30 Jul Thinking Clearly: How being in the present can change everything
Reading Time: 8 minutesOne Sunday morning, as I was sitting outside eating my usual breakfast of freshly cooked bread rolls with jam and drinking strong black coffee, I noticed something was different. The sun was brighter, even warmer as if I were on holiday somewhere close to a beach on a Mediterranean island. The sky was crystal clear, with a few occasional passing puffs of white cloud, as if they were translucent flecks of smoke being gently nudged along by the warm wind. It was bliss.
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed my mind and thoughts gaining more clarity than they have in the past. I’ve seen more of the things I enjoy, and even when I do notice the things that annoy me, these thoughts pass as I come to understand why they annoy me. I’ve noticed other aspects of annoyance, such as my irritation with certain things and why I get stressed by certain situations or actions others take. I’ve even seen my relationships change.
As a psychotherapist, I’ve been aware of how my feelings and emotions from my past and present situations affect me, but I noticed things were different this time. So, I wondered why they were different.
Discovering new things
Many of my good friends have suggested various books I should read for my personal development. Some of these books have been good, while others I gave up because they were not for me. I have found some of them extremely useful for my sense of well-being. Here are two of the books I found helpful in calming my thoughts.
The first book I found that helped is Full Catastrophe Living: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I bought this book about eight years ago. It has been one of the books I recommended to my patients, especially to those who wanted an alternative way of coping with stress and pain in their lives.
Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the founders of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and has helped patients in extreme pain and discomfort from chronic illnesses or cancer. The book outlines some excellent mindfulness techniques, such as the full-body scan.
Here is a clip of Jon Kabat-Zinn describing what mindfulness meditation is all about
While I did gain some clarity from the book and the mindfulness practice, I started to feel I didn’t need to do mindfulness anymore. However, a few years later, I realised there was still something missing in my life. Then, another friend recommended Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. This book started to change things for me. I was initially in awe of the amount of research conducted on the positive effects of mindfulness on people’s stress levels, decision-making, and effectiveness in producing fantastic pieces of work. However, I was most impressed by the research on how mindfulness changes the brain’s activity to help individuals think about what is important to them.
A CD also accompanied the book that outlined nine guided meditation sessions for each week of the nine weeks to practice mindfulness for 10 minutes twice a day.
As I started to read the research and practice with the guided meditation on the CD, I felt a cloud begin to lift from around me. It was pretty amazing! I hadn’t felt this way before, and suddenly, all the clutter and “noise” flying in and out of my mind was starting to quieten. And all I was doing was the guided mindfulness meditation. I began to notice my breathing and pay more attention to the here and now. However, while this felt great for the first nine days, for some reason, I couldn’t “find” the time to put the practice in, and gradually, over a few weeks, I didn’t meditate twice a day. I started to skip days, and eventually, I stopped altogether. Life started to drift back to normal, and the “noise” in my head started to get a little louder. I began to forget what I wanted to achieve and thought there might be a quicker fix, but I couldn’t find one in all the other books I was reading.
In their book, Mark Williams and Danny Penman mention that the most challenging part of the mindfulness practice is not the practice itself but “finding” the time to do it. I started to get annoyed about this and then felt guilty I wasn’t doing the meditation, even though I was beginning to feel great. Slowly, I began to lose my way again. It felt ridiculous that I couldn’t find 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening. I felt like a fraud. I had been singing the praises of this book to my patients and my friends: “It could change the way you deal with your stress, calm the “clutter” in your mind and start to bring some calm into your life”. I also used to say: “Did I mention that it was only 10 minutes twice a day! How hard could that be to do…” but it was difficult in reality.
It was challenging to find the time to discover the space, and it was tough to control the stress and anxiety that were building up again. I was kidding myself. These were just excuses, and I knew it, which made matters worse.
So what happened that changed everything?
A couple of things in my life made me realise that if I didn’t bring that calm back into my life, I would lose everything I wanted to achieve. One of them was that I was getting completely stressed out about the direction I would take for the next phase of my life. I was focusing on changing the course of my business and my career. I was stressed about deciding what to do and how I would go about it. I also didn’t know what I was doing, and I felt like both the proverbial headless chicken and the rabbit in the headlights at the same time. I knew if I didn’t sort this out, I was heading for a depressive episode or a complete breakdown. I was managing my patients well enough but was conscious that I needed to look after myself. So, I took a short break from counselling to give myself some time to understand what was going on for me and to ensure my patients received the best therapy from a stable counsellor.
The next thing that happened was that I realised that I needed to let go of past decisions. To do that, I needed to put everything on “pause” and look after myself by dealing with my stress. I knew there were two ways to deal with this: talk to someone about what was going on and find a way of dealing with what I was looking for out of life. So, I found someone to talk to, which helped. Then, I reflected on what I could do to deal with the stress.
I knew what I had to do: go back to the calm state I had felt and started to achieve last year. I began to read about mindfulness again. I also read an article in the Financial Times about bankers who use mindfulness to cope with stress and organisational changes. They also mentioned that they were using a phone app called Headspace. So I downloaded the App to my phone, as I wanted to see what was different about the App compared to the books I had been reading. I was surprised by the difference. The personal approach Andy Puddicombe, the founder of the App, was taking and how the 10 minutes in 10 days method was easier to follow. Other mindfulness apps are available, such as Calm or these guided meditations from UCLA Mindfulness and Healthy Minds Innovation, which are free. By coincidence, a couple of my patients then mentioned they were practising mindfulness to deal with what they were going through in their lives. They found it helpful and were working through the guided meditation. What made the App worthwhile for me was how it reminded me to take ten minutes out each day and pay attention to what I was doing through different breathing techniques. I also went back to Mark Williams’ and Danny Penman’s book and started their guided meditation as well.
Since starting the meditation again, life has been different. I feel calmer inside my head, and I can see the decisions I need to make more clearly. Plus, my relationships are more loving, and I’m more open to new ideas.
So, what can you do to help with your stress, anxiety and the decisions you need to make?
- If you find it challenging to deal with your stress, mindfulness might be an option for you. Mindfulness gives you the time to understand the pressures you might be facing in your body and mind by focusing on your breathing while being in the present by paying attention to what is around you.
- Take a minimum of ten minutes to clear the “clutter” in your mind. Mindfulness will help bring some calm to your mind. It does take some time to get the technique right. Be careful, though. It’s not about clearing your mind of all the “busyness” in your head; it’s about giving yourself a moment to see what all the traffic is like in your mind by paying attention to the things that are important to you.
- Choose a book on mindfulness that is right for you. I’ve already mentioned a couple of books, but they might not be suitable for you. Have a look at the various ones available. But do find one. It might change your life!
- While mindfulness Apps are great for ease and keeping a record of your progress, they can also be a pain in the ass with all the reminders that subtly tell you to take time out. So choose one wisely, one that’s right for you.
- Don’t put yourself under pressure to complete the meditation each day. Set yourself some realistic goals and try to keep them. It also helps to keep the routine going, becoming a habit daily.
- One of the best ways to learn mindfulness is to attend a workshop near you. There are quite a few around, so check them out first by talking to the tutor or leader before you go to see what they offer.
- Keep asking yourself why you are doing this. Sometimes, like me, we forget why we started practising mindfulness. But once you start, you will have a clearer idea of how life can be with mindfulness compared to without it. So, once in a while, remind yourself what it was like before you started to practice.
- Keep up the practice. As all the mindfulness books and practitioners will say, it is the hardest thing to do.
I thought it would be easy to do when I first started, but it wasn’t. The most straightforward bit is the practice itself. The hardest part is making the time. So, while we all have distractions in our busy lives and can make all the excuses as to why we haven’t done something to improve our lives or relationships, we need to find that time and practice. So instead of watching that mind-numbing TV programme or checking up on your social media that doesn’t add any value to your life, take ten minutes out and change your life and do some mindfulness meditation. You will find that you have more time to enjoy the things that are important to you, concentrate more on the important stuff, and feel less stressed and anxious about the pressures and niggles of life.
So, if you would like to:
- feel less stressed
- less anxious
- have the clarity to make better decisions
- be able to concentrate more
- find some meaning in your life
- paying attention to those things that are important to you
Then mindfulness might be the answer for you. It changed how I see life, my decisions, the things that are important to me, and my relationships with my family. It also made me look at the wonders around me, such as the coffee, bread and jam, while looking at the bright blue sky that captured my imagination to write about mindfulness today.
Photo by Agnieszka P
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