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Presents mindfulness is as simple as bringing our awareness to the prison.

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That's it.

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If you're walking in the street, pay attention to that experience.

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If you're having lunch focused on having lunch, if you're arguing with your friend, we're embracing

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afterward, be fully in that experience.

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Sometimes when we learn what mindfulness is, we say, I already know that I'm walking in the street.

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I know I'm having a lunch.

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How is that supposed to be helpful?

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But mindfulness is more than knowing that we are doing something.

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It's about going deeper, intentionally, cultivating a connection with our experience.

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We don't just walk in the street.

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We notice the color of the sky, the feel of the ground on our feet, the sounds around us.

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It's opening our awareness to elements of our experience that we normally miss.

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At the same time, a mindful approach doesn't require that we do anything in addition to what we are

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engaging in.

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If we are running, we're running.

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If we're driving, we're driving.

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People sometimes protest that being mindful in certain situations would be distracting, even dangerous.

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In fact, the opposite is true.

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We are safer and less distracted when our attention is fixated on what we are doing.

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Simply being present in our lives accomplishes two things at once.

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First, it allows us to get more out of what's happening so we don't sleepwalk through our lives.

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We can discover the richness in our reality, even the most mundane activities.

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Second, when we are present, we are not ruminating about the past or fearing the future, which is

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a big part of why mindfulness practice reduces and anxiety and depression.

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So much of our unhappiness arises from things that have nothing to do with what's real.

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And this moment, for example, I was walking home from the train one evening and started thinking about

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my children's health.

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Before I knew it, I was imagining a tragic, tragic scenario in which one of them was gravely sick

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and I began to feel anxious and downcast as as though it were already happening.

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When I called myself and came back to the prison, I noticed what was real then lengthening the night,

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the birds flying the green grass and the blue sky.

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My kids were healthy as far as I knew.

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I didn't have to live in my tragic fantasy.

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It was hard not to smile with that realization as I headed home to see them.