What is on your mind right now? Are you thinking about something that happened yesterday or last week? Are you rehearsing for an important conversation you will have tomorrow?
I took a course titled “Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction” (MBSR) twice – in 2007 and again in 2010. The Program was delivered over 8 weeks at the local yoga studio. I learned so much that I thought about becoming certified to provide the program myself. I haven’t yet gone through the certification training, but taking the course put me on a path of personal development and becoming more consciously aware. It was a turning point, I think, that led to me being certified by The Life Mastery Institute as a Transformational Life Coach in 2015.
One of the real beauties of the MBSR program is the effect it can have on disabilities. Many people come to the program suffering from one or more debilitating diseases or conditions. Though MBSR isn’t a cure, it makes life easier. I was diagnosed with MS in 2005. I learned that in stressful periods of my life, the disease would worsen. MBSR did a lot for me in terms of reducing the effects of stress. Life is stressful — there’s no way around that – but it can be managed and that’s where MBSR comes in.
So, what is mindfulness and how do we cultivate that? Mindfulness is a learned skill. Although we are likely born with it, our socialization makes us “forget” how to do it. Imagine a baby’s conscious awareness. There’s little if any time spent thinking about the past or the future. Babies live in the present moment.
Now, we know we can’t simply take on the characteristics of a baby. As adults we have “responsibilities”, so we need to be able to look beyond the present moment. However, we don’t need to dwell in the past or the future. Think of a time when you were consumed with thoughts about something unpleasant that was likely to occur in the future.
One method to not get caught up in the thoughts, is to ask yourself, “Is there anything right now, in the present moment, that is threatening me?” If there is, you need to deal with it. If not, you can learn to trust yourself to know how to handle whatever comes up. In an article written by my MBSR Instructor, Brant Rogers, certain attitudes will assist us in cultivating mindfulness:
-
Non-Judging
-
Patience
-
Beginner’s Mind
-
Trust
-
Non-Striving
-
Acceptance
-
Letting Go
Each of those attitudes, of course, needs to be cultivated individually. How do you rate on a scale of 1 – 10 right now in each of those areas? For example, take “patience”. If you give yourself a “1”, that would indicate that you have little to no patience. A score of “10” would mean that you are extremely patient. We don’t need to hit the number 10 mark on any of these, but with time we can improve our ability to be patient, for example, by becoming more mindful!
We cultivate these attitudes in order to become more mindful, and in doing so,
we increase our ability to be mindful! A self-fulfilling prophecy, of sorts!
I’d like to devote the next few blogs to exploring each of these attitudes to cultivate an understanding of them and to learn strategies to increase our abilities in them. Are you game? If so, please join me for the next few articles, which I will be posting soon. In the meantime, if you know someone who could benefit by receiving this information, please forward this email to them, AND if you haven’t yet subscribed to the Authentic Living E-Newsletter, click here to begin receiving these free updates:
Authentic Living Newsletter Subscription
