So, what are these 3 mistakes & how might things be different to help us to be our best self and live life to the Max?
- Not loving hard enough — Well I think that the 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet Rumi rather hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “Love makes bitter sweet, copper gold, shadows vanish, death into life, leaders into slaves. From understanding comes love” — So, I think on that basis we’ve all got to try to understand that we need to love as hard as we can, and do it now!
- Not giving as much as we can — NO, It’s not the same as not loving as hard as we can, but rather it’s more about what we don’t give to any situation — that bit, or part of us that we hold back. Perhaps to protect ourself from fully feeling in the moment. Perhaps to try and protect ourself from the pain of inevitable loss — but here’s the kicker, loss is inevitable — & then we are left asking ourself, “Is that all it was?” Never truly feeling or experiencing — Never feeling as though we’ve really lived. Put it this way — without fasting i.e. direct, tangible experience, can there ever be true feasting? I think these words by Hunter S Thompson provide a pretty cool play-book for how we might solve this all to common predicament: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!” — So, just let go and Buy the ticket, take the ride, as Mr Thompson also said! &
- Dwelling in the past — To dwell, or be anchored in the past prevents us Being and Doing in the present, &, the present moment experience is all we really have, as I explain in my book, ‘Uncovering Mindfulness: In Search of a Life More Meaningful’. Rumination, as defined by the late Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Yale Professor of Phychology, is the compulsion to focus on what’s wrong, rather than what’s right — To focus on one’s distress and its causes, rather than its solutions. It’s being stuck, continuously experiencing the negative stuff and its just so debilitating. Do you know what, from the brain’s point of view there’s no difference emotionally between experiencing the negative event and thinking about it and as William Shakespeare so aptly put it in Hamlet: “…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison. Well, then it isn’t one to you, since nothing is really good or bad in itself — it’s all what a person thinks about it”— So, take heed and pay due attention to the present moment experience. Be Mindful too, as you are being present, and imagine all your thoughts whether to your mind good or bad, simply as coloured balloons — and let them fly, up up and away!
Paul Mudd is the author of ‘Uncovering Mindfulness: In Search Of A Life More Meaningful’ available on Amazon and www.bookboon.com; the ‘Coffee & A Cup of Mindfulness’ and the ‘Mindful Hacks For Mindful Living & Mindful Working’ series. He is also a Contributing Author to The Huffington Post and a Contributing Writer to Thrive Global. Through The Mudd Partnership he works with business leaders, organisations and individuals in support of change, leadership excellence, business growth, organistional and individual wellbeing and well doing, and introducing Mindfulness. He can be contacted at [email protected] and you can follow the continuing journey uncovering Mindfulness on Twitter @TheMindfulBook and at @Paul_Mudd
Originally published at journal.thriveglobal.com