Everyday Mindfulness

Anyone else been trying to enjoy life this week?

The chapter seemed to focus on the senses so my approach has been to try to record the things I take pleasure in for each of the senses: smells, tastes, looks, sounds, feelings and I've included mental plasures too.

This does help you realise that pleasurable things are often small and if you allow yourself to notice them (by being mindful), there are a lot more than you might otherwise think (and noticing them helps counterbalance the time the mind spends on difficulties - most of which are just worries and never happen). Listening to skylarks sing is one of my favourite foe lifting my spirits.

Steve

I did it and I really enjoyed it. It made me feel more alive and present

Whoops, looks like I started a duplicate topic for week 12, sorry about that (I must be enjoying life to much!)

Glad to hear that others have had a good week

Steve

Hi there!

I've been off, enjoying life too!

The weather here has continued to be glorious and I'm spending every spare minute outside with the dog - either out walking in the forest or park, or at home in the garden.

I don't know if you remember my "mindfulness re walking the dog" post a couple of months back? I was a bit lost and frustrated, cos our dog (who is an ex-stray, rescue dog) doesn't "do" normal walks... The walks were such chaos, that no mindfulness seemed possible.

Well, we have (at long last) found a new way of walking - I allow him to lead me WHEREVER he wants and after about an hour or so, I start leading him back home.

It's working a charm - he's becoming ever more happy, relaxed, stable. And is even starting to follow my lead a bit more, in return.

It was hard work tho - I had to radically let go of all of my "mental expectations" of what a walk was meant to be like.

I've moved to the concept of "TSO" (time spent outdoors) and I tell myself that every 60 seconds that he spends out doors and which are positive for him, that's a minute gained.

So we now walk in circles, in zigzags, back and forth, repeat certain routes umpteen times in a row, ... the bizarrest routes ever... and now I finally feel comfortable with it. I've just let go of trying to get our walks to "make sense" or "be normal"...

I even take a bus ticket along, in case he leads us so far from home (and possibly refuses to walk back home) that I can find the nearest bus station and get us back home that way. (Or, if all else fails, I will call us a taxi.)

Anyway, sorry to blather on about my dog-walking!!

Point is that we are now spending about 10 times as much time outdoors as we were previously, so that outside of work, I'm not home much anymore!! And hence not reading or posting here very much at the moment.

I will try and check in again more often. Especially now that I'm *almost* getting used to our new routine, at home.

Hope you're all well!

XXX J

We seem to have been on week 12 for about three weeks.

I'm glad the dog walking is working out more peaceful for you now. It's funny, I just wrote a tweet that says: "Life is more peaceful when you lose your expectations." True isn't it?

I think people have been away so we've been going a bit slower. I am currently on week 14 so I'll start a thread about that