How mindfulness creates peace, freedom and happiness
One of my 2020 goals is to read a book a month and this month’s book was The Power of Now. (Or I should say is, since I’m only 80% done.) Book review aside, here’s some thoughts I had while reading.
1. Everything starts from Mindfulness.
Mindfulness (aka awareness)
Years ago I came across Flow magazine and learned about the idea of mindfulness. Being able to know where your mind is at is a useful life skill (and a trending one). Everything starts from awareness. If you’re aware of how you feel or what you’re thinking, you can then tackle the issue.
Peace and Freedom
Being aware helps you increase your ability to enjoy life. If you practice mindfulness in the small daily mundane tasks and in appreciating your surroundings, you would feel more at peace.
Seeking freedom from external source or future plans might be an easier, quicker way to gain happiness but it will not last. Real peace and freedom can only be found within self, not outside of it.
If you can’t fast forward, slow down and enjoy the small things in life.
2. The mind controls you — the thoughts you’re thinking aren’t exactly yours.
Bad Thoughts
Does having bad thoughts mean you’re a bad person? Some might say yes. But it’s not- the thoughts are not you (not fully you at least) and you are not your thoughts. You are what you choose to do about it. You have a choice, to feed it or to kill it.
Negative Thoughts
We default to negativity in our idle state; we’re so attracted to negativity, it actually takes effort to think positive.
Isn’t it weird how we always choose to think negative thoughts instead of positive ones? Either way, we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, we don’t know what the other person is thinking or what the situation is on the other side, but we default to negative thinking. Why not think positively and give law of attraction a benefit of doubt.
3. Thoughts and feelings, situations and circumstances are all neutral — there are no “good” or “bad”.
I know you’re probably thinking “urm, yes there is..” Yes yes, I know. What I’m trying to say here is there is no real “good” or “bad”; everything is a perception. Feeling sad isn’t necessarily a bad thing but because everyone says it’s bad, we classify it as bad. But it’s just an emotion– everything is as it is.
Conclusion
Everything starts from our own mind, but a lot of times we aren’t brave enough to look at things from within so we look for external solutions like using social media, drinking, traveling, and venting on other people, etc. The ultimate life skill we should learn is how to be mindful of our mind.
