Mind Full or Mindful

Mindfulness is a desired state of mind, of late as much as I may try I have not been mindful - rather its been more Mind Full. Mindfulness is about bringing your focus to the 'now' and focusing on enjoying the 'now'. It is potentially one of the current buzzwords but behind every buzzword and current craze generally comes a deep meaning.

Lets unpack that - Mindfulness is a psychological process in which we one brings their attention to the current experiences. An interesting aspect is that this is quite a significant aspect of Buddhist teachings, it is utilised to develop self-knowledge and wisdom of a person and is said to be the stepping stone to 'enlightenment or the complete freedom from suffering'.

We currently live quite busy lives, from a mother/father bringing up 1, 2 or 6 children to the worker trying to balance life, love, family, friends and health yet crashing out and spending more time putting everyone else before their own thoughts. What we are ending up with is a full mind. We all know what this looks like. I mean I can't be the only one who sends myself emails in the middle of the night because I don't want to forget my amazing idea?

I guess what I am trying to say is that while there is so much going on around us, how can we focus on the present moment yet still try to keep up with the world thats going on around us and still try and to better ourself with every move. Even writing that sentence my head has started to refill.

A key to mindfulness can be meditation. I suck at meditation. I was once told that even 5 seconds of meditation was better than none, overtime you try you will get a little better. Don't be so hard on yourself - if you can't meditate, or if you have made a mistake. Thinking over and over about your mistake isn't going to make it unhappen. Obviously think about it, learn from it but don't focus on it so much it makes you feel bad.

A great thing I heard was that multi tasking doesn't really exist. If you think about it if you are doing a job and you start doing something else, technically you have stopped doing one, but you have stopped it when its not finished. Right?

We are constantly speeding around, organising, chatting, learning, reading but are we really taking it all on? No, probably not. It's unfortunate because we aren't taking in this beautiful world. Lets stop and smell the flowers and every now and then take a step back and make sure that you are pleasing yourself, not just everyone else!