5.4 Mindfulness
Planted: September 1, 2022
Last tended: February 25, 2023
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Video Transcript
Do you ever just get stuck in your head? I know I do a lot. Do you ever just get really analytical about everything really critical about everything and very just very intellectualized in terms of everything. And that doesn’t mean necessarily clever. It just means in your head. And you ever just become completely mindless, you’re so in your head that you’re not even aware of, of things in real life. That might not be easy to relate to. But you know, think about right now. Are you thirsty right now? Are you hungry right now? How are you feeling in your body? Right now, this is the essence of mindlessness. When you actually prompt yourself, maybe you can become aware of what’s going on right now. Think about the environment that you’re in, think about the sounds that you’re hearing here. Think about the way that you’re sitting or standing or moving or wherever you are. This is the the essence of what I’m trying to get across here is that mindlessness is so common, and it has a number of downsides. Do you ever just get introspective? This means focusing on yourself, focusing on the way that you are as opposed to focusing on others. And usually, it happens in a critical way it can be self critical. Do you ever just daydream quite a lot and just get lost in thoughts? Usually, that will be driven by the subconscious, it will be the manifestation of the subconscious in your mind. So it will be things like getting validation. In some imaginary scenarios, you’ll be daydreaming about validation or respect or about being liked, admired or appreciated or just daydream about being right. You know, do you ever get into justifying justifying is an interesting one, where you imagine a scenario that has previously caused the bad feelings like being criticized. So you imagine someone is criticizing you, or you imagine someone is saying something nasty to you. And then you imagine overcoming it. You imagine justifying yourself to that person. You tell them why they’re wrong. And it feels good. It feels good to tell people why they’re wrong in your head. And you can just destroy their argument in a very satisfying manner. Well, if you get any of these things, how do these things make you feel? Number one makes you feel bad about yourself. If you’re introspective, you become aware of your flaws, you become self critical. That really doesn’t make you feel good. For number two, for daydreaming, your wishes. If you’re daydreaming about things that fulfill the needs of your subconscious, your ego will get boosted in your head, right you will be validated, you will be respected in your head you’ll be liked and admired and appreciated in your head. And then when you return to real life, you have a realization that is not real, and that your life is still inadequate in comparison to this image in your head, this fake image of your potential life or your future life, you feel inadequate in comparison. And of course number three, justifying when your brain tells you constant criticisms over and over again, you just get put in a bad mood, you become argumentative or you become angry, or you just become sad. I mean, when there’s these imagined situations of just bad things being said and you’re you’re justifying yourself, you get put in a really bad mood. What all of this does all of this mindlessness, it not only does it just put you in a bad mood, but it also reinforces this subconscious inadequacy. So one of the best things you can do is to practice mindfulness, which is just the opposite of mindlessness. It’s about training your focus, okay? training yourself to be mindful, training yourself to stop getting stuck in your head. Stop getting lost in thought, and become aware more of of physical things, physical sensations, as opposed to mental thoughts and mental imagined scenarios and, and mindlessness. Okay, it’s about being aware of the present being grounded in the present. Your attention is so often occupied in your head, instead of being aware of what’s actually going on right now. I’ve just said, Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you tense anywhere? We’re just not aware of that, because we’re all in our heads. Mindfulness, being aware means being aware of what’s actually going on right here. And right now. How do you practice this? Okay? It’s surely you can now understand the benefits of this and what we’re trying to do here. If you become mindful, you stop feeling you stop thinking so much. You stop thinking of anything that can reinforce this inadequacy. In fact, the next slide is going to be the benefits of mindfulness. But before we get to that, how do we actually practice this is very simple. You just take five to 30 minutes out, you can set a timer to everyone. You sit down and you focus on something else. and all you do is you just focus. And what will happen is you’ll get lost in thoughts, because focus is really hard. Even, you know, watching these videos, you might get lost in thought you might struggle to focus, right? Focus is really, really hard. So you actually practice, focus. That’s really what mindfulness is its training focus, if you want more focus, this is how you do it, you practice focusing. So you find something to focus on. The easiest thing is the breath, because the breath is just constant, your breathing is always there, it’s fairly easy to focus on, it’s fairly boring, really, which makes it a little bit challenging. And it’s good to practice on something that’s a little bit challenging. So you focus on your breath, just focused on the physical sensations of air, passing through your nostrils, or through your mouth. Maybe you can focus on your stomach rising and falling or your chest rising and falling, maybe you can do it. Now as you as you watch this video, just focus on your breathing on the actual physical sensations, what will happen is at some point, you will drift off into thought and lose your focus. If you’re doing this in silence, and you’re just sitting there focusing, you’ll drift often, you’ll drift off into thought and you’ll lose your focus. All you need to do when this happens is become aware that you’ve drifted off, become aware that you’re no longer focusing on your breath, that your attention is not just purely directed on your breath, become aware of that as quickly as possible. And then turn your focus back to your breath. Completely dropping that thought it’s very hard to do actually, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. A lot of the times your internal monologue might take over. You’ll hear your brain thinking, okay, now I focus on my breath. We all have this kind of internal monologue, which is just you know, ourselves talking to ourselves really, don’t get lost in it. Just focus back on your breath and what it feels like when you’re practicing this is it, you’re just feeling your breath, there’s no thinking, there are no thoughts that should be in your head. And if there are, you just become aware of them, and you let them go. And you just keep focusing on your breath. What you should do is you should sit up straight when doing this without resting your back in on anything, because if you don’t, you might fall asleep. That’s the honest truth of it. If you don’t, it’s a lot harder to stay focused. If you’re sitting up in an alert posture, just sitting up straight, you can find it a lot easier to keep focusing. Okay. So one of the benefits of this, I’ve spoken about this all throughout this course, okay, this is mindfulness meditation, you have to I mean, I must have said this five or 10 times because it comes up to do with literally almost everything in this course. The first thing he does is it strengthens willpower, okay? You become aware of cultural influences, decreases attachment to expectations, while still allowing you to aim high and attachment to exit expectations is such a huge thing. It’s the attachment really, because when you practice mindfulness, you become more grounded in the present. So you become less attached to future things of, you know, needing to do something to be good enough one day, there is no one day you’re not focused on the future, you’re present. And that’s really one of the keys here. It helps you connect with your feelings, needs and wants, and particularly is the hardest part of owning your needs. The hardest part of owning your needs is finding out what your needs are actually just becoming aware of them. Because we’re not aware of what we need. We’re not aware of our feelings. We’re not aware of our wants. Mindfulness tackles that. It decreases the disconnection and helps socially. There’s research that mindfulness actually increases charisma, you can read the Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox comedian, I think mindfulness increases charisma. It’s a wonderful thing. It helps you become aware of critical or shaming voices It grounds you in reality gets you out of your head helps you to become aware of when actions are driven by inadequacy and therefore not do them, helps you to just accept yourself as you are right now in the present. Again, it’s all all of this is about accepting yourself right now. All of this is about turning our attention away from the future and towards the present and towards how you actually are right now. Not the future. But now okay, mindfulness is all about the present. It also has shown to decrease stress, lower blood pressure, there’s a direct correlation with happiness, literal happiness, they’ve studied happiness, and they found mindfulness is one the best thing for it. It’s a recognized treatment for anxiety and depression. There’s evidence that it increases gray matter in the brain, which is a wonderful thing. This is one of the best daily habits that you can do. Not just feeling inadequacy, but for living a good life, too. Okay. Mindfulness is all about training your focus into the present moment and into what’s actually going on right now. You do that just by practicing focusing on your breath. Okay. Here are some tips for doing this because, you know, I don’t If I made it sound easy by saying all you do is sit there and focus on your breath, it’s a lot harder than that. The hardest thing is that you can’t just do this once, you got to do this every day. And it might only take up five minutes every day, maybe it’ll take up 15 minutes every day, maybe half an hour, if you’re committed. The important thing is that you have to do it every day. Okay, remember habits, find a trigger for doing this, that if you want to implement this into your life, find something to trigger this, whether it’s waking up, whether it’s coming home from work, maybe it’s after brushing your teeth in the evening, before going to bed, associated with a trigger, or set an alarm on your phone, that’s a good trigger to, again, you’ve got to do this every day. Okay, because it’s a skill that you’ve got to practice. Yeah, even if it’s just five minutes do every day. And then if you do this, then during the day, you’ll start to become more mindful, you’ll start becoming aware of your thoughts, and aware where your attention has drifted. And then you can direct that attention back towards real life. By doing this over and over again, you change your entire perspective on life, and inadequacy goes away. If there is one thing that you need to do is mindfulness because it’s about actually connecting with who you are right now and actually letting go of this idea that you can be good enough one day and that you need to do something in order to be good enough, okay? It’s about bringing yourself back down to the present. Anyway, if you implement this into your life, even if you just try it for a few weeks, or just a few days, just try sitting there focusing and if you want more information on this, you can just Google mindfulness meditation. It’s, it’s very simple, it’s very common thing. Now it’s out there. There are a lot of how to guides that probably explain it a bit better than me. But if you just try this, I’m sure this will help you to get out of your head a bit more and if nothing else, it will definitely increase your mood and make you a little bit a little bit happier.If you asked me for the single best thing you could do, Iβd say itβs probably this.
It helps with:
- awareness of sources of inadequacy
- remembering to be self-compassionate
- Disconnection, and Self-Connection
- Being aware of your needs
- Reducing attachment to expectations
- Awareness of your feelings
- Ability to Surf The Urge
Mindfulness β the opposite of mindlessness β is about training your focus.
Your attention is so often occupied in your head instead of being aware of whatβs actually going on right now. Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you tense anywhere?
Mindfulness means being aware of whatβs actually going on right here and right now.
To practice mindfulness, take 5-30 minutes out to sit down and FOCUS.
Focus on your breath; the physical sensations of air passing through your nostrils At some point, you will drift off into thought and lose your focus.
When this happens, become aware that youβve drifted off as quickly as possible, and turn your focus back to your breath, and drop that thought.
Your internal monologue might take over, youβll hear your brain thinking βok, now I focus on my breathβ. Donβt get lost in it β focus back on your breath!
Try this out RIGHT NOW. Stop reading this and try to become aware of whatever thoughts are running through your mind. Then focus on the physical sensation of your breath, and then see how long it takes before a thought draws your focus away from that sensation. Itβs usually less than 1 second!
The idea is that you try to develop awareness of your thoughts. Once youβre aware of them, you choose not to follow them. At some point, thoughts will pop up, and itβs your goal to stay focused, without getting lost in thought (mindless).
Source
Author(s) || Connor McGonigal
Website || howtostopbeingacuckold.com
Article || 5.4 Mindfulness
Date || Between October 23rd and November 14th, 2018
tags: [“evergreen”]
contributors: ["Connor McGonigal"]