Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience. 

― Jon Kabat-Zinn

So far you have learned about this positive psychology challenge as a call to an adventure. It is the adventure of moving closer towards the kind of life that you want most. This could involve increasing the elements of PERMA – positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment – or some other goals or things you think may bring you greater happiness and well-being.

In the last chapter, you learned about three building blocks that you will use throughout this challenge and that will make your adventure and positive changes in your life possible. Positive reappraisal is the ability to change your mind to better see the good things in your life, behavioural activation involves finding and doing the things you really love to do, and exposing yourself to what you are afraid will enable you to build the courage you will need to face and overcome your greatest fears and obstacles.

In this chapter, I want to say something about the best place to start with this and any journey, and that is right here and right now – with practicing mindfulness and acceptance. The psychologist Carl Rogers once said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Mindfulness is about accepting where you are right here and now, so that the changes that you want and need in your life can begin to happen.

Mindfulness was first introduced to many people in the Western world 30-40 years ago by a then young scientist named Jon Kabat-Zinn who had studied it in Buddhism. He developed a programme to use mindfulness to help people with anxiety, stress, and chronic pain that doctors had not been very successful in treating. Kabat-Zinn has defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”

So, mindfulness is the awareness of what is happening right now, within us and around us. It involves focusing our attention on this in the present moment and continuing to do this moment by moment. And it involves the open and accepting observation of “what is” right now without any attempt to judge whether it is right or wrong or good or bad. When we can see and fully take in what is happening right now, we can understand where we are and can begin to move forward and make the changes that may be important for us.

You can see mindfulness in many famous teachers – going back to Buddha himself, in the modern Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, and in Eckhart Tolle who wrote a book called “The Power of Now”. Mindfulness has become an important part of positive psychology in that it enables us to fully notice, take in, and appreciate the good things in our lives that we may otherwise miss.

Mindfulness can also play a critical role in enabling us to function at a high level. George Mumford is a former professional basketball player who has taught people like Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant to use mindfulness to reach the top of their game. Mumford wrote a book called “The Mindful Athlete” that is not only good for athletes but for all of us who want to be at our best. Ryan Niemiec is psychologist who has used mindfulness to enable people to better focus on and use their strengths. He wrote a book called “Mindfulness and Character Strengths” that presents a programme for how we can practice mindfulness to better see, appreciate, and use the best in ourselves.

There are many ways that you can begin to benefit from mindfulness. You can read a book by someone like Jon Kabat-Zinn, George Mumford, or Ryan Niemiec. 

To help you get started in benefitting from mindfulness, I want to do two things in the rest of this chapter. First, I want to make you aware of two common barriers to practicing mindfulness. Second, I want to tell you about four ways that you can begin to practice mindfulness. In addition, I will give you the opportunity to practice a form of mindfulness for one of the activities listed at the end of this chapter.

The first common barrier to mindfulness is that we spend so much time focusing on the past or the future that, at first, it can be nearly impossible for some of us to focus on the present. It is important for us to try to learn from our past and plan for the future, but if we are never fully aware of and attentive to the present, we may not really be able to show up for and really experience and live our lives.

The second common barrier is that we are constantly judging and evaluating whether what we are thinking and feeling is useful or good, and whether what is happening around us bodes ill or well for us. Mindfulness not only involves letting go of the past and the future, but also letting go of our judgments about them which frees us to be more open to fully experiencing our lives in the present.

If you try to practice mindfulness, be gentle, patient, and kind with yourself when judgments and thoughts of the past and future come up. It is easy to react to one judgment with more judgment, whereas it is may be more beneficial just to note that you are making a judgment and simply return your focus to your experience in the present.

With these common potential barriers in mind, here are four ways that you can begin to practice mindfulness:

1. The first way is called mindful breathing where you focus on your breath as it goes in and out of your body. You can focus on your breath wherever you are most aware of it – your nose, your chest, or your abdomen as it rises and falls. This also may be a simple and effective way for many people to relax wherever they are.
2. The second way is called a body scan where you focus on the sensations in different parts of your body. It usually begins with your feet and gradually moves up through your whole body to your head and face. This is particularly helpful for those who have recurrent pain in different parts of their bodies. What they often find in doing the body scan is that the pain is often not as bad as they feared and that it comes and goes much more than always being there as a constant pain.
3. The third way to practice mindfulness is called choiceless awareness where you practice allowing your attention to go wherever it goes and wherever it is drawn. This is harder than it may sound because we are so easily distracted by thoughts of the past, the future, judgments about how we are doing, and thinking about where we should focus our attention.
4. The fourth way to practice mindfulness simply involves being more mindful during the regular activities of daily living such as walking, washing dishes, cleaning the house, gardening, or any simple repetitive activity. While many people may need quiet times free of distraction to begin to learn to focus mindfully on the present, this practicing of mindful awareness during daily activities can be a way to bring mindfulness more into everyday life.

So the lesson for this chapter is about the power of mindfulness in making acceptance possible and the value of being fully present to our lives. Mindfulness involves paying full attention to and having a full awareness of our lives in the present. It enables us to accept “what is” so that we can fully appreciate, enjoy, and savour it, and also begin to make whatever changes may be important for enabling us to move forward on our journeys.

Workbook Tasks for the Chapter

The tasks for this chapter are all designed to enable you to more fully understand and experience mindfulness and the mindful acceptance of the present.

1. First, there is a link for a special video about the kind of thing that mindfulness will enable us to see and more fully appreciate, and how joy can break into our lives when we least expect it!
2. Secondly, there is a guided mindful breathing exercise that will help you to begin to practice and experience mindfulness. There is a link below for a website where you can find this and other guided mindfulness meditations and practices such as the body scan.
3. Thirdly, there is again the opportunity to write down three good things that happen during the coming day. But this time you are also asked to write a sentence about how you can be more mindful of the kind of things that you note and more fully appreciate at least one of the three things in the future.
4. Fourth, there are reflection questions about how mindfulness might help you in your life and about the ways that you have found to be most helpful in relaxing.