Everybody is so caught up these days in the what if’s, I should have’s, the could have’s. Instead we should learn to practice Mindfulness and letting go. Too many of us psyche ourselves out before even knowing how something will turn out. We use past experiences or our nerves as an excuse for why we can’t do this or that. We make up scenarios in our head for how a situation will turn out which creates anxiety and makes things harder for us. A lot of us need to learn to live in the present moment more often and become a little bit more mindful in our everyday lives.
Practicing mindfulness is the best way to do this. When we practice mindfulness our thoughts tune into what we are sensing in the present moment instead of rehashing the past or imagining the future.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
Mindfulness is something we all already possess, it’s just a matter of learning how to access it.
How it Works
With mindfulness training we can be productive in disengaging or letting go of negative thinking. It involves knowing ourselves enough to know when we are automatically drifting into negative thinking. With practice and observation we will know when our minds will steer towards the negative and we will learn to skilfully redirect our attention back to the present.
It is so easy to create a scenario in our head about let’s say, an upcoming event: we can easily make up the most outrageous, worst case scenario that is most likely to never happen. Everything becomes worse when we start to try to control or change these worries in our minds. We can sometimes strengthen a negative experience rather than diminish it by trying to control or avoid worries or other negative thinking by: answering back, chasing or supressing these negative thoughts.
Mindfulness involves acceptance, we must listen to our feelings and thoughts without judging them. We must push off the belief that there is a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.
Think of mindfulness in terms of a radio. Think of the negative thoughts drifting into your mind as coming from a loud radio that is tuned into a station where the thoughts are very negative and seem to be shouting at you. Mindfulness is not so much about trying to turn off the radio but instead, changing the way you listen to it. And the key to this, like anything else we wish to perfect, is practice, practice, practice!
Negative Thinking
Many people who suffer from anxiety, depression or low self-esteem tend to make negative predictions about how certain situations may turn out. They may tend to:
- Overestimate the likelihood that bad things will happen or that something will go wrong
- Exaggerate how bad things will be
- Underestimate their ability to deal with things if they do go wrong
- Ignore situations that prove that the situation will not be as bad as they predict it to be
When we jump to such negative conclusions we tend to behave in unhelpful behaviours. We start to avoid situations because being alone is easier. We may try to escape situations too early right when something may seem too difficult. With these habits we can easily become overly cautious and engage in safety behaviours such as only putting ourselves in situations we know what the outcome will be.
The problem with these strategies is that they prevent us from ever testing out our predictions. We assume the worst, we avoid and so we never have a different experience from what we expected therefore we continue to expect the worst.
We can all start with small but achievable ways. To begin, start with minor concerns. I took some mindfulness classes back in high school when I had major anger issues and the work sheets they gave me from CCI (Centre for Clinical Interventions) teaching the participants how to practice mindfulness, seem to work the best for me.
In fact all of the information in this post is from the work sheets I received from the classes. I keep them laying around for safe-keeping and review them whenever I am having one of those days. They were written by the CCI. (https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/)
Here are the steps written in one of the articles that seem to work the best for me:
- I find a comfortable chair somewhere in my home, usually the big comfy lazy boy in the living room. I make sure my posture is relaxed and my mind alert.
- I do my best to zone out everything else and focus on that moment right there. I ask myself what am I experiencing right now? What thoughts are spiralling around my head? How is my body feeling, tense/ relaxed?
- I acknowledge, observe and describe these experiences to myself without attaching any thoughts to the original one or trying to change the flow of thoughts. I spend about 5-10 minutes solely focusing on this.
- Then, I bring my focus of awareness on my breathing, focusing on the sensations of breath as I breathe in and out. Binding my awareness to the back and forth movements of the sensations in my stomach from minute to minute, letting all thoughts go. I allow myself to really let go of everything else and just be in that moment.
- Then I expand my awareness to sensing my breathing throughout my whole body. I tell myself that whatever feelings pop up, I will allow myself to feel them. If my mind happens to go to negative thoughts, I can acknowledge it, let go of it and steer my mind back to focusing on my breathing.
I started off doing this exercise with the belief that it wouldn’t make much of a change but still, I forced myself to do it every day. When I started to realise certain situations in my personal life that would usually have me upset, I was instead able to steer my mind onto a positive path and literally drop the negative thoughts as if they were never mine: the more I started to take these exercises seriously. After I started really believing that I was fully capable of controlling my thoughts, it became even easier to do so.
I eventually started to do the exercise in public settings as well, where there were distractions everywhere. With more stimulation around me, the more thoughts that came to mind. The thoughts that popped up that were negative and would never benefit me, I let go of and again focused on the moment at hand, the here and now.
Analysing Our Thoughts
Analysing Our Thoughts
It is a normal part of life to sometimes have negative thoughts that lead to us being upset, anxious, depressed. But to feel this way all the time, is no way to live and there is no reason that any of us ever should live this way.
A lot of people make the assumption that these emotions or feelings are determined by external experiences, events, situations, and the behaviour of others. “The person who interviewed me made me nervous”, “My husband made me so angry”, “I’m depressed because I bombed that first date so bad.”
With these thoughts we are making the assumption that something or someone was directly determining the feelings we experienced instead of them being a result from our own thoughts. This is an automatic thought process that most of us experience without even stopping to analyse the situation.
It is most often than not the situation nor the actions or words of another but instead how we perceive the situation or the persons actions/words. It is our thoughts about an event that significantly influences our emotions which influences our actions.
For example: let’s say you attend your soon to be fiancé’s family get-together and your partner introduces you to his fun brother and he doesn’t give you much eye contact, seems disinterested then brushes you off real quick. Your girlfriend has been talking him up saying how he was always the life of the party, could get along with almost anyone and that you guys would get along so well. But he seemed to have no interest in you after thirty seconds of conversation.
Your mind then could easily go to the negative and think I must be a really boring person if the guy who gets along with everyone couldn’t even get through one conversation with me, or nobody ever wants to talk to me, I have nothing interesting to bring to the table, or your mind could go to the positive and think he probably has something stressful going on in his own life, or maybe he wasn’t making eye contact because he was looking for someone he was waiting on and he was getting anxious.
Both results will bring completely different emotions and moods. It is our choice how we want to feel. Our thoughts are so automatic and come to us so quickly that we are often unaware of them. Because we are not accustomed to slowing down our thoughts but instead we just think automatically, it is hard to be conscious of the way we are thinking. But we do have the ability to not attach to thoughts but instead change them. Once we take the time to really sit there, observe and become aware of what we are thinking, we become more able to control the way we think.
A lot of the time it is difficult to know precisely what we are feeling at a given moment and sometimes it is too difficult to put into words. To better understand the connection between our thinking and our feelings here is a list that contains words that describe feeling:
Tense Enraged Frightened Cheerful
Annoyed Happy Panicky Euphoric
Unhappy Exhilarated Frustrated Mad
Exuberant Keyed-up Scared Uneasy
Anxious Irritated Flat Sad
Depressed Joyful Tired Discouraged
Angry Excited Nervous Jealous
Our thoughts affect the way we feel. If we are feeling happy and excited chances are we have been thinking positive thoughts and about positive things. If we are feeling anxious or depressed, chances are we have been thinking negative thoughts. CCI calls these unhelpful thoughts, simply because they lead to unpleasant feelings or unhelpful actions.
If unhelpful thoughts lead to distressing emotions, then the best thing to do would be to change those unhelpful thoughts to helpful ones. How can we can that? To start influencing the way you feel, you need to learn to be aware of, and “capture” those unhelpful thoughts and beliefs, with the aim of changing them. Mindfulness training is the best way to do this.
When we live in the moment, are fully present and aware of what is going on around us, life becomes even more enjoyable and believe it or not, a lot easier as well. I recommend anyone and everyone to do some research on mindfulness training and start practising it in your own life!
