Dr Stephen McKenzie - Mindfulness for Life

Dr Stephen McKenzie has over twenty years of experience in researching and teaching a broad range of psychological areas, including depression, dementia, substance abuse, and most recently, mindfulness. Dr McKenzie has a unique ability as a lecturer, researcher and writer to present potentially complex information in a warm, engaging and entertaining way. He is currently a lecturer and research fellow at Deakin Universitys School of Psychology, where he is investigating mindfulness as a clinical treatment.

Dr Craig Hassed is an internationally recognised expert in mindfulness who has widely presented at national and international seminars and conferences and has published extensively in the areas of mindbody medicine and mindfulness. Dr Hassed devised and presents an innovative mindfulness training program for medical students at Monash University. His program has also been included in elective programs at other universities in Australia and overseas. He has worked with many other experts in the area of mindbody medicine and mindfulness, and has been instrumental in promoting mindfulness as a simple, natural and accessible technique for enhancing wellness, preventing and managing illness, and improving performance within health, educational and corporate settings. Dr Hassed is the founding president of the Australian Teachers of Meditation Association.

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

Which of the following makes you happiest: being distracted by pleasant imaginings, being distracted by neutral imaginings, being distracted by unpleasant imaginings or paying attention to what you are doing? Well, according to a recent study from Harvard University, simply paying attention to what we are doing makes us happiest.[1] This might seem strange because mostly we think that our daydreams, especially the happy ones, are interesting and the source of much of our contentment. Perhaps by the end of this chapter the relationship between our attention and our happiness will make a lot more sense. This book is simply about paying attentionin other words, mindfulnessand the profound happiness and health benefits that this can give us.

Have you ever walked into a room and forgotten why you went there? Have you ever waited for the weather report and when the forecast is given not even hear what the weatherperson says? Have you ever driven your car somewhere and not remembered the journey? Do you ever find yourself in a conversation with somebody and then suddenly wake up to the fact that you are not taking in a word of what they are saying? Do you ever find yourself reading a book (not this one, we hope!) and realising halfway through the chapter that you havent taken in a word? Well, if you answered yes to any of these questions, then you know something about what it means to be unmindful.

Our tendency to not be fully present in our life as it happens has vast implications and can result in our missing out on our full life potential. Being unmindful means wasting our lifetime, missing important information, increasing our risk of physical and social accidents and communicating more superficially with other people. Importantly, it makes us unhappier than we realise and more vulnerable to stress and poor mental health and all of the harmful physical consequences that can follow. We will discuss this in more detail later.

Whether unmindfulness is more common today than it once was is hard to say, but mostly these days we find ourselves rushing, rushing, rushing from cradle to grave without ever really appreciating the bit in the middle. If we are not distracted by speeding through life then we might find ourselves distracted by boredom and inertia. Whether it is too fast or too slow, modern life just doesnt seem balanced. Looking at the pace of our modern life and its constant bombardment of information and disinformation, it would be reasonable to conclude that we have created a world that almost encourages the problem.

Although it often seems that our unmindful and unhelpful mental state is our only choice, it isnt. Being mindful rather than mindless is literally so simple that a child could do it, and they frequently do practise mindfulness, often better and more easily than adults do. When was the last time that a young child told you, with a frown, that he or she was far too busy worrying about what interest rates will be like when they grow up to go outside in the sun and play ball with you? Mindfulness is our natural state. The rewards of improving our mindfulness are great, but this requires effort and patienceeven though the process is so natural that it could accurately be described as effortless effort.