Mindfulness without the Bells and Beads. Clif Smith
Читать онлайн книгу.
the hype about mindfulness?” You may be one of the millions of people who have been curious about mindfulness but don't want to be associated with the spiritual crowd that so often drowns out its core meaning. Perhaps you recoil at the thought of listening to someone breathlessly guide meditations in a sickly sweet voice. Maybe you thought you'd need to join a yoga studio and get a subscription for monthly deliveries of incense. If any of those have been keeping you from trying out mindfulness, this book is for you. In these pages, I peel back the layers of hype and hyperbole about mindfulness and provide a practical and demystified approach to reaping the real benefits from a consistent mindfulness practice over just an 8-week period.
When I was approached by Wiley Publishing about writing a book, I knew my purpose would be the same as my purpose for delivering my keynotes, coaching high-performers, and teaching my 8-week mindfulness course: to creatively inspire others so that they may transcend self-limiting beliefs, achieve their dreams, and navigate life with a bit more ease.
As you progress through the book and do the exercises, you can gain a greater ability to respond thoughtfully and calmly in the midst of high-pressure and complex situations, become more agile in the face of change, and pay more attention to the things you deem most important. You will learn practices that are known to lead to enhanced mental focus, empathy, and resilience. Through consistent practice, you can become aware of some of your self-created challenges and learn ways to avoid automatically falling into the same patterns so you can get out of your own way. You will learn ways to be less affected by unhelpful internal dialogue, limiting beliefs, and irrational feelings of fear (failure, embarrassment, and criticism), allowing you to see and seize opportunities to grow beyond what you previously thought possible and unlock your latent potential. Finally, you'll also begin to be able to connect with people around you more fully and effectively. These benefits cascade and compound, resulting in improvements in performance, leadership, and well-being.
The book is divided into two primary parts. Part I, beginning with my story and how mindfulness has affected my life, is designed to demystify and define mindfulness (the what), discuss the science and benefits of mindfulness practice in the modern world (the why), and provide you with some initial exercises to begin increasing your base level of mindfulness (the very basic how). These are the fundamentals. I won't be going into a deep scholarly review of ancient texts and parsing the different definitions asserted by Pali and Sanskrit language experts. My goal here is to provide practical, useful, and non–new age information to give you the tools needed to start an effective mindfulness practice, begin to reap the benefits, and be an informed consumer of mindfulness training.
Part II is a deeper dive into mindfulness (and some non-mindfulness) exercises to begin to create a consistent practice so you can move from merely an intellectual understanding of mindfulness to an embodied knowledge that positively affects your experience. Part II is meant to be followed as an 8-week course in which you read the content of week 1 and do the exercises outlined at the end of the chapter for a minimum of 1 week, before moving on to week 2 and beyond.
Here is a quick overview of the 8-week course:
Week 1: No Trivial Moments: Moving from Autopilot to Aware
Week 2: The Mindset You Bring to Your Experience Matters
Week 3: Do You Have the Story or Does the Story Have You?
Week 4: The Saber-Toothed Tiger of the Modern World: Everything
Week 5: Delving into the Difficult
Week 6: In the Same Boat
Week 7: Who Watches (Out for) You?
Week 8: Maintaining Momentum
Getting the most out of this book requires a commitment to doing the practices consistently. It's fine if you want to read the entire book first to get a sense of things and then actually do the course later, but do not lie to yourself as you close the last page and think, “I got this; now I know how to be mindful.” If you do that, you'll be about as mindful as one of those rocks in a Zen garden. You'd only have an intellectual understanding of mindfulness, which is pretty much useless. Whether you are new to mindfulness or have a long-term practice, I encourage you to start at the beginning of the book and work your way through in chapter order, doing the exercises consistently along the way. Practice is the only way to reap the benefits of mindfulness. Let's get to it.
Notes
1 1. https://www.dimensions.guide/element/track-and-field-400m-running-track
2 2. Hróbjartsson, A., & Norup, M. (2003). The use of placebo interventions in medical practice—A national questionnaire survey of Danish clinicians. Evaluation & the Health Professions, 26(2), 153–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278703026002002
3 3. Luthar, S., Small, P., & Ciciolla, L. (2018). Adolescents from upper middle class communities: Substance misuse and addiction across early adulthood. Development and Psychopathology, 30(1), 315–335. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579417000645
Chapter 1 The Power of the Trained Mind
On June 13, 1994, I stepped off a bus at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and was immediately assailed by the shouts from a group of US Army drill sergeants. As you might imagine, my heart was pounding in my chest and I was thinking, “What the hell did I get myself into?” I had barely made the grades needed to graduate from high school just 3 days prior and this was the first step on what has turned out to be an incredible journey through life with its ups, downs, and hard-won lessons learned. I had many family members who served our country and inspired me to do the same, and I wanted to “earn my freedom,” a phrase which, as it turned out, had two meanings.
The first meaning of “earn my freedom” was recognizing I won the world lottery by being born in the United States of America but had done absolutely nothing to earn it. Serving my country was one way to do so. I grew up being inspired by my Uncle Ernie, who served in the US Marines during the Vietnam War and later joined the Army, where he served until retirement. Every Christmas Eve at my grandmother's house in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, we would gather around the phone for our chance to talk with Ernie for a few minutes when he called in from a far-off place. There was always talk about service, patriotism, and sacrifice after we hung up that phone each year. Those sentiments instilled in me a desire to earn my freedom, and Ernie's stories kindled my interest in leaving my small town to explore the world.
The second meaning of “earn my freedom” came from the fact that we were dirt poor, and earning my financial freedom was high on my list of to-dos. I learned at a very young age what many kids do not learn until later in life, sometimes much later, that the food that arrived on my table each night and the roof over my head were there due to others sacrificing and laboring for me when I could do little in return. Crossing that threshold of understanding about the world fueled my motivation to become self-reliant, claw my way out of poverty, and help others.
Joining the US Army was one of the most important and impactful decisions of my life. The self-discipline, friendships, and experiences I gained in the Army shaped who I am, carried me through challenging times, helped me find the courage to take