CHAPTER ONE
Mindfulness

Mindfulness is paying attention to this moment on purpose. It is simply asking the question “What is happening right now?” It is noticing your thoughts, feelings, and the environment without judging any of it as good or bad. It is simply being present with curiosity.

There’s a story about two monks walking from one village to another. They come upon a woman who can’t get past a muddy section of the road. The older monk puts the woman on his back and carries her over the mud. The whole time she is berating him for being too slow and for splashing her. When they get to the other side, he puts her down, and the two monks walk on.

An hour later the older monk asks the younger one why he looks upset.

“That woman was so rude to you,” he answers.

“My friend,” says the older monk. “I put that woman down an hour ago. You are still carrying her.”

As you are reading right now, your brain is processing the information on the page but also moving at light speed through thoughts, feelings, and reactions—some of which have to do with this book and some of which surely do not. It is normal to have a very active mind, but it is important to know how to use it to see what is in front of you. It is easy to be like that second monk: distracted by the past instead of present in the current moment.

The Stress Reaction

It is not surprising that there is a lot going on inside your head. Your brain is the control center for everything. It keeps your heart beating, and it is how you can choreograph a dance, learn Spanish, and cry during a sad movie.

When you get upset, panicked, or angry, your whole body goes into a reaction known as the “fight or flight” response. Your blood pressure rises, your pupils dilate, and your heart rate and breathing speed up. Under stress, the most primitive part of your brain, the brain stem, sends messages to your body to prepare to defend (fight) or retreat to safety (flight). People call that part of the brain the “lizard brain” because its functions are those of basic survival that humans and reptiles share. This area of the brain does not do any of your complex thinking and only cares about one thing: attacking or fleeing when it perceives danger.

This reactive part of your brain does its job well, but it cannot distinguish between real danger and more general worries. Whether you are escaping from a tiger or fretting about a book report that’s due tomorrow, the body responds in a similar way. Even a small amount of stress (something as simple as forgetting something at home, or a moment of feeling awkward or left out) can switch your whole system into survival mode. You can easily respond from your lizard brain whether you’re dealing with big or small challenges.

Maybe you’ve already noticed a shift in your own body when you realize there’s a quiz today or you’re angry about something someone said. Do your arms tense, your palms clench, or does your face feel hot? Maybe there’s a noticeable change in your breathing and heart rate as your body prepares to protect you. That is your “lizard brain” taking control of the situation.

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These reactions are your brain and body working to keep you safe when sensing a threat, and overall that is a good thing. But studies show that sustained time spent in the fight or flight mode is dangerous for your health. Usually your immune cells function like Pac-Man, searching out disease cells and chomping them before they can multiply. Under stress, the body releases hormones like cortisol, which cause the entire immune system to slow down dramatically so that most of your energy can be channeled to the threat at hand. However, when those immune cells slow down, more disease cells stick around, weakening your system.

The Mindfulness Response

Mindfulness deactivates that stress reaction. It is like giving your whole system a Pac-Man Power Pellet. Using the brain to pay attention to the present has been shown to reduce stress in the mind and body and actually improve your ability to manage challenges. When you can be present and aware of how you are feeling in this moment, your body stops releasing excess hormones and returns to a more balanced state. This response is called “rest and renew,” and it is when your body returns to its natural state of well-being. When we are calm and clearheaded, the parts of our brain that are in charge of emotions (the “mammalian” brain) and thinking (the “human” brain) can function and bring perspective to what is actually going on. (Is there a tiger or are we simply doing challenging homework?)

Bottom line: Mindfulness is a simple way to de-stress and actually improve brain functioning. Students who practice mindfulness show less anxiety in social and academic situations and report a higher sense of accomplishment and well-being.

The shift from fight or flight to rest and renew is always available. Just one deep breath in and one long breath out can change how you feel mentally and physically. Pausing even for a moment has a profound effect on your ability to respond to your situation. If there is a real issue you need to address, being present will give you the clarity to make the best choice for yourself and others.

Try It

Listening Exercise

For the next thirty seconds you are going to be still and focus on your sense of hearing. (Set a timer if you have one. Otherwise, just estimate. You may want to read through the exercise first.)

Sit comfortably. Place your hands in your lap or on your knees. Close your eyes or look down so that you are less distracted by what you see and can focus on what you hear.

Begin: Pay attention to everything you hear outside of the room: cars, the wind, birds, people. What do you hear that you usually don’t even notice?

Now what do you hear inside the room? Any small noises you couldn’t hear until you were quiet?

Can you hear anything in your own body? Your breathing? Your heartbeat?

Take a deep breath in and let a long breath out. What do you notice?

How do you feel?

Getting quiet and listening is a simple way of pausing to notice where you are. Even in that short time period, your breathing most likely became slower, and your brain and body received the message that there was no need to rev up. There are a lot of benefits to being able to pause, even for thirty seconds, to tune into the moment.

Clearly, the human brain has developed beyond the basic survival skills needed to escape mortal danger. But the way your brain processes information still has a few pitfalls. You can think of these as habits of the mind. Just as your “lizard brain” triggers automatic physical responses, these habits of the mind trigger automatic mental and emotional responses. The brain is just doing its job, but if you don’t bring awareness and some alternative strategies to what is actually happening here and now, then these habits, these limited ways of using information, will end up running the show.

Let’s look at three habits of the mind:

Negative Mind

(that with mindfulness can become Flexible Mind )

Stuck Mind

(that with mindfulness can become Open Mind )

Distracted Mind

(that with mindfulness can become Focused Mind )

Each of these habits can get in the way of seeing situations in your life clearly. We will look at them in detail because it will be helpful to see if you relate to any of them. But an easy way to understand whether you are stuck in a habit of the mind instead of being truly present is to take a quick inventory of how you feel. Do you feel more constricted and contracted like a closed fist? Or do you feel comfortable and accepting of what is, like an open palm? (This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will always like what you are seeing or feeling. More on that later. What you’ll be working on right now is the ability to be awake and clear about what is happening in the moment.)

Mindfulness (being present and aware of how you are feeling and what you are sensing in the moment) is all that is needed to create a shift away from the unhealthy habits described here. See if any of these feel familiar to you as you read.

Negative Mind

Picture the way a bird is constantly scanning the area for danger, moving its head this way and that. A bird’s survival depends on it staying alert. It does not help the bird to be still and notice what it is feeling. The bird needs to keep its attention on what might be dangerous in any situation. Over the course of our evolution, humans have also had to continuously scan for threats. We’ve learned to focus on the negative.

In most situations, however, things aren’t all bad or all good. Drifting apart from a friend, for example, can feel sad and unsettling, but it does make space for new people and maybe new activities in your life. The loss of a friendship is not easy, but it is also not all bad.

Your mind is not wired for this kind of subtlety, and that can make you confused about what you are seeing. Like the bird, you want to get answers quickly to keep yourself safe. As humans we have trained ourselves to notice problems before anything positive in a situation. But this thinking can become very limited very quickly.

If you see a field of flowers with a snake in it, you focus on the snake.

Noticing a snake is important, and again, that instinct is a part of your biology that keeps you safe. That is where your “lizard brain” is working for you. If there is a viper in front of you, you want your mind to react quickly. However, your habit of scanning for threats can cause you to miss out on the flowers (or anything else pleasant) that is right in front of you.

You can see that same survival instinct being triggered in a room full of people. Have you ever been in a group situation in which one person makes a comment you don’t like or doesn’t listen to you, and then that one thing is what you focus on for the rest of the time? You can easily ignore everything that was positive about the situation, and spend all of your time thinking about the one thing that was not. This is negative mind. In the wild, that focus on danger is helpful, but in your day-to-day life, not so much.

There’s a very old story about a farmer and his family in a small village. One day, the farmer’s son finds a wild stallion and brings it home. He is overjoyed to show his father.

“Look what great fortune! Now I have this incredible horse!” His father replies, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”

A week later, the boy is out riding and falls and breaks his leg. He is angry and distraught, and tells his father how upset he is that such a horrible thing has happened to him.

His father’s response is again: “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?” A week after that, the army of the king arrives and demands that all young men join them in a new and terrible war. The farmer’s son with his broken leg cannot go.

Again, the farmer’s response is the same: “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”

It is a story about perspective. We all have reactions to what happens in our lives, and those reactions are not wrong. But without perspective, we tend to see things in only one way. Mindfulness creates an opportunity to recognize the negative mind. When you are present for what is really happening right here, right now, you are less likely to jump to conclusions (and make assumptions) about people, situations, and what you think you know. You can appreciate what is positive. You can understand and have compassion for your habit of looking for threats and see that almost everything has multiple layers and is usually not all good or all bad.

You know you are in Negative Mind when:

• you have no perspective (you are focused—sometimes almost obsessively—on what is or might not be good in a situation)

• you feel you need to get your own way

• your body is tense (tight chest, jaw, arms, or fists, strain in your neck and shoulders, shortened breath)

  

  You know you are in Flexible Mind when:

• you understand that you might not know all the sides of a situation

• you trust that things will work out even if you are not sure exactly how

• your body is relaxed (no strain in your shoulders, neck, and arms, your breathing is slow and easy, your chest feels open)

  

Stuck Mind

The mind often uses past experiences to assess new situations. This kind of learning shortcut works well in some cases. A baby learns that the oven is not safe because she can feel that it is hot. If she goes to someone else’s house, she won’t touch that stove either. She is learning new information.

In other situations, your mind’s tendency to rely on what you felt or saw in the past can keep you stuck. If you tried something and it was hard, you don’t want to try it again. If something scared you in the past, you avoid it without question. You are in a stuck habit of the mind when you have a rigid belief about what should or shouldn’t happen. If you are not paying attention in the present moment, there is no room for new data. You’ll end up using experiences from the past to dictate your future. You can’t grow. You can’t stretch. You can’t change.

If you aren’t clear about what you feel and who you are now, you end up making decisions for yourself as a teenager based on how something was for you when you were only seven.

I was in a dance performance in second grade and I wasn’t as good as the other kids, so no, I’m not going to try this new modern dance class at school.

Or you make decisions because of what you are afraid of rather than what is happening here and now.

I’ve never skied and most of my friends have. I don’t want to look foolish, so I’m not going to go on that ski trip.

Or you let what you think should be happening get in the way of dealing with what is happening.

I’m not going to ask that teacher for extra help. My brother did well in this class. I don’t want anyone to know I don’t understand.

Today, right now, is a new moment you have never experienced before. If you can’t pause and see that, you really limit your options. This moment is happening for the first time. It is full of potential. If you are caught in beliefs about the past and your fears, you end up being a reactor instead of an actor in your own life.

Is there something you haven’t tried because you’re not sure you’ll succeed or be as good at it as someone else you know?

If your answer is yes, you are not alone. Remember, your mind wants to keep you protected. It wants to stay with what is familiar and use only past information for making decisions. But it’s important to know the difference between being realistically cautious and letting old information wrongly dictate what you do now. When you are aware in the present moment, you can notice when that stuck mind is operating. That is where mindfulness comes in.

In this moment you can notice what you feel and ask yourself, Am I using good judgment or an old, inhibiting way of seeing something? Do I feel stressed and fearful or relaxed and receptive? If you can pause and feel present, you have a chance to open your mind to new approaches and ideas.

You know you are in Stuck Mind when:

• you feel misunderstood and grouchy

• you feel afraid of trying something new

• your body is tense and achy

  

  You know you are in Open Mind when:

• you feel excited and curious about what you’re doing

• you are willing to try new things

• your body is light and energized

Distracted Mind

Maybe you don’t focus on the negative and you aren’t stuck in old ideas about yourself. But you still have a busy human mind that makes it difficult to pay attention to the moment you are in right now.

Do you ever:

• Arrive someplace without really being aware of how you got there (maybe on your walk to school or moving from one class to another)?

• Go to get something in your room and forget what you needed once you are there?

• Check your phone for no particular reason even though you looked at it two minutes ago?

• Review the details of something that upset you over and over in your mind?

Again, welcome to having a brain. None of this is unique to you. We all share these habits in one form or another. It may seem like there are more distractions today (social media, phones, and socializing in an ever-increasing number of ways), but the issue of having a mind that won’t “sit still” is in no way new. The techniques in this book were developed and used thousands of years ago because people were having the same problematic “monkey minds” then too. As a species we are good at using our brain to track hundreds of pieces of information at a time, but we’re not so great at using it to focus on the here and now.

Even when you look relaxed, your mind can be traveling at warp speed. You’re afraid of missing out, you review past conversations over and over in your mind, or you think about how much you have to do. Ring any bells? Without realizing it, you can easily lose track of where you are and what is happening now. Even imagining something good that you would like to have happen can take over your thoughts. It feels as if there is somewhere other than here that needs your attention—at all times.

We all live in a world of do-ing, not a world of be-ing. Being present may not even appear all that valuable.

It’s tricky because this habit of staying out of the present moment does have benefits. You get complimented for being a productive multitasker. And reviewing your planner is important. Imagining scenarios for next weekend feels like a good use of your time. All of your many to-do lists do serve a purpose and keep you on track. There is a place for planning, but it seems to have taken over all of our lives, and you may find it difficult to operate in any other mode.

As a result, you can spend a lot more time in the past and the future than in the present.

Try It

Take a Thinking Habits Self-Assessment

How often are your thoughts focused on something that happened in the past or that might happen in the future?