Dabbling in Mindfulness
I started my mindfulness journey back in 2022, when I personally became interested in how mindfulness helped alleviate stress. As a coach, consultant, and friend, I saw how stress affected the health and well-being of people around me.
So, I had heard about mindfulness, which had probably already passed its peak in pop cultural popularity by that point, but I really wanted to find out for myself. My previous idea was that mindfulness was something that you either had or didn’t have. And meditation… HA! That felt like an impossible task. Quieting the brain? Little did I know, that wasn’t the point at all.
So I dove in, but I kept it pretty simple, learning through various websites and going through a coaching program that I later facilitated for organizations. I meditated regularly during times that felt turbulent and didn’t meditate when I didn’t necessarily “feel a need”. I did recognize that mindfulness meditations are not a “cure” but have many benefits when used regularly, but I personally tapped into mindfulness through practicing active listening, rather than body scans.
My mindfulness journey led me to discover that waking up in the mornings and defaulting to social media feeds were making me feel awful in every way, but only was able to compare the feeling when replacing the social media habit with morning meditations. I can still see the difference, weekdays or weekends, when I default back to that habit, I hear myself think “Why did you waste your time like that, aren’t you stronger and better than that?” And, frankly, even if I did waste the time, that is not a productive frame of mind to start your day with.
Be gone, negative self-talk!
How else did I learn about and practice mindfulness? Well, I got a huge kick out of the book 10% Happier, I recommended breathing meditations to others as work breaks when productivity was low, and I practiced “labeling” my thoughts as a form of meditation. Plus, with practice, I was suddenly able to identify my emotions and confront them as if they were another person standing in front of me.
While I’m not perfect and my mood can still sneakily shift without me noticing it (or managing it), mindfulness meditation helped me take what I learned from training in the emotional intelligence area and witness it in action.
But even with these amazing developments, I still feel like I’ve just been “dabbling” in mindfulness.
Now I want to take my practice a step further. That is, to make it a real practice, rather than a go-to tool. There are a few places where I am very mindless. I’ll pay special attention to these areas as I take my next steps:
Eating. I don’t consider myself to be a horribly unhealthy eater, but I do tend to make meals disappear while watching YouTube or having a chat with a friend.
My physical space. The way that I organize and keep my space, the way that I buy things, and the way that I store things or simply keep items lying around is not very mindful, nor intentional. (And certainly not demure.)
Relationships. I’ve done quite a bit of work to change the way I communicate with friends and loved ones over the last year. I’d like to see how I can continue improving in this area.
As a personal and professional development goal for myself, I’ve committed to taking the next step in my mindfulness training. The next step, for me, is MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction. Training commences later this week and I’ll be sharing my journey here on A Calmer Place.
