There's a simple mindfulness technique that can drive powerful change.
Ever get in your car to drive somewhere, and end up driving to work (or home) instead?
That is your pattern-recognizing brain at work.
One of your brain’s primary jobs is to recognize patterns. It is very good at this job.
It does this for a few different reasons. First, to help keep you safe. Taking in new data, processing it, and allowing our neocortex to decide how to handle it takes time. Time that a predator might exploit to kill you. Time during which a terrible accident may hurt you. The pattern recognition part of your brain can connect discrete stimuli to a known pattern and coordinate a response much quicker. It is this ability that allows race car drivers to avoid accidents at 200mph, and firefighters to know that a building is about to collapse, without necessarily knowing why.
This ability also helps you remember how to tie your shoes.
The second benefit (from your brain’s perspective) is that it allows the brain to conserve effort and energy. In other words, your brain is kind of lazy.
The downside, is that the brain is also reducing your ability to engage with your life. Ever notice how a year seems to pass much faster now than when you were a kid? The same process is to blame for that as well.
Other consequences can include bad habits that stick around despite our best intentions, and communication patterns that may be damaging to your relationships.
Fortunately, you can retrain your brain to engage more fully in the present moment.
With simple, curious attention, you can recapture the magic and wonder you expect only in new experiences.
This is what Sunryu Suzuki termed “Beginner’s Mind,” the ability to see everyday objects and occurrences as if they were brand new.
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Beginner's Mind can help your relationship with your partner, children, even coworkers. It can also change your experience of anger, depression, and anxiety.
You don’t need any fancy mindfulness training to do this.
Try it now! Pick one of the objects around you. Spend five minutes investigating it as if you’ve never seen anything like it before. Engage all five of your senses.
Touch: run your hands over every bit of it. Feel the weight of it in your palm. Squeeze it, or scratch it, or rub it between your fingers.
Smell: Bring it up to your nose and investigate it for any scent. Is it what you expected?
Taste (if safe): touch it first to your lips, then with the tip of the tongue, explore the surface of the object. This is a sense we rarely use, but most animals depend on.
Sound: Bring it up to your ear and listen. Does it make a sound? Manipulate it, shake it, or rub it against something else.
Study the object with all of your attention for five minutes. You’ll likely discover something you never knew about this thing you’ve seen many times.
You’ll quickly notice that your brain doesn’t want to pay attention that long. You may find yourself distracted. That’s ok, when you catch your mind wandering, simply turn your attention back to the object.
It may seem unimportant to you to notice some scratch in the casing of your stapler, but imagine how it might change a walk in the park. Or a conversation with your spouse. Set the intention to bring Beginner’s Mind to something you normally find challenging.
You may be pleasantly surprised with the results.
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