Chapter 11
Looking Beyond the Horizon to the Rest of Your Life – Week Eight: Living Mindfully
In This Chapter
Beginning the rest of your life
Continuing to practise
Living a daily mindful existence
Taking your life into your own hands
This chapter (which covers week eight if you’re following the course in order) is all about assessing your practice, if necessary addressing any specific aspects that you decide need your attention, and maintaining your motivation. This way you ensure that you continue to benefit from mindfulness into the future, whatever life throws at you. Think of it as being rather like brushing your teeth regularly and not just prior to visiting a dentist; you’re brushing and flossing to achieve mindfulness meditation and daily mindfulness in regular life!
My aim is to prove that you can continue regular mindfulness practice even when you seem too busy or times are hard. I relate a few inspiring stories of how mindfulness helped other people and how much benefit they reaped from developing and practising this life skill on a regular basis. I invite you to add compassion to mindfulness, so that you allow yourself the occasional lapse into old unhealthy patterns but still know that every moment is a new beginning. I also provide a ‘manual’ for a mindful day, which is rather like a home-based mindfulness retreat.
Mindfulness can become second nature to you with practice and by maintaining a mindset of openness, childlike curiosity, adventure and patience. To help, I describe a number of attitudes that can help you move towards a gentler and kinder way of being. You can discover and work on these attitudes by practising mindfulness meditation.
Getting Your Bearings on the Course
As you approach the end of the eight-week course, I hope that you’re managing to reserve a special ‘out time’ for yourself. If so, you may have realised how a little bit of stillness – moment by moment – can do wonders for your mood, energy and general wellbeing.
Please consider the following aspects as you begin the final week and implement any that you believe may help you:
Think about which meditations are particularly working for you. Perhaps pausing for a breathing space (see Chapter 6) is proving helpful or just sitting with your breath is your all-time favourite. You may also like the body scan (check out Chapter 4), which can be a great practice to still the chattering mind and prepare you for sleep.
Move mindfully during the day and feel the wonderful tension release when you open your chest and let your shoulders drop. Perhaps attempt mindful walking and decide whether you prefer indoors or outside. Try walking with bare feet and feeling how you imprint the soles of your feet onto the carpet or ground, noticing the lifting, shifting and placing of your foot. Turn to Chapter 6 for more on physical awareness and mindful walking.
Consider how you arrange your meditation corner or room. Add little rituals, such as lighting a candle or ringing a bell, to help your body and mind remember to sit with dignity and kindness for the upcoming meditation (flip to Chapter 4 for more).
Use the same shawl or blanket for your meditation each time so that it collects some wholesome energy with each practice as you increasingly associate it with sitting peacefully. Don’t forget your ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door. Make sure that you’ve a way of letting others in your home know that you’re practising mindfulness. And remember that you are allowed to switch off your phone for a while!
Embracing a Mindful Life in Good and Bad Times
As I describe in Chapter 8, visitors in the form of events and situations come and go in your life and they aren’t always pleasant or enjoyable. These visitors include illnesses and diseases that knock sufferers and their families for six. In this section I show that whatever challenges life throws at you, a little space for mindfulness helps you cope a lot better.
As just one example, research suggests that mindfulness exercises can help people caring for those with autism, enabling them to cope better with the challenges of leading a meaningful life. Mindfulness skills assist in reducing anxiety, obsessive behaviours and aggression. Read the sidebar ‘A very special boy’ for a specific inspiring instance.
Creating regular mindfulness practice is like bringing up a baby. As soon as you think that the child’s routine is settled, it changes again; loving parents need to find out how to be patient with their newly arrived gift. Similarly, when you’re creating a new lifestyle, even if it takes up only 40 minutes a day, you need to appreciate that challenges remain ahead.
Go about your practice as if only this moment matters, and treat every instance as a new beginning. Ask yourself and people you know well whether changes in your attitude or behaviour have been noticed. Perhaps you’ve become more sensitive to injustice in the world and the suffering of others. See which bell of mindfulness rings loudest for you. In the end, what matters most is your ability to apply mindfulness to your daily life – the changes will come, sooner or later.
The term bell of mindfulness refers to aspects of life that trigger new attention in you: the kindness you wouldn’t allow, fearing it may be exploited; the awareness of human suffering; and the fact that all humans are in the same boat. These observations are wonderful details to record in your mindfulness diary.
Pledging to Practise
Everyone finds their enthusiasm and commitment to regular practice fading from time to time. In this section, I provide some tips and ideas to help you continue your practice for many years into the future.
Motivating yourself
A great help in maintaining your mindfulness motivation is to recall from time to time why you originally bought this book. Consider whether somebody told you about it, or just about mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), or whether someone inspired you (check out the sidebar ‘Two great figures for inspiration’). If you had particular hopes in respect of acquiring the skills of mindful living, think about how things look now. Ask yourself what you’ve found out about yourself and the practice of awareness, and what benefits you’ve discovered from practising meditation.
Here are some other questions to help you assess your progress:
Are you ready to commit to mindfulness practice for a lifetime?
What can you gain as against what you need to invest?
Are any obvious obstacles preventing you from going on with this voyage?
Have you considered strategies that may assist you when you feel stuck?
How would you have responded to life if you’d been allowed to remain mindful, aware and in the moment, as children naturally are?
Remember those moments when you felt surprised by joy for no apparent reason; when you were totally involved with eating an ice cream, stroking your cat or dog or watching clouds passing, and not feeling guilty about not ‘achieving’ anything.
Here’s a thought: if every single person on this planet added a sprinkle of mindfulness and a dash of compassion to their daily actions, how do you think our planet would be affected? Not everybody can be a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King or Aung San Suu Kyi, but little actions multiplied by many participants make a difference. Maybe you could think of that little gift you could offer.
Creating action plans
As part of exploring and practising mindfulness, you may have written down action plans to help you create space and willingness for regular meditative practice. Sometimes, however, even when you pencil the plans into your diary, you can find yourself not implementing them. If so, read the following account of an interesting psychological experiment that may help you to stay inspired and return to mindfulness meditation, even if you briefly lapse into your old pattern of living.
A researcher visited an old people’s home to test whether using mindfulness or awareness would make a difference in the participants’ lives. She chose two groups of people in their eighties and nineties. One group followed their normal routine but to another group she gave three awareness exercises to practise every day for one month: looking after a plant; getting dressed by themselves; and making one cup of tea or coffee for themselves every day.
After one month the group with the mindful tasks demonstrated extraordinary changes, which were apparent in their wellbeing and behaviour:
They were more extroverted and started to create friendships; some even started dating again.
Their mood was more sanguine.
They had better skin-cell renewal, better immune responses and less stress chemicals in their blood.
Their lungs worked more efficiently and they had an improved breathing ability.
How interesting what a little bit of mindfulness can do for you!
If this story inspires you, please consider thinking about what you plan to engage in mindfully and regularly from now on. Here are a few ideas:
Connecting with nature in some way, such as gardening, getting new house plants or helping in a local project
Showing kindness to your body, such as with mindful baths and showers, lovely lotions and potions, an Indian head massage or any other body treatment, buying a lovely soft nightgown or pajamas
Starting a new hobby or renewing interest in an old one
Going to the movies, theatre or opera, or watching a stand-up comic
Meeting up with friends or people you like
Joining a group that voluntarily offers something to the world and its inhabitants
Eating and doing housework mindfully
Travelling mindfully – not just on holidays, but every time you need to
Engaging in a daily meditation practice of your choice
Surprising strangers you meet by offering your seat or holding the door open for them – just because you care
Keeping a progress diary
If you haven’t started keeping a mindfulness diary, it’s never too late! At this stage, make it playful and stimulating so that you keep your practice going. You can create one with a lovely cover page, for example. This way your diary will not simply be a clinical collection of practice-related thoughts and observations, but something deeply personal to you; a physical embodiment of the playfulness and creativity you are discovering through your mindfulness practice.
Perhaps find some photos of beautiful snowbells to stick on the cover of your first diary; they symbolise the beginning of spring, a new start that repeats itself every year. Then every time you look at the diary or write in it, you feel inspired to write down new ideas and reread old entries. Choose whatever tickles your heart and helps you to persist.
Examine whether you’re aware of blocks keeping you from engaging with your diary, such as:
Oh no, I can’t be bothered to do any more writing today.
I thought mindfulness was all about ‘being’ and yet writing a diary reminds me of ‘doing’.
I’m so tired and relaxed now; I’ll write it down later.
I hate diaries – I hate my handwriting – this is all too much.
Make a point to notice your mind’s tendency to focus overly on problems and avoid looking at benefits. See whether you can come up with advantages for writing things down in your mindfulness diary. For example:
It will help me remember my journey.
I can reread it when going through a rough stage in my life in the future.
I may re-engage with my creativity: instead of writing I can draw.
I’ll write down a few bullet points – I can and want to manage that.
Having a Mindful Day, Every Day
In this section I introduce you to the possibility of carrying mindfulness through every moment of your day. Even if you find doing so too difficult just yet, perhaps you can pencil in one day a week where you experiment with mindfulness step-by-step from morning to night.
Waking up
When you wake up, and before you get up, kindly bring your attention to your breathing. Just watch the in-breaths and out-breaths for a little while. Feel the rising and falling of your chest. Maybe you can even notice how the air is cooler around your nostrils when you breathe in and warmer when you breathe out. Bring awareness to your body and mind, noticing how you move from lying to sitting, to standing, to action.
When you engage in your regular bathroom routines, such as brushing your teeth, showering, shaving, washing your hair – fully enter the experience. Allow all your senses to feast on the moment (smelling the shampoo or shower gel, tasting the toothpaste, feeling the warm water on your skin) and leave the planning of the day for after breakfast.
Breaking your fast
Many people leave out breakfast altogether or wash down their coffee while chewing the last bit of toast on the run. If you recognise this pattern in your life, try something different and celebrate breakfast like a king, really giving yourself time to enjoy a new day and a delicious meal. I describe preparing a full mindful breakfast in Chapter 6, but even if your breakfast’s a tiny meal, mindful eating helps to make it last.
Now, give yourself time to plan your day by making mental notes or writing in your diary a few bullet points to help you remember.
Journeying mindfully
If you travel to work, be mindful of the little surprises the journey offers. Ensure that you don’t need to rush – maybe leave ten minutes earlier than usual. Feel the air on your face, arms or whatever as you walk – or from your car’s heater or air-con or through the bus or train window.
Your body thanks you for not getting stressed: doing things more slowly and mindfully helps you stay in your parasympathetic nervous system of soothing, equanimity and calm (see Chapter 7 for details). The more time you spend in this mode, the better your immune system and brain function.
Taking regular breathing breaks
Whenever you hear a sound – a car, voices, sounds of nature – use it as your call of mindfulness. Truly listen in an aware manner.
Throughout the day, seize a few moments to bring your awareness to your breath and connect with it. Are your in-breaths and out-breaths of the same length or not? Where do you feel the breath in your body? Do you notice the short pauses after each breath? Try a few deep and long breaths, really filling your lungs and breathing out slowly, because doing so helps to slow down your heart rate and makes you feel calmer and safer.
Performing mindful daily actions
Whenever you have a meal or drink, connect with your food/beverage and appreciate that it’s linked to things that nourish development: sunlight, rain, the earth, the farmer, the shop where you purchased it. Bring awareness to consuming this food consciously for your physical health: really see your food, smell it, taste it and chew it. Even dwell with the taste in your mouth as a reminder of what you’ve just enjoyed.
Whenever you’re waiting in a queue, kindly use this time to notice your standing and breathing. Take a moment to bring awareness of the contact of your feet with the floor and how your body feels. Notice any tense areas and gently stretch or breathe into them. Bring attention to the rising and falling of your abdomen. Focus on whether you’re feeling impatient.
Kindly bring wakefulness and gentle awareness to all your daily activities – combing your hair, washing up, tidying up, dressing and putting on your shoes, ironing and working.
Communicating mindfully
When listening to people, try to do so mindfully without agreeing or disagreeing, or preparing what you’re going to say next. Otherwise, you may miss out on important information. When speaking, see whether you can speak without overstating or understating. Kindness and patience are such wonderful states of mind that assist you when you want to get a message across and feel heard.
Going to sleep
This time of day may be best for your EGS (enjoyment, gratitude and satisfaction) practice that I describe in Chapter 10. Before you go to sleep, bring your attention to your breathing again. Close the circle of a day as you started it. Feel your body relaxing into rest and peace.
Embracing your experiences
Awareness and mindful living offer an uncomplicated but potent way for getting yourself back in contact with your instincts, with your innate inner wisdom and sense of truth – who you are beneath the restrictions and pressures placed upon you by your gender, class, religion and environment. All you need to be is yourself, not copying anybody else.
Re-engage with what you can call the ‘true you’, not worrying whether everybody agrees with or likes this original version of you. If you reconnect to this primal, unspoilt version of yourself, you quite naturally connect to mindfulness, for only this moment matters and counts.
Exercising mind and body
Remain aware of any tightness in your body throughout the day. Breathe into it and, as you exhale, kindly let go of excess tension. If you still feel tension – for example in your neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, jaw, knees or lower back – try some stretching exercises or practise the Alexander Technique, Pilates, Tai Chi, yoga or mindful walking once a day (I discuss the latter in Chapter 6).
Developing Mindfulness Attributes
Finding kindness and patience in your frenetic life can be challenging. So many things are out of your control: transport, noise, pollution, the weather, people’s reactions to you, work demands and changes, and so on. But you can strive to be in charge of how you respond to each challenge and how you approach dealing with it. This voyage into awareness offers its own tests, but just remember that another moment is always around the corner for you to start again. Let kindness be your guide always.
This section describes the attributes that you develop by engaging in mindfulness meditation and everyday mindfulness, and which I ask you kindly to seek to cultivate and explore throughout your life ahead.
Remembering non-judgement
Mindfulness grows and expands as you increasingly take the position of an unbiased observer of your life experience. You need to become aware of the steady flow of judging and reacting thought patterns to your internal and external experiences. You may even feel trapped by them at times. However, through mindfulness, you can discover how to move away from them and almost like a backdrop on a theatre stage keep them on the outer edge of your experience.
When you start paying attention to the hyperactivity of your mind, you may be surprised by how frequently you judge everything. You aren’t to blame, because you’re taught to label and categorise what you see, hear, taste, smell, touch and think.
Notice also how you judge the value of each experience. You judge some aspects as good (perhaps they earn you a reward of some sort) and condemn others as bad (maybe they cause you discomfort). This constant evaluation can lock you into unconscious reactions. These judgements often take over your thinking, which in turn leads to a lack of peace and tranquillity within.
Kindly observe how often you’re worried about liking something or being liked by someone. If you really care about yourself and go on the quest of finding peace, bring awareness to your favourite automatic judgements. This way you can slowly acquire the skill of seeing through your own prejudices and anxieties and freeing yourself from this judgement trap.
Here’s a way to combat judgement of your meditation practice:
1. Imagine that you’re practising listening to sounds. Again and again you become aware of thoughts referring to this practice as cumbersome or unnecessary, or you even think to yourself ‘when will this be over?’ These judgements simply arise uninvited.
2. See these judgements for what they are and let them pass – even if they arise hundreds of times. Every time you notice them, kindly return your attention to the sounds – your anchor of awareness.
3. Remember that even if you perceive this listening practice as not exciting, that’s absolutely fine. From a mindfulness perspective, neutrality and equanimity are welcome states of balance. Nature is at its best when in balance. Also bear in mind that thoughts, just like sounds, arise and pass through your awareness. They only stay for longer if you start ruminating on them.
Having patience
Persistence and patience are wise attributes that indicate you comprehend the need for things to unravel in their own time. Consider situations in your own experience that required space and patience to unfold, such as a project at school that came from a mere idea. You may still have this piece of creation at home. If so, look at it and remember the hours of thinking and doing that went into bringing it into existence.
Try to develop patience towards yourself and engage with mindfulness. Remind yourself occasionally that impatience doesn’t serve you well. You simply feed tension and fear when you obsess and demand a certain outcome within a certain timeframe. To grow and expand, you need to allow yourself to have the space and time for exploring life experiences mindfully. So treat yourself gently, like you would a vulnerable pet.
Also observe your mind’s way of wandering into the past or the future and ruminating about things that you can no longer change or foretell. Thoughts can be versatile and enticing – whether enjoyable, anxiety-provoking or neutral – but they tend to draw you away from being in the moment. A calm mind is a friendly and open mind. You don’t have to be intellectually active all the time; that’s just a habit that you can unlearn and so free your mind for creativity and equanimity.
Patience enables you to be open to whatever occurs in the now, kindly receiving the richness each moment offers and allowing life to unfold moment by moment.
Using childlike curiosity: Beginner’s mind
Children, particularly preschool-aged ones, have this wonderful ability to be amazed by little things. I remember taking my 3-year-old son to the zoo to see a rare white tiger. It was a beautiful beast, but my son pulled me away because he’d just seen his first real-life ladybird and was excitedly exclaiming ‘ladybird, mummy, ladybird!’
Such moments can be rich and enriching. Ordinary things can be just as extraordinary as a white Bengal tiger, if only you look and really see the intrinsic beauty of each small pebble or raisin. Even diamonds look just like rough stones before they’re cut.
The beginner’s mind is one willing to see all things afresh. Bringing childlike curiosity to each mindfulness practice helps free you from expectations, because each moment is unique, fresh and new. No moment is the same as any other. Simply be with it as it occurs.
Apply this attitude to the regular experiences of everyday life. Try seeing your partner with new eyes, or yourself with less critical tendencies and the eyes of somebody newly in love. You may be astonished. Perhaps experiment with somebody you meet regularly and see whether you discover aspects of them you’d never considered. You can also experiment with inanimate objects – anything and everything.
Trusting yourself
I ask you to trust yourself to engage with mindful being and live as so many millions of people have done before you. Just be and experience: it’s practically your birth right. Even though you need to earn a living and get involved in other activities, you can still find many moments to simply experience.
Furthermore, trust in your own unique experience. You will stumble on the way but walking your own path is best. Allow your feelings to guide you because they express your innate wisdom. When practising mindful movement, for example, listen when your body tells you that a particular movement is unhelpful: there’s no point in hurting yourself. The practice of mindfulness ultimately leads you to become more true to yourself. Teaching materials can guide you but in the end the decision is yours and your own depth of commitment is what enables you to change (see the sidebar ‘Practice trumps evidence’).
Working on non-striving
Usually, you engage in activities to achieve something. Mindfulness, however, encourages you to, say, walk just for the sake of walking, or experience how you breathe because your body is doing it anyhow. Switching off the doing programme and moving into just being requires attention and diligence, and that you trust yourself simply to be human.
This challenge of not feeling under pressure to do your meditation practice requires you to deliberately refine the attitude of ‘non-striving’, which can lead you closer to accepting yourself just as you are, now.
Be with tension, pain, self-criticism, boredom, fear, and so on and refrain from judging yourself. Instead, give yourself permission to experience your life simply as it unfolds at this very moment. You may at times notice a change or a shift in your habitual moods and responses, but everything occurs in its own time.
In other words, try not to strive (but don’t strive too hard not to strive!)
Accepting things the way they are
Acceptance means seeing things as they present themselves now: the good and not so good, the beautiful and the less beautiful, the ache, the joy – the full catastrophe of life! Doing so isn’t simple, because you tend to add stories to events; interpretations that may or may not be accurate. Accepting yourself as you are now is the point from which you make change possible. During meditation, try to accept every moment as it arises without adding your own ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’.
Feel what you feel, see your thoughts for what they are and remind yourself to be interested in and open to whatever occurs. By intentionally accepting what is, even something difficult, you create the opportunity for you to respond positively rather than react automatically – to move on and heal instead of staying stuck in a struggle.
Letting go
You may notice that your mind gets caught in the same way as the monkey in the nearby sidebar ‘Catching monkeys’, which is why developing the attitude of letting go is so important. Fortunately, this ability develops naturally when you practise non-judgement, curiosity, acceptance and the other attributes that I describe in this section.
You then comprehend why you need to let go of certain expectations and outcomes. I encourage you to ‘be with’ whatever occurs while you meditate, so that you can overcome the desire not to stop a great meditation or call a premature halt to a less pleasant exercise.
The whole point of meditating is to see that life is unpredictable and that you can be with whatever comes up.
When you notice judgement arising, let go of such thoughts. They can be present one moment and gone the next; it’s up to you. Practising letting go in meditation helps you to apply the same attitude in regular life situations where it may be helpful. After all, letting go isn’t all that unfamiliar. You do it every night when you fall asleep: you lie down and let go. If you hold onto your thoughts, for example, you don’t fall asleep. If this happens to you, check out the relaxing tips in Chapter 6.
Accepting the importance of commitment, self-discipline and intention
Like any change you want to apply to your lifestyle, this eight-week MBCT course requires dedication and a good portion of willpower to keep trying and restarting every time you lapse. Compare it to training for a marathon: you need to run regularly whether you feel like it or not.
A lovely lady I know trained six times a week for a whole year to complete a marathon to support cancer research. You can benefit from a similar attitude; give it your best and after the eight weeks you can decide whether you want to continue or not. You may need to rearrange aspects of your life to create the space necessary for regular meditation, such as reducing the time spent watching TV, reading the newspaper or surfing the Internet. You can gently adapt your daily timetable in hundreds of ways. Perhaps use your mindfulness diary to explore the possibilities.
Keeping it simple
Think about mindfulness as being like cooking: what’s the best recipe for garnishing your life with mindfulness? Like a master chef before he becomes experienced, just start and do it with curiosity, gentleness and a sense of purpose and adventure. To make a delicious grilled cheese sandwich, you need only bread, cheese and a grill – and voila! Similarly, start your voyage into mindfulness with a simple breathing practice from Chapter 4 and a mindful cup of tea as I describe in Chapter 6.
Each journey starts with a single step. Moment by moment you can direct your attention to what’s actually happening. Your life is your own, so be really present to see how your mindfulness adventure unfolds.
Giving yourself a reason to keep practising
You may at times ask yourself, ‘Why practise, why add another duty, another goal?’ But if at all possible, approach being mindful completely differently from other things you have do. Awareness is all about being, rather than doing. Unfortunately, this attribute isn’t widely promoted in the goal-orientated Western society. Telling your friends or colleagues that you’ve embarked on a journey towards non-doing or just being can sound rather unusual. And the journey is unusual because, alas, it’s not the ‘done thing’.
If you need a reminder of why mindfulness can be so beneficial to you, just watch a TV programme about nature or look at a bird or a squirrel focusing on the here and now. Deep inside your brain your instincts know that you need to simply be every now and again.
Doing so helps you continue on the quest of bringing more peace, kindness and patience to yourself and the people that you meet. You gain a new point of view on the old trip; as if you’re starting at the beginning of your life journey, for the first time looking out beyond the horizon.
The beauty of mindful living, when you truly commit to it, is that you can dedicate every moment of your life to a fresh start. It’s never too late to let go of unhelpful patterns of behaviour or thoughts. Even if you have to start a million times, so be it. Just begin again.
Reviewing Your Accomplishments This Week
This chapter contains quite a few questions to ask yourself to help maintain your motivation to practise regularly. To see the fruits of your self-assessment, what you’ve discovered over the eight-week course and how you plan to continue your mindfulness practice, consider the following points:
If you doubt that mindfulness can assist you during difficult times, read the earlier section ‘Embracing a Mindful Life in Good and Bad Times’.
If you’re struggling with your motivation to continue practising mindfulness, take a peek at the tips in the earlier section ‘Pledging to Practise’.
Have you managed to complete a full mindful day, and if so, how did it go (see the section ‘Having a Mindful Day, Every Day’ earlier in this chapter)? If not, try to schedule one now.
Have you considered the personal attributes that I describe in the preceding section? See which ones you think you possess and which ones you perhaps need to work on.