Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps with issues you can’t fix, also

06/07/2022

It happens in life that we experience stress and anxiety about issues we can’t fix – pandemic, war and climate change for instance; on a more personal level, health, relationship and financial issues cannot always be fixed.

For instance, none of us can dictate the course of the pandemic (even still) or make it go away for sure. If your job is under threat because of it, you will certainly be anxious and probably stressed because of it.

What is the point of mindfulness in such a situation?

Simple mindfulness

Simple mindfulness practices can help to lower that level of stress even if it can’t create serenity for you.

Returning from fearful thoughts to awareness of your breathing or of your body, for instance, can lower the degree of stress, help you to get a better night’s sleep and bring you some clarity of mind. Deliberately paying attention to your breathing has been found to reduce stress in the emotional system.

Cultivating acceptance – which is part of mindfulness – of what you have to accept can also lower stress and help you to see more clearly what to do next. Even accepting uncertainty can help.

Blood pressure

Stress can trap you in a vicious circle of upsetting thoughts which, in turn, can generate new upsetting thoughts.

So even if mindfulness in these circumstances isn’t going to turn you into a serene buddha, if it brings the level of stress down from – to use a traffic light analogy – red to orange, that’s good for you.

And it’s easier to move from orange down to green, when circumstances allow, than to jump all the way from red to green.

This Daily Bell might also help:

Why does bringing calm awareness to the moment a few times a day matter? What good does it do? It calms the stress centres of the brain (paying attention to breathing has this effect), it stops you building up stressful thought after stressful thought and it makes a space in which to allow  positive feelings to arise. Try it now if you c

Try: For a few minutes observe your breath, especially your outbreath, and when your mind drifts, very quietly note that drifting and return to your outbreath.

Learn many simple mindfulness techniques with my 15-lesson online course, Easy Mindfulness

See also: Follow your breath, not your thoughts

Image by Gift Habeshaw


Padraig O'Morain

I have practised mindfulness since the late 1980s, have taught mindfulness throughout Ireland and in London, have demonstrated mindfulness on ITV, RTE and TV3 and have had books on mindfulness published in several countries and languages. I provide public and corporate courses. My latest book is "Daily Calm - 100 daily reminders to help you build the mindfulness habit." My aim is to make mindfulness easily accessible to people in their everyday lives.