My view on what mindfulness is
You are familiar with mindfulness unless you have been hiding under a rock. A Google search or Instagram scroll will fill you up with more positive quotes, tips and meditations to last you a lifetime and some. But the same can be said for the fitness and weight-loss industry. Despite being a massive industry, we are still struggling with obesity globally.
And despite all the mindfulness content, we are still struggling with finding ourselves, and we can get even more lost in the sea of meditations and wellness practices.
Why are we still struggling?
Based on my own experience and the many consults that yielded similar realizations, this is my view. We live in an era that provides humanity with tools we never had before. We are experiencing a shock of values and an overload of shallow connections. This is causing tremendous internal struggle.
We have demands of ourselves and others that are not realistic. We have checklists to complete. Badges to earn to acquire what society tells us is a successful life. The degree, the job, the high salary, the partner that also satisfies a checklist, the house, the car, the dog. We are in a race on a life path laid out for us. We are developing new addictions that prior generations didn’t have. We are addicted to approval.
Our identity gets lost while we spread out too thin to satisfy all the demands we impose on ourselves. And all of this is happening on top of the beliefs you created during childhood.
As children, we have an innate need for survival, and to survive, we need to make sense of things to reach a semblance of safety because if I know what to expect, I know how to react. This process happens in all children. You don’t need to have had a particularly jarring upbringing. Events happen around us, and we give meaning to those events. That meaning determines how you process it and whether you will adapt and attach a belief to it.
So, what is mindfulness? It is acceptance of yourself. It is to dedicate your practice to observing your thoughts and emotions to clarify your true desires and values and to make the conscious effort to re-parent yourself. To peel the layers of beliefs that you acquired and re-assess them. Some may still feel true, but others, you have outgrown and are limiting. Now, what does the practice look like? that is your journey. You need to figure out what works for you.
In this journey of self-awareness, you may realize that you do want that degree, that job, etc., which is fantastic! Those things are beautiful goals to achieve. The difference is in following a path because you are told to follow it versus following it because you have an inner passion to do so.
It is this clarity that propels us to perform at our best capacity. When our actions are aligned with our emotions, we are at peace; and this is the objective of any mindfulness activity.