If you are always on the rush for the next moment, what happens to the ones you ‘are in’?

What Mindfulness really is?

It is the process through which we ‘actively notice’ new things, ‘let go of’ the preconceived mindsets and then ‘act’ on these new observations. The goal of a healing lifestyle involves the same things! That’s how being mind‘ful’ helps you heal from inside out.

In order to completely understand this concept and truth, what we need to be aware of is our general tendency to remain in a mind‘less’ mode for most part of our everyday lives.

How and Why Mindlessness sets in and converts into a lifestyle?

If we have really understood the meaning of being mindful, then there is a realization that true mindfulness comes from being conscious of one’s internal and external environment all the time. Now, this is the ‘ultimate possibility’. But, its not feasible and possible to remain conscious all the time. Our everyday struggles and hassles such as that of meeting the deadlines, children’s schooling, bill payments, dealing with promotion to higher posts, resigning from current job, etc. makes it hard to remain entirely stress free and calm enough to remain focused and conscious of our feelings, thinking, actions, behaviors ‘all the time’.

We end up becoming ‘reactive’ rather than ‘attentive’ – a state which is the exact opposite of ‘mindful’.

A glimpse of an ‘unconscious day’ –

Some of the experiences that it would include:

• You eat while you are on the run.    
• You eat irregularly without much notice to the feeling of hunger.    
• You act as if you are rushed or pressured.    
• You are no noticing even a single thing that you would really call as ‘beautiful’!    
• You keep feeling bad about your body or your weight, just like you did in the past and just like you will in future.    
• You lash out at your close friend without giving it a thought and regret after you feel he/she might be hurt.   
• You fail to stand up for yourself, just keeping along and getting along with people without much thought for its usefulness.    
• You keep worrying about a nagging problem, but do not really plan to solve it at all. These are few examples of ‘an unconscious day’ or ‘mindlessness getting normalized’! Due to the ease of getting into mindless mode, what’s really going on is that mindlessness is getting ‘normalized’ by people in today’s times. Only by seeing this and being aware of this experience can you ‘begin’ to change!

If you find yourself frequently trapped into a mindless lifestyle, be a wise healer by being ‘aware’ of the damage that is caused to your ‘self’ over time…and ‘only’ with this awareness your inner healing and spiritual growth begins!

By-Gunjan Sharma
(Clinical Psychologist)
Team-Talk To Angel