Wednesday 29 November 2017

Reading: A Mindful Activity

Yes, you read that right.

It's something I've been thing about for some time now. In a world full of distractions, choices and endless options for occupying oneself from one second to the next.
I often find myself unable to focus on one form of entertainment at once. Tell me I'm not the only one who can be caught watching hater Netflix boxset I'm bingeing on currently, whilst at the same time, flicking through Facebook posts and responding to Whatsapp messages. All. At. once. I often feel that I'm quite capable of taking all those in well. But then I'm often to be found rewinding said TV series when something profound happens and I admit I hadn't quite caught it or the lead up to it, or why it is profound in the first place.

There is often so much out there that we feel we are missing out on a lot if we don't have our fingers, quite literally on the button, for each new update.

In recent times, we have also experienced an epidemic of anxiety and depression that more and more research is linking to our excessive use of social media and the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). With every new update, every new notification, every new like or comment on our photograph, Facebook post or Whatsapp photo, we get a spike of Dopamine, a hit of that happy hormone. And following that, we then spend an inordinate amount of time seeking a further hit. And another. And another.

For those of us you can, I'd like us to take a look back to a time when we did not have Facebook or other miscellaneous forms of social media. *sharp intake of breath* I know. It's distressing, but just for a few moments, think back. Life still happened, right? You were still entertained, right? You still had friends. Ones you probably saw more regularly or spoke to more frequently than you do now. And there wasn't always this persistent feeling in the middle of your back somewhere that you should be doing something...else.

It's possible that it is just me that experiences all the above. It's possible. But somehow I doubt it.

You will all have heard about Mindfulness. In the last few years, it has become ubiquitous: a saviour of frazzled minds inundated with worry, anxiety and stress. Courses, workshops, retreats, podcasts, articles etc, have laid out different techniques and processes for implementing mindfulness in one's daily life. Indeed, it has even been taken up by employers, eager to improve productivity and wellbeing of their staff.

The premise behind Mindfulness, as I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong), is to ground a person's thoughts for a space of time. To reign one's mind in to focus solely on the present. Not what appointment you have next; not what you've forgotten to add to your Christmas shopping list; or the witty, barbed response you should have made to a veiled insult you received earlier that day. None of that. Only to focus on your breathing; the comfortable position in which you've situated your body for the session; the sensation of every extremity in relation to its surroundings and the surfaces they are in contact with. To experience your body's sensations and to savour them. For that allocated time, to ignore the pings, the notifications, the unanswered posts and the unliked photos. To just be an unharrassed person, breathing in an out. And in and out.

I must admit, the relatively few times I've tried Mindfulness sessions, I've enjoyed them. But nothing really calls me back to it from one session to the next. The moment my eyes open, I'm once again inundated and my mind is racing back to all the things it held off for that time.

What has all this got to do with reading, you ask?

Well, as the title of the blog post indicates, there is one activity that for me brings the essence of mindfulness to its fullest potential in my life. And that is reading.

I find that a twenty minute read of whatever work of fiction I have on the go- whether a physical book or one on an e-reader- when I come to the end of that time, I proceed about my day with a spring in my step, lighter and happier than I've ever felt after a typical Mindfulness session that the gurus offer.

I think it is because, reading a work of fiction, does not just cause you to forget about the noise and annoyances around you. It does more than that. It whisks you fully away from it and places you in a time and place of your choosing, with companions you are getting to know and becoming friendly with and adventures you are eager to see to fruition. It gives you a life experience totally removed from the one outside of the book. When you do come back, maybe because your pet needs feeding or an alarm has gone off and the real world beckons, yes, it's with a heavy heart because you have to leave the story for that time. But excitement lingers because you know, as soon as you can get another block of time, you'll be back in there, gamboling about fully engaged with the story, your real-life stresses happily forgotten.

If given a choice on the best way to de-stress, I'll choose a good book and a nice long read, anytime.
How about you? Do you agree? Or do would you choose something totally different from a book for a few minutes of abandon in the middle of a busy day?

Please let me know in the comments.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Monday 13 November 2017

The Gift of Time

It’s been a while…

I can’t believe my last post on here was in April 2013.

I think about how my life was at the time and I know why I couldn’t keep it up. I was in training at the time, I was in on-the-job training. It was tough- both the day to day job, the assessments and the examination preparations. There was constant guilt whenever I took time out to do something not relate to it. But that guilt was also laced with fear, because if I took that time and did not give as much as I could to my studies and ended up with poor outcomes in my assessments and exams, then I could only blame myself.

So, I made the decision to focus on that. I did. I am now qualified and working for myself.

Now, however, I know it’s not just that. I know I could have kept the blog up. How could I have done that? By making it a priority and giving it its own space in my head and in my schedule.

You see, I have only recently discovered the genius of the weekly timetable. I know, it’s late, right? But as they say, It’s better late than never!

When I was gifted the idea of a coming up with a weekly timetable, I only thought that it would help me remember from one day to the next what I had to do. And I must admit that it does this beautifully.

What I did not consider at all, was the space it would free up in my head and the amount of appreciation I would develop for how much time there actually is in the day.

Prior to the timetable, as someone that works in the evenings, I would get up leisurely in the mornings- without an alarm. Then immediately, my mind would start ruminations on what I need to be getting on with. I would decide which to tackle based on either how long I have procrastinated on it; or how likely I was to forget it if I didn’t do it then and there; or how immediate its resolution was (i.e. I had an appointment to attend or a deadline which took the decision out of my hands).

As I did the chosen, task, I would remember another and another. My mind would be endlessly distracted, simple tasks would take hours to complete because I knew I didn’t have to do it just then. There was not structure. Procrastination was easy.

I would often go to work later in the day feeling like I had wasted my time, frittered it away on nothing. I had no way of knowing what I’d accomplished. Even when I’d been running around all day, if I finally sit down for a bit of relaxation I couldn’t enjoy it because there was always the feeling that I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do. I remained plagued with guilt because I felt I hadn’t earned that time, I hadn’t accomplished anything. Basically, in my mind, there was still lots to do so why was I lounging about?

Then came the timetable. And suddenly, my mind is clear and uninterrupted.

I give myself an hour at the end of the weekend to think about what I need to get done during the week, and I write it down giving myself blocks of time in which to do each thing.

The first week, I got so much accomplished that I became unwell at the end of the week. Apart from the fact that I am fragile in that way, what I realised was that I did not schedule time for active R&R. I was run down. My lesson for that week was the importance of rest.

But I felt so accomplished. I could not believe how much I got done. I also learnt that I am very amenable to it. When I am doing thing, and thoughts of “Oh, didn’t you say you needed to do x, y, z…?” I immediately thought, “Yes, but that’s in the timetable for tomorrow afternoon, so no need to think about it now.” And just like that, the thought was gone and I continued the task I currently had at hand. In my previous life, my response would have been, “Oh yes, let me leave this and go and do that before I forget!” Hence, a trail of perpetually unfinished tasks and a harried mind.

Also, by breaking my day into blocks of time, I found that I could focus quite easily on the time I was currently in and if my mind drifted, it would be to the upcoming task block. I hardly thought about the spectre of going to work later, until the time to prepare for work, came around. That improved my time at work, because I came to it fresh instead of having frowned about it all day, instead of ruminating about things that may go wrong or things I’d done wrong (unless an active reflection period had been scheduled into the timetable!). The feeling that I had used my day well also gave me a satisfied attitude and helped my demeanour through my shifts.

I wonder what I could have accomplished if I adopted this practice ten years ago. Not even that, say five years ago. But there’s no good dwelling of “What ifs”.

I am a timetable convert now. And from now on, even if I drift and forget for a week or two to do a timetable, I know I will be soon brought back to it because the benefits are tremendous for me.
What about you? What habits have you implemented in your life that have transformed it? Do you also keep a schedule or timetable? Do you think it’s helped or hindered you? A friend of mine is against it because she feels it kills or constricts creativity. Have you found that? I can’t speak to that as yet. I will let you know as time goes on.

You see, I timetabled this post in to my day and I have got it done, without knowing before opening the word document, what I was going to write about. Would I have been so focused and productive if I hadn’t? Based on previous experience, I would say no.


Have a brilliant week!