Before my first husband and I divorced we were fighting a lot. At some point I decided to bring my mindfulness practice into our fights and that changed everything!
It was slow, to be sure. It took about 6 months before we stopped fighting, and can you imagine how powerful that was to go from daily fights to none?
Honestly, that was one of the things that made me realize just how powerful presence really is!
You can apply this same simple method to any difficult relatives you’re going to be with this holiday season. Hopefully, you don’t fight daily!
Here’s how: when Uncle Joe is saying whatever awful things he says, be really present with him. Instead of focusing on how he’s wrong and what you’re going to say in return, focus on what he’s saying. Really listen to him.
And notice your breathing at the same time.
This will help him feel heard, which is what he really wants anyway, will help you hear and understand him on a deeper level, and most important will help you stay calm. It may take a few sessions like this, and soon you’ll be able to listen and realize that what ever he’s saying says a lot more about him than what ever he’s talking about.
You’ll realize that you don’t need to take his ideas personally. You’ll see that they aren’t yours and you don’t need to be so reactive. Eventually, you might even be able to respond in a calm and rational way, which while may not help him totally, will be a lot better for you both than what you’ve likely been doing which is probably something like fighting with or ignoring him.
I just read this great article in Mindful Magazine about defining mindfulness. I think that they make some really great points including that mindfulness is the natural ability to be aware of where we are what we’re doing (and when we aren’t we tend to get anxious), that there many different ways to practice it, no belief system is required (nor negated) and that it brings out the best in everyone.
Be in the moment.
And like most people when they discuss mindfulness, I think that they miss a really cogent point that causes a ton of confusion: being in the moment does not mean you stop thinking about the past and future.
Oh contraire.
That is a logical mistake and an important one to correct. (Not that they make it directly, they just imply it and don’t address it.)
We keep hearing and saying, “Be in the moment. In the here and now. Don’t get lost in thought, thinking about the past and future, and lose touch with were you are in the moment.” This I agree with totally.
On the other had mindfulness doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t think about the past and future. We need to learn from the past and consciously create our futures. If we never did these things we’d be aimlessly moving though life, never improving our lives or evolving our selves.
Being conscious while thinking
Mindfulness isn’t about this. Mindfulness isn’t about giving up your ability to think or grow. It’s about doing these things with awareness. The conscious part is what’s important.
Being mindful means that when you think about the past and future you do it with awareness. You’re aware that you’re in the present, the here and now, thinking about another time. It means that you’re conscious about thinking about what happened and what could happen. Simply, you keep in mind the whole time, “I’m sitting here thinking this.”
This is an amazingly important point. And so many people misunderstand it that I’ve discussing it with practically every single client I’ve ever had.
Thinking isn’t the problem
I find this a weird disconnect. Why would the mis-belief that thinking is a problem be so widespread?
I imagine we don’t question it because most of us have a hard time with our thoughts and emotions. We want our busy minds to stop. We see them as the source of our problems, the obstacle to inner peace.
The issue here is that it’s not your thoughts and emotions that are the problem. The problem is that you get lost in them. You abandon yourself to them. And then you believe them.
The good news, my friend, is that they are not your problem. You don’t need to stop them, or calm them, or even make them go away. You just need to be aware of them. You need to be sufficiently conscious of them that you start to see/remember that you are not them.
Practice to realize your truth
This comes with mindfulness practice. As you practice being aware of yourself, of your thoughts and feelings and sensations, you realize little by little and giant leap by giant leap, that you are much bigger than they are.
This isn’t an esoteric idea or some kind of state or place that you have to achieve. This is who you already are. You’re already bigger than they are. You experience this naturally every time you become aware of yourself (example: notice that you’re sitting/standing there reading this and voila, you’re bigger than your body-mind). Simple, huh? Not rocket science.
The only difference between experiencing that as unimportant and experiencing that as evidence that you’re bigger than your thoughts is that you haven’t done it enough. The more you do it, especially being aware of yourself while you’re thinking, the more obvious this becomes.
And most importantly, you need to do it for yourself. You need to find out for yourself whether this is true or not. Definitely don’t believe me. Be the arbiter of your own reality.
Meditation is my power tool for self transformation. It’s the thing that I do that makes all of the other self transformation tools actually work!
Before it, I couldn’t see myself as clearly, which made changing things difficult. With meditation, I can see my patterns, when and why I’m doing them, and that’s invaluable for evolving them.
Meditation isn’t self-transformation in itself. It is self-observation. Self-realization. Self-knowing. That’s invaluable.
If I can see myself, I can change myself. If I cannot see myself, it’s much harder to even know that there’s anything that needs changing!
I’ve practice meditation since 2004 and the changes that it’s helped me make are so compelling that I continue to practice to this day.
Thinking about something else during your practice? Maybe you were lost in thought the whole time until your timer went off and reminded you you were supposed to be practicing? That totally happens to me sometimes! Like this whole week! Yikes!
One way to deal with this is to give your mind something else to focus on. That will help keep it interested in the practice you’re doing.
Mindfulness Can Be Boring!
A big problem that most of us have is that our breath is totally boring! After a few seconds our mind goes, “Man! Where are problems to solve? The videos and movies to watch? What fun is this? I want something to do! I know! I’ll think about this…” and you’re off, lost in thought, totally oblivious to your breath.
Most of the time, I just tell myself (and you) to return to your breath. To come back to noticing your breath whenever you notice that you’re lost in thought. For many of us that’s when we complete the thought, solve the problem or finish the story. At that moment you can rejoice that suddenly you’re aware of yourself (the point of practicing mindfulness! Yay!).
And what happens if you’re so lost in thought that you spend the entirepractice thinking about something else?! This whole week, I’ve been coming to at the end of my practice and realizing that I’ve been lost the entire time! Yikes!
Giving Your Mind Something Else to Do
What’s a meditator to do? After a whole week of this, I realized that I needed to change something! So I remembered a trick I used to use when I first started meditating. This worked really well for me then and it’s working well now, too.
Here’s what I do: I slightly shift my focus to give my mind something slightly new to do. It’s like having a new problem to solve. It works especially well if there’s something to count or quantify. Here are some examples.
Practices To Play With
If you’re focusing on your breath, change from say noticing the qualities of your breath (depth, speed, sensation, etc) to counting your breath. My mind goes, “Oh! You want me to count! Ok! This is something to do! Great!” You can go the other way too. If counting is boring you, change to noticing the qualities. Notice things like how deep or shallow you’re breathing. Or how fast or slow. Or what sensations you can feel. Or the sounds of breathing. Here’s a free guided breathing practice for noticing general qualities (vs counting).
Another example would be if you’re working with your eyes open, you can go from a specific focus, say on the candle in front of you, to soft eyes or noticing your whole field of vision (soften your gaze so that you’re not looking at anything in particular and notice everything in your peripheral vision). Or the other way round, going from soft to specific. You can follow a free guided meditation for having your eyes open here.
In the video I talk about changing up a sound practice if you’d like to try that (also free).
Contra Indications – Things to keep in mind.
Of course, you can also plow through, don’t change your practice at all and know that at some point you will be able to focus again. Someday your mind will settle down and you will be able to focus on your breath during your practice.
In general that’s good advice, especially since the object is to learn to focus and tricking yourself into focusing will only work for so long or so well…
Ultimately you can’t use your mind to meditate. You want to use that larger part of yourself, that part that you naturally access when you’re noticing yourself. This part, when you’re observing, witnessing or noticing yourself, is “larger” than your mind, and that’s really what you want to access. Changing up your practice to help your mind focus is really just a way to get your mind to calm down a bit so that you can notice yourself.
Keeping the Ultimate Goal In Mind
If it helps you be less frustrated when you practice, then play with slightly changing your focus. Keep in mind that when you change your focus, you want to be aware of yourself focusing, à la, “I’m here counting my breath.” or “I’m here looking at this candle.” and you’ll be accessing that larger part of you. You’ll be observing or noticing yourself. Awesome. You’re mindful.
I hope that helps you! Now I just have to follow my own advice! It worked earlier this week, and then I just got excited about the problems I was solving and left my practice in the dust… Ah, the life of a meditator! Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s fun to see what crazy things we get up to, hey?
Excellent question! One I don’t talk about much, in part because it’s difficult to explain!
Mindfulness is an experience and experiences, by nature are easier to experience than explain. It’s a lot like describing the experience of what an apple tastes like to someone who’s never tasted an apple. I can describe my experience, and how much better it is to just hand you an apple!
Likewise, it’s much easier for me to share the experience with you and have you decide from your experience why to practice mindfulness – or not – than it is for me to describe my experience and have you decide.
So, in this case, I’m going to stop writing and say, watch the video! Have the experience and draw your own conclusions.
I will say, as I do in the video, that mindfulness make my life richer. I’m much more aware of what’s going on inside and outside of me. This awareness adds texture, sound, complexity and vividness that otherwise I would miss.
It also helps me notice my uncomfortable unconscious and/or habitual patterns… and as uncomfortable as that can be (!!!), that knowledge allows me to start changing them. Of course, I use all kinds of other tools to help me change any deep psychological-emotional patterns. Mindfulness (awareness of them) isn’t enough. What mindfulness does allow me to do is recognize that those patterns exist (recognition is an important step!) and notice when they’re happening so that I can apply the tools of change. Mindfulness is the meta-tool that allows all of the other tools to work. It’s a kind of superpower that supercharges everything else.
Test it out. You might like it. If not, there are lots of other ways to evolve!
When you’re practicing mindfulness, inevitably you start thinking about something… that thing that happened yesterday, what you want to happen tomorrow, what you think about sitting here, etc.
This is actually a good thing… It means you’re alive and you’re not brain dead. (Congratulations!) Just like your heart beating, as long as you’re alive, your brain is going to be active and your mind is going to think. This is natural and normal and an important part of being alive: it’s how you’re able to understand yourself and your environment (on a mental level).
Distracted By Thoughts
The only issue is that it’s easy to get distracted by our thoughts to the point that we’re no longer noticing that we’re practicing. For example, if we’re sitting in our room, practicing being aware of our breath (which is a fancy way of saying that we’re noticing ourself inhale and exhale), it’s easy to get so caught up in our thoughts about that super annoying guy and that ridiculous thing he said at work yesterday, that we completely forget that we’re actually sitting here breathing. We lose touch with our physical bodies, and transport ourselves in time and space to work, yesterday! Mentally, we’re totally unaware of the room we’re sitting in – we’re at work!
We do this all of the time. We’re physically in one place and yet totally unaware of it, because mentally we’re thinking about being in another place. This is a classic example of being “lost in thought.” This doesn’t bother most people too much. You may only really notice it when you’re practicing. You complete your thought (“Next time he says that, I’m gonna say this!”), your mind returns to you sitting here, and “Oops! I’m thinking about something else and I’m supposed to be watching my breath!”
Immediately, you (likely) think that you’re not practicing well. You’ve been told to notice your breath, and you just caught yourself doing something else! Oops. Bad.
Aware of Thoughts
Well, actually, not bad. Good! Here’s a secret: if you’re practicing mindfulness because you want to be more aware of yourself, more present throughout your day, that means that you need to build the muscle of being aware of yourself even when you’re thinking. Functionally, that means that you stay aware of yourself sitting in the room while you’re thinking about work. Your thought process works something like this, “I’m sitting here watching my breath AND I notice that I’m also thinking about work.” In other words, you’re thinking about work while still aware that you’re sitting there.
You can do this now, by reading the next sentence while being aware that you’re sitting there reading it. Notice that your body is in whatever space you’re in (or how your feet feel on the floor) while you read this.
Even simpler, look around you right now and be aware of your body sitting here while you do it. Think/be aware that, “I’m sitting here in this place looking around.” Easy. (Please do it if you haven’t. Otherwise, you might have no idea what I’m talking about, and that experience is really important to understanding the next sentence.)
How does it work?
This is exactly what you do with awareness of thoughts. You just stay aware of yourself (your body if you like) while you’re thinking. Basically, “I’m (sitting) here, thinking this thought.” That’s exactly what you did above when you were aware of yourself while reading.
It’s pretty easy to be aware of ourselves while looking around (seeing what’s in front of us). It’s much harder to stay aware of ourselves while we’re thinking (for very long). This is because we’re so used to distracting ourselves (from where we are physically) with our thoughts. You start thinking about work, and you totally ignore where your body is. It’s habit. We’re incredibly good at distracting ourselves with our thoughts. Even if someone is talking directly to you, you can go off in your head, thinking about something else, and completely miss a whole paragraph of what the person is saying to you. Distraction is a strong muscle. We exercise it a lot.
And if there is any problem with thinking during practice, this is it. It’s that we get distracted from noticing (ourselves). We stop being aware and we start being distracted.
So how is thinking during practice good?
Well, that moment that you notice, “Hey, I’m supposed to be noticing my breath, but instead I’m thinking about something else,” is a moment of perfect awareness. You’ve just accomplished the difficult task of being aware of yourself while you’re thinking! Super!
The secret is that every time you do that, you’ve just exercised a new muscle. The muscle of awareness while thinking. And as you exercise this new muscle, the muscle of distraction will naturally get weaker.
Being aware of ourselves (sitting here) while we’re thinking, is really tough, so every time you get distracted and come back and notice that you’re thinking, you’ve just won the jackpot! Every time this happens you can celebrate! This is a challenging muscle to build, so every time you do it is a gift of pure gold…
So, next time you practice, if you get distracted a million times, realize that you’ve just given yourself a million times to experience mental awareness! Wow! Such riches!
Next time your mind is going crazy, be grateful. Every time you come back and realize that you’re thinking about something else, you’ve won the lottery. You’re giving yourself the gift of strengthening this new muscle of awareness.
If your goal for mindfulness practice is to be more mindful (present, aware, conscious), then the first thing to remember is that good or bad practice isn’t defined by how calm your mind or emotions are.
What?!
I know. Most of us fall into that trap of thinking a calm mind means we’re having a good practice and a busy mind means bad practice.
It’s tricky because there’s a lot of (mis)information out there that says the goal of mindfulness practice is to calm your mind. And, of course, then you naturally think that should be calming your mind when you practice. Calm mind = good practice. Busy mind = bad practice.
Frankly, it’d just not true. The goal is awareness. Not a calm mind. (Realize: Your mind can be totally crazy and you can be aware of it.)
Then it get’s even trickier!:
One of the side effects of mindfulness practice is a calm mind. And the more we practice, the more it happens.
AND it’s so enjoyable when it happens that we can start to make it the goal.
The problem is that it’s an unreachable goal, so if you start to make it your goal you will fail. Why? Because it’s your mind creating this as a goal. Your mind thinks it wants to calm itself, and this is a thought. The mind cannot calm thoughts with more thoughts. It’s sort of like fire trying to put itself out with more fire. Yikes.
What does work is to notice your thoughts, notice “I’m thinking.” By noticing your thoughts, you stop adding to them, you stop fueling the fire and it naturally calms down. This is because the part of you that notices your thoughts is actually larger than, or outside of, your mind. By practicing observing your mind you learn to naturally step outside of it into this bigger part of you. When you step out, you stop adding fuel: you take your foot off of the gas. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, rest assured that you do this all of the time without realizing it. Stepping into observation or witness mode is natural, you just don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. That’s why we practice this on purpose when we meditate – so that become aware when we’re doing it. Easy.)
This is how you get better at mindfulness: Simply, practice noticing whatever is happening.
Noticing a crazy mind is just as good as noticing a calm mind. The point isn’t to attain calm. The point is to get better and better at noticing, to be more and more aware, more and more conscious of whatever is happening. If you notice that your mind gets calm while you do this, great. If you notice that it gets even more crazy, great. You’re noticing. That’s good practice.
So, notice your crazy thoughts and emotions. Practice being aware of them. Come back to that over and over. You will get better just by doing it. That’s how you make your practice better. Notice.
Are you noticing increased levels of anxiety and depression around you?
I’m sad to say I am. And since those are two common outcomes of modern stress, my first thought was, Oh my God, we’re getting more stressed. Really?!
But, actually I don’t think it’s that. I’m not even sure it’s possible for us to be more stressed, because that would require that we be even more busy, take on more, do more, etc. … and there’re only 24 hours in a day.
What makes more sense to me is that we’re seeing the cumulative effects of all of these years of stress we’ve been enduring. After 5, 10, 20 years of overtaxing our bodies, we’re seeing these results of constant biochemical overload: more anxiety and more depression.
So if that’s what’s happening, the question becomes, is it worth it? Is whatever you’re doing that’s creating this constant stress worth your health and happiness?
That’s a serious question to ask yourself. And it’s not so easy to answer with honesty. Most of us have too many conflicting desires that are as deep as power, control and survival. A few little things to deal with…
What if you do want to move in the direction of more health and happiness? Would it help to start small? What are the little, simple, easy things you can do right now? Today? What things are you willing to do every day? Can you take more breaks, or eat lunch everyday, or relax every day, or, or, or? Can you prioritize you?
It’s an important question to ask yourself. It’s even more important to realize that you make these decisions each day, everyday, all day. You’re constantly prioritizing your health and happiness. Or not. Anxiety and depression aside, stress isn’t a great companion if you want a long and healthy life. And happy? I’m sure happier when I can think straight versus running in circles with my stress reactions. Little steps, everyday help me a lot. Maybe they’ll help you, too.
So many of us sit at our computers with our shoulders hunched forward or up around our ears, and it hurts! It also weakens our muscles through overuse.
Keeping our muscles in any contracted position for a long time will cause pain as the muscles become fatigued. It also weakens the muscles because we’re asking them to work with out giving them any rest and little nourishment. Just like your body, which needs rest and food in order to rejuvenate and be strong, your muscles are the same.
Why? Take this simple example: Imagine if you worked for many days and nights without eating or sleeping. You’d eventually run out of energy and be very weak, because your body needs rest and nourishment in order to replenish the energy you’re using to do the work.
Your muscles are the same. They need periods of rest and plenty of nourishment in order to replenish the energy they’re using when they contract. Your muscles aren’t designed to contract and stay that way for long periods of time. They’re designed to contract for short periods and release, contract and release. If you’re holding your shoulders forward or up around your ears for hours at a time, the energy needed to hold this position will eventually run out and you’ll need to relax in order for them to rejuvenate. They will be weak for awhile (while they recover), and of course if you’re holding this posture a lot, you’re creating chronic weakness, stiffness and likely a pain in the neck. :)
The solution to this is to relax! Change your habit of holding your shoulders up or forward for letting them stay in a nice neutral position.
How? One way is to bring awareness to your habit. How are you holding your shoulders right now? How about when you’re typing? When you’re walking? Etc. As you begin to notice what you’re doing, you can choose to change. You can gently relax your shoulders each time you notice and overtime you’ll patiently change your habit from hunched to relaxed and resilient.
(video: 10:06; I’ve added subtitles to compensate for the microphone.)
Shoulders up around your ears more often than you’d like? Do you frequently find yourself hunched forward over your computer? Painful? Sore? Stiff?
These poor posture habits can be changed with a little awareness.
This 10-minute yoga practice will bring your attention to your shoulders, soften and gently stretch them. Feels great and the focus on your shoulders is an awareness you can bring into your day to help you change your habits!
You can do this practice at different times for different goals: in the morning to start you say with this awareness, or midday as a wonderful rejuvenating pause, or at the end to gently wind down and release tension.
However you use it, let it help you bring awareness to how you’re sitting at your desk, standing and moving through life. With this growing awareness, you can choose to relax and relieve your shoulder muscles. Overtime, your shoulders will be where they’re serving you best: in a neutral, relaxed position, ready to move in any direction with ease and power!
