Mindfulness
Mindfulness means having a moment-to-moment awareness of your experience of life, while not getting caught up in your thoughts and opinions.
To me, this means not judging what’s going on, but increasing my curiosity. Using my senses to experience the curiosity. When I am experiencing something, and being fully present in my awareness, I can explore how it feels in my body, and what my mind is saying (overthinking or playing old tapes).
Almost everything we experience is labeled and categorized in our minds. It’s good or bad, welcome or unwelcome, fun or boring. We use our past to inform our present experiences and often this lens is tainted. We spend our days judging people, places, things and experiences. It’s exhausting!
Practicing Mindfulness helps decrease stress. Imagine living moment-to-moment, being open to the possibility that controlling things and people is unnecessary. The reality is that we control nothing. No matter how much we play a scene in our minds, write those plays where we say something and the other person responds a certain way, we cannot control it.
What if, just for today, you practiced simple awareness of self. As you go through the day, be intentional about how you feel, what you’re thinking, how you are responding to all of your interactions. Be a spectator. Make it fun.
Stress is simply caused by wanting something other than what it. In other words, not accepting reality. Try for today to just experience your current reality, as it happens, moment by moment.
“If you worry too much about what might be,
or what might have been,
you will miss what is.
Truth be told, worrying is a misuse of your incredible present potential.
So do your best to focus mindfully on what’s in front of you today.
Allow yourself to grow from what you’re living through.”
-marcandangel
With Love and Joy,
Sheila
PS: If you are ready to take a deeper dive into living mindfully, join my 1:1 coaching program where I teach my 3 step process, Presence-Power-Belief, to help you live the life you desire with calm confidence.