So I said I would write blog posts about mindfulness for 2017. But what the heck does that even mean? I mean, seriously, sometimes I can be so busy being mindful that I miss the point of being IN MY LIFE!!! And I don't think I'm alone either. The other day I met with a friend. We're going to have a mindfulness day to raise a little bit of money for our church. I suggested that after our talk on mindfulness that we go for a walk and put some of it into practice. Her response was "but we can chat too right?". Of course!! I think that's part of the problem with social media. There are so many images of mindfulness and people meditating that people equate the two. To be mindful is to meditate is the misconception. Wrong. The actual Wikipedia definition of mindfulness is that Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one's attention to the internal and external experiences occurring in the present moment, which can be developed through the practice of meditation and other training. So mindfulness is just noticing. Noticing and choosing. Meditation is just one way of training the mind to notice. And it it is just another thing to squeeze into your day then that misses the point. The point is to learn to notice what you are thinking about and choose what you WANT to be thinking about. Notice how you are behaving and CHOOSE your responses. Notice your feelings and validate them and then choose how much attention you want to pay to them vs. being mindful of other things in your day. So on our mindfulness day we are going to just chat and visit for half the walk and notice nature and beauty and sounds and colours on the other half. There is no wrong.,,,,just being consciously choiceful.
So mindfulness can look like this.....
..or whatever you decide you want that day, that moment, in your life. And on that note....I'm mindful of my time and going to say goodbye until next week because I don't want to be late for my next appointment! Be Well.
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