Calm weathers
Hello dear Reader ! I hope you are doing good. Last week was somewhat good if you are talking about weather. The skies were clear and sun shone brightly and the stars were all up there.
I have been trying to practice mindfulness meditation on and off for some time now. I got to know the term “mindfulness” while doing masters. I didn’t give much thought on that for sometime. But as work and pressure caught on, I realized that my productivity went down crazy. If I started on a report or seminar, it would always be in the last minute. I would always postpone things. When I started early though, my mind would wander off in a split second. Take for instance , I start writing some code. By the time I would actually complete the work or atleast some milestone, my chrome would have tens of tabs open on nearly everything not required at that moment. One tab would have youtube playing some random music, one tab ( sometimes multiple) with Facebook which I would have scrolled endlessly till the beginning of time itself (yet refreshing to start again). Some tabs would have something weird I would search in Wikipedia. What I mean from all my complaints is that the mind wanders and would continue to wander if not taken control. Its in the nature of the mind to travel and ensure chaos. On close introspection, I realized that that behavior was a symptom of an underlying cause. You see my mind always goes back in time , regretting the same mistakes again and again. Those endless tabs represent my mind’s effort to take me off that thoughts by putting into something that would provide instant gratification. “Instant Gratification” , a term dear listener even if you haven’t heard you would have surely experienced. You see our mind craves instant satisfaction. You would want something delicious, you would finish off the bag of chips in a matter of minutes eventhough you could have enjoyed the same thing over the week little by little. You don’t want to cook because that takes time. So you order truckload of food from Grubhub or DoorDash. You never seem to really enjoy the food but you are happy that that experience is taking your mind off things. You want to immediately be on ease at each moment. So you put on the music for every second of that duration just to keep your mind from panicking.
You see there are countless ways that you mind wants instant gratification. The key to a successful mind control is to start with rejecting things just for the sake of instant satisfaction. You want to eat. First cook your ass off and then take a bite. You want to work. Put down those earphones and disable other tabs by this extension. You want to get better body , stop with the videos and start exercising or just plain walking. And if you want to achieve all the above, start mindfulness. While it sounds religious, mindfulness meditation just asks to concentrate on the breathing or the sound around you. And when I mean concentrate , I mean just seeing the rise and fall of your breathing. Taking a deep breath , pausing for a second and then letting it all out. Just like life. You take a new breath and let out all your old worries out. While it sounds simpler, it is just as dauting as Goku practicing in 100G. Start simple , say 2 minutes for first few days, 5 minutes in the next week and then 15 minutes or more thereafter. Believe me you will feel a difference , a surge in motivation and energy. Like Goku’s Kamehameha, your efforts will be all in the direction you want and that generates a lot of impact. If practicing on your own is difficult, use guided mindfulness apps or soundtracks. I am trying to stay consistent nowadays, that means doing everyday at the same time ( before work or after ). Hope it helps you too.
