Change Your Vocabulary, Change Your Direction in Life
6 Mindfulness Terms to Reconsider
When vocabulary is overused, watered down or misconstrued, even profound ideas like “self-love” and “compassion” can start to sound like platitudes. The trouble is, if we’re not clear about what these important terms mean to us personally, how can we use them to help us move toward the life we want?
In this post, I’ll share six common mindfulness terms I’ve either redefined or replaced with a different word altogether to define their practical meanings more clearly and allow them to guide my path.
Terms to Reconsider
1. Live In the Present Moment. (Instead: Be present.)
I bet, at least once in your life, you’ve struggled with the impracticality of trying to go through life literally in the present moment from sunup to sundown. What exactly does it take to do that? Can you still have a set routine? What about appointments? Or that vacation you’re planning for later in the year?
Presence is the essence of mindfulness. It means our attention is anchored in the here and now. Regrets about the past or worries about the future are not clouding our awareness. But what happens when we need to reflect on the past in order learn from it? What do we do when we need to examine where things are heading in the future so we can adjust our aim?
Obviously, if you’re trying to live your life solely in the present moment, you might find it difficult to function in a world where schedules, plans and due dates are a necessary part of effectively conducting the business of our lives.
Consider the term “be present” as a broader concept of time and attention that includes the immediate present and the near future. For example, if a family member is planning a visit, or you have an important meeting scheduled the next day, you’re probably going to want to prepare.
We might need to be a bit more flexible when thinking about time if we want to function in the modern world in a grounded way. Being present doesn’t interfere with that at all. In fact, I find it very useful when reflecting on the past or attending to necessary planning.
Being present is really about paying attention to what’s happening in the now moment. It doesn’t include worrying about an uncertain future or ruminating on the past. When we get caught up in anxiety and speculation, bringing our attention back to present time is the antidote.
2. Gratitude. (Instead: Appreciation.)
We hear a lot about “practicing” gratitude in ways that can seem forced or shallow. I’m uncomfortable with the notion that we can just make a list of what we’re grateful for because most of what typically goes on a list like this is either trivial or something we think we “should” be grateful for.
Part of the reason for the tendency to misidentify gratitude may be our associations from childhood. How many of us were manipulated as children to feel guilty for not eating the food on our plate or not saying “thank you” while being told we should be grateful? Replacing gratitude with “appreciation” helps me sidestep all this baggage. When I experience appreciation, it always feels genuine.
At its deepest level, gratitude is a feeling, not an action. When I’m under pressure, it feels like a stretch to say I’m grateful for the challenges that leave me feeling worn out. This feels forced. But I can definitely appreciate what I accomplish in tackling the challenge or even for what the challenge reveals about what I need to address. This comes to me sincerely and relatively easily.
3. Self-Love. (Instead: Self-acceptance or self-compassion.)
It’s pretty hard to get anywhere near the concept of Self-love when I’m being hard on myself.
For me, “self-acceptance” or “self-compassion” do a better job of getting at what the term “self-love” is trying to emphasize, which I believe is treating ourselves with loving kindness rather than harsh criticism.
I also want to mention “unconditional love” here, which is really about self-acceptance. Conditional love is about withdrawing affection when someone does something you don’t approve of. When you love yourself or another unconditionally, you don’t beat yourself up when you do something wrong — or belittle the other person for their mistakes. When love is unconditional, you don’t use affection or approval as punishment or reward.
Bear in mind that acceptance doesn’t mean putting up with anything and everything. You still need to be honest with yourself and others if a line has been crossed. Unconditional acceptance doesn’t mean staying with an abusive partner or allowing a person close to you to do their worst and act like it’s okay. It simply means that you can accept your own or another’s imperfections as a human being. You’re not putting another person above yourself while neglecting your own needs — or taking it to the other narcissistic extreme.
4. Empathy. (Instead: Compassion.)
We talk about empathy as the thing it takes to truly care for and understand the hardships of another human being. My problem with the word “empathy” is how it so often gets conflated with knowing how another person feels.
I would argue that we can’t ever know exactly what anyone else feels. Because of our mirror neurons, we’re hardwired to feel what we think is actually what someone else is feeling. Someone bursts into tears in front of us or we see them get hurt, and this part of our brains puts us right in what feels like their shoes.
But our experience in this moment is always filtered through our own life experiences — a previous time when we burst into tears or got hurt. We can’t really know what someone else is going through or what it truly feels like to be them in that moment.
When you practice compassion, however, you aren’t trying to feel what someone else feels or take on their emotional burden. You’re simply witnessing the other person’s suffering while seeing through to their humanity and dignity. You are being there for them without condescending to know how they feel.
5. Positive/Negative thinking. (Instead: Constructive and realistic thinking.)
Maintaining an optimistic outlook can be hugely beneficial.
But it can become a problem when positivity becomes your only outlook and realistic problems are discounted as “negative” and left unaddressed. On the flip side, a descent into pessimism can be just as debilitating. If you believe things won’t work out, you won’t take the steps necessary to try and address them. Optimism, on the other hand, can be a much more constructive outlook, as long as it’s based in reality.
The next time you catch yourself thinking in terms of positive/negative, ask yourself instead if something is constructive and realistic.
If a thought or action is constructive, it will lead toward a more beneficial outcome. For example, consider a difficult conversation you need to have with a friend or family member so you can move past some hard feelings. Such a conversation might be highly constructive but still painful. But if you’re only thinking in terms of positive (pain-free) and negative (painful), then you’ll likely avoid it.
6. Responsibility. (Instead: Response-ability.)
Like gratitude, responsibility can get tangled up with issues of burden and blame. Are you responsible for this? Am I a responsible person? For me, it was always a question of what my responsibility was in any given situation, especially with my family. What was expected of me?
I had a real problem with taking on the emotions of others, to the point that it interfered with my ability to exercise compassion. The feelings of those close to me felt like a burden that was my “responsibility” to take on. So I started to avoid discussions of feelings altogether.
When I replaced being “responsible” with being “response-able,” my role becomes clearer and also more manageable. When I focused on being response-able, or able to respond instead of react to the situation at hand, I was able to exercise genuine compassion.
Closing Thoughts
We all have our own personal associations with words, for whatever reasons. And while I hope some of my reframing gives new life to these concepts, what’s most important is that you find a vocabulary that holds meaning for you and then use that to help keep yourself aimed at inner peace. Remember, the purpose of these terms is to help us go deeper.
Take good care : )
Meg
P.S. If you’d like to learn more about my approach to cultivating inner peace, sign up for my free Practical Pathways to Inner Peace videos.
