Mindfulness and Check Boxes Not Necessarily Mutually Exclusive

Here’s my Sunday night blogging while everyone else is watching the sports ball. I spent this afternoon working on a conference paper which is now done in draft more than a month before I am going to deliver it, which is very much on brand for me. I still have to work on finalizing the resources and organizing the activities that I going to use for the workshop I am facilitating at that same conference but that is going to be for another day. It will be for another day because my body said enough for today.

When you do yoga usually they ask you to be mindful of your breath, or of the small things that your body is telling you in the moment. I’ve been doing a lot of that today as I was writing. I would stop between sentences or paragraphs and be mindful of where the pain in my back was coming from, mindful of how my shoulder was feeling pressure early in the afternoon and then subsided as the day went on. Now I am mindful that my back pain has moved from mid to lower back. I acknowledge this because I could have decided that writing a blog post tonight was not important or put it off to tomorrow or next week. But I was also aware that mindfulness and completing personal check boxes for the day are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Yes I plan to take some time for me before bed tonight in the next few hours. In that time I will spend with my cat and maybe watching a show on Netflix, I plan to be kind to myself and to tell my body it is okay to feel pain sometimes.

We often get so involved in our writing or other kinds of work that we forget the importance of mindfulness and acknowledging what our body is telling us. Maybe it is saying, you are tired, or maybe it is saying, you need nourishment or water. Like any carefully designed research project there needs to be a holistic awareness of what is being said and what conditions need to happen so that life, like the research project, is run ethically. I could have done a few more things today. I could have read a few more books (or at least one more book) this weekend. But I read one book and watched a few movies on Netflix because that is what I needed to feel ready and refreshed for tomorrow and the week ahead.

We do an excellent job of ignoring ourselves. Tonight I am going to listen a bit more and be aware of what my body and my surroundings are telling me. Listening better and being mindful of our own needs should be one of the many “to do” check boxes on our list. A list that is not embodied in our own skills and awareness is not a meaningful list but rather an excellent way of just going through motions without value. I am now off to relax with my cat and I hope you have an equally enjoyable and relaxing evening.