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

by J. Mark G. Williams

You come to realise 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.

When unhappiness or stress hover overhead, rather than taking it all personally, you learn to treat them as if they were black clouds in the sky, and to observe them with friendly curiosity as they drift past.

We get drawn into this emotional quicksand because our state of mind is intimately connected with memory. The mind is constantly trawling through memories to find those that echo our current emotional state.

Mindfulness meditation teaches you to recognise 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.

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.

Think about that for a moment: I wish I were feeling happier. How do you feel now? You probably feel worse. This is because you focused on the gap between how you feel and how you want to feel. And focusing on the gap highlighted it. The mind sees the gap as a problem to be solved.

People genuinely believe that if they worry enough over their unhappiness they will eventually find a solution. They just need to make one last heave – think a little more about the problem … But research shows the opposite: in fact, brooding reduces our ability to solve problems; and it’s absolutely hopeless for dealing with emotional difficulties.

The evidence is clear: brooding is the problem, not the solution.

Pure awareness transcends thinking. It allows you to step outside the chattering negative self-talk and your reactive impulses and emotions. It allows you to look at the world once again with open eyes. And when you do so, a sense of wonder and quiet contentment begins to reappear in your life.

And, the trouble is, if you rely solely on outside circumstances changing in order to feel happy and energised, you’ll have to wait a very long time. And while you wait, constantly hoping that the sun will come out or wishing that you could travel to the peace and tranquillity of an imagined future or an idealised past, your actual life will slip by unnoticed. Those moments might as well not exist at all.

If Doing mode is a trap, then Being mode is freedom.

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.

be mindful means to be back in touch with your senses, so you can see, hear, touch, smell and taste things as if for the first time. You become deeply curious about the world again.

The Doing mode involves judging and comparing the ‘real’ world with the world as we’d like it to be in our thoughts and dreams. It narrows attention down to the gap between the two, so that you can end up with a toxic variety of tunnel vision in which only perfection will do.

Being mode, on the other hand, invites you temporarily to suspend judgment. It means briefly standing aside and watching the world as it unfolds, while allowing it to be just as it is for a moment. It means approaching a problem or a situation without preconceptions, so that you are no longer compelled to draw only one preconceived conclusion.

Mindful acceptance does not mean resignation to your fate. It’s an acknowledgement that an experience is here, in this moment – but, instead of letting it seize control of your life, mindfulness allows you, simply and compassionately, to observe it rather than judge it, attack it, argue with it or try to disprove its validity.

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.

Thes past doesnt exist . Only in your mind

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

So ‘hardy’ people have a belief that their situation has inherent meaning that they can commit themselves to, that they can manage their life and that their situation is understandable – that it is basically comprehensible, even if it seems chaotic and out of control.

that it’s difficult to be curious and unhappy at the same time. Re-igniting your innate human curiosity is a wonderful way of dealing skilfully with the frantic world in which we so often live. You’ll soon discover that although you feel time-poor, you are actually moment-rich.

You only ever have a moment to live, this moment, and yet we all tend to live in the past or in the future. We only rarely notice what is arising in the present moment.

Gradually, you will come to see that turning towards the chatter of the mind – becoming fully aware of it – grants you more choices and greater room for manoeuvre. And this gives you the freedom to engage with life more skilfully – dealing with looming difficulties before they seize control of the mind and your life.

Walking is one of the finest exercises and a brilliant stress reliever and mood booster. A good walk can put the world in perspective and soothe your frayed nerves. If you really want to feel alive, go for a walk in the wind or rain!

Happiness is looking at the same things with different eyes. Life only happens here – at this very moment. Tomorrow and yesterday are no more than a thought. So make the best of it. You do not know how long you have got. This is a positive message. It helps to give appreciative attention to what is here now. How much appreciative attention do you have for the here and now? Become still and look around. How is the ‘now’ for you?

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

Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple and a keen meditator, learned this after a brush with cancer: ‘Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – all these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.’

The story of the king holds an important lesson: it’s often far easier and more effective in the long run to live with our difficulties than to pour resources into battling and suppressing them.

Everyday life offers endless opportunities for you to stop, to focus, to remind yourself to be fully awake and present to what is happening right now.

One of the most difficult aspects of the frantic rush through a busy life is that we often do not allow even the smallest notion of ‘completion’ to enter the picture of our daily lives. We often rush from task to task, so much so that the end of one task is just the invitation to start another. There are no gaps in between in which we could take even a few seconds to sit, to take stock, to realise that we have just completed something.

you can practise cultivating a sense of completeness – even a glimmer, right now, in this moment, with the little things of life, there is a chance that you would be better able to cope with those aspects of mind that keep telling you that you are not there yet; not yet happy, not yet fulfilled. You might learn that you are complete, whole, just as you are.

We constantly weave false dreams for ourselves, but what we really need to weave is a parachute to use when life starts to become difficult or begins to fall apart.