The Beginner’s Mind: How to Break the Loop of Anxiety and Build a Lasting System

George Greensmith
2026-10-14

The Anatomy of Anxiety

When sharing our concerns with others people often say "Don't worry about it". While they may have good intentions, sufferers of anxiety get stuck in a worrying loop. This makes it difficult to stop.

Anxiety feeds off the present moment to generate a negative future projection. This projection is informed by past negative experience. However, anxiety only exists in the present.

Fortunately, we can become aware of this and reduce suffering. Just as you might wake up from a daydream, catching yourself worrying can ease its negative effects.

This is what modern psychotherapy uses to treat patients. Both CBT and ACT change the content or one's relationship to thoughts. In recent years, therapists have started to prescribe 'mindfulness techniques' as a means to treat anxiety. And as a result, programs such as MSBR have shown to effectively reduce anxiety over an 8 week period.

Mindfulness can be defined as cultivating a non-judgemental awareness of the present. The word ‘Mindfulness’ stems from the Chan Buddhist Tradition – or Zen as its commonly known in the West – in which a key principle is to adopt what is called Beginners mind.

The Seon Solution (Choshim / 初心)

Beginner's mind or Choshim (初心) is the Seon Buddhist – the Korean equivalent of Chan/Zen - term for awareness of the present moment without pre-existing judgment. It means seeing things as they are, not as our mind depicts them.

Choshim is a tranquil and meditative state. It is both a state of mind and a sensation. Although, I realise describing it in words doesn't do it justice.

Choshim lets us unlearn and change our perspective. When our own minds obscure insight into truth, this proves very useful. For example, unlearning our pronunciation habits when acquiring a foreign language.

If we apply this unlearning to our minds, we can quickly discover that suffering, including anxiety, is a temporary process.

The Practical Engine (Vipassana):

To start unlearning we must first adopt a meditation practice. Meditation can be as simple as sitting down and closing your eyes. The point is to practice just being. As Jon Kabat-Zinn once said "don't just do something, sit there!".

The more neurotic among us may find this instruction difficult and (like myself) may prefer a meditation object. For this, I recommend focusing on the breath at the tip of the nose or the abdomen, otherwise known as Vipassana meditation. Either practice works fine.

The reason we meditate is to see things as they really are. To practice what the Buddha called right view and right mindfulness. If meditation provides the anchor to the present moment, Choshim provides the attitude of non-judgemental perception.

Just as stretching allows for flexibility, meditation primes awareness. In both, formal practice sessions are not the end goal. We stretch to increase bodily flexibility, prime our nervous system and endure daily life stressors. Similarly, we meditate to return to the state of non-judgemental awareness in ordinary moments. We meditate to see clearly and return to clear seeing. Formal practice is just the stretching session and sustained mindfulness is our flexibility.

Integration into Daily Routine:

A room left unkempt accumulates dust and eventually requires a deep clean. Our minds also collect mental-dust, which we can tend to with mindfulness or perform a "deep clean" with meditation.

Integrating the habit of attending to our minds can be challenging, but the benefit of mental clarity makes the struggle worthwhile.

A simple way to integrate mindfulness into our routine is through walking meditation, during which you feel your feet on the ground as you walk slowly, noticing bodily sensations and being fully in tune with all one's senses.

Walking around the Han-river in this way has been a tremendously joyful experience. However, whether one walks or sits, the point is to remember to keep returning.

If we can redirect our attention to what is happening now, in controlled bursts throughout the day, Beginner's mind enters our lives with little effort.

The System

To make mindfulness a sustainable part of life, we need a reliable system - one that makes practice obvious, accessible, and low-friction.

For those new to practice I would prescribe the following:

A daily (including weekends) meditation practice done for 5-10mins. Preferably after the morning alarm, if not when lights go out before bedtime. Having a dedicated space or meditation cushion makes the habit more attractive and easier to execute but is not essential. I find it harder to skip meditation first thing in the morning. Do what works for you.

Next, daily mindful pauses.
Integrate single breath pauses during daily transitions such as finishing breakfast, steping into the shower, or closing your laptop. I forget to do this 90% of the time, but the 10% I remember feels amazing. Identify an existing transition in your day and commit to one conscious breath the next time you remember.

Of course, you are the DJ and are free to remix the system. As long as you establish a meditation practice and try to take mindful pauses throughout the day, you are actively breaking the anxiety loop.

The Trap & The Return:

The difficulty, of course, is that most of us spend our days on autopilot. I fail to stay mindful far more often than I manage to.

On a recent visit to a Seon Buddhist temple (만덕사) I shared this frustration with the lead monk. I explained that I keep waking up into awareness only to fall back asleep, forgetting my true nature.

She advised me to apply Right Effort (正精進): keep showing up, without attachment to the outcome.

Beginner's Mind or Choshim is not a permanent state - treating it as a goal is itself a trap. Trying to do so would be like trying to bite your own teeth or pull yourself up by your own bootstraps ¹. It simply cannot be done.

The goal is not to force calmness or defeat anxiety, but to see the present moment clearly for what it is. All we control is the act of showing up; the return takes care of itself. Accepting that you will sometimes succeed along the path and sometimes fail is precisely the awareness that frees you from anxiety.