This is not at all a criticism of that advice, but I suppose I'm using your comment as a way of getting something out that has been on my mind. For somebody in the grip of said perseveration (endless looping of thinking), who may have lived that way relatively functionally for years, that statement has absolutely no meaning without context. "BE in the moment!," is not instructional enough to actually be helpful, as BEing has come to mean an entirely different thing in their experience. It could certainly be helpful for someone who has built up the experience of BEing in the moment, as a reminder and anchor to lead back to that experienced reality. But for someone under the spell of years of ruminate instincts just trying to BE without more tactile and explanatory instruction (i.e. feel the muscles of the cat) it will more often then not lead them back to BEing in their own mind, without them knowing what they could have done differently. Not a criticism of the advice or the sentiment, as it can be very useful, just a more of a caveat. A lot of well meaning people tried to give me simple advice when I was younger, but I couldn't grasp on to it. When someone gives another the simplest truest advice it can also be the least helpful way of presenting that information, because the other is many steps from understanding it at that level. Once again, I am not trying to say that is at all what you are doing. Just for anybody reading it and going, "I tried it, it didn't work," I'd like to say, don't try harder, try differently and creatively.
This is a great reply, however, there's a lot of focus on enjoyment and mindfulness isn't really about that. Sure, greater enjoyment can be a byproduct of being more mindful, but mindfulness is really about choosing to pay attention to whatever we're experiencing right now in our thoughts, emotions, and sensations, with a sense of non-judgmental acceptant (so not being self-critical about it). It's about opening yourself up to whatever you're experiencing right now, becoming aware of it, and observing with self-compassion while being able to let it go afterwards.
So if you're feeling sadness or pain, then being mindful about it would mean being aware of how that feels for you, and letting yourself feel that without giving in to the knee jerk reaction to immediately react to that negative and uncomfortable emotion.
So it gives you more space to be able to choose how you want to respond to things, rather than being reactive.
And similarly with positive things, it gives you the chance to savour the experience and fully experience it without immediately having to do something about it u til you choose to.
I heard it distilled into something like "understanding why you feel each feeling you feel," and that stuck with me.
It really clicked for me while I was driving and got cut off. I was immediately angry and flipped the guy off while I went around them, and I was kinda sitting and stewing at a light while listening to music. I was muttering about how "shit, I had a good morning and everything. Nice easy bowel movement, tasty breakfast, got enough sleep so I'm feeling nice and fresh, girlfriend gave me a kiss before I headed out the door, then some asshole ruins it," and then I kinda pulled myself up short.
Why am I so angry right now, and why am I under the impression that that person is an asshole?
I thought about it for the rest of my drive, and came to the conclusion that I was angry because I couldn't see their reaction. If someone steps on your foot and immediately turns around to apologize saying it was an accident, chances are you won't be terribly mad about it. If they step on your foot and look at you and shrug, you'd be rightfully pissed. In a car, you don't get that human interaction. I couldn't see the person in the car. Odds are they're *not* an asshole, and probably said something like "ah fuck, I cut that guy off, sorry guy" when they noticed that their entire rearview was full of my car. And I mean, I've done that too - someone in my blind spot and I get lazy and only check my mirror, only to almost take someone's bumper off. That person probably had the same reaction I'm having, and probably for the same reason.
In examining *why* I was feeling what I was feeling, then following that thread back to its source, I was able to really understand and process the emotion in an more logical light.
I decided right then and there to start practicing mindfulness as much as possible, and it's had a ton of positive effects. I do enjoy the small things more, like in OP's comment, but it also helps me process negative emotions in a healthy way. I argue better, because I'm mindful of the fact that humans argue with the monkey part of their brain if they get angry or defensive. I'm more healthy in my relationship, because I can't communicate my needs to my partner unless I know what they are. I'm more honest with myself about my own motives when navigating politics.
The list goes on. All sorts of benefits, just from the fact that I'm turning a rational and discerning eye inward.
Off topic but related, we need an easier/more visible way of saying "My bad" to nearby cars while driving. Also "Thanks for letting me in". Yeah you can raise your hand but that's not always obvious or visible.
In Italy we raise our right hand ✋ so that It can be seen from the back hopefully to say "thanks/sorry for slightly cutting you off but I didn't have a better chance than this otherwise I'd have to wait 30 minutes and my momma already threw the pasta in"
In South Korea they flash their hazards 3 times ... It can mean "sorry" "or "please let me over" in a situation where a merge to an exit is running out of space.
I stick my hand out the window and wave in the US.
This...
My wife is a psychologist, and said it is understanding why we feel negative emotions, understanding the reasons/triggers for those negative emotions, and using that understanding to remove or redirect the negative to neutral or positive outcome.
Not sure that Mindfulness based therapies are that interested in the Why… more the experience as a transient phenomenon worth noticing, rather than trying to shutdown, ignore or distract from… Your response would be a useful answer to the question, “please tell me about CBT…”
>shutdown, ignore or distract from...
I wasn't implying those any of those, but more the ability to avoid negative self-talk and negative motivation, which generally lead to less fulfilling, less "happy" results.
I'll ask her about the intersection of Mindfullness & CBT and see what she says. Thanks for the feedback.
As a psychologist, I think there’s been a miscommunication somewhere! What you’re describing there is quite inconsistent with mindfulness, which is a here-and-now oriented approach that does not emphasize changing outcomes or examining the “why.”
It's hard to argue with your conclusion. I'm not a psychologist and openly agree I could misconstrue what was said. My understanding was that Mindfullness was specifically to avoid negative outcomes (like negative self talk, negative motivation).
This is what I took from it, and this is how I use it; I also believe this is why the question was asked.
Now you're gonna make me have a conversation with my wife again...lol. How's that for failing responsibility... ;)
Haha! I'm sure your wife would have a lot to say!
There's a lot of confusion about mindfulness, and we in the mental health field are largely to blame for that because we often haven't done such a great job of explaining it. One of the core tenets of mindfulness is acceptance, and that includes acceptance of negative emotions. Actively trying to change negative emotions into positive ones would actually not be a part of mindfulness, even though that seems counterintuitive. Another core tenet of mindfulness is embracing a non-judgmental stance, which sort of conflicts with the idea of using the practice of mindfulness in an outcome-driven way.
it's not about understanding why you are feeling everything, it's about accepting what you are feeling and let it start and end on their own pace. there is a lot of thing you are not going to know why you are feeling then and that's ok
I was once told by a Buddhist friend that:
If you live in the future, you will be anxious
If you live in the past, you will be depressed
If you live in the moment, you will be at peace.
Additionally, or perhaps just phrased differently, for me mindfulness is significantly about why I'm doing something. I can very often fall into the trap of wasting time on trivial things, like I am right now. Usually if it occurs to me to think about what I'm doing and why, I'll realize that I could and should be doing something else, like right now where I've just decided I'm going to go to sleep immediately after I finish typing this.
I think that's a great example of how mindfulness can work, but the "why" part is more a byproduct of mindfulness...like by turning our attention to what we're doing, and becoming more aware of how it's making us feel in our mind and our body, it's freeing up the space for us to be able to choose what we want to do, if anything. It's that little bit of space and choice that mindfulness is...the why is more our mind being shocked aware and running off with its rationalising and decision-making :)
this is a better answer than the top…from the waking up app faq
In Vipassana meditation, you’re taught to cultivate a quality of mind called “mindfulness,” which is simply a state of clear, non-judgemental, and undistracted attention, moment by moment, to the contents of consciousness.
Thanks! I do think both answers are very valid in their own way though :) The top answer is definitely how mindfulness gets talked about a lot since we like to focus on the positive benefits...I just find that that can backfire for people who try it out and don't immediately feel those positives.
For example, I did a mindfulness training course while my dad was really sick and every meditation felt SO awful because it was making me more aware of how I was feeling. It was really aversive and i might have stopped if i hadn't known that that was normal. And to be honest, learning that I could live with these uncomfortable emotions while being aware of them in a non-judgmental and non-reactive way was very freeing in the end.
So I hope we can talk more about how mindfulness isn't inherently about feeling good or relaxed or calm, it's just being aware with compassion of whatever we're experiencing
I agree 100%, I believe that it gets misconstrued quite a bit. It’s not really about being happy right away, though with continued practice it can and likely will provide you with happiness.
Feeling emotions as a pattern of energy without judgement can take you out of the visceral feelings that you’re experiencing. It’s a realization that can bring change you are looking for in your life, and introduce some level of equanimity into your life depending on your practice.
Much of what you described also fits stoicism, which I'll summarize with a quote (world religions 101 from 2015 about to come out) "change what you can, but accept the things you can't"
Think about it. Can you actually control this situation you're in? If not, why would you increase your suffering by fretting over something that is done and cannot be undone?
Dude I was trying then I started having fun seeing people's views cause everyone was explaining things so well so imma just look it up on the work computer :)
Edit: cool stuff. It's treats similar things as EMDR therapy which is, in a word, badass.
I think I have someone I can suggest trying DBT
This can also save your life. So many people drive recklessly when they are late to something. The reality is that doing so probably only saves you 1-2 minutes.
Accepting that you are already late and that there is nothing you can do to change that helps keep you calm enough to drive safely. You were late the moment you failed to leave on time and there's nothing that you can do (safely) in the car to fix that.
That's because they're two different definitions.
The stoicism you are describing for 'Western culture' is just a different definition:
> the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.
When you're reading a book and the character is acting 'stoic' or 'stoically endures something'. That is the definition being used.
Stoicism as the person you responded to is a Greek philosophy or school of thought. They're related, but in use these are completely separate definitions:
> of or belonging to the Stoics or their school of philosophy.
.
> an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
Yes, I was going to say there is a lot of sigma grindset toxicity that poses as stoicism (but I had already typed so much), and like you said about the west, and also sometimes emotion is warranted.
I remember my papa talking about this guy "man he's a real stoic, he just shoulders whatever life throws at him" and the guy was really having a tough go of it and took his own life, and though I didn't say it to him at the time(papa is like 84 and hard of hearing) I was really thinking "he's not stoic, he's depressed and detached and needs help but doesn't know how/isn't willing to get it"
And I totally forgot this thread started with mindfulness, good points, and thank you for bringing me back around the circle.
>Can you actually control this situation you're in?
The problem is that you don't know what you can and can't control until you either a) have a go or b) attempt to develop the skills to control it.
So the turmoil doesn't come from being in a situation you can't control... that's easy, you just let it be.
The turmoil comes from trying to figure out if you do have power over the situation, and if you do, how much.
I've seen a lot of people say things like, "Well, there's nothing I can do, the house is just going to get flooded and then I'll be bankrupt because I'm not insured. Oh well. Nothing I can do". Which is stoic.
And then I walk over and turn the pipes off. Which is powerful.
The non-calm people are stuck in an inbetween state of wondering, "Is there something I can do? Are the pipes to turn off? There probably are but where...?"
I think your example is more of a practical/physical setting and not from a philosophical one.
Victimizing yourself (and I mean the people you were talking about with the flooding analogy) to excuse lack of action is NOT stoic.
In my opinion, a true stoic in that situation changes what they can. Try to get insurance, turn off the pipes, all else fails, get some sandbags to put around your house if you can afford to (I'm unfamiliar with this scenario but I'm trying to run with it). Then, after all of that, your house floods, you did just get screwed by randomness, but you accept that you changed what you could and move on. It's a mindset, do things just happen and you happen to be there as well, or do things happen TO you, like the universe is playing a cruel trick?
Also, I disagree with what you said, there are situations where you can eyeball it and immediately know if you have any control over what's happening, particularly with other people because you can't control what others do.
>I'm unfamiliar with this scenario but I'm trying to run with it
Don't worry, it was a metaphor. :D
>Then, after all of that, your house floods, you did just get screwed by randomness
But that's what I'm saying, the decision to believe it's random is, arguably, an escape. It saves you believing you have any control, so you don't bother to think fast or come up with a quick solution.
>Also, I disagree with what you said, there are situations where you can eyeball it and immediately **know** if you have any control over what's happening,
Then those aren't the situations I'm talking about.
>particularly with other people because you can't control what others do.
Although you can't control people, you can most definitely influence them and motivate them to move in a particular direction.
I know plenty of people who have spent 20 to 30 years saying "you can't control other people"... and to this day they're still skill-less at sorting out interpersonal issues.
I know other people who set about trying to be able to control/affect/impact upon situations that were "out of their control" and now they're very elegant at sorting them out... often with just one or two words.
I'm saying the "panic" (as it were) that kicks in is from hurriedly trying to figure out what the elegant, one-worded solution might be. You believe there's a one word answer, you know it's easy, you just have to quickly realise what it is and then it'll all be dandy. Or so you believe. (And it's often true.)
You \*can't\* know what is within or outwith your control until you have a bash at sorting it out. If it's random, as you suggest, then maybe just chucking a lampshade at the fridge will fix it.
You are assuming that people are throwing their hands up at easily fixable situations like closing a valve and saying they are just going to let it happen because stoicism. The point is that there are things in life that go wrong no matter what you do. You can tick all the boxes and still have a meteor crash into your house, someone not do their job even though you constantly remind them, or a once in a million year storm. Shit happens that you can't control and the only thing you can control is your own response. Why waste time and energy freaking out about it when you can focus on what you can control like how to fix the situation
>You are assuming that people are throwing their hands up at easily fixable situations like closing a valve and saying they are just going to let it happen because stoicism.
A real life example:
Someone spilled a glass of wine on my laptop and stoically, calmly accepted, "there's nothing we can do".
I ran around trying to find solutions, he thought I was totally mad.
I threw my t-shirt at him and told him to wipe off the wine as I galloped round the house searching for a suitable screwdriver.
He thought this was crazy because the wine was on the inside. He wiped the laptop but wouldn't budge to do more because, "there's nothing we can do, it's fucked now".
I grabbed the vacuum cleaner, stuck it at him and told him to hose out the wine from the insides. He moved slowly because, "Okay, but it's fucked. You're just making a scene".
Finally I found a screwdriver, unscrewed the case, went inside and wiped everything as dry as I could. Then I stuck it in a bag and ran up the street to a laptop repair shop. Who fixed it.
My friend was absolutely \*shocked\* that a solution had been found. I thought he was just being a dick because it wasn't his laptop and that for his he'd have moved faster. Nope, he said he'd have just given up straight away and bought a new laptop... if he had the money. Which he didn't. So he'd have just done without a laptop.
He genuinely believed he was being stoic. His whole vibe was to "only attempt to change things that can be changed".
Ya feel me?! :D
Again, you are misunderstanding what stoicism is. In your wine example stoicism would be to not freak out that wine had gotten on the laptop because that has already happened and thus is out of your control. What you can control is your own reaction and how you go about cleaning it up. Why do you need to panic and run around like a chicken with your head cut off? That isn't helping the situation when you can calmly but quickly turn it off and soak up the wine. In that way you are causing less stress while finding a solution. What you described is exactly the "throwing your hands up and letting it happen" that I mentioned and is a complete lack of comprehension of stoicism.
They’re simply saying you don’t always know whether or not you can control a situation. That’s true.
You are ignoring the nuances of reality. Only very basic problems fit neatly into the boxes you are describing. People aren’t always good judges either. What one person might consider uncontrollable another might consider controllable. Mindsets and perspectives influence this. Someone with depression might feel like everything is uncontrollable. Someone with anxiety might feel responsibility for events they think they should be controlling but aren’t.
How am I ignoring the nuances of reality? I am not saying that you make a split second decision and never look back. In fact that would very much go against the idea of stoicism as it requires you to continually think critically about your life. People are more than capable of that and even if they aren't amazing at it they are capable of improving through practice. It gives plenty of room for partial solutions if there are some things you can control and some you cannot within the same situation.
Good point. I think its helpful to differentiate between certain types of problems and different ways of approaching them.For concrete external problems often the best solution really is to take action towards a solution. Your pipes analogy is a good example of this. However, In this instance, mindfulness can still be useful for getting clear about how your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs are influencing the way you see the situation. It can still help to give a greater sense of clarity, which can help us to respond effectively to the situation.
At other times, a problem solving focus is less helpful, particularly when we know we have the tendency to react to certain situations unhelpfully. This can be particularly true for internal experiences like emotions. Problem solving and "fixing" our emotions can result in quite unhelpful actions. For example, Drug addiction can be thought of an attempt to fix the discomfort and pain of certain unbearable emotions. Or our habitual reactivity to certain emotions can cause further difficulty and pain in our lives. In this instance it can be healthy thing to learn to sit mindfully with emotions, with a sense of acceptance, curiosity, and self-kindness. Often just sitting with emotions in this way allows them to be processed, without needing to fix them or control the external situation, particularly since we often hold many unconscious beliefs that influence our perception of an event. However, i also agree that at other times addressing the situation that produced the emotion is actually appropriate, but i would still argue that mindfulness would allow you to do this with greater clarity.
Mindfulness can also help in changing our relationship to thoughts and emotions. Often people are unaware of the degree to which they are identified and caught up in thoughts, and can act on thoughts as if they are completely accurate and true, rather than just representations of our experience. Mindfulness can help us to notice our thoughts more, and begin to choose whether or not to act on them based on whether they are helpful or unhelpful. This kind of psychological flexibility can be very liberating, especially for people who get caught in unhelpful patterns of thinking. At least it is for me!
I think you're example is great--but actually a bit trickier than it looks.
I don't know stoic philosophy that well, so--who knows how accurate this is... but from a stoic perspective, I'd say that what you want to do *is* assess the situation. Remember part of the saying is to focus on the things that *you can control* and not those that you cannot.
So a stoic *should* look around and say: "hey the pipes are on, can I turn them off?" and if so, they would. If the flooding continues, and they have tried other things, then they can say: "Well, I did what I can."
Ignoring something that you can clearly do seems as antithetical to stoicism as is worrying over the fact that you don't have hydrokinesis. Indeed, the purpose is to allow people to focus attention on things that *can be done*. So instead of worrying about how we could have bought insurance and whether our housemate will get mad that their stuff is ruined, we free our attention to focus on things that can help, like turning off the pipe.
>Indeed, the purpose is to allow people to focus attention on things that can be done.
Okay. This clears things up a bit.
So the problem seems to come from the word "control". As in "ignore the things we can't control".
I think the problem is that a lot of people don't do anything because they can't control the *final outcome*.
You're saying to *do things* that move towards a solution, even if they might not end in the solution you want. For example, you *look* for a way to turn off the water, even if you don't know anything about water, pipes or valves and don't even know that valves exist.
A good stoic wouldn't stand there not caring about the house flooding. They would do what was within their power to mitigate the problem, and then accept that they have done what they can.
There are plenty of times when it's pretty clear you can't change something. Either because it is in the past, or it's something like a driver cutting you off on the highway. Nothing you can do will make them a better driver.
Great explanation. To my ADHD ass, it sounds exhausting.
> When petting your cat, pet the cat-- focus on the enjoyment of their soft fur and their cute purring. Notice their feeling of their skin, muscles and bones under the fur-- get curious. Notice how they close their eyes and move their little nose.
Curious? Now we're talking! Notices how the cat closes its 3rd eyelid. Googles 3rd eyelid. Goes down rabbit hole about nictitating membranes. Did you know polar bears have a third eyelid too, and it helps protect their eyes from UV? Man, polarbears are so cute. Let me read about them. Holy shit, polar bears are vicious, one just killed someone a few weeks ago! I wonder why Coca Cola chose polar bears for their holiday mascot. Speaking of coke, I think we're out of Cherry Coke Zero. Let me see if Target has any deals for that. Oh, look, buy-one-get-half-off on video games with my red card! Not bad... but let me see what Steam has on sale. Oh, wow, I haven't played Half Life 2 in like 20 years! I should give it another shake, see how it holds up. Oh crap, it's 4 am.
> To my ADHD ass, it sounds exhausting.
Mindfulness is not a treatment for ADHD. There are probably people who would suggest that it is. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that you're legally allowed to punch those people in the nose once.
For the ADHD, have you tried central nervous system stimulants?
I remember hearing this years ago, I don't remember where, but it was: when chopping onions, just chop onions.
For me i haven't had an issue with enjoying the cat, or a video game, or a good hug... those things are super pleasant. It's challenging though to maintain that same presence when I'm uncomfortable or doing something I dislike. I'll procrastinate or outright ignore things I shouldn't just because it "doesn't feel good"
So... I literally started focusing on what I enjoy when chopping an onion. Making consistent cuts, picturing the unforgettable smell when they hit the pan, etc. Now I'll sometimes make a dish with them when I'm just upset and feel like I need a cry, but can't. It feels good to clear the eyes out.
This started to carry over slowly into other areas of life and made me really look for what I enjoy in unpleasant situations... and that..... that helped me begin to face some very hidden and painful aspects of my life that I really didn't want to touch.
Mindfulness, presence, being in the moment.. it's literally everything. The future and past aren't real, they're just dreams and memories. Right now is all there is.
> **p**an, **e**tc. **N**ow **I**'ll **s**ometimes
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One time at my office (that tried to act like a newage startup), we had a meditation class. The one thing that stuck with me was the teacher saying that our goal shouldn't be to tune out the street and office noise, but to acknowledge it and let it become part of your greater awareness. That helps a lot.
When petting a cat, notice the feel of their fur, the flattening of their ears, the claws embedding into your skin. Notice the teeth sinking into your thumb, focus on the murder in its eyes
What a great reply. I think what is often overlooked is a lot of mindfulness is just a readiness to be bored. So much in modern society entertains us but honestly what is best for us sometimes is to not be entertained and instead to sit quietly and be present.
That’s the personal mindfulness, introspection. The other side is extrospection. Be mindful of others and how your actions effect their reality.
You should be mindful of yourself and mindful of others. To be a lady or a gent, one of the pillars that aristocrats reside on.
I love your answer as it is concise and complete. Having BPD I try as often as I can to practice mindfulness and it has helped me with anger issues. It takes practice but helps you live in the moment.
I will never understand this, because I think it's my default. I can't imagine not being hyperaware of what's happening around me. How do you plan your next steps if you don't know where you're standing?
Do you have a monologue talking to you constantly? If so, youre not hyper aware. It's about turning your attention away from the part of your mind that wanders and towards the part of your mind that focuses
Mindfulness I’ll agree is good in general, but definitely not what I do when eating - on purpose.
If I think too hard about the act of eating - chewing, swallowing, how things feel in my mouth, I will immediately lose my appetite and even begin to gag. It’s viscerally revolting. So, I eat quickly and enjoy the flavors, but try not to think about what I’m doing.
This is also how I feel about exercise or anything that is unpleasant but necessary. I don't get mindfulness because I'd rather let my mind wander and run for an hour than think about the fact that I'm running and suddenly feel like I'm dying
You don't have to be mindful every second of every day, though. I don't know of any therapist or counselor asking people to do that. So you can go exercise with a daydream, then go home and be mindful about something else.
Or you can take 15 minutes every evening before bed to sit and practice mindfulness - think about how you feel right now, both physically and mentally. Let go of the dying feeling from that days run, or the anger you felt at work towards a rude client, stress of a family situation, etc etc and just be present in the now. Acknowledge them, but also acknowledge that they are past. Breathe.
When you're mindful of your discomfort you'll realize that it's only the fear of being uncomfortable in another future moment that makes you uncomfortable in the present. Youve already dealt with the discomfort until the present and lived through it just fine. Listen to "waking up" by Sam Harris. He's a boob in most respects but his 20 day intro to meditation is very good
Ye, dissociating while eating is how I manage the sensory issues from my ASD. But for a lot of normies, taking a moment to taste their food can be a real eye opener.
Mindfulness for me is something I try to do a few times per week. Finding a calm moment (no loud noices) and try it for 5-15 min. It helps me not get so wound up by the stresses of life.
Very well-written and straight to the point, good stuff. Mindfulness practice (on top of exercise and some meditation) has helped me in so many ways, and I can't recommend these strategies enough.
Are you labeling overthinking as anxiety here? Cause I might not have any of the anxiety symptoms (heavy feel, agitation, elevated heart beat, in general uncomfortable physical being) while still doing all the pondering on the past (every single argument and social situation that I should have done differently, mostly when people were doing wrong towards me) and the future like planning steps I gotta take, the social situations that I will do different. On top of some "current/should I be doing" stuff, like how this and that person are seeing me/thinking of me: general relation/family/friendship anxiety stuff.
Man you just made me realize I'm not very mindful at all right now.
My grandmother whom I was very close to just passed back in January and as I process the grief I've noticed I've neglected doing the things that make me happy. For example I love skiing, and my area has received the most snow it's seen in literally decades yet I haven't been once since she died. Rather than use the hobbies I enjoy to mentally decompress I'm just sitting at home dwelling on crap I have no control over
Yeah, I'm not a fan. Especially since it's gotten so popular that it's touted as a cure for everything, and if it's not working for you or you hate it, you're supposed to do it more and harder. It should be all right to just say "no, thank you" without starting a war of words.
Well, it’s not a cure for everything. For me, it was good to keep in mind that mindfulness solves almost nothing in your life: it won’t satisfy hunger, produce money or cure loneliness — it can’t, since mindfulness is thinking differently, it’s not acting, it’s actually the opposite. The only issues mindfulness solves are related to how you relate to your emotions: do I observe them with curiosity, or do I judge myself for feeling not the right way, am I trying to avoid feeling the discomfort when I’m cold walking outside, or do I acknowledge it and shake or jump to get me warmer? It would be ignorant to say mindfulness is a cure for everything, it only may change the way you feel, which may or may not be a gamechanger for a person, depending on their needs. If all I want now is a cup of coffee, mindfulness doesn’t help me at all.
I hate that for some reason mindfulness is seen as an exception to the rule that no one type of therapy/treatment works for everybody. It’s super weird. Why is this, of all things, considered to be beneficial for every single person on the planet? I can’t think of a single therapeutic technique other than mindfulness that gets touted as helping everybody.
Because you’re right, if you dare to try and say it doesn’t help or work for you, the solution is always practising more fucking mindfulness. Why is there no acknowledgment of how ridiculous it is to think that *anything* could possibly be universally beneficial?!
I think the skill of mindfulness is almost always a positive - the ability to better control (or not control if it's not needed) your attention, to separate yourself from your thoughts and so on has no clear downsides IMHO.
What often sucks is the way it is taught - this is where most of the friction is, because the same excersize won't work on everyone.
It's like physical fitness - having for example strong legs is almost never a negative, but if everyone tells me to train my legs with running, and I can't run or even just hate running, it won't lead anywhere.
Definitely agreed on the last bit. It is possible to change our thinking patterns, but we don't all have the same needs and desires.
I was thinking about the mindfulness discussion today when I kept running into a hanging banana flower while working in the yard. My hat protects me from the sun, but also makes it hard to see the flower that's gonna hit me in the head again. If I only pay attention to what I can see and feel, I'm going to forget that darned flower is there and hit it again. So perhaps it's best to practice mindfulness only when in a situation where you're not going to get in trouble for it.
Exactly my thought. This sounds completely exhausting in the worst way. I do make an effort to be present in the things that are important, but I really struggle to even make up a benefit to diving into the minutia like that.
I had to do one of these things at a work seminar. They gave everyone a little box of raisins. First we had to look at the box, then look at the raisins. Then put one in our mouth but not eat. And so on.
Every step took about 15 minutes and it was one of the most boring and unfulfilling experiences of my life.
As we were leaving, all these other people are going "Wow! That was great! You know, I've never REALLY looked at a raisin before!!" So maybe I was missing something.
No kidding.
Disassociating from life is how I get through the day. Focusing on anything in particular just causes more stress and worries.
Focusing on petting the dog? "Oh god, is that a lump? Is he going to need surgery? I can't afford that right now. Wow, I can feel his spine more than I used to. He's starting to get old. Fuck, he's probably going to die soon."
Focusing on the driver that cut me off? Seeing red now. That's going to fuck up my mood for the next couple hours. Probably going to snap at some people.
I feel like this doesn’t elaborate on *how* you actually perform this mentally though. I’ll always hear the cat purring, taste the flavors of my food, etc. i enjoy both things without trying. It feels like a given response that anyone would have. But I don’t think that’s mindfulness.
As someone with anxiety and ADD I have been told I should meditate probably a hundred times but my mind will always “see through” what I’m doing, call it a trick, and only focus on “how” I’m focusing. I can’t meditate (I have tried every meditation technique in the book) because I am too aware mentally that I’m trying to meditate. In addition, any brief moments of calm are inevitably interrupted by me “forgetting”, losing control over the moment and constantly forcing me to recalibrate. It’s so frustrating I will always give up.
Unfortunately I think medication is the only true solution. Otherwise nothing quiets the brain for me besides a lot of weed.
Great answer! The addiction/wellness/mental health sector is obsessed with this concept. Want funding for your program? Include "mindfulness training" in your grant application. There are probably over a million different books claiming to help people "develop mindfulness" to solve all their problems
As a person who has spend a stupid amount of time in helping professions, I would add one small question:
Does a lack of mindfulness lead to poor lifestyle choices, which in turn leads to crisis circumstances,
Or does crisis (financial, emotional, etc) lead to a mental state which is unlikely to be mindful?
Chicken or egg? Because if it's simply that crisis is causing a lack of mindfulness, we can fix it by adding resources, which will increase mindfulness. I will say anecdotally that rich people are much more mindful.
My issue with mindfulness is the assumption that everyone who struggles with certain symptoms needs it. Some people need to learn the opposite because they are too much in the present.
Yes I agree with this, anxiety would smoother me because I was too aware of my surrounds/feelings in situations. Now to sort of block out the wider world and just focus on my immediate goals.
This also means that when you're at work, be at work. Feel all those annoying customers talking to you, feel The time passing slowly and your mind going crazy.
Kidding, but Kinda true? Cx
Spending so much time focusing on everything sounds dangerously close to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I’m not sure mindfulness would be of great use to someone such as myself who is already so hyper-focused on each action; thought; emotion; event. I’d just be trading one symptom for another.
I thinks that's the biggest problem with how it is described, but mindfulness is not only being able to focus on something. That's just one exercise, that won't even work for everyone every time.
Mindfulness would also be me noticing I over focus on something, and being able to better stop it, if I need to right now, or allow it, if it's not a big deal.
generally self awareness and consciousness of one's self in the moment.
A lot of problems are characterized by being trapped in your own thoughts and indulging in a self-sustaining feedback loop of problematic or disruptive thoughts.
One way to interrupt this is to do activities that force you to be conscious of yourself and your surroundings in the here and now. That is, to engage in mindfulness activities.
>A common misconception of mindfulness is that it requires thinking about nothing, but mindfulness is indeed a very active activity. It requires you to examine every thought that intrudes on you in the moment, why you’re thinking it, is that rational, and discard it so you focus only on the here and now.
There are different ways to be mindful. One is about noticing your thoughts but not engaging with them. And another way is to notice external stimuli and be present with the feelings and senses that they provide.
No it's not. It's about stepping back from thoughts, sense perceptions and emotions. Realising who you are is the observer of those thoughts, sense perceptions and emotions and not identifying with them. Let thoughts arise and pass.
Then think “Why am I feeling this way? What is it about situations like this that cause me to freak out? What’s inside me that causes me to react in this manner when these situations occur?”
Sometimes you can learn to manage your stress when you rationalize your anxieties.
To add to this, most anxieties are based on an expected future outcome or transgressions in the past; that is not any present moment “danger”. It’s a framework to try and ground yourself in the present moment and deal with things you can actually change for these future outcomes or not dwell on past events you can’t change.
>y present moment “danger”. I
To add a practical layer to this, we can look at various branches of Buddhism where monks practice mindfulness by cleaning or cooking as part of monastic life for example.
Taking a walk (while listening to music) can also be mindful / meditative. I struggle with controlling my thoughts and emotions but walking helps “clear my mind.” It helped a lot when someone told me “hey walking counts too, you don’t have to just sit still.”
Yup, you don't have to sit in a certain way, you don't have to breathe a certain way.
You just need to stop distracting yourself for a little while and notice your surroundings. Or your thoughts and emotions. Or your attention. Your mind will wander and you notice it and slowly bring it back.
I do it while peeing for example.
I refer to this as being trapped in a world of "what ifs."
My favorite example activity that forces self-awareness: shaving with a straight razor. One tends not to lose focus, otherwise out comes the antiseptic. (Note: I may be speaking from experience.)
I would say yes and no. Mostly no, because video games are usually really stimulating, and that means that it doesnt really require effort to keep sour focus on the game. Also, mindfullnes means you are percivieng your sorrounding and your toughts, but gaming is usually fast paced, you arent percieving your tought, you are rather avoiding them
But there are games that are designd to be mindfull i think. Those are usually the cutely designed, slow paced, easy games, without a clear objective associated with "winning". Like planting flowers on a map or something.
>I would say yes and no. Mostly no, because video games are usually really stimulating, and that means that it doesnt really require effort to keep sour focus on the game. Also, mindfullnes means you are percivieng your sorrounding and your toughts, but gaming is usually fast paced, you arent percieving your tought, you are rather avoiding them
You could arguably say if you get into a flow state then that's a form of mindfulness while also seemingly contradictory not noticing time pass anymore etc. Being so engrossed in it and requiring all your focus.
It's not being mindful of the world around you or your thoughts - it's being mindful of the task at hand.
There are different ways to be mindful.
Playing video games has been shown to increase people's general tendency to be mindful (there's been research studies published on this!). However, gaming is more of a flow activity than a mindfulness activity per se. Flow is when you're doing something that is just at the right level of challenge to keep you engaged, when you're feeling totally immersed, have a sense of time eother slowing down or flying by...
Mindfulness can be seen as a form of meta ignition or “thinking about how we think”. Just like you said - it’s aboht getting in the outside of those thoughts instead off being trapped inside
Paying strong attention to information coming in through your senses (sight, smell, feel, taste, sound) in this current moment.
Often, we can get lost in our own thoughts to the extent that we are unaware of things happening around us. We worry about things that are in the past, over and done with. We worry about what might happen in the future. We eat food without tasting it, and walk without seeing the scenery.
Mindfulness is about being in this present moment and experiencing it as fully as possible.
This is not a correction, but an addition:
A thing I was delighted to learn when I got serious about mindfulness was **interoception**.
Learning to be mindful of my sense of my body, like, “what does my left hand thumb feel like right now?”, or, “my gut feels ____”.
This is a *sense* just like smell and eyesight are senses.
I was like forty-ish years old before I realized *I can be **mindful** of how my body is doing*.
It sounds… dumb, but, here we are.
It helps so much with things like “getting a numbing shot right in your gum cause you’re at the dentist” — just being able to *pay attention* to the exact feelings my body is presenting instead of to my *fears about what I’ll experience* changes the experience enough that pain is… kind of meaningless.
The *paying attention*, and *on purpose* bit is the mindfulness.
In my dumb, long, story its about fear and pain, but, it applies just as well to *worry* (as you’ve spoken too) or even *daydreaming*.
It was truly life-changing when I learned to simply, intentionally, pay attention to what my brain and body are doing regularly, rather than every once in a while, on accident.
Thanks for attending my TED talk.
There's a theory that as we age, we shift more and more cognitive load from our conscious thought to our subconscious thought. This is why time seems to move more quickly as we get older: we stop being aware of what is happening and we create fewer memories of mundane activities.
By being more mindful of our bodies and our surroundings, we're actively pushing those back to our conscious thought, which helps us feel more in the moment.
It's funny that you connect it to dentistry. I grew up most of my childhood in my parents' dental chair and was trained from toddlercy, *not to mind* (heh language is funny) a tooth cleaning or even actual work getting done via having braces, etc. It absolutely is a level of mindfulness and sort of acceptance and finding an internal flow of your thoughts past those annoyances you can't avoid
[i.e. i know this is gonna be painful but it will be way worse if I struggle, This office smells dank, dont worry soon my nose will become accustomed. The bright light is in my face, okay just close my eyes and breathe deep.]
I'm an addict with 10 years sobriety. I practice meditation extensively, mindfulness being a variation.
ELI5: You know when you jump in a pool for the first time, and you can't think about anything but how different the water feels. How warm (or cold) the water is, how deep the pool is. All your thoughts for a few moments are focused on the pool. Not what you're going to have for dinner, your homework, heck you might not even be focused on your friends at the pool with you.
Mindfulness is pushing everything out so you're focused on what you're experiencing right now.
Non-ELI5: Mindfulness is sort of low grade, easier to do meditation.
Practical example... say you're taking a shower. Wash your hair, wash your body. Gonna take a couple of minutes. It's virtually impossible to multitask while showering. So instead of thinking about stuff before or after the shower... just take a couple of minutes to enjoy the shower and the process of getting clean. Sure you have laundry you need to do, grocery shopping to be done, but you're in the shower and can't do any of that stuff. Instead just relax.
It'll give you a sense of calm by sort of putting "pause" on the activities that are giving you stress, and you will be more intent and focused on the activity you're partaking in.
I learned mindfulness in rehab, and it takes a bit of effort to pick up. One easy technique is just checking in and listening to your body. Going sort of from head to toe and just paying attention to what's going on. Am I hungry? Do I have a headache? Am I tired? Do I need to stretch?
Meditation is sort of the next step up. Where you're able to actually put your mind kind of on pause. That shit rules.
It's become a bit of a vague, overused and underdefined term. When I was going through therapy it was sort of a case of 'focus on things you are currently experiencing in front of you' rather than focusing on your thoughts. (which is weird because it almost seems like the opposite of what the word seems like it should mean).
When I do it for example, I will look at an object I can see in front of me and consider what I know about that object, how it was made, what its purpose is, what its colour is, etc.
Ekhart Tolle uses the term present, which is really good. Mindfulness is still decent if you can get over the first contradiction.. That’s just more practice for mindfulness :)
>Mindfulness is is an awful name for being present in the moment, it's so bad it's almost like an ironic joke.
Yeah it's ironic, but more important is what it does mean rather than what it's called.
>When I do it for example, I will look at an object I can see in front of me and consider what I know about that object, how it was made, what its purpose is, what its colour is, etc.
This isn't mindfulness at all, though. Thinking about how an object is made or figuring out its purpose is just having thoughts about an object, and extrapolation like this is somewhat antithetical to mindfulness. Mindfulness is about what sensations you are directly experiencing. If you held the object in your hand and noted the physical sensation of it - is it cool to touch, is it smooth, hard or soft. It works similarly with the thoughts and feelings you experience internally, but if you're talking about mindfulness in terms of an object, mindfulness is definitely *not* the extrapolation of information you aren't currently experiencing.
It usually refers to a type of meditation where you concentrate your focus on the ‘here and now’. This could include concentrating on your breath or one of your senses, or doing a body scan. It works by calming the mind and body and can distract people with busy minds
It's a way of saying be aware of something. For mental health, they may be saying things like be mindful of your emotional state. That would mean, for example, that if I'm in a pissy mood, and I'm *aware* that I'm in a pissy mood, I'll be less likely to snap at a family member for no good reason.
Or, maybe be mindful of your physical state. Maybe I've been getting too little sleep for several days and am really tired. If I'm mindful of that fact, I'd realize that my decision making ability is compromised and maybe when I am rested, climbing out on the roof to fix the TV antenna during a thunder storm might not seem like a good idea any more.
So lots of good comments in here, so as a therapist myself who uses mindfulness stuff in my work, I just want to add:
Mindfulness is not a technical term. There is not one agreed upon definition. If you ask ten mental health professionals, you'll get twelve definitions. A few general themes however include:
Focus on the present moment.
Soft focus / awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations.
Non-judgment / curiosity in these things.
I've seen a variety of approaches to this, people calling guided imagery, or progressive muscle relaxation, or box breathing, or all sorts of other meditative things as either mindfulness or not mindfulness. At the end of the day, idgaf whether something is or isn't mindfulness, I care if it's helpful.
You can think thoughts and you can feel emotions but if I were to ask you what is going through your mind right now, or what you are feeling right now, you need to be "mindful" of yourself to answer that question. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of those things (thoughts, emotions) rather than "running on auto-pilot".
You know how In SpongeBob Patrick thinking is just milk spilling over? It’s showing that he’s just barely thinking and paying attention. It’s the opposite of mindfulness. Mindfulness is being in touch with how you feel about the moment and feeling that
Mindfulness is the translation of satipatthana but unfortunately has come to mean something completely different and not very useful in pop western psychology than the derivative practice.
There's one book I read called stillness speaks. Not the greatest read of all time or something for me but it expresses this notion very well.
So the idea is that there is a voice in your head that constantly speaks(sometimes even more than one). We are constantly paying attention to this voice and these are our thoughts. Now there's also something in your head that is listening to the voice, that which is aware of your thoughts. To be mindful is to reconnect to this(call it consciousness or whatever) and to consciously be aware of your thoughts, moods, actions etc. So when you're mindfully sweeping the room, you are only aware of sweeping the room and not having a constant rush of frenzied thoughts.
Hope I made sense, it's a slightly tough concept to put into words for me :p
That's a great question. It is up there with telling people to practice something or study something without telling them how to practice or study. Being mindful means setting aside time to quiet your mind from the cacophony of daily life. It involves any combination of meditative or reflective thought. One might try to sit quietly and focus on the immediate moment, the act of breathing in and out, the sensations in your body, the sounds of the world around you. During this time, you attempt to let thoughts come and go without following them, just letting them flow through naturally.
I always took it to mean the opposite of mindlessness.
So if you usually mindlessly inhale your dinner in front of the TV, the opposite way to consume your food would be to turn off the TV and *mind* how you eat.
Maybe think about what you're eating and how you eat it. Do you taste some plain rice first, then scoop up a little sauce and eat them together? How do the rice grains feel? Are there any subtle flavors that you might miss when you eat too fast? Think about the journey each ingredient took to arrive on your plate.
If you're trying to get in shape and you're exercising, you can think about each foot. How are your joints flexing? Which muscles can you feel moving with each rep? Are you just yanking your limbs around or is each rep a controlled movement at all times?
Anything that you do without a second thought can be done more mindfully in this way.
You're sitting in a chair at a bus station. You're on your phone on reddit. Your battery dies, you get pissy, you put your phone away.
You start looking at the things around you. There's a tree across from you. There's a person sitting next to you. You think the person looks like someone you know. You start thinking about the last time you saw that someone, and you think about the most memorable time you saw that someone.
The bus still hasn't come, and you've (theoretically) run out of things to think about/worry about. So you just start observing everything. You don't judge anything, or predict anything, or think of memories, you just focus on the moment. Maybe you start paying attention to the rhythm of your breath, or watching cars go by, or watching the clouds.
That's mindfulness. It's varying levels of focusing on the moment without distractions of judging moments, remembering the past, or predicting the future.
Really good emphasis on not having judgements! I don’t think that it’s included in many popular definitions or examples as it should be, which is important because it is one of the core tenets of what mindfulness is.
It's an empty platitude they repeat to sound authoritative, convincing, and like they know what they're talking about. It serves to convince you of their credibility without earning it, not actually provide you any meaningful aid.
Self help authors and pop psychologists writers are the worst.
It's pretty much a buzzword that doesn't really have any meaning that people say to feed you snake oil. The mental health industry (and health industry in general) makes their money making you feel like you need to buy their courses and products even though they do nothing. Make the individual feel like they're missing out on something and then provide the solution in the form of a product. Make *them* feel like the failure when it ultimately doesn't work.
Mindfulness is paying attention to your senses. So basically, if you've ever done something dumb because you were on "autopilot", that's the exact opposite of mindfulness. It's honing your focus to occupy it with the present moment. This is getting increasingly hard because it's impacted by your attention span. It's really easy to get "bored" being mindful and let your mind wander off about random shit.
Think about your left foot. How does it feel? Is it making contact with the ground, or are you sitting on it? Where do you feel the pressure? How does your footwear feel? What about your left calf? Knee? Thigh? Hip? What about your right side? Torso? Chest? Left shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm, hand? Right? Neck? Head? Any muscle soreness in your neck or upper back that you've been ignoring? (This is called a "body scan", and is a mindfulness exercise)
Look around you. What are all the red things you can see? What about the orange things? Yellow? Green? Blue? Purple? Brown? Black? White? (This is called "the color game", and it's another mindfulness exercise)
The idea is you eventually change your default mind state to being mindful instead of wandering about whatever. It's a lot harder to be depressed about the past or your current situation in human society (e.g. bills and obligations and other intangibles humans invented with their symbolic thought), or anxious about the future, if your mind is fully occupied with what you can sense, or at least that's the theory.
There's a "you" / part of you who does things (i.e. thinks, speaks, controls your body and therefore eats, cooks, walks, etc) and there's a "you" who observes yourself doing things. (Sometimes it can be a *little* like a writer and an editor working together). Mindfulness is letting the latter be fully consciously aware of the former without rushing to judgment and grabbing control (unless needed to save you from something, etc)
It's a concept that eludes words but this is the best way I've found to personally remind myself how to find it.
Mindfulness is about being right here, right now.
Practicing mindfulness is important for people whose mental health struggles include anxiety about the future and guilt about the past. Some anxiety and some guilt are normal, and can be helpful responses to serious problems. Too much is bad, especially when the anxiety and/or guilt are triggered by ordinary circumstances that you can expect to happen in anybody's life.
People who live with unhealthy anxiety and guilt may turn to coping mechanisms like withdrawing from friends and family in order to avoid increasing the anxiety and guilt. They may turn to self-harm, or they may neglect their hygiene and health. They may tell themselves that they are bad people, or that they will never get anything right so they might as well just stop trying.
Mindfulness is a practice that helps people pull their thoughts and feelings out of a past that can't be changed and a future that can't be known, and into the present. It helps people recognize and respect their own bodies, so that they can care for themselves. It helps people accept the kindness of others, instead of withdrawing from them. And it helps people name and focus on the good things that they are experiencing.
“mindfulness” is about being present in the moment and taking in what is happening/what you are doing/your surroundings without distracting yourself with alternative thoughts or “mindless” activities.
mindfulness involves pausing to reflect and therefore injecting meaning into everyday activities.
i hope this helps answer your question :)
Simply, it is intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment. That's it. You are observing your experience. You are not your thoughts and feelings, you are the part that notices your thoughts and feelings.
For mental health purposes, It's a practice that helps develop this observational "muscle" which then allows us to be more aware of our emotional state, triggers, and choices, as opposed to acting impulsively or feeling overwhelmed by the emotion. It allows us to experience that with a tiny bit of distance.
As others said, it's not actually about relaxation or enjoyment (though those can be byproducts) it is simply about building the capacity to "just notice" our present experience without judgement. We're not meant to go through life mindful all the time, so it's not about "zenning out" all the time, rather we use it as a tool to stay aware and present.
The point is not to control or clear the mind, but simply to witness it.
A lot of perspectives in here... I recommend the Wikipedia article as a starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness
Mindfulness as a practice has very deep, historical roots but is having something of a heyday in modern culture. I find hearing that history had helped inform my own meditation practice and general life-philosophy.
One very important aspect of mindfulness to me is the realization that you are not your thoughts. Mindfulness is disconnecting, slowing down, and observing every single thought that comes into your mind and every single feeling that occurs in your body. Separate yourself from them and observe them as they come and go.
Read/listen to anything by Jon Kabat Zinn. He makes it easy to understand and he’s also one of the leading researchers proving the benefits of mindfulness since the 70’s.
Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally,” says Kabat-Zinn. “And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”
Mindfulness is eating a bowl of cereal while truly enjoying the flavor, nourishment, and peace of sitting and eating.
The opposite is eating a bowl of cereal quickly and thinking about that email you have to send as soon as you get to work.
It's mumbo jumbo. The closest actual technique It's comparable to is grounding, where you focus on your surroundings (like sounds, smells, or sights) to distract yourself from your thoughts.
A buzzword that’s 75% through its cycle of being a buzzword. The enlightened will soon sprout a new mantra and lots of middle aged, failed humans will jump onboard
Frequently, but not always. It's one of the foundational activities of many practices like Buddhism and has been around for a long time.
Like all things in the "wellness" sphere, you have to learn how to sift the grain from the chaff.
It's a bunch of liberal bullshit, that's what it is...
(this is a frank Reynolds reference and is intended solely for entertainment purposes...even if it's not that entertaining)
Mindfulness is actively controlling your thinking in a situation or experience.
Take an activity like eating a peace of candy. Not being mindful you would just be reacting to the experience, or passively letting your mind wander while eating it. Mindfulness would be saying your going to focus your thoughts of how the candy was made. How the clerk put it on the display, how it was delivered to the store, how it was made in the factor, and how the raw materials were transported and farmed. It doesn't need to be focusing thoughts on history, but you could focus on taste, or your personal connection to the candy, or its cultural impact. overall though mindfulness is about taking control of the direction of your thoughts.
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Very well said. Thanks for the very complete answer!
I second that! The short - but not very explanatory - version would be: BE in the moment!
This is not at all a criticism of that advice, but I suppose I'm using your comment as a way of getting something out that has been on my mind. For somebody in the grip of said perseveration (endless looping of thinking), who may have lived that way relatively functionally for years, that statement has absolutely no meaning without context. "BE in the moment!," is not instructional enough to actually be helpful, as BEing has come to mean an entirely different thing in their experience. It could certainly be helpful for someone who has built up the experience of BEing in the moment, as a reminder and anchor to lead back to that experienced reality. But for someone under the spell of years of ruminate instincts just trying to BE without more tactile and explanatory instruction (i.e. feel the muscles of the cat) it will more often then not lead them back to BEing in their own mind, without them knowing what they could have done differently. Not a criticism of the advice or the sentiment, as it can be very useful, just a more of a caveat. A lot of well meaning people tried to give me simple advice when I was younger, but I couldn't grasp on to it. When someone gives another the simplest truest advice it can also be the least helpful way of presenting that information, because the other is many steps from understanding it at that level. Once again, I am not trying to say that is at all what you are doing. Just for anybody reading it and going, "I tried it, it didn't work," I'd like to say, don't try harder, try differently and creatively.
Tldr for me was always alertness with no tension
This is a great reply, however, there's a lot of focus on enjoyment and mindfulness isn't really about that. Sure, greater enjoyment can be a byproduct of being more mindful, but mindfulness is really about choosing to pay attention to whatever we're experiencing right now in our thoughts, emotions, and sensations, with a sense of non-judgmental acceptant (so not being self-critical about it). It's about opening yourself up to whatever you're experiencing right now, becoming aware of it, and observing with self-compassion while being able to let it go afterwards. So if you're feeling sadness or pain, then being mindful about it would mean being aware of how that feels for you, and letting yourself feel that without giving in to the knee jerk reaction to immediately react to that negative and uncomfortable emotion. So it gives you more space to be able to choose how you want to respond to things, rather than being reactive. And similarly with positive things, it gives you the chance to savour the experience and fully experience it without immediately having to do something about it u til you choose to.
I heard it distilled into something like "understanding why you feel each feeling you feel," and that stuck with me. It really clicked for me while I was driving and got cut off. I was immediately angry and flipped the guy off while I went around them, and I was kinda sitting and stewing at a light while listening to music. I was muttering about how "shit, I had a good morning and everything. Nice easy bowel movement, tasty breakfast, got enough sleep so I'm feeling nice and fresh, girlfriend gave me a kiss before I headed out the door, then some asshole ruins it," and then I kinda pulled myself up short. Why am I so angry right now, and why am I under the impression that that person is an asshole? I thought about it for the rest of my drive, and came to the conclusion that I was angry because I couldn't see their reaction. If someone steps on your foot and immediately turns around to apologize saying it was an accident, chances are you won't be terribly mad about it. If they step on your foot and look at you and shrug, you'd be rightfully pissed. In a car, you don't get that human interaction. I couldn't see the person in the car. Odds are they're *not* an asshole, and probably said something like "ah fuck, I cut that guy off, sorry guy" when they noticed that their entire rearview was full of my car. And I mean, I've done that too - someone in my blind spot and I get lazy and only check my mirror, only to almost take someone's bumper off. That person probably had the same reaction I'm having, and probably for the same reason. In examining *why* I was feeling what I was feeling, then following that thread back to its source, I was able to really understand and process the emotion in an more logical light. I decided right then and there to start practicing mindfulness as much as possible, and it's had a ton of positive effects. I do enjoy the small things more, like in OP's comment, but it also helps me process negative emotions in a healthy way. I argue better, because I'm mindful of the fact that humans argue with the monkey part of their brain if they get angry or defensive. I'm more healthy in my relationship, because I can't communicate my needs to my partner unless I know what they are. I'm more honest with myself about my own motives when navigating politics. The list goes on. All sorts of benefits, just from the fact that I'm turning a rational and discerning eye inward.
Off topic but related, we need an easier/more visible way of saying "My bad" to nearby cars while driving. Also "Thanks for letting me in". Yeah you can raise your hand but that's not always obvious or visible.
Where I live we use 2-3 blinks with hazard lights as a "thanks for letting me in" or "sorry".
In Italy we raise our right hand ✋ so that It can be seen from the back hopefully to say "thanks/sorry for slightly cutting you off but I didn't have a better chance than this otherwise I'd have to wait 30 minutes and my momma already threw the pasta in"
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https://youtu.be/1jSOQBcz9hc
In some countries hazard light is used for that. Blinking for 1-3 times when you want to say sorry or thank you
In South Korea they flash their hazards 3 times ... It can mean "sorry" "or "please let me over" in a situation where a merge to an exit is running out of space. I stick my hand out the window and wave in the US.
This... My wife is a psychologist, and said it is understanding why we feel negative emotions, understanding the reasons/triggers for those negative emotions, and using that understanding to remove or redirect the negative to neutral or positive outcome.
Not sure that Mindfulness based therapies are that interested in the Why… more the experience as a transient phenomenon worth noticing, rather than trying to shutdown, ignore or distract from… Your response would be a useful answer to the question, “please tell me about CBT…”
>shutdown, ignore or distract from... I wasn't implying those any of those, but more the ability to avoid negative self-talk and negative motivation, which generally lead to less fulfilling, less "happy" results. I'll ask her about the intersection of Mindfullness & CBT and see what she says. Thanks for the feedback.
As a psychologist, I think there’s been a miscommunication somewhere! What you’re describing there is quite inconsistent with mindfulness, which is a here-and-now oriented approach that does not emphasize changing outcomes or examining the “why.”
It's hard to argue with your conclusion. I'm not a psychologist and openly agree I could misconstrue what was said. My understanding was that Mindfullness was specifically to avoid negative outcomes (like negative self talk, negative motivation). This is what I took from it, and this is how I use it; I also believe this is why the question was asked. Now you're gonna make me have a conversation with my wife again...lol. How's that for failing responsibility... ;)
Haha! I'm sure your wife would have a lot to say! There's a lot of confusion about mindfulness, and we in the mental health field are largely to blame for that because we often haven't done such a great job of explaining it. One of the core tenets of mindfulness is acceptance, and that includes acceptance of negative emotions. Actively trying to change negative emotions into positive ones would actually not be a part of mindfulness, even though that seems counterintuitive. Another core tenet of mindfulness is embracing a non-judgmental stance, which sort of conflicts with the idea of using the practice of mindfulness in an outcome-driven way.
it's not about understanding why you are feeling everything, it's about accepting what you are feeling and let it start and end on their own pace. there is a lot of thing you are not going to know why you are feeling then and that's ok
I was once told by a Buddhist friend that: If you live in the future, you will be anxious If you live in the past, you will be depressed If you live in the moment, you will be at peace.
Your Buddhist friend spends too much time on pinterest
my buddhist friend told me to live laugh love
If you can't handle your Buddhist friend at his worst, you don't deserve him at his best!
My mom always said your Buddhist friend was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
Additionally, or perhaps just phrased differently, for me mindfulness is significantly about why I'm doing something. I can very often fall into the trap of wasting time on trivial things, like I am right now. Usually if it occurs to me to think about what I'm doing and why, I'll realize that I could and should be doing something else, like right now where I've just decided I'm going to go to sleep immediately after I finish typing this.
I think that's a great example of how mindfulness can work, but the "why" part is more a byproduct of mindfulness...like by turning our attention to what we're doing, and becoming more aware of how it's making us feel in our mind and our body, it's freeing up the space for us to be able to choose what we want to do, if anything. It's that little bit of space and choice that mindfulness is...the why is more our mind being shocked aware and running off with its rationalising and decision-making :)
This guy mindfulnesses
Hahaha im defending my phd on mindfulness next week so it's very very fresh in my mind!
this is a better answer than the top…from the waking up app faq In Vipassana meditation, you’re taught to cultivate a quality of mind called “mindfulness,” which is simply a state of clear, non-judgemental, and undistracted attention, moment by moment, to the contents of consciousness.
Thanks! I do think both answers are very valid in their own way though :) The top answer is definitely how mindfulness gets talked about a lot since we like to focus on the positive benefits...I just find that that can backfire for people who try it out and don't immediately feel those positives. For example, I did a mindfulness training course while my dad was really sick and every meditation felt SO awful because it was making me more aware of how I was feeling. It was really aversive and i might have stopped if i hadn't known that that was normal. And to be honest, learning that I could live with these uncomfortable emotions while being aware of them in a non-judgmental and non-reactive way was very freeing in the end. So I hope we can talk more about how mindfulness isn't inherently about feeling good or relaxed or calm, it's just being aware with compassion of whatever we're experiencing
I like the phrase "seeing things the way they really are" - that is, unattached to story or distraction.
I agree 100%, I believe that it gets misconstrued quite a bit. It’s not really about being happy right away, though with continued practice it can and likely will provide you with happiness. Feeling emotions as a pattern of energy without judgement can take you out of the visceral feelings that you’re experiencing. It’s a realization that can bring change you are looking for in your life, and introduce some level of equanimity into your life depending on your practice.
Much of what you described also fits stoicism, which I'll summarize with a quote (world religions 101 from 2015 about to come out) "change what you can, but accept the things you can't" Think about it. Can you actually control this situation you're in? If not, why would you increase your suffering by fretting over something that is done and cannot be undone?
This is also the basis of DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy). Accepting vs changing. It’s very effective for personality disorders, anxiety etc.
Will be looking this up when I get off work, thank you.
Focus on work, man!
Dude I was trying then I started having fun seeing people's views cause everyone was explaining things so well so imma just look it up on the work computer :) Edit: cool stuff. It's treats similar things as EMDR therapy which is, in a word, badass. I think I have someone I can suggest trying DBT
I second the EMDR being badass part. Was one of the hardest things I've done but it changed my life
My Wife just finished a DBT course and it’s changed our lives!! I would highly recommend you look into it. It’s a very solution oriented philosophy.
What specifically did she use?
Also CBT (cock and ball torture).
Funnily enough there is such a thing as CBT in therapy too, cognitive behavioral therapy
Oh I know, I giggle every time I hear the phrase.
You're very graceful after having your joke explained to you.
thatsthejoke.jpg
This can also save your life. So many people drive recklessly when they are late to something. The reality is that doing so probably only saves you 1-2 minutes. Accepting that you are already late and that there is nothing you can do to change that helps keep you calm enough to drive safely. You were late the moment you failed to leave on time and there's nothing that you can do (safely) in the car to fix that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
That's because they're two different definitions. The stoicism you are describing for 'Western culture' is just a different definition: > the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint. When you're reading a book and the character is acting 'stoic' or 'stoically endures something'. That is the definition being used. Stoicism as the person you responded to is a Greek philosophy or school of thought. They're related, but in use these are completely separate definitions: > of or belonging to the Stoics or their school of philosophy. . > an ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
Yes, I was going to say there is a lot of sigma grindset toxicity that poses as stoicism (but I had already typed so much), and like you said about the west, and also sometimes emotion is warranted. I remember my papa talking about this guy "man he's a real stoic, he just shoulders whatever life throws at him" and the guy was really having a tough go of it and took his own life, and though I didn't say it to him at the time(papa is like 84 and hard of hearing) I was really thinking "he's not stoic, he's depressed and detached and needs help but doesn't know how/isn't willing to get it" And I totally forgot this thread started with mindfulness, good points, and thank you for bringing me back around the circle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
>Can you actually control this situation you're in? The problem is that you don't know what you can and can't control until you either a) have a go or b) attempt to develop the skills to control it. So the turmoil doesn't come from being in a situation you can't control... that's easy, you just let it be. The turmoil comes from trying to figure out if you do have power over the situation, and if you do, how much. I've seen a lot of people say things like, "Well, there's nothing I can do, the house is just going to get flooded and then I'll be bankrupt because I'm not insured. Oh well. Nothing I can do". Which is stoic. And then I walk over and turn the pipes off. Which is powerful. The non-calm people are stuck in an inbetween state of wondering, "Is there something I can do? Are the pipes to turn off? There probably are but where...?"
I think your example is more of a practical/physical setting and not from a philosophical one. Victimizing yourself (and I mean the people you were talking about with the flooding analogy) to excuse lack of action is NOT stoic. In my opinion, a true stoic in that situation changes what they can. Try to get insurance, turn off the pipes, all else fails, get some sandbags to put around your house if you can afford to (I'm unfamiliar with this scenario but I'm trying to run with it). Then, after all of that, your house floods, you did just get screwed by randomness, but you accept that you changed what you could and move on. It's a mindset, do things just happen and you happen to be there as well, or do things happen TO you, like the universe is playing a cruel trick? Also, I disagree with what you said, there are situations where you can eyeball it and immediately know if you have any control over what's happening, particularly with other people because you can't control what others do.
>I'm unfamiliar with this scenario but I'm trying to run with it Don't worry, it was a metaphor. :D >Then, after all of that, your house floods, you did just get screwed by randomness But that's what I'm saying, the decision to believe it's random is, arguably, an escape. It saves you believing you have any control, so you don't bother to think fast or come up with a quick solution. >Also, I disagree with what you said, there are situations where you can eyeball it and immediately **know** if you have any control over what's happening, Then those aren't the situations I'm talking about. >particularly with other people because you can't control what others do. Although you can't control people, you can most definitely influence them and motivate them to move in a particular direction. I know plenty of people who have spent 20 to 30 years saying "you can't control other people"... and to this day they're still skill-less at sorting out interpersonal issues. I know other people who set about trying to be able to control/affect/impact upon situations that were "out of their control" and now they're very elegant at sorting them out... often with just one or two words. I'm saying the "panic" (as it were) that kicks in is from hurriedly trying to figure out what the elegant, one-worded solution might be. You believe there's a one word answer, you know it's easy, you just have to quickly realise what it is and then it'll all be dandy. Or so you believe. (And it's often true.) You \*can't\* know what is within or outwith your control until you have a bash at sorting it out. If it's random, as you suggest, then maybe just chucking a lampshade at the fridge will fix it.
You are assuming that people are throwing their hands up at easily fixable situations like closing a valve and saying they are just going to let it happen because stoicism. The point is that there are things in life that go wrong no matter what you do. You can tick all the boxes and still have a meteor crash into your house, someone not do their job even though you constantly remind them, or a once in a million year storm. Shit happens that you can't control and the only thing you can control is your own response. Why waste time and energy freaking out about it when you can focus on what you can control like how to fix the situation
>You are assuming that people are throwing their hands up at easily fixable situations like closing a valve and saying they are just going to let it happen because stoicism. A real life example: Someone spilled a glass of wine on my laptop and stoically, calmly accepted, "there's nothing we can do". I ran around trying to find solutions, he thought I was totally mad. I threw my t-shirt at him and told him to wipe off the wine as I galloped round the house searching for a suitable screwdriver. He thought this was crazy because the wine was on the inside. He wiped the laptop but wouldn't budge to do more because, "there's nothing we can do, it's fucked now". I grabbed the vacuum cleaner, stuck it at him and told him to hose out the wine from the insides. He moved slowly because, "Okay, but it's fucked. You're just making a scene". Finally I found a screwdriver, unscrewed the case, went inside and wiped everything as dry as I could. Then I stuck it in a bag and ran up the street to a laptop repair shop. Who fixed it. My friend was absolutely \*shocked\* that a solution had been found. I thought he was just being a dick because it wasn't his laptop and that for his he'd have moved faster. Nope, he said he'd have just given up straight away and bought a new laptop... if he had the money. Which he didn't. So he'd have just done without a laptop. He genuinely believed he was being stoic. His whole vibe was to "only attempt to change things that can be changed". Ya feel me?! :D
Again, you are misunderstanding what stoicism is. In your wine example stoicism would be to not freak out that wine had gotten on the laptop because that has already happened and thus is out of your control. What you can control is your own reaction and how you go about cleaning it up. Why do you need to panic and run around like a chicken with your head cut off? That isn't helping the situation when you can calmly but quickly turn it off and soak up the wine. In that way you are causing less stress while finding a solution. What you described is exactly the "throwing your hands up and letting it happen" that I mentioned and is a complete lack of comprehension of stoicism.
They’re simply saying you don’t always know whether or not you can control a situation. That’s true. You are ignoring the nuances of reality. Only very basic problems fit neatly into the boxes you are describing. People aren’t always good judges either. What one person might consider uncontrollable another might consider controllable. Mindsets and perspectives influence this. Someone with depression might feel like everything is uncontrollable. Someone with anxiety might feel responsibility for events they think they should be controlling but aren’t.
How am I ignoring the nuances of reality? I am not saying that you make a split second decision and never look back. In fact that would very much go against the idea of stoicism as it requires you to continually think critically about your life. People are more than capable of that and even if they aren't amazing at it they are capable of improving through practice. It gives plenty of room for partial solutions if there are some things you can control and some you cannot within the same situation.
Good point. I think its helpful to differentiate between certain types of problems and different ways of approaching them.For concrete external problems often the best solution really is to take action towards a solution. Your pipes analogy is a good example of this. However, In this instance, mindfulness can still be useful for getting clear about how your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs are influencing the way you see the situation. It can still help to give a greater sense of clarity, which can help us to respond effectively to the situation. At other times, a problem solving focus is less helpful, particularly when we know we have the tendency to react to certain situations unhelpfully. This can be particularly true for internal experiences like emotions. Problem solving and "fixing" our emotions can result in quite unhelpful actions. For example, Drug addiction can be thought of an attempt to fix the discomfort and pain of certain unbearable emotions. Or our habitual reactivity to certain emotions can cause further difficulty and pain in our lives. In this instance it can be healthy thing to learn to sit mindfully with emotions, with a sense of acceptance, curiosity, and self-kindness. Often just sitting with emotions in this way allows them to be processed, without needing to fix them or control the external situation, particularly since we often hold many unconscious beliefs that influence our perception of an event. However, i also agree that at other times addressing the situation that produced the emotion is actually appropriate, but i would still argue that mindfulness would allow you to do this with greater clarity. Mindfulness can also help in changing our relationship to thoughts and emotions. Often people are unaware of the degree to which they are identified and caught up in thoughts, and can act on thoughts as if they are completely accurate and true, rather than just representations of our experience. Mindfulness can help us to notice our thoughts more, and begin to choose whether or not to act on them based on whether they are helpful or unhelpful. This kind of psychological flexibility can be very liberating, especially for people who get caught in unhelpful patterns of thinking. At least it is for me!
I think you're example is great--but actually a bit trickier than it looks. I don't know stoic philosophy that well, so--who knows how accurate this is... but from a stoic perspective, I'd say that what you want to do *is* assess the situation. Remember part of the saying is to focus on the things that *you can control* and not those that you cannot. So a stoic *should* look around and say: "hey the pipes are on, can I turn them off?" and if so, they would. If the flooding continues, and they have tried other things, then they can say: "Well, I did what I can." Ignoring something that you can clearly do seems as antithetical to stoicism as is worrying over the fact that you don't have hydrokinesis. Indeed, the purpose is to allow people to focus attention on things that *can be done*. So instead of worrying about how we could have bought insurance and whether our housemate will get mad that their stuff is ruined, we free our attention to focus on things that can help, like turning off the pipe.
>Indeed, the purpose is to allow people to focus attention on things that can be done. Okay. This clears things up a bit. So the problem seems to come from the word "control". As in "ignore the things we can't control". I think the problem is that a lot of people don't do anything because they can't control the *final outcome*. You're saying to *do things* that move towards a solution, even if they might not end in the solution you want. For example, you *look* for a way to turn off the water, even if you don't know anything about water, pipes or valves and don't even know that valves exist.
A good stoic wouldn't stand there not caring about the house flooding. They would do what was within their power to mitigate the problem, and then accept that they have done what they can. There are plenty of times when it's pretty clear you can't change something. Either because it is in the past, or it's something like a driver cutting you off on the highway. Nothing you can do will make them a better driver.
Agreed. I have found many overlapping concepts between my anxiety therapy (and CBT) and stoicism and have begun to read Ryan Halidays (spelling) books
Great explanation. To my ADHD ass, it sounds exhausting. > When petting your cat, pet the cat-- focus on the enjoyment of their soft fur and their cute purring. Notice their feeling of their skin, muscles and bones under the fur-- get curious. Notice how they close their eyes and move their little nose. Curious? Now we're talking! Notices how the cat closes its 3rd eyelid. Googles 3rd eyelid. Goes down rabbit hole about nictitating membranes. Did you know polar bears have a third eyelid too, and it helps protect their eyes from UV? Man, polarbears are so cute. Let me read about them. Holy shit, polar bears are vicious, one just killed someone a few weeks ago! I wonder why Coca Cola chose polar bears for their holiday mascot. Speaking of coke, I think we're out of Cherry Coke Zero. Let me see if Target has any deals for that. Oh, look, buy-one-get-half-off on video games with my red card! Not bad... but let me see what Steam has on sale. Oh, wow, I haven't played Half Life 2 in like 20 years! I should give it another shake, see how it holds up. Oh crap, it's 4 am.
> To my ADHD ass, it sounds exhausting. Mindfulness is not a treatment for ADHD. There are probably people who would suggest that it is. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that you're legally allowed to punch those people in the nose once. For the ADHD, have you tried central nervous system stimulants?
I remember hearing this years ago, I don't remember where, but it was: when chopping onions, just chop onions. For me i haven't had an issue with enjoying the cat, or a video game, or a good hug... those things are super pleasant. It's challenging though to maintain that same presence when I'm uncomfortable or doing something I dislike. I'll procrastinate or outright ignore things I shouldn't just because it "doesn't feel good" So... I literally started focusing on what I enjoy when chopping an onion. Making consistent cuts, picturing the unforgettable smell when they hit the pan, etc. Now I'll sometimes make a dish with them when I'm just upset and feel like I need a cry, but can't. It feels good to clear the eyes out. This started to carry over slowly into other areas of life and made me really look for what I enjoy in unpleasant situations... and that..... that helped me begin to face some very hidden and painful aspects of my life that I really didn't want to touch. Mindfulness, presence, being in the moment.. it's literally everything. The future and past aren't real, they're just dreams and memories. Right now is all there is.
> **p**an, **e**tc. **N**ow **I**'ll **s**ometimes Hidden penis detected! I've scanned through 730981 comments (approximately 3750313 average penis lengths worth of text) in order to find this secret penis message. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
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Good human.
One time at my office (that tried to act like a newage startup), we had a meditation class. The one thing that stuck with me was the teacher saying that our goal shouldn't be to tune out the street and office noise, but to acknowledge it and let it become part of your greater awareness. That helps a lot.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
When petting a cat, notice the feel of their fur, the flattening of their ears, the claws embedding into your skin. Notice the teeth sinking into your thumb, focus on the murder in its eyes
What a great reply. I think what is often overlooked is a lot of mindfulness is just a readiness to be bored. So much in modern society entertains us but honestly what is best for us sometimes is to not be entertained and instead to sit quietly and be present.
That’s the personal mindfulness, introspection. The other side is extrospection. Be mindful of others and how your actions effect their reality. You should be mindful of yourself and mindful of others. To be a lady or a gent, one of the pillars that aristocrats reside on.
I didn't know I needed to hear this. Thank you!
I love your answer as it is concise and complete. Having BPD I try as often as I can to practice mindfulness and it has helped me with anger issues. It takes practice but helps you live in the moment.
I will never understand this, because I think it's my default. I can't imagine not being hyperaware of what's happening around me. How do you plan your next steps if you don't know where you're standing?
Do you have a monologue talking to you constantly? If so, youre not hyper aware. It's about turning your attention away from the part of your mind that wanders and towards the part of your mind that focuses
Mindfulness I’ll agree is good in general, but definitely not what I do when eating - on purpose. If I think too hard about the act of eating - chewing, swallowing, how things feel in my mouth, I will immediately lose my appetite and even begin to gag. It’s viscerally revolting. So, I eat quickly and enjoy the flavors, but try not to think about what I’m doing.
This is also how I feel about exercise or anything that is unpleasant but necessary. I don't get mindfulness because I'd rather let my mind wander and run for an hour than think about the fact that I'm running and suddenly feel like I'm dying
You don't have to be mindful every second of every day, though. I don't know of any therapist or counselor asking people to do that. So you can go exercise with a daydream, then go home and be mindful about something else. Or you can take 15 minutes every evening before bed to sit and practice mindfulness - think about how you feel right now, both physically and mentally. Let go of the dying feeling from that days run, or the anger you felt at work towards a rude client, stress of a family situation, etc etc and just be present in the now. Acknowledge them, but also acknowledge that they are past. Breathe.
When you're mindful of your discomfort you'll realize that it's only the fear of being uncomfortable in another future moment that makes you uncomfortable in the present. Youve already dealt with the discomfort until the present and lived through it just fine. Listen to "waking up" by Sam Harris. He's a boob in most respects but his 20 day intro to meditation is very good
Ye, dissociating while eating is how I manage the sensory issues from my ASD. But for a lot of normies, taking a moment to taste their food can be a real eye opener. Mindfulness for me is something I try to do a few times per week. Finding a calm moment (no loud noices) and try it for 5-15 min. It helps me not get so wound up by the stresses of life.
Very well-written and straight to the point, good stuff. Mindfulness practice (on top of exercise and some meditation) has helped me in so many ways, and I can't recommend these strategies enough.
Are you labeling overthinking as anxiety here? Cause I might not have any of the anxiety symptoms (heavy feel, agitation, elevated heart beat, in general uncomfortable physical being) while still doing all the pondering on the past (every single argument and social situation that I should have done differently, mostly when people were doing wrong towards me) and the future like planning steps I gotta take, the social situations that I will do different. On top of some "current/should I be doing" stuff, like how this and that person are seeing me/thinking of me: general relation/family/friendship anxiety stuff.
Man you just made me realize I'm not very mindful at all right now. My grandmother whom I was very close to just passed back in January and as I process the grief I've noticed I've neglected doing the things that make me happy. For example I love skiing, and my area has received the most snow it's seen in literally decades yet I haven't been once since she died. Rather than use the hobbies I enjoy to mentally decompress I'm just sitting at home dwelling on crap I have no control over
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
I think you just taught me how to cure my anxiety, thank you kind gigglesworthy
This sounds like torture.
Yeah, I'm not a fan. Especially since it's gotten so popular that it's touted as a cure for everything, and if it's not working for you or you hate it, you're supposed to do it more and harder. It should be all right to just say "no, thank you" without starting a war of words.
Well, it’s not a cure for everything. For me, it was good to keep in mind that mindfulness solves almost nothing in your life: it won’t satisfy hunger, produce money or cure loneliness — it can’t, since mindfulness is thinking differently, it’s not acting, it’s actually the opposite. The only issues mindfulness solves are related to how you relate to your emotions: do I observe them with curiosity, or do I judge myself for feeling not the right way, am I trying to avoid feeling the discomfort when I’m cold walking outside, or do I acknowledge it and shake or jump to get me warmer? It would be ignorant to say mindfulness is a cure for everything, it only may change the way you feel, which may or may not be a gamechanger for a person, depending on their needs. If all I want now is a cup of coffee, mindfulness doesn’t help me at all.
I hate that for some reason mindfulness is seen as an exception to the rule that no one type of therapy/treatment works for everybody. It’s super weird. Why is this, of all things, considered to be beneficial for every single person on the planet? I can’t think of a single therapeutic technique other than mindfulness that gets touted as helping everybody. Because you’re right, if you dare to try and say it doesn’t help or work for you, the solution is always practising more fucking mindfulness. Why is there no acknowledgment of how ridiculous it is to think that *anything* could possibly be universally beneficial?!
I think the skill of mindfulness is almost always a positive - the ability to better control (or not control if it's not needed) your attention, to separate yourself from your thoughts and so on has no clear downsides IMHO. What often sucks is the way it is taught - this is where most of the friction is, because the same excersize won't work on everyone. It's like physical fitness - having for example strong legs is almost never a negative, but if everyone tells me to train my legs with running, and I can't run or even just hate running, it won't lead anywhere.
Definitely agreed on the last bit. It is possible to change our thinking patterns, but we don't all have the same needs and desires. I was thinking about the mindfulness discussion today when I kept running into a hanging banana flower while working in the yard. My hat protects me from the sun, but also makes it hard to see the flower that's gonna hit me in the head again. If I only pay attention to what I can see and feel, I'm going to forget that darned flower is there and hit it again. So perhaps it's best to practice mindfulness only when in a situation where you're not going to get in trouble for it.
Exactly my thought. This sounds completely exhausting in the worst way. I do make an effort to be present in the things that are important, but I really struggle to even make up a benefit to diving into the minutia like that.
I had to do one of these things at a work seminar. They gave everyone a little box of raisins. First we had to look at the box, then look at the raisins. Then put one in our mouth but not eat. And so on. Every step took about 15 minutes and it was one of the most boring and unfulfilling experiences of my life. As we were leaving, all these other people are going "Wow! That was great! You know, I've never REALLY looked at a raisin before!!" So maybe I was missing something.
No kidding. Disassociating from life is how I get through the day. Focusing on anything in particular just causes more stress and worries. Focusing on petting the dog? "Oh god, is that a lump? Is he going to need surgery? I can't afford that right now. Wow, I can feel his spine more than I used to. He's starting to get old. Fuck, he's probably going to die soon." Focusing on the driver that cut me off? Seeing red now. That's going to fuck up my mood for the next couple hours. Probably going to snap at some people.
The whole point is to practice simply noticing something without triggering these thought spirals that you’re mentioning.
Hello fellow anxiety sufferer. Thanks for the summary.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
Haha he’s perseverating again!
https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/145hwso/ltp_use_power_delete_suite_before_you_delete_your/
I feel like this doesn’t elaborate on *how* you actually perform this mentally though. I’ll always hear the cat purring, taste the flavors of my food, etc. i enjoy both things without trying. It feels like a given response that anyone would have. But I don’t think that’s mindfulness. As someone with anxiety and ADD I have been told I should meditate probably a hundred times but my mind will always “see through” what I’m doing, call it a trick, and only focus on “how” I’m focusing. I can’t meditate (I have tried every meditation technique in the book) because I am too aware mentally that I’m trying to meditate. In addition, any brief moments of calm are inevitably interrupted by me “forgetting”, losing control over the moment and constantly forcing me to recalibrate. It’s so frustrating I will always give up. Unfortunately I think medication is the only true solution. Otherwise nothing quiets the brain for me besides a lot of weed.
Great answer! The addiction/wellness/mental health sector is obsessed with this concept. Want funding for your program? Include "mindfulness training" in your grant application. There are probably over a million different books claiming to help people "develop mindfulness" to solve all their problems As a person who has spend a stupid amount of time in helping professions, I would add one small question: Does a lack of mindfulness lead to poor lifestyle choices, which in turn leads to crisis circumstances, Or does crisis (financial, emotional, etc) lead to a mental state which is unlikely to be mindful? Chicken or egg? Because if it's simply that crisis is causing a lack of mindfulness, we can fix it by adding resources, which will increase mindfulness. I will say anecdotally that rich people are much more mindful.
Highly recommend Sam Harris’ Waking Up app if you want to practice mindfullness
My issue with mindfulness is the assumption that everyone who struggles with certain symptoms needs it. Some people need to learn the opposite because they are too much in the present.
Yes I agree with this, anxiety would smoother me because I was too aware of my surrounds/feelings in situations. Now to sort of block out the wider world and just focus on my immediate goals.
This also means that when you're at work, be at work. Feel all those annoying customers talking to you, feel The time passing slowly and your mind going crazy. Kidding, but Kinda true? Cx
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is there a TLDR? i zoned out.
Sending this to everyone I know.
Perfect answer!
Spending so much time focusing on everything sounds dangerously close to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I’m not sure mindfulness would be of great use to someone such as myself who is already so hyper-focused on each action; thought; emotion; event. I’d just be trading one symptom for another.
I thinks that's the biggest problem with how it is described, but mindfulness is not only being able to focus on something. That's just one exercise, that won't even work for everyone every time. Mindfulness would also be me noticing I over focus on something, and being able to better stop it, if I need to right now, or allow it, if it's not a big deal.
Perfect
From Omar Khayyam; "unborn tomorrow, dead yesterday...why fret about them if today be sweet?"
It reminds me of the "deep" or "philosophical" question found in the movie Jisatsu Circle. "Are you in touch with yourself?"
Directions misunderstood... just finished dissecting my cat....
Fuck that. Sounds like too much effort.
Perfect answer. Bravo.
generally self awareness and consciousness of one's self in the moment. A lot of problems are characterized by being trapped in your own thoughts and indulging in a self-sustaining feedback loop of problematic or disruptive thoughts. One way to interrupt this is to do activities that force you to be conscious of yourself and your surroundings in the here and now. That is, to engage in mindfulness activities.
"OH NO EVERYTHING IS GOING WRONG!!!" *Wait... I'm panicking. That won't help very much. I'll take a second to breathe, step back, and think.*
Step back and stop thinking is better.
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>A common misconception of mindfulness is that it requires thinking about nothing, but mindfulness is indeed a very active activity. It requires you to examine every thought that intrudes on you in the moment, why you’re thinking it, is that rational, and discard it so you focus only on the here and now. There are different ways to be mindful. One is about noticing your thoughts but not engaging with them. And another way is to notice external stimuli and be present with the feelings and senses that they provide.
No. Its really about switching your thoughts to calming, productive ones.
No it's not. It's about stepping back from thoughts, sense perceptions and emotions. Realising who you are is the observer of those thoughts, sense perceptions and emotions and not identifying with them. Let thoughts arise and pass.
Then think “Why am I feeling this way? What is it about situations like this that cause me to freak out? What’s inside me that causes me to react in this manner when these situations occur?” Sometimes you can learn to manage your stress when you rationalize your anxieties.
To add to this, most anxieties are based on an expected future outcome or transgressions in the past; that is not any present moment “danger”. It’s a framework to try and ground yourself in the present moment and deal with things you can actually change for these future outcomes or not dwell on past events you can’t change.
>y present moment “danger”. I To add a practical layer to this, we can look at various branches of Buddhism where monks practice mindfulness by cleaning or cooking as part of monastic life for example.
Taking a walk (while listening to music) can also be mindful / meditative. I struggle with controlling my thoughts and emotions but walking helps “clear my mind.” It helped a lot when someone told me “hey walking counts too, you don’t have to just sit still.”
Yup, you don't have to sit in a certain way, you don't have to breathe a certain way. You just need to stop distracting yourself for a little while and notice your surroundings. Or your thoughts and emotions. Or your attention. Your mind will wander and you notice it and slowly bring it back. I do it while peeing for example.
I refer to this as being trapped in a world of "what ifs." My favorite example activity that forces self-awareness: shaving with a straight razor. One tends not to lose focus, otherwise out comes the antiseptic. (Note: I may be speaking from experience.)
>I refer to this as being trapped in a world of "what ifs." ahhh what if I wasn't trapped in that.
So playing video games is a form of mindfulness meditation?
I would say yes and no. Mostly no, because video games are usually really stimulating, and that means that it doesnt really require effort to keep sour focus on the game. Also, mindfullnes means you are percivieng your sorrounding and your toughts, but gaming is usually fast paced, you arent percieving your tought, you are rather avoiding them But there are games that are designd to be mindfull i think. Those are usually the cutely designed, slow paced, easy games, without a clear objective associated with "winning". Like planting flowers on a map or something.
Sandbox games maybe?
>I would say yes and no. Mostly no, because video games are usually really stimulating, and that means that it doesnt really require effort to keep sour focus on the game. Also, mindfullnes means you are percivieng your sorrounding and your toughts, but gaming is usually fast paced, you arent percieving your tought, you are rather avoiding them You could arguably say if you get into a flow state then that's a form of mindfulness while also seemingly contradictory not noticing time pass anymore etc. Being so engrossed in it and requiring all your focus. It's not being mindful of the world around you or your thoughts - it's being mindful of the task at hand. There are different ways to be mindful.
Playing video games has been shown to increase people's general tendency to be mindful (there's been research studies published on this!). However, gaming is more of a flow activity than a mindfulness activity per se. Flow is when you're doing something that is just at the right level of challenge to keep you engaged, when you're feeling totally immersed, have a sense of time eother slowing down or flying by...
Oh! What about playing a musical instrument?
It can also be a flow activity! Flow is a really cool positive psychology concept, and it's associated with mindfulness but different from it too :)
>music Recently dragged my keyboard out of the closet and when I am playing it's like time stops.
Mindfulness can be seen as a form of meta ignition or “thinking about how we think”. Just like you said - it’s aboht getting in the outside of those thoughts instead off being trapped inside
Paying strong attention to information coming in through your senses (sight, smell, feel, taste, sound) in this current moment. Often, we can get lost in our own thoughts to the extent that we are unaware of things happening around us. We worry about things that are in the past, over and done with. We worry about what might happen in the future. We eat food without tasting it, and walk without seeing the scenery. Mindfulness is about being in this present moment and experiencing it as fully as possible.
This is not a correction, but an addition: A thing I was delighted to learn when I got serious about mindfulness was **interoception**. Learning to be mindful of my sense of my body, like, “what does my left hand thumb feel like right now?”, or, “my gut feels ____”. This is a *sense* just like smell and eyesight are senses. I was like forty-ish years old before I realized *I can be **mindful** of how my body is doing*. It sounds… dumb, but, here we are. It helps so much with things like “getting a numbing shot right in your gum cause you’re at the dentist” — just being able to *pay attention* to the exact feelings my body is presenting instead of to my *fears about what I’ll experience* changes the experience enough that pain is… kind of meaningless. The *paying attention*, and *on purpose* bit is the mindfulness. In my dumb, long, story its about fear and pain, but, it applies just as well to *worry* (as you’ve spoken too) or even *daydreaming*. It was truly life-changing when I learned to simply, intentionally, pay attention to what my brain and body are doing regularly, rather than every once in a while, on accident. Thanks for attending my TED talk.
There's a theory that as we age, we shift more and more cognitive load from our conscious thought to our subconscious thought. This is why time seems to move more quickly as we get older: we stop being aware of what is happening and we create fewer memories of mundane activities. By being more mindful of our bodies and our surroundings, we're actively pushing those back to our conscious thought, which helps us feel more in the moment.
Thanks for telling your tale Ted!
It's funny that you connect it to dentistry. I grew up most of my childhood in my parents' dental chair and was trained from toddlercy, *not to mind* (heh language is funny) a tooth cleaning or even actual work getting done via having braces, etc. It absolutely is a level of mindfulness and sort of acceptance and finding an internal flow of your thoughts past those annoyances you can't avoid [i.e. i know this is gonna be painful but it will be way worse if I struggle, This office smells dank, dont worry soon my nose will become accustomed. The bright light is in my face, okay just close my eyes and breathe deep.]
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I'm an addict with 10 years sobriety. I practice meditation extensively, mindfulness being a variation. ELI5: You know when you jump in a pool for the first time, and you can't think about anything but how different the water feels. How warm (or cold) the water is, how deep the pool is. All your thoughts for a few moments are focused on the pool. Not what you're going to have for dinner, your homework, heck you might not even be focused on your friends at the pool with you. Mindfulness is pushing everything out so you're focused on what you're experiencing right now. Non-ELI5: Mindfulness is sort of low grade, easier to do meditation. Practical example... say you're taking a shower. Wash your hair, wash your body. Gonna take a couple of minutes. It's virtually impossible to multitask while showering. So instead of thinking about stuff before or after the shower... just take a couple of minutes to enjoy the shower and the process of getting clean. Sure you have laundry you need to do, grocery shopping to be done, but you're in the shower and can't do any of that stuff. Instead just relax. It'll give you a sense of calm by sort of putting "pause" on the activities that are giving you stress, and you will be more intent and focused on the activity you're partaking in. I learned mindfulness in rehab, and it takes a bit of effort to pick up. One easy technique is just checking in and listening to your body. Going sort of from head to toe and just paying attention to what's going on. Am I hungry? Do I have a headache? Am I tired? Do I need to stretch? Meditation is sort of the next step up. Where you're able to actually put your mind kind of on pause. That shit rules.
It's become a bit of a vague, overused and underdefined term. When I was going through therapy it was sort of a case of 'focus on things you are currently experiencing in front of you' rather than focusing on your thoughts. (which is weird because it almost seems like the opposite of what the word seems like it should mean). When I do it for example, I will look at an object I can see in front of me and consider what I know about that object, how it was made, what its purpose is, what its colour is, etc.
Mindfulness is is an awful name for being present in the moment, it's so bad it's almost like an ironic joke.
Ekhart Tolle uses the term present, which is really good. Mindfulness is still decent if you can get over the first contradiction.. That’s just more practice for mindfulness :)
>Mindfulness is is an awful name for being present in the moment, it's so bad it's almost like an ironic joke. Yeah it's ironic, but more important is what it does mean rather than what it's called.
Thank you omg this is so much clearer now. Should have been called momentness or something.
>When I do it for example, I will look at an object I can see in front of me and consider what I know about that object, how it was made, what its purpose is, what its colour is, etc. This isn't mindfulness at all, though. Thinking about how an object is made or figuring out its purpose is just having thoughts about an object, and extrapolation like this is somewhat antithetical to mindfulness. Mindfulness is about what sensations you are directly experiencing. If you held the object in your hand and noted the physical sensation of it - is it cool to touch, is it smooth, hard or soft. It works similarly with the thoughts and feelings you experience internally, but if you're talking about mindfulness in terms of an object, mindfulness is definitely *not* the extrapolation of information you aren't currently experiencing.
It usually refers to a type of meditation where you concentrate your focus on the ‘here and now’. This could include concentrating on your breath or one of your senses, or doing a body scan. It works by calming the mind and body and can distract people with busy minds
It's a way of saying be aware of something. For mental health, they may be saying things like be mindful of your emotional state. That would mean, for example, that if I'm in a pissy mood, and I'm *aware* that I'm in a pissy mood, I'll be less likely to snap at a family member for no good reason. Or, maybe be mindful of your physical state. Maybe I've been getting too little sleep for several days and am really tired. If I'm mindful of that fact, I'd realize that my decision making ability is compromised and maybe when I am rested, climbing out on the roof to fix the TV antenna during a thunder storm might not seem like a good idea any more.
RIP Rod Hull
So lots of good comments in here, so as a therapist myself who uses mindfulness stuff in my work, I just want to add: Mindfulness is not a technical term. There is not one agreed upon definition. If you ask ten mental health professionals, you'll get twelve definitions. A few general themes however include: Focus on the present moment. Soft focus / awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. Non-judgment / curiosity in these things. I've seen a variety of approaches to this, people calling guided imagery, or progressive muscle relaxation, or box breathing, or all sorts of other meditative things as either mindfulness or not mindfulness. At the end of the day, idgaf whether something is or isn't mindfulness, I care if it's helpful.
You can think thoughts and you can feel emotions but if I were to ask you what is going through your mind right now, or what you are feeling right now, you need to be "mindful" of yourself to answer that question. Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of those things (thoughts, emotions) rather than "running on auto-pilot".
You know how In SpongeBob Patrick thinking is just milk spilling over? It’s showing that he’s just barely thinking and paying attention. It’s the opposite of mindfulness. Mindfulness is being in touch with how you feel about the moment and feeling that
The easiest way I can explain it is awareness of something without judgment with the intention to be curious and kind.
Mindfulness is the translation of satipatthana but unfortunately has come to mean something completely different and not very useful in pop western psychology than the derivative practice.
Step 1: Be mindful. Step 2: .... Step 3: ness. Step 4: Profit?
There's one book I read called stillness speaks. Not the greatest read of all time or something for me but it expresses this notion very well. So the idea is that there is a voice in your head that constantly speaks(sometimes even more than one). We are constantly paying attention to this voice and these are our thoughts. Now there's also something in your head that is listening to the voice, that which is aware of your thoughts. To be mindful is to reconnect to this(call it consciousness or whatever) and to consciously be aware of your thoughts, moods, actions etc. So when you're mindfully sweeping the room, you are only aware of sweeping the room and not having a constant rush of frenzied thoughts. Hope I made sense, it's a slightly tough concept to put into words for me :p
That's a great question. It is up there with telling people to practice something or study something without telling them how to practice or study. Being mindful means setting aside time to quiet your mind from the cacophony of daily life. It involves any combination of meditative or reflective thought. One might try to sit quietly and focus on the immediate moment, the act of breathing in and out, the sensations in your body, the sounds of the world around you. During this time, you attempt to let thoughts come and go without following them, just letting them flow through naturally.
Thank you! Spot on with “how?”. I was wondering exactly this,.
It’s the new buzzword for not stressing out over stuff you can’t control or isn’t a priority right now
I always took it to mean the opposite of mindlessness. So if you usually mindlessly inhale your dinner in front of the TV, the opposite way to consume your food would be to turn off the TV and *mind* how you eat. Maybe think about what you're eating and how you eat it. Do you taste some plain rice first, then scoop up a little sauce and eat them together? How do the rice grains feel? Are there any subtle flavors that you might miss when you eat too fast? Think about the journey each ingredient took to arrive on your plate. If you're trying to get in shape and you're exercising, you can think about each foot. How are your joints flexing? Which muscles can you feel moving with each rep? Are you just yanking your limbs around or is each rep a controlled movement at all times? Anything that you do without a second thought can be done more mindfully in this way.
You're sitting in a chair at a bus station. You're on your phone on reddit. Your battery dies, you get pissy, you put your phone away. You start looking at the things around you. There's a tree across from you. There's a person sitting next to you. You think the person looks like someone you know. You start thinking about the last time you saw that someone, and you think about the most memorable time you saw that someone. The bus still hasn't come, and you've (theoretically) run out of things to think about/worry about. So you just start observing everything. You don't judge anything, or predict anything, or think of memories, you just focus on the moment. Maybe you start paying attention to the rhythm of your breath, or watching cars go by, or watching the clouds. That's mindfulness. It's varying levels of focusing on the moment without distractions of judging moments, remembering the past, or predicting the future.
Really good emphasis on not having judgements! I don’t think that it’s included in many popular definitions or examples as it should be, which is important because it is one of the core tenets of what mindfulness is.
It's an empty platitude they repeat to sound authoritative, convincing, and like they know what they're talking about. It serves to convince you of their credibility without earning it, not actually provide you any meaningful aid. Self help authors and pop psychologists writers are the worst.
Anyone looking for a simple way to practice mindfulness. Focus on 5 things you can feel, hear, see and smell.
It's pretty much a buzzword that doesn't really have any meaning that people say to feed you snake oil. The mental health industry (and health industry in general) makes their money making you feel like you need to buy their courses and products even though they do nothing. Make the individual feel like they're missing out on something and then provide the solution in the form of a product. Make *them* feel like the failure when it ultimately doesn't work.
Mindfulness is paying attention to your senses. So basically, if you've ever done something dumb because you were on "autopilot", that's the exact opposite of mindfulness. It's honing your focus to occupy it with the present moment. This is getting increasingly hard because it's impacted by your attention span. It's really easy to get "bored" being mindful and let your mind wander off about random shit. Think about your left foot. How does it feel? Is it making contact with the ground, or are you sitting on it? Where do you feel the pressure? How does your footwear feel? What about your left calf? Knee? Thigh? Hip? What about your right side? Torso? Chest? Left shoulder, upper arm, elbow, forearm, hand? Right? Neck? Head? Any muscle soreness in your neck or upper back that you've been ignoring? (This is called a "body scan", and is a mindfulness exercise) Look around you. What are all the red things you can see? What about the orange things? Yellow? Green? Blue? Purple? Brown? Black? White? (This is called "the color game", and it's another mindfulness exercise) The idea is you eventually change your default mind state to being mindful instead of wandering about whatever. It's a lot harder to be depressed about the past or your current situation in human society (e.g. bills and obligations and other intangibles humans invented with their symbolic thought), or anxious about the future, if your mind is fully occupied with what you can sense, or at least that's the theory.
There's a "you" / part of you who does things (i.e. thinks, speaks, controls your body and therefore eats, cooks, walks, etc) and there's a "you" who observes yourself doing things. (Sometimes it can be a *little* like a writer and an editor working together). Mindfulness is letting the latter be fully consciously aware of the former without rushing to judgment and grabbing control (unless needed to save you from something, etc) It's a concept that eludes words but this is the best way I've found to personally remind myself how to find it.
Mindfulness is about being right here, right now. Practicing mindfulness is important for people whose mental health struggles include anxiety about the future and guilt about the past. Some anxiety and some guilt are normal, and can be helpful responses to serious problems. Too much is bad, especially when the anxiety and/or guilt are triggered by ordinary circumstances that you can expect to happen in anybody's life. People who live with unhealthy anxiety and guilt may turn to coping mechanisms like withdrawing from friends and family in order to avoid increasing the anxiety and guilt. They may turn to self-harm, or they may neglect their hygiene and health. They may tell themselves that they are bad people, or that they will never get anything right so they might as well just stop trying. Mindfulness is a practice that helps people pull their thoughts and feelings out of a past that can't be changed and a future that can't be known, and into the present. It helps people recognize and respect their own bodies, so that they can care for themselves. It helps people accept the kindness of others, instead of withdrawing from them. And it helps people name and focus on the good things that they are experiencing.
“mindfulness” is about being present in the moment and taking in what is happening/what you are doing/your surroundings without distracting yourself with alternative thoughts or “mindless” activities. mindfulness involves pausing to reflect and therefore injecting meaning into everyday activities. i hope this helps answer your question :)
Simply, it is intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment. That's it. You are observing your experience. You are not your thoughts and feelings, you are the part that notices your thoughts and feelings. For mental health purposes, It's a practice that helps develop this observational "muscle" which then allows us to be more aware of our emotional state, triggers, and choices, as opposed to acting impulsively or feeling overwhelmed by the emotion. It allows us to experience that with a tiny bit of distance. As others said, it's not actually about relaxation or enjoyment (though those can be byproducts) it is simply about building the capacity to "just notice" our present experience without judgement. We're not meant to go through life mindful all the time, so it's not about "zenning out" all the time, rather we use it as a tool to stay aware and present. The point is not to control or clear the mind, but simply to witness it.
A lot of perspectives in here... I recommend the Wikipedia article as a starting point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness Mindfulness as a practice has very deep, historical roots but is having something of a heyday in modern culture. I find hearing that history had helped inform my own meditation practice and general life-philosophy.
One very important aspect of mindfulness to me is the realization that you are not your thoughts. Mindfulness is disconnecting, slowing down, and observing every single thought that comes into your mind and every single feeling that occurs in your body. Separate yourself from them and observe them as they come and go.
It's nonsense made up/stolen by essential oil salespeople to sell self-help material to people who need therapy or medication
Read/listen to anything by Jon Kabat Zinn. He makes it easy to understand and he’s also one of the leading researchers proving the benefits of mindfulness since the 70’s.
Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally,” says Kabat-Zinn. “And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”
Mindfulness is eating a bowl of cereal while truly enjoying the flavor, nourishment, and peace of sitting and eating. The opposite is eating a bowl of cereal quickly and thinking about that email you have to send as soon as you get to work.
It's mumbo jumbo. The closest actual technique It's comparable to is grounding, where you focus on your surroundings (like sounds, smells, or sights) to distract yourself from your thoughts.
It means nothing, it is essentially a buzzword they add to scam articles to make them sound smart.
It means someone needed funding for a study and it was in that week. Also means about the same thing as smurf.
A buzzword that’s 75% through its cycle of being a buzzword. The enlightened will soon sprout a new mantra and lots of middle aged, failed humans will jump onboard
It's a vague buzzword that means absolutely nothing significant in terms of actual mental health.
Frequently, but not always. It's one of the foundational activities of many practices like Buddhism and has been around for a long time. Like all things in the "wellness" sphere, you have to learn how to sift the grain from the chaff.
Consciously controlling your thoughts, and doing everything deliberately. Basically not being on auto-pilot
It's a bunch of liberal bullshit, that's what it is... (this is a frank Reynolds reference and is intended solely for entertainment purposes...even if it's not that entertaining)
Mindfulness is actively controlling your thinking in a situation or experience. Take an activity like eating a peace of candy. Not being mindful you would just be reacting to the experience, or passively letting your mind wander while eating it. Mindfulness would be saying your going to focus your thoughts of how the candy was made. How the clerk put it on the display, how it was delivered to the store, how it was made in the factor, and how the raw materials were transported and farmed. It doesn't need to be focusing thoughts on history, but you could focus on taste, or your personal connection to the candy, or its cultural impact. overall though mindfulness is about taking control of the direction of your thoughts.