Why Most People Get Mindfulness Wrong (And How to Do It Right)

The other day I was chatting to a friend who teaches in a secondary school. She told me they’re trying to introduce mindfulness to the students. When I asked what that actually involved, her answer was… well, a bit vague. She mentioned relaxing and listening to quiet music, and that was pretty much it.

Another time, after a workshop, a couple of students told me they sometimes get emotional when they meditate because they end up going over and over the problems in their lives. I didn’t say anything in the moment, but it did make me wonder how widespread the misunderstandings around mindfulness are.

Mindfulness has become so mainstream now that most people have tried it, or at least been offered it. But I suspect many think meditation is simply sitting down with soft music, relaxing, and letting the mind wander wherever it likes.

Then there was a conversation I had with someone who works in NHS mental health. He’s naturally a bit sceptical, so he’d been asked to try a meditation app for a few weeks. He said he listened to it while he was ironing and thought it was rather good. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help laughing. I don’t think he realised why! I wanted to say, quite clearly, that this is not mindfulness or meditation. If anything, it’s the opposite. If he were ironing with full attention, completely absorbed in the task, that would be mindfulness. But multitasking? That’s being un-mindful.

Left to its default mode, the mind drifts into memories or leaps ahead into imagined scenarios. When we dwell on the past, perhaps with regret, we’re simply remembering. When we feel anxious or worried, we’re imagining things that haven’t happened. None of this is true “thinking”, yet we treat it as if it’s important and give it far too much weight. In reality, these mental loops are unhelpful at best and often harmful, stirring up emotions that affect our wellbeing.

We tend to identify ourselves with the thinking mind, but that’s not quite right. The mind is simply doing what it does by default: wandering. You are not your thoughts. You are the observer, the one who notices them. And you don’t have to let them run the show—you can train your mind.

Mindfulness is the practice of stilling that wandering. It’s training the mind to rest on one simple thing—your breath, a sound, a mantra—until it stops leaping back and forth between past and future. It’s training the mind out of its habitual spinning, imagining, remembering.

It’s far more than sitting down to relax. It takes discipline, commitment and focus. If it were easy, yoga wouldn’t have developed thousands of years ago as a system dedicated to mastering the mind.

I’m not trying to put anyone off—far from it. Mindfulness is a skill, and like any skill, it takes practice. But the rewards are huge: even a little control over your own mind can change the way you feel, think, and respond to life. It’s not just about relaxation—it’s about taking charge of your mind and, in doing so, your wellbeing.