Chapter 1 and 2
The author holds that life is a challenging venture for entire humanity. Despite all the challenges, people react different and they also seem to shape their daily activities substantively different. Some lives are characterized by happiness while others by sadness. It is all about the choices that people make and how they decide to lead their lives. According to the author, despite people’s lives being based on prosperity, they still nurse stressful moments. Stress is thought to be a brain based occurrence. The brain, by virtue of its anatomy, continuously meditates on different things such as past experience, the current situation while also agonizing on future outcomes (Siegel, 2009). Regardless of how much effort people input to address unhealthy or disturbing thoughts, such efforts are not always effective. It becomes technically impossible “to let go of the thoughts”. This is why people need to practice high degree of mindfulness.
As per the author, mindfulness is a state of the mind which is majorly achieved by focusing on one’s awareness on the present conditions. In addition, they need to calmly acknowledge and accept their feelings, thoughts, as well as bodily sensations. Stress is described as an outcome of failure to accept and acknowledge change (Siegel, 2009). According to the author, both current and the past practices of mindfulness have great promise towards ameliorating every form of psychological suffering including dissatisfaction, worry, depression, and substance abuse. In addition, the mindfulness helps to enhance romance, parenting, and other personal relationships that foster happiness. The main reason why people are ever dissatisfied is because is because they spend most of their moments thinking about the different ways through which they can maximize pleasure while avoiding discomfort (Siegel, 2009). While trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, people filter most of their life’s potential richness. In the process, they gravitate the things that they like, avoid the things they dislike and ignore the things they feel are not strongly about their way. The author holds that ceaseless pursuit of goals makes it challenging people to appreciate the fullness of the world.
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Chapter 5 and 6
In chapter five, Siegel (2009) talks about the aspect of fear in people’s lives Siegel begins the chapter by explaining how life is frightening. Siegel explains how people are faced with new threats and new ones in their day to day life. He further argues that people’s minds anticipate more troubles than misfortunes which befall us. Siegel (2009) maintains that fear is the main reason why people feel afraid. According to Siegel (2009), fear is caused by other individuals, our missteps, and other things. Fear can also arise as a result of stress which has symptoms such as insomnia, headache, and back pain which can prompt people to drink or spent a lot of time on the internet. Fear makes people avoid some things, and the avoidance leads to more fear (Siegel, 2009). Overall, the author states that intense fear affects people’s normal functioning in families, social situations, and work. The author also talks about anxiety which is as a result of cognitive, behavioral, and physiological processes. To know that an individual is anxious, he or she exemplifies aspects such as worried thoughts, avoidant behavior, sensations in the body such as shallow breath and restlessness.
The author goes further to talk about sadness and depression. According to Siegel (2009), depression is as a result of biological predisposition and environmental factors (Siegel, 2009). Depression interferes with joy, interferes with relationships and work. The point that made the grabbed my attention is the notion that fear can lead to procrastination. I find this so because it relates to my personal life. Whenever I have fear in life, I tend to postpone some activities to avoid fear. Similarly, when it comes to depression, it is interesting how the effects highlighted by the author befall me when I am depressed. For example, I tend to have insomnia, feel restless, bored, and disengaged.
Chapter 7
The author talks about transforming pain and stress-related medical symptoms. Siegel states that throughout life, people have attempted to overcome illness by praying, using herbal medicine, and performing rituals. Some illnesses and pain can be avoided whole others cannot. A broad range of pain and illness is caused by people’s efforts to get rid of them. Numerous medical conditions are caused by stress, and as such, they tend to be interrelated because they have almost the same signs and symptoms. Richard further states that people can overcome these conditions by understanding the problem, resuming normal activities, and working with negative emotions. Siegel (2009) concludes the chapter by saying that the medical related conditions can be solved by adopting mindfulness practices (Siegel, 2009).
Chapter 8
This chapter focuses on intimate relationships. From the chapter, Siegel states that most of the problems in the world are as a result of lack of cooperation where most of them are associated with personal conflicts. Personal conflicts can be avoided by changing our view where mindfulness practices help people think more of being part of the wider world rather than feeling like separate self. Mindful practices also assist in appreciating our identity, values, and beliefs and also helps people relate with others at all times. According to Siegel (2009), these mindfulness practices help people evade sorrows and maintain their intimate relationships. Further, people are from a different culture, and thus, people construct their identities differently. Appreciating other people’s culture is the key to maintaining and building relationships (Siegel, 2009). To maintain intimate relationships, people should understand each other; know the sensations, feelings, and thoughts of others. The most interesting part of chapter 8 is where the author explained the practices people can use to enhance their relationships. For instance, the author argued that walking, nature, eating, and driving meditation can help an individual to be present in his or her relationship. I found the four meditations thought-provoking.
Chapter 9
The author in this chapter indicates that life is full of choices; we are faced with situations where we have to make different choices based on situations that we are faced with, the choices we make in life are either good or bad and they not only affect our welfare but also affect the welfare of the people around us (Siegel, 2010). Our habits and choices in life have significant consequences and our happiness and suffering are as a result of either the good or bad habits we practice. In order for us to lead a happy life we have to make wise decisions and break bad habits that have negative impact in our life; the most important thing is to realize that we have to make a choice in every situation. Mindfulness helps us determine the impact the decisions we are making and the habits we practice in life have and how they affect our relationship with the people around us (Siegel, 2010).
We are faced with major challenges while developing mindfulness continuity that will help us in making decisions and picking up good habits that will always ensure that we stay aware of the effects our choices have in the relationship we have with others and the kind of life we live (Siegel, 2010). Continuity mindfulness helps behave wisely, make proper choices and drop bad habits; with time the aspect of making wise decisions and dropping bad habits becomes much easier if we are in a continued state of mindfulness. When we include mindfulness in situations that requires us to make critical choices, we are able to overcome internal and external choices that lead us to bad habits. For example we can chose not to drink or eat certain food if we concentrate on the effects such effects have on us. It is interesting to know that mindfulness can help us make better choices in life and drop bad habits.
Chapter 10
Growing up is associated with numerous changes of both body and mind. One of the things that make growing up difficult is resistance to loss and changes that take place in our life (Siegel, 2010). This resistance results to fear of what will happen and we develop suffering as we grow older because we find it hard to accept the changes our body and mind undergo. Change is inevitable and people need to understand that life has to undergo different phases that are characterized by significant changes; the greatest fear related to change is based on attributes that define our sense of self and social ranks (Siegel, 2010). Worrying about changes that will occur in the future can keep us away from enjoying what we have in the present and make life difficult. Age and health are not the major problems but the major problem people face is minding about the changes that these two bring. Mindfulness can help us deal with the difficulties related to changes that take place in our life; mindfulness awakens four important insights related to change: it helps realize that everything in life undergoes certain change and this realization helps us embrace change, it also helps us realize that all we have is that present moment we know of and that the next moment can change, our thought are not a reality and what we think will happen can change depending of various aspects in life and life is an interdependent web meaning that changes in other peoples’ lives can have direct or indirect impact in our own lives (Siegel, 2010). What is interesting is that the fear of change affects our life in a great way but mindfulness can help us deal with these changes positively.
Reference
Siegel, R. (2010). The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems. The Guilford Press. New York. 1-369
