Hey there friends,
Most of this article is in the audio above for your listening pleasure (!) but not all of it - just the main section about mindfulness.
Don’t miss scrolling down for later sections. Oh, and, please send in your questions to be answered here with any identifying characteristics and names removed. x
While some people love to meditate, others won’t have a bar of it. And you know what? That’s completely OK.
After decades as a therapist I know for sure, nothing’s for everyone and you can’t force things on people whether they’re ‘good for them’ or not. People are going to do what they’re going to do, and they’re going to ignore what they’re going to ignore no matter how much you jump up and down wailing truly great advice into the abyss! I know, I’ve ignored plenty…
Meditation is kind of one of those divisive things, I’ve found, where people tend to either come down strongly for it, or against it as something that they’re willing to stick at.
Mindfulness, however, is a more fundamental concept. It’s a superpower in all of us - a power that makes us better at every aspect of daily life. It’s a way to greater self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and ultimately emotional freedom and peace. And, although it’s only fair to acknowledge that one of the best ways to develop your innate mindfulness is through meditation, you can be mindful in daily life, and reap the benefits without being a regular meditator.
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow
I'm not into long daily meditation personally, despite having been a yoga and meditation teacher for years. I’m a busy, realist and householder, not a full-time yogi. I'm sometimes impatient and always imperfect, so I’m about real-life mindfulness that works to support us in our mental health in good times and bad.
In a world of short attention spans, enormous advantage lies increasingly with those who can hold focus on what matters and what makes emotional sense, against the thrall of unrelenting distractions, increasing speed and growing impulsivity. So many situations can push buttons in us, knock the top off hurts, or invite us to bite the hook of anger, shame, defensiveness or envy.
There's nothing wrong with any emotions arising, but they can worsen situations if they’re expressed in mindless words or actions. Without awareness, it's too easy to act on a feeling of self-righteousness, rage or defensiveness, and end up making things worse for yourself, and those around you.
All emotions can be intelligent and useful when handled with a dash of mindful wisdom. Even pain and anger, expressed well, can be forces for change, freedom and healing.
A major life skill is to let our emotions run through a mindful filter before exploding them into the world. When you’re emotionally triggered to react in a way that you may likely regret, mindfulness comes into its own as a super-power and way of saving yourself.
It lets you create the space to take a breath, pause, acknowledge your emotion, and ask yourself:
“Is what I’m about to do, or say, likely to be helpful?”
In that moment of mindfulness, you can own your feelings as real, but choose to respond from your wisdom and bigger picture values, not out of an animal-brain, knee-jerk reaction.
Accessing your innate mindfulness means increasing your self-awareness. Awareness gives you the power to pause and step back from situations before reacting in ways that exacerbate problems, mistakes or conflicts.
Mindfulness means observing your inner and outer life in the present moment, non-judgmentally.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness is innate, but it can take some understanding and practice to awaken it in you. To really understand mindfulness and why it’s so important, it can help to reflect on the differences between thinking and mindful awareness.
Thinking is an ongoing commentary in your mind involving images and words, your inner dialogue.
On the other hand, mindful awareness feels more expansive and quieter – imagine it as being the quiet spaces between your thoughts. It’s always there behind the thinking, but it can become completely obscured and ignored because your thinking is so busy and all-consuming.
Your awareness can be likened to the sky and your thoughts to changing weather. The sky is a constant. The light, clouds and weather change, and life plays out, against its eternal backdrop. Similarly, your thoughts move against the backdrop of your limitless awareness, against the part of you that can step back and observe it.
It is comforting to know that mindful awareness is innate, always there for you to touch back into. Whereas thinking uses memories and imagination to transport our minds to the past or the future, awareness is in the present moment.
Thinking is all over everything, judging, sorting, analyzing, wondering, planning, remembering, dreaming - doing all sorts of busy, amazing and valuable things.
Awareness is just being here.
When you can touch back into that wider awareness, call it the bigger picture if you like, you can appreciate that feelings are options to be guided by, not prescriptions for mandatory behaviour. There is so much more to you than whatever temporary mood you’re experiencing!
Feelings need the balance of your wisdom to make their best contribution to your decisions.
Acknowledging the feelings that are with you and knowing you can choose how to act upon them (inside yourself and in the outside world) is a major part of emotional intelligence. You give yourself space to act on them wisely when you touch into your mindful awareness, creating that micro-second for choice, instead of blind impulsivity.
Einstein wrote that “we cannot solve our problems with the same kind of thinking that created them”. To teach yourself to change gear from thinking, to observing with awareness, is an important self-care and problem-solving skill. In fact it is a super-power.
How do you strengthen it and access it better?
You can learn to take pauses in your day to be, instead of do, consciously shifting your mind state without having to do lengthy meditations. Through practice you can teach yourself to observe your inner world and not be mindlessly swept away by every thought, feeling or impulse automatically, as though you have no say in it.
Mindfulness is the doorway to more agency in your life, starting from within, rather than characterizing yourself as a victim, completely subsumed in every mood or passing thought.
Conceptualizing your thoughts and feelings as events that rise and fall, rather than seeing them as defining you, is wildly liberating.
Through mindfulness, you also gradually strengthen your emotional ‘muscles’ so you can bear uncomfortable feelings and thoughts with equanimity, having less fear of drowning in them.
Plus, you get to know yourself more intimately, through giving yourself your full attention regularly. Mindfulness is getting to know your own heart and mind through the practice of consciously stopping and listening.
It’s about observing your inner life non-judgmentally, without needing to jump in and follow up, run away, or do anything. You know you are safe to be with your thoughts and feelings whatever they are, because they are not the sum of your identity, and they become less overwhelming than they once may have seemed.
As I’ve said, it doesn’t take long or esoteric meditation practices to get really good at these innate self-awareness and emotional intelligence skills. It just takes a bit of tuning in to yourself and practising taking a breath before reacting or automatically believing in every thought and emotion that comes up.
Micro Mindfulness Breaks
To train yourself to observe your thoughts and become more aware of your inner dialogue, feelings and habits, introduce micro-mindfulness breaks throughout your day – a minute or two is good, as often as you like.
Mindfulness is being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
As a viable alternative to lengthy meditation sessions, add micro-mindfulness breaks to your day. If it helps, set a reminder on your phone so you don’t forget. Soon, tuning in mindfully to yourself and your interactions will become usual, and your emotional wellbeing will be greatly supported.
· Close your eyes, or just soften your gaze, even for one minute.
· Observe your breathing like you are a tiny you, standing at your nostril!
· Whenever your mind wanders off, bring it back on task with a smile.
· Let each distraction pass.
· Keep returning to focusing on each inhalation and exhalation.
To extend the practice now, draw your point of view back to observe yourself as if from above, watching yourself breathe.
Keep the focus on the breathing then draw back in closely, observing at your nostril for a few breaths again.
Then release.
I know that if you are beset with difficult thoughts and feelings, it is hard to be with what is and not want to just run hurtling into distraction.
I know in the heat of an emotional moment it is challenging to step back and take a breath and check yourself for what is likely to be more helpful - but it is possible.
So, to make it easier to develop these skills, keep your mindfulness moments brief, gentle and manageable, so you don’t bite off more than you can chew and set yourself up to feel like you’re failing.
If sitting quietly with yourself for a few moments seems like too much, then walk or run, and count how many steps you take to each breath, finding your rhythm and observing it, letting thoughts pass by your awareness without getting hooked into them.
You’ve got this. Mindfulness was always in you.
The musical inspiration I listened to while writing this piece was Bjork because I adore this track and I love and admire her originality. I also find her music kind of transcendent of the everyday. I gues for me it symbolises touching into the sky behind the clouds of the mundane.
And now for something completely different…
What I’ve been reading and watching lately (if you’re looking for some ideas…)
I know I might be a little late for this party but Oh my goodness the main man behind this series has made an incredible piece of work - my hat is off to Scott Ryan. I believe even the beautiful and incredible actress Helen Mirren recommended Ryan to a Hollywood agent after watching Mr Inbetween with her husband.
Look, it’s tough and rough and violent at times. It can be hard to watch on occasion, but it so deeply human and so damn well written that I absolutely loved, loved, loved this series. (And I’m not a huge fan of violent stuff generally). It’s outstanding Australian story telling and every member of the supporting cast is wonderful too.
I just love biographies about fascinating people and truth is, I find most people fascinating. I love their stories, I love finding out how they think, how they got through the hard things they’ve faced and how they attained their successes.
I was so intensely drawn into this account of life with Fleetwood Mac during their meteoric rise to fame years of the seventies and eighties. The drug stuff got a little boring and ridiculous, but the rest of it was fabulously absorbing reading. I read it in remebrance of the lovely Christine McVie.
If you’re an inner subs Melbourne soul, more specifically someone who’s lived in or knows and loves glorious Richmond, you’ll probably get right into this award winner. It’s been around a while but it is a book that feels like home to me. Love.
That’s it for this newsletter.
Send your questions to be answered anonymously here and also send me your suggestions of what we all might enjoy watching and reading next.
Happy New Year. Love to You. x
Mindfulness Without Meditation