This has been my favorite topic of interest over the last couple of years! Have you ever heard about it? It’s a pretty interesting idea. Let’s start with this question; How often do you find yourself, I don’t know let’s say taking a shower and thinking about something like the meeting that’s coming up that day, what you are going to cook for dinner that night, what you said yesterday, and on and on we could go? Scientists have shown that we often spend more than 47% of our time not in the here and now. Pretty incredible isn’t it? In 2015 I attended an amazing conference in San Francisco, called Wisdom 2.0. Connecting technology and mindfulness, where I learned more about this way of life. My favorite definition on Mindfulness is; paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, non-judgmentally with kindness, I came up with this definition thanks to Jon Kabat-Zinn the person who began this movement, as well as, more recently a talk on Ted Talks by Shauna Shapiro.
One of my favorite speakers at the conference was Jeff Weiner CEO of LinkedIn; wow what a great leader and what a great message. If you have some free time and are looking to be motivated, just YouTube him and you won’t be disappointed.
Just recently when researching for a team meeting I came across an excellent fast activity to help bring you back to the moment and it went something like this; Pay attention to your senses, we have 5, right? So we will begin with Sight, observe 5 things around you and name them. Then move on to Sounds, try to identify 4 different sounds around you. Next you will focus on Touch, and touch 3 different things and really feel them. After that you will move on to Smell, try to identify 2 different smells around you. Finally Taste, really pay attention to the flavor in your mouth, or grab something to eat and really try to savor the taste. This is just one of many different mindfulness activities you can find online.
So here’s the thing if you are interested in being more present with your mind and body I suggest you research the topic on-line, take some courses and read some books. There is lots of information available, and it has honestly, along with some other techniques, really helped me to really be in the moment and enjoy life much more. One real example that really stands out for me that I would like to share with you would be about vacationing. Has it ever happened to you where you go away on holiday and get back and say to yourself; “did I really go on holiday?” Obvious-ly holidays go by so fast because they are so amazing, but when you are really living in the moment, you enjoy everything so much more, that when you do get back you no longer have that feeling, because you were really present maybe 80%-85% of the time, which is absolutely outstanding.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the next blog next week.
With Love,
Daniela
PS For all our EnglishSmart students how many phrasal verbs can you identify?