A Mindful Monday Mood

toddlerlookingatflowers.jpg

A Mindful Monday Mood



Hear the wind chimes tinkling in the breeze

See the fluffy clouds roll by

Smell fresh coffee brewing in the pot

Feel your weight against your chair


Mindfulness is stopping to smell the flowers, experience the moment fully.

Mindfulness is the practice of noticing raw experience. I’ve heard people who don’t understand mindfulness resist the idea that such a practice has value, or even that it makes sense as a tool for coping or for lowering anxiety.

Right now I sit in a quite room writing. There is a dog to my left on the floor snoring loudly, and another to my right who joins in sporadically with softer breaths. With the wind chimes outside the window and the click of the keys as I type, these sounds create a sort of improvisational song. And then they go silent for a moment before the snores pick up again.

Mindfulness is: sitting here, fully present in this experience, simply observing. Mindfulness stands in stark contrast to sitting here running a list of things that I should worry about, what might go wrong, or what I should have said or done differently in another time and place. Mindfulness is my effort to stay in this place and experience it as it is, without analysis or distortion.

If you haven’t tried mindfulness, it’s worth the effort to learn. And nothing about mindfulness is hard, it just requires that you make time to practice shifting your attention away from your constant mental chatter, and toward simple experiencing. You might be amazed at how your moods shift subtly when your attention is redirected.

Posted on April 22, 2019 by Melissa Deuter.