The Power of Mindfulness:

I attended the online DBT program to learn new skills and to build resilience and emotional balance during my graduate school. DBT teaches us the core Mindfulness skills which has gained significant attention over the years. Mindfulness can alleviate emotional and physical suffering and it does take practice. It takes patience. :)

Since I started to practice to live more mindfully, I feel that I have improved various areas of my life.

What is mindfulness? Mindfulness is about being fully present in "the here and now." It sounds simple? And it is also challenging. I found myself getting distracted frequently during my evening mindfulness meditation practice. Mindfulness can cultivate curiosity, patience an open, non-judgmental attitude towards our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. As for DBT program, mindfulness is one of four important modules of dialectical behavior therapy program. Many people suffer from intense emotions, overwhelming reactions to stimuli and they benefit significantly from this mindfulness practice. It is about observing and describing what is in front of you, what's going through you (your body, internally) and try to notice and pay attention to bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions without judgment. The more you practice this core mindfulness skill, the less likely that you are going to suffer from "meltdown" or "angry outburst." When you notice and observe your emotions and thought process, you simply note "my mind is having anxious thoughts. I have a thought that says I am not gong to do well during the interview tomorrow." This is different from "I am anxious, thus I am going to screw up during the interview tomorrow." You notice your anxiety and when you observe and describe your anxiety non-judgmentally, you are creating a little space between you and anxious feelings or anxious thoughts so you are not the anxiety. You are not the anger. Does that make sense?

This thought me a powerful lesson. Just because you feel angry, it does not mean that you always had to take action by reacting to the situation. Often that does not lead to favorable outcomes when you act out of "emotion mind."