Discover how to disrupt habitual responses to anxiety and nurture tranquility and self-awareness through 10 essential mindful approaches.
Mindfulness, in essence, is the practice of being conscious of our present experiences or sensations. It involves living in the moment without passing judgment. This ability is inherent in all humans. When you consciously perceive your immediate experiences through your senses, or your mental state through your thoughts and emotions, you are practicing mindfulness.
While further research is necessary to fully understand its workings, mindfulness is known to disrupt the automatic fight, flight, or freeze responses that often lead to anxiety, fear, and worry. By applying mindfulness to our present experiences, we increase our chances of consciously influencing our actions and attitudes. This process involves cultivating our intention, effort, willpower, discipline, and the ability to be kind to ourselves.
Mindfulness disrupts the automatic fight, flight, or freeze responses that can cause anxiety, fear, and worry.
Certain attitudes are crucial when mindfully addressing anxiety. These attitudes are fundamental to mindfulness and nurturing them can enhance and sustain your practice, much like nourishing soil helps a garden thrive. As a well-tended garden produces seeds and fruits, practicing mindfulness fosters these attitudes. Note that different sources may list slightly varied mindfulness attitudes. The following are those we believe are essential in mindfully managing anxiety.
10 Mindfulness Attitudes
- Intention or volition is the cornerstone of all other attitudes. It is your intention or will that sets you on the path of mindfulness, helping you transform your anxiety into ease, freedom, and peace. By focusing on managing anxiety, you cultivate persistence in viewing yourself as whole, capable, and resourceful.
- Beginner’s mind involves adopting an open, curious perspective. Approaching anxiety with this mindset is crucial for transformation, as it opens up new possibilities and challenges habitual anxious thoughts.
- Patience aids in enduring and overcoming challenging anxious feelings. It offers a wider perspective, recognizing that anxiety is transient.
- Acknowledgment means accepting your experiences as they are. Instead of striving for acceptance or peace with anxiety, you recognize its presence and your dislike for it, while understanding it as a temporary state.
- Nonjudgment entails experiencing the present without evaluative filters. In anxiety, avoiding judgment can clarify your experience and reduce secondary anxious feelings.
- Nonstriving is about facing experiences without seeking to alter them. This attitude, crucial during meditation, involves accepting your current state without resistance or denial.
- Self-reliance builds inner confidence. Through practice, you learn to confront your anxiety and other discomforts, supported by other mindfulness qualities.
- Letting be or allowing is akin to nonstriving. It involves giving space to whatever arises in the moment, like allowing anxiety to exist during meditation and understanding it will pass.
- Self-compassion is treating yourself with kindness, especially important during hardship. It grows with meditation and helps reduce anxiety by offering self-support.
- Balance and equanimity lead to wisdom and a broader perspective, helping you see beyond temporary anxieties and challenges.
Mindfulness Practice
Take time to revisit and ponder each mindfulness attitude. After reading each one, pause to reflect on its personal significance, particularly in managing anxiety. Experiment with each attitude and observe how it feels in your body, mind, and emotions. Afterward, briefly record your experience with each attitude, noting its ease or difficulty. Consider why some attitudes might be challenging, whether due to unfamiliarity or resistance, and how this insight can aid your practice.
