Hit the Reset Button on Your Mind

It is in mindfulness training that we come to an understanding that the mind is neither your enemy nor your friend. It thinks, creates, makes decisions, warns us, chastises us, and calculates doing all manner of things both to our advantage and to our detriment.

So often, however, we become enmeshed in our mind that it begins to rule our life creating so much emotional pain. It is when we get pulled into its ‘story’ that we begin to get caught in a vicious cycle of despair. We become like someone caught in quicksand struggling to get out. The more we struggle the deeper in we go.

According to the World Health Organization depression is fast becoming the most predominant illness in Western society above heart disease and cancer. Depression is in its basic form none other than an extreme unhappiness. Yet we live in societies overweight with material possessions and the discarded paraphernalia of our happiness pursuits. Never before has humanity searched happiness with such intensity and desperation. The advertising media has taken advantage of this despair leading us to believe that our life will be better if we just buy this or that product. As most of us are only to painfully aware this only creates momentary relief. We have become addicted to momentary relief over long term satisfaction.

Mindfulness is a process that trains us to be aware of both the happiness illusion and the short term relief addiction. Mindfulness training teaches us to recognize our thoughts and feelings for what they really are. Thoughts are none other than words strung together. Words in turn are but shapes and strokes, curls and dashes. Thoughts as feelings and memories are none other than pictures no more than the colours pixels on the flat screen on the living room TV. None of these things can harm us. Yet we spend an inordinate amount of time avoiding or trying to get rid of unpleasant thoughts and feelings. We do this in many ways: watch TV, surf the net, drink alcohol, have sex, take pills all in an attempt to squash or avoid unpleasant thoughts and feeling. While some of these coping mechanisms in themselves are not harmful, in the long term they can be or in the least just preventing us from living the valued life we want to live.

In mindfulness training we understand that we cannot remove thoughts from our mind. They will always return. What we can do, however, is hit the reset button and observe the thoughts and feelings from a distance – a bit like watching a boxing match on TV rather than being in the fight itself. Inner happiness is attained by accepting the dissatisfaction and living a valued life in spite of painful or depressive thoughts and feelings, not trying to avoid them. Therein lays the secret of mindfulness and inner happiness.

It only takes a few seconds to hit the reset button on the mind. Here’s how:

1. Stop
2. Observe the thoughts or feelings. Say to yourself: “I notice that I am having the thought that (then whatever the thought or feeling is).
3. Breathe into the painful feelings giving them space and softening them while not trying to get rid of them.
4. Become connected to the present moment.

Hitting the reset button helps us to get out of our minds and back into life. Mindfulness is a starting point and entry level to inner happiness. There is even more to come.