Introduction
‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’
– Annie Dillard
What is it with mindfulness? Why is there such interest, such a buzz, around mindfulness?
Too often, life zips by. There's no time to experience what's happening now, because you're busy thinking about what needs doing tomorrow or you're caught up with thoughts about what did or didn't happen yesterday. Your mind is chattering with commentary or judgement.
But thinking is not the enemy. It's essential to your life. Your mind is able to think back and reflect on past events and experiences and learn from those experiences, and you can reflect with pleasure on the good times. Your mind can also think about the future. It can plan ahead and look forward to forthcoming events.
This ability to think back to the past and forward to the future is not, though, always a blessing. Your mind's ability to project backwards and forwards means that you can get stuck in the past, going back over and dwelling on events. You can also be paralysed by worries and anxiety about the future.
Mindfulness is a way to have a more helpful relationship with this thinking, to recognize when your thoughts are being unhelpfully dragged back to the past or catapulted into the future. Mindfulness is about knowing where you are (being in the moment) but also having an awareness of – but not getting stuck in – where you have been (reflection) and where you are going (anticipating).
But how can mindfulness be helpful in your everyday life – as you go to and from work, in your job, with your family and friends, with cooking and eating and even sleeping?
Many of us work in a fast-paced, stressful world, dealing with a flood of information including email, meetings, text messages, phone calls, interruptions and distractions at work. Family life can also be fast paced and stressful – managing a job, a home and the variety of demands as you try to meet everyone's needs and your own commitments. Thinking about what needs doing and what you didn't do, getting frustrated, stressed and anxious.
Unfortunately, a good part of our time passes that way for most of us. We're in one place doing one thing but thinking of things we aren't doing and places we aren't at.
It's easy to stop noticing what's really going on within you and around you – your surroundings and other people – and to end up living in your head, caught up in your thoughts without being aware of how those thoughts are controlling what you feel and do. It's easy to waste ‘now’ time, missing what is happening in the only moment that really exists.
Mindfulness enables you to experience and appreciate your life instead of rushing through it, constantly trying to be somewhere else. Mindfulness is not another set of instructions. Mindfulness is simply a shift in your awareness of your life – your routines and habits, work and relationships.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
‘Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.’
– Arthur Ashe
If you can be present and in the moment sitting in a quiet room then why not when you're eating a meal, drinking a cup of tea, travelling to and from your job, being at work, working at the computer or in your relationships with family, friends and colleagues?
There are many ways in which you can practise mindfulness and many ways in which you can anchor yourself to any given moment.
Throughout this book, you will come across five recurring themes:
Mindful qualities.
Mindful work.
Mindful body and mind.
Mindful relationships.
Mindful eating.
Within each theme, you'll find a particular situation or circumstance where mindfulness is useful and where there are opportunities to be mindful. Alongside this, you will find practical ways – ideas, tips, techniques and suggestions – to be mindful and to use mindfulness.
You'll see that the aspects and qualities of mindfulness – awareness, acknowledgement and acceptance, focus and engagement, beginner's mind, letting go and being non-judgemental – are both a separate theme with their own pages and principles that appear throughout this book. Each time you apply these principles, each time you apply an aspect of mindfulness, you are learning how to relate more directly to your life.
Whether you need tips, techniques, ideas and suggestions or just a simple quote to inspire you, this book will help. Keep it in your bag or your pocket to inspire you whenever or wherever mindfulness can help slow things down, provide perspective and a sense of calm control in the moment and moments of your life.