The question posed above is a good example of how our ‘internal dialogues’ can negatively impact our lives. How can mindfulness help with this? Mindfulness is the ability to stay present moment by moment and observe experience. However, it seems to be interpreted differently by different people. For me, mindfulness is not just about watching the breath (or another one-pointed state of concentration), but includes observing experience and learning about our minds. This learning is different from a more psychological or analytical learning, this learning is a quiet attentive observing, more of an intuitive presence to our experience. It is not based in thought. This ability to intuitively observe is developed through calming the mind through exercises such as observing the breath.

Once we start to observe our experience (including our thoughts, feelings, perceptions, body sensations), we start to get an intuitive sense of how we want to keep away from the unpleasant and move towards the pleasant. And how this constant movement in the mind, if out of our awareness, leads to suffering. The unpleasant can include not wanting to be around someone who irritates us but also the more subtler experience of emotions. We start to learn how not being assertive, for example, can lead to us holding anger and how this leads to more ruminative thinking. It may sound simplistic, but the ability to observe consciousness without analyzing or taking it personally has a profound effect on the mind. We start to “let go” of thinking. We start to get more space around experience and have more choices in how we meet experience in the moment. We start to realize that it is not the experience that matters but how we respond to that experience. And we are more able to stay with difficult experiences and start to undo some of our habitual ways of reacting. The result is generally an increased sense of freedom and contentment.