Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World

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

Book: Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World Read Free
Author: Mark Williams
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your mind to recall a host of related memories. But it’s not just places that trigger memories. The world is full of such triggers. Has a song ever sparked a cascade of emotionally charged memories? Or the smell of flowers or freshly baked bread?
     
    Similarly, our mood can act as an internal context that is every bit as powerful as a visit to an old vacation destination or the sound of a favorite tune. A flicker of sadness, frustration or anxiety can bring back unsettling memories, whether you want them or not. Soon you can be lost in gloomy thoughts and negative emotions. And often you don’t know where they came from—they just appeared, seemingly from thin air. You can become bad-tempered, irritable or sad without really knowingwhy. You’re left wondering,
Why am I in a bad mood?
Or,
Why do I feel so sad and tired today?
     
    You can’t stop the triggering of unhappy memories, self-critical thoughts and judgmental ways of thinking—but you can stop what happens next. You can stop the spiral from feeding off itself and triggering the next cycle of negative thoughts. You can stop the cascade of destructive emotions that can end up making you unhappy, anxious, stressed, irritable or exhausted.
     
    Mindfulness meditation teaches you to recognize memories and damaging thoughts as they arise. It reminds you that they are memories. They are like propaganda,
they are not real.
They are not
you
. You can learn to observe negative thoughts as they arise, let them stay a while and then simply watch them evaporate before your eyes. And when this occurs, an extraordinary thing can happen: a profound sense of happiness and peace fills the void.
     
    Mindfulness meditation does this by harnessing an alternative way in which our minds can relate to the world. Most of us know only the analytical side of the mind; the process of thinking, judging, planning and trawling through past memories while searching for solutions. But the mind is also
aware.
We do not just
think
about things, we are also aware that we are thinking. And we don’t need language to stand as an intermediary between us and the world; we can also experience it directly through our senses. We are capable of directly sensing things like the sounds of birds, the scent of beautiful flowers and the sight of a loved one’s smile. And we know with the heart as well as the head. Thinking is not all there is to conscious experience. The mind is bigger and more encompassing than thought alone.
     
    Meditation creates greater mental clarity; seeing things with pure open-hearted awareness. It’s a place—a vantage point—from which we can witness our own thoughts and feelings as they arise. It takes us off the hair trigger that compels us to react to things as soon as they happen. Our inner self—the part that is innately happy and at peace—is no longer drowned out by the noise of the mind crunching through problems.
     
    Mindfulness meditation encourages us to become more patient and compassionate with ourselves and to cultivate open-mindedness and gentle persistence. These qualities help free us from the gravitational pull of anxiety, stress and unhappiness by reminding us what science has shown: that it’s OK to stop treating sadness and other difficulties as problems that need to be solved. We shouldn’t feel bad about “failing” to fix them. In fact, that’s often the wisest course of action because our habitual ways of solving such difficulties often make them worse.
     
    Mindfulness does not negate the brain’s natural desire to solve problems. It simply gives us the time and space to choose the
best
ways of solving them. Some problems are best dealt with emotionally—we select the solution that “feels” best. Others need to be slogged through logically. Many are best dealt with intuitively, creatively. Some are best left alone for now.
     

Happiness awaits
     
    Mindfulness
operates on two levels. First and foremost is the core mindfulness

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