What is Mindfulness and Why You Should Learn It

Most people hear the word “mindfulness,” think of meditation, and instantly say “Yeah….No thanks.” I could tell you a hundred reasons why mindfulness and traditional meditation are not the same thing, but I’ll spare you the details. What I will tell you is this: if you learn to use mindfulness, you can greatly improve your quality of life and enormously decrease anxiety. So if mindfulness and meditation are not the same thing, what is mindfulness really?

What is Mindfulness

Mindfulness in it’s true form is about two things: staying in the present moment and taking a step back within yourself. The first part about staying in the present involves focusing on something, anything, that is in the here-and-now. By doing this, you take your brain out of prediction mode about the future and reflection mode about the past. As we have all experienced, anxiety and doubt come from one of or a combination of these two modes. By focusing on the present, we eliminate both of them and allow ourselves to be free of anxiety and doubt. The second part about taking a step back within yourself is difficult to grasp at first because it requires separating your mind from your stream of thoughts and emotions. When you do this, it is like watching a river from the shore. Your thoughts and emotions are on this river, and they come and go if you allow them to and not grab and pull them onto shore with you. By taking a step back within ourselves, we allow our brains and bodies to still experience the thoughts and emotions they are designed to create, but we detach ourselves from them so they don’t affect our decisions, attitude, and well-being.

Both of these skills involved with mindfulness take practice to fully master, but if you learn to use them, they can become a tool to create a higher quality of life.