1. What is it and how can it help your happiness?
Mindfulness
What is it and how can it help your happiness?

2. Do you live in the moment?
Mindfulness is about being fully aware of living, right now, in this moment. We are often not fully “present” in what we are doing. You may be with friends or family, at school or perhaps in your bedroom supposedly doing homework, when before you know it, 10 minutes have passed and you have been deep in thought, rather than focussing on what is around you. This may be fine at times, but other times, these thoughts may bring your mood down.

3. Can you remember the last time you lived in the moment?
Have you ever arrived at school and realised that you don’t remember your journey there? When you are watching a television programme, do you drift off thinking about some school work you need to do?
We can often live our lives on automatic pilot. We carry out our daily routines lost in thought. Many of us do not live in the present. This means that we may miss what is happening in our lives right now.
Can you remember the last time you lived in the moment?

4. Mind full of mindful? Can you explain what this could mean?

5. We have between 50,000-70,000 thoughts per day
Mindfulness is also about practising the method of “stepping back” from our thoughts and identifying them as they come and go. If you can do this from time to time, you might start to be able to identify which thoughts make you feel sad or worried and try to avoid becoming absorbed in these thoughts.

6. Thoughts are like buses…

7. Metaphors:
You may have noticed that we have been using quite a few metaphors to describe our thoughts. This is because it is useful to visualise them in order to be able to step back from them and identify them. Here are a few more metaphors which you may find helpful…

8. Metaphors to help you “step back” from your thoughts
Imagine that you have a bubble machine inside your mind. It is switched on and hundreds of bubbles are coming out every minute. Each bubble represents a thought; some are nice thoughts, some are not so nice and may cause you to worry. Imagine the horrible thoughts and nice thoughts are different colours. Can you try to let the horrible ones drift away and pop? It may take some practice!

9. Feeding the imaginary friend
Imagine that you go to a doctor and you say you have an imaginary friend who keeps asking you for more and more food. This friend is now getting quite fat. Would the doctor tell you to keep feeding the friend? Perhaps, bad thoughts, like your imaginary friend, are not real things to focus on. The problem or difficult situation may be real but your over-thinking about it is not. You can try to stop constantly “feeding your imaginary friend” and your state of mind will improve.

10. The flowing river of thoughts
Imagine that your thoughts are all flowing in a river in your mind. There will be a huge variety of thoughts. Some will be mundane, some funny, some peaceful and some will be upsetting thoughts. Imagine that these upsetting thoughts are represented as lumps of foul-smelling mud which come floating along in your river of thoughts, now and again. Do you want to pick up these thoughts and examine them , or would it be best to let them float past and focus more on some of the nicer thoughts?

11. Real life mindfulness:
James' story: "Mindfulness isn't all 'airy-fairy' like I thought it was"

12. Research suggests that mindfulness can:
Improve immune function 
Increase empathy 
Enhance relationships 
Improve academic performance 
Reduce symptoms of hyperactivity in young people 

13. Remember:

14. Try taking 10 minutes today to stop, look around you and take everything in.

15. As said in the film “Christopher Robin”:
Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.