by guest blogger Melissa Kirk, co-author of Depression 101

I remember the moment I realized my rumination was contributing to my chronic low mood and sense of frustration with life. I lived about a mile away from my job, and in nice weather I would walk to work through neighborhoods of beautiful homes and lush gardens. People in Berkeley love their gardens! On my walk, though, I tended to ruminate - to obsess over what was wrong in my life, to replay difficult incidents and conversations, to worry about what I was missing: the right relationship, the perfect body, the "right" personality. By the time I got to work, I would often feel more tense or distracted than when I had started out, and often I would have missed the beauty of the homes and gardens along the way.

I always thought there was something inherently wrong with me that I got depressed and sad; I figured that somewhere, way back when, I hadn’t learned some vital lesson that others - the ones who didn’t get depressed - had learned. In the back of my mind I always figured I was flawed in a deep, core way that meant that I would never have the things that others had: marriage, successful career, physical beauty, the ability to connect easily with others. This is what I would ruminate over on my walk: why can I never seem to be able to do the things others do? What was wrong with me?

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

Setting an intention is a way of pointing yourself in a direction, toward an important value or goal. It is a way to identify a quality you wish to nurture in your life.

A skillful intention is more like a friendly guide. Acknowledge from the beginning that important changes take time. You, like everyone else, must make the effort to return repeatedly to the goal you seek.

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

You will work with a variety of approaches in your five good minutes. They include the following:

• Mindfulness
• Meditation
• Imagery
• Acting wholeheartedly

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

As you experiment and practice with the five good minutes exercises, you will learn to apply consciously your attention, intention, and wholeheartedness. You will see for yourself the power of being present and acting with intention while doing specifically guided exercises. Beyond the exercises, you may even discover more ways to apply these same principles throughout your life.

Excerpt from Five Good Minutes®

From our perspective, five minutes of clock time begins to change into something much more powerful and interesting when you are present (attention is in the present moment, and not lost in thoughts of past or future), when you set a clear intention for your actions, and when you act wholeheartedly. When you apply attention, intention, and wholeheartedness to the exercises in this book, which are aimed at cultivating peace and relaxation, deepening awareness and connection to life, enhancing relationships, and developing kindness and wisdom, then your five minutes truly becomes five good minutes.

by guest blogger Thomas Roberts, author of A Mindfulness Book

Greetings!

Recently, mindfulness has become somewhat of a commodity, a buzzword, something we can learn or get and be guaranteed wonderful outcomes. Be aware that mindfulness isn’t a thing to possess, an end state, something you have or do.

Consider, instead, that mindfulness is a way of being in the world. A way of being with great compassion, of remaining present amidst the flow of experiences that is our life. Turning down the volume on all our resistance, our need to control, manipulate and react. Instead, hang in there with what is going on. Remain patient with this flow, remain curious, and respond with great compassion.

by guest blogger Sameet Kumar, Ph.D. author of Grieving Mindfully and The Mindful Path Through Worry and Rumination

The old saying “as above, so below” is particularly well suited to learning both the practice of mindfulness and the revolutionizing changes that mindfulness can bring. Mindfulness can change how you experience yourself and thereby affect how you manage your relationships with others. The more mindful you become of your thoughts and feelings, the less likely are you to be controlled by ruminations and irrational worries, or get swept up into the maelstrom of destructive emotions.