During the past 7 sessions, we've learned about and practiced the essential key processes underlying mindfulness. In this final session, we'll create a personal plan for sustainably incorporating mindfulness into our daily lives after completing this course.

In this session, we'll be exploring 'the ego', and clarifying the relationship between mindfulness and our concept of the self. At the deepest level, mindfulness practice cultivates a different relationship with the self. The observing stance that becomes stronger after repeated and consistent mindfulness practice allows us to take a step back from all kinds of thoughts, including identity-related thoughts. Identity can be described as a rather static and thought-based story of “me”. Mindfulness creates room for a more dynamic sense of self, which can be described as an ever-present observer. This observer is aware of the stories about the self, and so is by definition different from the stories themselves. In this session, we'll experience the difference between the self as a story and the self as an observer, and the impacts these different stances can have on our wellbeing.

Mindfulness involves a kind and compassionate stance toward ourselves. Rather than a self-compassionate attitude, many of us suffer from a non-accepting and critical relationship with ourselves. The nature of this relationship is perhaps most clearly reflected by the 'inner critic': an internal voice that criticises us. In this session, we'll become acquainted with our inner critic. We'll explore how, by increasing our awareness of the inner critic and practicing self-compassion through meditation and self-caring actions, we can learn to cultivate a friendly and caring relationship with the self. We’ll also identify the benefits of being self-compassionate.

In this session, we'll be exploring 'Goals'. As we know, mindfulness encourages us to re-balance the focus of our attention so that we spend more time in the present moment.

An excessive focus on the future is one of the most common obstacles in the cultivation of mindful awareness. The default mode for many of us, particularly in our work, is a “doing mode” that's constantly focused on reaching present and future goals, and therefore focused on the future. We'll understand the potential pitfalls of this, and look at how we might use mindfulness to find a better balance between being in the present moment and planning for the future. We'll also explore the benefits of a grateful relationship with the present moment.

Mindfulness encourages us to take an accepting stance towards our experiences, rather than fighting or avoiding them. But acceptance is a complex and even paradoxical concept! In this session we'll clarify what we mean by acceptance in mindfulness, understand why we might want to adopt an accepting stance, and learn what this could look like in practice.

An important element of mindfulness is “open awareness”. Open awareness refers to a quality of consciousness that is not evaluative or actively shaped by our pre-existing ideas or intentions, but is fully receptive to allowing the experience to simply occur “as it is”.

In this session, we'll explore open awareness by addressing the evaluative nature of the mind. While open awareness involves non-judgment, most of our daily awareness is clouded by countless judgments and evaluations. By becoming aware of these judgments, an important obstacle of open awareness is removed. We'll explore the judgmental nature of our minds and learn about the problematic aspects of judgments in and outside of work.

In this session, we'll explore the relationship between mindfulness and automatic patterns or habits.

Much of our thinking and many of our actions are automatic. When we're running on “autopilot”, our behaviour and decision-making often follow habits and routines, while our mind is pre-occupied with other thoughts. This ‘automaticity’ conserves our limited attentional resources, allowing us to do multiple tasks at once. However, some automatic thinking patterns can negatively impact our wellbeing.

Without becoming aware of these patterns, change is difficult, if not impossible! Paying mindful attention to our automatic reactions and routine patterns of thinking and behaviour is a powerful way to decrease their effect. Awareness of our automatic patterns creates room to choose other behaviour, instead of the automatic behaviour.

In this session, we’ll explore the two most important building blocks of mindfulness - attention and the present moment. Developing our attention to the present moment is at the heart of mindfulness. The most common reason why we fail to pay attention to the present moment is that we’re pre-occupied by thinking, often about the past or the future. So in this session, we’ll introduce the role of thoughts and their relationship with the present moment.