Mindfulness

Hi. It’s me, again. 

How have you been? I hope everything’s good with your life. Can you believe 2018 is gonna be over soon? We’ve got, like less than a month! How time flies. It feels like it was only yesterday I had my seminar proposal (back in February).

Well, things are different now. I have graduated from college. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that. I’m very excited to start adulthood, freedom is all mine. But what scares the hell out of me is the thought of doing it all on my own. Responsibilities. I hate that word. Hahahaha. Like it or not, I might just have to get on with that.

Sooooo, lately I’ve been very into hmm what is it called... mindfulness. Yep, that’s the right word. What is mindfulness? Citing from mindful.org, 

“Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

It’s like to gain an inner peace, I suppose. To not be affected emotionally by the everlasting chaotic situation around us hahaha. To be calm. To be mindful, we have to possess self-awareness. Those two things are correlated. But the goal is the mindfulness. What is exactly self-awareness? In fact, what the heck are you talking about, dit? Hahaha okay this sounds so random, I know. I’ll try to explain in the simplest way. I once listened to a podcast about self-awareness. You too can listen it here in Life Skills that Matter Podcast episode 178.

Self-awareness is as the name suggests, about being aware of yourself, aware of your own thoughts, values, habits, actions, without judging them. It’s like accepting yourself as a unique human being. You’re observing of how in certain condition you react, think, or feel. The point is, it’s about being honest with your true self. It’s about embracing yourself. Cultivating love to yourself. Being self-aware doesn’t justify accepting your weakness and doing nothing about that though. It doesn't mean certain things can’t or shouldn’t be changed or mended. Maybe it’s more like not being too hard on yourself. You realize there are certain qualities in you that are good and bad. For the bad qualities, you change it without being too negative about that. Imagine it like when you have two different kinds of parents. When you fail an exam, one parent scolds you for being stupid blablabla... super negative vibes. And the other one who is very supportive, keeps encouraging you to get better by studying and putting more effort. Get it??? Which one do you prefer? 

It’s an important life skill to possess apparently, but we were never really taught about that at school, which is too bad. 

Back to mindfulness. Mindfulness can be trained by practicing meditation (yoga works too!) regularly. Hahaha okay that sounds sooooooo lame. But seriously, I think the idea of meditation is interesting to me. Schools in India have incorporated meditation into their curriculum, so the students are taught about how to be mindful by practicing meditation (I once read about this in Perry Garfinkel’s book called Buddha or Bust? In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness, and The Man Who Found Them All). I have to say, meditation is not easy though. I tried a couple of times and it was difficult. And in order to experience the difference, we have to do it regularly. I mean you cannot just do it one time and expect you’re a Zen master after that. It takes time.

A lot of time we find ourselves not be fully present mentally in the moment. Our physical body might be here, but our mind wanders somewhere in the past or future. We’re too busy replaying a scenario in our head over and over again, dwelling in the past and completely oblivious of present moment. Or we’re too busy thinking about the future by cultivating anxiety. Both ways, we can’t enjoy the present moment. Don’t get too preoccupied with the things we cannot control, like our mistakes in the past or what could happen in the future. It’s okay to worry, worrying is good. It means you’re anticipating the future, you’re thinking ahead. But only worry things we have control over. Other than that, leave it. Too much worrying can pose a harm to our mental health. It’s like ‘Carpe Diem’, I guess. Remember, everything in life is temporary. It’s impermanent. You only live once. Don’t waste your life time worrying over things you cannot control.

To end this super random post, I’d like to cite a quote by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen master (Buddhish Monk) who’s also an author of best-selling books. 

“The energies of mindfulness, concentration and insight can liberate us from our anxiety and worries. We let go of the past and the future, and come in touch with the wonders of the present.”

I’ll see you in the next post! Bye.