Mindful March.
Why is spring time the perfect season to bring mindfulness into your life?
In March (the 20th to be exact) we see the start of a new season! The season that brings growth and newness. As humans we are intuitively aligned to the seasons of nature, but we have to (and sometimes choose to) overrule our natural instincts as we work to a different rule of ‘time’. For example, in the winter all we really want to do is be inactive, sleep for longer and eat warming meals. During summer we are the complete opposite.
Spring is literally where nature starts to bloom again.
New beginnings. So how about new beginnings for you? You may feel a sense of change as we go into Spring that motivates you to do something different. Maybe work or life events are making you stressed or unhappy or you feel like you want to be a bit more ‘well’?
Mindfulness can certainly help and is actually the first step in any health journey, mental or physical.
It’s a huge buzzword in ‘wellness’ and has been prevalent in our culture for the last 3 years, maybe more. But what is it, actually? Can you achieve it every day? And why the heck should you? Mindfulness is the practise of being ‘in the present moment’.
Have you ever had a car journey that you can’t remember as you were on a call, talking to the kids or off somewhere else in your mind?
Life is a bit like that car journey. If you don’t focus on the present, you can miss all the good things. Mindfulness can be as simple focussing on ONE task. We live in an open- all- hours culture of multi- tasking to the extreme.
We have work conference calls while driving because it’s an ‘efficient use of time when you are otherwise not productive’ (which is not only dangerous but we often either forget the journey or what we had promised to do on the call).
We call friends while we have the kids as it’s the ‘only time’ we have (meaning the kids and the friends get 50% of your focus each).
We try and cram as much into our day and night as we can and then worry about the to- do list (that ALWAYS has something on it that didn’t get done that is not actually urgent but we can’t stop thinking ‘I should’ and it acts like a weight on our shoulders).
All of these scenarios create stress. With Mindfulness we look to do the opposite. You can create time you didn’t know you had. You can become more productive, and less stressed.