Chapter Two: The Meaning and Practice of Mindfulness

Hello and thanks for tuning in! Welcome to Chapter 2. Here, we’re going to talk a little bit more about mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness? Demystifying a Popular Term

First, let’s talk about what mindfulness is. It’s a popular term being frequently used nowadays, but what does it really mean? Basically, it means paying attention on purpose to what’s going on in the present moment. So, mindfulness is an act of observation.

If you pay a little attention, you may notice that throughout your day, a lot of times you’re just going on autopilot, going through the motions, onto the next thing. With being mindful, we take a moment and observe what’s actually going on in the present moment. Most notably, a key area we often overlook is our thinking at any given moment, and being mindful helps us to pay attention to our thinking.

What mindfulness isn’t: It isn’t something magical. It isn’t necessarily spiritual. Your own individual spiritual or religious practice could have mindful elements, and mindfulness can be used to complement those practices; it doesn’t contradict or go against them. However, the act in itself does not have to be attached to any religious teachings. It’s just simply an act of taking a moment, taking your awareness, and paying attention to what’s going on in the present moment.

As I will outline a little later, there are different practices we can do to help us do a better job of this. But the actual act of doing that is just paying attention, taking your awareness, and placing it on the present moment, observing what’s going on—what information we’re getting through our senses, and what information our body and our mind are giving us.

The Historical Roots of Mindfulness

The origins of mindfulness can be traced back to very early human history. However, it is typically attributed to Eastern cultures, such as Buddhism, Taoism, Eastern philosophy, and Eastern religions. Many ancient cultures, in their own different ways, discuss taking time to pay attention to your present moment—things that we may today label as meditation or mindful walking. Very early on, we realized that being able to bring our focus and awareness back into the present moment, focusing on what’s going on with us and our thinking, is a very useful thing.

Jon Kabat-Zinn and Mindfulness in the West

Here in Western culture, specifically in the United States, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a professor and author by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn is widely credited with helping to bring and popularize mindfulness. He worked at the University of Massachusetts and, through his own mindfulness practice, helped develop a program for patients at the medical school who were undergoing various treatments. He thought that adding a mindfulness practice might help them improve their results in their recovery, and indeed, he was right!

From that, he developed a program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Since then, there have been many offshoots of that program. He has written a few books that I recommend, from which many of the concepts in this book are pulled. He has a very clear way of explaining the goals of mindfulness practice. So, that’s a little bit about what we’re trying to accomplish when we talk about being mindful and practicing mindfulness.

The Seven Core Principles of Mindfulness

In Jon Kabat-Zinn’s writings on being mindful and teaching it to beginners, he broke it down into seven core principles that can help us understand what being mindful and being in the present moment involve. This doesn’t mean these are steps you must follow in each moment to be mindful; that would be difficult. Rather, these principles describe elements and experiences you bring into, or encounter during, mindful moments.

Beginner’s Mind: With mindful observation, approach each moment as if you were a beginner, with that same curiosity. Imagine a time you were trying something new for the first time, or you visited a place for the first time—perhaps the first time you saw a mountain or a skyscraper. If you put yourself back in that experience, you’ll realize that in that moment, your senses were wide open. You were taking everything in, paying attention, truly in the moment, and trying to get the most out of what that moment was giving you and the information it provided. His encouragement is to bring that element of curiosity and wonder to your observations of the present moment, that sense of “okay, let’s see how this goes, let’s see how this turns out”.
Non-Judging: We’ve had a lot of experiences in our lives—some good and pleasurable, some not so pleasurable. As we accumulate those experiences, we can form preconceived notions about how something is going to turn out because we’ve had a similar experience or heard about one before. So, we often have a thought about how something will be, its value, or what the experience will be like before it even happens. To a certain extent, that’s useful, but these judgments can get in the way of our experience and interfere with our ability to have the present experience just as it is. Approaching the situation without judgment can also help us maintain that curiosity and awareness, enabling us to take things in as they are. Our judgments can be a hindrance if we already have a preconceived idea about how something is going to be; we might not be as aware of indicators in the moment that it might be different than what we thought, because we are still attached to that preconceived notion.
Acceptance: This leads to the third principle, acceptance, which makes it easier to accept what is. Whatever is happening in the present moment is what’s happening. Resistance to what’s happening causes us stress; not wanting to be here, wishing something else was going on, makes it more difficult to tolerate the present moment. Acceptance doesn’t mean you necessarily approve of what’s going on or want it to happen again. But you can say, “Hey, this is what’s happening”. For instance, if you’re caught out in the rain during a walk and don’t have a raincoat or umbrella, you might not be happy about it. But there’s nothing you can do until you get home. You could either be mad about it, or you can accept it and just say, “Well, I guess I’m getting wet today”. These are two different experiences, and bringing some acceptance into that can greatly improve the situation.
Patience: Principle number four is patience—being able to allow the present moment to play out the way it’s going to play out. A lot of times, we are quick to want to change it, quick to want to put effort and energy into making a difference from what it is. Being patient, being able to bring what we need to bring into the present moment, and allowing it to play out can increase our effectiveness in many different areas.
Trust: Being patient, accepting the present moment, and suspending our judgment opens up the ability to have more trust. This includes more trust in the information we get from the present moment, more trust in our ability to be effective in the present moment, and more trust to not have to add things to the present moment, but just use the information we’re getting. Trust that the observed information is enough for us to be effective. We don’t have to go “up into our heads” and add a whole bunch of other things to the present moment; we can just respond as effectively as we can to the information we’re observing.
Non-Striving: This speaks to the next principle: non-striving. Of course, we put effort and energy into accomplishing many things throughout the day, which is perfectly okay and encouraged. What this principle speaks to is approaching the present moment when we’re being mindful—when we are in a state of observation, just focused on our awareness—and taking in what information is coming into the present moment. We’re not striving to change it, striving for it to be different, or resisting what’s happening; we are going to take it as it is. If, in the present moment, the most effective thing for us to do is to take some action, that will be decided based on the information we get from our mindful observation of the present moment. We’re not bringing anything extra into the present moment that might not be useful.
Letting Go: Last but not least is letting go. After we go through all of this—we observe the present moment mindfully, we accept what it is, we’re patient, and we trust the information we’re getting, we don’t strive to change it, and we respond as effectively as we can in the present moment—then we let that go and start over in the next moment. Being able to “hit the reset button” with each breath and renew allows us to carry less of the day with us, less of the stress we pick up throughout the day. We can say, “Hey, once I’m as effective as I can be in this moment, there’s nothing more to do here. Let’s move on to the next moment, observe, and be as effective as we can be with that next moment”. Easier said than done, which is why it takes practice and why we develop mindfulness practices.

Bonus Principles: Gratitude and Generosity

These were the initial seven principles of mindfulness that Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote about. If you watch videos he’s made in recent times, he has added two more that he feels are ways to enter the present moment mindfully: with gratitude and with generosity.

Gratitude: This involves appreciation. There’s something that you have in your life right now that you’re really glad to have—at least one thing. You’re really happy that you have it, and you would be really distressed if you didn’t have it. Being able to focus and bring that attitude of gratitude into each moment helps us stay focused on what is, not have the urge to resist, and not have the urge to strive for things to be different, because we’re feeling grateful.
Generosity: This is about wanting to give, whether that’s time, material things, or effort and energy. It’s saying, “Hey, I have something; let me give that with the hope that this will benefit the recipient, with the hope that it will benefit the universe—the universe will be improved because of what I’m giving in this moment”.

These are some bonus principles of mindfulness, but in this book, we’ll just focus on the first seven.

Common Misconceptions About Mindfulness

Here are some common misconceptions about being mindful:

Mindfulness as a Religion/Spirituality: As I said earlier, there’s a misconception that this is some sort of religious or spiritual practice. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be. If your spiritual practice is very important to you and means a lot to you, this could be a complement or a supplement to what you’re already doing. If not, you don’t have to add any of those elements to it.
Mindfulness as “Right” or “Wrong”: Another misconception is that mindfulness is something we can do “right” or “wrong”. For example, if I’m learning a song on the piano, there are certain notes I have to play, I have to play it at a certain tempo, and the piano should be tuned. So there are certain things I need to do in order to do it correctly. If I practice it and play the first line of the song, hit the wrong note, and mess up, I have to start all over and try again until I get it right. Mindfulness doesn’t work like that.

If I’m sitting here focusing on my breathing, focusing on the present moment, and then my mind wanders and I start thinking about the future or the past, I haven’t “messed up the song” like when practicing the piano. The idea is to notice that you’re not in the moment and bring yourself back. That is actually the practice: catching yourself and bringing yourself back. The idea that you have to be sitting there with absolutely no thought, absolutely nothing going on, in order to be mindful, is not true. It’s the observation of whatever is going on. So if thinking is what’s happening in the present moment, then thinking is what’s happening in the present moment. The idea is to be able to observe that and see its usefulness—or lack thereof—in the moment. How does this serve whatever effectiveness I’m trying to execute here in the present moment?

If I try to sit and meditate for 30 minutes and for 29 minutes and 30 seconds my mind is all over the place, and I’m trying to bring it back—hey, great! If I try to meditate for 30 minutes and that whole 30 minutes is peaceful, thoughtless observation of what’s going on—hey, that’s great! They’re both just as good. A lot of times, my clients get in their heads, saying, “I can’t do it, I just keep messing up, I keep thinking about things every time I try to meditate.” I tell them, “Great, good job!”

So, those are the core principles of mindfulness. Hopefully, they help give a better understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish here, and ease some of those misconceptions or judgments about what being mindful might be.

Evidence-Based Benefits of a Mindfulness Practice

Now, I’m going to talk about some of the benefits of mindfulness and having a mindfulness practice—some of the changes that people have been able to observe in themselves if they are able to put some time and effort into establishing a mindfulness practice. When I say these are “evidence-based benefits,” what I mean is that research has been done and observations made of people before and after they’ve established a mindfulness practice. What changes have been observed or reported? Not just in one instance, but many over time. Many experiments are done, reviewed by other professionals in the field, and replicated. After a number of times of being able to replicate it and getting similar results, we can say, “Hey, we’re pretty confident that this is evidence-based”. So, that’s what I mean by that.

Some of the evidence-based benefits of establishing a mindfulness practice include:

Reduction of Stress: This makes sense. Stress is a natural feeling; it’s designed to help motivate us to put energy into solving the problems right in front of us, giving us a little motivation. As we all know, it can get overwhelming if it builds up too much. If you imagine our minds going a mile a minute, thinking about all the problems of our lives, and us responding with a stress response with every thought that happens, it can get really easy for that to become overwhelming. What mindfulness does is break up that momentum. We take a deep breath, notice if our focus and attention are on something we can actually do something about in the present moment, and relieve the stress that way. Or, if we’re focused on something outside of our control or something that’s not happening right now, our body will still respond with stress even if it’s something that’s not happening right now. Then we have the stress to motivate us to solve the problem, but absolutely no ability to do anything about it. That’s how stress builds up and gets overwhelming. So mindfulness can help us observe that, see that that’s what we’re doing, and give us an opportunity to make a choice to do something more effective, which is to focus on what we can control and what is happening in the present moment.
Better Sleep: If you think about what I just talked about, if we can reduce the amount of time we spend focused on stressful things, then we’ll spend more time relaxed and at peace. That can be particularly useful at night because, as I know from personal experience, that’s often when the brain can be racing, and the mind can be going over a lot of different problems we need to solve. In the middle of the night, when we’re lying in bed, the only problem we need to solve is falling asleep. Learning to be able to observe that, learning to be able to redirect that, learning to be able to come back into the present moment and notice when we’re focused on something that’s not useful in the moment, getting good at that, becoming proficient, and establishing a practice of that can translate to our ability to set those things down, leave the problems of the day where they are, and get some sleep so that we can attend to them the next day.
Increased Focus: You can understand why, if our minds are going a mile a minute with all the stresses and problems popping in all the time, it might be hard for us to focus on what’s going on right now. From our previous descriptions of mindfulness, you can see that the actual practice can help us with that: take a deep breath, pay attention to the information of the present moment, and focus in on that. Many of us have a skill or talent, and maybe without even knowing it, we practice mindfulness while doing that particular skill or talent. If we know how to dance, paint, draw, or play a musical instrument—anything that we’re good at—when we get into that flow and things are happening, and it seems like we’re not even thinking about it, we’re just in the moment going with it—that’s what I’m talking about. So, being able to be mindful and pay attention to what’s going on in the present moment can help us focus in and be more effective in completing a task that’s right in front of us.
Greater Sense of Calmness: All our problems at once seems like a very stressful, very anxiety-filled, and eventually a very discouraging existence, with a lot of worry when we’re thinking about everything all at once. If we can be mindful, focus on just what’s right in front of us, and just what we can control, it may help us calm down a little bit. It may help us be able to take a deep breath and say, “Okay, maybe I can handle just this for now.” If I give myself permission to handle just what’s right in front of me for now, maybe I won’t be as anxious and frantic as I was when I was thinking about all the things all at once.
Stronger Memory: This makes sense: if we’re paying more attention to the things that are happening in the present moment, then it’s probably more likely we’re going to remember what happened in that moment. Whereas if we’re distracted, if we’re off somewhere else, if we’re thinking about this, that, or the other, and something’s going on, it may be hard for us later on to recall what was going on then, what was going on in that moment. So, a mindfulness practice can help us with that.
Improved Physical Health: As I said earlier, stress is a very useful tool. It’s designed to help motivate us to solve the important problems that are right in front of us, and it’s meant to only be a temporary boost. But many of us spend our lives in constant stress, and it turns out that’s not good for the cells in our body or our immune system. So, our health can be improved if we’re able to focus on the present moment and reduce the amount of excess stress we’re experiencing. Furthermore, if we are doing things to improve our physical health, such as exercise, being mindful helps make that more effective. Lifting weights is going to be a lot more effective if you’re able to pay attention and be in the moment while you’re lifting weights, and it will be a lot safer too. You’ll be able to run longer or do more jumping jacks if you can stay in the present moment. Any athlete will tell you that getting “up in your head” and saying “oh man, this is hard” will interfere with performance. What we eat, what we put into our body—when we are not paying attention, not being aware, not being mindful, we may grab the easiest and most convenient thing. But being able to take a moment and observe what’s going on, paying attention to what would be best for us, what we may need in this moment, and taking the time to provide that for ourselves, we might be more likely to cook a healthier meal or put more effort and energy into our nutrition. So, mindfulness can help our physical health in all sorts of ways.
Increased Self-Esteem and Happiness: As you hear me describe these things and think about the increase in effectiveness in all these areas, you could probably start to imagine that if I can have some improvement in these areas, I might start feeling better about myself. I might start feeling more confident in myself and my ability to be effective and solve problems. So, practicing mindfulness is known to help people develop a greater sense of self-esteem and belief in yourself. And that’s really what we’re talking about today; this is a Mindfulness Workbook for Self-Love, right? Feeling better about yourself and increasing your effectiveness in these areas really does help you feel better about yourself and leads to a greater sense of happiness. So, those are some things that have shown to improve with establishing a mindfulness practice.

Establishing Your Mindfulness Practice: Meditation and Beyond

That word “practice” is very important. A mindfulness practice just means doing things that help us be mindful. A lot of people ask me, “Joel, are mindfulness and meditation the same thing?” And the answer is: kind of. Mindfulness, as I said, is the actual act of paying attention and observing, using our awareness in the present moment to observe what’s going on. Something like meditation is an actual practice.

To use an analogy: there’s basketball. I might want to make the basketball team, right? But in doing that, I may practice shooting free throws; I may practice shooting three-pointers. So I’m practicing something that’s helping to make me better at basketball. When I sit down to meditate and I pay attention to my breathing, and I just notice what I’m thinking and feeling in this present moment, and I sit down for 30 minutes and just practice doing that—that’s like getting in the gym and practicing free throws if I want to make the basketball team. And then, later on that day, because I practiced, I might be more likely to bring myself to the present moment if I’m waiting in line at the store and it’s taking a little longer than I think it should, or somebody comes to me with a problem and I’m really busy at the time. I might be more likely to take a deep breath and be more mindful in that moment because I practiced. So, a mindfulness practice is just doing something to help you practice being mindful.

I mentioned one: meditation, just simple, tried and true, sitting down and focusing on your breathing. There’s also no shortage of guided meditations; if you go to YouTube and type in “guided meditation,” you’re going to have plenty to choose from. So that’s one practice. There are other practices:

Mindful Walking: This is a practice where you intentionally pay attention to your walking—the muscles in your body used for walking, the contact your feet make with the ground, the sensation of moving through your environment. You’re practicing being mindful.
Mindful Eating: This is where you pay attention to your food as you prepare it, as you prepare to eat it, as you put it in your mouth, as you chew, as you swallow. You pay attention to each element of it and really be in the moment, getting out of your head, out of your thinking, out of all distractions, and paying attention to that. It’s a practice: mindful eating, and so on.

If somebody is struggling with this, one of my clients, I try to get creative with it and find different ways for them to be able to practice mindfulness if some of the formal ways aren’t really appealing to them. Attach it to something that they’re already doing, but can they do it in a more mindful way? Can they use this as a mindfulness practice? Anything that’s mundane and repetitive and doesn’t take a lot of mental energy, like washing the dishes, cleaning your room, or folding your laundry, can be turned into a mindfulness practice. Pay attention to how the shirt feels as it comes out of the dryer—the heat and the smell. Pay attention to how it feels as you fold it or put it on a hanger, really allowing yourself to give permission to let go of everything else and just be in the moment. And guess what? People say, “Wow, I like folding laundry more after doing it like that!” So, a practice is just like any other practice; you do it to try to improve your ability in that area. Establishing a mindfulness practice is the same.

Conclusion: Applying Mindfulness to Self-Love

Thanks for tuning in! Hopefully, this helps with your understanding a little bit more about mindfulness. Next, we are going to talk about how we’re going to apply it to what we’re trying to accomplish here: helping you develop a greater sense of self-love and self-appreciation.