3 Life-Changing Lessons I've Learned About Mindfulness Practice

To Help Mindfulness Beginners Stop Stress Before Its Out of Control and Become Resilient Amidst Any Challenge

Stress gets overwhelming.

Often, before we’re aware of it.

Fortunately, mindfulness has given me the tools to combat stress before it gets out of hand.

I’ve been able to cultivate:

• A quieter mind

• Steadier emotions

• Clearer thinking

All because I’ve dedicated myself to the practice.

However, as a beginner, it was difficult to stick with mindfulness.

Why?

• I desired immediate results

• I misunderstood its purpose

• I didn’t know how to apply it in daily life

In this newsletter, I’d like to discuss 3 revelations that helped me uproot those mental blocks.

My hope is they help you, too.

So you can stop stress in its tracks and give yourself control over how you respond to it.

Lesson 1: Mindfulness goes beyond meditation

Mindfulness is a practice for life.

It’s not just something you do for 20 minutes a day during formal meditation. It’s something you can practice any time, anywhere.

Here’s an interesting example.

When I went to the dentist to get teeth pulled, I practiced mindfulness.

I focused on my breathing as the oral surgeon yanked and twisted my wisdom teeth as they crackled out of my gums. Sure, I was numbed with Novacaine, but I sat there without much discomfort.

Oddly, it was a bit pleasant despite being a stressful situation.

But what does that have to do with your life?

Think about the moments in your life that trigger stress.

• Is it the moment you walk into work?

• Is it the constant doubt about your worthiness of existence?

• Is it the wondering of whether to stay or go in a relationship?

No matter what it may be, mindfulness can be applied.

Let’s use work as an example.

You know it’s a stress trigger, but you don’t know how to work with that. Perfect!

Here’s a simple way to apply mindfulness:

Just pay attention to your body and mind when you walk into work.

And notice…

• Does your heart rate elevate?

• Do you wish you were anywhere else but work?

• Does your mind start worrying about everything you have to do?

Why pay attention to these sensations?

They’re all stress signals.

An elevated heart rate is your body telling you you’re aroused. If that’s coupled by worrisome thoughts, that’s a double-signal to you that you’re in danger.

When you recognize you’re experiencing stress, you can do something about it.

It’s that moment of recognition that stops the stress from growing. In that moment of recognition, you can take conscious action to change your state of mind and emotion.

That conscious action can take you from states of stress to soothed in moments.

More on this with lesson two:

Lesson 2: It keeps me calm amidst life’s inevitable chaos

Life always changes.

No matter how comfortable we try to get, comfort is always short-lived. There will always be uncontrollable events popping up that trigger mental and emotional stress.

How has mindfulness prepared me for that?

I’ve learned how to respond to stress rather than react to it.

Instead of reacting in worry when something doesn’t go according to plan, I check in with my body and mind and take a few breaths to reassure myself that everything will be okay. Instead of reacting in anger when I’m wronged, I release it.

This has provided tremendous relief from difficult emotions.

Here’s another example recently from my life.

I was on the hunt for an apartment, but the person I was considering living with wasn’t much help. They didn’t fill out rental applications or look at any apartments with me.

Essentially, I was doing everything.

Then, when it came time to decide on an apartment, we disagreed.

The anger I was holding reached an apex. I was ready to burst out in a white-hot rage about how inconsiderate he was. But before I did that, I recognized that anger.

So instead of bursting out, I took some breaths and looked into my anger.

I understood that I felt unappreciated. I understood that I wished he would agree with me, so we could move into a beautiful apartment. I understood I had to accept that it might be better to live on my own.

All of that happened in mere moments.

And this is one of the main purposes of mindfulness

To become responsive rather than reactive.

The difference between responsiveness and reactiveness is the spaciousness between an event and the response.

As Viktor Frankl once said:

There is a space between stimulus and response, and in that space is our freedom.

In other words, if we can live in that space and respond rather than immediately react to aversive stimulation, we are practicing mindfulness. We are responding with wisdom rather than reacting without consciousness.

That’s the key.

And so is lesson 3:

Lesson 3: It's a practice FOR life, NOT to escape it

Jack Kornfield was once asked: “Doesn’t meditation isolate us from the world?”

His answer was beautiful. This is the paraphrased version:

Meditation can make us feel isolated. But that’s if we refuse to take what we’ve learned in practice and stay small in our separateness. But if we take what we learn through the practice and bring it into our lives, we get intimate with all things.

This is especially true for difficult times.

Recently, I suffered a life-altering injury.

I ruptured my Achilles on April 23rd, and life has been a complete 180.

I went from playing basketball four times a week, lifting weights twice a week, getting 10,000 steps a day, and driving wherever I wanted to, to doing none of that in a matter of seconds.

Talk about an abrupt stoppage to life as I knew it.

But I’ve used mindfulness to help me work through this challenge.

I’ve embraced the concept of impermanence when I start to feel sad, knowing sadness won’t last forever, and neither will my physical state.

I’ve also reminded myself of all the good that has come from this injury.

Dozens of people have reached out and expressed their condolences.

My mother drove two and a half hours to be with me during the surgery and help me the day after. I’ve had friends organize drop-ins, so I’m not by myself the whole time during recovery.

In that, this injury has created hints of sweetness.

Lots of love despite my pain.

And mindfulness opens us to all that.

It opens us to the totality of life.

So that even when we feel like we’re drowning or swimming in stress, we also know there’s a life beyond that. A clear, blue sky that we can use as a refuge when we’re bombarded by clouds of stress.

And that’s what the practice is all about.

Cultivating that blue spacious sky.

So we can smile amidst even the most stress-inducing days, knowing that spaciousness lives within us.

If you're a mindfulness beginner, trust these lessons.

It is the process of heart-mind liberation.

And when the heart and mind are liberated, you’re free.