Mindfulness explained🧠☮.
You must have heard multiple times that Generation Z is the most depressed generation. Ever wondered why?🤷♂️
Hey!
This is Shreshtha.💁♀️
Welcome to the first issue of my newsletter!✍🔍
Happy Reading!📚👇
“One can either elevate oneself with the help of the mind or degrade oneself. The mind can either be a man’s best friend or worst enemy”.
-Bhagvad Gita🌏
A few days back, I was listening to a podcast🎙 on mental health and hence I decided to write about it. Click the button below to view the podcast.👇
Now let me give you the Internet definition of the word ‘Mindfulness’-
Mindfulness🧠☮ is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.❤
Source-https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness/
Image source: Adobe Stock/stournsaeh
Now, I will try to explain it you in my way!💪✍
First things first, let us try to see a list of tasks an ‘imaginary’ eighteen year old guy named ‘Sheldon’ performs in a day.📚
Look at the following table carefully.🔍
The marks have been given by me.😁
Hmm. Just see the number of times, I have typed the word ‘end🔚’ in the table! The super duper smartphone🤳 which Sheldon had received as a gift from his parents after his High School graduation has definitely ‘ended’ a lot of things for him, especially the most valuable resource out of all i.e. TIME!⌚
See, my dear reader ‘mindfulness’ is nothing but the ability to enjoy and live the ‘present’. Let me give you an example on how I try to practice this.✌😉
Example 1:
Well, it was my parents’ ‘Twentieth Marriage Anniversary’ last month and I had decided to bake a cake for them. Cooking was something that I had started learning in the Coronavirus lockdown.
So how much time did I take for baking it?🤨
THREE HOURS!😲
But to my surprise, I didn’t feel exhausted at the end.
Since, I was deeply engrossed in mixing the cocoa powder in the cake batter and putting up the chocolate cream🍫 , my consciousness got united as a single entity. We all feel a sense of satisfaction, joy and serenity within our soul when we do something we truly love. ☮💕
We don’t check our watches even once, when we completely get immersed in our favourite task. But, if you suddenly ask me to study organic chemistry🧪, I will go total bonkers🤯 and might end up closing the book within ten minutes!😴
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian- American psychologist’s recent study is all about motivation and the different factors contributing towards it.👇💯
One personality characteristic that Csikszentmihalyi researched in detail was that of intrinsic motivation. According to the Internet, intrinsic motivation is the act of doing something without any obvious external rewards. You do it because it's enjoyable and interesting, rather than because of an outside incentive or pressure to do it, such as a reward or deadline.
In poetic terms🎶👇
Intrinsic Motivation comes from the heart and gives you joy ——> Internal Reward🤩
Extrinsic Motivation comes from the society and gets you recognition from the society itself ——> External Reward🏆
I have summarized my example in the form of a table below!😁
——————————————————————————————————
Well, my imaginary friend Sheldon is now curious about ‘Meditation’.🤔🧘♀️
He has the following question in his mind:
How do you practice meditation and what is it exactly?🤷♂️
Well, Sheldon keep calm☮ because I will clear your doubts!✍💁♀️
“ Meditation is like home-coming🏠. No matter how beautiful the vacation might be, after a while you start missing home. Your home may not have the luxury of the hotel room service and housekeeping, yet you feel the most comfortable at your own home. The same goes for the soul. Our body is like a hotel room which longs to merge with the supreme consciousness. It wants to go home.”🧬
This excerpt has been taken from Om Swami’s book ‘ A Million Thoughts’.📖
Dear Readers, for people like Sheldon who are extremely new to the processes of mental health and well being, I couldn’t find a better explanation for the word ‘meditation’ anywhere other than this. I have asked him to read the book carefully in order to widen his horizons, and I will ask you to do the same if you wish to learn more about meditation.
Let me give you an example of how I got benefitted through meditation.🧘♀️
Example 2:
I had always feared Mathematics as a child.➕➖✖➗
When I was in Tenth standard, my Maths teacher who was an IITian himself told me to meditate in order to increase my concentration and focus.🧘♀️☮
I asked-” But how should I meditate sir?”🙄
He said-” Sit in a quiet place and hum the ‘Gayathri Mantra, twenty one times. While doing so imagine the Rising Sun and its radiating rays falling on you and blessing you with calmness, positivity. Imagine that the powerful rays have burnt all your terrors!”☀💪
This worked like magic✨. Sir was right ✅. I defeated my anxieties and scored a 💯 in my Maths boards exam. Maths become my companion for life.👫
Dear Readers, with the help of the above example, I have successfully explained you the difference between ‘Active Mindfulness’ and ‘Contemplative Mindfulness.’🤩
According to Om Swami, active mindfulness aids a meditator’s concentration to remain strong. Its purpose is to ensure that the mind of the mediator is focussed on the object of meditation without getting distracted.🧘♀️☀
On the other hand, practice of contemplative mindfulness can be used to assist in making big life decisions for your day to day activities. It is used to make mindful choices rather than reacting hurriedly.📊✅
See, in Example 2 since I concentrated on the ‘Gayathri Mantra’ 21 times without getting distracted , I practised ‘Active Mindfulness’ here.☀
As a result I could create a proper strategy and timetable to solve my Maths problems with 100 % focus and positive approach .This is where I practised ‘Contemplative Mindfulness’, because I took a mindful decision of creating the right strategy for myself after proper analysis.📊
“One who finds satisfaction within, enlightenment within, such a person is considered to be self realized and liberated.”
-Bhagvad Gita
This brings us to the end of today’s newsletter.
My friend Sheldon has thoroughly enjoyed reading it and has asked you all to share, subscribe and leave a comment below!
Hope you all enjoyed the first issue of ‘Unbounded✨’!
May you all find liberation from ignorance!
Till then, Happy Reading!📖
Very Very well written and explaind Didi I have told my freinds about your newsletter already😁😊🙂
Nice thoughts 👍. Extending the thought on intrinsic motivation, the real life will be filled with a mix of important/urgent tasks that would be intrinsic / extrinsic motivators. We as people can do one of the following -- FIND an aspect of intrinsic motivation in every task that we do. OR make some mega choices in life, while we still can, to have only the intrinsically motivating area of study/ professions so that our day is filled with mostly such tasks. If your work is also your hobby, then you are in a meditative state of mind even when you are working for a living 😊