Mindfulness and the smart phone

Finally, I "caved in" and got a "smart" phone. Obviously, it has a lot of really neat features, my favorite of which so far is very recent pictures (and videos and face-to-faces!) of my granddaughters. But really those pictures just make me want to be there with them more, to hold them in my arms and to study every aspect of their faces and their sturdy little bodies.

Now-a-days, besides smart phones, another popular trend is mindfulness. Jon Kabot-Zinn tells us that "because mindfulness is so popular at the moment, it is very easy to misconstrue what it really involves: 'I get it! I will be more present and less judgmental. Good idea! Why didn't I think of that myself? Clear sailing from here on. No problem! I"ll just be more mindful.'"

But it's just not that easy. Mindfulness is a state-of-being that takes practice.

Ironically, smart phones and other such devices usually make us less mindful. To prove this to yourself, just do some people-watching and notice how many of us are on our phones, instead of being here in the present moment--enjoying the person next to us or the food that we are eating or the activity that we are attending. Using smart phones is like an epidemic--a sickness, really, among us. One of the several dis-eases of our contemporary society. Let's put our phones away for a moment and be really present.

But how do we make mindfulness our default setting? Instead of being on the setting of automatic pilot or of mindless doing? How do we truly cultivate mindfulness?

For decades we have been in this highly conditioned and tenacious mode of unawareness, of mindlessness. So the way that I look at it, it may take us years of practice to become the mindful person that we would like to be. But the good news is that it's not a contest; it's not a test. Every little mindful step, every little mindful moment, every little mindful thought, emotion, or action is a victory for us. And the most important thing that I want you to do as you seek mindfulness is to be gentle and loving with yourself.

So the first step in wanting to be more mindful is the one that you have already taken, if you are reading this blog: awareness of our mindlessness. And a desire to become more mindful.

While the idea of mindfulness is simple, it is not easy, but it is necessary to our living a more joyful and peaceful life. It is not so simple to maintain mindfulness, even for short periods of time. Unless we implement it and sustain it through an on-going, regular practice, mindfulness will become just one more thought to fill our heads and to make us feel more inadequate--as Kabot-Zinn says it becomes "one more concept, one more slogan, one more chore, one more thing to schedule into your already too-busy day."

The benefits of mindful are multi-leveled, so I refer you to this recent article on its benefits: 20 Reasons Why Mindfulness Is Good for your Mental and Physical Health. If you want to read more on mindfulness, I mentioned a few good reads on my last mindfulness blog.

For me, mindfulness is an antidote to our crazy world and makes my life a little less crazy, a little less scattered, a little less chaotic. It's an antidote to my constant thinking, thinking, thinking. It balances out thinking for me.


Let's start slowly with a few simple, but challenging steps--

1. Try to do one thing at a time and focus on that one task or activity, instead of jumping around from one thing to another, trying to accomplish dozens of things at one time. I believe that our society has created a lot of ADHD in people.

I know that we women especially have been proud of our multi-tasking, but that is in the past. Mono-tasking is what you want to practice now.

2. Try to sit still for 10 minutes a day and just breathe--in and out--being aware of your breath and of your thoughts, coming and going. Just let them come and go; do not act on them. Be here now; be some place else later.

It doesn't matter if you sit in a chair, on your couch, or on a cushion on the floor. Just tell your smart phone to let you know when 10 minutes has passed! It doesn't matter if you need to scratch your nose or move your leg into a more comfortable position, just try to do so mindfully.

3. Try to find a yoga class that suits you--and attend it once a week. There are so many classes out there, so try to find a teacher and a class that you like and one that suits your schedule and is close to you.

For instance, since I am a morning person, I go to a morning yoga class, which is only five minutes away from my home.


Practice these steps for a few weeks or a month until I blog again about mindfulness. I've decided to blog about this most important subject the first week in every month. Please let me know if you are a student of mindfulness and how your first week goes. And if we must, which we must, let's use our smartphones more mindfully, too.