Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world

by J. Mark G. Williams

Doing mode solves problems not only by bearing in mind your goals and destinations, but also by holding on to ‘anti-goals’ and the places you don’t want to go to. This makes sense when, for example, driving from A to B because it’s useful to know which parts of town or the highway network to avoid. But it becomes a problem if you use the same strategy for those states of mind you’re desperately trying to avoid. For example, if you try and solve the problem of feeling tired and stressed, you will also keep in mind the ‘places you don’t want to visit’ such as exhaustion, burnout and breakdown. So now, in addition to feeling tired and stressed, you begin conjuring up new fears for yourself, and this only enhances your anxieties and stresses, leading to even more exhaustion. Despite its best efforts, Doing mode, used in the wrong context, leads you step by step towards burnout and exhaustion. Being mode, on the other hand, encourages you to ‘approach’ the very things that you feel like avoiding; it invites you to take a friendly interest in your most difficult states of mind. Mindfulness does not say ‘don’t worry’ or ‘don’t be sad’. Instead it acknowledges your fear and your sadness, your fatigue and exhaustion, and encourages you to ‘turn towards’ these feelings and whatever emotions are threatening to engulf you. This compassionate approach gradually dissipates the power of your negative feelings.