Hi everyone, welcome back! Since a lot of people say that this world is not a safe place to live in, last week I examined if this world really is that unsafe and the humans living in it are really that bad, the way we view them a lot of times. This week I would like to break away from examining another belief and instead would like to examine what ‘practicing mindfulness’ looks like.
I am really fond of attending mindfulness related workshops that are sometimes offered for free at my workplace and I happened to recently attend one of these workshops where the lady who was presenting was promoting mindfulness and was presenting all the research that has been done in the last 40 – 50 years to show how truly helpful mindfulness is if one takes the time to practice it. At the end of her presentation during Q&A, one guy asked her ‘the question’ which I think is on everyone’s minds – everyone who is interested in the topic of mindfulness and wants to benefit from it, however, is clueless on what the heck mindfulness really is and how exactly to practice it. But the interesting thing that I noticed from this presentation and a lot of other similar presentations which I have attended over the years on this topic is that most people who are presenting on the topic of mindfulness do an amazing job at presenting, however, a lot of times when asked this question about ‘how to actually practice mindfulness’ in a real situation at work or in personal life, they tend to falter. And this presenter that I just mentioned above was no different. So I am going to take a stab at it and will try to break down mindfulness the way I understand it and if anything I say resonates with you, you are welcome to try to use in your own life and if it doesn’t, simply discard it – your choice!
So before we being to even understand ‘how’ to practice mindfulness, let’s first try to understand what mindfulness really means and in what ways can it help as we navigate through our lives. Here is how I understand mindfulness – to me, mindfulness is NOT about getting rid of all the negative thoughts that our minds create so often. I believe mindfulness is about understanding my own self better, my own beliefs which create the thoughts that I think and my actions that are a direct result of these thoughts. And when I become more mindful, what really happens is that I begin to understand the kinds of thoughts my mind creates in any given situation and also understand the kind of re-action that I could have in that situation as a result of these thoughts. And because a human mind thinks repetitive thoughts almost 95% of the time (maybe even more), I, the owner of my mind, continues to repeat the actions (re-action) over and over again until either I realize that this is happening or life becomes full of stress and anxiety and maybe even depressive and then I have to take the time to understand what’s causing me all this misery. But on the other hand, if I learn to be more mindful, when I come across another situation which triggers my mind to create similar thoughts, now that I understand the ‘thought-re-action’ phenomenon, I realize that I have a choice whether or not to re-act (repeat my actions) the same way as the last time around. And the way I would practice it is by first accepting and being ok with the fact that my mind is creating all these negative thoughts and then realizing that I have a choice whether or not I want to believe my thoughts. And when I understand that, I allow myself the space to choose to let go of my negative thoughts and because I choose to let them go, I end up acting differently this time around. And because I acted differently this time around, everything and everyone around me will act differently also and amazingly they will also receive that space to choose whether to re-act or change their actions this time around!!
Alright, let’s try to understand this through an example. Because a lot of us work in corporate jobs and therefore work in teams, I would like you to imagine that you are part of one of those teams where you and your colleagues are working hard to implement a project. There are timelines associated with tasks and a strict deadline with regards to the implementation of this project. And even though all team members in the team work well together, there are a couple of folks who seem to have issues all the time with not just other team members but with you as well. So every time you receive an email from these 2 people or are face to face in meetings discussing something, all you can think about are the things you will write or say to these people in response to their emails or words. And in practicing this approach, what your mind is really trying to do is to defend you from the negative things that these people can say or write.
So, let’s see how we can try to practice mindfulness in this situation. Let’s imagine that you just received an email from one of them saying that a task you were responsible for wasn’t executed well and your boss and all other project team members are copied on that email. So if you are not mindful you will be furious when you read that email and will want to re-act by responding to that email immediately! And if you choose to respond to that email in that state of anger and frustration, you may end up saying/writing things that you may regret later on and it will never end your perpetual frustration at work because at the end of the day the truth is that you have to work with these people! But if you are mindful, you already know the kind of people they are and you expect that kind of behavior from them and because you expect that behavior, you can choose to NOT engage with this person and NOT re-act when you see that email. Instead you still get angry but you choose to respond once you have had a chance to cool off your own anger. This will allow you the space to NOT re-act but to respond instead. And this is the key difference when you practice mindfulness. You respond to situations and/or people and not re-act to them. And that right there reduces your stress levels because you break the vicious cycle of acting the same way every time and in response, the situations/people respond differently to you!
Additionally, if you become really good at practicing mindfulness, people like these and their behaviors become a source of entertainment instead of frustration for you! And the people who you thought were responsible for all the work related stress become more bearable now that you have changed your perspective not just on them but have understood the basic truth about where the stress is coming from – your own re-actions!! I know this may appear like a difficult way of functioning in life because obviously each one of us have egos that would tell us to ‘stick it back to them’ but trust me, practicing mindfulness brings so much peace to you that it simply outweighs the need to prove others wrong and point their mistakes because mindfulness allows you to focus on yourself instead of others 🙂
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
