Musings on Mindfulness
The ultimate life skill, and one of the biggest challenges in a modern world of uncompromising pace and relentless distraction, is the ability to be right here, right now. Being “where my feet are,” as Alabama football coach Nick Saban would say, allows me to make choices with an understanding of what is rather than what I wished it had been or what I want it to someday be. It gives me the opportunity to make decisions that are grounded in the reality of The Now rather than anchored and reactive to the unchangeable past, or grasping for a future that doesn’t yet exist. The present moment can be gorgeous, fulfilling, humbling, and it can be scary, vulnerable, brutally truthful, disappointing, and excruciatingly emotional; it is also the only place I have any sort of control over my experience. It is the place where I can utilize the gift of choice that is part and parcel – and maybe the most powerful tool – of the human experience.
We call this practice of centering in The Now mindfulness. A simple definition of mindfulness is ‘engaging fully in one’s present-moment experience without judgement.’ Some practices emphasize just being with what is, which for many of us is a lifelong challenge in and of itself. This can be achieved through seated meditation and through intentional breathing practices; for those of us for whom that’s not the way, it can also mean getting out in nature and walking, reading a book or listening to music, swimming laps (no, really), working in the yard (seriously), or cleaning the house (those people exist). Surfing has been shown to help veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress get into their bodies and into their moment-to-moment experience, lessening both the frequency and intensity of their flashbacks and symptoms.1 For me, skiing is the ultimate “get in my body in the moment” practice.
These activities fall into what I – and probably others – call mindfulness in motion. Despite what you will sometimes see in popular media, there is no one right way to do it, only the way that works for you. What’s important is what we get out of the process of becoming more mindful and the ramifications that our slightly-more-mindful existence have on the world around us, transmitted through the choices we make from a calmer and less reactive place.
The concept of mindfulness has made its way into the public consciousness, mostly for better and also for worse. Better because it’s a doorway to better health and a more fulfilling, dynamic, connected and self-responsible life; worse because, like a lot of powerful concepts that become trends onto which we desperately latch as we seek answers to our problems, it can be misrepresented, oversimplified, overhyped as a catch-all solution, or squeezed into the latest “5 steps to happiness.”
In my estimation, mindfulness exists on a spectrum just like most things that we – in an effort to achieve certainty and security – make black and white. I’m totally mindful all the time, or I’m a mindless automaton. I’m 100% a good person, or I am 100% trash. I am totally happy! Or I’m completely and hopelessly sad. We both transmit and internalize these narrow and reductive definitions of self, leaving no space for the multifaceted and complex nature of human existence and thereby cheating ourselves out of the full experience; it’s not a surprise that depression, anxiety, and loneliness are at an all-time high.
What’s closer to the truth is that mindfulness – like morality, and sexuality, and emotion – is really about embracing the grey area of my experience, because within that grey area is where complexity, challenge, uncertainty, possibility, dynamism, resilience, choice, inspiration, surprise, critical thought, curiosity, self-acceptance, humility, discovery, and connection exist. It’s where living lives.
We – in the United States specifically and in Western societies more broadly – have another bad habit of just believing what we’re told without taking the time to consider where the information we take in is coming from, the agenda of that source, what need or mechanism inside each of us is resonating with that information, and the ramifications of our resulting choices, actions, and inactions. We have given up our power of choice! This can lead us to relatively harmless habits, and to brutal, arrogant, and dehumanizing practices that hurt ourselves and others, and everything in between. It’s even true that sometimes we get lucky and the thing we latch onto mindlessly is actually helpful. Still, in our quest to make the uncertain more certain, we have sacrificed empathy and compassion, logic and common sense, humility and community, patience and connection, nuance and curiosity and discernment.
There is something to be said for the hard-learned and lifelong mindfulness practice of just being. It is SO UNCOMFORTABLE sometimes to just be with myself, or just be with what is. Learning to exist, and eventually thrive, within discomfort, sadness, confusion, or pain is a victory worth recognizing and celebrating. And, sometimes I also have to act.
In the day-to-day, moment-to-moment existence in which most of us live, we have a never-ending series of choices to make. Some are easy, others less so; some seem impossible. Living mindfully gives me access to something that, along with healthy doses of self-awareness, grounding, and humility, will help me make those tough choices, and that thing is called intuition. Intuition is, quite simply, the voice of the heart. You know what that voice feels and sounds like, even if you’ve been ignoring it so that you can continue to pursue instant pleasure and gratification or avoid difficulty, vulnerability, or rejection.
Intuition is the nudge, the whisper, the impulse that tells you “do this” or “don’t do that.” It’s likely telling you something you don’t want to hear, encouraging you to make a difficult – but ultimately freeing or good-for-you – decision. What your intuition will rarely (if ever) do is tell you exactly what you want to hear, especially if that desire is driven by a desire to maintain an unhealthy or stagnant status quo. So, no, that voice telling you to “just have one more” or that “next time it’ll be different” is not the one you want to follow; it is the ego, not intuition, that is in the business of confirmation bias.
Choosing to live a more mindful existence requires patience, critical thinking, and curiosity; it demands that I decenter my own ego needs so that I can listen to my heart. Choosing to live this way can actually provide the motivation I need to continue to pursue growth in all its challenge and beauty. It pushes me to enter what sport psychologist George Mumford calls “the space between stimulus and response” – often achieved through breath – and to consider what I think I believe BEFORE I choose/act/speak/vote/ buy. A mindful existence is one in which I question, with curiosity, the stories that I tell about myself and my experiences. It challenges me to really examine my internal and external incongruities, biases, hypocrisies, blind spots, behaviors, values, and the impacts that my choices have on the world around me.
If that sounds awful and painful and like a lot of work, and you’re asking why you would do that…I don’t blame you. Living mindfully is not going to have you “in your bliss” all the time (excuse me while I vomit all over my $118 yoga pants). Living mindfully, authentically, and vulnerably means trading my naivete, my willful ignorance, my judgment, and my distraction for some fundamental awareness of, as The Roots said, what’s really going on. There is nuance and complexity in the human experience; by choosing to embrace that, I am agreeing to the full spectrum of emotions, which means I have to feel EVERYTHING, but also means that I get to feel EVERYTHING.
The payoff for my patience, devotion, and struggle to live more mindfully – and yours if you so choose (cue the Mission: Impossible theme music) – is that while we’re looking at the hard stuff, we also get to see unexpected beauties, step more fully into our strengths, and discover dimensions of ourselves and our capabilities that we could only find at the serrated edge of a comfort zone. Why else? A regular mindfulness practice can literally change the structure of your brain, opening pathways associated with learning, memory, growth, human connection, and positive emotion. It’s an invitation to refine or clarify or revamp core values, set healthy boundaries, and be a little more calm and a little more open. It’s curiosity rather than judgment and self-responsibility rather than narcissism. Worth the trade-off? I think it is.
Living mindfully means slowing down in order to allow myself space to be a feeling human. I understand that we experience the world through opposition, and I accept the possibility that there will be seemingly unbearable sadness because it’s how I recognize epic joy. The diversity of everything that exists within the space between the two is how I know that I’m truly alive.
References
1. Caddick, N., Smith, B., & Phoenix, C. (2015). The effects of surfing and the natural environment on the well-being of combat veterans. Qualitative Health Research, 25(1), 76-86.
Originally published on October 23, 2023