What If We’re Confusing a Cluttered Mind with a Full Life?
(On my morning walk in the woods)
When I was on the phone with my aunt the other day she was eagerly searching for her glasses, only to call me back later amused, as she had been wearing them. Similarly, I was talking to my mom on the phone while on a walk over the weekend to suddenly bolt and frantically scramble, as I couldn’t find my phone in any of my pockets…
It seemed a week of moving faster than I was paying attention. There was that espresso I made myself to dump it down the drain when washing the bialetti, having skipped the step to actually put the coffee into a cup. I filled the kettle to boil water, pouring it into my teapot after a while never having heated it up. And on duty to water the plants of my neighbour I took her key, stuck mine into my door from the inside, and slammed it closed…
What’s happening when we’re moving faster than we can keep up with ourselves?
Are above events a result of mentally being ahead of where I actually am?
My mom once “inaccurately” called it “mindlessness” when we were talking about the increasingly popular topic of mindfulness. It struck me that that's actually more accurate for the desired state of truly paying attention, as precisely my mind being so overly FULL of mental gymnastics and projections is what led to these anecdotes.
What if our challenge is a chronic state of mind-FULL-ness created by mental overwhelm blocking our attention?
I read somewhere that when we missplace something, it’s usually because we don’t pay attention when we put it down, not because we can’t remember where we put it.
It’s presumably why I’ve found my phone in the fridge after a frantic morning and searching for the car around our neighbourhood when I was a kid was a frequent occurrence as my parents had no recollection of where they left it the night before, being tired upon returning from work.
The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries defines mindfulness as:
the fact of remembering somebody/something and considering them/it when you do something (SYNONYM consciousness)
a mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment, while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you, used as a technique to help you relax.
In every-day context, being mindful is about being fully present in the current moment. About being engaged with attention when relating to our experiences – realising we are wearing the glasses we are looking for.
For years, I eyed mindfulness, often mentioned in context of meditation, with curious suspicion, picturing incense-filled rooms and cross-legged monks chanting in midair. The very idea of integrating a formal mindfulness practice like meditation into my daily life initially seemed too abstract to investigate further.
Meanwhile though, embracing what I once avoided, meditation has become somewhat fashionably mainstream, popping up everywhere from corporate boardrooms to smartphone apps.
How did this (mind-) shift happen? And why should we care?
The Anxious Mind: A Reflection of Modern Life
Trying to integrate a meditation routine into daily life can initially feel counter-habitually odd in a world that celebrates constant busyness.
Yet, many friends working in high-pressure creative environments and living bustling lives have found real solace in this ancient tradition. In my job in the fast-paced fashion industry it became a support system to not relentlessly spin out into the future, as an infatuation with predictable planning relentlessly pulled us beyond the present.
In a way it was like perpetually devaluing where we were by racing toward where we urgently thought we needed to be, often literally running after a tightly knit schedule.
For decades, I lived with an underlying nervousness, anxiously stuck in my head and to-do lists that habitually increased, while the reflex of constantly adding to them fueled the anxiety.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal once stated that "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
His words point to our shrinking ability to sit with the discomfort of not being distracted in our era of constantly available entertainment, luring us toward instant gratification rather than longer-term balance. It’s how we perpetually propel ourselves towards living as human doings rather than human beings.
What if our restlessness paradoxically comes from our constant activity though?
Try this for a moment:
When was the last time you looked up?
Do you to tune into how you currently actually feel from time to time and take in fully where you presently are? Are you aware of the temperature of the room? If the position you are in is comfortable? Are you aware of the tension in your neck? The ringing in your ears? Your grumbling stomach? The scent lingering in the air? The inside lighting contrasting the light outside?
Do you pick up on the subtle magic of the light taking the stage for the day as the sky brightens in this brief symphony of a changing color chord, the way the same woods where I live light up differently every morning?
What if it’s by sidelining our attention that we create a kind of blockage within, that increases as we don’t let our feelings and thoughts pass through?
What if this is leading to those chronic imbalances in our digestive system. The stuck tension in the muscles. The way our heart races and our mind seems to be spinning. The way our nervous system seems off-kilter, making us jump out of our skin to the slightest trigger. The way we feel overpowered before we get started.
What if the anti-dote to our constant overwhelm is as unspectacular as it is challenging - giving ourselves space to process what we live? Space to feel and notice the countless thoughts constantly passing through our minds each day. Realizing they lose their grip when we fully acknowledge them, instead of blocking our system by pushing them back down as soon as they surface.
Most thoughts tend to return like a boomerang until they’re fully acknowledged.
By filling every mental gap with distraction, we avoid confronting our fears that linger beneath the surface, which is how their power increases.
I’m assuming it’s the reason why a recurring nightmare I had up until my adolescence stopped when I worked with a therapist at having a very close look to finally diffuse the feeling of being haunted by those steps I had been chased by in a labyrinth for decades. The last time I dreamed it was when I woke up from my own screaming which was restricted in the dream till then. It’s what broke the spell.
The Internal Struggle: Confronting Our Fears
As the influential Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing suggested, humans often face three core fears: death, other people, and our own minds.
When I left my last corporate job it became hard to ignore that I was rarely present—habitually trained on mentally jumping ahead. It was like a reflex keeping me trapped in an anxious loop so ingrained that I had trouble acknowledging it as a self-propelling mechanism I could short-circuit if I actually became aware of it.
Ironically, the more overwhelmed I felt, the more appealing any distraction seemed than sitting with my tangled emotions. It tightened the loop like a Chinese finger trap—the more I pulled away, the tighter the grip became.
Turns out:
Sitting with our spinning minds is one of the bravest things we can do.
It’s also the crucial step to free ourselves from the mechanism, as we become aware how our thoughts seem to be thinking us, rather than us consciously thinking our thoughts. It’s when we feel like we are “running in circles”—overthinking without progress, like a dog chasing its tail.
This is where mindfulness is an impactful remedy to loosen the tension — allowing us to observe our thoughts to realize what they are actually conveying instead of judging them.
Do we need to take them as serious as we do? Where do they come from? Why do they appear at certain moments? Are they relating to what’s happening right now? Are they as permanent as we fear or actually trying to pass through? Do they lose their substance like a cloud moving along the sky, as often used in ZEN practice to describe how to let our mental chatter pass along?
It’s how we can realize how often we hold onto a thought or try to block off what we don’t want to look at, standing in our own way, as the famous proverb goes – basically hindering the clouds to naturally come together and fall apart.
The Book of Job reflects on brevity of our experiences, stating in Job 14:2: "They spring up like flowers and wither away; they flee like a shadow and never stay."
Encouragingly, understanding the fleeting nature of our thoughts is the key to releasing us from a self imposed prison that might not be as solid as we think.
What if thoughts have as much power as we give them?
What if what we regularly think about is, in fact, what we become?
What if this is our chance to change our game as we become mindful of how we talk to ourselves?
Are you aware of the internal chatter made up of self-limiting stories we recycle, much like cows ruminating—chewing the same thoughts over and over?
Do you constantly refer to yourself as forgetful, too short, too tall, too old, a victim, not enough, always unlucky, late for life, behind schedule, without realising the impact this has? How you are underlyingly demeaning yourself or even hurting yourself by bargaining your value that is non-negotiable?
Recognizing what perpetual thoughts are shaping your perception is like taking your power back from being hijacked by them.
It’s how self-awareness is your chance: It`s how you get to re-code your perspective as you understand how your mental gymnastics shape your daily experience.
Science backs the measurable benefits of calm contemplation, mindfulness and meditation as a more formal setting:
A study led by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that experienced meditators showed increased gamma wave activity in their brain, associated with attention, learning, and conscious perception. This suggests that consistent meditation can enhance our capacity for emotional resilience, focus, and overall well-being.
A 2019 systematic review in the Journal of Psychiatric Research found that mindfulness-based interventions effectively reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. I can relate to this from my own experience of meditation as an anchor stabilising my mental health after decades of depression as I learn how the the thoughts and feelings travelling through my system are not automatically a threat to fend off, rather a message to view with curiosity.
Research compiled by the National Institutes of Health has also shown that mindfulness can modulate the perception of pain, offering a non-pharmacological route to manage chronic discomfort.
Turning Inward: How to Practice "Doing Nothing"
A major misconception is seeing meditation as a practice with a specific goal or destination. It’s also the most common reason to throw the towel in as we don’t see results as fast as we have conditioned ourselves to expect them on our habitual desire for a return on our “investments.“
Unfamiliar to this, while a broader sense of calmness can develop over time, meditation isn’t about achieving something—it's about simply being — admittedly a tall order as it turns out.
We can learn about being present without striving for an outcome from the beloved bear Winnie the Pooh. In a conversation with Christopher Robin, Pooh says that what he likes doing best is "Nothing."
When asked how to do nothing, Pooh had learned that it's simply about being fully engaged in the moment without any specific agenda. He describes it as: "just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear and not bothering.”
In that way, intentionally doing nothing could be seen as a practice of mindfulness of the exact moment we are in.
What if we follow Pooh’s advice and learn to just be for a moment? What if we listen to the birds we rarely take note of, smell how approaching snow is lingering the air, notice how the bubbles in the water tickle our skin when washing dishes in the sink?
What if we take conscious note of the inside experience reflecting our outside explorations to guide us towards what truly aligns with our inner North, mirroring the poignant statement of the renowned Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh that “The way out is in.”
See for yourself by giving it a subtle go:
Savour your food: Pay attention to what you are eating by savoring each bite without distractions, noticing flavors, textures, and smells.
Brew mindfully: Brew tea or coffee by hand, focusing on the entire process, not just the result (as when pressing a button for an automated process while quickly squeezing in reading an article on your phone). This helps avoid dumping it down the drain before actually filling your cup.
Embrace routine chores: One of my favorites is weeding as an extremely calming way to unwind after a hectic day as it seems to soothe my overstimulated system.
Take a conscious walk: The easiest first literal step might be to take a walk without distractions, leaving your phone behind and listening to the sounds around you—whether city buzz or nature’s whispers. It’s as simple as it is effective as a practice to discover how mindfulness feels to you.
Try a 10-minute sit: You might even challenge yourself to set aside 10 minutes at the same time each day, first thing in the morning, during your lunch break, or right before bed to sit quietly, focus on your breath, and observe your thoughts without judgment.
There’s no right or wrong in the simplicity of the practice.
The practice itself is the path, not a means to an end.
And while it’s not about expecting a specific gain, on the long run widely researched benefits of mindfulness practice include life-altering benefits like stress reduction, as it activates the body’s relaxation response, lowers cortisol, and builds resilience to stressors. It’s known to reduce anxiety, promoting relaxation and emotional regulation, while enhancing sleep quality. It’s praised to boost focus, and cognitive function by training you to stay present which frees up creative thinking and problem-solving by helping you get out of your head.
Ultimately, the enhanced self-awareness deepens your self-understanding, which is the most crucial investment you can make towards yourself and the way you relate to the world.
Mindfulness isn’t just a practice—it’s a way of life that invites you to engage deeply with yourself and your surroundings. And, inspiringly, it´s what can make you see so much more of what is already there that you have habitually been overlooking.
Starting Your Own Inquiry
How often do you find yourself fully present, truly noticing the moment you’re in?
What simple daily activities (like making coffee or walking the dog) could you intentionally transform into mindful moments this week?
What kinds of persistent, self-limiting stories do you find most challenging to sit with and observe?
If you became more aware of your own internal mechanisms, how might your relationships with others naturally start to shift?
What might your life look like if you committed to just a few minutes of "doing nothing" each day?