It’s Mindful - Not Mind-Full
“Wherever you are, be all there.” — Jim Elliot
It’s mindful, not mind-full. Two little words that sound almost identical, separated by a hyphen and a single letter, and they mean the exact opposite things. Mind-full is a mind that’s crammed, overloaded, running in ten or more directions at once. Mindful is a mind that’s present, aware, and simply here. A hyphen apart on the page and worlds apart in how it feels to live inside one or the other.
A Mind That’s Full
Most of us are walking around mind-full, and we’ve decided that’s just normal. Somewhere around 65,000 thoughts a day, most of them recycled from the past all swirling at once in what I call in my book ‘The Confusion Fog.’ In ‘The Tip,’ the cluttered dumping ground of the mind, we react to everything on autopilot, which is pulled this way, to whatever thought shouts loudest. We even wear it like a badge of honour, “I’m so busy, my mind never stops.” A full mind where it’s just a crowded one.
What Mindful Actually Means
Here’s the definition I use in the book. ‘Mindfulness’ is the practice of paying deliberate attention to the present moment without judgment. It lets us become aware of our thoughts, emotions and sensations as they arise, instead of being swept along by them.
Notice that being mindful is not about emptying your mind, that’s a myth that puts some people off. You’re not trying to have no thoughts. You’re learning to become the observer of the ones you have. And from that small bit of distance, something big becomes possible: instead of reacting automatically out of old habits and fears, you respond with clarity and intention. That single shift rewires the brain over time, wears down the old paths to ‘The Tip,’ and opens new ones toward ‘The Garden.’
The Cost-of-Living Mind-Full
I know the cost of a mind-full life first-hand. I grew up around people who could lose their temper in seconds, trigger-happy, firing off a reaction instead of pausing to listen and be present. It’s a hard habit to unlearn, because a full, reactive mind feels normal when it’s all you’ve known.
These days I choose the pause, and honestly, I’ve been misunderstood for it, sometimes being called arrogant at times, simply because someone expected an instant reaction from me and got a considered response instead. That pause, the small gap between the trigger and the reply, is exactly where mindfulness lives. It’s the difference between your life happening to you and meeting your life on purpose.
A Simple Way to Practise
You don’t need a mountain or beach retreat to start. One of the simplest practices I share in the book is mindful walking. Walk slowly and pay close attention to the sensations in your feet and legs as they move. Notice your feet making contact with the ground, the rhythm of your steps, the feeling of the air on your skin. Now that Spring has arrived, notice the intoxicating smells of flowers blooming and breathing their air and giving us life as you go for your mindful walk. The purpose is to connect movement with awareness and ground yourself in the here and now. Give it five to fifteen minutes and if you get distracted from your thoughts, keep coming back to the now.
It sounds almost too simple to matter. Stay with it, and you’ll start noticing patterns of thoughts you had no idea you were repeating. There’s more in the book on how to build this into ‘Catching yourself thinking,’ the real engine of lasting change. This one small practice is a doorway to opening up this world and sharing it with the people that matter the most to yourself.
A Question to Sit With
The beauty of this little phrase is that it works as a check-in you can run any moment of any day. Pause, and ask yourself honestly:
‘Right now — am I mindful, or mind-full?’
There’s no wrong answer, and no need to judge whatever you find. Simply noticing you’ve drifted into mind-full in itself is the first mindful moment. That’s all it takes to begin the walk back home to yourself.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? — Navigating the Paths Between Chaos and Clarity → Get the bookwww.michaelmalacos.com