While honoring my mother-in-law’s life last week, I found myself distracted by the arrangement of the room, especially the bottleneck at the photos preventing people from reaching the coffin. I desperately wanted to rearrange the funeral home for better flow, but I redirected myself to focus on connecting with the people in the room instead. Later, during the service, I couldn’t stop looking at this giant cobweb hanging from the ceiling; its lack of respect for her life offended me because she deserved nothing less than the best.
It was then I knew I was striving for perfection, again, and missing the message because of it, so I redirected myself and my attention again. And again. And again. Yes, these are hard habits to break, but noticing we’re striving without judging ourselves for it is mindfulness in action. Paradoxically, not introducing an attitude of where we should be will eventually move us closer to where we want to be.
Before discovering mindfulness and meditation, I’d always oriented myself toward goals and strived to accomplish them. The closer to perfect the achievement or event turned out, the better I felt, which of course meant the opposite was also true. My feelings of self-worth were tied up in the judgments of myself and others, and because perfect is impossible, nothing was ever quite good enough, even if it was amazing. I constantly strived to make things better, to do things better, to be better.
Yet, according to Jon Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness “transcends opposites,” and striving “undermines our ability to pay attention to what’s actually happening moment by moment.” Mindfulness and non-striving help us realize we already are, in some sense, whole and perfect and there is nothing to attain, Kabat-Zinn tells us in Full Catastrophe Living. It means “to live in accordance with the way things are, to come into harmony with all things and all moments.”
We can’t strive our way into a state of non-striving. The spirit of non-striving, he says, is to befriend the current situation as it is, and ironically, this kind of non-action eventually leads to greater attainment of our goals and desired states of being because they come naturally through our practices and cannot be forced.
What practices does Kabat-Zinn recommend to help us become more non-striving without striving to do so? Mindfulness and meditative practices top the list because they will help us cultivate “a new way of seeing [ourselves], one in which [we] are trying less and being more.” Not introducing an attitude of where we should be and seeing and accepting things as they are prerequisites for change. He says completing body scans, yogic and other body practices, as well as visualizations and imaginings for their own sakes as a way of being with our bodies will help us embody an attitude of non-striving, and not trying to achieve anything beyond awareness and acceptance may even lead to wisdom.
Jon Kabat-Zinn isn’t saying we should never try or act, but rather that shouldn’t be our main focus as we explore non-striving and self-acceptance as ways of being. He says, “There is a lot [we] can do to gently, lovingly, and firmly—through non-striving and non-doing, coupled with doing when taking action with awareness is called for—influence how things unfold across the lifespan.”
How do you embody an attitude of non-striving, and how has that helped you in your life? We’d love to hear from you.
Author: Terry Shamblin
Mindful Life Connections 