The Path of Mindfulness

With the stress and demands of daily life, staying on a path of mindfulness takes some effort. Many of us feel pressure to be on 24/7. Mindfulness is considered the intentional, accepting and non-judgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment. When we are mindful we notice details---an expression, a flower or leaf. How do we quiet the mind to create this kind of centering peace?

We can cultivate and develop our own ability to be mindful through practice. I enjoy helping my clients develop their own, unique strategy for keeping balanced and mindful. There are many ways to get there. We each need to develop practices we can use daily, as mindfulness needs to be gotten fresh daily, like showering.

When we are mindful, we have more energy, higher levels of compassion for ourselves and others, we are calmer and more relaxed, and are less vulnerable to anxiety and depression. Mindfulness increases self-acceptance.

Here are some ideas for creating mindfulness in your daily routine:

1. Create quiet time for yourself. Silence is powerful, and helps heal and give you clarity.

2. Exercise, to burn off stress and nervous energy.

3. Get outside. Try to spend a little time outside, on a walk or in your garden every day if you can.

4. Create sacred rituals--- a cup of herbal tea and some inspired reading first thing in the morning, a Saturday bike ride, play time with your dog after work, a fireside chat with your partner each evening.

5. Journal daily. Writing allows you to process emotions and events and give you perspective.

6. Take time for quiet prayer or conversations with God.

7. Meditation. Sit quietly and usher out any thoughts that come up. Don't worry about 'doing it right'. Consider this time your daily meeting with yourself.

8. Reconnect with life: do something creative with your hands, observe animals and nature, focus on your breath.

9. Make note of 3 different things you are grateful for daily. Consider your friendships, your body, your home, happy memories, things about yourself.

10. Lie down and do nothing. Be aware of your breath. Scan your body for any tension and let it go.

11. Let yourself feel--anger, sadness, or loss.

12. Challenge yourself to accept what is.

13. Eat with mindfulness--slowly, and with reverence.

14. Taking time for a cup of tea.

15. Express appreciation.

If you are needing some help with getting started, you might check out the simple exercises in The Little Book of Mindfulness: Ten Minutes a Day to Less Stress, More Peace by Dr. Patricia Collard (Gala, 2014). 

I also love the free downloads of guided mindfulness practice you can find through UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center at marc.ucla.edu. Their 9 minute meditation on loving kindness is one of my personal favorites, and would make anyone have a better day filled with more compassion and less edges.

Set your mind to cultivating mindfulness in your everyday life. It's all in the details of consciously creating rituals that slow you down and open up your heart.

Three Cheers For Patience

Patience,it seems,is a highly valuable personal character trait that is in on the endangered species list.In our lives of text messages and rapid-fire e-mails,slowing down,breathing,and pausing before we respond is incredibly helpful in our closest relationships.It can be an asset in other places in your life,too.

Where do we need to exercise patience?

In our close relationships, it often strikes me how often we rush others along while they are speaking. We can interrupt. We can finish other peoples' thoughts (often incorrectly).These bad listening habits contribute to misunderstandings, amd make others feel hurried and disrespected. There is nothing more loving in relationships than to listen from the heart and with every intention to give the other person your full attention.This attending to what your intimate other is saying makes the other person feel more at ease, understood, and important. Spread the attention around to others who matter at work as well.Taking the time to really listen in an unhurried manner gets you a whole different experience than what happens when we interrupt or interrogate. Try the difference with a teenager you love and notice how things open up and change.Teens can smell lectures coming, but are happier if you listen when they feel like sharing. Just don't play devil's advocate,start lecturing or grilling, or you lose a beautiful moment of connection.

With strangers,try a little patience and kindness and see what occurs. Being difficult and impatient with strangers while you are driving,waiting in line at a store,or otherwise going through rote daily public interactions deprives the experience an element of humanity and warmth. Try this with the grocery checker or bagger when they ask you how your day is going:smile and ask them about their day.Let someone merge in front of you.Being a loving,authentic person requires a level of genuineness and patience which says to perfect strangers that you recognize that YOU are not the center of the universe.You also demonstrate with random acts of patience that you are not"busier than thou", and see yourself as part of the community. If you are a parent, keep in mind that you are role-modeling patience or impatience as a lifestyle,eveywhere you go.

Give yourself a little gift of patience,too. Try not to be critical and judgemental of yourself. We are all imperfect.It takes time, as I always remind my patients in therapy, to change behaviors and create new and healthier patterns.When we know better,we generally do better. Try to reflect on lessons learned from any interpersonal sequence you regret,and focus on what you can do differently next time. Apologize freely. Good things generally take time, and aren't instant. Witness the difference between homemade mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving,compared to the microwaveable stuff. Relationships that cultivate depth, real intimacy, flexibility,and resilency also take patience and perseverence. This defies current thinking that things should come effortlessly and stay great automatically in a relationship, or in pursuit of a life goal.The truth is that most things worth having aren't fast or easy.

Be a partner with me in taking patience off the endangered species list:one person, one family,and one workplace at a time.I want Team Patience to beat Team I'm In A Hurry Here. Some conscious attention to living patiently helps us hang on to our humanity as technology speeds up our lives.