NANCY’S NOTES
mind·ful·ness
mind·ful·ness; noun
1. the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.
2. a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.
This is another thing I have trouble with. (Pretty soon, you’ll know everything about me there is to know.) I have trouble staying focused on anything. Whether listening, reading, or just thinking, I have trouble zoning in and staying in the moment. Consequently, I have a lousy memory. I constantly play guessing games at home or at work, and it goes like this: when I can’t think of the word or name I want, I give clues until someone comes up with it. I know, “at my age,” I should really be concerned about this, and I am, so I am working on it.
I get the feeling I’m not alone in this, and I believe this scattered-brainism may be another product of my generation and our times, brought to us by all the distractions of our electronic devices. At least I have diagnosed myself with that being the probable cause.
There’s a lot being said and written about “mindfulness.” I think it’s a relatively new buzzword (within the past 4-5 years?) as I see it a lot on the front covers of magazines and in blogs. I used to pass this stuff by, but I’m sitting up straight and paying attention now because I know this is something I need to work on. Mostly I kind of float through the day in a near dream-like state, flitting from one thing to another and then another, like a butterfly in a flower garden. When I’m working on one thing, I’m thinking of another thing. And that’s how I flutter through the day.
Like a lot of things that we decide to do in order to make a change in life, after admitting we need to (which I just did in the above paragraph!), is to DECIDE TO DO IT. This sounds obvious and trite, but intention is everything. Since my self-diagnosis is that, throughout my day I am preoccupied with too many things at once and therefore cannot do any one thing well, I am really trying to practice mindfulness in various ways.
The best time for me to practice mindfulness is on my morning walk, which I like to think of as a prayer walk. It is during this time that I try to push out any thoughts or plans for the day, and instead, be especially aware of the sounds of the morning: dogs barking, birds singing, roosters crowing, my own breathing, and the sound of my feet on the pavement. I read a quote that I like to think about as I walk: “Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”
I don’t know if anything can be done to help my focus deficiency. It may just be because of all the birthdays I’ve had, but I’m still having too much fun having birthdays to stop. In the meantime, I’ll simply continue to focus on my lack of focus and see if I can increase my ability to focus. Or something like that.
