Being Mindful About Where Our Mind Is

On Friday I had a great lesson in mindfulness. In fact, I am having the same lesson right at this moment as I sit and type this. Hard lessons takes lots of awareness to overcome.

On Friday we were gearing up for quite a busy weekend. My daughter had a dress rehearsal in the early evening, my son and I were going to volunteer for two hours Saturday morning, followed by me needing to get flowers for the little Irish dancer, food for lunch, my husband hoping to get in a motorcycle ride for sanity in between, back to another dress rehearsal by 3 PM, with me volunteering to organize the front end activities of the night, a recital, and then out to dinner with friends.

All day Friday as we were trying to do our school for the day, all I could think about was all the stuff I needed to get done, blush needed to be purchased cause we lost the first one we got, hair done, mascara on, food for dinner, dinner needed to be made probably, the house was a mess, laundry hadn’t been gotten to in some time, directions to the school needed to be found, the girl had to get dressed, we had to get through math, reading, science, history, and I always hope to get to hours where I read to them endless stories of knights, tiger’s, children, other cultures, whatever…

My mind was not on schooling at all.

And guess what happened?

I was a cranky, nervous, uptight Mama. And school wasn’t fun. The more I pushed, the more my son pushed back. “Can we just get this done, done, done,” I am thinking to myself. What he was probably thinking was, “Ahahaha, she is a crazy women right now, allow me to feed off her energy and be stubborn about my math work today.”

It is the same energy I have right at this moment too. SO much to get done. Not a good way to figure out how to make it all come together in sight. I am writing this post as I am at a bounce play area waiting for friends to arrive!

What is this teaching me? What about mindfulness can be garnered from a few days of living from a list in my head?

That living in my head, replaying constantly what needs to get done in other moments than the one I am in is no way to live. It makes me anxious. Go figure. It makes me cranky with the kids. Go figure. It makes me not very effective at what I am attempting to do in the moment I am actually in. It makes my nervous system ramp up until I talk and talk and talk and become hyper, hyper, hyper.

The reality is, the moment is perfect to be in. I love doing school with my kids when I am present with them. When I am in my head running through my lists it becomes a chore. I love cooking delicious, healthy food. When I am in my head ruminating over all the other things that need to get done, not enjoying the slicing and dicing, I resent cooking from scratch with whole foods. When I am trying to meditate, and the realities of other things that need doing fight for my attention, do I need to even explain that meditating dissolves into chaos of brain activity?

So the lesson for the week? Breathe. Come back to the present moment. Realize there is nothing on the list that is an emergency. Usually.

My friend has arrived. I will inhale the life cleansing force that brings me to this moment, allowing myself to enjoy our time together as our children play and get the wintery wiggles out.

Breathe. There is only this moment. Enjoy your mindful week.