The first thing to do is learn HOW to become more consciously aware and the one minute exercise
I know that many of you have attended the Mindfulness classes here and so are familiar with the concepts below. However, my question is whether you have integrated these practices into your lives now or not?
Here are some suggestions that will help you learn HOW to focus and stay in the present without drifting off. I must add that if you don’t practice, nothing will change as these practices need to be internalized by you. Practice and repetition are the only way to reach mastery, anything else doesn’t work. Practice throughout the day in the small ways suggested below will have great impact if you work towards internalizing them.
- When you clean your teeth, focus on it
- Cleaning the sink
- Cleaning the toilet
- Walking
- Preparing food
- Washing up cups
- Showering, smelling the soap, feeling the water
- Shaving
- Drinking a cup of tea or coffee
- Eating
- Eating a nut
- Swimming
- Dusting
14: focus on a flickering candle
When you start to practice any of the above, you are actually training your mind, disciplining it, teaching it how to stay where it is.
Discipline can mean you have greater choices in your life because you decide rather than your automatic ridding from your life.
The whole point of the exercises is to focus on small mundane tasks that require no thought.
When you make these exercises a daily practice, you will be sharpening your mind and training it to focus on the present (task). Getting into this practice is not about meditating for fifteen minutes each day, it’s about training your mind and totally transforming it. Meditation is important of course, but it is not the complete picture.
You will only achieve mastery through regular practice throughout the day and on a daily basis. It is no different to going to the gym. If you go to the gym once a week for fifteen minutes, nothing changes. If you go every day for one hour, you will experience dramatic change. So it is with training the mind. You can only benefit if and when you dedicate yourself to the practice.
It doesn’t mean becoming obsessed, it means learning how to internalize what you are practicing.
Learning to become consciously so that it does impact on your quality of life can start right here, so make no mistake these exercises are the first step.
Once you start to master the techniques, then it’s time to put them into practice within your own world