Wellness Journalism: Building Mindfulness

Attitudes: The Foundations of Mindfulness (Part I)

Taken from Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
and expanded by Gina Tang, Wellness Journalist

Non-Judging: Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of being an impartial witness to your own experience. To do this requires that you become aware of the experience of constantly judging and reacting to inner and outer experience.

Example: You’re down to the wire, studying hard for midterms. At a group study session one of your classmates starts gossiping about drama that has nothing to do with class material. The irritation you feel is overwhelming, and a highly critical internal monologue sets in—you start thinking about how your time is being wasted, how frustrating it is to try and study when other people are creating distractions, etc. In this moment, you are consumed by your experience of judging the classmate’s behavior. A mindful attitude, however, bears witness to the irritation but is not swept away by it. You accept that the distraction is happening around you, without actually distracting yourself—in other words, you don’t internalize it. Instead of casting yourself into a state of judgment, you can choose to stay focused on your own material. And eventually, the classmate settles back into studying too.

Patience: Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept that sometimes things unfold in their own time and that our efforts to control are often part of the problem.

Example: There are four people in your group and the project is due at the end of the week. Each member of the group has taken charge of a particular section of the project, and the agreement is that everybody will submit their portion well in advance of the deadline. You’ve posted your part, along with two others, and find yourself waiting for the final segment from the fourth member—and losing patience with it. Your impatience is such that you start badgering the fourth member via email and text, making a spectacle out of it with the other group members and raising general hell. You actually start doing some of the work yourself, convinced that it isn’t going to come in on time otherwise. When the fourth member submits the completed material, the day before it is due, it comes with the revelation that there had been a family emergency that required a quick trip out of town. Since the project was on time after all, the entire episode leaves you feeling like a jerk. A mindful attitude would not have proactively pestered, rather, allowed the fourth group member the freedom to accomplish the segment and submit it to the group according to the plan. You save yourself a great deal of energy and frustration by simply giving space to the situation, and responding—when necessary—to challenges that arise with a level head.

Beginner’s Mind: The richness of present-moment experience is the richness of life itself. Too often we let our preconceived ways of thinking and our previously formed beliefs about what we “know” prevent us from seeing things as they really are or taking a fresh perspective.

Example: A friend of yours invites you to go check out a documentary screening—an important film, the friend says, about the corruption of the food industry and the health hazards that are often over-looked and under-reported. You don’t want to see it, though. You figure you already know what’s healthy and what isn’t, and you’re satisfied with what you eat, and the way you eat it. Fast forward a few years: you are sitting at dinner, and your date starts talking about the same movie—and convinces you to watch it. You are shocked by what you learn, and find yourself wishing that you had seen it sooner, certain it would have made a positive difference in your life. A mindful approach doesn’t dismiss new opportunities on the basis of assumptions, but carries an open mind to new information, new people, and new experiences.