Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

by J. Mark G. Williams

We try so hard to be happy that we end up missing the most important parts of our lives and destroying the very peace that we were seeking.

You come to realize that thoughts come and go of their own accord; that you are not your thoughts. You can watch as they appear in your mind, seemingly from thin air, and watch again as they disappear, like a soap bubble bursting. You come to the profound understanding that thoughts and feelings (including negative ones) are transient. They come and they go, and ultimately, you have a choice about whether to act on them or not.

Mindfulness is about observation without criticism; being compassionate with yourself.

when you start to feel a little sad, anxious or irritable, it’s not the mood that does the damage but how you react to it.

You can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, self-critical thoughts and judgmental ways of thinking—but you can stop what happens next.

Mindfulness meditation teaches you to recognize memories and damaging thoughts as they arise. It reminds you that they are memories. They are like propaganda, they are not real. They are not you. You can learn to observe negative thoughts as they arise, let them stay a while and then simply watch them evaporate before your eyes. And when this occurs, an extraordinary thing can happen: a profound sense of happiness and peace fills the void.

Emotions are “bundles” of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and impulses to act.

But tension, unhappiness or exhaustion aren’t “problems” that can be solved. They are emotions. They reflect states of mind and body. As such, they cannot be solved—only felt. Once you’ve felt them—that is, acknowledged their existence—and let go of the tendency to explain or get rid of them, they are much more likely to vanish naturally, like the mist on a spring morning.

Pure awareness transcends thinking.

Depressed mood, depressed body

you find that you can change your internal landscape (the mindscape, if you will2) irrespective of what’s happening around you. You are no longer dependent on external circumstances for your happiness, contentment and poise. You are back in control of your life.

Mindful awareness—or mindfulness—spontaneously arises out of this Being mode when we learn to pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment, without judgment, to things as they actually are.

In mindfulness, we start to see the world as it is, not as we expect it to be, how we want it to be, or what we fear it might become.

Mindfulness teaches us that thoughts are just thoughts; they are events in the mind. They are often valuable but they are not “you” or “reality.” They are your internal running commentary on yourself and the world.

We re-live past events and re-feel their pain, and we pre-live future disasters and so pre-feel their impact.

Consciously knowing that you are remembering, and knowing that you are planning, helps free you from being a slave to mental time travel. You are able to avoid the extra pain that comes through re-living the past and pre-living the future.

See if it’s possible to keep in mind that the intention is not to strive for a goal. You are not even striving to relax, strange as this may sound. Relaxation, peace and contentment are the by-products of the work you are doing, not its goal.

Like trying anything new, whether it’s learning to paint or to dance, it can be frustrating when the results do not correspond to the picture you have in your mind. In these moments, it pays to persist with commitment and kindness toward yourself.

Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

none of us can control what thoughts rampage through our minds, or the “weather” they can create. But we do have some control over how we relate to it.

thoughts, feelings and emotions can often be as much a product of the body as of the mind. The body is acutely sensitive to even the tiniest flickerings of emotion that move constantly across the mind. The body often detects our thoughts almost before we’ve consciously registered them ourselves and frequently reacts as if they are solid and real, whether they accurately reflect the world or not. But the body does not just react to what the mind is thinking—it also feeds back emotional information into the brain that can then end up enhancing fears, worries and general overall angst and unhappiness. This feedback loop is a dance of phenomenal power and complexity that is only now beginning to be understood.

Happiness is looking at the same things with different eyes.

The spirit in which you do something is often as important as the act itself.

So you become caught in a fantasy of freedom and miss the actuality of freedom available to you.

The way we interpret the world makes a huge difference to how we react. This is sometimes called the ABC model of emotions. The “A” represents the situation itself—what a video camera would record. The “B” is the interpretation given to the scene; the running story we create out of the situation, which often flows just beneath the surface of awareness but is taken as fact. The “C” is our reactions: our emotions, body sensations and our impulses to act in various ways. Often, we see the “A” and “C” quite clearly, but we are not aware of the “B.” We think that the situation itself aroused our feelings and emotions when, in fact, it was our interpretation of the scene that did this.

we often give far more credence to emotionally charged stories than to logic—no matter how rational the arguments.

The experienced meditator is not someone whose mind does not wander, but one who gets very used to beginning again.

Think of the meditation as planting seeds. You give young seeds the right conditions, but you don’t try to dig them up each day to see if they’ve grown roots.

So what do we mean by acceptance? The root of the word (the same root as the words “capture” and “perception”) means to receive or take hold of something—and through this, it also means to grasp or understand. Acceptance, in this sense, allows the mind to embrace the true, deep understanding of how things really are. Acceptance is a pause, a period of allowing, of letting be, of clear seeing. Acceptance takes us off the hair trigger, so that we’re less likely to make a knee-jerk reaction. It allows us to become fully aware of difficulties, with all of their painful nuances, and to respond to them in the most skillful way possible. It gives us more time and space to respond. And often, we may discover, the wisest way of responding is to do nothing at all.

In short, mindful acceptance gives us choices.

if you want not only to bring about the bone-deep peace that comes from cultivating mindfulness, but also to help sustain it in the light of the stresses that life throws at you. You need to relate to the world with kindness and compassion, and you can only do this if you come home to who you are, accepting yourself with deepest respect, honor and, yes, love.

Kindness transforms things: the “aversion” pathways in the mind are switched off and the “approach” ones switched on instead. This change in attitude enhances openness, creativity and happiness, while at the same time dissolving the fears, guilts, anxieties and stresses that lead to exhaustion and chronic discontent.

If you find it difficult to bring forth any sense of friendship toward yourself, bring to mind a person (or even a pet) who, either in the past or present, has loved you unconditionally. Once you have a clear sense of their love for you, see if you can return to offering this love to yourself: May I be free from suffering. May I be happy and healthy. May I have ease of being.

Although we often talk about having empathy for others, it’s equally important to be open to receiving it ourselves. We often have very little empathy for our own thoughts and feelings and frequently try to suppress them by dismissing them as weaknesses. Or we might try indulging our emotions with treats (mostly accompanied by a slightly bitter feeling of entitlement), such as overeating (because we feel we deserve it). But it may be helpful to imagine that our deepest thoughts and feelings don’t want indulging (or dismissing). They just want to be heard and understood. They just want us to empathize with the feelings that are giving rise to them.

Usually, in daily life, we are motivated to do something, then we do it. But when mood is low, we have to do something before the motivation comes. Motivation follows action, rather than the other way around.

In summary, when you feel tired, unhappy, stressed or anxious, waiting until you feel motivated may not be the wisest course of action. You have to put the action first.