Archive for month: April, 2016

Last evening I caught up with one of my dear friends, Gary. In the course of our conversation he told me about an eight week mindfulness program he is undertaking at work. He proudly told me he was up to week three. Gary told me that so far it was OK, but he was longing for some practical application of this mindfulness stuff. “Just show me how to use it”, he said. I responded to him by quoting the famous line from the Karate Kid film- “patience, grasshopper”.

This conversation sparked me to sit down and pen this article. I could hear the impatience in Gary’s tone. I suspected, as a mindfulness teacher, I could do more to help guide my students in the practice.

For many people, just noticing whether they are present, fully attentive, to what they are doing can be a challenge. Why is this a challenge for some many? The way we currently understand how our perceptual and sensory systems creates our reality is by taking a series of sensory snapshots of our environment and constructing our reality of experience. These snapshots are not necessarily how the environment is, but more about how we see it and experience it. Snapshots are necessary, as we could not take in every detailed aspect of our environment in every moment.

Interestingly, the way we take snapshots and make representations of how our environment becomes habitualized over time. With this habit comes speed of observation, understanding and in some cases – an action or response. It also allows us to skim over the details of things that are familiar to us. Through this process our brains create faster, more automated and responsive neural networks. “Neurons that fire together- wire together”. Hence, whatever we regularly practice, whether it is intended or unintended, becomes our habit. What marvelous adaptive perceptual/sensory systems we have! Evolution has clearly set us up to adapt to many varying environments and situations.

When things change in our world, sometimes our minds still feel as though things shouldn’t or haven’t changed. An example of this is the feeling of unreality you can get when someone close to you dies or when the road intersection traffic light sequence changes for the first time in 10 years. We have difficulty accepting and managing the change. We expect things to be as they were. It’s like our attention has been captured in someway.

A way of describing our attention is like a torch or flashlight for those in the US. It shines a beam of attention on objects in our life. Like a torch, we can switch our attention “ON” and we can switch it “OFF”. We can FOCUS it on one object or we can focus it on many different objects in a short period of time. We can change the DIRECTION of our attention and even vary the INTENSITY of it. Often we focus our attention on objects outside of ourselves. As human beings we also have the capacity to focus our attention in TIME -in the PAST, in the PRESENT and in the unrealized FUTURE.

So, Attention= ON/OFF, FOCUS, INTENSITY, DIRECTION, PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE. How many of these do you use on a daily basis and which ones do you have active conscious control over? If I had a magic attention tracking machine and attached it to you- what would I see about your day to day attentional practices?

Is your attention captured by worries or concerns? Are you able to focus your attention on an object and hold it there without your attention wandering off? How frequently is your attention distracted by technologies, the environment, people or random thoughts that come up? How scattered is your attention when you multi-task or juggle tasks? How busy are you? Do you find yourself often rushing and getting stressed? Does your attention get regularly hijacked by your emotions?

The problem of all of these considerations above is that they regularly occur in our lives. Yet we are unaware of the repetitive impact they are having on our awareness, our attention, our intentions and our actions in the world. They contribute to wiring our brains to become more mindless. Even when we stop and rest, our minds are still thinking, planning, worrying, jumping from the past to the future without our conscious direction. We can even have difficulty switching our light of attention OFF- even when tired and trying to sleep.

You can only imagine what the impact of these attentional afflictions have on how we experience our life- moment to precious moment. In the words of William James, founder of modern psychology, “what we attend to becomes our reality”. This attentional affliction does not allow us to focus on the ingredients of our lives that genuinely make us happy.

This is the “WHY” in practicing mindfulness. John Bruna defines mindfulness as, literally, “presence of mind”. In other words, it is the ability to maintain a level of awareness of what is happening within us and around us without elaboration. The practice of mindfulness is much more than present moment awareness, it includes and facilitates the cultivation of concentration, wisdom and the ability to make healthy choices that foster genuine happiness and a meaningful life.” You can notice from this definition the focus of awareness of what is happening to us and around us in our lives.

To assist us all in this mindful awareness, we have developed an online community of practice called “The Mindful Life Community”. This community provides a practice community in the application and practice of the four foundations, or keys, of mindfulness.
In the Mindful Life Community, we undertake a daily attentional and intentional practice based on the four foundations of mindfulness – Attention, Wisdom, Values and an Open heart. One way members of the community receive support in this practice is by a daily mindfulness support email. In each daily email, they are invited to focus and reflect on one of the four foundations of mindfulness, reflect on how this relates to their life and how they could incorporate mindfulness practice into their day. This is supported by a daily activity and a weekly exercise that community members can use to build their mindfulness every single day.
If you haven’t joined the Mindful Life Community, I would encourage you to do so. It’s a great way to gain support in becoming more mindful in your life. You also might gain better control of your attention ——-ON, FOCUSED, BRIGHT, PRESENT.

-Mark Molony