A Beginner’s Guide to Mindfulness
Getting to grips with the world’s hottest wellness trend
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I’m sure mindfulness is nothing new to you. We’ve all heard of it, and a lot of us have tried putting it into practice. The thing is, I’m not convinced that we really know what it means to be mindful. To be present.
I’ve had a rough couple of years: my parents’ separation, the loss of some of my closest friends and the terminal diagnosis of my fiancé. Throughout it all, there’s one single tool that’s kept me sane along the way.
What is it? Well, I think you know already. It’s mindfulness, of course. I sincerely believe that if we can learn to be fully present in every single moment, nothing can come between us and our peace of mind.
It’s as Thich Nhat Hanh put it,
‘The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.’
So how do we become attentive?
Reverse Mindfulness
Mindfulness isn’t something we’re taught much about in schools. At least, not when I was at school anyway. Society doesn’t seem to place much emphasis on the here and now.
Throughout all of our education, we’re taught a sort of reverse mindfulness. It’s all: what do you want to do for the rest of your life? Where do you see yourself in ten years? Which career path do you want to pursue?
It’s all about the future. Now pales into insignificance.
Of course, it’s necessary for us to plan ahead and live our lives with foresight. But not at the expense of our happiness.
See, for as long as we continue to contemplate the future, dwell on the past and lose ourselves in thought, we only delay the arrival of true happiness.
I mean, sure, sometimes thinking about the future might make us excited. Happy memories might warm our hearts and bring a smile to our face. But true, long-lasting happiness? Peace of mind? Contentment? There’s only one place that those things can be found, and that’s right here, right now.
Eckhart Tolle was on the money.
‘If you feel anxiety or depression, you are not in the present. You are either anxiously projecting the future or depressed and stuck in the past. The only thing you have any control over is the present moment.’
You’ll Be Happy When…
The way a lot of us tend to live is in endless expectation of some future event. When we have something exciting coming up at the weekend, that’s all we think about. Now doesn’t matter — it’s all about Saturday night.
Alas, when Saturday night rolls around and runs its course, we’re miserable. We want to go back. The void returns, and it demands to be filled.
This is how most of us live our lives, really. Not necessarily in endless anticipation of Saturday, but in endless anticipation of something. Of everything. Of the future.
What’s more, we’re always being taught to work hard today so that we can settle down later in life, as though this moment is just a means to an end. If we keep moving forward and working towards something, once we get it, then we’ll be happy.
I’ll be happy when I get good grades. I’ll be happy when I go to university. I’ll be happy when I get a job. I’ll be happy when I get a promotion. I’ll be happy when I retire.
But will you? Or will you just feel the same as you do now? When does it end? Well, for as long as we keep telling ourselves that ‘we’ll be happy when’, it’ll never end. We’ll never be happy.
Why? It’s kind of like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We’ll never reach it. So instead of trying, shouldn’t we just finding satisfaction in the here and now?
The Fisherman
To illustrate this point, Paulo Coelho presented a beautiful story.
In it, a businessman catches sight of a fisherman rowing a small boat towards the shore. Their conversation can teach us all a valuable lesson about mindfulness. I’ve quoted it below. It might be a little long, but I encourage you to take a moment to read it.
“How long does it take you to catch so many fish?”
“Oh, just a short while,” replied the fisherman.
“Then why don’t you stay longer at sea and catch even more?”
“This is enough to feed my whole family.”
The businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?”
“Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the night.”
“You should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats, set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.”
“And after that?”
“After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing and dance throughout the night!”
“Isn’t that what I am doing now?”
Meditation vs Mindfulness
When you hear the word mindfulness, what’s the first thing you think about? For a lot of us, it’s meditation. But mindfulness is so much more than just meditation.
Meditation, for those of you that don’t already know, is the act of taking a moment to practice being present. Often that means focusing on the breath, but it might also be as simple as becoming aware of our thoughts.
And while meditation and mindfulness are indeed intertwined, they’re not the same thing. Think of meditation as the practice. The training. The foundation.
Mindfulness is the application of that skill: the skill of being here, now. (And yes, it is a skill — because it’s far more difficult than it sounds and must be developed through practice and experience.)
What Mindfulness Isn’t
To fully come to terms with what mindfulness really is, it can help to first consider what it really isn’t.
Just a few months ago I was travelling on the London Underground at rush hour. I’d meditated that morning, but there I was racing around, eating food on-the-go and pushing through swathes of people to get to where I needed to be.
When I settled on the train, I pulled out my phone and staring back at me was the Headspace app. I couldn’t help but laugh. What was the point in meditating this morning? I asked myself. I’ve been anything but mindful this afternoon!
Now, I’m not saying meditation is useless. Not at all. But if you’re going to meditate, it’s crucial that you allow that mindful awareness to carry through with you during your day. To be present, just as you are in meditation.
Meditation on its own isn’t enough. To truly utilise our practice, we have to let that mindset pervade into all areas of our life.
In truth, you don’t have to be sat cross-legged on a puffy cushion to meditate. You can do it right now. All it takes is that you tune out of your thoughts and into the world around you.
How to Be Mindful
Where are you right now? What’s going on around you? What sounds can you hear? How does your body feel? How do you feel? Are you lost in thought as you read these words? Are you at peace? Are you happy?
See, when we’re fully in tune with what’s going on right now, it becomes very difficult to feel unhappy. Of course, if you’re experiencing something incredibly traumatic at this moment, you’re not going to feel great. But if you’re reading this article, I’m assuming that’s not the case.
There’s rarely anything to worry about right now. Right now I’m sipping a cup of coffee at a local coffee shop as I write these words.
The future could be pretty rough for me. My fiancé has brain cancer, for one. I’m also trying to make a living as a twenty-something writer. Things could go south — very south — at any moment. All manner of tragedies could befall me and any one of us.
But they’re not. Not right now. Right now, all is well. I needn’t worry about the past or the future or anything — just the temperature of my cup of coffee.
In the words of Virginia Woolf,
“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”
What we’re doing right now. That’s all that matters. That’s what mindfulness is: noticing. It really is that simple.
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