Mindset - Mindfulness

You master mindfulness – the ability to be fully present and objective in each moment – by doing two things:

1.     Meditating consistently. Consistent meditation causes significant and lasting changes to your brain that make you more mindful.

2.     Learning strategies that optimize your ability to be present and objective.

There are dozens of strategies that you can use to be objective, which are defined as your ability to think rationally and control your emotions instead of being controlled by them.

Being mindful means, you are fully present and fully objective. Bring present means you are immersed in the moment rather than:

-        Thinking about the past

-        Thinking about the future

-        Only partially being in the present

Being objective means you are living life unfiltered. You are seeing each moment for what it truly is – just the facts – rather than allowing your opinions, guesses, fears, biases, or emotions to color your experience.

Mindfulness is critical for optimizing your mindset. Let’s start with presence. Being present is critical for mental toughness for two reasons:

1.     It prevents us from being robbed

2.     It makes us the launderer rather than the laundry

Being robbed

The stoic philosopher, Seneca, beautifully explained the importance of being present when he said:

“People lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.”

Mark Twain said,

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

So often, we surrender the most important and amazing thing we have – the present moment – because we’re so caught up in worrying about the future or regretting the past.

-        Even though it’s a lovely Sunday evening and you’re sitting on the couch watching a good movie, you can’t relax because you’re so worried about all the work you have to do in the coming week.

-        Even though you’re watching your child play at the playground, your mind is consumed with thoughts of your upcoming presentation.

-        Even though you’ve made great progress working out, you just keep thinking about how you haven’t reached your ultimate goal yet

-        Even though you’re sitting in your lovely backyard surrounded by people you love you can’t help thinking about all the changes you would make to the yard.

-        Your business is successful, but you spend your evenings worrying about all the things that could go wrong in the future.

Most of us spend huge amounts of time each day allowing the future or the past to rob us of the enjoyment that is right here in the present.

Think about the arrivals area at the airport. There are always people rushing to passionately embrace their loved one who was away. Why does that happen? Why do couples greet each other in the arrivals area of the airport so differently than they do every morning when they are together?

It's not because we love them more in the airport than we do in the morning, right? When your significant other goes away, you don’t love them more. The reason is when someone you love leaves, you remember how much you love them. And that realization makes you bound over to them and wrap them in a hug rather than mumbling, “hey.”

Every morning you wake up next to your significant other, you love them just as much as you do in the airport, but you don’t feel overcome with joy and gratitude because your mind is already on the future. Instead of thinking how insanely wonderful it is that you got to spend your time with someone so amazing, you’re already thinking about your debt, the long day ahead, how annoying your boss is going to be at the morning meeting, or how many diapers you’re going to have to change that day. These stressors and concerns and made–up imaginary scenarios we create of what might go wrong steal the most precious thing we have – the beauty and magic of this moment.

Hundreds of times a week, we, usually without even realizing it, choose to focus on the ugliness of what might happen instead of the wonder of what is happening.

Learning to be present both ensures we don’t miss the magic of the now and that we don’t stress over things that can’t be changed or haven’t even happened yet. That is an important skill.

The launderer instead of the laundry

The second reason learning to be present is imperative for developing mental toughness is it transforms us from being the laundry to being the launderer.

During meditation lessons, you learn to observe and notice your thoughts and emotions rather than believing or becoming caught up in them.

Whether during meditation or outside of meditation, thousands of times a day, your brain will make you think and feel unhelpful thoughts and feelings. Being fully present means you are aware of and immersed in every aspect of the moment – that means in addition to noticing what you see, hear, taste, and smell, you also notice what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling. And noticing what you’re thinking and feeling allows you to simply drop the unhelpful thoughts and feelings rather than unwittingly getting caught up in them.

When you’re on vacation lying on the beach and your brain decides to think, “do you think it will be 600 or 700 emails I have to respond to when I get back?” you can notice your brain has left the present and can kindly tell it to fuck off by coming back to paying attention to the present moment – feeling the sun on your skin, the sand on your back, and the taste of the coconut in the pina colada. If you aren’t paying attention, the thought of your ballooning email inbox will grow and make you feel stressed and anxious rather than happy and relaxed.

Having moment-by-moment awareness of your thoughts and feelings allows you to watch them as they spin around the drying machine of your brain. Not having moment-by-moment awareness places you in the dryer with them – your calmness and happiness being wildly thrown around by each random passing thought and feeling.

Now let’s talk about objectivity – the second part of mindfulness. Many of the events in life that cause our calmness, happiness, and effectiveness to be reduced are imaginary.

Just last night I was entering a busy four-way intersection when an ambulance appeared behind me with its lights and sirens flashing. To let the ambulance by, I stopped. By the time the ambulance passed, the light had turned red. I had driven just far enough before the ambulance arrived that I was now stopped in the middle of the crosswalk. About 30 seconds later, a pedestrian who had arrived after the ambulance had left went to cross the road and was miffed that my car was in the middle of the crosswalk. They angrily gestured and shouted at my car while they passed.

That person certainly wasn’t angry that I stopped to let an ambulance pass. They weren’t even angry that I was in the crosswalk; they could still easily pass to the other side by going around my car. They were angry at the injustice. How inconsiderate must this driver be to park his car right in the middle of the crosswalk? How rude?!

But this injustice was entirely imaginary. It only lived in their head. That person lost possession of their calmness and happiness because of an imaginary story their brain had concocted out of thin air. Life presents us with enough actual adversity that I have no interest in creating more made-up adversity on the side.

But this happens to all of us all the time.

Just last week, I texted someone to see if we could push our Sunday dinner date an hour later because I wanted to work longer than originally planned. She didn’t respond. I assumed she was pissed. Turns out she had fallen asleep and was taking a nap.

As humans, we naturally read into things. We try to detect patterns. We connect dots. We make inferences. But we are often wrong. Learning to be objective – seeing things only for how they are rather than for what we think is really going on behind the scenes – will allow us to:

-        Avoid turning non-stressors into stressors

-        Turn small stressors into big stressors

One of the simplest methods to bring your mind to the present moment is to focus your attention on one of your 5 senses. What do you see? Look deeper. What do you hear? What does the air feel like on your skin? Focus your attention on one of your 5 senses and when your mind wanders off, gently and firmly bring it back to the moment.