how do you talk about mindfulness?

[cryoldman]

As this is the Buddhism section of the forum, I assume that you already know about mindfulness, more or less. I'd love to know how you explain it to someone else.

I've learned the hard way that talking about mindfulness to someone who has no idea what it is, is like talking in two very different languages.
As for me, here's my understanding . In briefest, mindfulness is to learn not to trust your own thought (feelings etc.) In fact, it's about to unlearn trusting it. Kind of developing a super-conscience or a guide to the rightness or wrongness of our thoughts.
Now you can see the big problem. Many people aren't familiar with this kind of learning. They always believe they are the ones who think, and they really know their own thoughts.

Here's a story of someone who was not aware of his own thoughts:
A guy is driving through the desert when one of his tires blows out. He gets out of his car and pops open the trunk to look for a spare tire and a jack. He sees the spare, but there’s no jack. “Oh, No!,” he yells. "I’ve got to walk back to the gas station I passed five miles ago!’”
So he starts walking. "I hope he has a jack," he says to himself. Half way there, he mumbles anxiously, "He better have a jack." When he’s almost there, he growls, ‘That son of a gun better let me use his jack!’”
Minutes later, he finally arrives at the gas station. He’s hot; he’s frustrated; he’s fuming. He sees the station owner in the garage, and he walks up to him and says, "Hey buddy! You can just forget it! Keep your damn jack!’”

Freud (1959) once told of a patient who was walking down a street and suddenly, inexplicably, broke into tears. Being psychologically-minded, the woman quickly reflected back on her state of mind just prior to the crying jag. Although she had not noticed it at the time of its occurrence, the woman now recalled having been preoccupied with a highly organized and morose daydream in which she had been first seduced, then impregnated, and finally abandoned by a local pianist who in reality did not know her at all.

So, if the man above knew mindfulness, he might see his (negative) thoughts (how he can deal with them is another story); and for the psychologically-minded woman, seeing her own feelings on the spot.
I believe that to understand mindfulness, you have to do something like breaking the fourth wall.
Recently, I've just learned the meaning of "breaking the fourth wall". I mean, I saw it in some movies before that a character talked back directly to the audiences, which was funny. Or in the theater, an actor might break the fourth wall physically by walking down from the stage, through the audience and out the door instead of exiting stage left or right.
Or when we are watching movie and so move with it (excite, scare, sad etc.) if only we can pull ourselves back to the reality, outside the movies, then, we will realize that it's just a movie.
So, yes, sometimes, we know what they think, but sometimes (and maybe so many times) we don't. If mindfulness (or being psychologically-minded) is not there, we might not be able to break the fourth wall of our thoughts (feelings etc.).