108 The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook
And finally, your daily mindfulness regimen will include doing tasks mindfully. This might
sound like a new skill to you, but you’ve already practiced doing all the steps that are necessary.
Doing tasks mindfully means doing all the things you normally do in your life, like talking, walking,
eating, and washing, while also staying focused on your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations,
and actions in the present moment, and without judging what is happening. In effect, this is the
exercise where all the skills you’ve learned in the last two chapters finally come together.
To do tasks mindfully, you need to do the following:
Focus and shift your attention between your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations,
and actions in order to be mindful of your present-moment experience. Let go of distracting thoughts and judgments by allowing them to float past without
getting stuck on them so that you don’t get distracted from what’s happening in
the present moment. Use radical acceptance to remain nonjudgmental. Use wise mind to make healthy decisions about your life. Do what’s effective in order to accomplish your goals.Some people find it helpful to use the following memory device to remind themselves to do
tasks mindfully:
“Mindfulness is like a FLAME.”
Focus and shift your attention to be mindful of the present moment.
Let go of distracting thoughts and judgments.
Use radical Acceptance to remain nonjudgmental.
Use wise Mind to make healthy decisions.
Do what’s Effective to accomplish your goals.Let’s look at some examples of doing tasks mindfully, using all the skills you’ve learned in
chapters 3 and 4.
After reading these two chapters, Loretta began approaching many of her tasks mindfully.
At night, she would even brush her teeth mindfully. First, she focused her attention on how the
toothbrush felt in her hand and how the tube felt as she squeezed out the paste. She was also
aware of how her body felt, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, and how the weight of her
body felt as she stood in front of the sink. Then, as she began to brush, she became aware of the
taste in her mouth, the feel of the bristles on her gums, and the movement of her arm as she
brushed. When distracting thoughts arose, such as things she did earlier in the day, she imagined
the thoughts floating down a river on a leaf. If judgments arose about people she knew, she did
the same thing and watched the judgments float away. Then she continued to shift her focus every
few moments to her breathing, feeling it rise and fall. Loretta did a good job being as aware as
possible of simply brushing her teeth in that moment. At other times throughout the day, she had