Presents mindfulness is as simple as bringing our awareness to the prison.
That's it.
If you're walking in the street, pay attention to that experience.
If you're having lunch focused on having lunch, if you're arguing with your friend, we're embracing
afterward, be fully in that experience.
Sometimes when we learn what mindfulness is, we say, I already know that I'm walking in the street.
I know I'm having a lunch.
How is that supposed to be helpful?
But mindfulness is more than knowing that we are doing something.
It's about going deeper, intentionally, cultivating a connection with our experience.
We don't just walk in the street.
We notice the color of the sky, the feel of the ground on our feet, the sounds around us.
It's opening our awareness to elements of our experience that we normally miss.
At the same time, a mindful approach doesn't require that we do anything in addition to what we are
engaging in.
If we are running, we're running.
If we're driving, we're driving.
People sometimes protest that being mindful in certain situations would be distracting, even dangerous.
In fact, the opposite is true.
We are safer and less distracted when our attention is fixated on what we are doing.
Simply being present in our lives accomplishes two things at once.
First, it allows us to get more out of what's happening so we don't sleepwalk through our lives.
We can discover the richness in our reality, even the most mundane activities.
Second, when we are present, we are not ruminating about the past or fearing the future, which is
a big part of why mindfulness practice reduces and anxiety and depression.
So much of our unhappiness arises from things that have nothing to do with what's real.
And this moment, for example, I was walking home from the train one evening and started thinking about
my children's health.
Before I knew it, I was imagining a tragic, tragic scenario in which one of them was gravely sick
and I began to feel anxious and downcast as as though it were already happening.
When I called myself and came back to the prison, I noticed what was real then lengthening the night,
the birds flying the green grass and the blue sky.
My kids were healthy as far as I knew.
I didn't have to live in my tragic fantasy.
It was hard not to smile with that realization as I headed home to see them.