There is just too much to consider!
The job is demanding more of you each day.
You feel guilty for taking time away from family and loved ones, so you try to compensate and send energy their way. And at the end of the day you have how much left for yourself? Usually an IOU to yourself to make up for the lost time at a later date. But who really gets shortchanged here?
That’s right. It’s us again. Giving all of our selves away to others (which we really don’t begrudge for a moment) but having nothing left for ourselves. We’re stressed, exhausted, and looking for a way out.
In all of this hubbub of activity, how much of it is played out in real-time and how much was the planning, worry, and emotional stress of preparing for the events? If you are like many, it is the latter in which we invest the majority of our personal energies.
So how about a mini vacation each day? Could you scrape together a few minutes to get your head back down out of that cloud of worries, concerns, and planning in which you have been living?
Mindfulness is more than a euphemism. Mindfulness is where you set aside the time to take stock of what’s happening with YOU.
How’s your heartrate and blood pressure? How do you feel right now? Been awhile since your last exercise session?
Take time to take inventory. Come back to the moment in which you are living. Yes, THIS moment! Not the ones in which you are thinking about may happen.
Take a deep breath.
Listen to the sounds around you.
Feel the chair in which you’re sitting.
Feel the temperature of the air on your skin.
Welcome to the moment. This is mindfulness.
Practicing mindfulness can take on many forms. The more traditional would be the various forms of meditation.
For those more inclined towards western religious practices, much has been written about the abiding power of prayer.
Also consider action meditation in which you become so involved in a physical activity, that your thoughts take a back seat to the demands of the moment. Just like the juggling in the video above.
Endurance sports like running and cycling have a long-storied history of the positive mental effects of participation. Going out for a workout and returning with the solution to a problem that you have previously not seen. The difference was in moving consciousness from the mind to the body. A vacation that allowed problem-solving to occur without involving your conscious brain.
Activities like walking and gardening can also create these moments. Just find enjoyable activities in which you are physically involved and focused on the activity. The mind gets a brief vacation from all of the overwork you give it to do.
The point is to get out and make those moments a regular part of our reality. Get into the world around yourself. It benefits you physically and mentally to take that break, so that you can come back to your other world of worries and commitments with renewed vigor and vitality!
“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
― John Lennon
Image: “Chinese cute girl” by Xuan Zheng
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