I’ve been told to try and practice Mindfulness, but I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept,
Are you supposed to block bad thoughts out? Ignore most things? I don’t understand the fact you’re supposed to ‘observe your thoughts’
Help needed!
You don’t try and do anything. You return your thoughts to the present. If you are distracted, you return. That’s all.
Regards,
Shodan
To be “mindful” is simply to be aware of - “While handling the snake, be mindful that it bites”. In laymans’ terms, it could be restated as “Keep it in mind”, where “it” is the thing you are to be mindful of.
If you are speaking of “mindfulness” as it relates to Buddhism, then I really don’t have the foggiest clue 
From the Buddhist side, right mindfulness means to see with a clear consciousness. See things as they are, without prejudices or expectations attached.
OP, who precisely is advising you thus?
qui gon jinn?
The idea of a Mindfulness practice is to be mindful of something. A very common suggestion is your breath. Pay attention to breathing in and out, how it feels in your nostrils, how your lungs expand, how your ribs and belly move, how fast, how deep, whatever you notice about your breathing. Set aside a time, for 10-20 minutes, and just sit comfortably, being mindful of your breathing. You will naturally get distracted, and start thinking about a whole bunch of other things. That’s normal. Once you notice that you are distracted, just refocus on the breath. Some people find it helpful to label it ‘thoughts’ or ‘daydreaming’ or ‘worrying’ or whatever. That’s fine too, then just go back to your breathing.
You can download mp3s from the web to talk you through. Just find one that is the length of time that you want to sit for. There are some that focus on breathing, some are body scans, or other things. Practice every day for however much time you want to put in.
A P.S. about ‘observing your thoughts’: What generally happens with thoughts is that you get caught up in them and start actively thinking them. One leads to another, and then there are some super-intriguing ones that demand all your attention. You start worrying about your or relationship, or whatever it is, and your awareness of your breathing goes right out the window. Observing your thoughts means that when thoughts come up, clamoring for attention, you notice that they are there, wanting to be thought about, label them if you wish, then go back to your mindful breathing. Typically, when you start, the way you notice a thought is you suddenly realise that you haven’t been paying any attention to your breath, because you have been so busy thinking. If you keep practicing, you will notice the thoughts earlier and earlier, till eventually you notice them as they arise. Then you can just notice them, and observe them without really interacting with them. without getting pulled in.
Why would I want to concentrate on breathing? Isn’t that pretty boring? Won’t all that happen on its own?
There is a tenet in weight management to eat mindfully, which means to be aware of every bite that goes in your mouth. No snacking on the sofa while watching TV, or at the computer, or at your desk at work. Stop and pay attention to what you eat. You will almost certainly eat less.
Mindfulness is at the core of meditation, which is a form of relaxation you can do by yourself. Meditation is great for stress reduction, and has vast physiological and psychological benefits. Alternative (and more common) techniques for coping with excessive stress are drinking, smoking, and/or drug abuse. Substance abuse is linked to early death via heart disease, lung disease, liver disease, and depression (with concomitant increase of risk-taking behaviors/potential suicide). Substance abuse is also strongly correlated with domestic violence.
I think of it as not dwelling on the past and not worrying about the future, but trying to really experience the present. I suck at it. The present seems like the current instant which is really nothing – the past and future are where everything happened or will happen. But that it how all this time has slipped by and I never really experienced it.
Blocking out bad thoughts is pretty much the opposite of what you want to do. If anything, you would crowd them out by focusing your attention on what you’re doing in the present moment. I can understand why that might sound like a subtle difference but it’s not.
Aggressively refusing to think about bad things is just going to fuck up your mind. Think about them at the appropriate time. Don’t obsess over your impending bankruptcy at your daughter’s birthday party. Obsess over it later, when you meet with your accountant, and just enjoy the cake and pin the tail on the donkey.
Mindfulness has spawned many, many books but I can give you an example that should help.
When you taste wine or any other drink like scotch mindfully, start by looking at the colour of the liquid in the bottle. Open the container, smell the cork to see if it is tainted. Pour it into the glass, note the sound and watch the liquid as it flows. Let it rest for a moment. Look at the colour again and see how it changes in the glass, swirl gently and see how the fingers trail on the edge of the glass, thicker means it will be sweeter, generally and have more nose. Place your nose in the glass slightly and inhale; what do you smell? Note the different scents. Tip the glass and let a few drops play against your tongue, try and identify the different flavours as it moves from one part of your mouth to another. What is the mouth feel? Is it thin, thick, silky, rough? Take another sniff and see how the smell notes change. Now take a larger sip and draw air in to mix and pull more flavours out. Feel how it warms your insides as it slips downward.
Now, repeat.
Now you could just pour some into a glass and shoot it, but you’ll miss out on a lot of the experience, not to mention spending a lot of money on a nice bottle of hootch.
As noted above, mindfulness is being in the moment. Pay attention to what you are doing while you are doing it. Part of it is what I would crudely call your GAFF (Give a Fuck Factor). To be mindful is to care about what you are doing and trying to do the best job of it you can as you do it.
Mindfulness is the opposite of the state commonly referred to as “being on autopilot”, if that helps any.
Others have touched on mindfulness, so I want to touch a bit more on this.
Quite the opposite. There is so much going on around us all the time, as much or more today than ever before, and yet we still get bored, perhaps as often or moreso than ever before. If anything, it seems to me that boredom results from a constant state of over stimulation, and the only way to keep it going is to make things louder, brighter, busier than they were before.
It’s sort of like the difference between scarfing a meal down just to not be hungry anymore or taking one’s time savoring experience. If I do the former, eating isn’t an experience anymore, it’s just a task of maintaining my existence, and then I’m on to the next thing, sometimes it’s even just eating more food. But taking my time to savor a meal, it’s not boring at all, and now what before seemed like a nuisance turns into a pleasant experience.
Our thoughts are much the same way, and we have as much control over how we experience it as we do any other part of our lives. My thoughts can be focused on what I’m doing next, sorting out my day, thinking about all the various stresses going on in my life, and it’s a very easy way to get oneself wound up. These are the sorts of thoughts where it turns our experience being alive into just mundane tasks. On the other hand, we can experience these things as they come, let them pass, but also make sure to touch on all the other thoughts that come to us. Unfortunately, this isn’t something we’re taught, and I imagine that the minds of so many people are much like mine is when I’m not mindful, just a chaotic maelstrom.
And this is where meditation, comes in, even something as simple as focusing on one’s breathing. After a lifetime of living in that tornado of thoughts, it can seem boring, even remarkably so, and to a certain extent one is just crowding out other thoughts by replacing them with active thought focusing on something simple, but it’s much like any other learned skill, where one learns for the sake of unlearning it; it becomes like a second nature.
The best way I can really describe it would be like wearing headphones and listening to music. So often people will do that while they’re at the gym, while they’re working, maybe even just walking around. But how often do you just put on music and do nothing but just listen to it? Suddenly, there’s these little subtleties that come out and what was just there in passing becomes a fulfilling experience all by itself.
Mindfulness is a quiet safe place to go in meditation, the mind is quiet and aware but still clinging to Maya, the illusion that one’s mind is separate from the universe and that reality is rational.