Why Mindfulness Is a Superpower
You may have heard this word mindfulness, it’s become something of a buzzphrase of late. I’m going to give you one simple serviceable definition which is this: mindfulness is the ability to know what’s happening in your head at any given moment without getting carried away by it.
Imagine how useful this could be. Just as an example, you’re driving down the road, and someone cuts you off in traffic. How do you normally react?
I think most of us normally react by having a thought, which is, “I’m pissed”.
And then what happens next? You immediately, habitually, reflexively inhabit that thought. You become pissed! There’s no buffer between the stimulus and your reaction.
With just a little bit of mindfulness in that same situation, you might notice, “my chest is buzzing, my ears are turning red, I’m having a starburst of self-righteous thoughts, I’m getting angry.” But you don’t necessarily have to act on it and chase that person down the road screaming at them with your kids in the back of your car thinking you’ve gone nuts.
Now you might be thinking, “don’t I need to get angry sometimes? aren’t justified?” I would say yes, but probably not as much as you think.
The proposition here is not that you should be rendered by mindfulness into some lifeless, nonjudgmental blob. The proposition is that you should learn how to respond wisely to things that happen to you, rather than just reacting blindly. And that, my friends, is a superpower.
How do you get it? The way to get it is through meditation. I believe that meditation and mindfulness are the next big public health revolution. In the 1940s if you told someone you were going running they would’ve said “Who’s chasing you?” but then “what happened next?”.
The scientists swooped in, they showed that physical exercise is really good for you, and now all of us do it, and if we don’t, we feel guilty about it. And that’s where I think we’re headed with mindfulness and meditation. It’s going to join the pantheon of no-brainers like brushing your teeth, eating well, and taking the meds your doctor prescribed for you. Let me just close by saying mindfulness is not going to solve all your problems, it’s not going to render your life a nonstop parade of unicorns and rainbows. Nonetheless, this is a superpower and one that is accessible by you, immediately.
