By Abrar Raza
Mindfulness Thought Processes
Mindfulness is a way of life. Yes, indeed there are ways and techniques which teach us that way of life. Those techniques do give us an insight and understanding on how to incorporate it, follow it and practice it.
Let’s understand why we need Mindfulness so badly in this time when our attention, focus, and energy is scattered all over the place. In this time, when we are struggling to take a grip on most of our distressful situations.
We are the product of our senses, including many other things
Our senses – taste, sight, touch, smell and sight – have been absorbing everything since the time we get conceived to this present moment. And at this moment, how we are processing our senses through our conscious thoughts and past experiences, decide our reaction towards it. Processing is the key word here.
Our brain stores new sensory information and stores in it with highly detailed categorization. It stores each new experience with our feelings, thoughts and emotions attached to that sensory information.
This categorization is necessary to avoid workload that our brain might go through each time we happen to land into same experience. However, this categorization also stores and solidifies our perception, our judgment, pain, learning, and our overall experience to that situation, place or person.
That categorization is a very necessary part of our cognition. It saves us lot of our energy, time and effort that we might have to put in if that categorization might not happen. However, that categorization is also a reason that we happen to experience a huge amount of distress, stress, anger, frustration, pain and sufferings during various avoidable or unavoidable situations and circumstances of our life.
Mindfulness Strategies to Keep You Calm and Centered
Focus on your mind, body and spirit
Accepting and acknowledging pain, suffering, difficulties and obstacles are best done when we learn to focus our mind, body and spirit. Let us not use the ideas, learning, judgment and perceptions that our brain has categorized for us previously. When we focus, live and embrace our moment fully – no matter how difficult or how distressful it might me – we give way to healing. We give way to a better tomorrow.
Learned Emotions
Reacting to a distressful situation either with anger, frustration, blame, regret, and many other negative emotions is very natural. Most of the time, those emotions are learned ones. We happen to “know” how we must react in a given situation.
For example – we have learned that a breakup is painful; we have learned it’s not good if someone leaves us, it’s not good if people are laughing at me, it’s not good if I have failed.
Mindfulness techniques teach us to embrace our any experience fully with a fresh pair of eyes. Accepting, acknowledging and living the true intensity of any feeling that we are actually getting from that situation.
Labeling
It’s very natural that we hardly take time in jumping to a conclusion if any situation is either “good” or “bad”. But before we could decide that, if we could just live the emotions as they comes, we might happen to know that good or bad is merely a number that we give to any situation. Experience is important than the result. We may change the label later on as well; however we might not live in that moment ever again.
Live in the Present Moment
We all know that present moment is the most undervalued commodity. While we are sorting out our past, and making plans and dreaming about our future, our present moment is slipping by freely.
Only present moment is the time that we truly are in control of. Past is constant. And future can only be altered if only we can live, do, change our present moment.
This simple idea when put to action saves us a lot from the grip of the limitations of our past and dreamy imagination of our future. It allows us to focus at the point of time which we are actually living in.
Avoid Multi-tasking
Research has proven multi-tasking is neither good for our productivity, nor it actually serves any purpose. Multi-tasking – be it of any kind at all – overloads our cognition, divides our attention, and makes us lose grip over the moment.
People who multi-task a lot are highly prone to various cardio-vascular diseases as well. So, it neither serves our mind nor our body.
We indeed want to achieve a lot in a very short-period of time. The whole world is competing against each other on a mass-scale. And we also end up paying huge cost at times for the same. For example – while we are eating, we also watch TV, we keep ourselves on smartphone, playing games or on social media, while talking to our family members or guests, and so on. This is just one tiny little example. However, Multi-tasking has become a behavior which is quite contradictory to practices of Mindfulness.
It is true that once we have put ourselves on high speed, getting slow gets difficult. And when we have so many things going around it becomes difficult to choose just one.
When we have so many opportunities, so many overwhelming emotions, so much to experience, we are always on a mode of getting perfect, getting ahead, being the best.
We lose track of the sound of our soul. We lose track what our emotions are actually singing. Mindfulness teaches us to listen to those tunes. Those tunes might not be pleasant at times, but listening is the least we could do for our own tunes.
Editorial Note: If you would like to read more mental health and psychology hacks, then do check out our section on Mental Health Inspiration.
About the Author
Abrar Raza is an expert Counselling Psychologist for Personal Development, Self Improvement, Family & Relationship Issues, Workplace Wellness, Managing & Coping various life events and situations, and for overall Emotional Well-being. He is based out of Delhi and works as a Consultant Corporate Counsellor with WorkplaceOptions and Optum. He also takes private consultation at his residence. He also dedicates few hours to a well-known Online Counseling portal YourDost.
Abrar carries with himself more than 8 years of experience in 3 MNCs, at a Super Specialty Hospital, in Delhi Family Court, and at a National Child Guidance Center. As an Alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, his work is fully dedicated towards the Mental and Emotional well-being and wellness of the youth of India. He tries to spread knowledge and awareness through his YouTube channel to theHindi speaking population. You may follow his work on the following social media platforms:
https://www.facebook.com/TheAbrarRaza/
https://www.youtube.com/AbrarRaza
Greetings! Very useful advice in this particular post!
It’s the little changes which will make the greatest changes.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much for your feedback!