Mindfulness Should Be More than Meditation — It’s a Way of Living

Because to fully benefit from mindfulness, we should view it as a lifestyle, rather than a habit.

We’ve all been forced to slow down this year. Experiencing the pandemic, despite the devastation it has caused, could be viewed as offering us a global remedy for our current way of living.

For decades, we have been obsessed with instant excess — fuelled by our fast-paced world. At the click of a button, if we want to, we can have anything. Social media, whether we like it or not, has become a key focus of our daily lives, which only feeds into this cycle of materialism. We are exposed to more, and therefore, end up wanting more.

The neverending cycle of immediacy and excess suddenly came to a halt back in March, when the world was thrust into a global pandemic. With the closure of retail shops, restaurants, cafes, markets, shopping centres, cinemas, and every other leisure facility that you can think of, the world was forced to stop and contain themselves with what they already had.

In other words — it forced us to slow down — but whether we have become more mindful as human beings, is another matter altogether.

What is Mindfulness? Is It Just a Buzzword?

The practice of mindfulness has become popular in modern, Western, discourse and associated within apps such as Calm and Headspace, that promote taking out 5 or 10 minutes in your day to meditate and be at one with yourself.

Meditation is known for connotations with religion and spirituality — as the practice is rooted in Buddhist and Hindu teachings. However, for it to have a more significant, long term impact on your life, it should be practised as a lifestyle, rather than a quick solution. There are benefits to meditation— but when the timer is over, mindfulness is often taken out of the equation.

But what is mindfulness? And what does it aim to do? How can it be a remedy for coping with our fast-paced world?

According to Psychology Today, mindfulness by definition should be viewed as an “open attention to the present” by “observing one’s thoughts and feelings without judging them” it forces us to accept whatever worries or anxieties we have and let them be. This experience and adopting a mindset of self-acceptance in the long term can help to protect against anxiety and depression by gaining a sense of perspective.

But mindfulness is more than just meditation — it is the culmination of several practices, approaching them in a specific way, and incorporating them as part of a long term lifestyle.

Why We Should View Mindfulness As a Way of Living

Mindfulness, in the short term, can be achieved with the process of meditation or similar ritual. Still, for it to truly benefit our lives and take away the consumption mindset that we have become conditioned with, it needs to be incorporated as part of a lifestyle, in the same way, that veganism, or minimalism, aims to achieve.

Mindfulness is not achieved by a quick solution, nor a 10-minute daily meditation practice. It takes time, commitment, and the rituals of everyday life have to be in tune with it for it to produce long term benefits.

Drew Vetting of Columbia University defines mindfulness as:

“a process of bringing a certain quality of attention to moments by moments of experience”

Thus, he defines it as an active, plural practice — suggesting that it can not be achieved in one sitting. It’s the culmination of actions within our every day lives that can make a difference overall — and these will be the ones that crucially, convert our mindsets to live simpler lives. Therefore, it is imperative that although we recognise the value of rituals such as meditation, we also realise that mindfulness is a way of life.

During this pandemic, I have not been meditating but have been practising mindfulness through a variety of ways. And these ways have their origins in everyday life. They are things we probably all do every day for long periods, rather than snippets here and there.

The pandemic has disrupted peoples’ lives and the world in so many ways; in its aftermath, it will cause us to have our reckoning with our lives. What we want to achieve in the future, how we want to live our lives and the people we want to be in it. It may shift our mindsets — but adopting mindfulness as an approach to living, will ensure its benefits will last. Here are three ways this can be demonstrated, as part of daily life.

Cooking Stimulates the Mind and Forces you to Focus on the Present

First of all, being able to cook from scratch regularly is a privilege. It takes up time and relies on planning — which some people, do not have. However, if you can cook from scratch and if you want to, it can be used as a method in which to achieve mindfulness as part of everyday life.

Cooking from scratch is naturally time-consuming, and is often done by one person. It’s reliant on timings, precision and hands on action. You can’t chop an onion whilst scrolling through Instagram — or can you? The point is — the act of chopping, peeling, dicing, pureeing, sautéing and baking — forces a person to have a heightened awareness of the present. When we give it our full attention, we become attuned to each hiss, boil and burn. We get lost in the process, and cooking becomes a means of escape from the world around us.

Cooking for any amount of time — but preferably longer — can force us to focus on the present moment, which is what mindfulness aims to achieve. Cooking can easily be approached as a chore if you let it, but thinking of it as an opportunity for calamity, contemplation and stillness — can help put mindfulness and being okay with the present — at its focus.

Cooking is something (as humans), we are more likely to do every day; thus when approached with the right mindset, it can be infinitely valuable. If we start to view mindfulness as a lifestyle — we have to start approaching it within aspects of our everyday life. Otherwise, it becomes a fluke, a second thought or something we miss off of our to-do lists.

Cardio Based Exercise can Stimulate Mental Strength

The association between good mental health and exercise are well known — and even recommended by doctors in moderation to build a healthy lifestyle. Due to the release of endorphins, it is often cited as a way to release stress, anxiety and depression.

For many, it can be a method in which to cope through difficult periods in our life — including grief and other personal struggles. Changing our relationship towards exercise by banishing our expectations can help to improve mental strength.

Take running for example — the exercise in itself is meditative. Putting one foot in front of the other, concentrating on the regulation of your breath and the gentle swing of each arm, over and over, takes the body into a rhythmic, meditative state. This process, when observed with the right mindset, can force us to be more mindful. When running, the pain and difficulties of the exercise itself can force us to focus on one thing — the pain. In this process, our anxieties, concerns and worries about tomorrow can be forgotten.

It forces us to focus on the present moment right in front of us — to not lose control our breathing, and keep placing one foot in front of the other. And walking can do this too — although it is not always as strenuous. Cardio based exercise, in particular, has a rhythmic quality to it due to its natural repetitiveness. It can be an opportunity to gain perspective, re-shift the mind and force the person into the present. However, to do this, one must alter their perception of exercise.

It can be easy to focus on the stats, calories burned, distance covered, and whether you improved upon last time — in a way, that’s what we are tuned to do. However, viewing exercise — particularly running — solely as an opportunity to move, be with yourself and take yourself away from the problems that are plaguing your mind, enables negative connotations to dissipate.

Removing the expectations remove the ability for us to be disappointed. In the short term, it can make us more likely to exercise and improve our relationship to it, and in the long term, more able to adopt mindfulness as part of everyday life. It becomes a type of lifestyle and way of living.

Journaling Lays the Groundwork for Being in the Present

Writing, like running, is another meditative act. It’s rhythmic, repetitive and the physical process of writing something down is a form of mental release. The idea of “Morning pages” is intended to be a means of debunking all the worries, anxieties and concerns built up overnight or in the early morning, so that you can start your day fresh by attuning yourself to what’s going on in the present.

Doing this each morning, can free your mind of anxieties and can help you to approach daily life with greater ease and calamity. Writing in any capacity is good, but the physical process of writing — at least for me — promotes the feeling of things being removed for my mind and taken away by committing them down to paper.

In the process, you shouldn’t be self-editing what you are writing — you should write everything that comes down to mind immediately and not look back. Through it, you can learn about what triggers your anxiety or low mood and can incorporate solutions to counter it in the future. Viewing it as a bit of “me time” before the day begins lays the perfect groundwork for being able to focus on the present.

Additionally, if you are a writer, this is a great way to warm up your mind before you start properly committing your pen to paper. It’s a form of introspection where you don’t have to worry about impressing, but you can just be yourself. Journaling your thoughts, concerns and ideas, is a way of confronting them by committing them to paper — but importantly — you don’t have to say them out loud or admit them to anyone else.

This promotes one of the central ideas behind mindfulness — self-acceptance — as soon as you start to acknowledge these thoughts, the sooner you can make peace with them, and start living your life in the present. It forces you to confront yourself— before all the craziness of life gets too much.

To Sum Up

• A state of mindfulness cannot be achieved via short term solutions, such as daily meditations. Rather it’s about approaching day to day life in a new way
• Many everyday tasks (such as cooking, exercising and writing) can help you achieve a greater awareness of the present
• Choosing mindfulness as a way to live — rather than a solution to cope with your life — will give you a long term appreciation of the present

Mindfulness can be achieved via many forms. Traditionally, it is expressed or sought after in the form of meditation — and it works, for some people. But often, the benefits of meditation are short-lived. They can focus the person in those ten minutes, or a few hours after, but it doesn’t promote an all-round mindset shift.

To experience the long term benefits of mindfulness that we all deserve, we need to approach our daily lives with a focus on the present and the action in hand. In this way, we can gain a state of presentism, take control of our future worries and live our lives in the best way that we can.

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