Are you satisfied right now?
How about right now?
How about now?
If you are completely satisfied then you have no need for a mindfulness practice.
But if you ever find yourself dissatisfied then a mindfulness practice has use for you.
What we all know from experience is that events can be interpreted differently.
We all know of the miserable millionaires in the Hollywood Hills and the children playing happily in the slums of Mumbai.
If the experiences were ultimately responsible for our happiness then we would see consistency across people having what we would objectively label negative experiences and all the rich people would be happy.
We know this is not the case and so what this tells us is that the experiences mean nothing as to our level of happiness.
What holds the power is our interpretation and it's with mindfulness practice that we can begin to influence that interpretation.
So why practice mindfulness?
The simple answer is to stop being dissatisfied and to be satisfied instead.
We do this first of all by working with thoughts.
We're not going to worry about feelings.
In the beginning they're much harder to work with.
They're millions of years old and often quite powerful.
But the thoughts we can begin to work with right away.
When we interpret some experience negatively we hurt ourselves.
Now this isn't to say that we need to go around with rose tinted glasses on or practice some kind of stubborn positivity a la the law of attraction or the secret or whatever it's called where you just believe the good things are going to happen.
No,
Bad stuff's going to happen.
Learning to accept the bad stuff is what we're after.
In accepting the bad stuff we make ourselves more prepared to change our outer circumstances.
For example,
If I decide I'm going to get a sulk on about Covid-19 and the state of the world I'm going to be much less effective in carrying on whatever work I can during this time and then also in getting back to work on the other side of this.
If I were to choose to get a sulk on I wouldn't be able to record and share these lovely videos with you all.
And I have a choice about this.
I have a choice about how I'm going to interpret events.
Now I might have some old habitual behaviours built up around how I interpret things.
That's okay.
That's what the mindfulness practice is designed to help us to work with.
So say I'm in a sulk.
Well,
The moment that I see that I'm in a sulk the whole thing becomes much more flimsy.
When I know I'm in a sulk,
I see myself,
I go,
Wow!
I'm behaving like a child right now.
In that a child has little or no control over their thoughts and feelings.
What we're largely doing here is deciding that we're going to run our lives and ourselves from the prefrontal cortex,
The human part of the brain rather than from the reptile brain,
The instinctive part.
The part that relies upon feelings,
Emotions to make decisions.
We simply have more powerful hardware than that available to us for our decision making and for our interpretation.
That human part of the brain is much better able to choose and to act and to plan.
So with mindfulness practice,
I see those negative thoughts and feelings.
I see myself in a sulk and I say,
This just isn't useful to me.
I'm not serving myself by being in a sulk.
So I see it.
I take a good laugh at it.
Point my finger.
And I separate myself from that sulk.
Now the sulk is not something that's happening to me and I am helpless with no agency to do anything about it.
The second that I separate myself from it,
And certainly in the moment that I laugh at it,
Then I've changed my course.
Things are already more positive.
I don't necessarily have to generate anything new,
Although you can learn to work with that.
You can actually generate feelings of joy,
Feelings of satisfaction.
But it's not hard work.
It almost happens automatically the second we separate ourselves from our bad thoughts,
Bad feelings.
And have a good laugh,
Or if you can't manage a laugh,
A grin at least.
And if you can't manage a grin on your face,
Well,
A grin in your mind.
And we really can do this with anything,
As long as we remember.
The fundamental skill that must be developed in mindfulness practice is the skill of remembering.
Good news,
We've all been practicing that skill already,
Only a lot of the things that we've been remembering don't serve us.
Our entire mainstream educational system is built around remembering knowledge.
Well,
That knowledge might be helpful some of the time.
Remembering to interpret what's going on around you in a way that will benefit you is useful all the time.
So I encourage everyone to develop the skill of remembering.
And we can use tools to help us with this.
One of the tools we have at our disposal is the breath.
Because the breath is always happening right here,
Right now.
And when we put our attention on our breath,
Instead of thoughts,
We learn to choose what we think.
And wouldn't that be useful?
Wouldn't that be pleasant?
To be able to choose what you think at all times.
So whatever time of day,
Whether you've taken yourself off to a distraction-free environment or not,
Whenever you remember to remember,
Enjoy the pleasant sensations of the breath,
As it is right now.
And when you catch the mind wandering,
Never mind,
Start again.
Bring your attention back to the pleasant sensations of the breath and congratulate yourself for successful mindfulness practice.
