Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (3 page)

The same is true with unhappiness, anxiety and stress. It is normal to feel a little unhappy from time to time, but sometimes a few sad thoughts can end up triggering a cascade of unhappy memories, negative emotions and harsh judgments. Before long, hours or even days can be colored by negative self-critical thoughts such as,
What’s wrong with me? My life is a mess. What will happen when they discover how useless I really am?

Such self-attacking thoughts are incredibly powerful, and once they gather momentum they are almost impossible to stop. One thought or feeling triggers the next, and then the
next … Soon, the original thought—no matter how fleeting—has gathered up a raft of similar sadnesses, anxieties and fears and you’ve become enmeshed in your own sorrow.

In a sense, there is nothing surprising about this. Context has a huge effect on our memory. A few years ago, psychologists discovered that if deep-sea divers memorized a list of words on a beach, they tended to forget them when they were under water, but were able to remember them again when they were back on dry land. It worked the other way round too. Words memorized under water were more easily forgotten on the beach. The sea and the beach were powerful contexts for memory.
¹¹

You can see the same process working in your own mind too. Have y
ou ever revisited a favorite childhood vacation destination? Before the visit you probably had only hazy memories of it. But once you got there—walking down the streets, taking in the sights, sounds and smells—the memories came flooding back. You may have felt excited, wistful or perhaps even a little bit in love. Returning to that context encouraged your mind to recall a host of related memories. But it’s not just places that trigger memories. The world is full of such triggers. Has a song ever sparked a cascade of emotionally charged memories? Or the smell of flowers or freshly baked bread?

Similarly, our mood can act as an internal context that is every bit as powerful as a visit to an old vacation destination or the sound of a favorite tune. A flicker of sadness, frustration or anxiety can bring back unsettling memories, whether you want them or not. Soon you can be lost in gloomy thoughts and negative emotions. And often you don’t know where they came from—they just appeared, seemingly from thin air. You can become bad-tempered, irritable or sad without really knowing
why. You’re left wondering,
Why am I in a bad mood?
Or,
Why do I feel so sad and tired today?

You can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, self-critical thoughts and judgmental ways of thinking—but you can stop what happens next. You can stop the spiral from feeding off itself and triggering the next cycle of negative thoughts. You can stop the cascade of destructive emotions that can end up making you unhappy, anxious, stressed, irritable or exhausted.

Mindfulness meditation teaches you to recognize memories and damaging thoughts as they arise. It reminds you that they are memories. They are like propaganda,
they are not real.
They are not
you
. You can learn to observe negative thoughts as they arise, let them stay a while and then simply watch them evaporate before your eyes. And when this occurs, an extraordinary thing can happen: a profound sense of happiness and peace fills the void.

Mindfulness meditation does this by harnessing an alternative way in which our minds can relate to the world. Most of us know only the analytical side of the mind; the process of thinking, judging, planning and trawling through past memories while searching for solutions. But the mind is also
aware.
We do not just
think
about things, we are also aware that we are thinking. And we don’t need language to stand as an intermediary between us and the world; we can also experience it directly through our senses. We are capable of directly sensing things like the sounds of birds, the scent of beautiful flowers and the sight of a loved one’s smile. And we know with the heart as well as the head. Thinking is not all there is to conscious experience. The mind is bigger and more encompassing than thought alone.

Meditation creates greater mental clarity; seeing things with pure open-hearted awareness. It’s a place—a vantage point—
from which we can witness our own thoughts and feelings as they arise. It takes us off the hair trigger that compels us to react to things as soon as they happen. Our inner self—the part that is innately happy and at peace—is no longer drowned out by the noise of the mind crunching through problems.

Mindfulness meditation encourages us to become more patient and compassionate with ourselves and to cultivate open-mindedness and gentle persistence. These qualities help free us from the gravitational pull of anxiety, stress and unhappiness by reminding us what science has shown: that it’s OK to stop treating sadness and other difficulties as problems that need to be solved. We shouldn’t feel bad about “failing” to fix them. In fact, that’s often the wisest course of action because our habitual ways of solving such difficulties often make them worse.

Mindfulness does not negate the brain’s natural desire to solve problems. It simply gives us the time and space to choose the
best
ways of solving them. Some problems are best dealt with emotionally—we select the solution that “feels” best. Others need to be slogged through logically. Many are best dealt with intuitively, creatively. Some are best left alone for now.

Mindfulness
operates on two levels. First and foremost is the core mindfulness meditation program. This is a series of simple daily meditations that can be done almost anywhere, though you’ll find it most helpful to do them in a quiet spot at home. Some are as short as three minutes. Others may take twenty to thirty minutes.

Mindfulness
also encourages you to break some of the unconscious habits of thinking and behaving that stop you from living
life to the full. Many judgmental and self-critical thoughts arise out of habitual ways of thinking and acting. By breaking with some of your daily routines, you’ll progressively dissolve some of these negative thinking patterns and become more mindful and aware. You may be astonished by how much more happiness and joy are attainable with even tiny changes to the way you live your life.

Habit breaking is straightforward. It’s as simple as not sitting in the same chair at meetings, switching off the television for a while or taking a different route to work. You may also be asked to plant some seeds and watch them grow, or perhaps look after a friend’s pet for a few days or go and watch a film at your local cinema. Such simple things—acting together with a short meditation each day—really can make your life more joyous and fulfilled.

You can do the program over as long or as short a period as you wish, but it’s best to do it over the recommended eight weeks. It’s as flexible as you want to make it, but it’s worth remembering that it may take time for the practices to reveal their full potential. That’s why they are called practices. Everything in this book is designed to help you along this path. And if you follow the path, you’ll begin to find peace in a frantic world.

To start the program right away, we suggest you turn to Chapter Four. If you’d like to know more about the new scientific discoveries that reveal how and why we trap ourselves in negative ways of thinking and behaving—and how mindfulness meditation frees you—then Chapters Two and Three will help you with this. We really hope you will read these chapters, as they’ll give you an understanding, at the deepest
of levels, of why mindfulness is so powerful. They will greatly aid your progress and you’ll also get the opportunity to try the Chocolate meditation. If you’re anxious to get going now, however, there’s no reason why you can’t start the program immediately and read Chapters Two and Three as you go along.

At
http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness
you will find eight tracks containing the meditations you will need to guide you through the program, narrated by Mark Williams. We suggest that you read through each meditation as you come to them in the book, and then do the meditation itself, following the guidance on the audio tracks.

L
ucy was outwardly a successful buyer for an international clothing chain. She was also stuck: she sat staring out of the window at three in the afternoon, stressed out, exhausted and thoroughly miserable:

Why can’t I get on with this project?
she wondered.
I can usually do these figures in no time. Why can’t I just come to a decision? What’s wrong with me? I’m so tired—I can’t even think straight …

Lucy had been punishing herself with such self-critical thoughts for over an hour. Before that, she’d had a long, anxious chat with the kindergarten teacher about her daughter, Emily, who’d been crying when she’d left her earlier that morning. Then, in a bit of a rush, she’d phoned the plumber to find out why he hadn’t been to look at the broken toilet in her house. Now she was staring at
a spreadsheet, feeling drained of energy and munching on a chocolate muffin in lieu of lunch.

The demands and strains in Lucy’s life had been growing steadily worse for months. Work was becoming ever more stressful and had started to drag on, way past her normal finishing time. Nights had become sleepless, days more drowsy. Her limbs had started to ache. Life had begun to lose its joy. It had become a struggle to keep going. She’d felt like this for brief periods before, when at college with exams looming, but those had been temporary. She’d never have guessed that they could become such a permanent feature of her life.

She kept asking herself repeatedly
: What’s become of my life? Why do I feel so burned out? I should be happy. I used to be happy. Where did it all go?

Lucy exists in a netherworld of overwork, general low-level unhappiness, dissatisfaction and stress. She’s been sapped of her mental and physical energy and has begun to feel increasingly rudderless. She desperately wants to be happy and at peace with herself, but has no idea how to get there. Her unhappiness and dissatisfaction aren’t severe enough to warrant a trip to the doctor, but enough to sap many of life’s joys. She
exists
, rather than truly
lives.

Lucy’s story is hardly unique. She is one of countless millions who are neither depressed nor anxious in a medical sense—yet who are not truly happy either. We all go through life with rises and falls in mood and energy. Often these changes in mood come out of the blue. One moment we’re happily bumbling through life, daydreaming, feeling content and unfussed, but then something subtle happens. Before we know it, we’re starting to feel a little stressed: there’s too much to do and not enough time, and the pace of demands seems ever more relentless. We feel tired, but find that even after a good night’s sleep we don’t feel refreshed. And then we stop and ask ourselves: How did that happen? There may have been no big changes in life, we haven’t lost any friends nor have our debts suddenly spiraled out of control. Nothing’s changed, but the joy has somehow gone out of life and been replaced with a sort of generalized distress and listlessness.

Most people, most of the time, do snap out of these downward spirals. Such periods
do
generally pass. But sometimes they can tip us into a tailspin that persists for days. Or, as in the case of Lucy, they can persist for weeks and months with no apparent rhyme or reason. In severe cases, people can be tipped into a full-blown episode of clinical anxiety or depression (see box on the preceding page).