Some mindful principles
Mindful principles are fundamental to any process of working with the mind towards improved outcomes in life. So what is mindfulness, and how does this help?
A good way of thinking of this is to imagine standing by a road, watching what passes by. Sometimes it’s deserted, sometimes traffic is zipping by both ways fast, at points coming to a standstill, and with all kinds of vehicles passing by throughout the day.
Considering our-self as an observer stood by the side of the road, we may see a bus-full of chocolate come to a standstill (or something that ignites a powerful desire, perhaps a bus-load of swimwear models). Perhaps a car drives by full of snakes, which may be scary. Or a mathematics professor with a loudhailer, spouting a quantum mechanics lecture from his bike, which is dull and uninteresting.
Over the course of the time we spend by the side of the road, its contents have many effects, and we are tempted to chase after things that appeal to us, ignore or run from those which cause us discomfort, get angry at those that cause us an affront. When all we really had to do was stand there and observe.
This is the skill of mindfulness. Paying attention in this example to the mind as the road, with everything whizzing through it sometimes painfully slowly where we’re aware of every fiddly little detail. Other times when the traffic is so fly-by that we’re barely aware what’s passing through
Mindful skills, if they can so be called, begin to permeate our normal life after some practice. We may find ourselves aware of situations as they unfold, and find we can decide not to react in a habitual way we may have done previously. We can undo some of the harmful and limiting ways we run through the daily routines, and take away much of the suffering from what is difficult and challenging for us.
So why we become more mindful is to understand and experience these benefits for our-self. We experience a change in how we can perceive the world around us, and ourselves within it. We can effect a change in our frame of mind, so that it will have a powerful and positive impact on our life at large.
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In this sense the only thing we really need to get hung up on isn’t why or how to be mindful, this is bland and impersonal. Instead we merely need reflect on what ways could we benefit from a greater understanding and experience of our own mind. This leads nicely to seeing where mindfulness can fit into our life, thus avoiding time and money spent idly on courses and programmes.
Whether we want a better work-family balance, to be calmer, to have a better business mindset it doesn’t really matter whatever our focus is. Having a more mindful outlook is fundamental to any process of working with the mind towards improved outcomes in life.
