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The Guardrails: Mindfulness HOW Skills (DBT mini-season ep. 2)
130 Plays14 days ago
In this very special episode of Friendless, we're continuing the DBT micro-season diving into the how skills of mindfulness: non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively. If those sound like made-up DBT words, you're not wrong—but what they actually mean is surprisingly straightforward.
Last episode covered the what skills (observe, describe, participate). This week is about how to practice them without turning mindfulness into another thing you're failing at. Because here's the thing: you can know all the skills, understand them intellectually, explain them to other people, and still completely fuck them up by making mindfulness a source of shame.
The how skills are the guardrails that prevent exactly that.
What You'll Learn:
- Nonjudgmentally: How to separate facts from interpretations—the difference between "I'm feeling tired" and "I'm lazy for feeling tired"
- One-mindfully: Why doing five things at once means doing five things poorly, and how to actually focus (spoiler: your mind will wander, that's fine)
- Effectively: Letting go of the "right way" and just doing what works—meeting yourself where you are, not where you wish you were
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Transcript
Opening Struggles with Mindfulness
00:00:00
Speaker
Fun fact about me. When I first tried mindfulness, I spent half the time judging myself for not being good at mindfulness, which is impressively missing the point.
Introduction to Mindfulness 'How Skills'
00:00:12
Speaker
ah Welcome back to Friendly Sweet Peas.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm your host, James Avramenko, and this is episode two of the dbt micro season. We're still in mindfulness territory, but today we're talking about the how skills.
00:00:37
Speaker
Non-judgmentally, one mindfully, and effectively. And if those sound like made up words, They kind of are. thing ah They're DBT-speak.
00:00:47
Speaker
And what they actually mean is actually pretty straightforward. These are basically the settings you use when you're practicing the what skills. So you remember last episode we talked about observe, describe, participate.
00:01:02
Speaker
Those are the what skills. Today is the how.
Judgment and Mindfulness
00:01:06
Speaker
How do you observe without immediately judging what you observe? How do you describe without turning it into a performance?
00:01:13
Speaker
um How do you participate without holding yourself to these kind of impossible standards? That's what we're covering because here's the thing that I learned the hard way.
00:01:25
Speaker
You can know all the skills. You can understand them intellectually. You can explain them to other people. And you can still completely fuck them up by turning mindfulness into just another thing that you're bad at.
00:01:42
Speaker
And that's what the how skills are designed to prevent. They're the guardrails that keep you from turning a helpful practice into another source of shame. So let's talk about them.
00:01:53
Speaker
Let me tell you about the first time I tried to do mindfulness practice because I think this story will resonate with at least some of you. Maybe all of you. Who knows? I don't know. Maybe none of you. what We'll find out.
00:02:04
Speaker
but So this was years ago. This was before I did the DBT workshop. I was with a different therapist. This was different from, you know, my boy Scott. um And this therapist recommended I try a guided meditation.
00:02:18
Speaker
It's this 10-minute thing. She sent a link to an app. Very simple. Very beginner-friendly. And I was like, yeah, sure, I can do that. 10 minutes, I can sit and breathe. How hard can it be? So I sit down and I open the app and I press play and the voice starts, you know, very calm, very soothing.
00:02:37
Speaker
Notice your breath, let your thoughts come and go like clouds passing in the sky. And within like no exaggeration, at the longest 60 seconds, my brain has wandered.
00:02:51
Speaker
I'm probably thinking about, you know, am I hungry? you do Do I have that email I need to send? Do I have to reply to those texts? Oh my God, are my friends mad at me? Whatever. And then, you know, i remember, oh, I'm supposed to be meditating. So I try to come back to my breath, right?
00:03:05
Speaker
But now I'm not just coming back to my breath. Now I'm also thinking, God, you can't even focus for one minute. Everyone else can do this. What's wrong with you, right? You know, and now...
00:03:16
Speaker
I'm not meditating anymore. I'm spiraling. I'm having this full shame spiral about not being able to meditate. i'm i'm I'm suddenly building this narrative in my head about how I'm probably broken, about how this is evidence that I'll never get better and how even the simplest self-care practice is too hard for me.
00:03:38
Speaker
And meanwhile, the guided meditation is still going. The voice is still saying, you know, these calm, soothing things. But I'm not hearing any of it because I'm now too busy hating myself for not being good at meditating, something I have never done at that point.
Mitigating Shame with 'How Skills'
00:03:55
Speaker
And I must have made it, i don't know, couple minutes before I just outright turned it off because... I was overwhelmed and I ended up not trying again for for months because i had turned it into proof that I was fundamentally incapable of doing the thing that was supposed to help me.
00:04:14
Speaker
And this is why the how skills matter. Because I was trying to practice mindfulness. I was trying to observe my breath.
00:04:26
Speaker
But I didn't know how to do it without immediately judging everything that happened. And the judgment is what made it worse. The judgment took a simple, wandering thought and turned it into evidence of my brokenness.
00:04:42
Speaker
And I think a lot of us do this. We try to practice mindfulness or meditation or self-care or whatever. And the second it doesn't go perfectly, we turn it into another thing we're failing at.
00:04:55
Speaker
Another thing that we're bad at. Another piece of evidence that we're the problem. And that is exhausting. And it's also counterproductive. And it's also completely avoidable if you know how to practice non-judgmentally.
00:05:11
Speaker
So that's what we're going to talk about. How to observe your breath wandering without making you know making it mean something about your worth.
00:05:23
Speaker
How to notice your mind drifting without immediately going to, oh, I'm bad at this, I suck. And how to practice the what skills without the how skills turning it into a nightmare.
00:05:37
Speaker
Okay, so let's break this down. Non-judgmentally, this is the first how skill. And this one is really big. This is the one that basically changes everything because most of us are walking around with this running commentary of judgments in our head all day long about ourselves, about other people, about everything.
00:05:56
Speaker
And judgments are really, really sneaky because they feel like facts. They feel like objective observations, but they're not.
00:06:06
Speaker
They're evaluations and they're interpretations. And they're usually unkind. So let's define what I mean by judgment, because I think we use that word kind of loosely.
00:06:20
Speaker
A judgment in this context is when you take something that's happening and you evaluate it as good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. you're adding a layer of interpretation on top of the fact.
00:06:35
Speaker
So for example, fact, I'm feeling tired. Judgment, I'm lazy for feeling tired. See the difference? One is just describing what's happening.
00:06:46
Speaker
The other is making it mean something about your character. Or how about fact, my mind wandered during meditation.
00:06:56
Speaker
Judgment, I'm bad at meditation. Fact, I didn't get as much done today as I wanted to. Judgment, I'm a failure. Fact, I'm feeling anxious.
00:07:10
Speaker
Judgment, I shouldn't feel this way. You see how the judgment adds a whole extra layer of suffering on top of the original experience. The fact is just the fact.
00:07:22
Speaker
The judgment is where the shame comes in. And the thing is judgments, especially self-judgments, they don't help. They don't motivate you. They don't make you better.
00:07:36
Speaker
They usually just end up making you feel worse. And when you feel worse, you're then less likely to try again. You're far more likely to give up.
00:07:47
Speaker
So practicing non-judgmentally means you're describing what is instead of evaluating whether it's good or bad. You're separating the fact from the interpretation. You're noticing what's happening without adding a story about what it means about you.
00:08:02
Speaker
Let me give you some examples of how to shift from judgment to non-judgment. So judgment is, I'm a mess. Non-judgment, I'm feeling overwhelmed right now. Judgment, I'm lazy.
00:08:13
Speaker
Non-judgment, I'm tired and my capacity is low. Judgment, I shouldn't feel like this. Non-judgment, I'm feeling like this. Judgment, I'm bad at mindfulness.
00:08:26
Speaker
Non-judgment, my mind wandered. Judgment, I'm failing. Non-judgment, I'm struggling with this task. Do you see how the non-judgmental version is just softer?
00:08:40
Speaker
It's not necessarily kinder in a sort of a fake, toxic, positive way. It's just factual. It's describing what's actually happening without adding a layer of self-attack on top.
00:08:53
Speaker
And let's be clear about what this doesn't mean. Because there is a version of non-judgment that people hear as, never evaluate anything ever. Like, you know, you can't have opinions or standards or preferences. And that's not what this is about. You can still evaluate things, obviously. You can still have preferences. You can still notice when something isn't working.
00:09:12
Speaker
But you separate that evaluation from your worth as a person. You separate the fact of what's happening from the story of what it means about you.
00:09:23
Speaker
So you can notice this meditation app isn't working for me without making it mean I'm broken. You can notice I'm struggling with this skill without making it mean I'm a failure.
00:09:35
Speaker
You can notice I'm feeling really anxious today without making it mean I shouldn't feel this way. You're just describing what is. And that is so much easier to work with than with a judgment.
00:09:51
Speaker
I'll tell you a story about a time when I kind of caught myself in a judgment and managed to reframe it. Try to illustrate the point a little bit. i you know I'm trying to give as many personal examples as I can. And um funny enough, I'm sort of Sometimes i kind of struggle to come up with examples because um I get so sort of in my own brain that I don't recognize at times what is a practice, what's normal, what's abnormal, what's what's, you know. Anyway, so as the series goes on, hopefully I'm going to be able to kind of mine more stories. But here's a here's an example.
00:10:24
Speaker
So I've been on a medical leave from work since this past October. And I have this pattern that happens a lot.
00:10:36
Speaker
I'll go to bed with this intention of starting the next day fresh. You know, I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to shower. I'm going to get on with it and be productive and prove that I'm not wasting time.
00:10:48
Speaker
And then I wake up and I am frozen. I can't get out of bed. My body just will not move. My brain won't engage. i am just stuck.
00:11:02
Speaker
And more often than not, immediately after that, the judgment begins. You're so lazy. You're a failure. You're a total disaster who's failing at everything. You can't even get out of bed. What's wrong with you?
00:11:13
Speaker
Just full judgment mode, full spiral. And there are days where I just stay in that all day long. Sometimes the judgment just completely runs the show.
00:11:27
Speaker
But sometimes... I manage to catch it. I notice the judgments. I see them for what they are. And I reframe. I check the facts.
00:11:39
Speaker
Facts are, I'm on medical leave. That is not a moral failing. That is a medical reality. I am supposed to be resting. I'm supposed to be going easy. That's literally the point of medical leave.
00:11:52
Speaker
And that's it. Same situation. Zero judgment. Just facts. And weirdly... That shift tends to make everything easier.
00:12:03
Speaker
And not just, you know, getting through the day, but it actually makes it easier to start tasks later. Because when I let go of the pressure to overexert, when I remove the shame, that the the the barrier for entry lowers.
00:12:17
Speaker
When I'm judging myself, every small task feels impossible because I'm carrying all this shame and self-attack on top of it.
Mastering 'One Mindfully' Skill
00:12:27
Speaker
But when I reframe non-judgmentally, when I just say, I'm on medical leave, I'm allowed to rest, suddenly the smaller tasks feel much more doable again.
00:12:39
Speaker
It's like the judgment is what's making everything harder and removing it kind of gives me my energy back. And that shift from you are lazy to your energy is low,
00:12:50
Speaker
That's the power of nonjudgmental noticing. It turns shame into curiosity. It turns what's wrong with me into what's happening here. And that second question is actually answerable.
00:13:06
Speaker
So that's nonjudgmentally. Describing what is instead of evaluating whether it's good or bad. Separating the facts from the story. Noticing with without judging. And I'm going to be honest with you, it's hard.
00:13:19
Speaker
It's only one of the hardest, if it's if not the hardest how skill, it's one of the hardest DBT skills. Because we've been trained our whole lives to judge, not only ourselves, but everything else.
00:13:30
Speaker
To evaluate, to compare, to turn everything into evidence, whether we're good enough or not. So if you try this and you catch yourself judging anyway, that's fine. That is normal.
00:13:40
Speaker
That's what you've been conditioned to do. Just notice the judgment. And then you can describe that nonejut non-judgmentally.
00:13:51
Speaker
I'm noticing judgment. That's it. You don't judge yourself for judging. You just notice it and keep going. The practice is in the noticing, not in the being perfect. Okay, so that's non-judgmentally. First how skill.
00:14:04
Speaker
Second how skill is one mindfully. And this one is all about focus. One mindfully means do one thing at a time. That's it. That is the whole skill.
00:14:17
Speaker
Don't try to do five things at once. Don't multitask. Just do the thing you're doing. And I know this sounds really, really simple. Like, obviously, just focus. Got it, right?
00:14:30
Speaker
you know But the thing is, most of us are actually terrible at this. I know I am. I'm constantly taking in extra stimulus. You know, we are all constantly trying to do multiple things at once.
00:14:41
Speaker
We're scrolling on our phone while we're watching TV, while we're thinking about tomorrow. We're in a conversation while mentally drafting an email, while planning dinner. We're washing dishes while listening to a podcast, while catastrophizing about something that happened last week.
00:14:53
Speaker
We're never just doing one thing. And the problem with that is when you try to do five things at once, you do five things poorly.
00:15:04
Speaker
You're scattered. You're not really present for any of them. And you end up feeling really fragmented and exhausted. One mindfully is intended to be the antidote for that. And it's literally just do one thing.
00:15:19
Speaker
Give it your full attention. And when your mind wanders to something else, notice it and come back. and so You know, again, giving context of what this doesn't mean, um it can sound like you have to focus perfectly and never let your mind wander.
00:15:39
Speaker
That's impossible. Obviously, as we've said before, your mind's going wander. My mind is constantly wandering. You know, ah sometimes I'll be in the middle of a sentence and suddenly I'm thinking about something completely unrelated. This just happened right now as I was recording. I was thinking about different, it doesn't matter.
00:15:59
Speaker
It's just what brains do. One mindfully doesn't mean you never drift. It means you keep returning to the one thing when you notice you've drifted. So if you're washing dishes and your mind wanders to the email you have to send, that's fine.
00:16:13
Speaker
That's normal. You just notice, oh, I'm thinking about the email. And then you come back to the dishes. You feel the water. You notice the soap. You're back. Maybe 30 seconds later, your mind wanders again. That's fine. Just come on back.
00:16:27
Speaker
You might have to come back 40, 50, 60 times. That's not failure. That's perfect practice. Every time you notice, you come back. And that's the practice of the skill.
00:16:38
Speaker
You know, we talked about the the muscle reps, right? That's that's all it is. Those are your reps. The skill's not about staying focused forever. The skill is in the returning. you ever hear about the idea of of ruptures and repairs, ruptures are going to happen in any relationship of any kind. It's how you repair.
00:16:58
Speaker
Think of it the same way here. It's not the focus. It's the return. It's the repair that matters. Let me give you some examples of what one mindfully looks like in practice.
00:17:11
Speaker
You're in a conversation with someone. Instead of thinking about what you're going to say next or you know mentally checking out or planning your afternoon, just listen. This is an example we used last week. It's a it's a build on.
00:17:24
Speaker
Be there in the conversation. And when your mind wanders, notice it and come back. You're eating a meal. Instead of scrolling on your phone or watching TV or reading, you're just eating.
00:17:40
Speaker
You taste the food. You notice the texture. You are there with the meal. You're walking from some point A to point B. Instead of being on your phone or mentally somewhere else or listening to music or whatever, you are just walking.
00:17:56
Speaker
You feel your feet on the ground. You notice your surroundings. You're there. Walking. So these are some simple examples of one mindfully. And they're all really, really small moments.
00:18:10
Speaker
You know, again, like last week, we're not talking about hours long, deep focus sessions. We're talking about just being where you are for a few minutes at a time. And the reason that it matters is because when you're constantly multitasking, constantly scattered across five different things, you're never actually resting.
00:18:28
Speaker
Your brain never gets a break. You are always on, always splitting your attention, always trying to keep track of multiple threads. And that's going to burn you out. One mind flees intended to give your brain a break.
00:18:42
Speaker
Like we said last week, you know, when you are focused on where you are, your brain can rest because it doesn't have to imagine all these other things that might happen or have happened or whatever it might be.
00:18:53
Speaker
So it's much more easy on your mind to just be where you are. it sort of reduces that cognitive load.
00:19:04
Speaker
And it will help you be more effective of whatever it is you're doing because you're actually doing it instead of half doing it while also forming five other God knows what's. An example from me, I hate washing dishes. Like genuinely hate it. It's one of those tasks that I always try to avoid or rush through or distract myself during, um you know, get a dishwasher, whatever it might be. And normally when I'm washing dishes, when I have to be,
00:19:32
Speaker
I'll also be you know listening to podcast, mentally planning what I'm going to do after I finish the dishes, thinking about something I have to do tomorrow, probably catastrophizing about something completely unrelated. you know I'm doing multiple things all at once, and none of them well.
00:19:48
Speaker
And a few weeks ago, I decided i was going to try One mindfully washing dishes, just as an experiment, just to see what would happen. So I turned off the podcast, put my phone in the other room, and I just washed dishes.
00:20:04
Speaker
And ah ironically, i didn't need to because my dishwasher was empty, but this was part of the practice, was I'm going to do it. So... I'm there, i feel the water, I feel that the temperature of it, I feel the weight of the dishes, i notice the soap, I pay attention to the movement of my hands.
00:20:23
Speaker
And, you know, again, these aren't transcendental but moments. I didn't have like a a ah come to Jesus moment about dishwashing, but it wasn't excruciating.
00:20:36
Speaker
It was just neutral. which for a task that I usually hate is actually a huge win. And because here's what I noticed. It didn't take any longer.
00:20:48
Speaker
In fact, it probably actually went faster because I wasn't constantly switching between dishes and podcasts and thoughts and phone and yada, yada. I was just doing the thing. And when I finished, I didn't feel drained.
00:21:00
Speaker
I didn't feel scattered. I just felt Done. Like I had completed a task and now I could move on. And that right there is the power of One Mindfully.
00:21:11
Speaker
It's not about making boring tasks fun. It's about making them bearable. It's about not adding extra suffering on top of the thing that you're already doing.
Embracing 'Effectively' Over Perfectionism
00:21:22
Speaker
So that's One Mindfully. Do one thing at a time. And when you drift, come back over and over. That's the practice. The third how skill is effectively.
00:21:35
Speaker
And this one is all about pragmatism. Effectively means do what works. Not what's right. now what Not what's ideal.
00:21:48
Speaker
Not what you should do. Just what works. And this might be one of the more underrated skills in DBT because a lot of us get really stuck in shoulds.
00:22:01
Speaker
We get stuck in ideas about how things are supposed to be done. And meanwhile, we're not actually solving the problem because we're too busy being principled about it.
00:22:13
Speaker
Effectively is about letting go of that. It's about choosing your goals over your ego. So let me give you some examples of what this looks like. You need to ask somebody for help.
00:22:26
Speaker
The right way to do it might be call them on the phone. But phone calls make you freeze. You can't think straight. you end up So instead, you end up not calling at all.
00:22:38
Speaker
Effectively would be text them instead. Sure, it's not the ideal way, but it works. And it gets the thing done. How about you need to clean your space?
00:22:49
Speaker
The right way would be to do a full deep clean, everything perfect, but that feels overwhelming and you end up not cleaning at all. Effectively would be something like set a timer for two minutes and clean whatever you can in those two minutes.
00:23:04
Speaker
It's not perfect, but it's something and something is always better than nothing. How about you need to eat? This is what I struggle with. The right way might be to, you know, cook a full nutritious meal, but you don't have the energy, so you end up just not eating.
00:23:20
Speaker
Effectively would be eat a granola bar, get takeout, make toast. Yeah, it's not the ideal meal, but it's food, and food is the goal. you see the pattern here?
00:23:33
Speaker
Effectively is about meeting yourself where you are. It's about working with the capacity you actually have, not the capacity you wish you had. And now, this doesn't mean just take the easy way out or don't try hard.
00:23:50
Speaker
That's not it at all. Effectively doesn't mean never challenge yourself or never aim higher. What it means is choose strategies that will work for you instead of strategies that look good on paper but don't account for your actual brain, body, and circumstances.
00:24:07
Speaker
It's about being pragmatic. It's about being honest with yourself and about what's actually achievable right now. Story time. I... often have writing goals that I set for myself, time sensitive stuff.
00:24:23
Speaker
And I had set a new one ah around some work and the right way, if you were to judge it, the right way, ah the other way, you know, the the way other people might do it is just, you know, sit down and do it.
00:24:39
Speaker
Power through, get it done because it has to be done. So the time's coming. And here I am trying, trying so hard and nothing's coming out. No matter how hard I i sat, I just, I couldn't get it off my to-do list.
00:24:55
Speaker
And, you know, maybe it was ADHD. Maybe it was my energy levels. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was my obsession with clients. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Either way, I was stuck. And I could feel that frustration building. Like, you know, why can't you just do this? Everybody else can sit down or work.
00:25:09
Speaker
What is wrong with you? But sitting there staring at that document just wasn't working. So I gave up on the right way and I tried something else.
00:25:20
Speaker
I went for a walk. I thought about other things. i I talked to my partner. I shifted my brain elsewhere. I let it go for a bit and then I came back. But instead of trying to tackle everything in one go, I broke it down into these tiny little work sessions.
00:25:35
Speaker
Five minutes at a time, then a break, then five then another five minutes, then another break. And yeah, there was some shame around that. Like, Jesus, you can't even work for more than five minutes. You're wasting so much time with all these breaks. But the thing is, the goal wasn't to work for hours straight.
00:25:54
Speaker
The goal was to get the writing done. And those little five-minute bursts added up. And I eventually got the work done, and it became the script that I am now reading to you here.
00:26:06
Speaker
but Was it elegant? No. Was it the way I wish my brain worked? Absolutely not. But did it work? Well, we got the episode, so yeah.
00:26:18
Speaker
And that is effectiveness. What I had to let go of was the idea that there is a right way to do things. I let had to let go of the story that if I can't do it the way other people do it, then I'm failing.
00:26:32
Speaker
Because the goal wasn't to do it the right way. The goal was get the writing done. And I got it done. So that is effectiveness. So when you're stuck, when you're beating yourself up, for not being able to do something the way you think you should do it, ask yourself, what's the actual goal here?
00:26:53
Speaker
And what would actually work given the brain and body and circumstances I have right now? Not what would work in an ideal world, not what would work if you were a different person, what would work for you right now?
00:27:11
Speaker
And then do that. Even if it's not perfect. Even if it's not how you wish it could be. Just do what works.
Integrating 'How' and 'What' Skills
00:27:19
Speaker
And that is effectiveness.
00:27:22
Speaker
Okay, so those are the three how skills. Non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, effectively. And here's how they work with the what skills from a previous episode.
00:27:35
Speaker
Remember the what skills observe, describe, participate. Those are what you're doing. You're noticing, naming, and engaging with the present moment. The how skills, non-judgmentally, one-mindfully, effectively,
00:27:47
Speaker
Those are how you do it. Without judgment, with focus, in a way that actually works for you. So it looks like You observe your breath.
00:27:59
Speaker
You do it non-judgmentally. You don't judge yourself when your mind wanders. That's how. You describe what you're feeling. You do it unmindfully. You're focused on just that, not also thinking about five other things.
00:28:13
Speaker
That's how. You participate in the moment. That's what. You do it effectively. You use whatever strategy actually works for you, not what you think you should do.
00:28:25
Speaker
That's how. So that's the way the what and the how work together. They're not separate. They're the same practice, just sort of different dimensions of it. And from my perspective, the how skills are are are the ones that sort of make that mindfulness sustainable.
00:28:44
Speaker
Because without them, it's really easy just to turn mindfulness into another source of stress. It's another thing you're failing at, another way another way to prove you're broken.
00:28:55
Speaker
But with the how skills, mindfulness becomes workable. It becomes something you can actually do, even when it's messy, even when your mind wanders, even when it doesn't look like the way you think it should.
00:29:07
Speaker
And that right there is the difference. Okay. To close things out, we're going to do a really quick practice. We're going to a simple exercise in noticing a judgment and reframing it non-judgment.
00:29:19
Speaker
You can do this with me now. You can skip ahead. You can do it later. No pressure. Whatever works for you. a So think about something you judged yourself for today.
00:29:31
Speaker
Maybe something small, maybe something big. It could be, I didn't get enough done. I was lazy. I was anxious for no reason. I ate badly.
00:29:41
Speaker
I wasted time. Whatever comes to mind. Notice the judgment. What words did you use to judge yourself? Now, See if you can reframe it non-judgmentally.
00:29:55
Speaker
What are the facts? What actually happened without the layer of interpretation? So maybe i didn't get enough done becomes I completed some tasks, but not all of them.
00:30:08
Speaker
I was lazy becomes I was tired and my capacity was low. I was anxious for no reason becomes I felt anxious today. i eat badly becomes I eat food that was available and easy.
00:30:22
Speaker
I wasted time becomes I rested. Notice how the non-judgmental version feels different. You don't have to like it. You don't have to believe it.
00:30:33
Speaker
You just want to notice the difference. And that's the practice. Catch the judgment. Reframe the facts. Repeat forever. Because look, you're going to judge yourself. That's normal. That's what brains do.
00:30:47
Speaker
The practice is in catching it and choosing to describe it differently. And yeah if you want to explore this a little bit further, here's a question for you to take take along with you.
00:30:59
Speaker
What is one area of your life where effectiveness matters more than perfection? Maybe it's how you respond to messages, how you keep your space clean, how you move your body, how you show up for creative work, how you maintain relationships.
00:31:16
Speaker
Where are you holding yourself to a standard that's making things harder instead of better? You don't have to answer that right now. Just let it sit. Notice if there's somewhere you could let go of the right way and just do what works.
00:31:33
Speaker
So that is mindfulness. We've covered the three how skills, non-judgmentally, one mindfully, effectively. These are your guardrails.
00:31:44
Speaker
These are the skills that keep mindfulness from becoming another thing to feel bad about. And look, I know this is hard. Practicing nonjudgmentally is hard.
00:31:56
Speaker
Doing one thing at a time is hard. Letting go of should and just doing what works is hard. But it is worth it. Because these skills, they make the what skills actually sustainable.
00:32:12
Speaker
They make mindfulness something you can do long term instead of something you just try once and then abandon because it makes you feel worse. Next episode, ah we're moving into a completely different territory. We're putting mindfulness not behind us because i think mindfulness, the reason we start with it is because it incorporates itself into everything. But we're putting mindfulness to the back of our mind.
00:32:37
Speaker
And we are entering distress tolerance. This is the module where for basically when your emotions are so big that mindfulness feels impossible. When you're kind of in full crisis mode and the goal is just don't make things worse.
00:32:50
Speaker
So we're going to talk about the stop skill, the tip skill, how to survive emotional hurricanes without basically burning your life down. But that's next time. And while I obviously hope to catch you there, I'm not going to worry about that right now.
00:33:05
Speaker
And neither should you. Because that is then. This is now. So for now, I'll just say thank you for being here. Thank you for practicing with me. If you didn't practice, thank you for listening anyway.
00:33:19
Speaker
I love you. And I wish you well. Fun and safety, sweet peas.