Explore how to fully inhabit life when it’s good and even when it’s not so good. Learn how mindfulness can help you meet each moment of life with more curiosity, openness and clarity.

When things in our lives are stressful or uncomfortable, the frequent response is to do something to avoid feeling discomfort. Tuning out in the form of distraction and procrastination generally do the trick. Tuning out to avoid discomfort doesn’t make it go away. The underlying feelings are still there, fueling unnecessary activity on relatively unimportant things. 

One of the greatest gifts of mindfulness practice is the ability to more fully inhabit our lives by staying present and tuned in even when life is uncomfortable. Mindfulness includes meeting each moment of our lives with curiosity, openness, and clarity.

7 Days of Tuning In

We’re all familiar with the moment when wedding vows say “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health...” It’s about making a commitment to staying present, engaged, and loving for the full range of experiences shared with a life partner. This takes daily, and even moment-to-moment attention and kind effort. The same is true about our relationship with ourselves.

In Good Times and in Bad Times

Awareness

Curious Observation

Cognitive Flexibility

Attitudes of Mindfulness

Focus

Procrastination is about avoiding a task that seems unpleasant for any number of reasons. It usually involves imaging that the task will be difficult, overwhelming, time consuming, or simply boring. While it makes perfect sense that we would want to avoid doing something we anticipate will be unpleasant, avoiding generally just makes the task bigger and wastes our valuable time.

One Step At A Time

Whether it’s the broccoli on your plate, your partner running late for dinner with your family, or difficult news, our tendency is to mentally and physically resist and push it or them away. We do this by not accepting the experience for what it is –already happened

It Is What It Is

What do you notice happening in your body when you think about something unpleasant? Imagine doing your least favorite task right now. Do you notice physical tension, thoughts about how you don’t like it? Is there some emotional reaction of irritation or dread? We have a mind-body reaction to experience we associate as unpleasant, which likely involves habits of trying to avoid the unpleasantness.

Checking Out?

We’ve all heard the cliché, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. There’s actually a useful lesson here about resilience. While most people don’t feel grateful for the unpleasant moments, at least not in the immediate moment, learning how to can make a bit difference. In order to be resilient we need to learn something not only from being in the circumstance itself, but also our inner capacity to grow from it -to bounce back and find some meaning in it

Make Lemonade

As a society, we’ve become intolerant of boredom and find it to be an unpleasant and unnecessary experience. In the past, having time without anything to entertain us was normal. It would be a normal part of the day. However, our habit of checking our phones the second we’re free, has trained our brains to constantly seek this stimulation.

Breaking The Busy Addiction

Another way of thinking about this is that we have a tendency to either consciously or unconsciously believe the grass is always greener somewhere else. We have an incredible ability to judge the experiences we’re having as good or bad, right or wrong, like it or don’t like it. This is an efficiency of our brain to be able to categorize our experiences.

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