Mindfulness: What It Can and Can't Do

Mindfulness gives you space to respond thoughtfully instead of reacting unthinkingly.

Mindfulness does not magically fix everything. I make a point of this because if you think it’s a cure-all, you’ll be very disappointed when your anxiety, your frustration, or your anger don’t immediately disappear after the first time you use mindfulness in a situation where these emotions have been activated. You might be tempted to abandon it. “Okay, I’ve tried mindfulness; it didn’t work. What’s next?”

What mindfulness does do is make you aware that you are not the emotion. You’re able to see the challenging emotion as something that has arisen, perhaps for a perfectly logical reason.

We are social beings and we instinctually don’t want to lose our status inside a group. And it’s natural that in a group there will be conflicts. Mindfulness gives you the opportunity to not react mindlessly when, for example, a colleague says your work looks disorganized. You can step back and reframe, “Okay, I’m surprised that you’d say that.” Instead of, “If your team just did its job, we wouldn’t all be consistently running behind.”

This use of mindfulness doesn't mean that you instantly feel good—you can still be angry! But you didn’t make things worse. You didn’t just absorb the insult (where it will linger inside you) and you didn’t just trade insults (which puts you on the same level as the insulter). You’ve opened up a dialogue. In the end, you’re going to feel good about yourself and your control.

So, all of this is to say: “Don’t give up! Don’t expect instant results! Do expect improvement!”

Mindfulness, like a muscle or love, grows stronger as you use it