How to do a mindfulness without moving to Tibet
Happiness lies in controlling the gap between your expectations and your reality.
For many of us, life may be going pretty well, objectively. If you have a reasonable source of income, consistent access to food and shelter, hopefully some friends and family in your life to rely on, hospitals nearby filled with people who know a helluva lot about how to fix you if things go wrong, then life should be pretty good.
Most people living just over a century ago would kill for this quality of life, one in which the majority of our most basic needs are well catered to on a daily basis.
But:
Happiness isn’t dictated by our objective reality.
It’s largely determined by how we feel about our expectations of where we should be, or what others have.
Think about social media. How often does a scroll through a feed leave you feeling worse than before, having seen a bunch of people with things you don’t have, or in places you haven’t been. The perfect partner, high achieveing kids, dream car, the big garden, a sunny climate, amazing travels. You name it, someone else seems to have it.
Seeing these things creates expectations for us; we want those things, too. But we don’t have them. And that feeling of not having them makes us forget about the things we do have.
Ergo, unhappiness: the gap between our expectations, and our reality.
There are two ways to reduce that gap.
1. Reduce your expectations
There’s a lot of value in this as an approach. Actively choosing to ignore what others have, and thereby managing your own expectations, is a certifiable pathway to increasing your own happiness.
But there’s a problem with this approach. And it’s called the Tocqueville Paradox:
“As the living standards in a society rise, the people’s expectations of the society rise with it. The rise in expectations eventually surpasses the rise in living standards, inevitably resulting in disaffection.”
In other words, it doesn’t really matter that the person living 150 years ago would be really jealous of your one bedroom flat equipped with a flushing toilet and shower. Because as general living standards rise, so do our expectations.
Lowering our expectations can be really helpful to maintaining perspective. But we should also acknowledge that it’s really difficult to do because our expectations keep shifting, too.
And it also feels, well a little defeatist, doesn’t it?
But there’s a second way to reduce the gap between expectations and reality.
2. Change your view of your reality
Now, I’m not talking about a scene out of the Matrix and deciding which colour pill you should take.
But I am talking about something a lot of people may feel is just as out-there; mindfulness.
It can be described as:
Mindfulness
The intentional and focused direction of attention to the current experience, whether it be the breath, sensations in the body, or the unfolding of thoughts. It's a purposeful act of being consciously present.
Let’s say you’ve just bought a cup of coffee.
Something you do every day. It’s warm, well-made, and comes with a heart finessed into your frothed milk of choice.
If you chug that coffee down like any other drink, absent-mindedly as you scroll through Twitter getting annoyed at the news of the day, or watching dog videos about them holding secret meetings in cardboard boxes, that cup of coffee is unlikely to make a significant mark on your reality in that moment. The reality of that cup of coffee is likely to feel quite ordinary.
But now imagine putting your phone down.
You’re sitting with your coffee, finding a quiet place to sit, possibly in a patch of sun as it breaks through on a cold winter morning.
You wrap your hands around the mug and feel the warmth across each part of the eight, no seven, fingers that are in contact with the cup. You arch your neck a couple of inches towards the warmth, breathing in the aromas. Something chocolatey, perhaps, and maybe a hint of some kind of berry. You don’t know what notes you should be detecting, all you know is that is smells like a memory from a year ago with a friend in this same spot.
You take a sip, letting the flavours wash over the different parts of your tongue, noticing the tingle of anticipation in your throat as the warm liquid flows down and settles comfortingly across your chest and stomach. You feel your body react to the joy to be had in warming yourself from the inside out.
As you do, a soft touch of chocolate settles on your tongue, a little dash from the barista to take the edge off of your Tuesday morning.
Even though the coffee is still the same, the reality of that cup feels very different. It serves as a moment in your life for a minute or two, a star attraction, rather than a forgotten sideshow. All from something you do every day, but that has the potential of being uniquely different each time.
You’ve changed your reality.
I believe that’s one of the great powers of mindfulness. It can grant you a remarkable power to extract the maximum joy from a moment, no matter how ordinary it might appear. And that’s why it makes sense that so many people talk about it today.
Mindfulness is at the core of reducing stress, improving mental health, regulating your emotions, improving focus and concentration, and allowing you to extract more from the little things in life.
But the way people talk about it too often makes it sound like you have to go to the top of a mountain for six months, foregoing all contact with others while living off the land in order to achieve it.
Now, that might be one way. But I have a job, and plans to drink a few beers with some friends this weekend.
How can you learn to do a mindfulness in your everyday life?
When it comes down to it, mindfulness is just noticing things. But really carefully, and with intention. It’s a powerful skill to have, if you can train it.
If you change your reality, you can be your own Neo. Or, at the very least just really enjoy cups of coffee. Or a ray of sunshine on your arm. Or a hug from a friend.
So what does a mindfulness practice for the everyday person actually look like?
Here are two examples you can try today:
Brushing your teeth: Hopefully, this is something you’ll do today. If not, well, there might be bigger lessons to tackle first. But when you do, pay close attention to all the different sensations in your mouth as you do. Feel the weird mix of water and paste they mesh and flow over your tongue and your teeth. Notice the sensation of your gums as the bristles crash over them. Feel the pressure you’re exerting with your fingers. Identify when your tongue flicks to the other side of your mouth as soon as you move the brush in an automated effort to accommodate it. But most of all, try not to think about any of these things and what they might mean, notice only the feelings and sensation. If the thought enters your mind that you haven’t seen the dentist in an embarrassingly long time - like your-mum-would-be-angry-long - try to ignore it and return to one of the sensations in your mouth. Keep this going until you spit out and rinse, and then go about your day. Which hopefully involves making that call to the dentist.
Sitting on the couch: When was the last time you noticed sitting? You thought watching TV was your time off? Well, it is. But let’s do a bit of mindfulness while the ads are on, at least. Start at the top of your body and simply notice each part of your body that is in contact with the couch. Your shoulders pressing into the material, one slightly harder than the other. The part of your back that normally acts up in the morning but feels pretty nice nestled in against the cushion. Feel the weight of the back of your thighs as they create indentations into the padding beneath. And down to your toes, caught resting gently against your snoozing pooch, where you feel the soft rhythms and vibrations of her snoring. Just notice, and as thoughts come and go - I need to bathe the dog this weekend, and she really hates it - refocus again back on those soft vibrations.
Life is what happens when we’re too busy doing other things to notice.
So figuring out how to notice more effectively, brings a bit more life to you.