WTF is Mindfulness? And How Can I Get Some?

Have you ever just sat in that place between sleep and awake? Sometimes I feel euphoric. Sometimes I feel so tired physically that I can’t open my eyes, but my brain starts firing thoughts like an old arcade shooter game. Pew! Pew! Pew! I can’t make it stop. Meanwhile my husband can literally watch paint dry. He enjoys it even. Or he can stare at the yard and just be at peace with his thoughts. It’s disgusting really. How can he just do that?

The really disgusting part is that I want to know how he does it. I can’t do that. I can’t just be in the moment. Why? Because I don’t know how. And he can’t explain it in a way that I can understand. He tells me that he “is at peace with his internal conflict.”

That’s my secret, Captain… I’m always angry.

The Incredible Hulk, The Avengers

I feel like as a society, we have lost the true meaning of the whole concept of mindfulness. It just feels like another hashtag to throw on the end of your InstaGram post. I have made it a personal mission of mine over the past few months to try and figure out what the true meaning of this word entails. P.S. It’s still a work in progress.

Meditation Is A Practice

Jon Kabat-Zinn, professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), defines mindfulness as “the psychological process of bringing one’s attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training.”

Running does this for me. I guess that is the “other training” part of that. Walking meditation is a very popular form as well. My mind clears of all the extra chatter and I can concentrate on one thing at a time. My legs do all the work. I breathe. I can focus. But I can’t just run all the time. So how do I incorporate that feeling into the rest of my life?

I keep coming back to the word “practice.” Practice is something you continually do to get better. My running has definitely gotten better with practice. That’s how we as humans get better at anything we try to do. Why would this be any different? So maybe if I can incorporate little small steps of mindfulness every day, then I can get better? And maybe if I can get better, then it won’t be so hard.

Another aspect of this that really clicked for me was when I finally figured out the point of meditation. I was always one of those people who said, “I can’t meditate. My brain won’t shut up for long enough.” But guess what? That’s not the point of meditation at all.

If you try to calm it, it only makes things worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things. That’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.

Steve Jobs

The point of practicing mediation is to reprogram that neural pathway (Read more about that here.) to be able to pull yourself back to yourself when things get tough. That’s why they call it a “practice.” The more you do it, the more reflexive it will become. Your brain will pull it out of your Swiss army knife of automatic reactions.

Cultivating Patience

I am beginning to see how this whole patience thing works. I, being the Millennial that I am, have grown quite accustomed to getting everything that I want now at the click of a button. I obviously suck at being patient.

After pretty much forcing myself to slow down and appreciate the smaller moments of my life, (AKA chasing after that #mindfulness) I am slowly coming around to realize that what they said was true all along. The journey really is the destination.

I am not saying that I don’t have goals or aspirations. I most certainly do! But I am also really enjoying the education process, the self-discovery. I am not really interested in rushing the process anymore.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you have now was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus

Patience is defined as the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. Since I have begun a meditation practice, these things that used to really upset me don’t upset me as much. I am starting to be able to pull myself back, and to not let my emotions take so much control. Does it still annoy me, yes? But do I let that emotion run rampant, no? What do I do? I figure it out.

But what about anxious? I truly believe that anxious needs to be a part of the definition. A trigger can just as easily make you anxious as it can make you angry. That same meditation practice will work for anxiety too.

This happened to me just the other day. I had been stung by a wasp the day before. I knew I wasn’t going to go into anaphylactic shock because I was stung last year also by a wasp. I cleaned it up, and continued trimming the hedge.

The next day my wrist was swollen around the sting, and it hurt like hell. I took some Tylenol and put an ice pack on it. Then I sat on the couch and stewed. My husband looked over at my and asked my what was wrong. I told him I was pissed off that I was stung. He told me not to sit and dwell on it. Did I listen?

Of course not! That would have been the smart thing to do. I dwelled so hard. Actually, I ended up sending myself into a full blown panic attack. Every worst case scenario rolled through my head. Shit.

I threw on my headphones, found a meditation, (I use the Insight Timer app on iPhone.) and twelve minutes later my breathing was back to normal. I was still in pain and still swollen, but I could now function.

Detach from the results and fall in love with the process.

Deepak Chopra

It’s not perfect, but it’s progress. I am slowly cultivating patience. It’s a long journey, but I’ve got my whole life to figure it out.

XOXO – Jenna