You probably have heard the term mindfulness before. Mindfulness practice is becoming popular as a tool to help with relaxation, stress reduction, and mood management. Companies large and small hire mindfulness experts to offer instruction to their employees in order to help them manage stress and improve interpersonal functioning among staff.
So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness can be defined as a practice wherein we attend to the present moment without judging it (or ourselves) as good or bad, positive or negative, wanted or unwanted. Rather, the present moment just is and we are there with it. When we are mindful we observe and accept. Once we have accepted what and how a particular moment is, we are in a better position to move forward and work within it because we are not getting bogged down in the struggle to make it be something that it is not, or coercing ourselves to feel differently in the midst of it. We also are not judging ourselves because we happen to be in it or feel a certain way about it.
Many people find not judging things and not trying to change things to be a bit unusual at first. We are socialized (and perhaps wired) to make rapid judgments about situations, other people, and ourselves. We are frequently told by others or ourselves that we should not think or feel a certain way, or so much of a certain way (“I shouldn’t be angry right now!” “You’re too sensitive!” “You’re over-reacting!” “It’s terrible that I thought (or felt or did) that!”).
Of course, many times we need to make judgments about things, and it is essential and self-preservative to change things that are harmful to us. But we can learn a lot and experience a sense of peace when we step back, observe, and experience many of the things that are occurring in the moment, including our thoughts and feelings, without trying to change them or ourselves.
So how does sitting with and observing our thoughts and feelings without judging them help us manage our stress, worry, and other negative emotions? Won’t sitting there with negative thoughts and feelings without trying to change them make us feel worse? Surprisingly, it usually doesn’t if we can take a mindful approach–that is, one that takes a step back from direct personal involvement in the emotion or thought content and merely observes and describes it.
One benefit of a mindful approach is that we get to stop fighting with our internal experience by judging it (or ourselves) negatively and/or trying to make it feel different. When we fight with our internal experience we usually wind up getting stuck in it (or holding on to it) and feeling progressively worse. When we step back from our experience and allow it to be what it is in that moment, we get to disengage from that particular struggle—and we usually feel less stressed.
Another benefit of a mindful approach is that when we accept and observe our experience without judging it (or ourselves for having it), we are in a better position to respond more effectively. Because we have disengaged from an internal struggle and we feel calmer, we can consider more options of what to do and we can better plan how to proceed. We are also in a better position to see if we are missing or ignoring certain aspects of the situation that might change our thinking about it.
A third benefit of a mindful approach is being able to remain in the present moment and to avoid giving undue energy to thoughts about what happened in the past and/or what might happen in the future. Thoughts about the past and the future are quite often uncomfortable, and they often throw fuel upon our emotional fires. Often, when we think of past events, our minds tend to go to ones that are painful or sad or embarrassing. When we think of the future, we not infrequently find ourselves thinking about things that might happen that we deeply don’t want to happen. This is especially true of the thought processes associated with anxiety or depression.