Every day we make thousands of choices. Most of them may be insignificant, like what to wear or which perfume to put, but some can entirely change our lives. We may think of them to be small, but they add up, like a water dripping into a bucket, and before we even realize the bucket gets filled.
What are those choices that change our life for the better?
Some are obvious, like keeping a daily practice of self-reflection, eating and sleeping habits.
The others can be managing time, big decisions like marriage, education, job change, health related etc.
Here I would like to share a short story, how mindful awareness can influence our choices.
Once a so called accomplished man went to a monastery wanting to relieve his anxiety and intense stress which he was experiencing for some time. He decided to stay there for some time to learn calmer ways of living. After a few days he noticed that he is enjoying the quiet environment.
It was tough initially to restrain & resist from drinking, smoking and eating habits.
But to his wonderment, in just a couple of days he started feeling levels of compassion, warmth and gratitude in his thoughts towards his relationships and people, which he never felt before. Due to daily practice of mindful awareness, he started noticing the changes in his thoughts and feelings. Gradually his anxiety and stress started reducing and level of happiness and contentment increased manyfold and by the time he came out of the monastery, he was a calm and relaxed person. A couple of years later when he lost his father, who suddenly fell ill and was placed on life support, his clarity and calmness served as a tremendous resource for his whole family.
We often have options that we do not think exist but the need here is to make ourselves available towards them by taking a step back to observe our thoughts, feeling and emotions.
A beneficial and often fun practice which we can use daily is to pause and reflect on the array of things we can think, say or do in a particular moment.
Once we start observing our thoughts we find a variety of options, if our boss wants us to lie to a customer or if we are thinking about some unpleasant incident from the past, with an increased level of awareness we feel a sense of greater power and courage to overcome them.
That’s all for now.
Take care and have an amazing day.
Reenu