Mindfulness Is Like Eating - You Have to Actually Do It to Get the Benefits

We all want to get results fast and with minimum effort.

In a society of instant gratification, when we start any activity — sometimes even when we are just thinking about starting it — we already want to get the benefits of it, we want immediate rewards.

However, in important and long-lasting things — like our physical and mental health — things don’t work that way.

“The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.”

- Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for All: Living a Life of Success at the Edge of Your Ability

We are creatures of habits. Habits take time to change and require practice. Mindfulness is no different.

Mindfulness is a process

If we want the benefits of a meaningful life, we have to keep in mind that is a process, it requires time and practice. The development of a mindfulness attitude requires daily exercises if we want to achieve lasting results.

It is not enough to know how to practice meditation or what it means, we need to adopt a mindfulness attitude. We have to practice daily and we have to do it for ourselves, nobody can do it for us.

It is a process very similar to what happens with eating, as Jon Kabat Zinn explains in his amazing book “Full Catastrophe Living”:

“(…) cultivating mindfulness is not unlike the process of eating. It would be absurd to propose that someone else eat for you. And when you go to a restaurant, you don’t eat the menu, mistaking it for the meal , nor are you nourished by listening to the waiter describe the food. You have to actually eat the food for it to nourish you. In the same way you have to actually practice mindfulness in order to reap its benefits and come to understand why it is so valuable “.

Mindfulness is a process in which practice is essential to discover the true flavor of life. If we practice, the process can evolve and allow us to go beyond our daily rush, and help us to identify the moments of stress.

When we are dominated by intense stress we do not realize what is really happening, we do not see the characteristics of things, we do not notice the differences between them — we fail to see things as they are.

Once again, the situations in which we operate on autopilot end up being very similar to the process of eating. As we can eat without tasting food, we can live without enjoying life, as Jon Kabat Zinn reminds us.

“When we are functioning in this mode, we may eat without really tasting, see without really seeing, hear without really hearing, touch without really feeling, and talk without really knowing what we are saying”.

Practice is the essential step

In mindfulness, practice is the most important ingredient for us to evolve, to improve the way we see and feel the world, to become more aware of ourselves and others.

The perfect life does not exist — but the frequent practice of mindfulness is the best way to add the ingredients of peace and joy to the life we ​​want to build.

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation