Well it's been a mad week all round. I feel like I've hardly drawn breath and here we are - Friday already. I had so many plans to incorporate mindfulness in my daily life, meditate at great length, do yoga and I was going to blog daily, (seriously?), hmm, maybe every other day (good luck with that)....ok then twice a week.
When I thought about "Mindful in March", I knew it would take effort but I also hoped it would bring mindfulness cente-stage in my awareness as opposed to all those other thoughts that dominate (Is my son happy at school? Will I ever find the right job? and have we enough potatoes to make chunky chips?).
How's it going just over a week in I hear you ask, you did ask didn't you? Well I'll tell you anyway. Fair to middling I'd say in all honesty. In terms of finding time to do lots of meditation, I'd say that's not been great. I don't know if it's truly because it has been an unusually busy week with lots of stresses or I am encountering resistance to practice which is perfectly normal. Mindfulness has been very much on my mind - I've been thinking about it, reading about it, writing about it but when it comes to sitting in stillness, I've been too tired/busy/distracted to do anything more than 10 minutes. Does that make me a bad mindfulness practitioner, am I being unmindful? No I don't think so. Mindfulness is a permanent challenge which presents us with the opportunity to stop and see what's really going on when the dust of our thoughts settle. When they are blowing in the wind the picture is unclear and we are buffeted by the stories they tell, allowing ourselves to be led down the garden path by some thought pretending to be a fact, the content of which we believe to be true. I hope you're following this....I am but only just. Let me illustrate. All week I have been thinking that I'm not very good at mindfulness because I don't practice for half an hour a day. This thought whirled and swirled in my head to the point where I totally believed it was true and decided there was no point carrying on or blogging because I wasn't good enough. Having noticed this (noticing....very mindful....excellent!!) I realised that this is typical of me - making judgements about myself and stopping myself doing something before I get started! I have done this time and time again. So maybe, despite my lack of 30 minute practices I am in fact being very mindful. Noticing what's coming up for me, stepping back and seeing it for what it is, ingrained patterns of behaviour which serve to limit rather than expand my world. I am treading a well worn path in my life which is familiar but doesn't actually get me where I want to be. I need to make a new path but that may require a bit of digging, plenty of effort and the help of friends. Anyone fancy a spot of gardening?
Have a great weekend.
Mindfulmissy
ps: I'm off to a full day of mindfulness practice tomorrow - 5 hours! See, I told you I was a proper mindfulmissy!
I'm using mindfulness daily, it is helping me deal with uncertainty about my job. What it will be? Will I get another post? I drag myself back to the moment and live in it, so much better.
ReplyDeleteHi Alison, ooh was excited to get a comment so thank you! Apologies for the delay in replying! It's great that you are using mindfulness on a daily basis. It's simple to do yet I find the maintaining it really difficult sometimes. That's why I decided to on the #MindfulinMarch idea. I needed something to keep it at the forefront of my mind. It is so easy to get pulled into the future and end up worrying about things that may never happen. Any way you can get yourself back in the moment is great - even if involves dragging yourself there!
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