What we will cover in this book and how to use it
In this book, we are keen to:
- show you how mindfulness can dramatically improve your busy life.
- teach you some ways to practise mindfulness that are especially easy to fit into your busy life, without changing anything in your life.
- illustrate to you just how accessible mindfulness is to you, and how opportunities to practise it are abundant and infinite, despite how busy you are.
- show you how being mindfully compassionate towards yourself can help you to handle your busy life with greater ease and effectiveness.
- show you how to cultivate less stress and more well-being and efficiency in any given moment of your busy life.
- help you get in touch with what matters most to you and to build more of the life that you want for yourself.
We have designed this book as a guide to practising mindfulness on-the-go. We will help you to learn how to better manage your busyness, creating space when it feels like you are suffocating under the never-ending jobs you have to do. It is easy to think of mindfulness as yet another futile time-consumer, but you will soon see how it is really an effective time-saver. In fact, our own experience, and a growing body of research, tells us that the busier we are the more we may need and benefit from mindfulness.
Whether you choose to spend more or less time on your mindfulness practice is absolutely fine, as evidence shows that even practising just a few minutes a day can have a positive impact – although the more mindfulness practice you do, the more you notice the benefits.
The book is divided into five parts, which we believe will provide you with a good starting point for your onward journey of mindfulness practice. However, if you are already familiar with mindfulness, we hope that this book will inspire you to try new ways of practising and keep your practice going. Feel free to pause between each part for as long as you need, to give yourself time to practise as much as you like. If you prefer to read straight through the book, then go ahead. You can always revisit parts and any of the practices again.
This book is full of practical mindfulness practices, designed to fit into your busy life. For quick reference and easy accessibility, you will find them dotted throughout the book, under the following headings:
- I haven’t got time for this! These exercises are designed for you to practise throughout your busy day. They are focused on everyday activities that, likely, you will be doing anyway and can, therefore, be incorporated as you go about your busyness.
- Mindfulness right now! These exercises are for when you can spare a few moments as you are reading the book and are designed to help you reflect on the principles that we are keen to share with you.
Salient learning points are summarised at the end of each chapter, under the heading Mindfulness top tips to-go.
Finally, to support your mindfulness practice, at the end of each part, we have suggested various practices that you can try out and reflect on that have been covered in the book. There is no right or wrong way to practise and we would not expect everyone to do all the suggested practices in one go, so we recommend that you pick whatever feels manageable for you. Take mindfulness at your own pace, allowing it to become a natural part of your life – there is no rush! Incorporating mindfulness in a way that suits you personally will mean that it will become a normal part of your everyday experience.
Audio recordings are also included, which will assist you as a guide through certain practices (should you want to use them), and they are indicated by this symbol:
You can download the audio guides for free from: www.pearson-books.com/mindfulness
Why is this book full of practical exercises you may ask? Well, we can tell you all about mindfulness and you can appreciate, understand and grasp it – but, unless you practise, it will not make the slightest difference to your life! Rather than only taking our word on this, here is what the late Steve Jobs had to say on the subject:
‘If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is,’ Jobs told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. ‘If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practise it.’
The late Steve Jobs – former co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc.
The benefits of mindfulness
You may have picked this book up because you are interested to learn more about mindfulness generally, what it can do for you and maybe how you could incorporate it into your busy life. Or you may simply be just so crazy busy right now and at your absolute wits’ end that you are willing to give anything a try (mindfulness or whatever it may take!) to find some relief and peace and quiet from your frantic existence. Either way, you have come to the right place – this book is for you.
As busy people ourselves, we are all too familiar with what it is like to be rushed off your feet, scrambling around, constantly on the go, never feeling like everything is done, that there is never enough time in the day, feeling tired, exhausted, stressed out and fed up most of the time. We also understand how frustrating it is to be told just to think positively, just to take some time simply to switch off and relax, to delegate more to others and to get better at prioritising our daily tasks and improve our time management skills.
Well, if, like us, you have tried all this, then you have probably also found that it just does not work and it is just not that simple. Thankfully, we have discovered something that is always there to help us manage our hectic lives, something that really does work, and that is something called mindfulness.
As practising psychologists in the City of London, we provide mindfulness-based therapy and coaching sessions and also run mindfulness, stress management, resilience and well-being workshops for very busy people just like you (and us), and we are keen to share some of the techniques and expert guidance that we use in our work with our clients and in our own personal lives every day; techniques that really do work to help you be more in control of your busy day. If you then choose to practise mindfulness regularly, then let us warn you – it will change your life (in a good way).
Specifically, by practising mindfulness regularly you can expect to:
- improve your motivation and energy levels.
- be more focused and therefore more productive and effective.
- boost your immune system and improve your general health.
- decrease your stress and chances of other mental health problems.
- enhance your communication skills and enjoy more fulfilling relationships.
- respond to your own and the emotions of others with greater understanding and kindness.
- create a more enjoyable, meaningful and fulfilling life.
We are not here to sell you false promises; all these benefits are yours for the taking. You will, however, need to practise mindfulness to notice them happening for you – and we are going to show you just how to do this throughout this book, without necessarily needing to find any extra time in your busy day.