From a total beginner at living in the moment - an experiment in applying Mindfulness.

"The best way to capture moments is to pay attention.  This is how we cultivate mindfulness.  Mindfulness means being awake.  It means knowing what you are doing."             

Steve (my fiancé) drives me round the bend when he plays on his phone whilst we watch TV, watch a film or even when we eat dinner.  But what throws me into even more of a rage is when I realise I’m doing it too.  The only difference is I’m not on Candy Crush, I’m doing important things… like checking Facebook.   

We all work hard and have guilty pleasures which help us unwind of an evening, and I’m not ashamed to admit our guilty pleasure is ‘EastEnders’ (no judgement please) The other day we were “watching” an episode, both of us glued to our phones, and missed the lead up to the good bit and ended up totally lost and having to rewind. It was most annoying as we couldn’t find the right point at which we’d both tuned out and so, from now on, phones are down and we dedicate a full 30 minutes to our guilty pleasure.

Mindful eating is something to try too and as well as enjoying the food a lot more, I find I'm less likely to overeat than when I mindlessly eat whilst doing other things!   I’m all for multi-tasking but when it comes to the those little treats and moments of bliss, like a favourite TV show or a delicious dinner, I think we owe it our full attention and for this reason I now make a conscious effort to apply mindfulness every day.  

Mindfulness has become a bit of a ‘buzzword’ lately and I’ve only really read about it since starting my Life Coaching course and it’s made me realise that since a very young age I have been completely rubbish at living in the moment.  I am a thinker, not so much in an intellectual way, more in a daydreamy kind of way, and I can often be physically present somewhere but be totally in my own world.  In science or maths lessons at school (my worst subjects) I’d often transport myself to my own little world which was much more fun.  I think this developed into quite a bad habit and I’m starting to realise now that I missed out on things simply from not ‘being in the moment.’  

Evidence of this is that my younger sister remembers the tiniest details from family holidays and she’ll occasionally bring up memories she has and I’ll look blankly at her.  It’s not even just the little things I don’t recall, sometimes my family will talk about an area we visited or a day out and nope, nothing.  The reason is that, again, I was in my own little world, most probably thinking about boys!

My two week mindfulness experiment

For one of my life coaching assignments I applied mindfulness to my life for a two week period and I found this really interesting…and hard.  As well as generally trying to be more mindful day to day, I specifically applied it to my walks to work.  I’m lucky enough to have a 15 minute walk to work each day and normally go from A to B on autopilot.  In fact, I often don’t pay any attention at all to my surroundings, just to the constant chatter that goes on in my head…. people I need to get in touch with, what I have to do at work, jobs I need to do and various worries about anything and everything.  During my two week experiment I actually listened to the sounds around me, paid attention to the people I passed, observed nature.  When you look for it, there is so much out there to appreciate that can so easily be lost in the general hectic-ness of life. 

I began to really look forward to my walks to work.  Of course thoughts crept in along the way but when they did, or when they started to build momentum, I brought myself back to the present moment.  As I neared the end of the two weeks I really did feel that this little experiment had had a really positive effect on my wellbeing.   I was making the conscious effort to really savour and appreciate things – the feel of a nice hot bubble bath, the taste of a home cooked meal, the feeling I got having my first sip of Pinot on Friday night and, of course, good old ‘EastEnders’.  For me, all these little moments add up to increased feelings of happiness which can only be a good thing.  The hardest thing is actually remembering to apply mindfulness but when you do you’ll be really glad you did.

By the end of the two weeks I was feeling more positive, calmer and more appreciative of the small things that are actually the big things when you bother to notice them, like my ability to see my surroundings, walk to work and smell the lovely garlic coming from the Italian restaurant on my walk home!

I’m still new to mindfulness and have just scratched the surface in terms of how practicing it can have a positive impact on my daily life.  This, I’m sure, will be the first of a few mindfulness themed blog posts as my knowledge and experience in the area grows.  A couple of books on the topic which I really enjoyed are Mindfulness – apractical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams &Danny Penman and Mindfulness: Be Mindful, Live in the Momentby Gill Hasson

But for now, why not apply some mindfulness to your day and see if it injects just a little bit of extra happiness?  Let me know how you get on...