Every Moment Is An Opportunity For Freedom

One of the main reasons why you want to practice bringing mindfulness into your day is that it enables you to simply stop what's happening.

You can be in the middle of an argument or a disagreement or find yourself getting angry in response to something you see online or even just feeling pain and then you'll remember your mindfulness practice.

And in that moment,

You can choose to just simply begin again,

To take a step back and rather than sort of falling into and going along with whatever's been happening in your mind,

To simply take a mental step back and observe it,

To detach from it,

To see it as it is for what it is mindfully.

And then you're free.

You're free to make a different decision.

You're free to stop arguing.

You're free to take a calmer,

More enlightened approach to the interaction.

You're free to stop the internal suffering.

Now this obviously requires some practice.

You can't just meditate for a few days or a few weeks and then instantly be completely serene at all times.

But what you can do is start bringing mindfulness into your day.

Start practicing mindfulness every day for a start.

But then when you finish your sessions,

When you hop off the mat,

Make a little commitment to yourself to bring mindfulness into your day.

Because that's really the point.

The point of our practice is to bring the benefits off the mat and into our daily lives.

We don't go to the gym to be able to get better at going to the gym.

We go to the gym so we're stronger and fitter and healthier in our everyday lives.

And the same thing is true for our meditation practice.

We meditate every day so that the rest of our lives is improved.

So there's a couple of ways that you can bring the meditation off the mat and into your everyday to help you to free yourself from these flash moments of emotionality.

The first one is to make the commitment.

Like I said,

Rather than just ending your meditation session and just going about your day,

Just a quick pause,

Just 5-10 seconds just to think to yourself,

I'm going to be mindful in my day.

But there's a couple of other things you can do.

And the main one is,

Just take some mindful breaths.

A mindful breath is like your typical mindfulness practice.

Just one breath where you focus your attention on the sensations entering and leaving the nose.

Let's try it now.

Just one breath.

I like to do a mindful breath whenever I think of meditation,

Whenever I remember meditation.

I just pause and just detach,

Focus on the sensations coming into and out of my nose.

And what that does,

It sort of,

It resets me.

It gets me back into a mindful state of mind.

It sort of cleanses my mental state and gives me a bit of a detachment,

A bit of a step back,

A bit of a stop break from that emotionality.

And if I find that I'm in pain or that I'm arguing or that I'm getting angry or whatever it is,

That little breath,

That little pause is enough most of the time for me to be able to make a better decision.

Because it's like I'm able to now have the space to make a different choice.

I don't have to continue the argument.

I don't have to continue with the mental patterns that I was previously in.

So like I said,

I like to trigger it based off whenever I think of meditation or mindfulness.

But a way that I trained myself to do it all the time throughout the day was using a door handle trigger.

So basically every time I touched a door handle,

I would take a mindful breath.

Touch a door handle,

Take a mindful breath.

So when I'm entering and leaving a room,

When I'm entering and leaving a house,

When I'm opening and closing a car door,

Each of those moments was an opportunity to take a mindful breath.

Now,

I might've only done it half of the time,

But that's still at least 10 to 20 mindful breaths throughout the day on top of my morning practice.

So I encourage you,

Give this a try.

Take a mindful breath every time you touch a door handle.

And then when you come out of that mindful breath,

Consider your mental state,

Consider your words,

Consider your actions,

Consider how you're feeling,

And then decide if you want to continue down that path or make a different choice.

Because remember,

You're free at any time to change.

You're free at any time to make a different decision.

You're free at any time to be mindful.

So let's do one more mindful breath together,

And then I encourage you for the rest of the day,

Whenever you touch a door handle,

One more mindful breath.

So turn your attention to the sensations at your nose and breathe in and out.

Have a great day.

This talk was taken from the book,

Mindfulness,

A guidebook to the present moment.