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Living mindfully in a busy world

7/30/2019

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http://walkingtall.thinkific.com
Our lives are busy and are often filled with competing demands on our time, thoughts, and energy. We find ourselves being pulled in different directions, struggling to balance our work, family and personal commitments and activities. We can become so busy with daily life and worrying about what we have to do next, that we forget what is truly important: living in the present moment. As a result, we can easily feel overwhelmed, stressed, anxious and frazzled.
 
One way to live a less stressful and more balanced life is through the practice of mindfulness. Many people will have heard of mindfulness as it is popular at the moment, with loads of books published on the subject and many mindfulness courses available. It has the potential to truly enhance a person’s quality of life if it is understood and practiced correctly.
 
Mindfulness is derived from eastern Buddhist practices where monks would meditate for hours to still and empty their mind. They saw this as a path to enlightenment, something which takes a lifetime of practice to achieve. Given its Buddhist origins, most people associate mindfulness with the concept of being completely still and of emptying our minds. This is the practice of mindful meditation, which requires quiet time and space away from normal daily life. For most of us, this practice of mindful meditation is not realistic or achievable. Our lives are too busy, are minds are too filled with thoughts that we struggle to control, and we have little free time to sit and meditate.
 
Mindfulness as it has been related to westernised culture, is based on the principle of focus rather than on emptying of our minds. It doesn’t require us to meditate or to be completely still for extended periods of time. Instead, mindfulness is a state of being, where we are completely present and living with full awareness of each moment, as part of our daily lives and activities. This enables us to undertake our daily tasks in a way that frees us from worry about the future or thinking about a multitude of things at once.
 
Living mindfully shifts our focus to each present moment. We give our full attention and focus to our present task or activity, whether it might be sitting reading a book, taking a walk, doing housework, playing with our kids, or taking part in our favourite hobby or pastime. To become more mindful means that we participate fully in the activity that we are doing in that moment, while gently letting go of any distracting thoughts or worries that may come into our minds. We can’t necessarily stop the flow of distracting thoughts, but we can choose not to focus on them.
 
Being fully present and mindful requires us to focus solely on the task at hand. We focus on doing the dishes or playing with our children. We immerse ourselves in that activity in a purposeful way. We also do it in a way that is non-judgmental. This involves recognising but gently letting go of any negative self-talk and the judgments we make about ourselves, such as “I’m not doing this well enough” or “I will never be good enough”.  
 
Learning to live mindfully requires us to develop the skills needed to focus on the task at hand in a way that is purposeful and non-judgmental. It requires dedicated and consistent practice for it to become a normal part of our lives. If we make this commitment, mindfulness has the potential to dramatically enhance our quality of life. It can reduce stress and anxiety, enable us to more fully enjoy our daily lives, and reduce our worries about the future.
 
We can all learn to live more mindfully. If you would like to learn the skills to incorporate mindfulness into your everyday life, check out our online training at https://walkingtall.thinkific.com/.
 
Caroline Hurst
Registered Mental Health Nurse, Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, Acceptance and Commitment Therapist and Dialectical Behaviour Therapist.
 
Copyright © 2019. CBT West™ and Walking Tall. All Rights Reserved.

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How living mindfully changed my life

7/30/2019

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How living mindfully changed my life
20 years ago, I was a highly successful lawyer. I was married, had a great income, and owned my own home. However, I was also incredibly anxious and fast approaching burn out. Despite challenging and rewarding work, I would drag myself out of bed in the morning, dreading the day ahead. I was constantly living for the next weekend and the next holiday. I began to hate everything in between.
 
After a massive breakdown in my mid-thirties, I knew something had to change. While I made many life changes, one seemingly small thing actually made the biggest difference. I stopped constantly looking backwards and forwards, and instead started to focus more on my life as I was living it. In other words, I started to live more in the present moment and the impact it had on my life was huge

Here is what I did.


  • I stopped watching the news on TV. I have always been an avid follower of national and international news. I want to know what is going on in the world around me. I found though, that watching sad, tragic and sometimes gruesome images on the TV news was significantly affecting my mood. These terrible images of human suffering would play over in my head, trapping me in a past that wasn’t even my own. So, I stopped watching and instead started reading the newspaper instead. I still do this every morning. I can then choose what I read and what images I see. I rarely read an article about gruesome events (like mass murders) as I know these will haunt me. Reading the headlines of those stories is enough.

  •  I stopped obsessing about my next holiday. I used to look forward to holidays as a way of getting through the difficult days, weeks and months. I would get very excited about my next holiday. However, while I really enjoyed the first few days of a holiday, I would start to get increasingly depressed as it drew to an end. By the time I went back to work, I was miserable. To cope, I would start planning my next holiday. It was a vicious cycle. Once I realised how miserable this was making me, I stopped obsessing about holidays. I would book and plan for them, but I stopped using them as a source of motivation. This was difficult at first, but over time I trained my brain the let these thoughts go when I became aware of them.

  •  I allowed myself to feel pain. Life is often difficult and painful. As a survivor of trauma, I have experienced a great deal of emotional and psychological pain throughout my life.  I came to realise that I would respond to pain in a couple of distinct ways. It would either overwhelm me and I would become trapped in old painful memories, or I would try to distract myself with something that made me feel better. However, experience taught me that neither of these were helpful, so I started to find ways to be more accepting of pain. I became more willing to just sit with and feel pain as it was happening without necessarily doing anything about it. The pain didn’t disappear, but I found it didn’t last as long and had less impact on my mood.

  • I looked for the joy in each day. All of these changes led me to look at the world around me differently. I started to notice the little joyful moments in each day. This might be the warmth of the sun on my face, or the enjoyment I got from seeing my dog run through the sand dunes. I made a point of acknowledging and soaking up those moments, no matter how small.
 
At the time, I had not heard about mindfulness and while I had a therapist who provided me with tremendous support and guidance, learning to live more in the present moment was something I largely figured out for myself by trial and error. Many years later, I have learnt much more about mindfulness and how to incorporate the skills of living mindfully into my daily life.  These practical skills have enabled me to live a calmer, more fulfilling and joyful life.
 
To find out how you can learn to live a more mindful life, check out our online course at:www.walkingtall.thinkific.com
 
Jane Hurst, PhD
Instructor, Walking Tall
 
Copyright © 2019. CBT West™ Pukekohe and Walking Tall. All Rights Reserved.
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    Picture

    Caroline Hurst

    Caroline is a Registered Mental Health Nurse specialising in CBT, ACT & DBT therapies. Caroline uses a skills based approach for treating anxiety and depression, managing chronic pain and illness, and working with those who want to focus on professional and personal development.

    Picture
    Jane is a professional writer with a doctorate in management. She specialises in taking complex ideas and writing them in a way everyone can understand.

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