What Is Mindfulness and 4 Ways It Helps Men
“I’ve tried meditation and yoga and it didn’t work. I just can’t control my thoughts!”
This sentence often comes up when I start talking with clients about mindfulness in therapy. What images come up for you around the word “mindfulness?”
Right now, you’re probably picturing someone sitting on a mountaintop or in a Zen garden with their legs folded at impossible angles, their hands folded or resting on their knees in that “OK” gesture. Or maybe you’re picturing someone doing yoga. They’re either standing on their head or twisted up like a pretzel in ways it hurts you to even think about, let alone try.
If either of these describe you, you’re not alone. Many people call up these mental images when they think about mindfulness. And while those are examples of something that can be done very mindfully, they’re not the only ways to be mindful.
What is Mindfulness, Really?
Okay, so if mindfulness isn’t specifically meditation, yoga, or controlling thoughts, just what is it? It’s been a big buzzword in health and fitness the past few years and has been researched and documented to help with things like reducing stress, managing anxiety and depression, treating substance use, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and promoting overall wellness. But, despite all of the talk, many people still don’t quite understand what mindfulness is.
One of the most straightforward definitions of mindfulness comes from author, scientist, and meditation teacher John Kabat-Zinn, PhD:
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.”
That’s it.
When you get down to it, you can do anything mindfully. You can drink a cup of coffee and focus on the flavor, the warmth, and the moment. You can take a mindful walk. You can engage mindfully with your children or a pet. You can swim mindfully, play disc golf mindfully, read mindfully, or even wash dishes mindfully.
Though that definition is short and sweet, it consists of a few parts worth exploring in a little more detail on their own. So let’s dive in!
“Paying Attention”
Many problems related to mental health and wellness come from our desire to avoid the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings we experience such as anxiety, sadness, painful memories from the past, self-doubt, and self-judgement. While this is understandable, it often pulls us into unhelpful ways of dealing with that discomfort, like avoidance, procrastination, using substances like drugs and alcohol, or opting out of life with endless scrolling of social media, video games, or binge-watching shows. We do these things in an attempt to do anything but pay attention to what is happening inside of us. We want something to distract our attention or shut it off.
So, one of the first steps with mindfulness is to make the choice to pay attention to what is going on both around us and inside of us instead of turning away from the discomfort. As you learn to do this little by little, you learn to step back and look at your thoughts and emotions with a bit of distance and curiosity instead of being tangled up in them.
“On Purpose, in the Present Moment”
One of the key parts of mindfulness is paying attention to what is happening right here, right now instead of getting stuck on memories of the past or worries about the future. When we start to pay attention on purpose and grow that ability, we can learn to bring our focus into the present moment by choice.
We often look at getting swept up in our anxiety, depression, or other struggles as something we have no control over. And while it’s true that we cannot really control what thoughts or emotions come up, we can learn to choose how we relate to them and deal with them. By paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment we can do two things.
The first is becoming aware of what exactly is going on inside of us. Rather than getting pulled into reflexive reactions like lashing out in anger at a person or situation, we can begin to notice the thoughts and feelings playing out inside us almost like we’re watching images on a movie screen.
For example, say you’re driving to work and a person cuts into the lane ahead of you, forcing you to step on the brake. You reflexively lay on the horn, shake your fist, and maybe shout a few colorful insults at the driver. You might even follow them closely, tailing them while you honk to let them know just how mad you are.
As you gain the ability to come back into the present and direct your attention to that moment, you can start to take a look at what is happening at that time. Is the anger a reaction to a sudden feeling of fear for your safety? Are you feeling threatened and powerless? Are you upset because you believe people should be conscious of others around them and not act in self-centered and unsafe ways?
The second part of paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment is gaining the ability to shift your focus to other things than your unhelpful thoughts and feelings. This may mean you get out of your thoughts and pay attention to your body with a breathing exercise or what you can experience with your senses. It might be directing your attention with purpose to things around you.
Say you get to your destination and you’re still fuming about being cut off earlier. You notice you’re still nursing a grudge toward that driver and realize it’s not going to do you any favors if you keep thinking about it. As you get out of your car, you pause to intentionally look at the trees around you and notice how they are swaying gently in the cool breeze. You take a few moments to breathe in the crisp air and watch the leaves and branches slowly dance about.
Your irritation may still be there, but now it’s taken a back seat in your consciousness. As you pay attention to your surroundings, it slowly fades into a memory from your day instead of this cloud of angry thoughts that consumes you.
“Without Judgement”
This is the last key piece of the essence of mindfulness. Judgement is another one of those things that our brain does that serves us well sometimes and gets in the way in others. For example, judgement can be useful if we’re determining whether something is safe or not or deciding if someone is being honest with us. But it can become a problem when we get caught up in excessive judgements – especially about ourselves.
Let’s go back to the situation involving getting cut off in traffic. Chances are you’d have some significant judgements about the driver of the car that cut you off. You might think about how he must have been some kind of idiot to drive like that, or that he’s clearly a self-centered person who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. You might start having thoughts like, “This kind of thing always happens to me!” You start to judge the person, yourself, your situation, the world around you, how life is so unfair, and it just piles up.
By learning to put judgement aside, you can remove that extra layer of stress that you take on when you’re not mindfully engaged with the moment. You can shift your attention away from the fear and anger you felt the moment we were cut off, come into the present instead of replaying the event, and release all of the inner talk about how life, the world, other people, and even yourself should or shouldn’t be.
Then that moment in traffic that might have otherwise cast a shadow over your entire day becomes just a random thing that happened during your commute.
By learning to pay attention, on purpose, to the present moment, without judgement you begin to develop the ability to unhook from all of the mental traps that typically pull you into the things you’d want to change like emotional reactivity, thought spiraling, anxious avoidance, substance use, doomscrolling, and more.
What is mindfulness?
It’s the ability to accept reality as it is, right here, right now and not get tangled up in judgements of how things should or shouldn’t be - including ourselves.
How Mindfulness Helps Men
While mindfulness can be a powerful tool for anyone, it doesn’t often get talked about in men’s spaces. Some of this is due to the common misconceptions about mindfulness only being done with meditation or yoga. And while both of those are activities increasingly done by men, they still carry a certain stigma. There is also the stigma that exists among many men about talking about mental health problems in general.
But chances are you’ve had mindful moments and just didn’t recognize it as such. Men often talk about being “in the zone,” or “in a flow state” when describing being in a state where their focus was on the present moment with intention and without judgement. Things aimed at men also tend to use phrases like “mental toughness,” “mental focus,” or “internal resilience,” though these often involve approaches that are more about trying to control thoughts than engage mindfully with them.
Regardless of how they’re labeled, mindfulness-based approaches can offer unique benefits to men struggling with mental health problems.
1. Mindfulness Builds Emotional Intelligence
Just like mindfulness, “emotional intelligence” is another buzzword making the rounds in men’s spaces these days. Expanding on what it is in detail is a blog post unto itself (stay tuned, because one is sure to come!). Suffice it to say that emotional intelligence is basically being aware of what emotions are showing up inside you in the moment.
The idea that men only have a limited range of emotions focused mostly on anger is a myth. Men have the same range of emotions as any human being, including joy, sorrow, fear, guilt, shame, excitement, and love. But men are conditioned in Western society to suppress displays of many of these emotions. In time, this suppression becomes reflexive and unconscious, dulling a person’s awareness of what is really going on inside.
While anger is often considered the only acceptable strong emotion a man can display, it is viewed by many therapists as a secondary emotion. This means it’s an emotion that occurs in response to another emotion. For example, you may feel anger toward the driver that cut you off because, deep down, you felt a flash of fear for your safety. Or you may feel anger toward a friend or partner because they said something that stirred up a feeling of shame, guilt, or lack of appreciation. For many men, it is easier to express anger than to admit to these other primary feelings.
Emotional intelligence can not only help you to become more aware of what goes on inside of you, but it helps you become more the person you want to be, which helps improve your relationships, your lifestyle, and your personal productivity. You also unlock another benefit of mindfulness.
2. Mindfulness Helps You Choose Conscious Action vs. Unconscious Reaction
Whether it’s lashing out in anger, avoiding anxiety-producing situations, or trying to distract yourself from uncomfortable thoughts and feelings with substances, video games, or social media – many of the things people want to change in counseling are responses and reactions that became unthinking habits over time. Even when you know what you want to change, identifying the triggers that cause the unconscious reactions can be challenging.
Mindfulness helps you develop the ability to step back from your thoughts, feelings, and reactions and look at them without judgement. As you get better at noticing what is going on inside you and identifying it, you can start to unhook from those internal processes in ways that let you then choose how you will respond to them rather than getting pulled into the same old patterns of reacting.
For example, say you typically get defensive and angry when someone tries to tell you about a problem that was caused by something you did - or didn’t do. Your unconscious reaction might be to snap back with a reminder of the last time they let you down and say things to intentionally make them feel bad for making you feel bad.
Your more mindful self might pause and see what’s happening inside of you. You might recognize that you’re feeling defensive because, really, you feel guilty for letting that person down. Knowing that your old pattern of behaving would lead to that feeling of guilt turning into angry responses that lead to a big fight, you can choose to employ new skills you learn like responding with empathy, validating their feelings, and having a conversation rather than an argument.
3. Mindfulness Creates Mental and Situational Flexibility
There is a famous line from an interview Bruce Lee once gave in which he says, “Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
What Bruce Lee is fundamentally talking about is mental flexibility. When you cultivate the ability to identify what is going on in you emotionally and chose how you will respond, you unlock the capacity to be flexible both mentally and situationally. When someone cuts you off in traffic, you can react to the emergency without then being angry the rest of the day. When someone says something hurtful, you can respond in a way that reflects the person you want to be instead of in ways that cause further damage to relationships.
4. Mindfulness Helps Reduce Stress
Men are sometimes called “the silent sufferers” because they are taught to be stoic and “self-reliant.” This can result in men holding things in ways that build up psychological pressure that takes a toll on the body – what we often call “stress.”
Stress is the body’s natural responses to demanding situations and includes the release of adrenaline, increased heart rate, and decreased digestion. It’s your body prepping for the “fight-or-flight” response.
When men hold things in for a long time, however, the stress response keeps happening. What is a natural response in the short term becomes a long-term state that starts to negatively affect the body. This can include high blood pressure, digestive problems, heart disease, and muscular tension. It’s like being in fight-or-flight mode all day for days on end!
Cultivating the ability to be mindful, mentally flexible, and purposeful with choices and actions can help you react to challenging situations in ways that address the problem earlier and prevent the buildup of internal and external issues that lead to chronic stress.
Added Benefits
Mindfulness is a great tool for unlocking all of the benefits above. And when you’re more emotionally aware, acting consciously instead of reacting automatically, mentally flexible, and less stressed you’re empowered to create better relationships, have more energy and focus in your daily life, and perform better in the things you want and need to do. You become more resilient and capable of dealing with challenges as they arise, knowing you have the presence of mind and self-confidence to do the things you need or want to do in life.
Ready to Take Your First Step into Mindfulness?
While mindfulness as a skill sounds pretty great, it is a skill that gets built up over time. You may also reveal internal challenges you weren’t aware of before as you begin to notice what plays out in your thoughts, feelings, and even behaviors and how your unconscious reactions really affect your life. This is where working with a trained therapist can help.
If you curious about mindfulness-based counseling in Arkansas, MoonPath Counseling, LLC is here to support you in your journey. Click the link below to schedule a free 20-minute consultation or contact me with any questions.
Be water, my friend.