People ask sometimes if mindfulness is a religious practice — but it’s not.

All mindfulness is, is being aware of yourself and your life, and having a sense of what everything in that life means to you. It means having gratitude, on many levels, but that’s not all that it means.

When you are mindful, you are also aware of the detrimental things in life, and work to find active ways to protect yourself against their influence. If certain situations are dangerous or harmful for you, mindfulness lets you find ways to pursue paths that won’t harm you. If you know that a certain person is cruel to you, being mindful means finding ways to remove their influence from your life.

A mindful person isn’t a robot with automatic gratitude. A mindful person measures and weighs the value of every aspect of their life that influences them, and chooses the ways that are most beneficial to themselves and their world.

Being mindful means protecting yourself from harm as well as rejoicing in the good.