Something that stayed with me from the early days of my mindfulness training was an example of bringing mindfulness into our daily life when we find ourselves in situations that are frustrating. In the example, a person was finding themselves becoming stressed over how often they were put on hold at work when speaking to other departments. Rather than get frustrated which changed nothing, the person in the example instead took the opportunity to do a few moments of mindful breathing.
It is so simple and yet so relatable we’ve all been in situations that cause us frustration but that we have no control over. So often we rail against this reality, serving only to make a difficult situation worse. This is the genius of mindfulness in daily life – it changes those moments and changes how we experience them.
I recently had my own opportunity to practice this. I had a rather mundane trip to the shops to pick up a prescription and also get some milk (I was starting down the barrel of tea without milk and that was unacceptable) but I was under a bit of time pressure and despite what my travel app was telling me (“Bus Due”) it was nowhere to be seen.
Without awareness and the acceptance at the heart of mindfulness, it could have been a very stressful errand. Indeed, my initial response was to get embroiled in an inner monologue about the perfidy of the transport company, deepening my sense of stress whilst achieving nothing.
Then I remembered I was a mindfulness teacher! I forced myself to pause and just focused on my breath, helping me relinquish the London-transport-invective barrelling through my mind. Within this quieter headspace, I was able to recognise that because of the time, I couldn’t wait for the bus, so I had to walk to the shops.
It was a surprisingly sunny day for October, so I removed my headphones (I had been ensconced in an history podcast!) and decided to do a bit of mindful walking. Initially I still found myself getting mentally caught up in annoyance at the bus situation, but pretty soon this faded away as I took in my surroundings. The part of south London I live in is remarkably green and I chose a route through the woods. The combination of the rhythm of my movement and the delightfully quite woods made the lack of bus seem like a blessing in disguise. So much so that it was a small jolt to emerge from the woods into the busyness of Crystal Palace.
Again, I felt a little annoyance – how dare this city interrupt my oasis of wooded calm! But I was quickly onto it, allowing myself to instead shift my attention to the noise itself. To mangle a Jon Kabat-Zinn quote, I thought “it’s already here, let me hear it”. Whilst a high street in London is hardly a soothing backdrop, I was able to just listen, just experience rather than push back against this reality.
This all meant that by the time I got to the pharmacy and then the busy supermarket (it was lunch time) I was much more calm and predisposed to having to queue for ages to pay for my milk. I stood there, calm and patient, breathing as the queue moved forward with the rapidity that snails cross a pathway.
Of course, thoughts like “why did I come to the shops at lunchtime?” and “how is it in the 21st century people still can’t use self-service checkouts?” did flitter through the mind, but I was able to let these judgements pass.
Before I knew it I was back at my desk, cup of tea with milk at my side and getting on with my day. A hurried trip to the shops at lunch had been transformed from a series of stressful reactions into a chance to practice mindfulness in daily life. It took the edge off the difficulties and allowed me to bring acceptance to a situation that was beyond my control, and this was invaluable.
As Sharon Salzber says, “Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it”, and when we do remember to do it, it can change that moment. And the next. And the next.