Being Mindful
Becoming intimate with our experience is often called being mindful. Cultivating this natural capacity of presence is a proven way of unlocking our greater potential.
By being mindful we can:
- liberate energies trapped by stress
- free emotions we've suppressed
- clear attention from distractive thinking
- live a calmer and more creative life
What is Mindfulness
An example I like to use is this: When we eat something for the first time, we're very mindful. We've never seen it before, we look at it from all angles; lifting it up, turning it around. We touch it, smell it. Then when we bite into it, we feel the texture on our lips. When we taste it, it is registered in all its detail.
When we compare that to eating something we've eaten nearly every day of our lives. We look at it but don't really see it, bite it but don't really feel it, and are probably not even aware of the taste after the first mouthful, unless it tastes bad.
How Free is Freedom?
Even though this is starting to read like an advert, the really best thing is that this is available for free.
You can't buy mindfulness from someone else, just like you can't buy happiness, you already knew that right? It's a state of being; a naturally arising temperament from an uncluttered life.
Uncluttered! So that hints at one way to be mindful, by doing less. Although it's not the essence of mindfulness, this is an important way to develop the skill. Do the thing you are doing fully.
Yet we could say it even simpler, yet remember that something that is easy to say is often difficult to do!
We can be naturally mindful in the moment once we remember to pay attention.
The trick is how to remember, the truth is, it takes practice.
Just One Thing
It came to me the other day that we can't do one thing 100% if we're also doing something else. OK, yes, that is pretty obvious, but how often do we pretend to ourselves that we're doing something fully, when we're actually not?
For me the consequence of seeing this is not that I need to give 100% to every task I do. But rather I need to know how much of my attention does the task I wish to do necessitate. To give a sense of how this insight plays out in daily life, let's use the example of driving a car. Driving is an everyday activity with the potential to change our lives. There are many serious or fatal accidents involving cars every day.
Let's examine our attention in relation to driving.- What percentage of your attention do you need to drive safely?
- Is it dangerous to use your phone while you are driving?
- Of course it is. But even if you're not holding the phone?
- Is there any type of conversation you wouldn't have while driving?
It's been proven that we are less observant of our surroundings while having a conversation with someone who is not physically present.
This BBC article suggests we need between 50 and 70% of our attention to drive.
While the LA Times reports hands-free is not risk-free, according to the AAA.How does this affect the way you act?
Let's pay close and loving attention to how we live our lives. Because the more observant we are, the closer we can become to who we wish to be. SuperHeroYou has a nice post about - How to Be More Observant
What do I Need to Change?
When we look at something like this, we may see that there are things we do without real consideration. Although the way we drive can be an act of peace, it isn't going to be the highest on the list for many of us. But regardless, whatever we make our main priority, a good dose of mindfulness can go a long way in helping us change.
By deeply reflecting on our habitual behaviour with the calm steadiness of mindfulness we can see things as they actually are. Then when we incorporate how we wish to live, we can unlock insights into how our behaviour and our intentions fit together, and how they don't.
Evaluate your Life
Give a bit of time to contemplate how much attention you would like to give to:
- A dialogue
- A conversation with 3 or more people
- My work
- Cooking
- Brushing your teeth
- Taking out the trash (garbage, rubbish, bins - whatever you call it)
- Doing errands around the house (gardening, cleaning, washing up)
Add your own actions, events or thing to this list
In time Mindfulness can be expanded into more forms through Meditation