Mindfulness is one of the key techniques that Technalink has advocated that people develop. As with many things in life, mindfulness itself is just a technique or a tool, so it is what people decide to do with it that brings the real benefit. However, for many, mindfulness can be a cornerstone toward building what many people value: a greater sense of control. This control, however, is focused on one of the more “slippery” aspects of life, the inner life of the mind.
Most People Don’t Have It
Many people assume that because the mind is an internal process, and they can do things with their mind, such as turn it toward a problem to solve, this means they are in total control of their mind. However, the reality is that it’s the other way around, and most people find themselves being controlled by a mind that exerts influence on them.
If you’ve ever found yourself unable to concentrate on a task at hand because of thoughts running through your head, or someone had to get your attention because your mind wandered, you were not in control of your mind. Instead, your mind presented you with a series of thoughts and feelings you got lost in whatever it provided to you. For many people, the reality is that the thoughts that come into their minds are ones they occupy themselves with, instead of creating thoughts and mental spaces that they control themselves.
How Mindfulness Helps
Mindfulness is the technique of focusing on the present and directing your attention to observing what is happening around and inside you. Essentially, it is an exercise to pay attention only to the present and to take note of the many things in it. This is, in effect, giving your mind a task and directing it to do what you want. In other words, by choosing to be mindful, you are making a choice about what you want to do with your mind and exerting the control required to do it.
While this might not seem like a big task, the fact that you are doing it at all means that you are consciously exercising control over your mind. Rather than being at the mercy of thoughts or worries, you are instead observing those thoughts and worries, and ultimately letting them pass you by as you continue to choose to exert your attention on other things in the present moment.
Long-Term Building
Creating any new behavior or habit involves a series of smaller steps that build on top of each other. For people who want to be more in control of their thoughts, mindfulness exercises are often that small step that can be used as the foundation for laying out more concerted efforts. Of course, the trick here is to exercise patience. While the ultimate goal may be to have far more control over thoughts or be less at the mercy of feelings, all of this initially stems from being able to create even a moment or two of mindfulness.
Once you become comfortable with attaining mindfulness at your own discretion for even just a few seconds, the trick then becomes to lengthen the amount of time the mindfulness persists. From a few seconds to a few minutes, it may even be possible to sustain this for hours eventually.
All of this can be made easier by incorporating it into a regular habit. Meditation, for example, is one of the most reliable ways to bring more mindfulness into your life. However, every person needs to find the right style of meditation for themselves, and the right tools, such as fluorite prayer stones. These can be useful aids in improving both mindfulness and control.
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