Mindfulness is the buzzword these days floating around the internet and the communities that embrace the act of “living in the moment.” There are practitioners who teach mindfulness 1 on 1 or small group settings, there are centers that have flourished in LA like https://www.unplugmeditation.com and countless books like one of my favorites Make Peace With Your Mind by Mark Coleman. So why all the hype about this simple, but difficult practice that sages, yogis, and gurus have been practicing for millennia?
Today more than ever, there are so many distractions that pull our attention from one thing to the next creating new habits and patterns in the wiring of the brain and nervous system. Even the shows we watch today are geared toward shorter attention spans. My wife and I just started watching a great series on Netflix called, Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee by Jerry Seinfeld, It’s awesome! Each show is 20 minutes long. It’s like a little teaser into the lives and minds of the celebrities he drives around with. Give me more!!
But you know as well as I do, nothing is going to change in the foreseeable future. We want information and our handheld devices to it NOW! And the more we get it, the faster and more we want it now. And the irony of it all is we can’t live in THE NOW.
So what can we do? The simple answer is, BE MINDFUL. One minute of practice is one minute of generating the energy of mindfulness. It doesn’t come from the outside of you, it comes from within. The energy of being mindful is the kind of energy that helps us to be here, to be fully present in the here and now. When you drink tea in a mindful state, your body and your mind are perfectly united. When you sit in a cafe, with a lot of distractions in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you’re not really drinking your coffee or tea. You’re drinking your projects, your drinking your distractions, worries, and fears.
Being mindful is a practice. It is a practice to help us be free! If you are haunted by your past, if you are afraid of the future, if you are stressed about your projects, you are not a free person.
You are not available in the hear and now, so life is really not available to you. Now don’t stress over this! LOL We all have to get better and being mindful! That’s the purpose of this blog. I too need to work on being more mindful. My wife, Yuki is from Japan and she takes 3x as long as I do to eat, drink, cook, shower and do the things I tend to rush through. She has made me more aware that being mindful is more fulfilling, but I am a work in progress!
This is why practicing being mindful is essential to our new way of living, in a world where applications and information is available to us in a nanosecond. Yet it is not something that you need to train yourself for many months or hire the best mindful coach. One hr a day or even 1 min a day to start can help you be more mindful. Train yourself to drink your water, tea or coffee mindfully, to become a free person while you drink your beverage. Train yourself to be a free person while you make breakfast or while you’re chewing your food. Exercise with mindfulness and notice the way your body is moving or feel the way your muscles begin to burn when they begin to fatigue. Any moment of the day is an opportunity for you to train yourself to be mindful and evolve into a free person. You just have to start one minute at a time!
Happy New Year and I wish you all the best in your journey to a free life being mindful!
Sincerely,
Steve
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