What is Mindfulness?

"Mindfulness is being so mad you want to punch someone, but you don’t"

-2nd Grade Mindfulness Student

What Mindfulness Isn't

This is one of my favorite definitions of mindfulness that came from a wise 2nd grade student. Mindfulness isn’t about being happy and blissful all the time. It’s not about ridding ourselves from the pain and difficulties of life.  It is not a quick fix or solution to whatever ails us.  It’s not about our lives being perfect but rather about learning how to be more present.  Mindfulness is learning how to be with what is, cultivating an open and receptive awareness to whatever is happening, good or bad.

What Mindfulness Is

Mindfulness is our ability to be aware of our emotions, thoughts and experience rather than being lost or overtaken by them.  We realize that our emotions, thoughts and experiences do not have to define who we are.  We come to understand that our awareness of anger doesn’t have to be angry; that our awareness anxiety does not have to be anxious and so forth.

There is an old saying “awareness is like the sky that holds the weather”, the vast, spacious open sky that can hold all the various weather patterns.  On a cloudy, grey day the sky is still blue. 

With this practice, we allow for the natural unfolding of life without always fighting, fixing or controlling it, without pushing away or checking out of it.   We learn to accept our moments as they come.  Learning to be okay when things aren’t always okay is the ultimate freedom. 

CONCLUSION

So, mindfulness isn’t about being on autopilot nor is it taking life for granted.  Mindfulness is a process, it takes time and patience, it takes a commitment but it is a worthy endeavor.  So, we start this process, this practice one breath at a time; learning how to befriend the moment one breath at a time and doing so we learn how to befriend our lives and more importantly learning how to befriend ourselves.

“Mindfulness is not about getting anywhere, it’s not about having some special experience. It’s about being who you already are in your fullness.” 

-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Founder of MBSR