Mindfulness: A Review of the Basics
I’ve been practicing, teaching, researching, and writing about mindfulness for some time. Because of that, I sometimes take for granted that not everyone shares my level of understanding of the basics. This blog is the beginning of a series that explores the basics, such as why practice, the health benefits, and its impact on relationships and overall happiness.
The word mindfulness is everywhere these days and is used in many ways. Whenever I ask people what mindfulness means, I get a lot of different answers, from meditation to relaxation techniques such as yoga. The simplest way to think about mindfulness is this: it is the ability to focus your attention on the present. You are not thinking about the past or future but the here and now. Mindfulness is defined as an intentional focus on the present moment, or the opposite of what most of us do without realizing it – living inside our heads and multi-tasking every second of the day. We’re so used to living like this that it feels completely normal. And being intentionally present feels uncomfortable and abnormal.
We Are Already Halfway There
Researchers have estimated that we are present about 50% of the time. While that may sound good, think about it this way. When our attention is focused elsewhere, it’s as though we aren’t there. When our minds wander, we don’t remember what we are doing or what is happening all around us. I often think about this when I see people videoing a concert or taking pictures of everything when they are on vacation.
How Do You Improve the Control of Your Attention?
All you need to do is to watch a baby or children playing to realize that being present is our natural state. However, as we grow into adulthood, we suppress that ability and increase our ability to think and plan the future and contemplate the past.
Mindfulness practices are anything that helps you build your ability to control your attention. Many people also think that mindfulness equals meditation. This is not the case. Meditation is only one way to train your attention to focus on the present, but there are many ways to practice mindfulness. Furthermore, emerging research has shown that brief and frequent mindfulness practice delivers significant benefits.
From the beginning, Levelhead has utilized this research as the foundation for our program - designing bite-sized activities that can be integrated into the normal course of your day, adding little or no extra time. It’s a program for real life that can help you build this important skill and help you thrive as you practice daily.
If you want to get started on a simple and effective way to train your attention, download our new app Levelhead for Real Life on both app stores, Apple and Google Play.