- [Instructor] So, the key number two
is teaching mindfulness with confidence:
how to emphasize a simple process
without worrying about the outcomes.
So, when I first started teaching mindfulness,
I was really just trying
to convince everyone of the benefits.
I thought people would try everything I taught.
(laughing)
It makes me laugh now,
but that's kind of what I thought people would do,
is they would listen to me and then actually utilize it.
I expected people just to, to just get it.
And I hoped that everyone's lives
would be totally transformed.
So, I was wearing rose-colored lenses
when I first started teaching.
But I was really just focused on the outcomes.
I was teaching mindfulness for the sake of feeling calm,
or achieving flow or,
you know, inspiring compassion or peak performance,
to decrease the pain, and,
it was really focused on,
you know, what's the quickest way
to get to the goal, (snaps fingers)
to the end point,
to what they want?
And, I realized that
because I was so focused on the outcomes,
and on my ability to do it,
I was bypassing the actual practice.
My focus on the outcomes
lacked the actual substance of the practice itself.
I was bypassing the heart of the process.
Now, this is very important to remember.
When you focus on the outcomes,
it's actually, there's a paradox that
you actually don't get to the outcomes
as much as you do if you focus on the process itself.
So, because I was lacking this transformation in people,
I had two options.
I had door number one:
should I abandon teaching mindfulness?
Should I try something else?
This isn't quite working the way I thought it would.
Door number two was to figure it out.
You know, try something new.
Help a lot of people in a really meaningful way.
And so, you know, there was really no choice for me.
I had to figure it out.
So again, what is mindfulness?
It's paying attention, on purpose,
in the present moment, non-judgmentally.
So, you know, there's nothing about outcomes here.
There's nothing about feeling calm,
or achieving peak performance.
There's nothing here about decreasing stress.
Mindfulness is not about feeling calm.
I know that might sound a little weird, but,
mindfulness is not about any outcome.
It's about the process.
It's about paying attention to what's actually happening
without judging it.
That's it.
Now, calm is often a result,
but sometimes it's not.
Sometimes your experience intensifies
when you put nonjudgmental awareness to it.
Sometimes, things get more intense.
Sometimes, emotions change from anger to sadness.
Sometimes, pain increases when we're more mindful of it.
So again, it's not about the outcome.
It's about the process.
But by focusing on the process itself,
this nonjudgmental awareness
(snaps fingers) of what's actually happening,
it's the most efficient way to transform your experience
with this light of awareness.
Calm usually does happen,
but you need to stay with your experience
moment to moment to moment to moment
without striving for calm.
Without craving a sense of peace or ease.
Without latching onto the outcome of peak performance,
or a sense of serenity.
The more you focus on the outcome,
the more elusive it becomes.
So again, it's not about the outcome.
It's about the process.
So then, that begged the question,
how can I simplify the process in a way
that more and more people can understand?
So I boiled it down.
Nonjudgmental awareness, just two words.
This is how I started defining mindfulness
in the most boiled-down way I could.
Of course, it's this nonjudgmental awareness,
moment to moment to moment, of your experience.
But, when you really unpack that,
it's just this nonjudgmental awareness.
Some people call it open awareness.
Some people call it caring awareness.
Other people, like Rahm Doss or Jack Kornfield,
will even call it loving awareness.
I tend to use the word nonjudgmental,
but you can use open if you wish,
or curious if you wish.
But I usually use the word nonjudgmental
to really hammer home that it's
this awareness without criticism or condemnation.
And so the nonjudgmental piece,
you can cultivate with this...
With heart cultivation practices.
The heart practices of loving kindness,
compassion, joy,
equanimity, forgiveness,
gratitude, and generosity.
These heart practices
cultivate this nonjudgmental quality
of being open with,
you know, staying curious about what's happening
moment to moment, without criticizing it.
And so, these heart cultivation practices
are a separate type of meditation than mindfulness,
but they can really
help to cultivate the sense of nonjudgmental awareness.
And so, then the awareness piece,
to sustain your awareness
throughout many moments,
requires concentration.
And so, you know, this style of meditation, these, this...
These concentration practices
feed the sustainability of your awareness
to last from moment to moment to moment to moment.
And so you can practice concentration practices
in a whole wide variety of ways
including repeating mantras,
counting your breath,
you know, counting each exhale:
one, two, three.
Counting up to 10 and then back down to one.
You can have a visual or auditory concentration object
where you really sort of narrow your focus
onto that one sound or sensation or visual,
and really lock in on that one
concentration object for a long period of time,
to the exclusion of other phenomenon.
So, there's kind of
these three main categories of meditation.
There's mindfulness, which is this nonjudgmental awareness
at the top in green.
Then there's also these heart cultivation practices,
and concentration practices.
But all three of these practices are interrelated.
And so, mindfulness is really
at the heart of emotional intelligence.
It's the very first foundation
of emotional intelligence.
Here, we're equating
mindfulness with self-awareness, at the top.
But that self-awareness
is the basis or the foundation for self-regulation,
motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Without mindfulness or without self-awareness,
you're really lacking in your ability
to regulate your emotions.
To stay motivated with a sense
of resiliency, and envisioning.
It's difficult to empathize with others
if you can't empathize with yourself.
And so, and then obviously it's hard
to enhance your social skills or leadership skills.
So in, in my opinion,
it's important to dream big, but to start small.
Not focus on the outcome so much.
Not focus on, you know, how you want to feel,
but rather, how you are feeling now.
So mindfulness is, you know,
I think one of the more healthy goals of mindfulness
is to understand what's happening in your body,
in your experience,
in your mind.
To understand what's happening,
rather than trying to force something else to happen.
Because when you do that,
there's usually this underlying sense of aversion
for what's happening, or against what's happening,
or a sense of greed for something else to happen.
So, rather than focusing on the outcomes,
it's important to focus on the process
by paying attention to what's actually happening.
Sequencing practices
took me a while to understand,
but it's helpful to start with mindfulness of breathing
for people who have never practiced before.
Sensing their belly rise and fall with each breath.
Just noticing the sensations of the belly.
But mindfulness of breathing is a foundational practice,
and you know, if that's all you do, that's fine.
You can really get nuance with that practice.
It's not just a beginner's practice, but,
I do emphasize mindfulness of breathing in the belly,
then moving through to the body-scan,
standing, walking,
listening to sounds of bells or birds
or rustling of leaves in the wind,
mindfulness of eating,
and then segueing into what's more difficult,
or unpleasant,
or nuanced,
like mild discomfort in the body,
sensing emotions in the body,
and just feeling the physical manifestations of emotions,
rather than the mental.
Mindfulness of thoughts, which I think is quite hard,
but there's different techniques of categorizing thoughts
into past or future or present.
Types of emotions or types of thoughts.
You can then go into the more hardcore or deep-water areas
of depression, anxiety, pain, and trauma.
Here's a diagram I love of how emotions manifest
in the body for most people.
This is a heat sensor
of how different emotions
feel in terms of heat or coolness.
I think it's really
amazing to see how
they actually have this physical effect
in our body that we can feel in real-time.
So again, it's really about less expectations
about what you want to happen,
and more on the process.
So now, when I teach mindfulness,
I go into a teaching opportunity thinking, you know,
I just want to offer some useful tools
for people's toolboxes.
You know, everyone won't like everything
that I say or how I say it.
Some people won't like me.
That's just how it goes.
But, most people will find
at least one or two things that...
That are useful for them.
And at least, you know, I'm planting seeds,
or watering seeds
for them to sprout later on in their life.
Maybe something will click
a week from now or a year from now.
Who knows.
But I go into it lightly.
Just wanting to do the best I can,
feeling that sense of compassion,
and just offering some mindfulness tools
that hopefully will be of use.
And so over the years,
through my training and my practice,
I've learned how to introduce mindfulness
to just about anyone in a way that's
not too conceptual or theoretical.
I like introducing mindfulness through
just inviting people to notice what's happening
on the bottoms of their feet as they touch the ground.
Noticing the weight of their body
on the chair or the ground.
Noticing what sensations of their belly
feel like as they breathe.
That sort of thing.
Just noticing their experience without judgment.
And then, I will introduce the concepts around mindfulness,
linking it back to what they already did,
so that they have this experiential sense
of what I'm talking about.
I've learned a lot about how
to address skepticism and doubt.
Usually through this nonjudgmental awareness
of the skeptic or the doubter.
Not judging them, but actually welcoming them,
and letting them know that,
you know, whatever they're
feeling or thinking is understandable.
I learned a lot about how to create courses
and workshops and retreats.
How to lead guided mindfulness meditations
for a variety of people.
And, how to apply mindfulness
to just about every area of life.
And so, if you'd like to learn a lot of this nuance,
I'd be more than happy to work with you.
If you send me an email, or just stay tuned in this webinar,
I'll show you more about how you can learn how to do this.
So this is Levi Bersola from Tesla.
I was happy to help him
create a mindfulness program
for the safety team at Tesla,
and learned a lot about how to bring mindfulness to...
To their unique needs and skillsets.
Shauna Shapiro is a mindfulness author, researcher.
I highly encourage you to check out
some of her TED talks and videos on YouTube.
She has a lot of cutting-edge research
out there on mindfulness,
and have had the pleasure of working with her in the past.