Mind Time: How ten mindful minutes can enhance your work, health and happiness. Michael Chaskalson

them. But you can change how you are in the situation – and that can change everything. With AIM – Allowing, Inquiry and Meta-awareness – you experience things differently.

      Here’s how it works.

      Allowing has two sides to it. There’s a wisdom side and a compassion side.

      With the wisdom side, you let what is the case be the case. This means recognising that this moment – this very moment, right now – couldn’t be anything other than it is. You can’t go back in time and change things so that this moment somehow turns out to be different. Right now, it is what it is. And it’s only when you can truly allow that it is what it is that you have choice about what to do next.

      So, with your mum and your brother, you recognise that it is what it is. This is what it’s like and there’s no sense in wishing it could magically be different right now.

      We spend so much of our time wishing that things weren’t as they are. ‘If only I were different’ or ‘if only they were different’ or ‘if only my work was different, or I had more money, or I was better looking, or fitter, or …’ Anything, really. None of that helps. It is what it is. And when we can allow that, we begin to have some real choice about what we do next.

      This moment can’t be changed, but the next moment is undecided. What we do now shapes what comes next, and when our actions are rooted in allowing and acknowledging the current reality of things then they’re very much wiser and more effective.

      So part of the first step with AIM in this particular family situation is to allow that it is actually what it is. But this isn’t cold and indifferent, because as well as a wisdom side to Allowing, there’s also a compassion side.

      Compassion involves being kinder and more accepting towards everyone involved in each situation – yourself and others. In this case, it might mean seeing with care and concern all the unhappiness that your mum and your brother are inflicting on themselves as they act out this familiar drama. And it means being kind and concerned for everyone else involved in the moment, including yourself.

      Compassion needs to start with yourself. That often goes against our assumptions about what compassion or kindness is all about. But when we’re better able to be kind to ourselves it can help us be kinder to others.

      It’s so easy, and so common, to be harshly self-critical. We can sometimes speak to ourselves in ways we’d never speak to others. ‘Where did I leave my keys? Oh, that’s so stupid! I’ve lost them again. I keep doing that. That’s so stupid. I’m such an idiot!’ If your friend told you she’d lost her keys and you used that kind of language to her, she’d think it very odd.

      With Allowing we’re kinder to ourselves. And we’re kinder and more accepting of others. Everyone has their own history that has shaped them to be as they are. We’re all doing our best to make a life and to get by. Yes, some people can annoy us. Some can seem harsh and unkind. But if we really understood what it’s like from their side – what it’s like to be them – maybe we’d be less critical. With Allowing, we ease back a bit on our own harsh and critical judgements – towards ourselves, others and the situations we find ourselves in.

      So, in the case of your mum and your brother, you allow the experience, in that moment, to be what it is.

      You don’t get angry with yourself for letting the situation get to you. You don’t get angry with the others around the table – that wouldn’t help. And instead of helplessly wishing things were different you’re able to accept that it is what it is. Like it or not, what is happening is happening.

      The second part of AIM is Inquiry.

      Inquiry involves taking a lively interest in each moment of experience. As you develop your capacity for Inquiry you find yourself occupying an increasingly interesting world. You begin to notice what’s happening inside you, your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses – right now. And you get more interested in what’s happening outside you, in the world around you, right now. You get more interested in other people – what’s going on for them? And you get more interested in what’s happening between you and others – the constantly changing, endlessly fascinating dynamic of humans relating to each other.

      With Inquiry, the rich and complex tapestry of this present moment lights up. You become more alive to each moment and begin to see more into the depth of things.

      Coming back to the situation at that family gathering, instead of reacting you begin to inquire. You broaden your attention. Rather than being lost in what is happening out there – as if you’re immersed in a TV show, emotionally at the mercy of what happens next – you become interested in your experience. You begin to wonder what the others around the table might be experiencing. You notice things in the space around you that might be influencing what’s happening.

      Questions form in your mind: ‘What am I feeling right here and now?’ ‘What do I see in the faces of my family?’ ‘What is the atmosphere in the room right now?’ ‘What am I seeing that can give me a clue about what this strange dynamic is all about?’

      You’re open, engaged and interested. Alive to what’s happening. Caring, kind and curious.

      And you have Meta-awareness, the third element of AIM.

      You are simultaneously ‘in’ your experience, feeling and sensing what’s going on, and at the same time you’re able to notice some of the ways it’s unfolding for you.

      You notice and can, to some extent, describe your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses as they arise and pass. The lens of your awareness can be set narrower, focused just on yourself and your inner experience, and it can be set wider. You can pay attention outside yourself – you pick up your relations’ body language and facial expressions. You notice how warm the room is and how the music in the background is quite lively and fun, in contrast to the mood in the room.

      Meta-awareness is a way of experiencing that we all have to some extent. And it’s something that we can develop much further. Here’s an example that might help you to understand a little better what we mean by meta-awareness.

      If you have ever travelled on the London Underground at rush hour you will be familiar with this experience. You’re standing on a station platform at 5.30 p.m. It’s hot and crowded. It’s been a tough day and you’re feeling frazzled. You can’t wait to get home, take off those shoes, get a drink and relax. A train pulls in. People struggle to get off – there’s hardly any space on the crowded platform – and others rush to get on. Pushed from behind, you just make it. You’re standing there, hot, breathless, squeezed from all sides as the train pulls out. There hardly seems to be room to breathe. You grow increasingly irritated.

      ‘Oh no. This is intolerable!’ you think. ‘Why am I doing this to myself? People are so inconsiderate! If another person pushes their backpack into my face I swear I’ll scream! In the morning they all stink of aftershave. In the evening it’s body odour. This is ridiculous! It’s completely intolerable …’

      And on and on.

      That’s one way of being with what’s happening.

      Here’s another. You start to grow irritable, but meta-awareness kicks in. You notice that your jaw is tight and that you’re holding your shoulders up so they’re almost alongside your ears. You see that your thoughts and feelings have fallen into ‘unhelpful inner-rant’ mode.

      So you ease your jaw, relax your shoulders and come away from the rant. ‘Gosh – I’m having such irritable thoughts!’

      In this instance, the difference is between being irritable and noticing that you’re having irritable thoughts and feelings.

      That moment of stepping back, ever so slightly, of seeing what you’re up to and what’s going on, is a tiny shift – but it changes everything.

      One moment you’re unconsciously ‘doing irritation’ – lost in your inner rant, treating the