Guest Blogger Paul Masidza, Marketing Director, Kenya
We hear the words mindfulness and meditation just about everywhere these days. But what does it really mean to be mindful, and how can you practice mindfulness/meditation to boost your personal and professional life?
Being more mindful has many perks. practical mindfulness is just as useful as one-on-one cognitive behavioral therapy for stress-related conditions such as anxiety. Mindfulness can relieve our perception of aches and pains, keep us more focused at work, and help us become more resilient. It’s also an ideal way to get a grip on emotions, which can affect our attention, memory and motivation.
You almost need a black belt in emotional management in today’s volatile, uncertain and ever-changing corporate landscape.
Mindfulness Meditation gives us a space between our emotions and our fight-flight-freeze reactions, however brief, and increases our ability to respond more skillfully. This can lead to a reduction in conflicts and an ability to utilize empathy to drive stronger relationships.
Being able to observe how your mind is spinning instead of quickly reacting in an upset way can certainly help us evolve. Mindfulness Meditation works wonders, but how exactly does one do it? Here are a few tips to help you tune into your inner Zen.
Soul Wisdom ‘SOUL CIRCLES’
Know what Serving is, and isn’t. There are many ways of serving correctly and the two core aspects are being an observer and being nonjudgmental about what you observe. Can you hear your breath or notice bodily sensations without trying to change them? This act of being an unbiased observer is what gives us the capacity to see things more clearly. Simply observing and acknowledging our feelings, thoughts or sensations without continuing to focus on them is important. Often we convince ourselves that we need to do something about what we’re thinking or feeling and we put our attention on them. This is where we get into trouble. We make up stories and ‘spin’ about them.
One of the most beautiful (and frustrating) things about getting quiet and waiting are the many paradoxes.
For example, you might not feel like you have the time to meditate, yet meditation makes you more productive. The more time we spend on the prolonged quiet and extended meditation being in the spirit realms, the more space we might create in our day to get things done. And what about the fact that Serving isn’t about a goal at all but it still helps you achieve more of your goals or change them altogether? It’s an invitation to let go of any goals and lean into our moment-to-moment experiences.Over time, our busy minds begin to settle, enabling us to be more present and see more clearly. So ultimately, we’re more likely to achieve more of our goals.
Experimentation Courage
It is important to “just start” when you want to begin serving correctly. You could begin by working with a simple one- to two-minute of service practice every day and go from there practicing mindful/meditation can be done anywhere, anytime. The beauty of serving correctly is we can practice it in multiple ways such as sitting, standing, lying down, walking or eating, to name a few. It’s also highly adaptable to workplace environments and can be implemented in short bursts throughout your day.
Wisdom In Serving
The easiest way to incorporate Serving into your life is to find a way to connect to it on a daily basis. Being mindful is a way of Serving Love and as it says in the book, What It Means To Serve, “You do serve others and yourself and the earth and the spirit world and all of Creation whenever you serve Love.” Simple things like noticing the sensations in your body or your breath as you brush your teeth, drink water, wash dishes or drive home from work… anything you do every day on a regular basis. Pick just one or two and make it a routine.
Getting Quiet And Waiting
Many people try to get something from their practice immediately or expect to feel a certain way when meditating. That’s not how it works, Serving requires that you drop your agenda and really appreciate the moment as it is, regardless… without having to fix it or wait for it to be different.
To see a difference in how you are affected by being more in the inter-dimensional consciousness. Practice regularly and give it time. It doesn’t need to be long, it can be a few minutes a day, or a few hours but the effects build over time and become more noticeable even after just a couple months.
FAITH
Don’t try too hard when it comes to being more mindful in serving, It’s called the ‘practice’ of serving correctly since it can take a while to retrain ourselves to simply observe what’s happening in inner space [thoughts, feelings and sensations] rather than unconsciously acting on them.
Anxiety doesn’t typically disappear in an instant when one begins practicing how to meditate and serve one’s own wellness. Undoing old habits can take a while, but this is well worth the time. Serving should not be a struggle. It’s quite simple but that doesn’t mean it’s easy, since we’re learning new ways.
Meditation can be an ideal tool to improve your personal and professional life something that can cause a positive ripple effect across both areas, at its core, Serving is a skill that teaches us to retrain our attention and boost concentration power. The obvious benefit is increased wellness which leads to productivity, but that’s only scratching the surface.
