Mindfulness is only actively choosing what you're paying attention to. Mindfulness meditation is the exercise of picking something to pay attention to, and then continually bringing your attention back to it whenever you find your mind had wandered. Practicing this 10 minutes per day strengthens your ability to recognize and choose where your attention goes.

Anxiety at a cognitive level is caused by your mind thinking about things in the past or the future that are not serving you well. Strengthening your mindfulness skills allows you to recognize when your mind has wandered into that territory and decide to let it go and give your attention to something else.

Unfortunately our modern society is designed in a way that encouraged shorter attention spans and less control over our attention