Is mindfulness simply not giving a shit about time?
I used to believe to be mindful meant to be aware and be living in the present moment. Or that it was just a general blanket term for someone who tries to live a more spiritual life.
If someone told me to live more mindfully, especially if I was just starting out on my spiritual journey, I would have had no fucking clue how to integrate that into my daily life.
Only recently it was explained to me in a super simple manner that anyone can integrate it into daily life.
Mindfulness is simply doing any kind of task and not worrying how long it takes you to complete it. It's all about time!
My mind was blown when I heard this. Because yes, to be mindful is to be aware, but placing your awareness on how you feel and actually knowing why you feel frustrated, angry, irritated, unsatisfied etc. is a big key to improving your ability to be mindful.
How many tasks throughout your day do you dread and how many times during those tasks do you just feel like screaming HURRY UP!!
Us humans have an innate clock built into our ego telling us time is running out. Which, in a way our time will run out, our chance of living out our purpose in this human body will end. But being mindful is a way to push our ego back so we actually enjoy our lives. By simply being aware we don’t have a limited time to complete a task.
Most of us want to hurry up mundane everyday tasks to get to the tasks we think we enjoy more.
Tasks you might find yourself feeling frustrated in are driving to work, doing the dishes, cleaning of any kind, being forced to an event you didn’t want to attend and my most hated task - grocery shopping.
Or you get shitty about something going wrong because you know it will “cost” you more time as you then need to do even more tasks.
This of course also applies to your long term goals that take a long time to reach. Be mindful about each little step you have to take to reach it instead of getting super grumpy over every little thing.
So next time you are feeling frustrated, bring awareness in and ask yourself why you feel like this? More often than not it will be because you think whatever you are doing is taking too long and it’s eating into your precious time in this life. It’s not! It’s part of life.
Steph