The Importance of Being Mindful

So it’s the first day of a fresh new month. The sun is shining more than it’s raining, when we finish work at 5.30pm it’s still light outside and we are one month closer to summer. One might say we have quite a lot to be happy about. However, the reality is that no matter how bloody beautiful it is outside or how swimmingly well our lives are going, the twenty-first century human being has a habit of either dwelling on the past, or worrying about the future. The present ‘now’ doesn’t become a sincerely meaningful thing until tomorrow comes and it’s transformed into the past.

As humans, we are very very bad at appreciating the present moment. Actually, not even appreciating it but merely living it. Everything boils down to yesterday or tomorrow. But what about right now? Like, right this second? How are you feeling? The past has been and gone and you’re never going to create a time-machine, so really, the most important moments of our lives are the ones that we’re drifting straight through whilst our busy minds are set to autopilot.

Have you ever craved a chocolate bar so badly that you go out and buy one to then notice you have an empty packet in front of you without even realising? Or have you returned home from a holiday and it’s only when it’s over that you truly appreciate how amazing it was? Of course you have, you’re human. What we all need in our lives is a little bit of mindfulness.

Now you can all release a ‘PAH’ when I explain that I first learnt about mindfulness whilst doing yoga in Bali in the middle of a Monkey Forest (and no, I wasn’t on my gap yahhh). We’ll let Google provide a definition:

Mindfulness; a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations.

So, mindfulness is a kind of presence then, which sounds almost ridiculous when we are obviously present in our own lives. But how much of this presence is hollow and unappreciated? At a guess, I’d say quite a lot. Whilst in Bali my two dear friends and I adopted the term ‘mindful moments’. This involved us taking five to actually pay attention to our senses and emotions at that very second. It doesn’t take much, but it provides you with an appreciation of the present like nothing else.

Don’t get me wrong, mindfulness does not equal happiness. It’s an awareness of your emotions whatever they might be, and an opportunity to deal with them there and then. Not feeding your mind with experiences from the past or worries about the future. Sure, happiness might be in the next job, in the next city, or with the next person but how are you ever going to be settled in the present if you are constantly striving to fix something that’s not truly broken? It’s very easy to get caught up in the complexities of life, but ultimately, what better time is there to grab life than right now?

Don’t just plateau through, use those ‘mindful moments’ to appreciate life because it can be pretty great. It’s staring us straight in the face so grab on to it, don’t let it overtake you and most importantly, pay attention on purpose.