What was the last change you made in your life in order to feel better, happier, or more productive? How did it work for you? In my conversations with people, I’ve discovered that many of us can identify a change we’ve undertaken, but we’re not always able to measure its success. That’s because we haven’t documented our starting point.
Before and After 30 Days of Meditation
Maria Popova, who curates Brainpickings, recently posted a link to an article about “Before and After,” a series of images by New York photographer Peter Seidler. Seidler took photographs of participants on the first and last days of a month-long meditation retreat, while asking them to think about their expectations and their experience at the retreat.
The structure of these paired images invites the viewer to look for differences between them. More than that, the “Before and After” structure so familiar to us from advertising invites us to see positive changes that can be attributed to some process or product. Seidler’s notes on the project conclude with an assertion about what he sees in the series, and an invitation to the viewer:
It’s clear from results that the person in every one of the portraits has undergone an important transformative experience. I leave it to the viewer to draw their own conclusion.
Although most comments and reviews have been very positive, some viewers have criticized the series as potentially manipulated. I think this is a response to the proliferation of such photos in advertising for diet and fitness products, which many consumers recognize as sometimes making exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims. Images can always be manipulated, and there are many ways to create the illusion of an intended effect.
But as far as I can tell, Seidler isn’t selling anything with these photos. He’s selling the photos themselves, since he’s an artist. There’s little reason to imagine why he would go to the trouble of staging or falsifying these images, which are part of a larger project on contemplation. Moreover, regular practitioners of meditation often notice physical transformations that result from greater muscle relaxation and the calming of the nervous system.
Documenting Your Before
One of the things I find so compelling about Seidler’s project is that I can imagine these photos serving as a reinforcement of the effects of the meditation retreat for its participants. No one goes to a 30 day retreat by accident, after all. These people had hopes or intentions for the event. These photographs serve as a record of who they were when they began the month-long retreat.
Setting aside a little time to explore your starting point can boost your motivation to make a change and add to the richness of your change process. Consider, for example, these questions:
- how do you feel right now?
- how happy are you right now?
- how much energy do you have right now?
How to best document your own starting point for a personal change depends upon what kind of change it is and what your comfortable modes for learning and creating are. Some possibilities include:
- write a short (one paragraph or one page) description of how you feel right now and why you’re undertaking the change
- taking a photograph of yourself at the beginning of the change, and/or throughout the change process
- brainstorming a list of keywords that describe your current state
- drawing or creating a collage of images that evoke your current state
- write a letter or an email to your future self that describes how you feel right now
- leave yourself a voicemail and save it in your phone
Set a Clear Timeframe
“Before” gives meaning to our “after” when we have a clearly defined timeframe. Setting a timeframe helps you measure the success of the change. For example, say I decide to start taking a new B-vitamin supplement every morning. If I don’t decide upon a timeframe with which to evaluate the effects of the new vitamin, how will I know how well it’s working? By writing some notes about my current energy levels and my reasons for embarking upon the new vitamin regimen and setting a 30-day time period for my change process, I’ve given myself a clear structure that will help me evaluate whether or not this is a change I want to stick with.