Mindfulness. Meditation. Spirituality.

If you’re anything like I was a few months ago, you’ve heard of all three of these words.

You can just about describe at least parts of one or two of them.

And you think they’re fine… for someone else.

Not really your thing.

You’ve got your shit figured out… and you ain’t no tree hugger.

That’s where I was at a few months ago.

But I also didn’t really know what any of them involved.

A lot of my preconceptions were totally incorrect.

And once I got a more accurate understanding of them, I found they actually had some awesome benefits for business and for everyday life.

Who knows, you might find the same.

Mindfulness

All the information you receive—from the outside world and your senses, as well as all your thoughts—gets filtered through your preconditioned mind before you become aware of it or act on it.

What do I mean by preconditioned? Your mind has been adapting since you were born, building up a set of beliefs about yourself and everything around you. How everything works. What’s safe vs risky. What’s good vs bad.

Some of that filtering is great. It helps you see dangerous situations as dangerous, so you stay away from them.

Trouble is, your filters aren’t necessarily tuned correctly. For many reasons they’re very often inaccurate… and harmful.

Mindfulness is simply turning down that filter, to see things more accurately and objectively.

Recognising that thoughts are just thoughts, and exploring them as such. It turns out you yourself have no control whatsoever over what thought you’ll have next, any more than you create the words of a friend who’s speaking to you. (In fact, brain images would show that your brain has settled on a decision of what you’ll think about next before you have any conscious idea that it’s coming).

And in the same way you wouldn’t blindly follow whatever someone else says is true, you shouldn’t for the things your mind tells you are true.

Example

I used to dislike going for walks.

Unless there was a purpose, like needing something from the shop, I just didn’t see the point.

It was fruitless, and boring, and so I wouldn’t do it.

I should like it because it’s a nature walk? Meh, I’ve seen trees before.

If I did go, I would indeed feel bored, and that would reinforce my belief even more strongly for next time: ‘See? I felt bored last time. So it’s not a good thing for me to do.’

Mindfulness involves observing those thoughts, and the subsequent feelings, rather than accepting them as true just because they arose.

When you do, something kinda interesting happens.

Because it turns out “bored” isn’t the base state that you drop into when nothing engaging is happening: it’s an explicit thought from your preconditioned mind when it decides something isn’t worth doing.

You can watch that thought.

You can question it.

“Huh, so, Mr Mind, you say the activity isn’t worth doing? Where did that idea come from? How come not everyone feels that way about that activity?”

If you had never walked in your life you’d probably find the idea pretty interesting (in fact, you did, when you were first learning to walk)—so wouldn’t it be fair to say that the only thing making the walk “boring” is your memories of the past?

If you can dial down those preexisting thoughts, the walk actually becomes incredibly enjoyable.

Again, boredom isn’t the base state when there’s nothing stimulating you. It’s a thought that, with practice, you can switch off, and find yourself enjoying the reality of whatever situation you find yourself in.

Likewise with getting frustrated because something feels difficult, or sad because something hasn’t gone your way.

Those feelings or emotions are nothing more than physiological changes within your body. That absolutely doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel them (you should), but you can get curious about the feeling. Where in my body do I feel it? What thought caused it? And suddenly its power over you is lessened.

Meditation

There are so many preconceptions about meditation.

From people who have never tried it it’s often that it just means sitting still and doing nothing.

From people who have tried it it’s often that it’s too difficult to switch off your thoughts.

It turns out meditation isn’t about switching off your thoughts.

Meditation is simply _a way to practice mindfulness_—to practice separating yourself from your thoughts—by nudging your attention back to your ‘object of meditation’ (e.g. your breathing) any time your mind wanders off.

The idea that you’re doing this because the mind wandering off is bad is totally false. It’s a good thing when the mind wanders off during meditation, because it’s that consistent act of noticing it, accepting that it’s happened, and bringing the attention back again where the skill is actually built.

Spirituality

If mindfulness is about observing your thoughts and feelings, the natural next question becomes: “Who, or what, is doing the watching?” or, equivalently, “Who am ‘I’?”

Investigating that question is what we call spirituality. That ‘spirit’ or ‘essence’ or ‘consciousness’ that is you beyond your thoughts and feelings and senses.

It gets kinda deep. Not least because then you naturally get to questions like “Is my essence a totally distinct entity than yours?” and “It’s widely accepted that an animal doesn’t have thoughts in the same way we do, and even more so that a tree doesn’t. But are you sure they don’t also have that same essence?”

(If you’re sceptical about this, explore that thought. Why is your mind so adamant that these things can’t be true? 😉)