Why should I care about Mindfulness?
It can help you with stress resilience. What is stress resilience? It is an incredible ability that will help you live a long happy life. Sounds great right? How does it work?
Imagine someone hurts you to your core. You are raw, disoriented, paralyzed and eventually angry. You are consumed by it, distracted. It makes you sick. You can’t eat, sleep or think. Some of us retaliate, some hold grudges, some bury it away in a corner of our minds. All these coping strategies are of avoidance. What if we could face this pain, make space for it out in the open and appreciate it. I know I sound like a crazy person. Why would we appreciate the horrible torturous pain that comes when someone hurts us?
Pain serves us. It calls attention to something we are ignoring. Something we need to be present for or wrap our head around. Something we need to sit with and understand our feelings about. Our first instinct is to focus on the cause of our pain and fight or run or just become catatonic. Great if the potential pain is coming from a lion chasing you. Not great if it is coming from a boss, friend or family member. We must be able to notice the pain that we are feeling and understand it. Understanding is powerful. It allows us to take deliberate and determined action. Action that has purpose and is not just what we feel is right but what successfully helps us find the things that nurture, empower and make us happy.
Mindfulness is sitting with your pain as an old friend. Listening to it. Appreciating its wisdom and how it is actually here to help. Mindfulness helps us find clarity. When we reach understanding we can go on. We have recovered. We can recover quickly from difficult conditions. We have practiced stress resilience. I would be very interested to hear any stories you all would like to share about how you practiced stress resilience.
If you have time I also recommend you listen to this story: http://insig.ht/gm_5314
Thank you as always for reading. I am very grateful for you time.
Devon
