Just a Thought…about Mindfulness
Our guest blogger is Christie Reed, founder of HumanKind by Design. She facilitates conversations with individuals and groups designed to empower them to impact and fulfill on what they care about most. She’s also a great human being with incredible insight. Every time we connect, I feel energized and inspired.
Thank you, Christie!!
I’ve done a lot of development in my life. Since the age of 23, I’ve been in some form of growth and development work or another, all of which I would call transformational in nature. I even worked at a yoga studio for a couple of years as a manager and started to appreciate the practice of Yoga. I got that it wasn’t just a physical practice, but one I could actually take off my mat and into my life.
All of that development has shown me that awareness is where it all begins.
Everything we authentically want for ourselves and our lives starts with becoming aware. Everything that really matters to us starts with interrupting our automatic and unconscious survival thinking and behaviors by becoming aware of them.
But through all of it, for some reason when someone would say the word “mindful” or “meditation” to me, I knew intellectually it had value and was about awareness, but I never really connected to it. In fact, if I tell the truth, I might have thought it was a little too “crunchy“ or “woo-woo” for me or about escaping from reality.
Until a couple of months ago.
Over the last 5 or so years, I had developed some practices I knew were not working for me and which, no matter what I seemed to do, I couldn’t shake. When I hit midlife, I started watching a TON of TV. Probably more TV than I’ve ever watched in all the years before. (Let me rephrase that – I started binging TV like a TV-aholic.) And, similarly, I started eating (and sometimes drinking) in ways that also felt addictive.
I “knew” all of the reasons. I even knew it had nothing to do with TV or food, really. I knew the source was something else entirely. I could write the textbook on it. But, freedom still alluded me.
Then, one day I was writing a list of practices in my life that I knew weren’t working for me in my journal, and I wrote the following…
Mindlessly watching TV.
Mindlessly eating.
And it hit me like a lightening bolt. That’s it. That’s the real issue. Being mindless about my choices. Not TV, or even watching TV. Not eating sugar, a burger or having a cocktail. The quality of my life isn’t about never watching TV, or even watching less TV, and it’s not about never having a burger, sugar or a glass of wine again or “cutting back.” It’s about the quality of all of those interactions.
Am I being mindful or mindless?
Am I acting on autopilot and out of habit or am I making a mindful choice?
When I say a “mindful choice” I don’t mean the “right” choice or the “good” choice. I mean mindful. I still may watch the same TV show I watched before, or some days I may choose to “binge” several episodes, but when I take on being mindful – coming off autopilot and becoming aware - I’m crystal clear that I’m choosing to watch it, and that makes it fulfilling versus draining, guilt-producing, derailing and de-energizing. And, sometimes I find, being mindful does change my choices about what I watch or how much of it I watch at a time. Either way, I’m the author of the experience, and that’s a completely different universe.
I’m discovering that being mindful is what creates the quality of my experience, not the circumstances themselves. And the quality of my experience now, creates the quality of my life and experience in the next moment…
Dear mindfulness…I stand corrected!
Mindfulness: “Dear Christie…it’s all good, you’re human.”
