Unlocked: Now What? Part 3 (Patreon)

By Alex Ferguson, Ph.D. 

(Find part one and two by Alex here.) 

Hopefully, you have found some time to do some mindfulness. Even better would be if it was a regular part of your day, but it's alright if not. It's funny how hard it is to start a daily mindfulness practice. A free activity that can be done almost anywhere, is highly beneficial and doesn't leave you sore or tired afterward. It seems odd that it would be hard to build a habit around that, but there is a very good reason why it is so difficult. 

If you have done some mindful breathing, you now have a taste of mindfulness. There are different ways of knowing, and direct experience of a thing is different from reading about it. Doing mindfulness is different from reading or thinking about it in the same way swimming at the pool is different from watching a video of people swimming. Now that you have a little experience with it, we can talk about it some more.

Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally. When we try mindfulness, the first part of the definition is what we tend to focus on most. Holding our full attention on something like the sensation of breathing for any length of time is tricky, and distractions are constant. 

For the first couple of sessions, it's hard enough to just pay attention to the present moment. Thoughts are coming up constantly and grabbing our attention; there are various aches and itches in the body, and sounds coming in from outside to distract us. Our attention is under constant assault, so there is already plenty to work on before we even get to that final word, "non-judgmentally." What does it also mean to pay attention non-judgmentally? Let's talk a little about judgment and what it might mean to do something non-judgmentally. 

How do we think about the ways in which we spend our time? The things we do during the day are normally categorized. For example, it is common for people to have days where they stick to a diet plan, and then cheat days when they can eat whatever they want. There is time spent on gym sessions and time spent eating ice cream and scrolling Instagram. The workweek and the weekend.  Classifying time and activity is common, and part of that classification is judgment. This time is good for my development; this time is wasted time, this activity is something I have to do, this is something I get to do, and so on. You can hear it in people's voices when they tell you what they have been up to lately. 

Then we double down on judgment; we can have mindfulness sessions that we think went well or went poorly. We can also judge ourselves for how we have spent our time: "There is a bunch of stuff I should have done, but I didn't. So I must suck". There are many, many ways in which we apply judgment to ourselves and our actions (not to mention the judgment of others and their actions). Think about how many ways you judge a situation.

We aren't going to be able to just suspend judgment for our mindfulness sessions. The brain doesn't simply switch off strongly ingrained habits just because we want it to. If it did, then we could do the same with thinking. The recipe is the same for both, acknowledge them and then return the attention to the present moment. There will be positive and negative judgments that arise, "This sucks!", "This is boring," "This is helping," "This is great," "I will never be good at this," "This is a good session," and so on and on and on. When you notice that you are caught up in building a little story, or a list of evidence that supports your view, acknowledge it and bring your attention back to the present moment. 

So there it is the definition of mindfulness. I have an experiment for those who are curious. Do a week of daily mindfulness practice, and before you start, write down the reason or reasons why you are doing it. Do you want to know more about the working of your mind? Do you want to deal with some stress and anxiety? Do you want increased mental focus? Is it one of those things everyone is doing, and you were curious? Then take a little note at the end of each session, do you feel like you got closer to your goals? Was it a good session? Any persistent thoughts?—that kind of thing. There is one important point I'd like to make, but it can wait until the next article.

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