Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Read Free Page A

whole day or far, far longer. Recent scientific discoveries have shown how these normal emotional fluxes can lead to long-term unhappiness, acute anxiety and even depression. But, more importantly, these discoveries have also revealed the path to becoming a happier and more “centered” person, by showing that:
     
     
 
when you start to feel a little sad, anxious or irritable, it’s not the mood that does the damage but how you react to it.
     
     
the effort of trying to free yourself from a bad mood or bout of unhappiness—of working out why you’re unhappy and what you can do about it—often makes things worse. It’s like being trapped in quicksand—the more you struggle to be free, the deeper you sink.
     
     
    As soon as we understand how the mind works, it becomes obvious why we all suffer from bouts of unhappiness, stress and irritability from time to time.
     
    When you begin to feel a little unhappy, it’s natural to try and think your way out of the
problem
of being unhappy. You try to establish what is making you unhappy and then find a solution. In the process, you can easily dredge up past regrets and conjure up future worries. This further lowers your mood. It doesn’t take long before you start to feel bad for failing to discover a way of cheering yourself up. The “inner critic,” which lives inside us all, begins to whisper that it’s your fault, that you should try harder, whatever the cost. You soon start to feel separated from the deepest and wisest parts of yourself. You get lost in a seemingly endless cycle of recrimination and self-judgment; finding yourself at fault for not meeting your ideals, for not being the person you wish you could be.
     
    We get drawn into this emotional quicksand because our state of mind is intimately connected with memory. The mind is constantly trawling through memories to find those that echo our current emotional state. For example, if you feel threatened, the mind instantly digs up memories of when you felt endangered in the past, so that you can spot similarities and find a way of escaping. It happens in an instant, before you’re even aware of it. It’s a basic survival skill honed by millions of years of evolution. It’s incredibly powerful and almost impossible to stop.
     
    The same is true with unhappiness, anxiety and stress. It is normal to feel a little unhappy from time to time, but sometimes a few sad thoughts can end up triggering a cascade of unhappy memories, negative emotions and harsh judgments. Before long, hours or even days can be colored by negative self-critical thoughts such as,
What’s wrong with me? My life is a mess. What will happen when they discover how useless I really am?
     
    Such self-attacking thoughts are incredibly powerful, and once they gather momentum they are almost impossible to stop. One thought or feeling triggers the next, and then thenext … Soon, the original thought—no matter how fleeting—has gathered up a raft of similar sadnesses, anxieties and fears and you’ve become enmeshed in your own sorrow.
     
    In a sense, there is nothing surprising about this. Context has a huge effect on our memory. A few years ago, psychologists discovered that if deep-sea divers memorized a list of words on a beach, they tended to forget them when they were under water, but were able to remember them again when they were back on dry land. It worked the other way round too. Words memorized under water were more easily forgotten on the beach. The sea and the beach were powerful contexts for memory. 11
     
    You can see the same process working in your own mind too. Have you ever revisited a favorite childhood vacation destination? Before the visit you probably had only hazy memories of it. But once you got there—walking down the streets, taking in the sights, sounds and smells—the memories came flooding back. You may have felt excited, wistful or perhaps even a little bit in love. Returning to that context encouraged