How to Be More Mindful

Give a read to that book by Don Miguel Ruiz, the Voice of Knowledge. It got me thinking about mindfulness, which I do think about a lot and try to cultivate in my own life. Although it feels like there tends to be a lot of confusion nowadays about what mindfulness is. I mean, people think they sort of equate it with meditation. And I don't know about you, but I just really like to think of it is. And others talk about it as being the ability to be present, to be aware in this moment, not to have our mind wandering and meditation being one way to cultivate the ability to be present, but in a more formal way, but certainly not the only way to strengthen your ability to be present, to be awake.

Sure, yeah. And Don Miguel Ruiz talks about meditation being a great tool for some people to get to that point, but he really ended up creat creating a life for himself where he is constantly living in the present moment, really kind of a glimpse of eternity by living within an awareness of what's around him, being fully consumed with what's around him and loving every moment of his life. And who wouldn't want to get there?

For most of us, we are unlikely to reach that level, let's say, of I don't know what self actualization, whatever it would be, but I like thinking of it as this idea that being mindful, as I think Jon Kabat Zinn talks about, is, you know, this sort of innate quality that we all have that can be cultivated. And again, as I said earlier, meditation being one formal way, one of the most researched ways, and historically one of the ways that people have cultivated mindfulness. But I think of mindfulness is like a muscle, right? I mean, and like a muscle that can be strengthened. And, you know, just like the idea of exercise. Right. If I wanted to get in better shape and strengthen my muscles, I could do formal exercise by going to the gym. And one may say formal exercise for mindfulness in this case is things like meditation or what have you. Or I could do more informal physical activity that would also strengthen my. Strengthen my muscles and my physical conditioning. That's just sort of as simple as deciding to focus on the present moment. Whether you go sit on a park bench and say, okay, I'm gonna stay present. I'm not gonna let my mind wander. I'm gonna think about the beautiful breeze today, the sun on my face, you know, the trees, the flowers, those sorts of things. And just being present in that moment.

Yeah. And the analogy to working out is exactly perfect, because when you haven't worked out for a period of two or three months, let's say, and you start bench pressing, you feel you, you know, you can't do a lot of weight, you feel sore after it, you don't really think that it's worth the effort. You stick with it for two or three weeks, and all of a sudden you're bench pressing hundreds of pounds and you're feeling good about it. Mindfulness is exactly the same thing. The more you practice it, the more you see yourself doing it. And really trying to create a reflexive response of mindfulness versus, okay, now I'm going to be present, now I'm going to pay attention. But the more you do it, the more it'll just naturally occur.

Totally hear that. I mean, I think the other thing I've found personally, and I know others have said to me is that it can be frustrating too. And, you know, again, part of the frustration can come from the recognition that your mind is wandering. Right. And really, I mean, I don't know, maybe there are, you know, others, Buddhist monks, others that can sort of keep their minds focused. But I know for me and for most human beings, the tendency is that our mind will wander. This understanding, what was really helpful to me in terms of practicing mindfulness was this understanding that the noticing is what it's all about. It's not, I need to keep my mind from wandering. Right. Or I should. There's not some should there. It's every time my mind wanders and I notice and bring it back to what I intend to focus on, that's like another rep, right? That's the rep that's going to strengthen that mindfulness muscle, which is, which is neat. And then over time, as you were saying, there's this natural capacity to be more present in the moment and all the things that that leads to, to in our lives.

Yeah. And the great thing about the Voice of Knowledge is he teaches, don't judge yourself. You know, you're trying to be present, but you end up getting seeing. You know, you go to bed at the end of the day and you realize, oh, I wasn't present the whole day. I was thinking about something bad in my past or something scary in my future potentially. And I just wasn't present. And then you start beating yourself up because you weren't present. That's exactly the opposite that Dr. McGilvery is teaching. He says, you know, we're made perfectly, you know, whether or not we know it or whether or not we'll believe it about ourselves, we're part of A perfect plan. We're made perfectly and we need to live in that truth. And when you live in that truth, doesn't mean you won't get mad, doesn't mean you won't fail, doesn't mean you won't stumble. But forgive yourself and just, you know, the only thing you do is the next moment and try to be better the next moment and realize that of.

Course, when people are feeling stressed out, when any of us, when I'm feeling stressed, it's so hard to kind of remember that sometimes it's hard to know where to start. And you know, we often get to this place of how can I remove all this from my life? You know, remove the, the wandering mind or remove the stress. And you know, I heard this saying the other day that I loved, which was discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. And that it isn't always, it isn't about, you know, trying to remove struggle from your life. Right. I mean, almost anything that is meaningful has a component of struggle associated with it. And I know, you know, we both might think of our families, things like that, which they're wonderful, but, you know, who has a family that they've never had to have any struggle as a part of that, you know, bringing children up or what have you. Most of us in this bell shaped curve live, you know, with day in out, day in and out, just different challenges that we face. It's not about creating this perfect life, it's not about eliminating struggle, but it's how we face that struggle, how we deal with it, how we find support through the struggles that we are dealing with. Religion is one way that some people find, for example, some find they need a therapist or a close friend they can speak to. I mean, we all need sort of the resources and those resources that we need may shift during different phases of our lives.