mindfulness news & tips
Mindfulness
Acceptance, as I keep saying, is the second half of mindfulness (the first is awareness). It means not rushing to judgment, pausing to take in the reality of situations and increasing your tolerance for experience.
By helping you to avoid knee-jerk reactions, acceptance improves your quality of life and that of those around you.
It increases your choices by helping you to pause long enough to see what those choices might be.
Mindfulness – awareness of the present moment – makes it easier to pause and to see things differently.
So try to build mindfulness and acceptance into your day – it will make a difference.
To learn more about acceptance and other aspects of mindfulness, do my online course Easy Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is often thought of as ‘being in the moment.’ It’s more about returning to the moment again and again.
That’s because our minds wander by default – so we have to keep bringing them back.
One way to bring our attention back is to focus awareness on our breathing. This is perhaps the most basic of all mindfulness exercises – observing your breathing, perhaps counting the breath as you do. For instance you could count to 7 while breathing in and to 11 while breathing out, for a while. If 11 is too much of a stretch for you, use a shorter number.
Deliberate awareness of breathing has a calming effect on the emotional centre of the brain and that is probably why it is to popular among mindfulness practitioners.
Returning again and again helps us to avoid getting lost in rumination. Rumination means thinking negative thoughts over and over again.
Rumination can lead us towards depression or excessive anger so the ability to come out of it quickly is very valuable.
To learn more about all aspects of mindfulness, check out my Easy Mindfulness online course.
Image by Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash
Come into the mindful space – it’s easy
A mindful space is one you can come into for a sense of clarity, or a pause in the day or a rest from the busyness going on around you.
How do you enter it? By becoming aware of your breathing or of your body.
But it’s not just that – the important thing is that you don’t engage with the thoughts that are running through your mind. You let them go by without getting involved in them. And the way that you do that, again, is to keep bringing your attention back to your breathing or your body.
Your mind will drift away again and again, even while you’re in that space. But keep bringing it back.
A pleasant sense of clarity
In that space you can get a sense of clarity, which can be very pleasant. You will usually also get a sense of relaxation. You can even get the break you need in your stream of thoughts to give you a new sense of perspective or to make a better choice.
Don’t have time for it? The good news is that it doesn’t take a long time.If you can’t go into the mindful space for five or six or seven minutes, go into it for two or three or four minutes. If you can do it for, say, 10 minutes all the better.
That mindful space can add significantly to your quality of life. So try it out – see what it’s like.
My 15-lesson mindfulness course, online, can help how to enter the mindfulness space more easily and how to practise many other aspects of mindfulness. Payment is by donation. More details.
Page image is by Joshua Jen on Unsplash
We can’t always have something to celebrate for ourselves when our emotional mood is low. But taking pleasure in the good fortune of other people can help lift the gloom. It is, if you like, a way to light a candle in the darkness.
This often neglected approach is part of the philosophy behind mindfulness. Mindfulness, as we practice it today, is derived from Buddhist philosophy and one traditional Buddhist approach, called Mudita, expresses this idea.
Positive Empathy
In Western psychology it is called positive empathy. Empathy means appreciating or understanding or sensing how another person feels. Often we bring this into play when we sense that another person is suffering.
In positive empathy, or Mudita, we bring our awareness to another person’s happiness, joy or pleasure. We then allow ourselves to share that happiness.
Reward centres
We know from research that taking pleasure in another person’s happiness and wishing them well activates reward centres in the brain so that we ourselves feel rewarded.
Cultivating joy has always been a somewhat unacknowledged part of Buddhist philosophy. One way to cultivate that the joy, especially when there isn’t much of it in your own day, is to feel joyful for someone else’s good fortune.
Try this:
Call to mind someone you know and like and think of that person receiving good news or in some other way having an experience that brings them happiness. Let your awareness rest on their happiness for a little while. Say silently to them, Be happy, be well. Now think of the fact that people all over the world are experiencing moments of happiness just now. They also have unpleasant experiences, just like you, but right now they’re having a moment of happiness. Now say silently to them, Be happy, be well.
Try repeating this practice for a few minutes a few times a day. it’s an act of friendship towards other people that will also benefit you.
It’s also a form of compassion towards other people and of self compassion.
To build on this:
My online course True Friend, on self-compassion will introduce you to this and other ways to help you feel better about yourself as well as others. Payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all.
This question can bring you straight into the practice of mindfulness – so long as you don’t answer it.
By asking the question, you step out of habitual responses for that moment – out of the wandering mind and preoccupations in which we all spend a good deal of time.
When I ask the question I see fairly quickly that I am welcoming the moment or pushing it away or wanting it to go on for longer or feeling irritated or one of any number of attitudes or qualities.
Hardly aware
It seems our attitude to the moment can be something we are hardly aware of – yet it colours other people’s experience of us (grumpy vs happy for instance) as well as our own mood.
Why not answer the question? Because you ask the question only in order to come out of that light trance. If you need to change the quality you are bringing to the moment you will realise this instantly, in my experience, and will alter your approach without needing to analyse.
The experience I am having
By the way, when I say ‘this moment’ I’m really saying ‘the experience that I am having right now.’ So a longer version of the question would be “What quality am I bringing to the experience I’m having right now?”
One could say the question is another way of saying ‘Wake up!’ And mindfulness practice aims to keep us awake to our experience and to what we are adding to it.
So the question, “What quality am I bringing to this moment?” can bring us straight into the heart of mindfulness practice.
My 15-lesson Easy Mindfulness online course can enable you to bring many mindfulness practices to your daily life and to learn what mindfulness is and why it’s a good idea to practise it. Payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more
Image by Ahmed Zayan from Unsplash
A key aspect of self-preoccupation is the tendency to judge everything in reference to ourselves. I call it Radio Me Me Me. Suppose you hear that it’s going to rain for a day and a night in your city of one million people. Instantly your mind turns what this means for you, specifically. Will those clothes I hung out on the line get to dry before the rain? I wish I had got that roof looked at. And so on.
But it’s more insidious when you’re wondering: What does the team really think about me at work? If I finish at 5:30 to take care of my child, what will my colleagues think about that? Do people think I’m a bad parent because I put my child into childcare? Why haven’t I got further in my career anyway?
Self preoccupation pulls us out of the present moment, adds to our anxiety and can also be a feature of depression.
Turning down the volume
The good news is that the practice of mindfulness helps to turn down the volume on Radio Me Me Me.
When our minds wander they switch on Radio Me Me Me.
Two particular structures of the brain (called the medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex) are involved in this activity. Mindfulness practice can actually reduce activity in these areas and therefore turn down the volume on Radio Me Me me.
The alarm centre
As you can imagine, the “alarm centre” of the brain, called the amygdala, can also become quite active when you are preoccupied with yourself in a negative way. Mindfulness practices such as re-focusing on your breathing or on an activity such as walking calm down the amygdala.
When you switch off Radio Me Me Me, and instead step into direct experience, life becomes simpler. If, when I’m collecting my child from the playschool, I switch from my preoccupation with plans and with tomorrow’s meeting to direct experience of my child, I am being mindful and (usually!) experience less stress. If I’m late for a meeting I can switch from ‘awfulising’ about it to the direct experience of ringing or texting ahead and then put my focus on getting there safely.
How to turn it down
To spend less time wrapped up in self preoccupation and to turn Radio Me Me Me way down:
– Commit to returning as often as you can from the wandering of your mind to your direct experience.
– Build some deliberate periods of mindfulness practice, such as mindfulness of breathing or of walking into your days. Even a few minutes a day makes a difference.
This article is a shortened version of a lesson in my Bring Mindfulness to Work online course which is available again from September 2022 (let me know at pomorain@yahoo.com if you want me to notify you when it’s available) .
Image by Israa Ali
Accept how things are to change how things are
Acceptance can sometimes feel like it’s a rather passive approach to take to things. But in fact sometimes acceptance is the first step towards fighting for change.
For example, if you accept that you have, say an addiction, that act of acceptance is the first step towards fighting that addiction and doing something about it.
Health condition or relationship
Or if you accept that you have a health condition that you really didn’t want to accept, but now you accept it, you are far more likely than to do what’s necessary. You are more likely to work towards a cure or to manage the condition in ways that allow you the maximum choices in your life with that condition.
This is probably more important than ever now in the era of Long Covid but of course people have always been having to accept and deal with adverse health issues.
You could say the same about a relationship you’re in that’s causing you distress or about a situation at work that’s getting you down. Acceptance can be the first step towards searching for a solution.
Denial – never a good idea
Denial is never a good idea when it comes to important matters that we would be better off dealing with. Denial of a health condition, for instance, just postpones the day when you can do something about it.
So acceptance, however reluctant you may be about it, can be very empowering and that’s one of the most important of life lessons.
This Daily Bell might also help:
You don’t get to build without clearing away rubble. Sometimes, to build your future you need to clear away emotional rubble. What do you need to accept or forgive? Maybe not everything can be accepted or forgiven but a lot can. That clearing away allows you to live more in present moments than in your head.
Acceptance is a key aspect of mindfulness (sometimes think it’s the most important part of it) and you can learn more about all aspects of mindfulness in my 15 lesson online course Easy Mindfulness (pay by donation, so it’s affordable to all). Find out more here.
Page image is by Arjun Babu on Unsplash
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
That’s an attitude I really like from a Japanese mindfulness based approach. called constructive living.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no
Are you successful? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Are you a happy person? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Are you a good partner? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Softer judgments
I think that the use of that phrase helps to soften our judgments of ourselves as human beings who make mistakes and don’t get it right all the time. So remember it and try it out.
Does it work? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.
My True Friend self compassion online course can help you see yourself in a more tolerant ay. It’s an online course and payment is by donation so it’s affordable to all. Learn more
Page image Johnathan Kaufman on Unsplash
Mindfulness is made up of awareness of the present moment and acceptance.
Acceptance means many things but we can see it as
- not struggling against experiences that you can’t win against
- or that are not worth the effort.
Something that is over and done with it is an example of an experience you can’t win against. We fail to accept such experiences by going over and over them in our minds. This can bring us a great deal of emotional pain sometimes for many years. When you accept the experience it doesn’t mean you approve of it. It means you let it be, that you are no longer fighting a battle that is over and done with.
Something that is not worth the effort might be red traffic lights on the way to work, a late delivery of an item that isn’t really all that important or your teenager’s untidy bedroom.
Acceptance not only saves us a lot of emotional energy but is sometimes necessary for the sake of our relationships. People in long-term relationships have various differences that are not going to change and the capacity to accept these differences could spell the difference between a long and satisfying relationship or a short one. (Some differences, of course, are ‘deal breakers’ and long term relationships cannot survive them in any satisfactory way- for example domestic violence.)
If we accept that we have an addiction then we are more likely to do something about it. Very often the road to recovery begins with acceptance.
Acceptance is not about surrendering to what you should not surrender to and it is also not about putting up “walk all over me sign”. It is about a more skilful way of living your life, of saving your energy for what you can actually influence and of letting those things be that it is better to let be.
My online course Easy Mindfulness will teach you more about acceptance and about all aspects of mindfulness.
Michael Grehan 29/8/2016 09:27:19 pm
What a brilliant 3 minutes on ACCEPTANCE. As it happens, I’m struggling with accepting an inevitable episode in my life as a senior citizen.
Many thanks Padraig.
PS I’ll be keeping an eye out for any more videos on acceptance.
ReplyMary Maume 17/10/2016 10:48:54 am
I must say Padraig that the few minutes helped me to put aside worries that I cannot do anything about and allowed me to be still and be present to all the wonderful things that I can enjoy in my surroundings.
Accepting things that we cannot change gives us serenity of being able to tolerate the pain or misfortune without the added bitterness or blame that is destructive.
So thank you for those words that help us to live life as it is, not as we often wish it should be. When we cultivate this,we can enjoy the beauty around us and the people who make our lives worthwhile.
ReplyCheryl moreno 22/2/2017 11:32:03 am
Thank you so much for the free instruction i have a disease which doesnt allow me to access your courses but your free online daily posts are allowing me to work on a debilitating childhood love and kisses cheryl
ReplyMike Mcgee 20/11/2016 02:29:49 pm
Wonderful. Wonderful. A good pocket tool to carry around. Will use in my daily activities. Thanks.
Replymary murphy 30/1/2017 12:42:42 am
a great video and found it beneficial
ReplyTeresa flavin 20/5/2017 09:37:50 am
Wonderful piece of advice.I felt an instant calm listening to this video and how much sense it all made.Will definitely use it a my daily mantra.Many thanks for all your helpful advise and knowledge
ReplyTherese 26/5/2017 01:35:28 pm
Just sitting in the sun 
listening to you speak about acceptance…. it made such sense to me, as in the past when I did nt accept something it felt like going against the grain. Thank you for your calming way.
Hopefully my practice of mindfullness will grow stronger.
Therese Mulreany
Pauline 23/9/2017 12:12:11 pm
Acceptance other half of Mindfulness Difficult for me to let go as u say doesn’t mean u approve or surrender to it makes sense Thank u for video help
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