Becoming Present: A Journey through Facets of Mindfulness

A guide to your mindfulness results.

Have you ever walked across campus and realized you couldn’t remember a single step you just took? Or sat down to study, only to find your mind replaying a conversation from last week? It's okay - me too. Actually, most of us, most of the time aren't fully present in the moment. Our minds are built to wander and worry, rehearse, and remember.

But what does it mean when we catch ourselves, aware of the present. How a sip of tea actually tastes. What a deep breath does to our shoulders.

That’s mindfulness - bringing our attention to the present moment, on purpose, and with care.
We can cultivate our mindfulness through practice, like meditation. And some people are just naturally more aware of our inner lives and more attuned to our environments. Some of us react more, judge more, and mental, more prone to go through the motions.

This activity measures eight different facets of mindfulness psychology researchers have identified. Your results give you a kind of mirror - not a judgment or grade, but a reflection of how you relate to your thoughts, feelings, body, and surroundings.
Before we explore the psychology more, let’s walk through each facet!

Observing means noticing our internal world - thoughts, feelings, body sensations. If you would like to grow, try scanning your body for sensations, sensory walks, or simply pausing to name what you feel in the moment.

Describing means putting words to our experiences. If you would like to grow, try journaling, talking to a friend about your feelings, or using emotion wheels to expand your vocabulary of the heart.

Acting with awareness means paying attention to what we're doing, instead of living on autopilot. If you would like to grow, try choose a single task each day, something commonplace to you like washing dishes or walking to class. Do it with full presence, just a minute or two.

Nonjudging of inner experience means not labeling our thoughts or feelings as "good" or "bad." If you would like to grow, when a tough emotion arises, try saying: "It’s part of a full life to sometimes feel this way, and it's okay."

Nonreactivity to inner experiences means allowing thoughts and feelings to rise and fall without getting swept away. If you would like to grow, try counting to five before responding to strong feelings. Or imagine your thoughts drifting by like leaves on a stream.

Meta-awareness means being reflecting on our thoughts and feelings in the moment we're experiencing them.
If you would like to grow, practice checking in with yourself - set reminders to pause and ask yourself, "What’s on my mind right now?"

Decentered awareness means seeing thoughts and feelings as ephemeral, passing experiences. They're not facts or our identity. If you would like to grow, when you notice a tough thought, try observing it. Maybe you say to yourself, “I noticing a thought in my mind … " Simply noticing a thought is a thought, and not the be all, end all, softens its grip.

External awareness means noticing the world around you. If you would like to grow, go for a "noticing walk." Challenge yourself to find five colors, five textures, and five sounds.

We often talk about mindfulness as if its the same experience for everyone. But it's not. How we notice, name, or respond to our inner lives can look very different depending upon our cultural background. In some places, being aware of our emotions is deeply valued; in others, mindfulness might show up more quietly - through attunement to others, stillness, or shared rituals. Psychology has found mindfulness scores can vary across countries, not because some people are “less mindful,” but because mindfulness is shaped by cultural values (Olivera-Figueroa et al., 2022). Interventions to help us be more mindful tend to work better when they’re adapted to fit the communities they serve (Castellanos et al., 2020). So if some parts of the survey didn’t feel like they quite fit you, that’s okay. Your way of being present might look different, and still be just as meaningful.

Mindfulness isn’t a magic fix to our mental health woes, but it can be a powerful support. People who are more mindful tend to experience less anxiety, depression, and stress (Aldahadha, 2021). They also report fewer automatic negative thoughts (Ayhan & Kavak, 2021), more resilience to childhood trauma (Chen et al., 2021), and fewer moments of emotional overwhelm (Belen, 2021; Heath et al., 2016). At the opposite end of the journey, lower levels of mindfulness are common among people living with challenges like ADHD (Keith et al., 2017), bipolar disorder (Carruthers et al., 2022), alcohol use disorder (Avcu et al., 2022), and non-suicidal self-injury.

But here’s the hopeful part: mindfulness is not fixed. Multiple studies show with practice - through programs like meditation, mindful yoga, or simple awareness exercises - people can increase their trait mindfulness (Quaglia et al., 2016). And when that happens, it often leads to positive changes in focus, emotional regulation, and self-kindness.

Even if your scores today are on the lower end, that doesn’t mean mindfulness isn’t for you. It might just mean you’re standing at the trailhead of a path that’s waiting to unfold.

If your scores feel uneven, that's not a problem. It's a portrait. No one is mindful in every way, all the time. But by naming how we show up in the world, we give ourselves the power to shift. Mindfulness is less about being perfect and more about being present.

When I first created this activity, my results showed something I already sensed: a strong capacity to notice what was happening around me, but much less ease in naming what was happening within. My external awareness was extremely high. So was decentered awareness and observing, but describing and meta-awareness were low.

It makes in the context of how I learned to move through the world. Like many people, I’d spent years tuned into the emotional weather around me, adapting quickly to the needs and expectations of others. It felt safer, in some ways, not to look too closely at my own thoughts and feelings.

It wasn’t a flaw. It was an adaptation - a rational and sensitive response to where I came from. But it also meant I became a grownup out of practice with myself.

Mindfulness helped me return. Slowly, gently, and with the support of therapy, I learned to listen inward. To name my feelings without flinching. To notice thoughts without getting tangled in them. To stay with myself, even when it feels unfamiliar.

If mindfulness feels hard at first, it doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It may simply mean you’re doing something deeply unfamiliar. Mindfulness is less about being perfect. Healing isn't about forcing ourselves to be someone else. It's about returning to ourselves, one breath, one moment, and one act of kindness to ourselves at a time.

Uneasy Feelings about Your Results?
Please remember your results with any activity are not who you are. Your results are a 'snapshot' of a moment when you did an activity. It's just one measure, a single thread, of the many strands of who you are. Any result is a guess with statistical error. And it's possible the measure is flawed in a way so it doesn't work for you. Please do not think of your results as definitive dogma. Instead they're a starting point for our self reflection. Please keep in mind too, self-reflection can feel uncomfortable. "Bad" feelings are not actually bad. They're information. So, even if your activity result is inaccurate and flawed, you might ask yourself what your feeling is trying to tell you? Trusted teachers, friends, and therapists can be helpful. I wrote an essay elaborating with concrete examples how we can appreciate uneasy feelings about our activity results.

Scholarly Information?
You're welcome to use Copernican Revolution activities and essays for your thesis and studies. Having information about scholarly aspects like psychometric data, activity design details, and norm calculations may help. The primary focus of my essays is connecting educated laypersons with psychology. To help people like you, with advanced academic interests, I add an appendix with each activity.

Aldahadha, B. (2021). The relationship between mindfulness, depression, and anxiety among university students. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 26(1), 1–12.

Avcu, R., et al. (2022). Mindfulness levels in individuals with alcohol use disorder. Addictive Behaviors, 132, 107309.

Ayhan, B., & Kavak, F. (2021). The relationship between mindfulness and automatic negative thoughts in depressed individuals. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 35(1), 20–28.

Belen, H. (2021). Fear of COVID-19 and mindfulness in Turkish youth. Current Psychology, 40, 6242–6251.

Carruthers, S., et al. (2022). Dispositional mindfulness in individuals with bipolar disorder. Mindfulness, 13(4), 812–823.

Castellanos, D., et al. (2020). Culturally adapted mindfulness interventions for Hispanic populations: A meta-analysis. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 26(1), 56–66.

Chen, Q., et al. (2021). Childhood trauma and college student resilience: The moderating role of mindfulness. Journal of Affective Disorders, 291, 274–281.

Heath, N. L., et al. (2016). Mindfulness and non-suicidal self-injury. Mindfulness, 7(4), 945–953.

Keith, J. R., et al. (2017). Mindfulness and ADHD: A cross-sectional study of trait mindfulness and cognitive regulation. Mindfulness, 8(2), 329–337.

Olivera-Figueroa, L. A., et al. (2022). Culture and mindfulness: A cross-national study. International Journal of Psychology, 57(3), 313–328.

Quaglia, J. T., et al. (2016). Trait mindfulness change following mindfulness-based interventions: A meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 7(3), 535–545.