Mental attitude is a very powerful factor. Basic beliefs, mental models and thoughts shape our words and actions.

Take the statement, "I am the sky and everything else is just weather." The attitude expressed in this quote from Pema Chodron provides a foundation for less-stress living and happiness that is not conditioned on getting pleasant things and avoiding unpleasant things.

Unnecessary Stress
Stress is that part of life that stimulates, annoys and distresses. Unnecessary stress is the stress you impose on yourself in reaction to the stresses that you cannot avoid. Unavoidable stress is a physical or mental challenge, pain, a terrible job, noise from a neighbor, nasty smells, etc. Unnecessary or avoidable stress is what we add to the situation. When a neighbor makes a disturbing noise just when you have settled into a comfortable rest, the avoidable stress comes from your thinking that the person making the noise is a rotten so and so without any concern for others, or perhaps obsessing about how you chose the wrong place to live. Anger and the tension it brings is not about the sound itself. It is about your reaction to the sound.

Unnecessary stress can be avoided if you step back and, for a moment, observe the gap between the stimulus and the response. The noise, the unavoidable stress, is the stimulus, your reaction to it the response.

Often it seems as if there's no gap between stimulus and response. Noise and anger seem to arise simultaneously. But there is a gap. Being able to perceive it and step in with a new response is a critical capability. Without it you are doomed to reactive behavior that more often than not is damaging to yourself, your relationships and others.

Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a key. It enables you to see more of what is going on? It is as if the world around you is going in slow motion. Meditation enables the meditator to see the gap, the space between the stimulus and response. With the right attitude it promotes objective observation and healthy acceptance of whatever comes.

Meditation practice is relatively simple. You begin by focusing on your breath as an object of attention to calm the mind and provide a taste of quiet spaciousness. Notice thoughts, feelings, physical sensations of the body, sounds, sights, smells and bring our attention back to the breath. If the breath doesn't work for you, you can use a sound, image, word or phrase as the focal point. Keep it simple.

This is concentration practice. Sustained focus on any object trains the mind and results in a calm state. The mind becomes trained so the practitioner can choose which thoughts to continue to focus on and which to let go. As concentration increases, there are fewer moments of distraction, less reactive behavior and a sense of being centered and in a highly pleasant, open and productive state. This is being in the zone or experiencing a calm state. The mind is stable and relatively quiet. Thoughts come up but there are fewer of them and the ones that do come go by without distracting the mind.

The calm state is a step in the right direction. Another step is to cultivate mindfulness. Experienced meditators gradually shift into an open meditation. Open in the sense that the focus is outward and less on a particular object like the breath or a sound. Movement, in the form of thoughts, feelings, sounds, sights, and all the other things that arise in and around you, becomes the object of meditation. 

If you become distracted, lost in thought, as soon as you realize it, it is gently back to the breath, then it is back to noticing the movement; opening to whatever arises with choiceless awareness. 

If the mind seems too busy you can shift back to concentration practice to quiet the mind. You might choose to spend the first few minutes of a meditation session with concentration and then open to mindfulness, calmly observing whatever arises.

Note that mindfulness practice is not limited to formal meditation sessions. It spills over into daily life so that every activity becomes a meditation.

Awareness
At some point you become aware that consciousness is an object that you can notice just as you notice your thoughts, sensations, sounds and all the rest. You have taken a step back. You are observing the observing. At first it seems as if a separate part of the mind is engaged as an observer or witness. As meditation practice matures this witness blends into the background and there is awareness without any identifiable observer being aware. There is just the experience of being aware. This awareness does not get in the way of your daily activities, just as the sky doesn't get in the way of the weather. It is simply present.

Many people, meditators and non-meditators alike, naturally experience this kind of awareness. Perhaps you have experienced a moment while playing a sport, being involved in an accident or engaged in an artistic performance in which you are no longer there in the normal way. Everything is just happening. You are performing and yet you are not doing it in the same old way. You are aware of whatever is occurring. Even the things that you are doing seem as if they are happening by themselves.