Let’s continue our exploration of the 5 Core Components of Mindfulness of Self. If you haven’t read that article, it might be helpful to do so then come back here.
The primary aim of mindfulness is to cultivate a mindset that is characterized by open awareness and observation. Open awareness means that rather than being judgmental or judging everything within ourselves and outside ourselves, mindfulness aims to cultivate a mindset that looks to increase awareness of judgment by looking at things in a fresh and new way, rather than in a way that has been influenced by all kinds of beliefs and old viewpoints that we have about our experiences. Judging is simply a way of labeling things (I am good or bad, they are pretty or ugly, this is right or wrong and so forth). What we end up doing when we live like that is constantly looking at reality through a lens of judgment.
Let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with judgments. We need to make judgements all the time about; whether a situation is safe or unsafe, if meeting someone for coffee is a good networking opportunity or a waste of your limited time or even if you feel like chocolate or vanilla ice cream. It’s how we navigate the multiple ambiguities life throws at us every day. We don’t want to find ourselves in an unsafe situation, waste our time or get the wrong ice cream.
The thing with judgment is that by definition it’s subjective. It’s our own unique view of the world deeply based in and biased by our upbringing, past experience, culture, race, gender, preferences, etc.
When we’re unaware of the fact that a judgment is subjective, it can create problems because we confuse reality with the judgment that we have about reality and mindfulness is simply becoming aware of this process.
So, instead of occasionally using mindfulness techniques to cope with setbacks or stress (the objective of many corporate programs, apps, websites, etc.) the aim is to achieve an overall change in one’s relationship with thoughts, emotions and sensations. Mindfulness involves (continual) awareness of automatic processes and maintaining open and focused awareness, in all kinds of situations, both easy and difficult, in both our private and work lives. In other words, increasing mindfulness involves a continual process that creates a profound and ongoing change in perception, behavior and cognition, rather than a temporary employment of strategies that help one “become present in the here and now” again.
Our habits of thinking and knowing have been built over many years. Changing them takes time. In order to change problematic automatic patterns of behavior and thinking, cultivating continual awareness is key. For example, someone who strongly identifies with their negative, judgmental thoughts will need time to become aware of the various manifestations and consequences of those thoughts, both at work and at home, and practice being with them in a mindful way as soon as they are noticed. Being with, is not the same as enduring, coping or shutting down thoughts. It may feel like that at first, but negative thoughts are as much a part of life as positive ones. They belong. You’re noticing the negative thought with an open, non-judgmental awareness.
In a similar vein, a person who is almost constantly in the “doing mode”, rushing through activities or experiencing difficulties with detaching psychologically from work, will need time and practice to restore balance with their “being” mode again. Mindfulness works in the multiple domains that make up our lives, especially those which require a profound change. The research shows that structural changes to our ways of being often do not emerge until several weeks or months of regular practice have passed. For instance, a study by Baer, Carmody, and Hunsinger (2012) showed that significant improvements in perceived stress did not occur until week 4 of the mindfulness intervention. Further research which compared expert meditators to novice meditators, revealed that after extensive meditation training, minimal effort was needed to sustain focused attention (Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson & Davidson, 2006). Besides practice duration, practice quality has been found to contribute to improvements in psychological symptoms as well (Del Re, Fluckiger, Goldberg, & Hoyt, 2013).
So, the aim of mindfulness is to cultivate open awareness, the hallmark of a beginner’s mind. It is as if we look at reality for the first time. Like a young child who experiences something for the very first time.
There is No Goal in Mindfulness
I want to wrap this article up by talking briefly about goal-oriented mindsets and mindfulness. We swim in a sea filled with plans, goals, objectives, achievements…and like fish in water, we don’t always realize it. In fact, the bulk of the content we all see on LinkedIn, where you’re probably reading this, is achievement oriented. That’s fine for some things in our lives, like advancing a career or getting through school, but not for everything.
It is perhaps the aspect of mindfulness that is most paradoxical and most difficult to explain; there is no goal to achieve in doing mindfulness exercises. This may sound strange. People often are drawn to participate in my mindfulness trainings because they want to achieve the goal of worrying less, experiencing less stress, less pain, etc.
The practice actually aims to cultivate open, non-judgmental awareness of the present. That’s it. Because goals are always related to the future, if you think about it, awareness of the present is really not that great of a goal. The problem is, that when we start doing the exercises because of a goal (“I am now going to meditate because I want to become calm and relaxed”), the goal not only focuses our attention on the future, we may also become aware during the exercise that we are not achieving the state of relaxation fast enough, if at all. The goal of mindfulness, if there is one, is not achievement (like becoming relaxed or being a gold medal meditator), but to practice being present with whatever arises in the moment,then this one, then another and so on.
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