Mindfulness is a skill like any other. It can sometimes be difficult to learn, because it is so diametrically opposed to the way we’re accustomed to thinking, acting, and doing. Some of the techniques of mindfulness may feel strange at first, simply because they are different. ‘Different’ doesn’t mean ‘better’ or ‘worse,’ it simply means ‘different.’ With practice, however, these skills will become easier over time. Don’t give up after trying mindfulness skills only once or twice. Have patience and allow them time to work. Change can sometimes be hard. If it were easy, we’d already be doing it.

There’s a saying that, “Insanity is doing the same thing in the same ways and expecting different results.”
If we’ve been doing things that lead to negative consequences, we’re probably doing those things because they feel familiar to us. This is fine if we like the consequences of our actions. But if we don’t like the consequences of our actions, we may choose to do the sometimes difficult work of making change. The only way to get different results is to do things in different ways. This leads to different consequences for our actions.

Mindfulness is a way to do things differently.

Although meditation is a part of mindfulness, Mindful Awareness is much more than a meditative technique. Mindfulness is a way of life. The techniques of mindfulness can be applied to any of our day-to-day experiences. They are not restricted to the realm of meditation.

Like anything else that has to be learned, mindfulness is a skill that requires practice. Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa the first time he picked up a paintbrush. Leonardo Da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa the first time he picked up a paintbrush. Likewise, you probably won’t be able to jump right into a ‘mindful awareness’ mode of being without a lot of practice. That’s okay. Give yourself permission to practice once in a while. The more you do so, the more mindful you’ll become!

A fisherman and his son were at sea, going about the daily tasks of catching enough fish to make their living. It was a beautiful spring day, and they were both enjoying the ocean. They were having a particularly good day. They had caught many fish, and they were ready to turn for home and make their way back to the shore when the father noticed a tiny leak at the bow of the boat. The boat was slowly filling up with water. While the leak wasn’t a big one, they both realized that the boat would be full of water before they could row back to shore.

The father and son began to panic as they thought of the prospect of losing not only their boat, but the fine catch they had made that day. In his panic, the father suddenly seized upon an idea. He grabbed the oar and punched a hole in the side of the boat.

The son thought his father had gone mad. “What are you doing?” the son shouted.

The father replied, “I’m punching a hole in the bottom of the boat so the water can flow out!”

They both watched in horror as more water rushed into the boat the father had made. Seeing that his idea had not succeeded, but had only made things worse, the father began to furiously punch even more holes in the bottom of the boat.

The son, upon seeing this, yelled at his father, “Will you please stop it? Can’t you see you are only making things worse?”

But the father said, “No, my idea will work! I just didn’t have enough holes in the boat! If I keep punching holes in the boat, the water will eventually flow out!”

The son watched helplessly as the father, in a frenzy, continued to batter more holes into the hull of the boat. Finally, the boat overflowed, sinking to the bottom of the sea and taking the catch of the day with it. The father and son had to swim for shore.

Upon arriving at the shore, totally exhausted, they both realized that they had not only lost a fine catch, but they had also lost their means of making a living. With the boat gone, they could no longer be fishermen. With great sadness, they turned to make their way home, wondering about what they’d do to survive in the future.

To think about:
What solutions to problems have you been trying, that only make the problem worse? How could you make it better instead? If what you’re doing isn’t working, could it be time to try something different?

The most basic mindfulness technique involves simply paying attention to the moment. One way to do this is to focus only on your breathing, without thinking about anything. If a thought comes to mind, simply note it and let it go, without judging yourself or the thought. It’s perfectly natural that thoughts will try to surface, because we are taught to be thinking creatures. However, as you practice with mindful awareness, it will get easier to let those thoughts go. Don’t get frustrated if it is difficult at first.

One way to achieve this ability to pay attention to the moment is to picture your thoughts as ripples on a pond. As the wind ceases to blow, the pond becomes calmer and calmer until its surface becomes as smooth as glass. In this case the ‘wind’ is the things that drive your thoughts and feelings, and the ‘ripples’ on the pond are your thoughts and feelings themselves. Your goal is not to make the pond go away. Your goal is to allow the surface of the pond to become calm.

Suppose I tell you that for the next ten seconds, you can think of anything you wish, except for Panda bears. What’s the first thing you’re going to think of? Likewise, if I tell you, “Try not to think for the next ten minutes,” the first thing you’re going to do is to think. Furthermore, if you have a thought, and catch yourself having a thought, and think, “This is hard, I can’t do this,” the thoughts this is hard, and I can’t do this, are more thoughts. So the goal isn’t to try not to think. Trying is doing, and you’re not doing, you’re just being right now.

Some of the features of Mindful Awareness include:

Observing

Think about your morning routine. When you were in the shower this morning, were you actually in the shower, or was your mind racing down the highway to your day-to-day errands? When you were there in the shower, were you feeling the warmth of the water on your skin, smelling the fragrance of the soap, and hearing the sound of the water, or was your mind elsewhere?

When we are preoccupied with thoughts of the past or the future, we are in Thinking Mode. Thinking Mode takes us away from experiencing the world directly with our senses. When we leave Thinking Mode and begin to experience the world instead with our senses, we have entered Sensing Mode. Mindful Awareness teaches us to focus on the world experienced directly by our senses: touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight.

Experiencing life in Sensing Mode introduces us to a richer world. It’s impossible to be bored or apathetic if you treat each experience as if it is happening to you for the first time.

Describing

This skill of Mindful Awareness involves observing the smallest details of an object, event or activity. Try to approach each daily activity as if you are experiencing it for the first time. Explore as many dimensions of it as you can. For example, you can probably readily identify with the fact that the color of an apple is ‘red,’ or maybe ‘green,’ but have you ever thought about what an apple sounds like? Is there a distinct quality of an apple that would make it identifiable only by sound? By smell? By touch? What would a blind person’s experience of an apple be? When you think of apples, do you have any emotional reaction to them? Do you have any positive memories about apples? What about negative memories? By identifying and labeling these feelings and thoughts about apples, we become more aware of our internal experiences relating to apples.

When we gain experience with this technique, we can apply it to other areas of our lives as well. For example, by looking at your negative thought processes, and identifying and labeling them as such, you are better able to recognize them simply as processes, and not as part of who you are as a person. All of these thoughts and feelings make up our moods. By observing and describing them, we become aware of the primary and secondary emotions at play in our emotionally aggressive states, and in our more emotionally productive states.

Remember when you were a child? Each day the world was new. You approached each day with a sense of childlike wonder. As we get older and learn about things, we learn what to expect by learning how things work. This is usually a good thing. For example, if you learn from experience that dogs may bite, you will probably approach a new dog with caution.

But what if it’s a friendly dog? Will you miss an opportunity to play if you assume a friendly dog will bite you?
Our assumptions can work to protect us, but sometimes our assumptions can work against us as well. If you approach all dogs as dogs that might bite, you’re naturally going to avoid dogs more often. You may even miss an opportunity to play and roll in the grass with a friendly dog because your assumption may be that ‘all dogs bite.’

What about people and relationships? If you’ve been hurt in a relationship, your assumptions might include ‘people bite.’ Such an assumption will color the way you approach new people. If you assume that all people are unfriendly, how is a new person likely to react to you? By learning the skills of observing and describing, we can focus more on the whole person (or dog!) and see that each individual has both positive and negative qualities. We can choose which qualities to focus on based on the assumptions we make in our interactions with them.

Fully Participating

Mindful Awareness allows you to experience every aspect of an activity. We have a tendency, when in thinking mode, to see things and activities as either ‘all bad’ or ‘all good.’ This is not necessarily an accurate depiction of reality.

In Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom gets his friends to help him whitewash a fence by convincing them that fence painting is one of the most fun and enjoyable activities in the world. There is an element of truth in Tom’s deception. Most activities aren’t inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ We’ve taught ourselves to think of them in such terms, but we can also teach ourselves a different way. Think about an unpleasant activity that you have to engage in on a regular basis, such as washing the dishes or taking out the trash. Can you think of any pleasant aspects of these activities? For example, the last time I hand-washed dishes, I found myself fascinated by the bubbles in the sink. I watched the way the light played across them, generating myriads of rainbows that danced and moved across the surface of the bubbles. I was so entertained by this, that I was done with the dishes before I knew it.

There are enjoyable aspects to every experience, if we train ourselves to look for them. Even if we find ourselves caught in an activity in which we can find no pleasure at all, at least we have the pleasure of thinking about how good we’ll feel when the activity is over!

Being Non-judgmental

Mindful Awareness teaches us the art of acceptance. Emotional reactions to our circumstances are natural, but that doesn’t mean that we have to respond to these emotions by engaging in behaviors that lead to negative consequences. The mindful skill of acceptance teaches us that we can experience these emotions without engaging them.

Acceptance teaches us that we are not our thoughts, and that we are not our emotions. At any given time we can choose which thoughts and emotions we wish to respond to. The essence of mindful mood management is that there are no ‘wrong’ feelings. What may be detrimental is the behavior we engage in after experiencing these emotions. Our goal is to manage the behavior.

When we do so, we are able to manage our moods. This is the difference between feelings and moods: Our moods are a cluster of behaviors we choose to engage in as a response to our feelings and emotions. While we may not be in control of our feelings, we are in control of our moods (or we may learn to be).

If, at any time, we should ‘slip up’ and engage in thoughts and behaviors that lead to negative consequences and negative moods, this does not mean that we have become ‘bad persons.’ This simply means that we are human beings, and as humans we are entitled to make mistakes. Each mistake is an opportunity for growth and learning.

Forgiveness is a skill and an art. The place to start with learning the art of forgiveness is in learning first to forgive ourselves when we make mistakes. When we are able to do so, we will have learned the skill of being non-judgmental with ourselves as well as with others.

Focusing on One Thing at a Time

I love chocolate kisses. There have been times when I have been engaged in other activities while eating kisses. I grab a handful of them and sit down at my computer, eating kisses as I work. On some of those occasions, I’ve eaten the last kiss without realizing that it was the last one. When this has happened in the past, I’ve gotten a little upset that I didn’t realize that I had eaten the last one. The thought that came to mind was, “If I had known that I was eating the last one, I would have enjoyed it more.”

What is it about knowing that I’m on the last kiss that makes eating it more enjoyable? That particular kiss isn’t any different from the rest of the ones in the box. What makes the experience of the last kiss different and more enjoyable is the fact that I have focused all of my attention on enjoying it, because it is the last one.
What if we could learn to make every kiss the ‘last’ one?

By focusing on one thing at a time, we are able to fully enjoy every experience of life. By leaving Doing Mode and entering into Being Mode, we’re able to focus on the pleasures of the present moment. By leaving Thinking Mode and entering into Sensing Mode, we are able to make every kiss the last one by focusing our attention on the experience of enjoying the kiss.

Blues singer and musician Ray Charles once said, “Live every day as if it will be your last, because one of these days, you’re going to be right.”

The way to live every day as if it will be your last, is to focus on the moment, savoring every bit of every experience the world has to offer. The ability to do this is what we call Mindful Awareness.

We all have things that make us anxious.

Think about some things that cause you anxiety or stress. Now ask yourself, “How many of them have to do with worrying about events that happened in the past?”

It doesn’t matter how recently in the past the event took place. It could have been five years ago, five days ago, five minutes ago, or five seconds ago.

Now, how many of them have to do with anxiety over an event that may or may not happen in the future? Some events that cause you stress might have been both about the past and the future, because you may be disappointed or angry about something that happened in the past, and you may be concerned that it will also happen again in the future.

Do any of your worries have to do with anything that is occurring right now, at this very moment? Note that some things may have their root causes in the past, but you may be worried or anxious about them in the present. In such a case, the event that led to your present anxiety is still in the past. It’s your choice in the present moment whether or not to pay attention to the memory of that event.

Think about the things that cause you stress in your day-to-day life. As you do, ponder the fact that unless someone invents a time machine, you cannot go back and change anything in the past the past. The past no longer exists except in your memory. Since the only place the past exists is in your memory, you are in control of it. You can choose which memories to pay attention to, and which memories to ignore.

Likewise, the future does not exist except as an extrapolation of the mind. Trying to anticipate what may or may not happen in the future is just a mental exercise, and nothing based in reality. You might think that some things are likely to happen, and some things are less likely to happen, but unless you have a crystal ball or a time machine, the only way to know for sure what will happen in the future is to wait and see.

The key point to remember here is that feelings are not facts. Moods are not facts. Thoughts are not facts. Moods, thoughts and feelings are just processes of the mind. If you are stressed or depressed over past or future events, you have the choice over which feelings and moods to pay attention to, and which thoughts and feelings to let go of.

A benefit of Mindfulness-Based Ecotherapy is that when we leave Doing Mode and enter Being Mode, we stop worrying about the past or stressing over the future, if only for a moment.

Note that this doesn’t mean that leaving Doing Mode and entering Being Mode makes bad moods go away. It just means that by entering Being Mode, we allow ourselves the choice of not giving energy to those negative moods.

By living in the moment we create some space between our True Selves and our thoughts, moods and feelings. This space allows us some breathing room. It also allows us to come to know that we are not our moods. We are not our feelings. We get to choose who and what we are.

This all happens by living in the moment.

Radical acceptance means that you learn to accept yourself and others without judgment. It is a skill that can be learned in an afternoon, yet take a lifetime to master, especially in Western cultures where we are conditioned to strive for certain ideals of perfection. We are told by the media that if we don’t drive the right car, wear the right clothes, eat the right foods, vote for the right political candidate and wear the right perfume, we will not be accepted by others. This conditioning must be overcome in order to achieve radical acceptance.

The first step in radical acceptance is to meditate on the assumptions we have created for ourselves.

Examples of these might be, “I’m not handsome enough,” or, “I’m not smart enough,” or, “Nobody likes me.” Radical acceptance recognizes such thoughts and feelings without making value judgments about them, and without trying to deny or affirm them. For example, the thought, “Nobody likes me,” is not true, but the goal of radical acceptance is to simply note the fact that this thought is present in the observer’s psyche, and not to make a truth value judgment about the contents of the statement. It can be accepted as a thought process while not having to be incorporated into the observer’s sense of identity.

From this perspective, we are less concerned about whether or not the thought or feeling is true as we are about whether or not it is helpful. Is it effective to have these thoughts or feelings? If not, can I let them go?

Case Study: Juliet
Juliet has had a series of relationships. Every time one of these relationships ends, she goes into a downward spiral of emotional self-abuse, telling herself that she’s not good enough to have a relationship, asking herself why she’s such a “loser,” and panicking at the thought of being alone yet again. This panic causes her to leap right into yet another relationship and repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Implicit in all these thought and feeling cycles is the theme, “What’s wrong with me?”

By learning to radically accept herself just as she is, Juliet could come to realize that “This is the way I deal with emotions.” Eventually she may even be able to accept herself with unconditional love, and see this quirk as just a thing she does, and not as a character flaw. When caught in these cycles, Juliet could ask herself, “Is it true that there is something wrong with me? Is it helpful or effective to think that there is something wrong with me?”

Additionally, Juliet could learn that thoughts and feelings are not facts. They’re just things the brain has sometimes been conditioned to do in response to certain situations.

The irony is that by learning to accept these thoughts and feelings as a part of herself, it may lead to the realization that there is nothing wrong with her. Even if she never comes to that realization, she will be able to accept it as just a thing she does from time to time. It is perfectly natural to wonder “Is there something wrong with me;” however, such a question is just a thought, and not a fact.

Radical acceptance is the ability to see clearly the thoughts and feelings that are going on within us, as they occur, and to be able to accept them with love and openness. It also means coming to realize that thoughts and feelings are not facts.

When Juliet began to practice mindful meditation, she came to understand that the panic produced by losing a relationship was caused by her desire to find the “perfect” man for her. By finding this idealized individual, she hoped to prove her own self-worth. In her mind, if she could find the perfect man, he would help her to become the perfect woman. As Juliet came to recognize that her idea of perfection was just an arbitrary standard she had imposed on herself, she was able to accept and even love herself, even with all of her perceived “flaws.” This diminished need to be “perfect” allowed her to actually move towards loving herself just as she was. This renewed self-confidence allowed her to enter into a relationship that later led to a happy and successful marriage.

Juliet credited the success of her relationship on the fact that, “I learned to be responsible for my own happiness and well-being. In my previous relationships, I had put the responsibility for my happiness on my partner(s), and this impossible situation eventually drove them away. Once I learned to accept responsibility for my own happiness, I found someone with whom to share that happiness.”

Radical acceptance is about minimizing avoidance as much as possible. By meeting life head-on instead of trying to avoid certain aspects of it (such as unpleasant thoughts and emotions), we are able to live life more fully.
According to Hoffman & Asmundson (2008), “Patients are encouraged to embrace unwanted thoughts and feelings – such as anxiety, pain, and guilt – as an alternative to experiential avoidance. The goal is to end the struggle with unwanted thoughts and feelings without attempting to change or eliminate them.”

Baer, R. A. (2003). Mindfulness training as a clinical intervention: A conceptual and empirical review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 125–143. Introduction to Special Issue 183

Cordon, S. L., Brown, K. W., & Gibson, P. R. (2009). The role of mindfulness-based stress reduction in perceived stress: Preliminary evidence for the moderating role of attachment style. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy: An International Quarterly, 23(3), 258–269.

Dimeff, L., & Linehan, M.M. (2001). Dialectical Behavior Therapy in a Nutshell. The California Psychologist, 34, 10-13.

Hofmann, S. G., & Asmundson, G. J. G. (2008). Acceptance and mindfulness-based therapy: New wave or old hat? Clinical Psychology Review, 28(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2007.09.003