This One Moment: Skills for Everyday Mindfulness

Do you often feel that your emotions or impulses are in control and not you? Is your mind often filled with worries about the future?  Or, anxieties about the past? Do you feel like you can't live in the present? Would you like to be free, free to live according to your own beliefs? Would like to deepen your ability to consciously participate in your own life? Any of this is true for you, this program's for you.

Welcome. I'm Marsha Linehan.  I'm a professor at the University of Washington and I'm a research psychologist and I do research to develop treatments. Basically I develop treatments for people who have problems.

I'm going to be talking to you in this program about a set of skills, not really that I developed. These are a set of skills I'm going to teach you but they are a set of skills that were taught to me.  They were so valuable for me that I started thinking maybe they would be valuable for someone else. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly had I learned and how, exactly, could I teach it to someone else. And that's what this program is about. And the name of the skills that I'm going to be talking about is Mindfulness Skills. So that's the focus of this whole program - Mindfulness.

MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness refers to the quality of attention or the quality of awareness or the quality of presence that you bring to every day life. It's a way of living your life awake.  Which is to say, with your eyes open, instead of your eyes closed.  You know most people live their lives as if their eyes were closed a good part of the time.

You know life; it's a lot like walking across the room with the lights off.  There's lots of furniture. You're trying to get from one side to the other. Mindfulness is when you're trying to get there as effectively and as skillfully as you can. You turn the lights on so that you can see the furniture.  You've got to admit if you turn the lights on and you can see the furniture, your chances of getting from one side to the other without tripping over the furniture is a lot higher than if you keep your lights off. A non-mindful life is the same thing as trying to get across a room with the lights off.

Mindfulness as a practice is thousands of years old. In fact it exists in every single religious and spiritual tradition that I have ever heard of. Both western and eastern spiritual tradition - it just goes by different names. Now, what's interesting about it is and what is interesting to me also a scientist, is that although that's the spiritual tradition, and mindfulness has been there for years, what's been happening over the last, I don't know, ten years or so, maybe fifteen, there's been an emerging tradition in western science that's been looking at the very same practice.

So you find now in psychology also a really big emphasis on the practice of mindfulness. The good thing about this is that what you find if you start looking at the spiritual tradition and if you look at the sort of western science tradition, is that they both start saying exactly the same thing. In other words, they're coming up with the same insights.  And that's what I'm going to talk about somewhat in this program, is the insights that you can get from the eastern and western spiritual traditions and the insights you can get from western science.

What are Mindfulness Skills? Well, there are 2 kinds. There's what you do, and how you do it.

What are the 'what' skills?  Observing, describing, participating. Now the one thing about the what skills that I'm going to ask you to remember is that, when it comes to what you're doing, you can only do one thing at a time, if you are being mindful. Part of being mindful is 'one thing at a time'.  So we're going to focus here on three 'what's' but we're going to do it one at a time. 

Now I'm going to have you practicing with me as we go through. And as we go through, you try to do one thing at a time.
How many things are you doing right now? Have you gotten up to get a piece of paper to make notes? If you haven't, you don't want to get up and get a piece of paper to take notes while I'm talking - that would be 2 things at a time. So get up and pause this program. Go get yourself some paper, get a pencil, come back. When you come back, get it started again. 
The good news is, watching a program and taking notes is like going to a class and taking notes. It's a complex thing, but its one thing at a time. So you can do that.  Are you ready?


What Skills: Observing

Observing is the first 'what' skill. Now the secret to observing is to focus on just one thing at a time. So the idea isn't to be observing... you know how sometimes you can say 'I'm observing - I'm looking over here and I'm looking there and I'm looking here and I'm looking there. Well, I'm just observing everything in the room.'? That's fabulous. It's perfectly fine to do it. I'm not telling you not to do it.  I'm only saying that's not the mindfulness skill of observing. 

Mindfulness skill of observing is when you keep your mind focused on the same thing. So let's try that.  Put your hand right now on the table in front of you or you can put it on your leg.  Just pay attention to your hand.  All of your attention on the palm. Did you just notice what the palm of your hand felt like? That's noticing. That's just observing.

Now let me ask you something.  When you were just observing your hand, did you start describing what it felt like?  Did you say 'hot' 'cool' 'hard' 'soft'? It is really hard to notice things without at the same time trying to describe them. However, I guarantee you, it's an amazing fact of life that if you practice this you'll find that over time, you'll get quieter and quieter and quieter. And you'll actually learn how to observe things without a running commentary. 

You can observe things outside of yourself.  Or you could observe things inside yourself.  If you want to get mindful, you've got to be able to look in and out. 

Now, let's talk about observing inside first.  Some people are just downright scared to do that.  They're afraid of what they'll see if they look inside. Some people say 'If I have to look inside myself, I'll be overwhelmed. Feelings will come up that I don't want. Thoughts will come up that I don't want.  Who knows what will happen, but it's not going to be anything I want. No, I am not doing it.' 

Alright, if that's you, that's not where you want to start.  You're going to start practicing observing things outside of yourself.  Now that's not to say that you're not going to sooner or later look inside. But if it's too hard to look in to start, look out. 

Other people, on the other hand, that's all they ever do is look inside. They experience themselves all the time. No matter what they're doing.  They're kind... sort of overwhelmed with thoughts running through their mind; emotions popping up. They can't get away from themselves.  They notice just about everything that goes on inside of themselves.  That kind of person is going to have to practice looking outside of themselves. 

So let's practice. First, just watch the screen.  If you watch it, first you're going to notice I'm going to disappear. Good news is I'm going to reappear.  But I want you to just watch it. Now watch it and try not to describe it.


Let's do another one.  This time we're going to try just listening to sound.

Now the trick to mindfulness is, don't close your eyes.  I mean, what's the point of learning how to be mindful with your eyes closed.  It's not that useful. You'll want to learn to be mindful with your eyes open. But if you want to practice with your eyes open, you don't want to get distracted by everything in the world. So, why don't you just find a place for your eyes. Find something to look at. You can look down. You can look at anything in front of you.  It really doesn't make any difference what you're looking at.  Most people close their eyes a little bit.  I don't because if I close my eyes even a little bit, I always want to close them all the way. So, find a place for your eyes, but then pay attention to what you hear. Just listen. [music for 8 seconds]

Let's do one more. We're going to do the most common mindfulness practice in the world. It's the one that you find in every culture. And just about every mindfulness group or class on mindfulness that you ever get yourself into is going to focus on this one.  What's the one thing you're going to have with you your entire life?  That no one can ever take away from you? Your breath.

So how do you practice this one? Well first, sit back.  If you're sitting, just sit back try to make your back sort of straight, mainly because you want to be comfortable. Find a place for your eyes. You're going to want to keep your mouth slightly open or at least your teeth slightly apart so you want to kind of relax the bottom part of your mouth. 

But you're going to breath through your nose.  Now, just notice the breath coming in.  Notice the breath as it goes up your nostril and it goes down the back of your throat. And notice your chest coming up. Try to breath really deep and just notice the breath coming in  down your... back of your throat. And then notice your chest coming out.

Breathe out. Breathe out through your nose, kind of slowly, not too fast. Just try that for a couple of breaths. Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Just notice.  Just pay attention. Are you able to do that? That's observing.  That's all it is. It's not really complicated.

Most people when they start practicing observing notice right away that they can't observe anything for very long.  That their mind just goes off.  That if they're observing one thing, they start thinking about something else. So there is a trick to this. The minute something else comes into your mind, observe it.  You just notice it. You just notice it and then try to take your mind right back to what you were observing in the first place. Kind of like clouds in the sky - just sort of let them go by.  You can imagine that your thoughts were just birds flying by. Just let them fly out of your mind.

It can take a really long time to learn to keep your attention on one thing. And in fact, almost no one ever really learns it completely.  Why do you think that is? Well, it's because the job of the brain is to generate thoughts.  And the job of the brain is to attend to sensations and feelings. So it's probably never going to happen that you're going to try to observe one thing that other things aren't going to come into your mind.

So, you don't want to start worrying about that or thinking you're not doing it because if you starting thinking you're not doing it then what'll happen? Then an emotion will come, like frustration or anger or fear or worry or hopelessness or despair. And then, you just have to notice that.

So whatever happens, the secret to this practice is notice it. Observe it and try to turn your attention back to what you had started observing in the first place. 

You may be thinking 'Listen. Give me a break Marsha.  I have never focus my mind on one thing in my entire life. I can't do this. This is not anything I can do. Why would I try if I can't do it?  I'll get to jittery, I'll just quit.  I know it.' Take heart.  I was exactly that way when I started. In fact, when I started doing mindfulness practice, I used to sit there. I would try to pay attention to my breath, so I would sit there like this paying attention to my breath.  I don't know, maybe a minute into it, I'd get the urge to stop, I'd want to quit.  So what did I do? I always quit. Never  occurred to me that if an urge to quit came by, I shouldn't just quit. It took me years to figure out that I could just sit there and wait for the urge to quit to come and then I could just notice the urge to quit.

Let's move to learning how to notice what's going on inside you. So how would you do it?  Well, the first thing to remember is to keep your eyes open again. This time what I want you to do is sort of sit back, watch your mind and see if a thought comes in.  Just notice whether a thought comes in.  And if a thought comes in, notice what it is. Did you notice one? Some people do.  Some people don't.  You could have just been there waiting for a thought.   Or, you could be a person who has a million thoughts go through your mind.  You could have had a thought going really slowly through your mind.  It really doesn't make any difference what you notice. The trick to noticing is just to notice.

Now you may have been thinking 'I'm not doing that.' You may be one of those people who figures that whatever you see in your mind, you're not going to like.  You're going to have thoughts that are scary.  So you may be thinking 'I'm just avoiding that'.  Sooner or later, you're going to have to look at yourself. We all do. It's just one of those things in life that no one can avoid.  So this is a really good way to practice it and a good way to learn it. 

Now you may be thinking, 'Well, if I look at my thoughts, I'm just going to have too many of them. So I'm going to get rid of my thoughts first.  I'm going to squish my thoughts down.  Then I'm going to look at my mind.' That is not going to work.

In fact, if you wanted to figure out a way to have a thought stay in your mind, try to squish the thought and it will come back.  If you want a thought to go away... this is going to sound like a miraculous event but actually it's a fact... if you actually look at a thought, just observe, just notice.  Don't do one other thing with it. Just look at it. You'll be amazed.  It's like a miracle.  The thought will go away.

You know thoughts, sensations, feelings, emotions, you can think of them like they're cars on a train. And mindfulness practice is a little bit like sitting on a hill with a train track down in front of you and you're just watching the train cars go by.  And one car may be a thought.  Others may be emotions. Others may be physical sensations. Just watch the train. Watch them go by.  They just sort of rumble past.

Now the secret is, don't get one the train.  You know sometimes how if a thought goes by you and then you start thinking about something and a little while later you say 'What happened?  What happened?' That's getting on the train. So the idea is don't get on the train.

The best reason for practicing observing is that it brings you into the present moment.  It's especially useful if you're having trouble getting your mind off the past.  Or, getting your mind off the future.  Thoughts about the past are just driving you nuts.  Thoughts about the future are interfering with your life. Try observing. You could observe anything.  Observe yourself walking. Let's imagine your walking.  Just be walking and observe.



The What Skills: Describing

Describing really is applying words to what you notice.  If you're looking at a painting of a landscape you may say 'trees, green, yellow, brushstrokes'.  That's describing. 



Or you could describe something inside yourself. 'A feeling of sadness has just arisen within me.' 

Just like in observing, you can describe things outside of yourself or inside of yourself.

Let's start with something outside of yourself.  So just watch the screen and see what comes by and describe it.  Describe it in words.



Alright, so there's a red line.



A blue circle.



A heart shape.



Yellow spot. Great.

It can be very useful also to try to practice describing your thoughts.  In other words, you step back, you observe the thoughts going through your mind, and then you describe them.  Now describing thoughts can be hard unless you categorize them. So what you might want to do is try categorizing or sorting your thoughts out into different kinds of thoughts. 

You could be watching your thoughts and thinking 'worry thoughts, planning thoughts, critical thoughts, thoughts about tomorrow' on and on and on.  Doing this requires one really important skill, which is that you've got to know the difference between a thought and a fact. 

I'm going to give you a thought and I want you to let it go through your mind. 'I'm a green person.' And are you thinking that's a fact?  Or are you thinking you actually are a green person?  No, probably not.   Let another thought go through. 'I'm a jerk.'  Do you know lots of people when they have a thought like that go through their mind, they actually don't think it's a thought; they think it's a fact.

Now I want you to notice that 'I'm a green person' and 'I'm a jerk' are both thoughts. That's the secret here.  The secret is to be able to tell the difference between thoughts and facts.

Why is describing such a good idea?  The main reason is it helps you to react to what's really going on in the world instead of reacting to what you think is going on in the world. The most important thing about describing is to try to describe only what you observe. Don't add to what you see. And don't subtract from what you see.  Sounds really easy, doesn't it?  It's not. It's actually really hard. So I'll give you an example. Now I want you to just watch and watch my face, ok? Now watch my face and as you look at it I want you to describe it.



Ok.  What did you say? All right, how many of you said anger? Raise your hand. Anger, irritation, something like that, raise your hand.  Most people do you know.  Now watch again and tell me what you really see. Lips pursed.  Eyebrows together.  Staring eyes. That's what you saw.
Almost everybody says that.  That's why I use that example because just about everybody says anger or irritation or something 'she's mad at me' something like that.

What you're doing when you do that is you're making an interpretation. And then you're treating your interpretation as if it's a fact.  As if you actually saw it.  It's possible to be correct in interpretations.  It's really possible. I could have been feeling anger. But, it's just as possible that you're wrong. 

Not being able to tell the difference between facts and interpretations is a source of a lot of the world's troubles. And it's a source of a lot of our own troubles also.

The What Skills: Participating

The third 'what' skill is participating.   When you are participating you just throw yourself in to what you are doing.  The idea of participating is to try to become one with the activity.  Participating is when you lose self consciousness - you lose consciousness of yourself in an activity.

Participating is really the goal of observing and describing.  I mean, the point of life is to participate in it.

When we're participating in living in our life, we often run into problems.  And then what do you do when you run into a problem? Well you have to step back.  You have to step back.  You have to observe.  Then you try to describe - try to figure out and understand what's going on. You try to explain what the problem is.  Then once you've figured out what's wrong, try to correct it.

Correcting usually takes a lot of practice.  So you may really have to describe what you're doing.  Observe and describe; observe and describe; observe and describe. And then, sooner or later, if you keep at it, what happens?  You can participate. 

Have you ever noticed how musicians become one with the music? Piano players just all over the place; they just become one.  Have you ever seen how dramatic they are? Horn players are the same way.  That's participating.
Now imagine that you found out that the way you were playing the music was incorrect.  You'd actually gotten the notes wrong. What do you think would happen?  Well, you would step back. You would observe what you were doing that was incorrect.  You would describe it. In other words you would explain it. You would say 'no, I'm playing A when I'm supposed to be playing C sharp'.  And you'd pay a lot of attention, you'd observe and describe, observe and describe, observe and describe.  But what's the point of all this? The point of all that is to get so you can participate again. 

Participating is really hard.  If you're socially shy or anxious when you're around people, very nervous when you are performing, it can be really hard to participate.  You're a person then that has to work on it.  Ask yourself, do you sort of stand in the corner? Do you stay out of things?  Do you spend your whole time just observing what's going on?  If you're that kind of person, practice participating. 

Are you the kind of person that when you go on a vacation never looks at anything, you just take pictures of it all?  I've done that. That's the nonparticipating vacationer.  If you're that kind of person, you're going to some day want to go on a vacation and leave that camera at home. You're going to just want to look at the mountains.  It's amazing they actually look different when you're looking at them than they do in a picture. 

Those are the three 'what' skills. Observe. Describe.  Participate. 


THE 'HOW' SKILLS

And now we're going to do the 'how' skills. And the how skills have everything to do with how do you observe, how do you describe, and how do you participate. And there are three 'how' skills:  non-judgmentally, one mindfully, and effectively.

The How Skills:  Non-judgmentally

What are you doing when you are judging something? Judging is adding something to what you observe.  It's when you observe a fact and then you add an evaluation.  And the evaluation that you're adding, in one way or the other, is good or bad.  That's the bottom line. That's really all it is.  It's actually pretty easy idea and it's a really hard one to get. 

Let's talk about the difference between observing and describing, and observing and judging. So we'll take lying. What's lying?  Lying is when a person says something that's not true.  On purpose. Ok.  Saying something not true.  On purpose.

'So, Mary said something not true on purpose and she's bad.  Ah, what a liar!' 'Mary said something not true on purpose and well, it had a lot of consequences.  People don't trust her anymore. Some people who believed her made decisions that turned out to really hurt them. Lying had painful consequences.'

Now, notice. In one, I was saying lying is bad so that's 'lying' that's an observation; 'bad' that's a judgment.   And the other, I said 'lying' that's an observation.  And then what did I do?  Instead of judging, I described the consequences.

Judging actually is a shorthand way to state consequences. And if the consequences are negative, painful, destructive, disliked, we call it 'bad'.  If the consequences are positive, lead to enhanced welfare, improve the happiness of one and all, we call it 'good'.

So judging is a shorthand. Therefore judging is really needed some of the time. Sometimes we need a shorthand. When do you need a shorthand?  Well, I'm a teacher.  I give a shorthand by giving A, B, C, or D.  A is better than B. B is better than C.  C is better than D. I get paid to judge.
If you go to the fish market, and you go to buy fish, and you pick it up and you say 'Is this still good?'  And the dealer smells it and say's 'No, it's not good.' What's he doing? He's evaluating it, but what's he evaluating?  Actually it's a shorthand for 'No, this has germs; this is old; this could make you sick; this is not safe.' All of which are consequences.  However, my guess is you'd just as soon not have the fish guy say all that stuff.  You'd just like him to say 'No, it's bad. Don't buy it.'

Have you ever noticed that lots of times we just forget that judging's shorthand?  Have you noticed that?  We go around making statements about people who are either good or they're bad; they're stupid or they're smart; or they're this or they're that. And we forget that it's a shorthand, we start thinking those are real qualities of the person.  We start acting like... we start forgetting that we're describing the consequences of their behaviour and act like we're describing characteristics of the person. 'That person is good.' 'That person is bad.'

A lot of us judge ourselves.   And a lot of us judge others. And some of us do both.  Which are you? Do you mostly judge yourself; mostly judge others? Or are you an equal opportunity player; you do both?

There are 2 problems with judging. The first one is that when you're judging something, if you forget that you're doing a shorthand, you don't react to what other people are doing or what you're doing.  You start reacting to your own thoughts about what they're doing. It's kind of like you think you're reacting to what someone else is doing and you're really reacting to your own judgments.  Have you ever noticed how people do that? I'll bet people do that to you. And my guess is that you do it to other people some of the time.

So that's the first problem - you're just inaccurate.  You're responding to things that might not even be happening.

And the second problem is, is judgments cause unending problem emotions. Have you ever noticed that? It's really hard to be angry at someone without judging them.  It's hard to be angry at yourself without judging yourself. It's almost impossible to get rid of shame if you don't reduce the amount of judgments that you make about yourself. 

So, there are two reasons. Reason one, it's hard to react to the real world as it really is when you are reacting to judgments.  It's a little bit like reacting to interpretations instead of the facts.  And second, it causes no end of emotional pain. It's hard to reduce negative emotions without reducing judgments.  Ok, got it?

Well, now the question is... the 64 thousand dollar question is how in the world are you going to change judgments? This can be extremely difficult. That's the bad news. The fabulous news, you can do it.  I cannot even begin to tell you how many people I've worked with who are really judgmental - judge, judge, judge, judge, judge - that have gotten it to go down.  It can take some time, but there are a lot of things that are going to take you more time than this.

So I'm going to go through the steps.  If you really want to get your judgments down, and you follow these steps, this will work. 

Well the first step is you have to decide what is actually important to you to reduce your judging. It's going to be hard to do this if you don't want to. So it's probably not going to work if you're stopping judging because someone else told you to do it. Someone else wants you to do it or other people are being critical of you.  So you need to sit back and just say to yourself 'Do I or don't I? What do I have to gain?' Now I'm going to assume for the moment that you have a lot to gain by being less judgmental.

The next step is to start paying attention to your own judgments.  What you want to do is observe, notice, and then describe. By describe, I mean just label.  You want to notice judgmental thoughts, judgmental actions, judgmental tones of voice. 
Judgments can be hard to recognize. Listen to this: 'Well, I went into this room, had yellow walls and a green carpet.'  Ok. Now listen to this:  "Well!  I went into this room and it had yellow walls and a green carpet!' Ok.  See the difference? You notice that in the second one, didn't that sound judgmental?  What do you think?  Do you think I like the yellow walls with the green carpet?  No. In the first one, no judgment, it's a description. Second one, judgment. 

So you've got to watch.  You've got to watch for your voice tone and the content because the '...went in this room it had yellow walls!' is the same thing as saying 'I went in this room, it had yellow walls. And uck, uck, uck, they were terrible. Who's that decorator?'  Alright.

So the first thing you do is notice. Now what you want to do the first time is you want to notice them and you want to count them. Especially if you judge a lot. You want to count them and you want to count them each day.  So how would you do that? Well, it kind of depends on whether you judge a lot or you don't judge a lot.

But if you're a person who judges a lot, and a lot of people are, then you're going to have to find a way to remember how many judgments you've made during the day. What I tell the people I work with to do is to go and buy a counter. You can go to any sporting goods store and buy a counter. And you put that on your belt or you put it in your pocket or you carry it with you someway. And then, all day long, every time you judge or you find yourself being judgmental, you just click it. At the end of the day, you look at the number, write it down and you've got it for the day.

It'll be interesting to see how many you have. I've had people who thought they had loads of judgments when they had seven or eight. And, I've had people who've had over a hundred a day. I had one person, she had so many she couldn't count them. So she used to just count for an hour out of the day. She said she was judging all day long. So, that's step one: count.

Now what you want to do is write it down every night.  So take a week out of your life and say 'I'm going to watch my judgments every day for a week.'  It's very interesting.  If you want a behaviour to go down, you want to do something less, and you start counting it, just the very fact that you're counting it almost always makes it go down. It's really interesting but that's just the way it works. 
Now I have to tell you one more really important thing.  If you've decided that you want to stop judging, or at least reduce it, then you start noticing when you're judging, you're going to want to remember: don't judge the judging.

If you judge your judging, you'll have to click that counter again.  You don't want to do that.  That would double your number of judgments in the day.  So, don't judge your judging.

Simply take a judgment and replace it with a consequence.  That's the best way to reframe it.  And know the difference between a judgment and a fact. 

And not decide that everything that is negative is a judgment. Lots of times we think people are judging us if they say 'I don't like your lipstick' or 'I don't like your hair' Your mother may say 'I wish you'd wear skirts.' You think she's judging you. She may be of course, but it's possible she just wishes that. 

Now some people think that the best way to reframe a judgment is just to turn a negative into a positive.  You're not bad, you're good.  We often think that when we're thinking about ourselves.  I'm bad, so I say, 'Oh, I should have affirming beliefs, positive self views.  So I'll change the negative to the positive.'

Now I've got to tell you that's very dangerous.  The reason it's dangerous?  If you can be positive then you can be negative. The trick? Skip both. Simply say 'I am.  Neither good nor bad.'  That's the whole idea of being nonjudgmental is to develop the capacity and the habit of seeing the world as it is, describing it as it is, and honestly stating your values.  Having values is not being judgmental. 

The How Skills:  One Mindfully

What's the second mindfulness skill? One mindfully. One mindfulness is the opposite of mindless. 

So ask yourself, how often do you do things mindlessly?  What do I mean by that? Well, I mean, how often do you do things in an automatic way, sort of a non-conscious, automatic way without thinking about what you're doing?  For example, have you ever been driving somewhere where you were the car driver, and then you got where you going but you had no idea how you got there? You were thinking about home, or what you were going to do when you got home or what you were going to do when you got somewhere? You were talking to someone else?  In other words, you were doing everything else including driving? In other words, you were doing five things plus driving? That's the opposite of one mindful. 

Being one mindful is also the opposite of multitasking.  Most of the time when I start trying to teach mindfulness skills, especially to professionals, they say 'Ok, look, I can do it but I've got to do two things at once.  It's the only way I can be efficient. I... I'll never get anything done. You can't ask me to do that. I'll do everything else but not this.' That's a very typical response.  Are you saying the same thing? 

What you may not know is that people have actually done research on this.  People have gotten subjects to come into research and then in the research they give them a number of tasks to be done. And they ask one group of people to do everything mindfully. And they ask another group of people to try to get everything done as quickly as possible, multi-tasking.   And then they look to see who's the most efficient. Who do you think it is?  It's the person who does it one mindfully. 

Now you may be thinking 'Well, the reason why multi-tasking was inefficient in that research is because they had subjects doing three things, all of which needed their attention. But how about when I have a lot of things to do and only some of the things need my attention. Like why in the world would I pay attention to washing the dishes when I could be solving some problem in my mind. Why not wash dishes and think about my problems?'  Or 'I don't need to pay attention to driving. I get home anyway, so what's the point?  I can have a really important conversation with someone or I can listen to music or I can do other things. So it's really ridiculous.' 

Now that may be true.  So what's the point of one mindfulness in those situations? The real question to ask yourself is, how full do you want to live life? How much are you willing to miss in your very own life? One mindfulness has to do with not missing your own life. 

What is one mindfulness? Well, it's actually very simple. It really is 'one thing at a time'.  If you're eating, just eat.  If you're talking, just talk. If you're worrying, just worry.  Throw your mind into what you're doing and do that one thing. 

So the idea of this skill, one mindfully, is to one mindfully observe, one mindfully describe, one mindfully participate. When you're observing, only observe. When you're describing, only describe. And when you're participating, throw yourself in; just participate totally. 

Now doing one thing at a time can actually be difficult. One thing that makes it hard, is just not liking the current moment that you are in.  Often when we don't like what's going on now, or we don't like doing what we're doing, we don't like doing one thing, we either start doing something else at the same time or we start thinking about something else. So that's one thing that makes it really hard.
The second thing that makes it really hard is when the past and the future get in the way. That's a big one.  Have you ever noticed how worrying about the past or thinking about the future can really interfere with the present? 

I had a client who had a lot of chronic pain.  She had this terrible disorder that just gave her so much physical pain  I... it was just agony. She would call me sometimes on the telephone just to tell me how awful it was and it would be really interesting. She would be saying things like 'Oh, it hurts! It's just been going on so long! It's never going to end!'  I would say 'Listen, you've go so much pain in the present - you've got plenty of suffering. You've got enough suffering without having to suffer everything from the past and everything from the future.  You've got enough in the present. Keep your mind in the present, this one second.'

We only have to live this one second, so if you've got to suffer it makes a lot more sense, suffer this moment.  Just one moment; just this moment. 

I'll give you an example.  So imagine you're walking somewhere.  So you're just walking. So imagine that. Doing nothing else.  You're not doing one other thing. Just walking.  Now lets add on to it. You're walking down an aisle to go up some stairs to a podium to get your award.  We'll compare that to walking to the bathroom.  And we'll compare that to... what if you were walking to the guillotine?  You're going to get your head chopped off.

Do you know almost everybody in those situations would feel different while they're walking. The person walking to get an award, how do you think they might feel?  Happy?  The person walking to the bathroom, may be neutral.  The person walking to the guillotine, probably miserable.  The facts of the matter are though, what's the difference?  You're not at the guillotine yet, you're just walking. You're not getting your award yet, you're just walking.

That's the idea. The idea is do one thing and throw your whole mind into the one thing.  Walking is walking.  Eating is eating. What are you doing now?  Watching. Watching and listening. That's all you're doing now. Not one other thing.

So why practice this?  I'm going to give you three reasons.  The first is more efficient.  Doing one task at a time is more efficient than multi-tasking. So that's a good reason.

The second reason is it allows you to live life to the fullest.  If you're living life in the moment, you experience and can be aware of your entire life. You don't miss your life.  You don't miss what's going on.  If you've got children, you live your children growing up. 

The third reason is that life has enough suffering in the moment.  If you practice one mindfulness, you just suffer the moment. And suffering just the moment beats out suffering the future, the past, and the moment.  So in effect, it reduces your suffering. 

The How Skills:  Effectively

We've gone through two of the 'hows'.  Non-judgmentally. One mindfully. And we have one more.  Effectively. 

Acting effectively means doing what works. You have to ask yourself, 'Works for what?'  So you have to know your goals.  You actually have to think through what is it that you really want? It's going to be hard to figure out whether you're doing what works if you don't even know what you want. So you have to do that. 

The next thing that you have to do though, is figure out what do I have to do? In other words, you have to think through what's needed, what's necessary to act effectively. That means that you have to took at what's actually going on.  Not only do you know what you want, but you have to figure out what's really needed.  What's needed in this situation?

So you have to pay attention to the situation and respond to what's really going on. You have to use your observing and describing skills.

So what gets in the way of being effective?  Sometimes we just decide that's its more important to be right than to get what we want. 
Have you ever noticed sometimes how people driving in the outside lane on the highway come up and get right behind other people who are driving slow?  Either they're driving exactly the speed limit or even slower sometimes.  Then you notice, what does the car do?  They start tailgating the driver. Have you ever had that happen to you?  Now, ask yourself, if someone is tailgating you, what do you think they want? They want to go faster, right? Have you ever noticed that sometimes that happens and that person could just go right over to the right-hand lane. They could just move right over and pass you by?  They could just pass the slow driver by, but they don't.  What do they do?  They tailgate. 

Is that effective? It is sooner or later. Most of the time people will get over and the person gets to go on.  But, I'm sure you've seen it cause I have, there are times when that actually doesn't work.  Sooner or later they have to go and pass them.  That's an example of wanting to be right instead of wanting to be effective.

Alright. What's the next thing that gets in your way. Believing it's not fair that you should have to put all this effort into being effective. Generally what gets in your way here is when you're very clear what you want and you think that you should not have to do anything to get it.

I'll give you an example.  How about your birthday.  You may be a person like a lot of other people who want to have your birthday remembered.  But, you don't think it's fair that you should have to go around telling other people that your birthday is coming, leaving hints. So what happens? People don't remember your birthday. Then you get hurt.  Your day goes downhill. Then you get hurt. Now, what's effective? How could you be effective?  Remind them that your birthday is coming.

Sometimes what gets in the way is you're just not thinking about what's important. You're not focusing in on your most important goals.

Think about it.  When your goals are just right in your face, you can't miss them. Usually, you're willing to be effective. 

I'll give you an example.  Imagine that you're in a bank.  While you're in there, you're just talking to the teller. A bank robber comes in.  And the bank robber yells 'Down on the floor!'  What do you think you would do? Would you say, 'Hey, against the rules.  Not doing it.  You're not even supposed to be in here. I'm not doing that.  Mmmm, I don't think so.' What do you think you'd do?  You'd probably fall flat on your face.  Why?  It'd be hard to miss that your life is in danger. It's pretty obvious that your life is in danger. That's why you'd do it.  Not only that but it's a pretty important goal.
So when it's really important and it's really obvious, most of us are willing to play by the rules. We're willing to be effective.

Now lots of times in life the consequences of being right instead of effective aren't so extreme. We may have something to lose but we don't have a lot to lose. The problem is, is if you're always focused on being right, what happens to you over the long haul?  If you look over the years of your life, what happens?  Being right costs a lot.  You lose a little bit now, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit the next day.  And all of a sudden you may have lost a lot of things really important to you.

So, pay attention. Is this important to you.  Are you a person who would rather be right than get what you want?  If that's true, think about it. You may want to practice effectiveness.

Why practice doing things effectively? There's only one answer. It's a really simple one.  It works. 


CONCLUSION

So let's look at all the skills together now. 

So what are the 'what' skills? Observing. Describing.  Participating.  Now remember when you are practicing, do those one at a time.  Practice observing; practice describing; practice participating. 

And what are the 'how' skills? There are three 'how' skills.  Non-judgmentally. One mindfully. Effectively. The 'how' skills you can do all at once. So you can non-judgmentally, effectively, only observe. You can non-judgmentally and effectively only describe. And you can non-judgmentally, effectively, only participate.

Now that's actually the goal.  The goal, for all of us, is to get to the point where we can participate in our own lives.  Without judging.  In the present with awareness.  And effectively. So that's the goal of all this practice.

Remember at the beginning of this program when I asked you if you were free, or if you wanted to be free? Mindfulness will set you free. The most amazing thing about mindfulness is that if you practice it intentionally and regularly in your life, you'll find that you'll start living in the moment. You'll find that freedom comes your way. And when you're freely living life in the moment, the moment will crack open.   The moment cracks open and you'll find joy.

Now. What do you think? Are you going to practice these skills?  I hope you do.  And if you do, I hope that you'll send me an email 'cause I'd love to hear from you.