
Mindfulness for beginners – A Guide of What Mindfulness is Not
I bet you asked yourself at least once What is Mindfulness?. But have you ever wondered what mindfulness is not?
Mental health may be achieved and preserved in many ways. It is not limited to the practices of sitting cross-legged on the floor or meditating in a calm hilly area. Basically, mindfulness is just a simple and effective mental health tool you can ever imagine.
It is more effective than those tools you are accustomed to or you may have to stumble into during your studies. An interesting fact is that it is free and readily accessible anytime and anywhere.
Many people around the world are drawn to find out the sweetness of mindfulness. However, there are several misconceptions tied around this wonderful mental health practice. This article seeks to demystify these misconceptions and you find these insights helpful.
What Mindfulness Is Not
1. Copying others
The standing out the meaning of mindfulness is definitely coming from Jon Kabat-Zinn who said that mindfulness is centered on giving yourself more time and seeking to find out who you truly are. Therefore, it goes without saying that the regular practice of mindfulness will increase our sense of awareness and compassion.
You become your own best friend as you learn more about yourself and build a good relationship with your thoughts and feelings. You also become more aware of your habits relating to those who are around you. It will teach you about what is happening in your environment.
2. Mindfulness is not a method
If you think mindfulness is an activity, then it not the actual concept. Actually, mindfulness is all about being and do not confuse it with ways of fixing problems. Even though, mindfulness can eliminate lifestyle challenges like; prolonged pain, stress, depression, and anxiety.
What mindfulness does? It makes you accept your challenges and teaches you how to solve them instead of making them go away. In other words, mindfulness is all about re-training your mind so that you can cope with everything that comes your way.
3. Mindfulness is not being forever calm
The greatest misconception about mindfulness is that people expect it to become a reason for calm, relaxation and peace. This perfectly explains why people will rather accept pleasant experiences and wish away unpleasant ones or mild ones. It is common for people to want something and when they don’t get it they become sad.
What comes to our minds during such instances is we’re doing it wrong or something is wrong. That is when many people start judging what they are going through or what happened before.
4. Mindfulness is free from religion
Unlike many cultures and religion which are known for certain norms that wake the awareness of the people about the current activities and inner self, mindfulness has no such cultures or rituals. These norms may include: Qigong, tai chi, meditation, prayer, and yoga. For instance, focusing on the present religious’ dynamics. It is a vital part of all the vibrant and mainstream religions of the world.
5. Mindfulness is not Science
Interestingly, science has a measure of the effects of mindfulness but not mindfulness in itself. It will rather assist to focus on the dynamics of mindfulness in a better way. Mindfulness is an art not a science and it requires the connection of an individual to attend the surrounding realities. Putting mindfulness into practice helps you recognize your owns self and being comfortable with your thoughts and feelings whether good or bad. This gives you a wide range of moments ranking from pleasant and informative to unpleasant and ugly.
6. It is not all about meditation only
We all know meditation as a practice that gives strength to mindfulness. Practicing a better mindfulness means that you have a good capacity to move forward. The more we stretch our brains through learning, the more they get better at doing whatever you are learning. Interesting, many people cannot afford the laxity of sitting down for just an hour a day meditating. What happens during the day is also part of training your brain. So, meditation is a vital and practicable part of mindfulness.
7. Mindfulness is not the elimination of thought
Mindfulness does not negate the thoughts; it is the ability to play around with our thoughts without doing anything with them. During mindfulness, you recognize your thoughts and learn how to set yourself free from them. This means you embrace your thoughts other than pushing them away. In the process, you learn how to relate your personal experiences to a mindful approach.
8. Mindfulness is not about perceptions
Mindfulness is not the explanation of your right or wrong perceptions; it is a way of finding the hidden realities and capacities of our brain. It is an admitted fact that our minds keep on working even when we sleep. Therefore, it is practically impossible to control it. The sequences of activities happening in our mind include the cycle of thinking and judging. The action mind acts on this sequence automatically even if they are not accurate or not true.
9. Mindfulness is not about Perfection
It is rightly said that ‘no one is perfect’. You can never have a perfectly satisfying job, house or you cannot be optimally balanced in your relationships. Excellence has links to the creation of the mind. This mental creation is a direct contrast to the reality of life which mindfulness seeks to address.
10. Mindfulness is not an instant solution
It is natural for human beings to seek a remedy to stress. It goes without saying that mindfulness really works but if the person is using the right strategy to approach the facts. Many recommendations have suggested that going with the long-term assessment on mindfulness will give you the best results.
Being brief, mindfulness is about focusing your mind but it is not limited to it.
You can take the example of a sniper who stays attentive and extremely focused while shooting. It means focusing your mind with curiosity about diverse facts which surround you.
You will be able to take better decisions when you will be aware of the fact that what mindfulness is exactly about. It is a practice of building awareness and delivering necessary pieces of information to yourself and to others.
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