Life is Too Difficult Not to Practice Mindfulness
October 10th, 2011
In my blogs, I tend to write often about being mindful and paying attention to your life. These simple actions may seem almost too simplistic. After all, how can paying attention to your life, to what you are experiencing moment to moment change your life in ways that make a difference. Most people live with anxiety and depression, if not on a regular basis, at some time during their lives. With the economy in a tail spin, people having less leisure time and working longer and harder, life often seems out of control.
Many of the things that affect us in really big ways are most often beyond our control. The things that we worry about often don’t happen. Yet, we continue day after day living in fog like conditions, on automatic pilot with the speed limit on fast forward. Unfortunately, when we are living in this mode we are unable to notice what we do have and how fortunate we are on many levels. It’s like wearing blinders that you have worn for so long, that you don’t realize that you even have them on anymore.
One of the many nice things about practicing mindfulness is that you allow yourself to be present to the beauty and love that surrounds you on a regular basis, even when things seem not to be going well. Because you practice, you are able to be more aware of this abundance. Some of the readers may recall how much they love hiking in the woods on an autumn day, or how much they love the smell of their spouse or baby. These are only two examples of an uncountable amount of delights that surround you moment by moment, that we too often miss.
Again this may seem simplistic and you may not be in a place of finding delight and enjoyment in your life because things are not going well for you right now. Being with the sadness and pain that life deals everyone, is very difficult, and being present to that part of your life also has gifts (this topic better saved for another newsletter). Yet, even when things are difficult, it is possible to find the daisy growing out of the cracked sidewalk in the ghetto. No one knew this better than Viktor Frankl, reflecting on his time spent in concentration camps during WWII, he wrote in Man’s Search For Meaning “…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” However, I believe the act of choosing requires being present over and over again.
Life is too difficult not to practice mindfulness. Besides blessing yourself with the present moment and seeing the beauty all around you, mindfulness also does amazing things to your brain, helping it be healthy and develop the wonderful traits that make us kind human beings.
Paying attention, moment to moment on purpose may seem simple, but does bring exceptional results.
If you are interested in registering for an interactive workshop on Mindfulness, please click here https://tinadwyer.com/mindfulness-group
Comments RSS Both comments and pings are currently closed.
