Week 1: Focusing Your Attention

Mindfulness or Mindlessness: Discovering the Difference

The following story illustrates how clever people can behave in mindless ways.

James had always been a high achiever. His father was a serial entrepreneur, and it was expected that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. James worked hard, excelled at school, and later completed his MBA at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School. Despite his father’s repeated executive-level job offers, James was determined to make his own way and secured an executive position in a global financial organisation.
For the first year, all went well. James exceeded all his targets and was rewarded with a pay increase and greater responsibilities. In response, James worked harder, a strategy that had served him well in the past. His days were filled with web-based meetings at all hours of the day and night, travel, working on his computer, and evenings out with colleagues and business contacts. To make time for his work, James set aside his membership at the gliding club and prioritised a two-week fact-finding mission in Hong Kong over his annual break in the lakes with family and friends.
With so much to do and multiple tasks to juggle, James started to find it increasingly difficult to concentrate, so he did what he’d always done – worked harder. James worked into the early hours with increasing caffeine intake in an attempt to stay alert and focused, often getting only four hours of sleep. Despite all his efforts and hard work, his work began to slip, and he was sent to see the occupational health team, who suggested he was showing signs of burnout and recommended time off work.
Grudgingly, in denial, James took a month off. He booked himself a soaring safari in South Africa, a holiday that promised to deliver his lifelong ambition to see lions and elephants in the wild, combined with his love of gliding. As the days leading up to the holidays passed, James started to look forward to it. He threw himself into researching and planning to make the most of his break. He worked hard to ensure that all his projects were safely handed over to his colleagues, his emails were completed, and clients reassured about his absence. He researched and booked the best travel insurance, researched and bought suitable clothes, got involved with online forums, and learnt some of the local language.
Eventually, the day of his flight to South Africa arrived. James had driven to Gatwick airport many times. As he drove to the airport, he caught up on his last remaining phone calls, ate a sandwich, and drank an energy drink, finishing his phone calls just as he pulled into long-term parking for Terminal 2. Only as he stepped out of the car did he realise that he was at the wrong airport. His flight was due to depart from Heathrow, yet somehow he had driven himself to Gatwick airport!

Has something like this ever happened to you? Don’t worry: you’re not alone. Less dramatic examples include arriving for a meeting at the wrong time or on the wrong day or forgetting appointments and things you were supposed to be doing. Luckily, it isn’t a sign that you’re experiencing early onset of executive dementia! This is an example of ‘mindlessness’ or going on ‘autopilot’.

In the following sections, we explore what it means to go on autopilot, how you can recognise habitual responses, and why sometimes the mind tends to wander.

Observing autopilot in action

It’s estimated that the human brain processes around 400 billion bits of information every second. The more primitive areas of the brain process the majority of this information and are highly efficient at doing this. They process incoming information speedily while expending relatively little energy. All this happens at a subconscious level. The majority of the time, this is good news because it frees up your powerful, but slower, more energy-hungry ‘thinking’ brain to focus on the things that require conscious processing. So far, so good?

The downside is that problems can arise if you try to process too many pieces of information simultaneously. Your working memory can usually process only four to five pieces of information at a time. Trying to handle more can create a bottleneck. In an effort to be efficient, the brain has a tendency to process as much as it can unconsciously, freeing up your limited working memory capacity to focus on other things. This strategy is both time and energy efficient.

When juggling too much information, or when under pressure, your primitive brain sometimes gets it wrong. Its autopilot subconscious responses, based on past experiences or predictions of the future, are sometimes incorrect, leading to poor decisions and missed opportunities.

Recognising habitual responses

You form habits in the brain by repeating actions or thoughts over and over again. As you do this, you form robust physical neural pathways in the brain, making it easier to repeat the thought or action in the future. Habits are stored in the more primitive areas of the brain, which means they can be repeated without conscious thought. The upside of this is that it’s a tried and tested response that has worked in the past. It’s also quick and energy-efficient to repeat.

James’s journey to Gatwick airport is an example of operating on autopilot (see the earlier section ‘Mindfulness or Mindlessness: Discovering the Difference’). With little or no conscious brain effort, he was able to drive a car, navigate to an airport, drink, eat, and have a number of phone conversations without crashing his car. Each of these activities is highly complex in nature. To drive, James’s brain had stored a number of habits connected with the activity of driving, such as clutch and break control, steering, and changing gears.

In the same way, James’s brain had stored habits connected with how to eat and drink while driving. Because habits extend working memory, James was able to make phone calls while driving to the airport by using these habits or autopilot responses. The problem is that as James was doing so many things simultaneously, his unconscious brain started to make some important decisions for him – in this case, driving him to an airport it was familiar with, which unfortunately wasn’t the right one.

Responses that may have served you well in the past may not always be appropriate to present-moment situations. Despite this, especially when under pressure, your brain defaults to old ways of thinking and doing things long before the conscious higher brain kicks in and you have the opportunity to question their appropriateness. The good news is that practicing mindfulness enhances your awareness of your unique patterns of behaviour and habits. This awareness is the first step towards replacing unhelpful habits with more appropriate ones via the power of neuroplasticity.

Noticing the mind’s tendency to wander

James story detailed in ‘Mindfulness or Mindlessness: Discovering the Difference’, earlier in this chapter, vividly illustrates the human tendency to work on autopilot. Now read on to find out what it can tell us about the mind’s tendency to wander.

As soon as James realised his mistake, he got straight back in the car. He had three hours before his flight departed, and Heathrow Airport was around a 50-minute drive away, so he might still make his flight – by the skin of his teeth. As he drove from Gatwick to Heathrow, James became angry with himself. How could he have ended up at Gatwick when he knew his flight was from Heathrow? What would people think of him! They would think he was losing it.
James started to think about what the company thought of him and his career prospects, concluding that this mistake would definitely impact his promotion prospects and he’d no longer be invited to get involved in key prospects. He mentally protested that none of this was part of his plan, and maybe he had been foolish to put down a deposit for a new waterside apartment in Docklands. Now his promotion prospects were blighted, he would never be able to keep up the mortgage payments. James gripped the steering wheel tighter. His shoulders and arms tensed, and he pressed the accelerator pedal down harder.

Recent research suggests that the human mind wanders for around 47 per cent of the day. The same research concluded that when the mind wanders, people tend to feel unhappy. At a time when James should have been focusing on driving his car safely to the right airport in time to catch his flight, his mind was again elsewhere, trying to anticipate the future and making himself thoroughly stressed and miserable in the process, his body holding onto tension, ready to fight the imaginary tiger he imagined his future to be.

Spending this amount of time in mind wandering is a phenomenon unique to human beings due to our advanced brain function, but it comes at an emotional cost and has huge impacts for workplace well-being, decision-making, and productivity.

Close your eyes and try to empty your mind completely of all thoughts, just for one minute. How did you get on? When we ask people to do this activity during mindfulness introductory sessions, most people find this more difficult than they thought it would be. This is no surprise. It’s estimated that your mind can generate around 50,000 individual thoughts in the course of 24 hours. Day after day and year after year, your mind is constantly churning. Thoughts come and go continuously, and few require immediate action. Despite the fact that thoughts aren’t facts, people often treat them as so, triggering knee-jerk responses, including emotions and tensions in the body.

Developing greater awareness of your thoughts and habitual patterns of behaviour gives you greater control over your life. It gives you choices. Many high-powered executives, like James, silently wish to stop the madness. And in an effort to cope with increasing workloads, they spend more and more of their life on autopilot. Do you, like James, ever find your thoughts spiralling away from the facts of the present moment into elaborate stories of the world, which, although not real, trigger more thoughts, emotions, sensations and tension in the body?

If you were a caveman facing mortal threats to life and limb, this would be a wholly appropriate response to keep you alive and safe from harm. The possibility of less status or a lack of promotion at work could hardly be described as life-threatening, yet people respond in much the same way – treating it as if it were a life-and-death situation. As a result, they spiral towards a ‘hyper’ state, wired and ready to fight for their lives, or tumble down to a ‘hypo’ state, where they start to shut down and are rendered inactive – a freeze response that works on the ancient principle that if you play dead, the danger will pass you by and you’ll live to see another day.

Tuning in to the Present Moment

Do you remember the first time you ate your favorite food? Perhaps you paused to savour the flavour, texture and smell. Did you pause to notice the pleasure it gave you at that moment? Do you still pause to fully appreciate this pleasant experience, or do you eat it with little or no conscious attention?

For some people, food is simply a source of fuel, while others really enjoy the whole eating process. Eating is an everyday thing that all people do, often with little or no conscious attention, but it provides opportunities to tune in to the present moment and fully experience the richness of the experience.

Try this mindful eating exercise to practice tuning in to the present moment.

Select an everyday item of food you normally eat with little or no conscious attention. It could be a biscuit, a snack bar, an apple, a bag of seeds, dried fruit or nuts. Pick something that doesn’t need preparation or peeling to eat. Then follow these steps:

Hold the food item in your hands or between your fingers and thumb.

Focus your full attention on it as if you’ve never seen it before. How heavy is it? Explore your item with a sense of openness and curiosity.
Look closely at the food item.

What can you see? What is its texture like? What do you notice about its colour? Is it hard or soft? Explore it meticulously with full attention. Is it smooth? Is it uniform in shape? Does it have any recesses or dimples?
Notice the sensations you feel in your hand as you hold the food item.

Explore the texture of the item. How does it feel to be holding it at this moment?
Place the food item under your nose and smell it.

What do you notice? Does it have a scent? Very little scent? Does it evoke any memories? Are you aware of any impulses or urges?
Place the item on your tongue (but don’t chew).

If the item is small, like a nut or raisin or small sweet, place it on your tongue. If the item is bigger, like a biscuit, apple or sandwich, take a bite and let the bite of food sit on your tongue. Simply tune in to the experience of it resting on your tongue. If you wish to, try exploring the object with your tongue. Notice any urges, avoiding the urge to chew, and tune in to the changing sensations in the mouth right now.
Chew.

When you’re ready, bite the item and notice any flavours that emerge. Slowly and consciously chew the item but don’t swallow. How do the textures and flavours change? Tune in to what’s going on in your mouth at this moment in time.
Swallow.

When ready to do so, swallow the food. See whether you can notice what your tongue and throat do in preparation for swallowing and follow the sensations of swallowing as the item moves down the throat. What do you notice now?
Notice the aftereffects.

End this exercise by spending a short while noticing what happens after eating. How does the mouth feel in the absence of the food item? Are you aware of any thoughts, urges or emotions?

Many people eat with little conscious awareness while having a conversation, travelling, or working at their desk. How did this short exercise change the experience of eating?

Many people attending WorkplaceMT training and trying this for the first time are surprised at how the simple act of eating an everyday food whilst consciously focusing on it transforms the experience. For example:

‘I love raisins and normally eat them a handful at a time. Eating the raisin evoked memories of childhood Christmas cooking with my mother. The raisin had a different texture than I was expecting, and the taste when I bit into it was more intense and flavor-filled than I thought it would be’.
‘I selected an oaty biscuit I regularly eat at our weekly meetings. The same biscuit selection is provided each week along with tea, coffee and water. When I explored the texture, it felt rough and unappetizing. The smell, to my surprise, was mildly unpleasant, but I persisted. I took a bite and discovered the taste was bland and sickly sweet. I wondered why I had been eating these biscuits each week. I never want to eat that biscuit ever again!’

Stepping out of autopilot allows you to see things as they really are – and make wiser decisions based on present-moment facts rather than memories of the experience achieved by your brain. A seemingly insignificant thing like a raisin can provide a taste explosion, or a biscuit might trigger pleasure or revulsion. It also illustrates just how much of life passes by and the big impact that focusing on small things can bring. It illustrates the cost of your inattention – just think of all the pleasant experiences you could be missing out on. Also consider the habits you repeat that are no longer serving you well.

Focusing Your Attention

So far in Week 1’s WorkplaceMT training you have discovered the mind’s tendency to wander and to work on autopilot. James, who we met earlier in the chapter, found it difficult to focus when he returned to work.

When James returned from his break from work, his occupational health team offered him some one-to-one mindfulness training. At first, James was cynical, “I was asked to focus on a raisin to improve my attention and awareness. I thought the trainer was nuts, but it made me realise just how little I was aware of what was really going on around me. It was a real wake-up call for me that something needed to change.” James knew that he couldn’t instantly change the world and his organisation’s working culture, but he realised that he could change the way he responded to it.

Mindfulness certainly isn’t about switching your mind off. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Brain scans indicate that increased metabolic brain activity occurs while practicing mindfulness – in other words, you become more aware of what’s going on around you. You experiment to see whether you can simply acknowledge what’s going on around you rather than springing into a reactive cycle. You learn to turn towards your brain chatter – noticing patterns and chain reactions and creating a thinking gap between the stimulus and your response to it.

Simply committing to be fully aware of the present moment isn’t enough. You need to train your brain to focus and maintain attention where you want it to be. You need to recognise unhelpful habits that drive your routine behaviour and replace them with new habits that serve you well. Mindfulness isn’t something you can simply read about and then magically become mindful. If it was, we would instantly become a mindful nation! Mindfulness is something you need to experience for yourself. Developing mindfulness takes time and effort, but the potential gains are enormous.

WorkplaceMT mindfulness training is a combination of psychological education, combined with formal and informal everyday mindfulness practical exercises. The practice elements of WorkplaceMT help you to rewire your brain to reduce inappropriate emotion-based reactivity, increase your ability to focus your attention, and stand back to see the bigger picture of what’s really going on – within yourself – and within your organisation.

Practicing mindfulness of breath

The first of the formal mindfulness exercises we would like you to practice as part of your training is mindfulness of breath. Why breath? Because everyone breathes. It’s universal. Breathing is something that most people take for granted, but without it, we’d all be dead.

Focusing on the breath provides a simple and natural object to anchor your attention on. The breath can be surprisingly sensitive to how you’re feeling. By progressively training your brain to notice your breathing patterns (shallow or deep, smooth or rough), you can monitor your internal weather patterns, taking skillful action when you need to take care of yourself.

Why practice mindfulness of breath?

Using your breath as an anchor for your awareness enables you to notice more easily when your mind has wandered, if you become bored or distracted, or if you experience emotions such as happiness or sadness.

The exercise takes less than ten minutes and provides an opportunity to see how things are for you in this moment. It allows you to practice the art of letting go of the doing, fixing mind and to experience simply being – allowing life to live itself – just for a short while. It provides the opportunity to observe the insights and wisdom that occur when you stand back from thinking and doing.

How do you practice mindfulness of breath?

We recommended that you practice mindfulness of breath at least once a day for the next seven days – more if time allows. In WorkplaceMT courses, we guide people through mindfulness of breath as they sit in standard office chairs in the workplace. In our experience, most people practice their formal mindfulness exercises at home because they’re less likely to be disturbed. If this is the case for you, feel free to try this exercise sitting or lying down – find a posture or position that’s comfortable for you. If you do decide to lie down, remember that practicing mindfulness is about falling awake, not falling asleep!

Experiment with practicing at different times of the day – first thing when you wake, after you’ve had breakfast, after you’re dressed and ready to go to work, when you arrive home and have settled, before you start your evening social and domestic routine, after supper, or before bed. See what works for you, but make a commitment to practice daily. Doing so will get results – training the muscles of the brain in the same way that you’d train your body muscles at the gym.

If you do miss a practice session, don’t make things worse by getting angry or frustrated with yourself. Simply start practicing again the next day. If you’re practicing by yourself, rather than attending a six-week WorkplaceMT course, feel free to repeat a week if you managed to practice only two or three times that week. Alternatively, you may decide to move on to the next week and come back to that week at a later date.

Although relaxation is a welcome by-product for many who practice mindfulness, it’s not the aim. It’s about tuning in to your present-moment experience, warts and all. Sometimes this is a pleasant experience; sometimes, it’s not so pleasant.

Your mind will naturally wander during this exercise. The important thing is recognising that it’s wandered. Only once you notice it has wandered can you redirect your attention to where you want it to be. Repetition of this activity strengthens the neural pathways in your brain, making it easier to notice mind wandering and easier to sustain focus and attention.

Mindfulness of breath – the science

Practicing mindfulness of breath helps you to develop the ability to

Direct and sustain the focus of your attention
Notice when your mind has wandered
Suspend judgment and experience the present moment as it is

The simple act of your mind wandering, you recognising that it’s wandered, and then bringing your attention back to where you want it to be forms new neural connections in your brain. Every time you go through this process, you reinforce these neural pathways and make it easier to do the next time.

Practicing exercises like mindfulness of breath for as little as eight weeks has been proven to thicken the parts of the brain’s cerebral cortex responsible for decision-making, attention and memory.

On WorkplaceMT training courses, we recommend that you download and play the accompanying MP3s to guide you through this practice. Play Track 1A or 1B for the mindfulness of breath exercise. (Note: If you prefer not to use the accompanying tracks or are unable to do so, simply familiarize yourself with the instructions and set a timer for 10 minutes.)

Settle yourself in a chair where you can sit in a comfortable upright position.
Plant both feet firmly on the floor, relax your shoulders with the chest open and your head facing forward with the chin dipped slightly to your chest.

Your upper body should feel confident and self-supporting, embodying a sense of awakeness and alertness. Close your eyes.
Direct your attention to the contact points between your body and the chair and floor.

Spend a few minutes exploring how your feet, legs, bottom and any other areas in contact with the chair and floor feel in this moment in time. Briefly scan each area of your body in turn, starting at the feet and finishing at the crown of your head. If you detect any tension, experiment with breathing into the area on the in breath and imagine releasing the tension on the out breath.
Focus your attention on the breath.

Notice how the chest and abdomen feel as the breath enters and leaves the body. If this is difficult, focus first on wherever you feel the breath most vividly.
Place your hand on your abdomen and focus your attention on the sensations of the abdomen rising and falling in its own natural rhythm.
Allow your hand to gently return to your side and shift the focus of your attention to the short pause that occurs naturally between the in breath and out breath.
Refocus your attention to the tip of your nostrils.

Observe the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the body through the nostrils. Notice any subtle differences between the temperature of the air as it enters and leaves your nostrils.
Refocus your attention back to the body.

Tune in to your body and notice how it feels in this moment in time.
At the end of the practice session, gently stretch your fingers and toes and open your eyes.

Now you’re ready to re-engage with the rest of your day.

If at any point your mind wanders, don’t beat yourself up! Simply acknowledge the fact that it wandered, make a mental note of where it wandered to (if you’re aware of this) and then kindly and gently refocus your attention back to where you intend it to be. It doesn’t matter if your mind wanders 100 times; the act of recognising that your mind has wandered and bringing it back is what’s important.

This exercise isn’t about controlling your breath. Simply observe the natural rhythm and sensations of breathing, unique to this moment in time, without the need to engage in judgment.

Try your best to suspend judgments about how your practice is going. Doing so puts you under pressure and can send your thoughts spiralling. Let go of ideas of success and failure or right and wrong, and allow your practice session to unfold just as it is moment by moment.

On WorkplaceMT courses, we encourage personal reflection following mindfulness practices. Doing so helps you to learn and benefit more from your time spent practicing. After each session, reflect on the following questions:

How hard did you find it to remain focused on your body or your breath?
How many times did you notice that your attention had wandered?
Did you notice where your attention had wandered to or how long it had been wandering?
Did you find yourself at any time making judgments about your experiences or being self-critical?
Can you make any other observations about this experience?

When James first tried this exercise, he noticed that, in his own words, his mind was like an ‘unruly monkey. It was like there was a drunken monkey, constantly popping up and down, scuttling around, screeching and endlessly chattering away’. He said it felt as if this monkey was constantly center stage, clamoring for attention. In truth, of course, the ‘monkeys’ in your head never fully go away. It’s useless to fight them or to try to banish them from your mind because, as you’re probably aware, that which you resist persists. Practicing mindfulness on a regular basis can help you befriend your inner monkey and, maybe, in time, even tame him.

James also noticed his mind’s tendency to flit from thought to thought, making it hard to stay focused. This recognition is important when learning mindfulness for the first time. Your mind will wander; the important thing is recognising it has wandered and regaining your focus. How you do this is important.

If you get angry and frustrated with your inability to stay focused, you’ll find it even harder to focus. Kindness and gentleness are key here. Cutting-edge research suggests that it’s neurologically impossible to be simultaneously kind to yourself and angry at the same time. Being kind to yourself when your mind wanders and cutting yourself some slack diffuses tension and helps you to regain your focus more quickly.

Week 1 WorkplaceMT Practice Exercises

The mindfulness techniques you’re invited to practice as part of your WorkplaceMT training can help you to reduce the time that your mind wanders. By reducing the time your mind spends wandering, even by a relatively small percentage, you gain back hours of time every week. By progressively developing the ability to notice that your mind has wandered, you’ll increase focus and concentration and open up a world of creative possibilities.

Your core practice activities for Week 1 consist of a formal brain-training activity and informal everyday mindfulness activities that you can easily fit into your day. In total, all we’re asking you to do each week for the next six weeks is around 20 minutes of practice a day. That includes 8 to 15 minutes of formal practice each day plus a few minutes of everyday mindfulness scattered throughout your day. Research demonstrates that the more you practice, the greater the benefits you’ll experience.

Before you get started, consider carefully two very important questions

What difficulties do you see yourself encountering? Difficulties often include making a time to practice, overcoming distractions, and keeping going when things aren’t going to plan for you.
How will you overcome these difficulties? Planning strategies to overcome the inevitable barriers and difficulties you encounter in the next few weeks is really important. Partnering up with someone else who is working through the programme or involving a friend who already practices mindfulness can be really helpful. Some people find the act of physically diarizing an appointment with themselves to practice mindfulness does the trick. Find a strategy that woks for you, but do spend a few moments planning to help ensure that this programme will have maximum benefit.

Week 1 formal mindfulness exercises

Here is a summary of your Week 1 formal exercises.

Practice mindfulness of breath (see earlier section ‘Practicing mindfulness of breath’) – using MP3 track 1A or 1B to guide you each day. We have included two versions of this exercise – use the one that works best for you.

If time allows, spend a few moments afterwards reflecting on your experience.

Week 1 informal everyday mindfulness exercises

Following is a summary of your Week 1 informal exercises.

Mindful eating

Try eating a few bites of your lunch mindfully or taking a few mindful sips of tea or coffee. Use snacking as an opportunity to practice a little mindfulness. Try to fully tune in to the experience of eating and drinking, which changes moment by moment. See what you notice.

Reconnecting with the present moment

Although you’re always physically in the present moment, your mind may be frequently elsewhere, trawling through memories of the past and trying to predict the future. Twice a day, try to use an everyday experience to bring your mind back to the present moment.

For example, when sitting in a chair, ask yourself how you feel in this moment in time. Be specific. The following questions may help you to reflect:

How do your feet feel in contact with the floor?
What other parts of your body are in contact with the chair? What sensations can you notice at the contact points?
Are you experiencing any positive or negative emotions? If so, what are they?

Releasing habits

Try to do one or two things differently this week. Try out a different coffee bar, drive a different route if you can, sit in a different chair, or park in a different area of the car park.

You may also try to do a routine activity mindfully, such as washing up, showering, getting dressed, walking up or down stairs. As you do, consider what thoughts arise. Are you aware of any urges, impulses or emotions? Observe what arises with a sense of gentle playfulness, fun and curiosity.