What is mindfulness? It is a state of being aware or conscious at the present moment. Why am I talking about this today? Because mindfulness is very important in our daily lives to be happy and successful. I attended a career development session last year and mindfulness was taught for about a few weeks with a lot of emphasis before moving on to resume writing and the job-hunting process.
Imagine you are attending a lecture or listening to your boss for some important instructions, but your mind is drifting away somewhere else. Or you made some serious mistakes because you were not paying attention. Just one small mistake one day can make you pay a big price. So it is extremely important to concentrate better, to be mindful, to be awake at the present moment (however you want me to describe). One of the keys to success is effective listening and we need to be mindful in order to listen better.
Some spiritual coaches talk about consciousness and they use a lot of fancy words and claim they can help people become more aware of themselves. In all essence, they are talking about mindfulness.
Why is it hard for a lot of us to be mindful? If you notice carefully, when we are not mindful, we are either thinking about some past events or some imaginary future events. We think about the past because-either we want to re-live some happy moments or we wish we could have changed certain things of the past. We contemplate the future because we are either planning something or we are suspecting something good or bad might happen. Now we cannot change anything in the past nor do we have any control over the future. So why spoil the present moment for things which are not in our control? The worst part is, when we are stressed, we tend to be less mindful.
How do you become mindful? I am sharing with you a very simple trick. Whenever you find yourself lacking focus, just breathe in and breathe out, bring your concentration to your breathing exercise for a few moments. Let all other thoughts pass. Activate your senses while you are doing it. Try not to think of anything else. Just concentrate on your existence. Do this simple trick everyday everywhere. It will be hard at first, you will find yourself going in and out of your awareness. But don’t give up, keep practicing. You can spend some quiet time every day doing this mindfulness meditation. Prayers do help a lot as well if you have any particular faith. But you should always be doing this, whenever you are finding yourself not paying enough attention.
My World 