How mindful are you in your day to day living? Mindfulness is being open, aware and fully receptive to moments as they occur. Being mindful, in a sense means that you are in some ways free of the realm of time. This is because the past and future are constructs of your mind, however, there is no beginning or end to what is now. There’s a timelessness involved with being mindful.

Too often we get caught up in our consciousness and thoughts, so we are essentially ‘half-awake,’ or ‘half-conscious.’ This is a result of habitual thinking patterns that have been ingrained in us for years and years. Many of us are not even aware that they are there.

Here are a couple of very simple examples that I’m sure all of us are aware of and have experienced. If you work in an office, you probably attend many meetings. How many meetings have you been involved in where some or all of the participants brought their laptops and were typing away, ‘half-aware’ of what was actually going on in the meeting? How would the meeting change if all participants were truly present, engaged and mindful?

How many times have you had a conversation with a loved one or a friend and in the middle of the conversation you look down to check your phone, or type a text message? Maybe you aren’t fully engaged in the conversation at all and instead you’re thinking about where you need to be or when you can end the conversation.

The above are examples of mindless living.

Extensive research has been done on this subject and a tool for measuring mindfulness was developed. It’s called The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (Brown & Ryan, 2003). This questionnaire is used to gauge how mindful you are. Take the time to review and honestly answer each of the below questions:

1. I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.
2. I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention, or thinking of something else.
3. I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present.
4. I tend to walk quickly to where I’m going without paying attention along the way.
5. I tend not to notice feelings of physical tension or discomfort until they really grab my attention.
6. I forget a person’s name almost as soon as I’ve been told it for the first time.
7. It seems I’m “running on automatic” without much awareness of what I’m doing.
8. I rush through activities without being really attentive to them.
9. I get so focused on the goal I want to achieve that I lost touch with what I am doing right now to get there.
10. I do jobs or tasks automatically, without being aware of what I’m doing.
11. I find myself listening to someone with one ear, doing something else at the same time.
12. I drive places on “automatic pilot” and then wonder why I went there.
13. I find myself preoccupied with the future or the past.
14. I find myself doing things without paying attention.
15. I snack without being aware that I’m eating.

I found some of these questions to be very interesting. Take #9 for example. Do you get so caught up in your projects and the end goal that you don’t appreciate what you’re doing in the present moment? I think that this can be a big challenge in lifestyle design. Many people are focused on the end-goal (traveling, leaving a 9-5 job, making money online, etc.) without being mindful and in touch with what they are doing to get there because the sole focus and attention is on the ‘future.’

Others may be fully mindless of the process itself, blindly following someone else’s process for lifestyle design, without stopping and being totally present with what they are doing in the moment in order to determine if it’s even something that they want to do.

Finally, during this holiday season we all find ourselves in a rush. There are errands to run, cleaning that needs to get done, traveling from place to place, presents to buy and parties to attend. What should be a joyous time in our lives often turns out to be an overly stressful time. If you find yourself in a rush or stressed take the time to stop. This doesn’t mean stop your thoughts. Instead, take the time to stop being pre-occupied with what’s in your mind and focus on being present. It doesn’t have to be much. Simply asking yourself ‘Am I awake,’ and focusing on your breath for a minute helps.

Focus on the above questions. If you have difficulty with some of them, ask yourself what you can do to reverse it and be more present. Always remember that there is no better time to start your mindfulness training than right now.

Photo Credit: Joel Bedford