{audio:0:00:19} Ed, a warm welcome. If we could begin with your definition of mindfulness?

{audio:0:00:34} The simplest definition that I like to use is, knowing what’s happening and learning from it and acting on that learning. Mindfulness, really, is a way of paying attention to our lived experience. That’s the knowing what’s happening part. The trickiness of that is that, much of the time, we are not trained to pay attention to what’s going on. Our minds are elsewhere; our minds may be wandering into habitual places. Those habitual places are often thought-based. We spend a lot of our time up in our heads and trying to achieve goals, meet standards; trying to get what’s good and avoid what’s bad. That’s a perfectly reasonable way to live our lives and that mode of mind, I would call a driven doing mode of mind, because much of the way that it operates is automatic. We are evolved to try to get what’s good and avoid what’s bad.

{audio:0:02:17} As I said, it’s a very sensible way of living our lives. If, for example, we have a tiger coming to try to eat us, from a survival perspective, that mode of mind is very skillful. However, there are situations, particularly in our modern world, where we can’t simply just get what we want and we can’t simply just avoid what we don’t want. In those situations, understanding how we operate as human beings is very useful because it can help us see the ways that we act on habit-driven autopilot. It can give us the understanding, or at least a window, into ways of responding to these kind of situations differently.

{audio:0:03:19} There you have the second part of the definition, which is learning from our lived experience, that we are now paying attention to it, not on automatic pilot, in order to meet the moments of our lives in a skillful way.

{audio:0:03:45} Where does judgment come into this, for you? Judgment and non-judgment?

{audio:0:03:50} Judgment is a difficult term, because there are times where judgments are helpful. I would prefer to call that kind of judgment "discernment". In order to be able to discern how to respond to a situation, we need to be able to understand it and to have the skills to be able to act on that discernment, to act wisely.

{audio:0:04:23} In that sense, a skillful judgment. Often where judgment is used in mindfulness training is to describe the kind of judgment that comes from setting standards for ourselves and, indeed, for others, which maybe, aren’t helpful. To be continually looking at, where am I trying to get to, which takes me back to, what do I want, the next meal, for example, and what am I trying to avoid, to get away from. We make judgments about what we imagine to be good for us and bad for us. It turns out that, in some situations, what those standard-setting judgments do, is they create, in our minds, a discrepancy between what’s happening and what we want to be happening. That discrepancy, if it can’t be resolved by an action, will often lead to stress, because we’re stuck in a middle place of, I can’t fix this, I can’t avoid this, but I’m still experiencing it and it’s not what I want.

{audio:0:05:38} This often turns up as self-criticism. Judgments such as, I’m not good enough, I wish I were better at X, Y or Z, I wish this wasn’t happening, so judgments of a situation. Criticisms of others, as well. When judgments are in service of taking skillful action, which we can sometimes do, then they can be helpful. Discernment.

{audio:0:06:13} But when they actually trap us into being in this middle place between reality – what’s actually happening – and what we would like to be happening, we get stuck in the gap and that’s a stressful place to be.

{audio:0:07:45} If I could ask you to tell us a bit about non-judgment and how it fits into the picture?

{audio:0:07:51} Non-judgment is a phrase that is often used in mindfulness training. There is a slightly longer definition of mindfulness, which is paying attention, on purpose, with full presence and non-judgmentally. Sometimes, there is a critique that comes up that says, “If I pay attention, non-judgmentally, I’ll never make any decisions.” What this is pointing to, rather, is to meet our experience with a quality of friendliness, with a quality of interest and, if you like, of not being the judge or not being judgmental. When we say, being judgmental, that perhaps, gets us closer to what these phrases of judgment and non-judgment mean, in mindfulness training.

{audio:0:08:54} Judgmental implies a bringing of old perspective, old habits, harshness, criticism in an unhelpful way. By paying attention on purpose, which means deliberately, so we can really see what’s going on, fully present and non-judgmentally, meaning with an attitude, a particular way of meeting our experience, of friendliness, warm-heartedness. Of not being the harsh critic that we often are, because we are in that doing driven mode, which is a sort of survival mode, rather than a mode which leads to our well-being.

{audio:0:09:51} What you hear often, in speaking to people about this, is that people will say that self-criticism actually helps me improve. How would you look at a statement or view like that?

{audio:0:10:07} Well, I would agree that self-reflection can help us to improve or it can help us to understand ourselves and make wise choices. The part that doesn’t seem to be helpful is the hardness and the harshness that comes in from self-criticism. There’s a difference between acknowledging the reality of a situation and then placing an attitude of, in some ways, an attitude of violence, towards ourselves. An attitude of, you’re not good enough. It’s a flagellating quality that seems to get added to the self-reflection.

{audio:0:10:56} Actually, I would argue that that driven part is not very helpful for us to flourish and develop and be the best people we can be, because it’s exhausting. If you imagine you’re flagellating, hitting yourself with a whip, every time that we buy into a harsh opinion of ourselves, that’s an addition to what’s happening. There is what’s happening and what is actually going on. Then there’s all of the stuff that we add onto it, which is not actually necessary. If you’re beating someone up the whole time, then the chances are, they’re not in a good state to be the best person they can be. They’re going to be exhausted; they’re going to be hurt. You’re injuring someone and then saying, “Go out and be the best person you can be.” It’s not likely to happen.

{audio:0:12:00} So the self-reflection part of the process, which is very much there in mindfulness, paying attention to what’s going on, with full presence, that’s there and is a reflection of the situation and learning from that. But if we add, and judgmentally, harshly, unforgivingly, then we’re adding something that becomes unskillful.

{audio:0:12:34} What does it mean to be fully present?

{audio:0:12:38} There’s a line, in one of James Joyce’s books, in Dubliners, and he speaks about a character called Mr Duffy, and he says, “Mr Duffy lived a few feet from his body,” which is a lovely, succinct description of how many of us live, much of the time, when we are on automatic. We don’t tend to inhabit our bodies. Of course, we are inhabiting our bodies; we carry them around all the time and they are us. But the way that we are trained and the way that we are evolved, is for our attention to move up into thinking. Much of our education system is based on this; learn to be a thinker.

{audio:0:13:36} When I went to university, I remember clearly, my director of studies told us that the process we were about to undergo was going to turn us into intellectuals and, in some sense, I’ve been trying to undo that process, ever since. That’s not to say that intellect is problematic, but it does become problematic when it’s automatic. Because, actually, that’s not real intelligence; that’s just following the dictates of our mind, as they have been trained and we’re not fully present when that is happening. We’re living more like robots, if we’re just following the tyranny of our thoughts, as I’ve heard the phrase used. We’re just going with whatever our thoughts tell us, which may not actually be the truth of things.

{audio:0:14:34} It may be part of the truth of things, but there’s a whole other dimension to our lived experience, which happens not up here, but down here, in our bodies. Those are the realms of body sensation, actually feeling of what’s going on, moment by moment. It’s the realm of emotion and, as it turns out, and this is now understood more clearly, I believe, at least in some fields that, actually, what happens in our bodies, really affects what’s going on up here [in our minds]. If we can become present, [...] to actually be aware of our thoughts, rather than just in our thinking and if we can be present to this domain of being, if I may call it that, this domain of embodied experience, then we’ve got more of the picture. There’s also environment, of course, what’s going on around us, which also affects what’s happening within us.

{audio:0:16:01} If we could be present to the sense of things. There’s this beautiful phrase, coming to our senses, meaning to become wise, to get real. That’s a lovely phrase, in itself, to get real. To really be in what’s true, in this moment. If we’re just up in our heads, if we are identified with the train of thought that is happening in our heads, all the time and if you actually stopped to watch your thoughts, which is something that happens in mindfulness practice, you start to see that a lot of what’s going on up there, is perhaps not that helpful. Maybe there are trains of self-criticism, trains of blame, trains of thinking about things that aren’t actually happening at the moment; things that might happen in the future, perhaps threats that we might be imagining that aren’t here yet. Things that have happened in the past, memories, that are also not happening at the moment. We get drawn, in our thoughts, into the future and the past, very easily.

{audio:0:17:19} If we can be present to our senses and our senses are experienced in our bodies and, also, the wonderful thing about being in our senses is that it brings us to reality, because we experience much of our reality through the senses. We can’t have tomorrow’s body; we can’t feel tomorrow. You can’t smell tomorrow and you can’t taste tomorrow. If we’re in our senses, we are, by definition, here and now. By coming into our bodies and directing our attention into our bodies, it’s a way of experiencing what’s really here and now, with a fuller presence. Actually, as it happens, by being in our bodies, it gives us a standpoint from which to view what’s going on in our thoughts.

{audio:0:18:15} By coming down into our bodies and, if you like, having an anchor in our body, we also get a better view of what’s happening up in the mind. It enables a more skillful understanding and appreciation of the fulness of our experience, if we can practice this. The great news is that you can practice it. It’s a skill that can be trained and it’s a skill that we have, within us, to be trained, a bit like language. We have the capacity, as humans, for language acquisition and, so too, we have the capacity for mindfulness, for self-awareness, or just awareness, maybe it would be best to say, because this includes the environment, as well.
{audio:0:19:03} By becoming fully present in this way, by training ourselves to be more present, by returning to the fulness of our senses, then we’ve got the possibility of meeting experience more fully, more skillfully and, perhaps, more wisely.

{audio:0:19:22} I’m not sure where it’s from, but there’s a saying that goes, “Mind is a terrible master, but a wonderful servant.”

{audio:0:19:32} Indeed, yes. That’s it. If we are dominated by our thoughts then, in some sense, we’re unconscious. We might think we’re conscious, but there’s a sense of actually being on autopilot, being driven by what’s coming up. If we can observe the contents of our mind then, actually, there’s some space there. There’s some space between what’s being thought and, if you like, the observer of those thoughts. In that space, we’ve got some creativity to choose, am I going to believe what’s coming up in my mind, or not? The possibility comes, then, of questioning what the automatic pilot mode of mind is telling us. From that gentle questioning, that gentle enquiry into what’s happening, we then have the possibility of making choices to either go with, or not go with, what our minds are saying.

{audio:0:21:11} An analogy I sometimes use and, again, it’s not mine originally, is related to buses. If you’re standing at a bus stop and watching buses go past, you have, perhaps, the discernment about which bus you want to get on. You look at them; where’s that bus going and is it a place I want to go to? Maybe it is; maybe it isn’t. If it is a place you want to go to, you get on the bus. If it isn’t a place you want to go to, don’t get on the bus. Maybe, sometimes, there are loads of buses coming at once and we don’t know which one to get onto. Maybe we wait for ages, without a bus coming. This is a bit like working with thoughts, in mindfulness practice. Sometimes we’ve got loads and loads of thoughts and it can feel overwhelming. They’re all going to different places. Sometimes nothing much seems to be coming along and we’re just waiting and waiting.
{audio:0:22:05} But if we can have the discernment to know, actually, my place of standing is the bus stop, then we can make the choices as to whether to get on the thought buses or not. The thing about buses is, as a colleague of mine liked to say, buses are okay but they will take you where they want to go. It’s the same with thoughts. You get on the thought and it will take you where it’s going.

{audio:0:22:32} Where mindfulness comes in is the understanding that you don’t have to get on the bus. You can choose to, but you don’t have to. You can stand at the bus stop and watch it go past. That’s a realm, then, of great freedom.

{audio:0:22:51} What are some common misperceptions about the practice of mindfulness?

{audio:0:22:56} There are quite a few. The most common ones are that it’s, primarily, about relaxation or getting to a place of calm. By the way, it’s not that that can’t happen, but it seems to be unhelpful to try to get there. If we approach mindfulness meditation with the desire to become calm or relaxed, then we’re introducing a standard to try to get to, so we’re back into doing driven mode. As we know, let’s say I’m not feeling calm or relaxed today and I’m making that my goal, then the result is likely to be more stress. You’re actually likely to feel less relaxed and calm because, not only am I not feeling relaxed and calm, but I’m failing at meditation which, actually, isn’t the case.

{audio:0:23:57} If we can turn that into just noticing what’s going on and working with what’s going on, in a gentle, allowing, interested way, then there’s no failure, because we’re just noticing what we’re noticing and that’s useful information. Over time, it may be that that way of meeting your experience, may indeed lead to greater equanimity. But the trick is not to try to get there.

{audio:0:24:28} Another myth that sometimes comes up is that we’re going to have blank minds, if we meditate. There is going to be, somehow, this place of no thoughts.

{audio:0:24:39} I remember a quote from a friend of Jon Kabat-Zinn, who was a successful scientist, who said that he’d be worried about losing his mind, if he developed a formal [meditation] practice.

{audio:0:24:55} Sometimes, particularly with people who are very intelligent, there is that fear that, somehow, they might lose their edge, their sharpness, their capacity to do and make decisions. First of all, if you have a prolonged period of no thoughts, then let me know, because you’d probably be a good case study. The reality is that human minds think. This isn’t about trying to stop that. It’s about knowing that thinking, knowing that process and realizing, perhaps, that much of that thinking is automatic. Therefore, turning the thoughts from master into servant. Rather than being dominated, taking that perspective of looking. It’s about looking at our experience and noticing when we are driven by habits or thoughts that are not helpful.

{audio:0:26:09} Rather than, actually, turning us into zombies or making us less effective, I would argue that the opposite is true. By coming to know the way that our minds, to really understand what’s going on, and the practice of maintaining presence, is much more likely to help us be more resilient, healthier, happier and more effective, more skillful. The research bears this out. There are, currently, about 800 peer reviewed journal papers, with the word mindfulness in the title. In general, it’s a developing field, but the overall body of evidence points to the helpfulness of this way of meeting experience, for all of these different areas of our life. For our own wellbeing, for our relationships, for our capacity to meet difficulty with skill. Also, to experience the pleasurable aspects of life, with full presence, as well, to really savor when things are enjoyable and pleasant.

{audio:0:27:35} A way that I like to conceptualize this is to imagine our minds and bodies like a piece of equipment for which, very often, we’ve not been given the manual. Okay, maybe we’ve had some help in our childhood, perhaps. Family, school and some of that might have been more or less helpful. But it’s, somehow, often not explicit. I certainly remember, from my education, I learned a lot of stuff; I learned all my subjects and I ingested a lot of information. But nobody really ever taught me what it was or who it was that was ingesting that information or, indeed, what to do with it.

{audio:0:28:34} Initially, when I went out into my life, post-university, I won’t say rude awakening, as it took me a little while to realize I was asleep. In some sense, it was a rude awakening, in realizing how ill-equipped I was to handle the day to day of working life but, also, just life, outside of the confines of the educational system and outside of my family of origin. However, what mindfulness meditation helped with is to, if you like, find the manual and be able to read the manual. Which, of course, is ourselves anyway. To be able to read ourselves and to start to actually know how this thing, us, operates. Therefore, if we understand how it operates, that gives us the capacity to choose how to use it well.

{audio:0:29:36} As a final point on this, we talked about your example of somebody fearing that they might lose their mind, by practicing mindfulness meditation. Well, it turns out that many of our decisions and choices are made somewhat unconsciously, particularly if we’re not paying attention. Many of them are actually driven at the level of the body, driven by emotions and that’s a bit of a shortcut. There’s ways in which we actually make sense of our world, without needing to think about it, rationally. In many ways, it’s a good system; we learn something and it becomes automatic and a really quickfire response in the brain and the body. I don’t have to relearn how to tie my shoelaces every day or relearn how to drive a car. Those skills, by having been practiced over and over again, are embodied.
{audio:0:30:47} But it does mean, because those skills happen unconsciously, that we often lose our awareness of how they are used. For example, it’s very easy for me, if I am on autopilot, to drive a car and miss my turning, particularly if it’s a route I travel every day, if I’m needing to go somewhere else. I often hear people say that they have been driving a car and actually ended up in a different place from where they were intending to go. This was mostly before the days of satnavs. They ended up in a different place, because they were on autopilot. Only when they reach that destination do they realize, hang on a minute, this isn’t where I intended to go. Well, if that can happen driving a car, when else does it happen that we might end up in a place we didn’t intend to go, just because it’s the way we usually do things?

{audio:0:31:39} If we’re not paying attention, our emotions can drive us, our body sensations can drive us, our habits can drive us and our thoughts can drive us. We can end up in places we didn’t mean to go, because we weren’t paying attention. By paying attention, actually, we can be more aware, perhaps, of where we are intending to go and we can become more conscious of what is actually going on around us and not be driven, so automatically, when that’s not helpful.

{audio:0:32:11} I’d say that, maybe, this is more about finding ourselves than losing ourselves.

{audio:0:32:17} Where are we when we are in that place of non-judgmental observation of thoughts?

{audio:0:32:30} In a place of warm-heartedness, first of all. A place of interest. I guess these are attitudes, rather than places, but with qualities of interest. What’s going on? What’s happening here? Curiosity is a vital skill, in any arena of life, but perhaps, particularly, in the workplace, to be interested in the many patterns of automaticity that occur in human relationships. Of course, this gets more complex when we’re dealing with other people, as well as ourselves. Suddenly, we’ve got whole ranges of interactions and automaticities and emotion-driven reactions to attempt to manage, influence, understand and steer.

{audio:0:33:53} I guess, where we are, when we’re paying attention, with full presence and non-judgmentally, is in a place of observing experiencing. That may sound slightly odd, using both those words. In one sense, observing is a sense of standing back from our experience and actually being able to look. A bit like being on a mountain top and looking down at the world below. You can see what’s going on, but are not involved as if we were down there. You can see a bigger picture. Again, this is very helpful for understanding situations, to be able to step back and look at them, perhaps with a degree of equanimity of not being so caught. A bigger view.

{audio:0:34:57} However, it’s also a mode where we are fully in our experience. This is the experience-seeing part. We are not detached from ourselves, but able to observe, as well as be in our experience. I sometimes describe mindfulness as an ABC skill. The A, being awareness and knowing what’s happening. The B is being with, so actually being present and embodying what’s happening. If we’ve got the A and the B, if we know what’s happening and we can be present to it, and not being automatically driven to our impulsive reactions, then we’ve already got the C, which is a space where we can make choices.

{audio:0:35:45} So I’d say, where we are is, a place of presence, discernment, stillness – a gap between impulse and action – that can enable us to meet circumstances well. It’s a place we’ve already got. Every time we bring our attention to a specified place or to what’s going on, then we are already there. The difficulty is how easily our minds wander off from it, automatically. This is why, in mindfulness meditation, and I’d really encourage anybody listening to or reading this, to see this, not just as a theoretical but to, perhaps, investigate the practice of mindfulness mediation. Only really from practicing it, can you get to understand what this is like. What it involves is actually bringing our attention into the present moment and, as I’ve suggested, the present moment is experienced in our bodies. Often, that means bringing attention into some place in our bodies, to begin with.

{audio:0:37:01} There we actually find that we are already in this place of stillness and presence and experiencing. It’s already there. We don’t have to try to get it; we don’t have to seek it and push for it. It’s just a matter of stopping and pausing and asking myself – you could do this right now if you are listening to or watching this – what’s it like with my feet on the ground. If you’re sitting, what’s it like with my bottom on the chair? Actually noticing your own weight and your own temperature in your body; the feeling of the places of contact that your body is in around you and the environment. Then, perhaps, also noticing what you can see. Having a look around you and just noticing what is actually here. What are the colors here? What are the shapes here? What are the textures? Not needing to think about them but, actually, to connect with them with the senses.

{audio:0:38:05} People often say that when they practice this, coming directly into the present moment and noticing what’s around and noticing what’s within and noticing the connection of our bodies with what’s around that we actually discover a place of stillness and we notice more about what’s happening. It’s a different quality. It doesn’t mean you are going to feel all Zen-like and relaxed. As I said, it’s not about relaxation. You may discover that you are really tired or that you are really anxious or really bored. But you’re discovering. Then just staying with that a little longer. The tendency is to go, I’ve done that now and move on to the next thing to get. Maybe not just yet. Maybe just coming back to, what can I see? What can I hear? What’s this experience of sitting, standing? If we can practice this regularly, maybe coming to the sense of breathing, maybe noticing, right now, the tone of breath coming in and out of your body, the movement of your body, of in and out with the breath. Just by noticing and experiencing what’s here right now, with the senses, we are training our capacity for awareness, for mindfulness.

{audio:0:39:46} It’s not like a one-shot deal. Like any skill, if you want to become proficient at it, you’ve got to practice it again and again and again. It’s like playing a musical instrument; you don’t get the piano in a day. But over time, our bodies become more familiar with this way. Our brains start to change, because any experience that we give ourselves, changes our brain. Over time, if we repeatedly train our minds and bodies and brains, in this mode of being present, then it’s more likely we’ll be able to draw on it, when we need it. So I’d really encourage people to explore the practice.

{audio:0:40:30} Precisely on that point, how does one go about that? How would one go about cultivating this approach?

{audio:0:40:39} This is a challenging skill. I very often hear, and I feel sad hearing it, is that people will say to me, I’m no good at mediation. I tried it and I can’t. Actually, what that often means is, I had a difficult experience. Perhaps they were trying to make their mind blank or trying to get to a place of calm and relaxation and it didn’t happen. Then that’s it; mindfulness is on the scrapheap. That’s rather sad, because it’s a bit like saying, I’m going to give up playing the piano after one lesson, because I haven’t managed Rachmaninov.

{audio:0:41:31} As with any trainable skill that’s rather difficult, it helps to have some guidance. I wouldn’t recommend that this is something we do without some form of assistance. That could come in a number of forms. There are many mindfulness apps and some of those are really helpful where you can hear a guided meditation; five to 10 minutes a day, to start to give yourself a little bit of space in each day, where you are guided through a mindfulness practice. That can be a really good way in. Even more skillfully, might be to find yourself a live teacher. If you imagine an app teaching you to play the piano, it might help a little bit and give you a good way in, but probably not the same as having a live teacher. You might want to seek out a mindfulness course and the gold standard mindfulness courses are the ones that usually last for eight weeks, two-hour sessions. Courses such as mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy are the two best known and best evidenced of those courses. You’re really encouraged to give yourself, fairly intensively, to mindfulness practice for a couple of months. As well as the weekly sessions, you’re asked to practice in between those sessions, on a daily basis, usually for about half an hour a day. That may seem like a lot but, as a say, it’s going a little deeper into the practice. But like most skills, if you spend more time and give more energy to them, you’ll probably get more deeper rewards, as well.

{audio:0:43:32} Those would be my two suggestions. First of all, some kind of guided meditation that you can find online, as a toe in, but taking care not to judge the experience too early. Then, if you really want to give yourself the chance to develop this skill – without wanting to sell it too hard, we’re talking about the skill of understanding our own experience. This mind and body that we take to every moment of our life, and the way in which it operates affects all of our relationships, all of our interactions and, therefore, I would suggest, is a skill that, if we want to take into working lives, our personal lives, maybe it’s worth some investment, because we take it everywhere.

{audio:0:44:36} Maybe it might seem like a lot, investing 25 hours in course, plus half an hour a day, over two months. I’m not going to say it might be the best investment you make, because I’m bound to say that, aren’t I? I’m a mindfulness teacher. But maybe it’s worth giving it a go and seeing whether what I’m suggesting is true for you or not.

{audio:0:45:04} How do you look at the relationship between mindfulness and self-mastery?

{audio:0:45:10} I would say that it’s a process towards self-mastery, because let’s not make it too much of a big deal. Who among us is fully self-mastered? If you get there, you probably don’t need to come to a mindfulness course. You can teach me. Moving towards self-mastery is a process. I would argue that mindfulness training is a way to travel on that journey, towards great self-mastery.

{audio:0:46:00} We cannot be masters of ourselves until we can notice what’s happening and until we can understand ourselves. William James said, in 1890, that if we can learn to bring back our wandering attentions, the skill of attention, then that’s what can make us master of ourselves. He said that nobody who doesn’t have this skill can be master of themselves. By learning how to pay attention and learning how to regulate our experience, the A and the B of mindfulness training, awareness and being with, not impulsively reacting, automatically, then we are able to regulate more skillfully, and therefore, be more resilient, because we’re not just drawn here, there and everywhere, when difficulties come. We’re able to stay present, we’re able to be less reactive and more steady. From that place, we are able to discern and act on real choices, rather than just first thing that comes into our mind, which will be a habit. It might be a good habit, a lot of the time, but it’s not a helpful habit [all the time].

{audio:0:48:08} Each of us are different. We’ll each have our different habits that are skillful and we’ll each have our different habits that are not skillful, which is why we need the first bit of mindfulness training, which is to become aware of what’s going on, because we are all different. There’s no simple way to say, this is how mindfulness will help you, because you are unique. But it can give us the skills to look and find out and see what those are and the skills to practice not reacting habitually. In that way, we can start to become more masters of our experience, if you like.

{audio:0:48:50} If we were to look at traits like adaptability and resilience, in what ways have you found a relationship between mindfulness practice and those two traits, specifically?

{audio:0:49:07} One of the propensities of the automatic pilot, doing driven mode of mind that we’ve discussing, is rigidity, if we are meeting our experience in a reactive way, in that fast, shortcut, speedy manner, which is very helpful in some instances. If you’ve got a wild animal coming at you, you don’t want to be meditating at that moment. You probably don’t want to be reflecting at that moment. I wonder how I’ll deal with this wild animal? You want to be getting out of the way, without needing to think about it. That habitual reaction that has evolved within us, to flee threats, would kick in there, hopefully, and we’d flee to safety.

{audio:0:50:13} However, that reaction, because of its speed and automaticity, is rigid. There isn’t time to consider other options. The body will just get us out of the way. It’s like a quick and dirty response; it has to be. But it means there is no real discernment going on as to what the situation actually is, which means that we will tend to react to any threat, any perceived threat, as if it is a wild animal and want to get out of the way. Maybe there are some perceived threats that, actually, aren’t immediate threats to our life. Maybe it isn’t helpful, in some of those situations, just to get away from it, because, firstly, it may still be there when we come back.

{audio:0:51:19} In those situations, perhaps, actually, what we need is not to flee, but to pause and look at it. It isn’t a wild animal trying to get us; it’s a problem that needs addressing. It’s a situation that needs appraising. It’s another person where we both might benefit from a relationship, rather than just screaming at them or running away from them. What we’re then displaying here, is adaptability, flexibility, which is realizing when a situation needs more than the rigid, automatic response. That’s difficult because those automatic, rigid responses, which we call habits, will inevitably kick in. Particularly in our bodies, they will kick in as feeling, thoughts, impulses.

{audio:0:52:19} However, if we can practice mindfulness in those moments and recognize that this isn’t a wild animal, it’s a relationship, it’s a difficulty, it’s me feeling in a bad mood today. Actually, I can’t run away from that. We have then got the presence and the resilience to begin to find creative ways of meeting it. Again, this involves curiosity. What’s really going on? Appraising this situation fully. Maybe trying things out and experimenting. Once we’re not in that kind of situation of real danger, the kind of things that the fight or flight mode has evolved for, then by training ourselves in mindfulness which, remember, changes the brain, changes the body, gives us just a little moment of pause, or the possibility of shifting modes, rather than being driven by the automatic, by definition, we have become more adaptable.

{audio:0:53:39} Evolution is all about adaptability, except, of course, what we are adapting to is a particular situation. That’s how evolution works. It’s like environment adapting to environment. We’d had a lot of history of adapting to certain environments, in order to be able to survive. That’s how we react to the present moment situations, when they are difficult. But maybe it’s not adaptive anymore, in some of those situations.  By training ourselves, we have this wonderful capacity for self-awareness, which has also evolved, only quite recently in our human history. The areas of the brain where that happens, it’s been shown from the neuroscientific studies, is quite recently evolved. Whereas, like all animals, we’ve got those middle areas of the brain, medulla and limbic system, which is the part of the brain which fires off and creates that automatic pilot reaction. That’s been around a lot longer, because survival is the first priority of evolution.
{audio:0:54:53} But maybe it’s not adaptable now, in some of those situations. Rick Hanson calls this self-directed neuroplasticity. By paying attention, in a particular way, again and again, our brains can begin to change in ways that are adaptive for the new moment that’s here and we can become more skillful at choosing our response to a situation. Being skillful in choosing our response to a situation according to what it is, would be, in my opinion, a pretty good definition of adaptability.

{audio:0:55:25} How does mindfulness practice help one deal with or handle uncertainty, skillfully?

{audio:0:55:33} Uncertainty is reality. It’s easy to say that we live in uncertain times; uncertainty is a given of life. Apart from the obvious. It was once said that death and taxes were the only two certainties. Certainly, the former of those seems pretty inevitable. Aside from that, there is a whole lot of stuff that we don’t know and that’s difficult. We don’t know what’s going to happen in five minutes. We might be able to make a guess. We don’t know that the sun is going rise tomorrow morning. We can make a good guess, based on past experience. All we’re doing when we say we know something, is using our past experience to make assessments about what we imagine might happen, because nobody knows the future. We can’t; it’s not here yet. There’s all sorts of things, happening in the present moment that might condition what happens in the future.

{audio:0:57:04} By definition, life is full of uncertainty. Even if you’re absolutely convinced that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, which I don’t blame you for, in smaller ways, there are so many variables that can change what is going to happen tomorrow and we won’t know until we get there. Uncertainty is a given.

{audio:0:57:31} Uncertainty, also, is challenging for us, as human beings, because we like things to be certain. We want to be able to predict the future, because that makes us safer. We want to be able to learn from the past, because then that can also help us make choices in the moment that help us to be safer and more successful. Our minds, brains, bodies are wired to look for the patterns. To look for, what do I expect to happen? What happened in the past that I can learn from, that will tell me something about what’s happening now? That’s brilliant; what a wonderful way of saving energy, by using our past experience to see the patterns of this moment.
{audio:0:58:31} However, the truth remains that the present moment is not the past. The future, when it comes, will not be what it is right now. Things are continually changing. This is another given of life. Nothing ever stays exactly the same. Things are constantly in movement. Therefore, what we’ve got is another example of this discrepancy monitor in the doing driven mode of mind, where we are continually, automatically, appraising what we imagine will happen against what’s happening at the moment, and recognizing this discrepancy.

{audio:0:59:14} So the uncertainty is there and, if we’re on automatic, we’re continually trying to close that discrepancy, trying to fix it, because it’s uncomfortable. Who likes uncertainty? It’s like that feeling in the belly, when you don’t know what’s going to happen. Is something going to get me? Is it going to go the way I want it to? Is this deal going to come off or am I going to lose everything? Am I going to get sick tomorrow or is someone I love going to get sick tomorrow? There are all sorts of ways in which things can go wrong. It’s back to that middle place of what’s happening and what we imagine might happen and that’s uncomfortable. However, it’s also inescapable.

{audio:1:00:01} So how do we deal with it? Well, first of all, we could recognize it. We could practice being uncomfortable with uncertainty. In fact, by being uncomfortable with uncertainty, maybe that’s the way to become comfortable with uncertainty. Actually acknowledging the discomfort. Okay, I’m uncomfortable; I don’t know what’s going to happen, because nobody does. But somehow, by acknowledging it and by doing the best we can, in the midst of this uncertainty, rather than constantly trying to close the gap and get things nailed down – which, by the way, actually is not very creative. By getting to nail things down, that means approaching things from the perspective of the past. That perspective of the past is, as I’ve suggested, not the present moment and, therefore, we’re actually putting a frame on the present moment, which is not what it is, or not wholly what it is. But if we can actually rest in the uncertainty, rest in the discomfort and then, in this place of discomfort say, let’s have a look here. What’s unique about this moment? What’s really going on? What am I experiencing? What are you experiencing? What’s happening in the environment? Then we’ve got a whole load of information, about the present moment, that we can use to engage with it fully. Whilst recognizing that we are not going to solve that uncertainty. But maybe we can act creatively, in the middle of the uncertainty and therefore, know more often when we are putting automatic frames and definitions and fixedness, onto the present moment, which might make us feel better. It might make us feel better to say, I know what’s happening here. But then we’re starting to become a bit of a know-it-all. As soon as we say we know what’s happening here, without investigating it, we’ve become limited in our creativity.

{audio:1:02:16} Because maybe we don’t know what’s happening here. Maybe we’re bringing our habitual perspectives into it. But by knowing we’re doing that, we’re actually opening the space for creativity. Creativity is pretty helpful in all realms of life, as well, whether it’s our work lives, our personal lives. Uncertainty is still difficult, but it’s there to be worked with, because it’s real, so let’s see if we can go with it.

{audio:1:03:45} What about conflict? Could you talk to us about the relationship between mindfulness practice and a skillful approach to handling conflict?

{audio:1:04:04} Conflict is difficult and triggering. Perhaps the first way is to recognize the difficulty of conflict. When there is a mismatch between what someone else is wanting, thinking, feeling and behaving and how we’re experiencing all of those things, there’s a jar, isn’t there? This will, inevitably, activate the threat system within both of us. The threat system, as we know, reacts quickly and not always in a very accurate way. Therefore, all of our past histories will likely come up. All of the ways that we’ve learnt to deal with stresses, will come out into this conflict. Then, perhaps, we’ve not just got the conflict about whatever is happening right now, but we’ve also got our historical ways of either avoiding or trying to quell stressful situations in us.

{audio:1:05:32} Imagine all of that going into the mix. It’s really tricky, really difficult to stay grounded in the present, in the midst of that and, indeed, to appreciate what’s going on. The first step is to know that it’s difficult. To be interested in our own reactions to the conflict, to notice, what’s going on with me; I’m noticing my heart’s beating really quickly or I’m noticing that my hands are beginning to tense up and I’m really wanting to either get the hell out of here or I’m ready for a fight with this person. To notice how those threat reactions come up in us and to know that’s okay. It’s like it’s inevitable. It’s not wrong that that happens. It’s a protection and preservation mechanism. But it may not be helpful for this moment because, actually, in human conflicts, it usually doesn’t help to try and kill the person or just run away from them, for all sorts of obvious reasons.

{audio:1:06:56} If we’re actually wanting to negotiate the conflict and find a way through it, then we’re going to need to stay present. So, first step, awareness. What’s going on, for me? The second step being, perhaps taking a pause. These tools of grounding ourselves. I’m sitting down here, so I ground myself by just feeling my body on this chair. If you and I were in a conflict, internally, I’m wanting to come and strangle you or I’m wanting to go out of the room, because I really don’t want to spend another minute in the room with this person. That’s the kind of desire to fight or flee and I will, likely, feel that in my body, in all sorts of ways. The adrenaline starts going round my body and I can’t think, because it’s all in a mess and a jumble. Maybe what I do in that moment, if I remember, is to say, okay, come into my body. I may even ask the person, can I just take a moment; I’m noticing I’m a bit riled up here. I just need to pause, maybe put my hand on my belly. It maybe that we can’t do this with the other person, so we might just do this, internally, for ourselves, just for a moment. Maybe we say, I’ll get back to you. We’re not going to resolve this now, can I have think about this?

{audio:1:08:22} So giving ourselves opportunities to pause. They don’t need to know that you’re going to practice mindfulness. Actually, we may find that people are very responsive to being given the courtesy of being reflected on. Very rarely will someone say, oh no, you can’t have 10 minutes to think about this. We know, at some level, that that is an act of courtesy. I’m going to reflect on this; I’m going to give this my time and we’re treating each other with respect.

{audio:1:08:54} Having grounded, noticing what’s going on, we might also just take a moment to reflect on what might be going on for the other person, recognizing that they’re, maybe, not just bringing the present moment conflict, but all of their previous conflicts to bear on this situation. Without judging them or trying to tell them what to do, because that probably wouldn’t be very well-received, or indeed, appropriate, but we might recognize, that like all human beings, we have our automatic ways of dealing with difficulty.

{audio:1:09:26} Then, perhaps, engaging, staying present, when we want to run or fight. So staying really well grounded in the conversation and getting interested in their perspective. Tell me a bit more about where you’re coming from here. I’d be really interested to hear, and whilst, at the moment at least, I don’t agree with you, I’d really like to understand what’s going on here, so that maybe we can start to have a dialogue about it. Not ignoring the conflict or getting into a fight, but seeing if there is way in, for a sense of mutual understanding. Maybe there is a way through and maybe there isn’t. Maybe, at some point, you agree to say, no thanks; we’re not going to work together in this way. If it’s an impossible situation – let’s say, it’s your boss – maybe it’s time to leave your job.

{audio:1:10:35} It’s not to say that it’s, necessarily, going to lead to resolution. If we can let go of resolution and move more into, how can we be creative here? What would be skillful to get to where’s possible with this, by going on the journey of the conflict. That’s really easy for me to say and it’s really difficult to do. It’s certainly not the case that I can do this all the time. But it’s a direction of travel so maybe we can also see this as a direction of travel, an art that we can give ourselves to and it’s got a lifelong training. Each time that we end up going into our habitual patterns, we can learn from that. I know you were going to ask about failure so, I guess, this is leading into that.

{audio:1:11:36} This is the last topic for the day, a skillful relationship with failure would look like what, to you?

{audio:1:11:47} If we can meet any situation with curiosity and gentleness, then I would invite you to explore that that can lead to skillful responses, whatever the situation is, in the first place. What has happened, has happened. The past is the past. That can’t be changed. But, maybe, remembering that things are impermanent and uncertain and, whilst it leads to discomfort, it also leads to the possibility of interesting things happening. There’s no inevitability that a failure now is not actually the ground of success later.

{audio:1:13:00} So if we can meet failure with courage, you could say it’s another opportunity. I remember a psychotherapist that I used to work with, who used to like using the phrase an AFGO, to describe moments of so-called disaster or failure or things falling apart, he called them an AFGO. I’ll tell you what three of the words of the acronym stand for and you can decide what the other one is. The A stands for another; the F, I won’t say, for the purposes of decency; G is for growth and O is for opportunity. So an AFGO is another growth opportunity. The way he would say it is, another growth opportunity, which is why the F is quite important, because it gives that sense of, aargh, I’ve failed again.

{audio:1:14:17} But as soon as we can go, rather than, aargh, I’ve failed again, and start to say, I’ve failed again, how interesting. That didn’t work the way I was hoping. I wonder what didn’t work. Can I get interested in what didn’t work? Can I learn from what didn’t work? Maybe I can see this as the ground of what might be possible now.

I’m no entrepreneur but what I have heard from entrepreneurs, and what you might call very successful business people, is that they seem to talk a lot about how much they’ve failed. Actually, it’s the attitude that they bring to the things that haven’t worked, that have led to really creative insights. New ways of meeting situations, that become creative and, therefore, become successful.

{audio:1:15:22} So if there’s no failure, then there’s no learning. That doesn’t mean that we need to try and seek failure out but if we can learn from what’s happened already, then we’re in the best situation to be able to deal with what’s happening now, and what we bring to what’s happening now, gives us the best chance of it leading to a fruitful future, when that arrives.

Mindfulness: Developing The Faculty of Attention

Defining mindfulness: knowing what's happening and acting on that learning

The difference between judgment and discernment, the relationship between judgment and self-criticism

Being present: how becoming aware of our senses and bodies can offer the possibility of meeting our immediate experience more skillfully

Developing an awareness of our thought patterns: how developing a mindfulness practice can help us respond less automatically to habitual thought patterns

Common misconceptions about the practice of mindfulness

How mindfulness practice can help us take a step back from intense situations and cultivate a sense of equanimity

Developing the skill of attention: the difficulties that tend to arise in the practice of guided and unguided meditation

The Relationship Between Mindfulness Practice and Self-Mastery

Noticing and disarming unproductive automatic responses to difficulty

Dealing With Failure: cultivating a mindset where we take interest in failure as a chance to learn

Mindfulness: Developing The Faculty of Attention

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

inpractise.com/articles/mindfulness-ed-halliwell

Why is this interview interesting?

Executive Bio

Ed Halliwell

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

Interview Transcript

Related Content

Dealing with Uncertainty

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

Dealing With Failure

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

Mindfulness And Conflict

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

Mindfulness: Being Present

Mindfulness Teacher and Author of Into The Heart of Mindfulness

Audio

Mindfulness: Developing The Faculty of Attention(February 26, 2020)

PARTNER

Speak to Executive