3 Things
John Cassidy【ツ】
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With the equinox last weekend, and all the rain these past few days it’s feeling a lot more like autumn.
Well, we might be missing the bright sunshine outside, but this email is all about bringing you some Mental Sunshine to improve your week.
This week, it’s a tip I heard about from an interview with Dr Ellen Langer.
Dr Ellen is a Harvard professor who talks a lot about mindfulness.
She says that if we can be more mindful, we can be more happy.
You might think that being completely present in the moment might make you less happy - we use all manner of distractions to avoid the present, after all.
But how can you enjoy something if you are not truly present?
The problem is that we’re all so used to multitasking, thinking about something else, we can find it hard to be present.
How often have you travelled somewhere, and got to your destination without actually remembering any of the journey?
Dr Langer suggests we look for 3 new things to help us become more mindful.
Three new things about something you already know.
That might be your spouse, your garden, your desk at work.
Something you see all the time; you know it inside out.
Can you find 3 new things about that?
3 things you’d not noticed before?
Perhaps your spouse has a mole on their arm you’d not noticed before.
Perhaps in the garden there are more leaves than you remembered.
Perhaps, on closer inspection, your desk houses 149 pens, and the computer monitor is slightly to one side.
When you notice new things about something you think you already know inside out, you realise you didn’t know them that well after all.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of familiarity, where we think everything is the same as it was yesterday and the day before.
Our brains go into auto-pilot mode if they’re dealing with something they’ve seen or done a million times before…
But auto-pilot is not mindful!
When we notice there are differences, it brings us back to mindfulness - to the here and now.
And when we are truly in the present moment, we’re not worrying about what might happen next week.
We’re not obsessing over the argument we had yesterday.
We’re just here, trying to spot 3 new things.
Why not give it a go today - can you spot 3 new things about something you think you know?
And if a loved one gives you a funny look because you’ve been staring at them… just blame me!