During the first two weeks of life with full attention, I listed some habits and routines in order to enhance my day-to-day mindfulness. Since the course’s second week starts tomorrow, I wanted to briefly reflect on the past two weeks.
First of all, I wrote down the following habits, which I marked by how often I managed to maintain them (red, orange and green, for almost never, occasionally, and often respectively).
- Journal at least one sentence every day, before going to bed. 🔴
- Read at least one section or chapter from a book before starting my day. ðŸŸ
- When I notice I started to feel some form of displeasure, recall what caused it and write it down in my pocket-book. ðŸŸ
While I made no spectacular progress on any of them, they remained in my awareness and occasionally I even managed to do them.
Particularly the habit of taking a moment when I feel some form of displeasure was an interesting experience. While I only wrote it down once, I could often retrace a plausible cause of my displeasure. Often, these were the results of actions taken against my better judgment. Hopefully, growing this awareness will help me to make better decisions in my day-to-day life.
Now, doing the same for my routines:
- Clean up dishes from the drying rack while cooking, and do the dishes directly after eating dinner. 🟢
- When I get home, put the keys in the door, put my coat on the hanger, put my shoes away, and clean up the contents of my work and sports bag. ðŸŸ
- Before starting a new task at work, make sure there are no unnecessary programmes opened on my PC. 🔴
- Make my bed after waking up. 🟢
- Clear my desk/table after having done something there. ðŸŸ
- Write a to-do list for tomorrow at the end of my day (already doing this). 🟢
- After using something (like my scissors) put it back where I got it from. ðŸŸ
Here also some mixed results, but overall, I’m happy with the progress I made. I realised that for many of these routines, such as making my bed, it does not even feel like an extra thing to do. Just the moment of being aware of it is all that I need to do it!
Tomorrow we will see what the next step will be in the life with full attention-course. Let’s keep up the habits and routines!
What was your experience on day-to-day mindfulness through simple habits and routines? Do you feel like your overall awareness has improved?
