Mindfulness is the act of self-awareness, self-reflection and self-compassion. It is an integral component of better living and living with intention.

Why? Because we are all human. And by that fact, our reactions subconsciously direct our lives and we often find ourselves unsatisfied with the same themes repeated throughout our lives - resentment, jealousy, pride, anger, fear, discontent.

This creates a cycle where we live anywhere but in the present; our minds often wandering in the past in regret or projected into the future with fear and uncertainty; Life then feels like a daily struggle against staggering and unfair odds.

We start to perpetuate an “If only” narrative in our minds - If only I had more money, then I would be happy. If only I could lose more weight, find someone who loves me, get that car, house, job, promotion. All these thoughts arise from the depths of our minds and the only way we can unpack and address them is to prime our self awareness, isolate our thoughts and deal with them one part at a time.

At the heart of it, practicing mindfulness is really about cultivating a deeper sense of self-awareness of our own thoughts and to develop present-state awareness that helps us decrease emotional reactivity (reacting by reflex) and proactively create our responses to whatever life throws at us.

How we perceive something that is happening to us is more important that the actual thing happening. In his book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankel talks about the principle of freedom and choice. While suffering unimaginable treatment and torture in Nazi Germany, he realized an essential principle while on the precipice of death: He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between an external stimulus and our response, there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our response. To be proactive and not reactive. The ability to shape our narrative rather than let the narrative shape us.

Mindfulness practice helps us stay in the present by reminding us of what we are supposed to be doing and helps us see things for what they really are; unclouded by emotions or judgement.

When we meditate, we focus our attention on one thing and when our mind wanders, mindfulness brings us back to the object of focus. Repeated in practice, meditation establishes this function as a mental habit that carries throughout the rest of our lives. Mindfulness helps us pay attention to the moment; when we get stuck in our thoughts or just before the moment where our minds react in reflex to something we instinctively perceive as bad.

It offers us the opportunity to catch ourselves in the moment, regain control of that space between stimulus and response and choose a different narrative. By making our unconscious conscious, we empower ourselves to proactively change the things we can and let go of the things we can’t.

The challenge with meditation of course, is that it takes up a lot of time and work with no obvious pay-off. For those who have attempted to dabble (like me), the struggle of trying to stop your mind from wandering and constantly failing is a real deterrent.

But meditation is similar to weight lifting, it’s that last rep that you finally push through that brings the most results. We are building our mental muscle to overcome our monkey brains, which by default is programmed to be constantly distracted with thoughts.

In its simplest form, meditation is about turning off society, clearing our minds and listening to ourselves. To do that, we have to learn to focus our minds on a single point of reference, even when intrusive thought insist on cropping up.

Mindfulness can be practiced in many ways - Hiking is walking meditation, swimming is water meditation, journalling is writing meditation, praying is gratitude meditation and showering is accidental meditation.

To each their own so start with whatever works for you and slowly work your way up.