Keep calm and don’t get carried away

28 Feb, 2022

Keep calm and don’t get carried away

Mindfulness is a highly effective way to keep yourself calm and emotionally balanced, but the traditional approach demands that we regularly spend quiet time on a meditation cushion. Luckily mindfulness is very flexible and there are many ways to practise without having to meditate. Let’s try these two easy exercises this coming week!

1. Distract your judgemental mind
Stress is not being caused by incidents in the outside world, but by your own response to those incidents. If a situation makes your stomach contract with stress and anxiety, realise that reality is what it is: not good and not bad. Only your own judgements turn a neutral situation into something stressful.

So what if you are in a hurry, then suddenly find yourself in slow traffic? How is that not bad, huh? Well… actually it’s not good and not bad. It just is. If you allow your mind to label it ‘bad’, you will experience extreme stress and frustration. But no matter how much you’ll stress yourself out: it still won’t give you the power to change the situation.

However, if you would take a few seconds and think… you’ll find that you do have the power to change your thoughts. How? By telling yourself: “This is what it is, I don’t have to judge it. This is not a life-or-death situation and nobody will die when I arrive later than expected. So be it.”

Your mind will keep on trying to drag you into panicky thoughts about you being stuck in traffic and how awful your situation is. But be strong and distract your mind with interesting or joyful thoughts, so that you won’t give it room to worry. Now take a few deep breaths; on every exhale, let go of any remaining tension.

2. Pay attention to what you’re doing now
Stress is being caused by judgemental thoughts about incidents and situations. Judging is not bad: it’s simply what your mind does. Still, that doesn’t mean that you have to lose yourself in those negative, judgemental thoughts. In order to be your mind’s master rather than its slave, you can practice mindfulness by doing everything you do with undivided attention.

How? By focusing on just one task, such as walking to the butcher, organising your desk or peeling potatoes when you’re making dinner. So walk in awareness, look around you and notice the street, the trees, the shops and the other people rather than looking into your phone. Organise your desk with undivided attention, without chatting to colleagues or checking your email every other minute. Peel the potatoes without watching TV at the same time. Instead, watch your hands with sincere attention, and

appreciate how cleverly they perform this task and what a miracle of refined movements your body actually is. Quietly enjoy the inner calm that you’ll experience.

Spiritual growth
Mindfulness teaches us to think for ourselves and not obey our judgemental mind blindly. By practicing mindfulness regularly you’ll fall less and less often in the panic trap while consistently working on a better focus, emotional resilience and spiritual growth. And as you can see, you don’t need meditation to achieve this!

n Marisa Garau is a mindfulness expert who has lived in Mangawhai since 2007. Find more practical tips on how to de-stress your life at her website or flick her an email if you’d like to have a personal chat: marisa@growingmindfulness.com