How living mindfully changed my life

20 years ago, I was a highly successful lawyer. I was married, had a great income, and owned my own home. However, I was also incredibly anxious and fast approaching burn out. Despite challenging and rewarding work, I would drag myself out of bed in the morning, dreading the day ahead. I was constantly living for the next weekend and the next holiday. I began to hate everything in between.
 
After a massive breakdown in my mid-thirties, I knew something had to change. While I made many life changes, one seemingly small thing actually made the biggest difference. I stopped constantly looking backwards and forwards, and instead started to focus more on my life as I was living it. In other words, I started to live more in the present moment and the impact it had on my life was huge

Here is what I did.

• I stopped watching the news on TV. I have always been an avid follower of national and international news. I want to know what is going on in the world around me. I found though, that watching sad, tragic and sometimes gruesome images on the TV news was significantly affecting my mood. These terrible images of human suffering would play over in my head, trapping me in a past that wasn’t even my own. So, I stopped watching and instead started reading the newspaper instead. I still do this every morning. I can then choose what I read and what images I see. I rarely read an article about gruesome events (like mass murders) as I know these will haunt me. Reading the headlines of those stories is enough.

•  I stopped obsessing about my next holiday. I used to look forward to holidays as a way of getting through the difficult days, weeks and months. I would get very excited about my next holiday. However, while I really enjoyed the first few days of a holiday, I would start to get increasingly depressed as it drew to an end. By the time I went back to work, I was miserable. To cope, I would start planning my next holiday. It was a vicious cycle. Once I realised how miserable this was making me, I stopped obsessing about holidays. I would book and plan for them, but I stopped using them as a source of motivation. This was difficult at first, but over time I trained my brain the let these thoughts go when I became aware of them.

•  I allowed myself to feel pain. Life is often difficult and painful. As a survivor of trauma, I have experienced a great deal of emotional and psychological pain throughout my life.  I came to realise that I would respond to pain in a couple of distinct ways. It would either overwhelm me and I would become trapped in old painful memories, or I would try to distract myself with something that made me feel better. However, experience taught me that neither of these were helpful, so I started to find ways to be more accepting of pain. I became more willing to just sit with and feel pain as it was happening without necessarily doing anything about it. The pain didn’t disappear, but I found it didn’t last as long and had less impact on my mood.

• I looked for the joy in each day. All of these changes led me to look at the world around me differently. I started to notice the little joyful moments in each day. This might be the warmth of the sun on my face, or the enjoyment I got from seeing my dog run through the sand dunes. I made a point of acknowledging and soaking up those moments, no matter how small.

 
At the time, I had not heard about mindfulness and while I had a therapist who provided me with tremendous support and guidance, learning to live more in the present moment was something I largely figured out for myself by trial and error. Many years later, I have learnt much more about mindfulness and how to incorporate the skills of living mindfully into my daily life.  These practical skills have enabled me to live a calmer, more fulfilling and joyful life.
 
To find out how you can learn to live a more mindful life, check out our online course at:www.walkingtall.thinkific.com
 
Jane Hurst, PhD
Instructor, Walking Tall
 
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