Mindfulness: What Is It, Why You Want It, and How to Get It

Do you want to feel calmer, more emotionally even… more balanced? I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want this, and if you’re reading my blog, I’m sure you do too.

Many people tout a regular meditation practice as the key to gaining this equanimity that we crave. The space between the stimulus and response. You’ll hear many powerful people and thought leaders list meditation as a pivotal step in their morning routines. But the traditional picture of meditation – sitting for minutes to hours on a cushion in silence, for example – has always seemed intimidating and unattainable to me.

My blog post on practical, approachable meditation techniques from last fall introduced the main methods that I’ve used to “meditate”. But what if there were an even easier way? One that involves an extremely simple process that you can do anywhere at any time?

Mental Fitness

Being mindful is something we can cultivate. Likewise, there’s no endpoint to the practice of mindfulness; you’re never done, and you’ll never be perfect at it. We’ll always be chasing an asymptote, kind of like strength training or rock climbing or the practice of medicine, really…

Think of your brain like a group of “muscles” to exercise. I learned this analogy through the Positive Intelligence framework, which divides mental fitness into three separate paths:

• Strengthening the logical, empathic and creative “muscles” of your brain (your Sage)
• Weakening the primitive, survival muscles of your brain (your Saboteurs)
• Strengthening your self-command muscles through frequent mindfulness exercises (“PQ reps”)

I recently completed the Stanford University research grant program for coaches that teaches this framework, and I’m about to begin the advanced certification. And while I’ve personally tried many different techniques for mindfulness and meditation over the years, I can honestly say that using this framework over the past two months has completely changed my brain. While I love the self-knowledge aspect of the Sage and Saboteurs, the thing that really got me excited about the framework is the self-command part.

The Actual Reps

So what do mental fitness reps, or PQ reps, look like? It sounds super simple, and it is. You apply a laser-like focus on one of your senses for as little as 1-2 minutes. For example, you could actively pay attention to one of the following:

• the weight of your feet on the ground
• the feeling of the soles of your feet as you stand, or your legs/butt as you sit in a chair
• the temperature of your morning coffee as you sip
• the colors, shapes, and textures of an object or viewpoint in front of you
• the farthest away sound you can currently hear
• the warmth of water as you wash your hands
• the feeling of rubbing two fingers together
• the temperature of your breath as it enters and exits your nostrils
• the feeling of your chest rising and falling as you breathe

After you pay attention to one of these things for 1-2 minutes, you can shift to another and build up your time. Or you can just stop there for the time being. These exercises can be done with eyes open or eyes closed, anywhere, anytime. The beauty is that people around you will likely not even notice you doing them! Thoughts will inevitably come into your head as you do this, but you just notice them and go back to focusing on the sensation.

If you exercise your self-command muscle on a daily basis, your ablity to apply it when needed (like when you’re feeling triggered or emotionally hijacked) will increase. With practice, your brain will rewire new connections and paths. This greatly appeals to me as someone who’s always looking for practical, real-life tools. I’ve suffered myself from accumulating all the knowledge and then feeling unable to apply it in the heat of the moment.

Letting Go of Perfection

As I mentioned when I previously wrote about meditation, mental fitness doesn’t have to look like your idealized impression of a quiet room, embroidered cushion, and completely empty brain. In fact, the goal is not to completely rid our brain of all thoughts; it’s actually to recognize and let go of thoughts as they occur. If you actually notice when you’re interrupted by thought, you’re actually succeeding! I often do 5 minute sessions a couple times a day, and during a typical 5 minute session, my mind will wander to a thought about 5 times.

“As soon as you start to see the chaos of your own mind, that’s the first step to not being owned by it.”

Dan Harris, mindfulness/meditation expert and founder of 10% Happier

Embrace the messiness of life while you’re trying this; it doesn’t have to be perfect. One day, I played a guided mental fitness recording in the car with my 5 year old daughter. The voice came over the speaker: “Close your eyes.” I could have aborted it and gone back to radio commerials or Top 40… but instead I kept it on and made sure to tell my daughter that I wasn’t going to close my eyes while driving! When we settled in to noticing our breath, I glanced in the rearview mirror. She had her eyes closed, but she would squint one open every so often and look around in an “Are we done yet?” sort of way. Yet when the recording was actually over, I asked her how she felt.

“Good,” she said. “Relaxed.”

Me too, even while driving in traffic.

WINNING.

The Effects

Now that I’ve been doing daily PQ Reps for more than 2 months, I really do notice that I’m calmer at times when I would have normally felt my neck get hot and emotions take over. I’m even starting to automatically do self-command mini-exercises during disagreements with my husband – like I’ll feel my feet on the floor or rub two fingers together and feel the sensation. Or I’ll take a few deep breaths before responding. He has noticed that I’m calmer. And my daughter notices that I’m calmer (“Mom, you used to get very emotional before you started doing these PQ reps”).

MORE WINNING.

If you’d like to try a guided self-command exercise session, there are 5 and 10 minute sample versions here. If you’re interested in the training I completed, adapted for anyone and not just coaches, you can find information about it here. As I go through the advanced training, I’ll be able to offer people free spots in the basic course, so stay tuned for that!

Could you see paying attention to one of your senses as a mindfulness exercise? Try it using one of my examples, and let me know what you think!

(A version of this post appeared on the website Doctors on Social Media. You can read the updated article here.)