Many people say that if you have a healthy mind, you are more likely to have a healthy life. Mindfulness is a skill that some people possess naturally, while others have to dedicate time to develop it properly.
The word itself is very straightforward, but the actions surrounding it and putting it into practice can be a bit tricky for some. Learning mindfulness skills can help you improve in this area, and therefore, improve across all areas of your life.
What is Mindfulness?
The word mindfulness offers up the idea that your mind is fully present, aware, and engaged in what is happening around you. It combines the concepts of genuinely caring about something or someone and maintaining a high level of focus, without becoming overwhelmed or overly emotional.
It seems like a simple task: stay on point and be aware of what’s happening, what someone is saying, and what you say in return. However, in a world full of distractions, it’s not always as easy as it sounds.
There are so many things that can catch our eye and draw our attention away from a situation. Even something as natural as a conversation with a loved one can be interrupted by the slightest distraction.
In this day and age, we are highly attached to our technology. TV screens, smartphones, and tablets suck us in like nothing else. Surely, you have been in the middle of a conversation with someone only to see them pick up their phone and check a text while you are talking.
Or, perhaps you were the one who committed this act.
These kinds of things demonstrate a lack of mindfulness, and it is prevalent in our society today.
A lack of mindfulness also takes shape in the form of obsessive thoughts. We may physically look like we are present in the moment, fully there with no visible distractions to blame, but our minds tend to wander. When we lack the mindful connection of mind and body, our thoughts can get the best of us and take our minds away from the situation at hand.
Everyone possesses some level of mindfulness, but learning mindfulness skills can help us fine-tune our abilities and gain a higher level of access to it.
Things to Remember About Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a simple concept that is often overthought, making it seem a lot more complicated than it has to be. So, there are a few things to keep in mind throughout the process.
For one, remember that mindfulness is not an obscure topic. It’s not some strange idea that made its way around the world and is just recently being practiced as a trendy concept. We all have an innate sense of mindfulness within us that takes on many shapes and forms.
In that same breath, it’s not particularly unusual, nor does it require change on a deep level. While we can certainly make a more considerable effort or strive for better outcomes, we do not have to change our personality or our beliefs in order to be more mindful.
Thirdly, mindfulness is a way of living that anyone can do. And we really do mean anyone. You do not have to possess certain traits, characteristics, or backgrounds in order to be more mindful. Any single human being can decide to be aware or choose to improve their mindfulness.
It’s a way of living in that it demonstrates awareness and caring that relates to everything we do. While lifting weights is a practice with the specific goal of getting stronger, being mindful touches goals across the physical, emotional, relational, spiritual, etc.
Finally, mindfulness allows us to be more productive and better thinkers. Through various skills, such as observation, description, and participation, which we will discuss a little later on, we can become more effective at our jobs, in our relationships, in our home, as parents, and during any other activity or group we are a part of. Not only can it reduce the stress that we put on ourselves, but it can benefit others in the ways we learn to be present, aware, and caring.
Mindfulness Meditation
A lack of mindfulness can not only negatively affect those we come into contact with, making us appear as though we couldn’t care less to be a part of whatever is going on, but it can also put a lot of stress on us.
Meditation is a skill that you can use to tap into your own mindfulness and increase your ability to remain present and aware through all of life’s situations.
Meditation is a way of exploring your mind, clearing your thoughts, owning your emotions, and really feeling your sensations. It allows for clarity and focus and does not allow for judgment – even your own review of yourself.
When you use meditation to help with your mindfulness, you eliminate judgment and let your natural curiosity work through your thoughts and mind. Doing so releases tension and stress and enables you to extend attention, kindness, and presentness to yourself and others.
So, how does it work?
If you have never meditated before, know this first: it’s an effortless, easy practice that anyone can do without any kind of training or professional guidance.
You can start by finding a quiet, comfortable place to sit. You should feel solid and stable but also relaxed and cozy.
There’s no exact science to how you should sit – again, you should be comfortable – however, the recommended pose is to either sit cross-legged on the floor, either on a mat or a pillow or on a standard chair with your feet flat on the floor.
Listen to your body in determining your posture. You should sit up, straightening your upper body, but don’t let yourself become stiff. Follow the natural curvature of your spine, and don’t force anything that doesn’t feel good.
Be intentional about your arms, too. You may have seen images of individuals meditating with their palms on their thighs or knees. This is pretty standard, so you can copy this pose. Or, you can simply let your arms rest parallel to your upper body.
Many people like to keep their eyes completely closed during meditation, but it’s not necessary. Feel free to close your eyes, but if you prefer to keep them open, you can practice dropping your chin a bit and letting your gaze fall downward. Fix your eyes on whatever they land on without really focusing on it. If you find that you can’t look at something without it distracting you, then it’s best just to keep your eyes closed.
Once you have secured your body’s position, focus now on your breathing. Breathing is a natural action that we don’t have to think about throughout the day, so you should really pay attention to the sensation and the motions. Breathe in and out steadily, either through your nose or mouth, and take note of your chest and belly rising and falling with air.
After some time focusing on your breathing, your mind may start to wander and lose focus of the action; that’s okay – that is the meditation working through your mind. Take notice of this, but don’t stop it. Instead, slowly return your thinking to your breathing, remaining kind, and non-judgemental to your wandering mind. Observe your thoughts without reactions and just pay attention.
Meditation can last as long or as little as you want or need it to. Whenever you are ready, you can slowly and softly lift your gaze or open your eyes. Be intentional about noticing your thoughts, your feelings, and the environment around you.
This simple act of meditation teaches you to drown out distractions and focus on what’s in front of you. In the case of meditation, this means focusing on your innermost thoughts and feelings. You learn to observe them without judgment and without dismissing them. Concentrating on your breathing teaches you to be present in the moment, aware of everything that is taking place so that you can do so our in the world around you.
Other Mindfulness Skills
Aside from meditation, there are other skills that you can use to strengthen your ability to stay mindful. The basics include three “what” skills and three “how” skills.
The first three skills on the list are your “what” skills, while the three that follow are how you carry them out.
Observe
In order to remain mindful in a situation, one has to be able to observe properly. Observation extends to all areas: sight, sound, taste, smell, touch. When you observe something, you take notice of it. You see the details of a painting. You analyze the taste of a donut. You form an opinion on a new song.
Observation is the most natural part of mindfulness because it is wordless and sedentary. It does not require any follow-up. In fact, most inspections occur internally. We make thousands of observations every day that don’t leave the perimeters of our minds.
Though observing is an extremely natural process, we can still practice and further develop it in terms of mindfulness.
Pick something to observe and identify which sense it involves. It can be something as simple as eating an apple. This observation can be a practice of taste. Observe how the apple tastes and really focus on those details. Entirely center your attention on nothing but the taste of that apple.
You can also practice observing by stepping back from situations and looking on without acting. This is an excellent practice for someone who also tends to be impulsive. Practice taking yourself out of a situation, regardless of your urges to act. Delve into your thoughts and really watch the motions of what is going on.
Describe
While observation is often a wordless action, describing is the complete opposite. This is a skill that you use to put words to experience or something you have observed.
Describing something can get a little confusing only in that we can often mix up our feelings and opinions with the facts. When you define an observation, you should try to stick to the facts while using emotions and beliefs as an avenue.
Let’s show a clearer picture of this.
When you observe an event or an action, your first thoughts are bound to be some kind of emotion or opinion. Something that people commonly observe is art. When you look at a piece of art, your feelings on it might be negative, while someone else feels something positive.
Your opinion of the art piece is not factual; you can’t tell everyone else that the piece is ugly because you observed it was ugly. While it’s okay to notice the emotions you feel and even come to a personal opinion on the piece, mindfulness comes into play when you observe it and state the facts: the piece of art is a painting. It uses blue, orange, and red colors. It is acrylic paint. It is depicting a sunset.
Of course, observing and describing the facts and details about something is usually more manageable when we do not have a negative opinion on it. The best way to practice describing is to pick something neutral: a leaf, a tree, a cloud. In exercising this mindfulness skill, you can write down the descriptions on a piece of paper.
You can also try describing actions. Observe people in a coffee shop and write down their actions. Pay attention to the little things they do: picking up the sugar and pouring it into their coffee, followed by picking up a stirrer and mixing the sweetener in. Write down everything – the switch of their gaze, a scratch of a hand, a smile to a stranger.
Finally, do this with your own self. As you are completing an action (washing the dishes, folding the laundry, meditating and breathing), describe it to yourself. Think about your emotions and describe them as such: this is anger; this is an annoyance; this is boredom. Describe what you’re doing: I am folding a t-shirt, I am hanging up a dress, I am matching this sock to its mate.
Participate
Observing and describing lead to one last thing: participating. The first mindfulness skills help you reach this last one. First, you watch, then you describe the facts or details, and finally, you participate.
Think about this step when you are driving. First, you observe that the street you need to be on in coming up. Then, you describe that it is a left turn at the traffic light. All of this information leads you to the conclusion that you need to turn on your left blinker to signal your turn and then rotate the steering wheel to complete it.
You learn all of this when you start driving, and perhaps the first few times you had to think through these steps. However, after a few drives, turning on your blinker to make a turn becomes second nature to you. This is the goal of the process of mindfulness.
When we practice mindfulness skills like these, we eventually fall into the habit of being mindful in most, if not all, situations.
When we enter an unfamiliar situation, we can turn to these steps to help guide us through. This is how it goes for anything unusual or something that isn’t working. You know how to turn on a light, but when you flip the switch, and nothing happens, you have to observe, describe, and participate in figuring it out.
Even though participation is where these steps naturally lead to, many people get held up at this point. It’s one thing to observe and describe because those are things you can do in the safety of your own consciousness. However, participation requires action to be taken, and that can be hard and intimidating for some of us.
In the same way, people may observe and describe us as unmindful, when in reality, we are just a little shy. Pushing yourself to participate will allow others to see you as mindful and will give you a continuous confidence boost.
Start small. Simply put yourself in a situation where you can participate in a conversation. Or, if talking isn’t your thing, join an exercise class or a cooking class where you can join with others in a larger group. The only way to improve your participation is by stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something.
Nonjudgmentally
As we mentioned earlier, these six mindfulness skills involve three “whats,” and three “hows,” and nonjudgmentally is the first of our hows. Nonjudgmentally is how we should observe, describe, and participate.
Let’s not get things too confused here; nonjudgmentally does not mean without using judgment. We always need to use good discretion to discern what is right and wrong, safe and harmful, etc.
Nonjudgmentally simply means that we recognize facts. Some may be positive facts, and others will be adverse facts – but we appreciate them all for what they are. Someone sitting in a jail cell might refer to themselves as a bad person, but that is not a fact. Instead, they can view the situation nonjudgmentally and say, “I committed a crime and got caught, and therefore I have to serve my time in a jail cell which is preventing me from furthering my career, seeing my family, and achieving my goals.”
The above statement recognizes the facts of the situation without making harsh judgments like “I’m a bad person.” When we carry out the above steps towards mindfulness with this mindset, it’s much more rewarding. Think about how much more empowering it is to say that you were responsible for your own mistakes, and now you will pay the price until you can make positive changes, rather than seeing yourself as a bad person and calling it a day.
Like we mentioned, we all make judgments every day. To practice nonjudgmentally, observe your daily judgments and describe them in terms of thoughts, postures, expressions, and tones. Whenever you find yourself thinking or saying a judgmental statement, try to replace it with facts.
One-mindfully
One of the main problems with remaining mindful and present in situations is the fact that our minds are trying to think about and accomplish so many things at once. Sure, we write out a to-do list for everything we’d like to achieve that day, but while we’re in the middle of the first task, we’re still thinking about everything else that needs to be done.
Being mindful is all about being in the moment, and that takes doing one thing at a time. Multitasking may be an impressive skill, but being one-mindful fine-tunes our actions and our thoughts, allowing us to be mindful of ourselves and others. Plus, multitasking actually cripples your ability to learn and decreases efficiency. So, while you might think to perform several tasks at once is increasing your productivity, you would actually get more done if you focused on one thing at a time.
You can practice doing things one-mindfully merely by choosing an everyday task and focusing on just that task alone. It can be super simple, like vacuuming the house, washing the dishes, or putting on makeup.
These tasks may seem very basic and one-and-done kind of deals, but really focus on doing only these tasks. Many people start washing the dishes and pause the wipe down the counter quickly. You may stop to grab a towel, prepping for the drying that comes after. You might also toss some food left in the sink in the trash can.
All of these are minor, but they are distractions that have taken you away from the task at hand. While they don’t necessarily impact you or your process in a negative way, focusing on the dishes will strengthen your mindfulness in other areas of your life.
For example, during a conversation with a friend, you might not think it’s a big deal to sneak a glance at your phone or try to untangle a necklace while you’re listening, but there’s a good chance that your friend notices these extracurricular activities and finds them distracting or rude.
Learn to do one thing at a time. Give the little things your full attention, and you will learn to be mindful across several areas of life.
Effectively
Finally, you should observe, describe, and participate effectively. Effectiveness is measured in all sorts of ways. In the workplace, you might measure your effectiveness based on results. Did you hit your sales goal for the month? If not, you are probably not being very useful. Have you gotten that stain out of the carpet using a wet paper towel? No? Again – clearly not an effective technique.
But whether or not we are effective is not always so clear and distinct. Sometimes the best way to be effective is to stop doing something, rather than doing more. And in other cases, being effective means changing your methods completely or even asking for additional help.
Some of us struggle with the difference between being willful and being productive. We are often so willing to reach a goal that we do everything we can. We try to reach our goal weight by trying every single fad diet and doing every kind of exercise in the book when in reality, consistency and a program that works for us are what will be the most effective.
Something that has a huge impact on whether or not we are effective is our emotions. Emotions are not bad – let’s set that straight right away. Emotions are natural, normal, and human. We all have emotions.
However, our emotions can cause us to be ineffective at times. So, a good way to improve upon your effectiveness in a situation is to make a list of your own emotions that you have noticed can cause you to be ineffective. For example, crying during a business meeting will probably render you ineffective in closing a deal.
On the other hand, anger can be very ineffective when trying to settle a disagreement with a loved one.
By identifying these emotions, we can better recognize what is driving us. Are we really striving to be effective, or are we letting out emotions lead the way? Am I being factual when I observe and describe that painting, or am I allowing my emotions about it decide what is right and wrong?
Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Mindfulness touches every part of our life. We can learn to be mindful listeners, being present during a conversation by observing the things that are said, describing them in our minds and to the others involved, and then actively participating.
We can also be mindful in our everyday lives, observing that someone is walking into the store behind us and being mindful enough to hold the door for them.
Be mindful of yourself, as well. Use meditation to listen to your innermost thoughts, desires, and goals, viewing them without judgment and preventing an excess of emotions from interrupting our effectiveness. We all have some level of mindfulness in us already, so it’s important that we learn to grow and develop this skill.