Mindfulness: Getting Out of Your Own Way!

Today I was at the office of a friend and we were talking how to feel better and not to feel drawn by the negative energy surrounding ourselves and i mentioned meditation and mindfulness. i practice everyday meditation and mindfulness meditation for about 4 years now. I have been trained for a while by Dr Anthony Foster and if you want to start Mindfulness I urge you to follow his workshops in Melbourne if you are based around here.

Searching for inner peace leads us down many paths. From the shelves of books in the self-help section to gurus, coaches and spiritual leaders, we’re often looking for a direct line from uncertainty to calm. 

This isn’t about a quick-fix. Far too many are mocked for supposedly wanting that. I think the vast majority are quite willing to put in the time and effort. 

Unfortunately explanation and instruction often replace clarity with obfuscation, as if a struggle of understanding is required for wisdom. Mindfulness doesn’t have to be shrouded in mystery.

What is being mindful?

Mindfulness is an active mental state of reflective awareness about the present.

1. Active

– While mindfulness is often looked at as meditation, too often meditation ends up being a passive behaviour. To be active is to be intentional and focused. This isn’t about relaxation, though that can happen, but deliberate engagement with mental life.

2. Mental State

– Don’t let the “mental” make you ignore the physical. Our minds are embodied. Mindfulness acknowledges our physical reality and how our bodies are the means through which we put thought into action.

3. Reflective Awareness

– Being aware is one of those behaviours we often think we’re doing, but is not as broad as we think. To be mindfully aware is to actively seek out and allow more of your experience to be seen and known. This means having no single thing take over your mind sight to the exclusion of everything else.

4. Present

– Time is, within the human experience, at least as much about our perception as it is a thing we live within. To be present is to recognise the transitory nature of our experience. Every present moment is immediately followed and replaced by the next present moment.

As Daniel Siegel, in his book “Mindsight,” puts it:

“Openness implies that we are receptive to whatever comes to our awareness and don’t cling to preconceived ideas about how things “should” be. We let go of expectations and receive things as they are, rather than trying to make them how we want them to be.” (Mindsight)

Not Getting Lost In Your Own Thoughts

Mindfulness and even more declarations of what its practice can bring into your life. The focus here is on broadening the contemplation of our lives to make room for new behaviour. For that, we turn to how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) utilises mindfulness.

ACT breaks mindfulness skills down into 3 categories:

• De-fusion: distancing from, and letting go of, unhelpful thoughts, beliefs and memories

Mindfulness allows us to see the transitory nature of our thoughts. Mental states do not last for long at all. We only think they do because of how they loop on themselves through attention and focus. The feeling of being stuck is due to being caught in one of those loops, where all potential action becomes fused to a narrow singular thought or story. De-fusion is the process of breaking free of that narrow vision.

• Acceptance: making room for painful feelings, urges and sensations, and allowing them to come and go without a struggle

Our mental states change with the speed of thought. We trick ourselves into thinking they last longer through our attention and obsessive focus. This is how pain leads to suffering. Our focus is often on ‘moving past’ or avoiding the pain, but the irony is what we avoid is what ends up running our lives. Acceptance isn’t about being a doormat to be stepped on. It’s an acknowledgement that pain is an inevitable and natural part of living, an indication of change.

• Contact with the present moment: engaging fully with your here-and-now experience, with an attitude of openness and curiosity

Personal stories or narratives are how we split reality into what we call experiences. No single story can hold the entirety of reality and so there are always more to our lives to be explored. The present moment fades into the next present moment seamlessly and inevitably, a fertile ground for curiosity to find new growth.

Mindfulness: The Present is Calling

We are more than any single thought, emotion or story. No single action can or should define the whole of who we are. Our Values manifest in constantly evolving behaviour. Shame ties us to a past that has already gone by, holding us to a falsely narrow vision of who we are capable of being. Mindfulness skills help us explore the present to find the inner peace of healthy questioning, the calm of accepting uncertainty and the personal growth of letting go of our thoughts.

Learning mindfulness skills can be an integral part of moving forward, contact me for more information on Coaching.