of the problem is. Discerning the relationship between the various isolated parts of the problem and the problem as a whole.

This is called taking a “systems view.” If we do not identify the system correctly in its entirety. We will never be able to come to a satisfactory solution of the problem because a key domain will always be missing, the domain of the whole.

The 9-dots exercise can teach us. That we may have to expand beyond our habitual ways of seeing and thinking and acting in order to solve or resolve certain kinds of problems. If we don’t, our attempts to identify and solve our problems. Will usually be thwarted by our own prejudices and preconceptions. Our lack of awareness of the system as a whole will often prevent us from seeing new options. And new ways of approaching problems. We will have a tendency to get stuck in our problems. Our crises to make faulty decisions and choices.

9-Dots Exercise Solution

Rather than penetrating through problems to the point where solutions are reached. When we get stuck, there is a tendency to make more problems and to make them worse. Also to give up trying to solve them.

Such experiences can lead to feelings of frustration, inadequacy, and insecurity. When self-confidence becomes eroded, it just makes it harder to solve any other problems that come along. Our doubts about our own abilities become self-fulfilling prophecies.

They can come to dominate our lives. In this way, we effectively make our own limits by our own thought processes. Then, too often, we forget that we have created these boundaries ourselves. Consequently, we get stuck and feel we can’t get beyond them.

You can get a closer look at this process on a day-to-day level by being mindful of your own inner dialogue and beliefs and how they affect what you wind up doing in certain situations.

Unless we are practicing mindfulness, we rarely observe our inner dialogue with any detachment and ponder its validity, especially when it concerns our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. For instance, if you have the habit of saying to yourself “I could never do that” when you encounter some kind of problem or dilemma, such as learning to use a tool or fixing a mechanical device, or speaking up for yourself in front of a group of people or in any other situation, one thing is pretty certain—you won’t be able to do it.

At that moment your thought fulfills or makes real its own content. Saying “I can’t” or “I could never . . .” is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Exploring 9-Dots Exercise More

If we are in the habit of thinking about ourselves in this way in such situations, by the time we have a chance to act or to do something to solve the problem, we will have already put ourselves in a box of our own creation and limit your possibilities.

The fact is you really do not know in many situations what you are capable of doing at any particular moment. You might surprise yourself if you took on a problem, just for fun, and tried something new, even if you didn’t know what you were doing and even if you inwardly doubted your ability to do it.

The point is that we don’t always know our true limits. However, if your beliefs and attitudes, your thoughts and feelings are always producing reasons for:

• not taking risks
• reluctant to take on new challenges
• not looking at what the entire scope of a problem might be and at your relationship to it

The 9-dots exercise can show us. What might be possible for you at the limits of your understanding and your beliefs is often fruitful. Then you may be severely and unnecessarily limiting your own learning, your own growth, and your ability to make changes in your life.

Whether it is losing weight or:

• not yelling at your kids, or starting your own business
• finding out what there is to live for when you have experienced a deep personal loss
• are in the middle of a momentous change in your life that threatens your well-being and that of everything you hold dear

What you can do will very strongly depend on your beliefs about:

• your own resources
• your beliefs about life itself

In the stress clinic, most people rise to the challenge and take on the risks of facing the full catastrophe with mindfulness. They often surprise themselves and their families with their newfound courage.

In the process, they discover their limits receding and they find themselves capable of doing things they never thought possible. Buoyed up by a new sense of wholeness and connectedness within themselves.

“Our Beliefs Can Actually Have A Major Influence On Our Health.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Source- Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Quotes: 

“There Is Another Way”

“There always is another way” (acceptance:)

Respectfully,
Heidi & Ross

Please, Bookmark. 🙂

G Ross Clark C.C.P.,
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada,
Email- TheMindfulCoach@gmail.com,
Training- MBSRtraining.com