Mindfulness
There are lots of good resources about mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn is known for his work with mindfulness. He has written several books, has several mindfulness meditation recordings, and developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. This program is available at many places, including some e-seminars. There is a free online version available at http://palousemindfulness.com/selfguide dMBSR.html. |
I'm going to super-condense mindfulness into my own terms. This is by no means a true definition of mindfulness.
Mindfulness to me is the ability to stay completely present at any given moment, giving my complete focus to only what I am doing at that moment. Yes, it's also about meditation, but you can exercise it in everything you do.
Mindfulness is the antithesis of multitasking, which is in fact a misnomer, since no one can do more than one thing at exactly the same moment in time. You may be juggling five things, but for a split second your entire focus is only on one of them until it shifts to another. Try it sometime. You may have several projects going but you can't physically or mentally take action on more than one at a time. The mind is very quick, so it can change thoughts rapidly, but it can never process two simultaneous thoughts in the same millisecond.
I emphasize this only because it took me a really long time to wrap my head around it (and maybe I'm trying to disprove it just a little).
Mindfulness to me is the ability to stay completely present at any given moment, giving my complete focus to only what I am doing at that moment. Yes, it's also about meditation, but you can exercise it in everything you do.
Mindfulness is the antithesis of multitasking, which is in fact a misnomer, since no one can do more than one thing at exactly the same moment in time. You may be juggling five things, but for a split second your entire focus is only on one of them until it shifts to another. Try it sometime. You may have several projects going but you can't physically or mentally take action on more than one at a time. The mind is very quick, so it can change thoughts rapidly, but it can never process two simultaneous thoughts in the same millisecond.
I emphasize this only because it took me a really long time to wrap my head around it (and maybe I'm trying to disprove it just a little).