Karine Oganisjana, Kaveesha Madhumali Pelithanthrige, Kavya Thathsarani Wijesinghe

Proceedings of the 28th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2024, pp. 300-306 (2024); https://doi.org/10.54808/WMSCI2024.01.300

Karine Oganisjana
Faculty of Engineering Economics and Management, Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia

Kaveesha Madhumali Pelithanthrige
Faculty of Engineering Economics and Management, Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia

Kavya Thathsarani Wijesinghe
Faculty of Engineering Economics and Management, Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia

Cite this paper as:
Oganisjana, K., Pelithanthrige, K. M., Wijesinghe, K. T. (2024). Practicing Mindfulness for Enhancing Emotional Wellbeing. In N. Callaos, E. Gaile-Sarkane, N. Lace, B. Sánchez, M. Savoie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2024, pp. 300-306. International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics. https://doi.org/10.54808/WMSCI2024.01.300

This paper presents outcomes of research conducted with the purpose of studying the impact of exercising mindfulness on the emotional wellbeing of Master’s students. At once after practicing different mindfulness techniques, they solved their current problems and filled in diaries with an analysis of how mindfulness affected their emotions when dealing with stressors. To meet research ethics requirements, the Master’s students were offered to share the diary-based data anonymously via Google Form questionnaire. Both the quantitative and qualitative data analysis witnessed the positive impact of practicing mindfulness on the Master’s students’ emotional wellbeing. Eight categories were developed during qualitative content analysis of the texts of their comments. Based on their meanings, the categories were related to two groups - with inward directedness (emotional regulation, improved quality of thinking and creativity, mind-body wellbeing, self-competency and mental clarity, self-enrichment and heightened intellectual capacity) and outward directedness (development of interpersonal skills and improvement of acceptance of the present moment and the surrounding world). Higher summative weight of categories of Inward directedness vs. of categories of Outward directedness led to theorization, that owing to exercising mindfulness, students first reached internal emotional regulation and only after that opened to the external world.