Wiser and Kinder

Man do we beat ourselves up. At least I do. Every little mistake, anything I could’ve done or not done to make everyone else’s experience at a get-together just a little bit better. Then there are the things out of our control we choose to be hyperaware of, the places our attentions hang their hats. I find it’s a recipe for disaster only missing a dash of anger, anxiety, or overall negativity.

But this isn’t meant to just be an article for people like me. Any one of us can benefit from practicing mindfulness, and we don’t need a yoga studio to get there. Mare Chapman, author of Unshakeable Confidence, stresses the virtue of being wiser and kinder to ourselves, effectively swimming outside life’s current from time to time to slow things down. Before we go all Genesis and get in too deep, let’s start with what exactly Mare means when she discusses mindfulness.

“Mindfulness is a skillset that’s cultivated, and it’s the ability to be aware of just what you’re experiencing in the present moment. What you’re thinking. What you’re feeling in your body. What emotion might be here. Basically, what you’re seeing, smelling, tasting. It’s the ability to be aware of that and then learning to respond with acceptance, with curiosity, with interest, with a kind of friendliness rather than a judgement or thinking I shouldn’t be experiencing this. Just opening to it.”

In a nutshell, we should be curious about the things we’re feeling then respond in a more skillful, more compassionate way. “It’s a way to train our mind to become our friend, rather than being our enemy or bully.”

True, there’s a societal component creating this need to be perfect, but we need to first be aware of this demand before we can respond more wisely. The research Mare has done suggests that our minds have between 67,000 and 120,000 thoughts in any given day. Out of those tens of thousands of thoughts, about 80 percent of them are reruns. These reruns create themes that often govern our worldviews, self-image, and behaviors.

“Our minds can be so creative and brilliant, but they also can cause our hell. Our habit is to automatically believe our thoughts, but our minds are just making up thoughts all the time. Some of them are true and helpful, but a whole lot of them are not. So it’s really important to be aware of what we’re actually thinking. Remember it’s just a thought.” After you learn to acknowledge a thought for what it is, you can learn to let it go.

Of course, not every negative stimulus initially comes from within. Triggers are very often external. But when you’re pissed off, Mare says we’re better off if we immediately acknowledge the feeling. “All right, here’s feeling pissed off right now. What’s it like? What am I telling myself? Oh, that person is so annoying. Why are they always like this? Oh yeah, I can see that my mind is really creating a reaction.”

By finding a wiser and kinder way to respond to those feelings, we can more easily understand the other person’s behavior. Perhaps that individual who got on your nerves is going through something themselves. Maybe it’s just taking a moment to put your relationship with the person in front of this moment of frustration. “The biggest view of this practice is that we’re all in the same boat. ... We all get caught up in stress and misery. And we all want to be stable and happy.”

If we can all agree a more mindful world would be a better world, then the next step is to work on becoming more mindful ourselves. Yes, everything discussed to this point is all well and good, and I’d like to be that wiser and kinder person, but how? The answer is meditation, and the good news is it might be more manageable than you think.

Worth noting, there is more than one type of meditation. Concentration meditation involves focusing on an object or on our breathing. Your attention is held without interruption or distraction. But mindfulness meditation is fundamentally different.

“You do start with the breath because the breath gets us into the present moment. It’s kind of the anchor; I call it the home base in the practice. But then you pay attention as you’re meditating to whatever arises.” For example, you might hear a sound, so you focus on that. How it comes in and how it fades away. “Or you’re paying attention to the mind thinking. You practice relating to the story by noting it and coming back to the breath, so you’re learning to let go of your thoughts when you want to.” If you can find even five minutes a day to start out, you’ll notice the benefits almost immediately. The more you practice, the longer those benefits stay with you until they’re part of who you are.

Mindfulness meditation doesn’t have to be formal. Mare suggests doing something she calls Dropping In. “First, intend to Drop In it and feel your body breathing three breaths. Then ask three core questions. What am I actually experiencing right now? How am I relating to this? Given what I’m experiencing and how I’m relating to it, what’s a wise and kind way to respond to myself?”

Everything we focus on to improve ourselves is some sort of exercise, and where we make the effort to be wiser and kinder could be called the mindfulness gym. The time I take to beat myself up would certainly be better spent going to my gym and sorting out my experiences. There, I can learn to not take my experiences so personally, recognize the narrative my mind has created, and remember what it is to be human and participate in that connection.

Kyle Jacobson is a writer and editor who thinks William Shakespeare was known as Shakes by his contemporaries and that the phrase what’s shakin’ originated from people asking about his new play.