These three basic mindfulness principles can help you make sure you set up the right goals and see them through, while enjoying the process.
When we don’t reach our goals, often the reason is not that those goals are intrinsically unachievable, but rather that we are not starting from the right place. To succeed and accomplish anything, the most important things we need to have are awareness and clarity of mind. Only with these we can effectively manage our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours to consciously move toward the right direction without excessive stress or fatigue.
Mindfulness can be integrated, in an informal way, into any of our daily activities like eating, cooking, or walking, by learning to be present with what we are doing. Even if making mindfulness a way of being is not for you, there are still some very useful takeaways everyone can benefit from.
There are the nine attitudes identified as the fundamental principles of mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a programme that introduced mindfulness in the mainstream of medicine and society more than 40 years ago. In this article, I have focused on three that I personally find particularly helpful with stress-free goal setting and achievement: trust, patience and gratitude.
1) Trust
It's very important to cultivate an attitude of trust in order to achieve any goal and to own that achievement. You have to trust your own wisdom and intuition as well as your authority. A good place to start is to remind yourself of all the aspects of you that are reliable and trustworthy (you can rely on yourself to deliver a certain task, from cooking a meal to completing a work project), and as you start to make a list, you will find that there are many aspects of you that you can count on.
Kabat-Zinn says about trust: “It is far better to trust in your intuition and your own authority, even if you make some “mistakes” along the way, than always to look outside of yourself for guidance. If at any time something doesn’t feel right to you, why not honour your feelings? Why should you discount them or write them off as invalid because some authority or some group of people think or say differently? This attitude of trusting yourself and your own basic wisdom and goodness is very important.”
The trust that you want to build, acknowledge and cultivate of course starts with yourself, but then it also needs to extend to others: from your close circle of family, friends and colleagues to more extended communities and organisations. It’s reassuring to acknowledge how many relationships we have that are trustworthy in many ways. And recognising that the trust of others has been bestowed in us, also validates our own worthiness. This helps us feel supported, recognised and loved.
In order to do something, anything, we need to trust that we are capable of doing it, and knowing that we are surrounded by people that can help us succeed makes the enterprise feel easier and the load of responsibility lighter.
2) Patience
Patience is the ability to allow life to unfold, moment by moment, without wishing to rush to the next moment. Practising patience means understanding and accepting the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time.
A child may try to help a butterfly to emerge from her larva by freeing its wings, but this is actually counterproductive and quite dangerous for the insect. All butterflies have "complete metamorphosis." To grow into an adult they need to go through specific different stages, each one with a goal, each one ensuring that the wings are fully formed and ready to fly at the end of the process. The process cannot be hurried, the butterfly can only emerge in its own time.
Becoming calmer and more balanced can greatly help us to develop an attitude of patience. This, in turn, will ensure that if we don’t reach our goal exactly when we had resolved to (whether because of elements outside of our control or for our own miscalculations of elements that were part of the process), we won’t beat ourselves up, won’t give up the whole project but persist, accept the delay as a fact of life and celebrate the achievement, albeit deferred.
3) Gratitude
Being thankful can be your secret weapon for success. Many scientific studies have demonstrated how cultivating gratitude can have an enormous positive impact on us.
Practising gratitude daily brings a higher level of attentiveness and alertness (as we consciously decide to pay attention to the positives in our life), as well as providing higher amounts of energy, enthusiasm, optimism and determination, and even improving the quality of our sleep.
Although they do not deny the negative aspects of life, grateful people report lower levels of depression and stress.
Appreciating everything that life gives us, ultimately means building a more generous relationship with ourselves too, as we give ourselves permission to receive whatever life has to offer us. Ultimately this will lead to living a more positive and satisfying life, which means we’ll be able to enjoy the journey we travel to reach that goal we so much want to reach.
People who keep gratitude journals have been found to have better physical and mental health and to feel more optimistic about their upcoming week/month/year as compared to those who keep journals recording the stressors or neutral events of their lives.
One way in which you can approach this is to dedicate just a few minutes every day before going to bed to list three things you are grateful for. From my own experience, I assure you that you’ll sleep better and wake up happier and more energised. The things you list can be things you have experienced (a nice meal you have had that day, an amazing place you have visited, a great piece of music you have listened to), things you have accomplished (tidied up a corner of your house, completed a task, even if it’s just a little thing you had been postponing that was at the back of your mind), material and immaterial things you have received (a gift, a compliment, a ‘thank you’, a smile) or that you have given (helping someone to solve a problem; giving emotional support, praise, or a present).
Why not try these ideas out and see if you experience positive changes in your life and, more importantly, realise how you can enjoy the process of reaching your goals, each step of the way, each day of the year.
About the author
Angela Meringolo is the Marketing Manager for the ACT Learning. She is also an accredited mindfulness teacher qualified with Mindfulness Now, a programme that combines elements of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).
Find out more: https://mindfulnessteachers.org.uk/user/angelameringolo/
