Why am I struggling with Mindfulness?

It's not unusual for people to struggle when immersing themselves into mindfulness training. When you begin to practice you may experience feelings of misunderstanding and confusion towards the concept behind the practice. My own journey with mindfulness has been somewhat a rollercoaster ride even whilst training as a practitioner. Initially I practiced with perfection in mind, always paying attention and always being slow, which I found incredibly irritating and impossible to maintain. I felt as though my personality had to be reserved and stunted in order to operate in this slow and unresponsive manner until I realised I was doing what I do best - over thinking.

When I began to relax and just be me but a more attentive me, it all began to click into place. Mindfulness is simply attention with intention. You don’t have to be religious, spiritual or perfect. It’s simply about paying attention and noticing your thought patterns.

A big part of mindfulness training is mediation based and for a long time I didn’t understand why until I read the book ‘Mindfulness in eight weeks’ by Michael Chaskalson. A section in his book focussed on forgetting and remembering, which is truly groundbreaking.

When you begin a meditation you set out with an intention to focus your attention on the breathing but very soon into the practice you forget and the mind begins to wander because that’s what minds do best. Your mind keeps wandering and you begin to get frustrated with yourself with an internal dialogue running questions such as - why can’t I just do this? It isn’t difficult? Just concentrate!' You come back, then you realise you’re off again thinking about the past or worrying about the future then you come back to the breath all the time wondering why this is such a struggle?

But here is the fascinating part. Over and over again during this process you are forgetting and then remembering again and again. Every time you forget gives another opportunity to remember and each time you remember you are building yourself some lovely little neural pathways connected to sustained attention.

The brain is fascinating and its capacity to rewire and reshape itself in response to repeated behaviour is called ‘neuroplasticity’. If you do something a few times it won’t have a huge impact but if you do it thousands of times you begin to restructure your brain. How cool is that?

That’s why repeated mindfulness training is so important. That way you have more opportunities to forget and remember which keeps laying down those bricks and over time your brain will slowly begin to restructure.

People often try meditation and say things like ‘It’s just not for me, I can’t stop my thoughts from wandering’ or ‘I can’t concentrate’ but actually that isn’t the point at all. The training is all about forgetting and coming back, that is exactly what is going to strengthen your pathways towards more mindful moments.

Taking that into account you can begin to realise it’s really normal to struggle with Mindfulness and actually that’s the whole point. As with any training, it begins to pay off when you start noticing the results and Mindfulness is no exception. Stick with it, keep practicing over and over and you will eventually begin reaping those wonderful mindful rewards.