Everyday Mindfulness

Lately I've gained valuable insights about myself. Not sure if it's because of meditation, but it never really happened before.

Some insights are more readily applicable. For example, I realized I spend a lot of time in others' heads when I make a decision. "What will he think?" "They'll think I'm selfish." And so on. So I now when I find myself in someone else's head, I simply come back in the present.

BUT, some insights are much tougher. Like, I learned that I do not retaliate not because I'm peaceful but because I simply love the comfortable. Confronting is uncomfortable. So even if I'm being exploited, I'd rather be in my cocoon. I decided to change this. However, in that moment when it happens, I go back to my default behaviour. Every time. It happens too quick to even take charge.

Example, someone makes me do his part of the work. Before I can even comprehend the request I find I've already said a 'yes'.

I think the quickness hinted that it's more of an auto-behaviour. Something I've programmed myself to do over the years. Can meditation help in changing this? I ask because the speed with which it happens, there honestly seems no time to even be mindful about it.

Mindfulness has definitely helped me in addressing certain automatic responses. I feel like it has inserted a tiny pause between the stimulus and the response.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Viktor Frankl

I have found that when that space increases, my life becomes a whole lot easier, and I make much better decisions.

There are pitfalls with gained insights. First let me say that these insights are of great benefit to you. Understand if you take the proper path you will continually receive these insights, most of them you have not discovered yet. So you still have much work to do. I say "proper path" because it is to easy to see all things from the standpoint of "I" or your "self". Perfect mindfulness is without the mind. Experience life without the judgmental mind sending you in all different directions. Few people can achieve perfect mindfulness but it is possible and the degree that you are successful with mindfulness training will be determined by how close you get to "no mind." There, insights flow like a river and it is the "self" that slows this. So I tell you that these insights are not for you or to you. They have been there forever and only now you are seeing them. Hold them for a moment then let them go otherwise the "I" in you will become so important that the great river will dry up and the insights will stop because "you" are standing in the way. A mindfulness teacher who talks about their journey is an example of someone who has not taken the proper path. This is your journey. Mindfulness is a place you can only go alone and when you get there you realize you didn't even bring your "self". If you are full of your self there is nothing you can add. Wishing you all the best.....

Hi not_neo. It seems to me that you have gained a very valuable insight - that you are human and flawed. It took me quite a while to be able to accept myself and all my flaws however