Mindfulness - A Purposeful Pause
The idea of mindfulness can conjure idealistic, unrelatable, inaccessible, imagery that feels impractical and intangible to the vast majority of people. It’s been commercialized and commodified, in a very big way. So when I work with coaching clients, I’m always so happy to be there when they make a connection and get to experience how simple and practical mindfulness can be.
Mindfulness is a key component of my practice as a Conscious Grounding Coach. In its simplest form, being conscious means being aware and responsive to internal and external environments.
It’s a pretty expansive and abstract concept to put into words and it is not something that can be scientifically or philosophically defined as one specific thing.
To make it tangible for me, I look at consciousness as a way of engaging in life. It lets our experiences and perceptions be layered with physical, emotional, and spiritual elements that can give us information about how we are moving through life. This doesn’t look the same for everyone and that’s okay! It’s not an all-or-nothing kind of thing.
Practicing and expanding consciousness is an ongoing process of learning, growing, and accumulating little bits and pieces of information about ourselves and the world that helps us evolve both individually and collectively over time. As we collect this information we get clearer in our own path and also more gracious in how we interact with people on different paths. We soften and strengthen in parallel. It helps us live a little (or a lot) freer.
Mindfulness tools are user-friendly building blocks that connect us to more conscious living. Mindfulness is deeply rooted in many ancient traditions and is well-researched in modern science. We all have natural tendencies, interests, and preferences that are unique to each of us, and these tools can be mixed and matched to suit individual needs and growth pathways. I like to think of it as a tried and true pancake recipe that can be tweaked according to mood or craving - some days we like it with crispy edges slathered in coconut oil, some days classic soft and fluffy with maple syrup, we can add bananas, lemon zest, chocolate chips, and rainbow colours!
I almost always start by introducing clients to A Purposeful Pause as a starting point for mindfulness. It seems offensively basic but in our current ways of living, it is a really challenging habit to practice and virtually impossible to master. Like most healthy habits, it’s simple but not necessarily easy.
A purposeful pause is a mindful act of paying attention in a way that anchors you in the moment. It has a way of slowing time and making room for us to connect, see and feel what’s happening. That ‘cushion’ of time and space absorbs reactivity in the form of frustration, fear, anger, pain, anxiousness etc. and are more likely to recognize the choices that are available to us and gain clarity to make more aligned and empowered decisions. (see my previous blog post on how Grounding works here).
A Purposeful Pause can look like:
Taking a few seconds when you wake up to notice that you are awake before springing into action, checking your phone, letting your pet out, or starting your coffee.
If the idea of delaying your coffee upsets you, you can purposefully pause through the steps of making your coffee. Thoughtfully choose your mug, smell the coffee, stir it slowly.
During interactions with other people, pause to scan your body. Notice if there’s a tightness in your chest, a pit in your stomach, tension in your shoulders, or a lump in your throat. In more relaxed moments, notice ease in your jaw or a spark of energy in your gestures.
Paying attention to the kind of thoughts that run through your mind when you’re happy, sad, anxious, frustrated, rushed, or exhausted. Are they piling on to the things that make life difficult or are they reassuring and encouraging?
Before going into work or logging into a video call or coming back home at the end of the day, pause to check in and see what is on your mind, and in your body. Simply noticing it (without judging it) can change the way we move through the next part of our day.
These suggestions can reveal so much about our tendencies and how they work or don’t work for us. The purpose is not to overwhelm, compare or judge ourselves but to get to know a little bit more about where we’re at and to understand ourselves with empathy. From there we start to see the areas where we want to try to do things differently. Then we begin.