BLOG Posts

Mindfulness

I’ve been hearing the term mindfulness for several years now. The primary source has been my wife who has been practicing mindfulness meditations for a long time and incorporating it into many aspects of her life. She has sent me multiple articles and exercises to do and I’ve tried them. I’ve also read a book that discussed mindfulness as part of the process of changing habits. It included weeks of meditations that sometimes lasted an hour or so. I did them. In each of these examples, I never felt changed or successful. I felt distracted by random thoughts bouncing in and out of my head, never getting to the peaceful or elevated state I expected to achieve. 

A month into pursuing my coaching certification, I read an article related to coaching presence that may have explained my challenge with mindfulness or at least indicated that I’m not alone. The first comment that struck me is that mindfulness is a skill, not a talent or personality trait. Just like any other skill, it requires practice to gain proficiency. As a former leader in a challenging military environment that required being in a more active thinking state almost constantly, gaining this proficiency would be difficult. To make it a habit, the practice would have to be daily… for between 18-254 days! Can I commit to something that doesn’t seem effective for that long? 

I think part of my problem is finding a mindfulness exercise which provides me a benefit. In the past, ones that take a lot of time, require a lot of visualization, or have a facilitator guide me through some process have not seemed effective for me. If anything, they seem to frustrate and discourage me. I have recently discovered a program that eliminates a lot of those challenges. The Dynamic Mindfulness Practice (DMP) has been around for decades, but the creator released it for free via an app during the COVID-19 time period. She thought it could help a lot of people struggling with stress, anxiety, and depression during that time based on years of experience and thousands of previous clients. 

So far, I’ve gone through the app’s education piece which included one practice session. There are several things I like about it. First, the duration is only about 15 minutes. Second, there isn’t a facilitator talking for the entire time guiding you through visualizations. Third, distracting thoughts are both allowed and expected. Lastly, during the education piece, she describes what could happen to indicate you were successful, and one of those things happened to me- I could feel the sensation of falling asleep while maintaining awareness. 

From a practical sense, there was a discussion on how shorter (<2 min) sessions could be integrated into your workday to improve creativity, confidence, and presence. Additionally, there was a discussion on how it can improve one’s ability to fall asleep faster as well as mitigate jet lag on international trips, both things that I could leverage.

I’ll try to build the habit of using this mindfulness practice and see if I can do it in less than 254 days.