In the previous post we learned what it means to be mindful. But you may be asking yourself, “Okay, so what’s the big deal? Why should we care if we’re being mindful or not?”
That’s a fair question, because becoming mindful (just like learning any new skill) will require a modicum of effort, commitment, and practice on your part. Good things rarely come easy, so there had better be a payoff in the end.
And there is, because I’ve personally experienced it.
The Promise of leading a mindful life
Based on my own personal experience (and confirmed by untold others), here are some of the benefits of instituting a daily mindfulness practice:
- Your stress and anxiety levels will decrease materially.
- Pointless moments spent dwelling on past regrets or future worries will steadily diminish.
- You will be calmer, more at peace, and begin to live life with an ease of being.
- You will notice yourself becoming less ruffled by life’s challenges and petty annoyances.
- Your life will feel less rushed (even if filled with much activity).
- You will experience less conflict with others and whatever conflict does arise, you will handle it with greater grace, ease, and wisdom.
- You will be less judgmental, of yourself and others.
- You will be more compassionate, understanding, and considerate of others.
- You will be more generous.
- You will be more patient.
- You will be more accepting of whatever life brings your way.
- You will be more easy-going, more able to lighten up and start taking life less seriously.
- You will be more comfortable in your own skin, less egotistic, more able to laugh at yourself, more confident about who you are as a person (warts and all), and less affected by what other people think of you.
- You will respond to life’s challenges with wisdom rather than react to them habitually and unthinkingly.
- Your external circumstances will no longer dictate whether you are happy or sad.
- You will experience greater joy, most noticeably from the simplest of things.
- You will notice and sense more and, in doing so, find that the world becomes more interesting.
- The feeling of boredom will virtually disappear from your life.
- Your ability to focus on the task at hand will increase.
In short, the promise of mindfulness practice is to help us become better people and to lead happier, healthier lives. This is why it’s worth bothering about.
Well, if it’s this good, why doesn’t everyone choose mindfulness?
I believe there are a number of reasons most people do not practice mindfulness:
- While mindfulness is steadily making its way into popular culture, most people remain unaware of it.
- Mindfulness is not yet taught in most of our schools.
- Most people lead such hectic lives that, even with the best of intentions, making room for mindfulness practice just doesn’t happen.
- Even with full awareness of mindfulness and its benefits, becoming a mindful individual requires a long-term commitment. Given society’s short attention span, this is a tall order for most people.
- Becoming mindful also requires quiet reflection, particularly through daily meditation sessions. In this manner the teachings become an integral part of who you are. However, society’s frantic pace is antithetical to making time for moments of quiet reflection.
- Our evolutionary inheritance biases us toward being mindless (see this post).
- Tragically, being mindless is our cultural norm and so seems, well, normal; just the way life is, with no reason to give a moment’s thought that there’s perhaps a different way – a better way – to lead a life.
Not Mindful? Then You’re Mindless
The opposite of being mindful is to be mindless.
To get a feel for what this means, take a moment to re-read the nineteen Promises of Mindfulness listed above but, this time, mentally make each one into its exact opposite.
For example, point number one becomes: “Your stress and anxiety levels will increase materially” – if you are mindless.
Take some time to observe those around you and ask yourself if this exercise doesn’t paint a pretty fair picture of most people’s lives – perhaps even your own! Needless to say, this is not a healthy way to get through life.
This is why practicing mindfulness is so important; it provides us with the means to counter our base human tendencies and become better, happier, wiser people.
“Our minds are reactive: liking and disliking, judging and comparing, clinging and condemning. As long as we’re identified with these judgments and preferences … our minds are continually thrown out of balance, caught in a tiring whirlwind of reactivity.
It is through the power of mindfulness that we can come to a place of balance and rest. Mindfulness is that quality of attention which notices without choosing, without preference; it is a choiceless awareness.”
Excerpt from “Seeking the Heart of Wisdom” by Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield
Mindfulness benefits
In the previous post this is how we defined mindfulness:
mind-ful-ness: noun. 1. on purpose, non-judgmental, moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, senses, and bodily sensations. 2. being focused on, and accepting with equanimity, whatever you are experiencing in the present moment. 3. focusing on the present moment and not dwelling on the past or the future. 4. purposely noticing and being curious about the world around you. 5. choosing wise, compassionate behaviour rather than reacting mindlessly.
Let’s explore the rationale behind some of these components:
1. You choose to focus your attention on what is happening at this present moment.
If your mind isn’t focused on the present moment then you’ve got a wandering mind or, more colourfully, a monkey mind. In such a state your thoughts are scattered and you carry on an incessant monologue with yourself. To some extent the only difference between you and the “crazy” guy who talks to himself is that you have the good sense to keep your mouth shut!
Why this mode of thinking is unhealthy is that a mind not focused on the present moment is an anxious, unhappy mind.
This was confirmed by an interesting study done by two Harvard psychologists who discovered that we are not thinking about what we are doing almost half the time – our thoughts are in the past or in the future – not in the present moment.
While interesting in itself, their key finding was that we are happiest when we are thinking about what we are doing. This means we are happiest when we are being mindful.
Of course, if we’re spending half our time not thinking about what we’re actually doing, then we are effectively cutting our lifetime in half! Think about it; time spent in the past or future or simply zoned out in semi-conscious auto-pilot is time un-lived. Imagine being able to double your actual lived life simply by focusing on the present moment! This is the power of mindfulness.
2. You choose not to dwell on an unchangeable past or fret about an unknowable future.
The only moment we get to experience is the present moment. Dwelling on the past just causes angst because we can’t do anything about it. The only thing we can do about past regrets is to take responsibility and make things right in the present moment.
Similarly, fussing over the future just leads to stress and anxiety because the future is unknowable and not actionable – it can only be dealt with when it becomes the present.
And the plain truth is that the future inevitably turns out to be far better than we feared. This is delightfully captured in a quote from the French Renaissance philosopher, Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592):
“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”
Of course, avoiding thinking about the future doesn’t mean we don’t plan for it. But planning is obviously a very different type of thinking than the scattered, worried thoughts we have when dreading some future situation.
3. You focus on one task at a time and give it your undivided attention.
This is simply a different way of phrasing the first component of mindfulness – to focus your attention on what is happening at this present moment.
I break it out separately because we live in a world where multi-tasking has become the pernicious norm. Tragically, it is also the cause of needless anxiety and stress.
In the article, “The Perils of Multitasking“, from Psychology Today we learn that multi-tasking:
- Interferes with learning.
- Reduces productivity.
- Promotes stress and fatigue.
- Becomes addictive and chronic through use.
- Leads to a short attention span.
- Reduces working memory capacity.
And the stated solution to this litany of woes? To quote the article, “To use mental discipline to condition good attentiveness and thinking habits”. In other words, to practice mindfulness!
4. You experience life directly through your senses.
To become aware of your body’s sensory inputs – hearing, seeing, feeling, etc. – you have to pay attention.
Living life directly through your senses means actually noticing life as it unfolds: you make it your practice to take note of your coffee’s aroma, to consciously hear the chickadees chirping on the branch outside your window, and to feel the cool evening breeze against your exposed skin.
Living life in this manner forces us into the present moment, which is when we’re happiest. And it also gives us the opportunity to take in and treasure the richness of our world.
5. You choose to live life with the renewed curiosity of a child instead of the jaded familiarity and disinterest of an adult. You consciously try to notice things and look for the fine details in the familiar as if experiencing them for the first time.
Jaded familiarity and disinterest put us into auto-pilot mode, living out our life without actually consciously experiencing much of it.
But life is way too precious to waste in such a zoned-out state of mind where all we tend to experience is our old tired thoughts and judgmental commentary.
Just as with living life directly through our senses, active curiosity and noticing keep us in the present moment and help us treasure life’s simplest moments. We become grateful simply for being alive and having the opportunity to take in all of life’s many wonders.
Think of it this way – how precious would your “boring” commute to work be if you knew that by day’s end you were going to lose your ability to see and hear? How beautiful would the sky seem that day? How precious the sound of a passing jet? The answer is obvious.
6. You choose to respond to life’s challenges and frustrations with compassion rather than reacting unthinkingly and automatically with ego-centric aggression.
Simply put, getting upset over life’s unpleasant moments is a complete and utter waste of time. It achieves nothing of value but does much harm:
- Your mental and physical health is compromised (see this post).
- You become a decidedly unpleasant menace to those around you.
Better to accept that whatever comes your way is simply part of life. Then just deal with, with equanimity and in a matter-of-fact, calm manner because:
- Remaining calm permits your wisdom to come to the fore. In an agitated state you are thinking with the emotionally-reactive part of your brain (i.e. your amygdala). In such a state your resulting words and actions will inevitably be neither helpful nor wise.
- You do no damage to your mental and physical well-being.
- You do no harm, mentally or physically, to those around you.
- You make the world a better place, contributing to its peace rather than its aggression.
7. Through practice you develop moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations and you use them as your guide to choosing the path of wisdom.
One of the greatest gifts I have received through mindfulness practice is a greater ability to sense, in the moment, when my wisdom is going off-line.
The blizzard of negative thoughts, the furrowed brow, tensed jaw, flushed face, clenched fists, the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, and the tightness in my chest all shout out their warning: STOP!! DO NOT PROCEED!!
These are my cues to immediately pause, breathe, relax my body, and slow down my thinking. Only then is it prudent for me to speak or act because if I proceed in an agitated state the outcome will not be one I look back at with pride.
Mindfulness – my only regret
When it comes to mindfulness, my only regret is that no one told me about it in my youth. So much needless, useless, silly drama could have been avoided.
This now serves as my primary motivation to spread the gospel, so to speak, so that others may avoid my pointless moments of drama and, in doing so, live fuller, richer, happier lives.
You would be doing me a great favour were you to bring my blog to the attention of friends and family, and I thank you for doing so.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life