Mindfulness Is For Everyone: Why Getting Present Matters

I’m sure you’ve heard this before. Or maybe you’ve even said it yourself, when someone drops that now trendy and overused word: mindfulness. “I’m not very good at mindfulness. I can’t meditate very well.”
 
Oh, trust me. I know this feeling too. I've had this thought. Many times.
 
That's why, when I talk to clients about mindfulness, I’ll be totally honest - I do it with hesitation. Mainly, because I know how misunderstood this powerful little word can be. So I want to break this word down and simplify it for you, so you can start experiencing the benefits of being present without hitting these pitfalls.

Mindfulness is defined as a state of being that basically embodies three things:

1) It is present-focused. Meaning you are paying attention to what is currently happening.
2) It is nonjudgmental. Meaning you are not judging what is happening as good or bad, right or wrong.
3) It is a state of awareness. Meaning you are concentrating on some aspect of the present moment, not letting your mind wander aimlessly or distracting yourself from what is coming up for you.
 
That’s it. It’s not a certain posture. It’s not a certain style of breathing. Heck, it doesn’t even have to be meditation at all. You can mindfully vacuum the rug. You can mindfully brush your hair. You can mindfully… just about anything.
 
So why does it matter?
 
There’s an almost silly amount of research at this point demonstrating the impact of mindfulness on the brain and body. I actually dedicated my dissertation  to exploring the impact of mindfulness, and I never could fully reach the bottom of that seemingly bottomless well of evidence supporting mindfulness. And it is constantly growing and expanding. Mindfulness is good for our immune system, for our emotional wellbeing, for our productivity. It actually changes the way our brain functions, and over time, practicing mindfulness regularly, we start to respond to circumstances more wisely, with more compassion and more perspective. Who doesn’t want that?
 
There’s plenty of theories on why mindfulness is so effective. I think a big part of it is that we spend so much mental energy dividing everything around us into buckets: this is good, this is bad. More of this, less of that. Like this, don’t like that. Want! Don’t Want! This process of judging our surroundings is, on a basic level, needed for survival. But when we do this all the time, we become anxious, overwhelmed, fearful, and exhausted.  Mindfulness is taking an intentional break from  the constant rationalizing, categorizing, and judging.
 
But mindfulness is not the same as distraction. Distraction is, if you think about it, another form of judgment. We say, I don’t like this, so I’m going to ignore it. Well, that works for a while, but anyone who has put off a deadline until the last minute with distraction knows that it tends to backfire. Being mindful is really the opposite of being distracted.
 
OK, OK, so you know mindfulness is important. But how do you practice mindfulness anyway, if it doesn’t include judging or distracting?
 
If you have struggled to meditate before, you might have said after, “I tried to meditate, but I couldn’t stop thinking.” Or, “I tried to meditate, but I kept feeling anxious the whole time. In fact, I felt more anxious the longer I did it.”
 
This is what makes mindfulness tricky. It’s not actually about not feeling anxious. It’s about not judging the anxiety to begin with. It’s about noticing everything – thoughts, anxiety, memories, physical pain – without getting caught up in the constant need to pull towards or push away experiences based on whether or not we like the experiences.
 
Mindfulness is simple. But that doesn’t mean  it’s easy.
 
If you’ve struggled with meditation before, and now the word mindfulness makes you cringe, here’s a few low-stress mindfulness activities you can try that don’t involve lotus position:
 
*Eat a raisin (or some other all natural snack). Eat it slowly. Smell it. Look at it. Taste it before and after chewing. Take your time fully experiencing the raisin. Notice your thoughts about whether or not you are enjoying the experience if those come up, then come right on back to the raisin.

*Take a shower. Really. Just take a shower. Smell the soap. Feel the shampoo in your hair. Watch the water coming out of the spout. If you take a shower every day, you can get your mindfulness practice in without needing to schedule in anything additional this way.

*Show up to one of your hobbies without any distractions this week. If you are a runner, run without music one day and really feel your limbs moving through the open air. If you color, pay attention to the colors on the page while you do it. If you cook, take in the way the spices you add change the aroma rising from the pan over time.

And sure, if you want to meditate, you can do that too, by sitting down and focusing on your breath, coming back to the breath whenever your attention shifts to some other thought or distraction.

But remember: mindfulness is everywhere, all the time. It’s not a place we are working to get to. It’s a state of being we can choose to be in anytime, anywhere, anyway we want.
 
And the more time we spend in a mindful place, the more freedom we’ll find in our minds.
 
How will you step out of your mind so you can step more fully into your life today?