Short, simple, easy.
As Einstein said,
As Einstein said,
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
meditationSHIFT explains mindfulness and meditation in 3 minutes.
Below is the transcript from a 3-minute video we made answering the question "What are mindfulness and meditation?"
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There's always a lot of confusion about what mindfulness and meditation are. One thing there isn't a shortage of is elaborate attempts to explain them. I've seen books with hundreds of pages, and videos over an hour long...most of them are overly complex and filled with misconceptions and bad information.
It's not complicated, though, and over the next 180 seconds, I'm going to explain it in a straight-forward, simple manner.
Meditation is a dedicated exercise that helps you develop the skill of observing what's happening in your mind without getting caught up in it.
As humans, our natural (or, default) state tends to be "lost in thought." Our minds are compulsive, they're always going, and we have this inner narrative - what some people refer to as the voice in our heads - that comments on and judges everything...including ourselves!
It pulls our attention away from what we should be doing right here and now, and carries it off somewhere else. Maybe to the past to dwell on something that already happened, maybe the future to stress over something that might happen. Or, maybe it creates an imaginary scenario where we come up with the perfect response to somebody who was rude to us or made us angry.
I mean, how many hours have we all wasted thinking about "what we should have said or done" in response to what somebody else said or did? I believe there's an entire episode of "Seinfeld" dedicated to that premise.
The point is, our minds don't stop. And, most of the time, we aren't even aware of it - we're just along for the ride, following them wherever they take us.
If you don't believe that, try this experiment: sit at a table with a pen and pad, start a timer for 5 minutes, and write down every thought that pops into your head. It's an eye-opening experience for most people. And, you'll probably still miss half the thoughts even though you're making a dedicated effort to focus on (and document) them.
When you meditate, you strengthen awareness of your mind and its non-stop activity. As I said earlier, you learn to observe thoughts, emotions, urges, and the stories playing in your head without getting caught up in them.
This is an important point, because thinking isn't a problem. The problem is thinking without realizing you're thinking.
It's identifying with the mental noise, and going through your days victim to it because you're unaware of what your mind is doing and where it's leading you. This creates conditioned behavior, including habitual actions and reactions, and culminates in the struggles we deal with every day - from stress and anxiety to extreme emotions to sleep problems (and everything in between!).
Meditation helps you overcome all of this, but it's only half the equation. Mindfulness is the other half.
Mindfulness is taking the skill you develop while meditating and applying it to your "non-meditating" time. When you do this, you train yourself to stop following your mind wherever it leads. You train yourself to no longer be held hostage by the next thought, emotion, or urge that pops into your head. And, you can apply it to every aspect of your daily life: work, school, spending time with others, playing, relaxing, et cetera.
As a result, you are able to keep your attention on what you're doing right here and now, instead of letting it be carried off somewhere else. This, in turn, helps you break free from conditioned behavior (including habitual actions and reactions) and the struggles it culminates in.
A good analogy to help you understand how mindfulness and meditation work together is looking at the role of an athlete: an athlete practices so they can perform well in the game. "Practice" is meditation. "Performing" is mindfulness. "The game" is your daily life.
We meditate so we can be mindful in our daily lives.
In closing, there are the things that happen to us, and there are the stories our minds tell us about the things that happen to us - the two rarely match. The more mindful you are, the easier it is to see the difference. The easier it is to see the difference, the less likely you are to get caught up in "mental drama."
The end result is a more content state of being, and less struggles and suffering.
>
There's always a lot of confusion about what mindfulness and meditation are. One thing there isn't a shortage of is elaborate attempts to explain them. I've seen books with hundreds of pages, and videos over an hour long...most of them are overly complex and filled with misconceptions and bad information.
It's not complicated, though, and over the next 180 seconds, I'm going to explain it in a straight-forward, simple manner.
Meditation is a dedicated exercise that helps you develop the skill of observing what's happening in your mind without getting caught up in it.
As humans, our natural (or, default) state tends to be "lost in thought." Our minds are compulsive, they're always going, and we have this inner narrative - what some people refer to as the voice in our heads - that comments on and judges everything...including ourselves!
It pulls our attention away from what we should be doing right here and now, and carries it off somewhere else. Maybe to the past to dwell on something that already happened, maybe the future to stress over something that might happen. Or, maybe it creates an imaginary scenario where we come up with the perfect response to somebody who was rude to us or made us angry.
I mean, how many hours have we all wasted thinking about "what we should have said or done" in response to what somebody else said or did? I believe there's an entire episode of "Seinfeld" dedicated to that premise.
The point is, our minds don't stop. And, most of the time, we aren't even aware of it - we're just along for the ride, following them wherever they take us.
If you don't believe that, try this experiment: sit at a table with a pen and pad, start a timer for 5 minutes, and write down every thought that pops into your head. It's an eye-opening experience for most people. And, you'll probably still miss half the thoughts even though you're making a dedicated effort to focus on (and document) them.
When you meditate, you strengthen awareness of your mind and its non-stop activity. As I said earlier, you learn to observe thoughts, emotions, urges, and the stories playing in your head without getting caught up in them.
This is an important point, because thinking isn't a problem. The problem is thinking without realizing you're thinking.
It's identifying with the mental noise, and going through your days victim to it because you're unaware of what your mind is doing and where it's leading you. This creates conditioned behavior, including habitual actions and reactions, and culminates in the struggles we deal with every day - from stress and anxiety to extreme emotions to sleep problems (and everything in between!).
Meditation helps you overcome all of this, but it's only half the equation. Mindfulness is the other half.
Mindfulness is taking the skill you develop while meditating and applying it to your "non-meditating" time. When you do this, you train yourself to stop following your mind wherever it leads. You train yourself to no longer be held hostage by the next thought, emotion, or urge that pops into your head. And, you can apply it to every aspect of your daily life: work, school, spending time with others, playing, relaxing, et cetera.
As a result, you are able to keep your attention on what you're doing right here and now, instead of letting it be carried off somewhere else. This, in turn, helps you break free from conditioned behavior (including habitual actions and reactions) and the struggles it culminates in.
A good analogy to help you understand how mindfulness and meditation work together is looking at the role of an athlete: an athlete practices so they can perform well in the game. "Practice" is meditation. "Performing" is mindfulness. "The game" is your daily life.
We meditate so we can be mindful in our daily lives.
In closing, there are the things that happen to us, and there are the stories our minds tell us about the things that happen to us - the two rarely match. The more mindful you are, the easier it is to see the difference. The easier it is to see the difference, the less likely you are to get caught up in "mental drama."
The end result is a more content state of being, and less struggles and suffering.
<>
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life.
"Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern.
Read Day 1 here (no email required).
Our minds constantly create stories about what we experience, and we spend most of our time caught up in those stories. This results in the stress and struggles of daily life.
"Your inner narrative" (our 15-day online course) can help you break that pattern.
Read Day 1 here (no email required).
