Summary: Another "uplifting" post aimed at the depressed loser and the mindful veteran alike. I attempt to frame "mindfulness" in my own words, and in a way that is easily understood by those finding it hard to comprehend how it is taught in it's current form.

I've been thinking about Christmas lately. The department stores around me have already brought out their Xmas merch, September turned to October, the sun sets while I'm still at work, and I've started waking up while it's still dark out.

There's an odd feeling waking up in the Autumn while it's quiet and black outside. It's the stillness.... a silent morning where every sound is sharper and crisper, the shower feels harsher on your back, breakfast tastes better, the leather small of the car seat, pungent yet familiar. The wind outside bites harder, you feel all these things much more acutely, your awareness is amplified in these mornings. Your mind wanders more freely; anxieties and stresses seem smaller, problems easier to manage, the world less foreboding, easily triumphed, your thoughts sharper, more logical.

It's during these mornings you have some of your best ideas, your eureka moments, your "that's so obvious" hindsight realisations, your showerthoughts. Those "clicks" where you finally overcome that one niggling doubt or worry much easier than you thought possible; where you tuck it away and accept it, where you see the world for the game it is, and your place in it.

These moments, they aren't confined to the cold winter mornings. They happen, sometimes often, sometimes with long breaks in between. These hyper-aware moments, where you "zoom-out" of your current frame and have a realisation of what's actually happening... where everything outside feels alien and different, where you feel like a stranger in a world you'd grown comfortable with.

They happen a lot on vacations. When you visit somewhere spectacular and marvellous, a culture that is shockingly different to your own, a landmark that is huge and breath-taking, a city that scares you with it's strangeness. I'm sure we've all had those moments staring at the waves on the beach of a foreign country, or the stars in the night sky in a different part of the world, contemplating life, laughing at insecurities and mistakes that up until just recently, had been huge worries back home. Everything seems smaller and manageable, things worry us less.

And they happen in crowds; for me, nightclubs, often. Drunk off my head or rolling on some psychoactive, watching all the people around me jumping up and down and going "holy shit". Suddenly aware of where I am, what's going on, how... ridiculous the situation is. At festivals with trance music and colourful people, outside a bar in a smoking area, deep bass and ringing ears, the sharp smell of tobacco.

Sometimes, on a packed train, squished between a group of commuters, suddenly grossly aware of the people around me, contemplative, almost sad.

Sometimes after finishing a book that took me by surprise, that shook my psyche in ways I didn't expect a stranger from a different time to be able to. Where you have to just stop and think, to process, hyper aware, yet calm.

And always, for me, at Christmas. The whole world around me changes. The colours are different, the songs are different, the streets and lights, brighter; people, more cheerful. It's like the whole frame of society shifts, and during the first few weeks before familiarity and monotony sets in, I feel odd... strange, more aware. Being in that different frame without having time to adjust forces my body into an aware and contemplative state, and christmas time has that weird effect on me, and I'd bet it's the same for a lot of you guys too. It induces the thoughtful, more realistic, slightly more caring version me. The morning of the New Year does it too.... as does the comedown from a psychedelic.

I didn't type this all out for peotic writing practice, there is a reason for it. I want you to think to yourself about all the times you've felt this acute awareness, this sad contentedness, these memorable and important moments. If you're like the rest of us, these have happened at significant times of your life, and probably a lot more when you were a kid or teenager.

This is mindfulness.

I've read so much meditation and mindfulness literature, scoured through all the self help I could find, read all the TRP meditation posts, listened to many "experts; the idea of "mindfulness" never really made sense to me until it clicked one day. It was a word on a page that I kept reading, but never actually understood. I pretended like I knew what it meant, but in reality, I could never comprehend it the way everyone was intending for me to understand it until I'd framed it in my head in a sentence I could understand.

Mindfulness is switching off autopilot

I've been reading Mike Cernovich's "Gorilla Mindset"; in the book he tells the reader to use self-talk to try and be fully "in the moment". To be hyper aware of what he's doing. Using Headspace app to meditate, I've been told to tune out all other thoughts and focus on my breathing and my body. When lifting, I've been told by countless people to focus entirely on the feeling in my muscles and bones and complete the movement with perfect and almost performance level form.

And one day without realising it, I understood why I had to do all these things. I was doing them because I was being told to, but I didn't understand the reasoning behind it. I was completing the action, ticking the box, but not actually doing the action.

I was "talking to myself" in my head while walking, just like Cernovich told me to, and I had a hyper-aware "Christmas" moment. My body felt weird under my control, my walk felt strange and alien.

I was meditating, and had a hyper aware "christmas" moment. The room I was in felt utterly bizzare and unfamiliar. I'd induced a feeling I thought only came to me at significant times in my life.

I was squatting, and had a hyper aware "christmas" moment. I looked back through the mirror at the guys behind me and marvelled at just how ridiculous the whole situation was. Standing there in shorts, weight on my back, in a basement with other men sweating it out picking things up and putting them back down again and completely ignoring each other.

I'd induced all these moments. They hadn't occurred to me naturally like they used to. I used to wait for these moments to happen and then be pleasantly surprised by them; now I was in complete control.

You have to Manually Flip The Switch

The control is the ability to flip the autopilot switch. Autopilot is your worst enemy. Autopilot is the state of being where you get up and go through your day exactly how you've been doing so since you could remember. It is "Default" you. It is getting up after snoozing the alarm a couple of times, the same lazy breakfast, the same commute, the same landmarks and people, the same fast food lunch, the same conversations, the same procrastination, the same exact time you jack off each day to the same porn, the same process of scrolling through reddit on your smartphone every night before falling asleep.

Autopilot is the default mode of every person. Every depressed person. Autopilot is the itch that keeps you addicted to that game or drug or stupid procrastinatory habit. The truly "woke" people are the ones who are able to switch off their autopilot. These are the "mindful" people. These people achieve this state of mindfulness in different ways. Some are temporary: go on a holiday and come back mindful for a few weeks only to slip back into monotony. Change house and be hyper-aware of your life for the first month, then back to old habits. New relationship, new dog, new season, new time of year.

You can be forced out of autopilot by the changing of your surroundings and situation. Christmas time does a good job of slipping the populace out of it's autopilot for a few weeks a year, vacations are expensive ways of forcing you out, drugs; quick and cheap. People are always looking for ways to freshen up their lives, to have those hyper aware "I feel alive" moments; what they're really looking for is that escape from the robotic programmed lives they live.

But these are all temporary, these will never last. They can't last because your autopilot state is your default, you're just switching it off for a few hours or weeks at a time, you will always resort back to it as long as your surroundings remain the same and you process them the same. It's why people always say that travelling is one of the best things you can do for your life. You cannot, by definition, be on autopilot while travelling through new places. It's why people have so much fun and enjoy themselves and come back changed.

Those people who say bullshit like "happiness comes from within" or "live in the moment". Those are people who have learnt to switch off their autopilot and force themselves into aware and content mindframes.

I used to think these kinds of phrases were bullshit and these people were just deluded child hippies. I used to think meditation was some weird mystic praying that people tricked themselves into doing. I never understood it. I understand it now.

Meditation is the process of actively switching your autopilot off.

It's recommended you do it in the morning, you get up, make sure you get in the right frame so you don't just coast through the day; make sure you're aware of your surroundings and body, zoom out a bit, and hit the day running "like it's your last".

People who have had near death experiences, people ho have fought illness and lived? These people who have brushed death, why are they so happy? It's because they have their auto-pilot permanently switched off.

When hippy-types or self help books tell you that "happiness comes from within", this is what they mean. You will never be happy while on daily autopilot. Autopilot is worker ant mode, autopilot is controllable and marketable, autopilot is depressed mode, autopilot is the narrator from Fight Club. You want to be happy? You switch off your autopilot.

But what does this actually mean?

It means being aware of what you are doing and who you are at every moment, it means completing every task and day with purpose. I know what I'm typing sounds like hippy shit, me a couple of months ago would have read this and wouldn't have understood, I know some of you guys won't, but I'll give you examples.

  • Before, I used to brush my teeth. I'd put toothpaste on my brush, rinse my mouth, move the brush in my mouth at the same pace for roughly the same amount of time twice a day, and think about other things while doing it. This was autopilot.
  • Now, I brush my teeth. I actually think about the purpose of brushing, I feel the bristles on my gums, I try to get every tooth. I focus entirely on the feeling in my mouth and getting my mouth clean and free from dirt or leftover food. I don't wonder to myself about anything else. I stop when my teeth feel clean, not when I feel like it's time-up.
  • Before, I used to "study", I'd read the books, copy out some notes and "understand" the content. I'd then wonder why I'd have to look over it and basically re-learn it all during exam cram time; it's because I wasn't learning shit.
  • Now I study. I read the content, I read the content. I don't just let the words enter my eyes, I try and fully understand, I don't make notes for the sake of writing things down so it looks like I did work, I make notes on things I know I need to memorise and learn, I come back to my notes. I actively learn.
  • Before, I used to lift. I'd have my headphones in, perform the movement, diddle around on my phone between sets, time the rest breaks, and then perform the movement again.
  • Now, I lift. I have no music, no phone. I focus entirely on the bar, on the tenseness of my body, on the direction of the movement, on which muscles I've been using, on the patches of tightness and soreness. I don't time my rest-breaks to some arbitrary time, I lift again when I'm ready, or just before to push myself. There was a guy who posted on here earlier about how meditation can help you lift better. He was right. This is the process. This is the mechanism. It's nothing magical or mystic, it's simply about being aware of the moment, of your bodies capabilities, and using them fully, rather than just half-assing and completing your actions for the sake of completing them.

Ticking the box is not enough, you need to do it properly.

So if you're used to hearing useless platitudes like:

  • "live life to it's fullest"

  • "treat every day like it's your last"

  • "be mindfull"

  • "happiness comes from within"

What these people are actually telling you, in a different frame is, "turn off your autopilot". I know for some people it needs to be framed in this way for them to understand, that's the only way I could ever understand it. It's why these people are able to overcome stresses and worries much easier; yes they still have them, but they deal with them much in the same way you deal with them when you're on holiday and your worries feel tiny. Except they've internalised this mechanism for self-reflection, and they didn't need to go to a travel-agent or coke-dealer to get it.

And you know what, it's very obvious when someone has their autopilot on or not. You can see it almost instantly. You can almost smell it on them. That aura of assertiveness and "go-getter" attitude that you'll see in almost all dream-fulfilling successful people, albeit in different flavors. You can separate people by whether they're just floating through life waiting to die, or whether they're actually out to do something, whether they have purpose and will, or are directionless. I think it was in a Molyneux/Cernovic podcast where I heard the phrase "People are either Do-ers, or Be-ers".

Don't be a "Be-er". Don't just exist and wait to die. Be a "Do-er". Switch off your autopilot, create those magical moments, don't just wait for them to happen. Don't just wait for the environment around you to change and kick you out of your comfort zone; do it yourself. These are the people who fulfil those dreams.

I know it's not easy, I know it's hard to be aware and force yourself out. You will slip back into autopilot, it's natural. We all do it, even the best. But the most mindful people are those who have disciplined themselves to catch when they have slipped into autopilot mode, and jolt themselves back out. It's why daily exercise and meditation is so important, it's an active exercise in keeping yourself switched on and tuned in. You won't get anywhere following your assigned, depressed programming. That's not how a successful person works.

A successful person breaks away from auto-pilot mode and takes success.

Lessons Learned:

  • Hyper-aware moments are significant times in your life where you have been thrown out of auto-pilot.

  • These happen because your environment has drastically changed and you need to process new information and feelings in a different frame

  • These moments can also be induced. When you force yourself to enter these moments, this is called "mindfulness".

  • This can be achieved through daily meditation, in fact this is one of the primary purposes of meditation.

  • Happy and successful people are never on auto-pilot, they are always switched on and tuned in.

  • You can find fulfilment and happiness in these small moments by being aware and mindful.

When are you going to get serious?