Mindfulness

I’m happy to see the media dog-piling on Facebook so much lately. None of this ’news’ seems to actually be conveying much that’s new, more that it’s started taking what was slowly becoming normalised and framed it in a way to highlight the outrage. I don’t particularly like the media’s approach but I can’t feel too sorry about Facebook. We should be outraged with their on-going behaviour. Four years ago I wrote an article about de-activating Facebook, I have not used Facebook since then and I believe I’ve permanently deleted my account somewhere along the way. I didn’t remove Facebook for it’s data hoovering and sharing but simply for it’s lack of intrinsic value. There have been points over the years where I felt a little FOMO, but very rarely and never enough to get back onto the site. Perhaps I don’t know what I’m missing, but from the looks of it on the outside that hasn’t been the case. ...

While I was camping along the West Coast of the US, I heard about the Leave No Trace movement and found the idea very much resonated with me. Recently, I’ve found myself looking around day to day and wondering where I could start leaving less of a trace. We can all hate on consumerism, but lets face it, well all need to consume a certain amount to live in the modern world. So this isn’t a guide on becoming a burlap wearing hermit, it’s just a few things I’ve come up with for to start applying this idea into my life a little more. ...

I’ve been meditating now for 150 days straight, but even before that I was a fairly regular meditator for many years, I had just never kept up with any sort of meaningful streak every single day. My current momentum started from a difficult period in my life and even once that difficulty subsided, there was still a desire to keep going with the streak. 150 days later and I’m still happy to maintain it, but figured I’d write down a few insights I’ve gotten from this whole period. ...

Over the last year I’ve been cultivating a mindfulness habit. Overall, it has delivered great results. One of the aspects I’ve been less than happy with however, is my ability to carry that mindful state with me throughout the day. I’m unsure if it’s because I’m a programmer and my mind has to be so wrapped up in what I’m doing that mindfulness will inevitably get pushed out or if it’s simply that full-day mindfulness isn’t possible for me. ...

When I imagine myself doing meditation, I see myself almost leaping out of bed with boundless energy, followed by a full and focused period of breathing exercises. Nothing could be further from the truth. Right now I’m working through the Discovery Series on Headspace and it’s focusing more on looking at your body and how it feels. Now, a lot of what the meditation suggests is, is to use focus to alleviate the negative feelings that occur in your body. This is great and it does help a lot but I have a fairly recurring and distracting problem when meditation. ...