Mindfulness

[PartTimeBrewer]

              I am starting a new thread here mainly for purposes of my own catharsis. It is my intention, at least at this point, to make regular contributions. Of course, if anyone else has anything to add, they are more than welcome. If you have any input, please contribute.

              Over a year ago I decided to deal head-on with my self-diagnosed adult attention disorder, (ADD). The inability to stay focused was becoming too stressful. I found myself sitting around watching the clock tick, yet I couldn’t keep “on task” with any project I started. Nothing was getting done and just starting something was becoming depressing.

              The smart thing to do was probably to get professional help, so instead I decided to try to heal myself, at least as a first try. Cognitive therapy and pharmaceuticals (UGH) might be the approved way to go but I decided to try meditation first.

              18 months and countless self-help books later, I still can’t bring myself to a regular, formal meditation program. But, along the way, I discovered informal mindfulness. Yes, I know it is the “Fad” right now. It is hard to navigate modern social trends without “tripping over” somebody extolling the benefits of mindfulness.

              Let me add my voice to the chorus.

[PartTimeBrewer]

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

[PartTimeBrewer]

I've been thinking about how to enrich life by converting nouns to verbs, or at least considering action on the basis of the meaning of the noun. The word "love" is already both a noun and a verb. Here MLK is doing it with the word "peace". I had just come from a Buddhist reading where "compassion" was so used.

[PartTimeBrewer]

"Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it." ~ Dorothy Thomas

[PartTimeBrewer]

"There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day."

~ Alexander Woollcott

[PartTimeBrewer]

"We are our own jailers. We keep ourselves unfree by clinging, out of confusion and fear, to a self that exists independently of all conditions."
~Stephen Batchelor

[PartTimeBrewer]

"One of the ways we become mindless is that we create categories and then become trapped by them. We assume that they have some validity independent of us." ~ Ellen Langer

[PartTimeBrewer]

"Work/life integration seems to me a better goal than balance. Balance suggests that our lives are in two parts. The more mindful we are, the less we compartmentalize our lives." ~ Ellen Langer

[PartTimeBrewer]

"Thinking is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master."

~ Jeff Warren

[PartTimeBrewer]

You have to be willing to give up the life you've planned for in order to live the life that's waiting for you. ~ Joseph Campbello

[PartTimeBrewer]

"Sometimes thoughts pop-up that would really take you to a bad place. The ability to see the thought and choose not to follow it really is profound."
~ Everyday Mindfulness

[PartTimeBrewer]

Especially at 4 AM when ruminating on some calamity, real or otherwise, serves no useful purpose. With practice, these debilitating thoughts can be intercepted and disarmed before the damage is done.

[PartTimeBrewer]

"The categories we make gather momentum and are very hard to overthrow. We build our own and our shared realities and then we become victims of them—blind to the fact that they are constructs, ideas."
~ Ellen Langer