Category: Mindfulness Challenge for the Week

What is your relationship with time?  Is it a good one, is it positive or is your relationship with time stressed?  Does it create trauma for you each time you have an appointment that you need to meet?  Are you a person who is habitually early by a number of minutes?  Are you a person who is always right on time or are you a person who is consistently and habitually late to appointments and to meetings?  What is your orientation and perception of time?  It is that orientation and perception that can create significant and profound stress each and every day.

The invitation and the challenge I have for you this week is to be mindful about your own thoughts and reactions to being on time.  I have three challenges, three invitations for you.  The first invitation is to set your intention to be particularly early to an appointment that you have this week.  This might be your regular routine, but simply do it anyway and access how you feel about being early to an appointment.

1. Does it feel good?
2. Does it feel bad?
3. What are your thoughts?

The second invitation is to – as best as possible – plan it out so that you are precisely on time to an appointment.  Then check in to see how you feel about being precisely on time.

1. Does it feel good?
2. Does it feel bad?
3. What are your thoughts?

And finally, the third invitation (you probably see this one coming) is to be intentionally late by 10 or 15 minutes to an appointment that you have. Access for yourself your own feelings and reactions to what that experience means for you.

1. Does it feel good?
2. Does it feel bad?
3. What are your thoughts?

The challenge of the week is to more systematically and mindfully assess your own personal reactions to what it means to be on time. I’m fully aware that some of you are habitually early, some of you are habitually right on time and some of you are habitually late.  It’s very possible that any one of the three routines of habit (being either early, on time or late) may create significant stress for you.  If you are unable to accept any one of these three challenges, ask yourself:

How does it feel to refuse the challenge?

If you are up to it this week accept all three challenges. Assess your personal reactions and feelings in the moment which is what becoming mindful is all about. .

Be sure to have fun with this one. You’ll find it will be an interesting experience that may reveal to you ways that you are being stressed that you never were aware of.  Have a marvelous week as you enjoy implementing the three mindfulness challenges.

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery

Since you saw the title of this mindfulness challenge this week, how many thoughts have rattled through your mind, five, ten, even fifteen?  We have at least 60,000 thoughts that rattle throughout our minds each and every day.

The surprise as it turns out is that about 90% of those thoughts are the same thoughts.  If we dump out thoughts that are not in our best and highest good – thoughts that have very low energy charges –  thoughts that are negative – we free up a massive storage capacity in our energetic hard drive. With this new capacity we are magically able to do what it is that we want to do with our lives, to manifest our destiny so-to-speak. How then can we track the 60,000 thoughts that rattle through the hamster wheel in our minds each and every day?

The mindfulness challenge this week requires use of a little technology and a little preparation.  My invitation is to set a timer at a set time sequence each and every day. Find a timer that might be on your cell phone or smart phone or watch. Perhaps you might want to use your a timer in your kitchen that can be set for a set number of minutes.  Set the timer for 54 minutes.

Each and every time the timer buzzes (whether it’s your smart phone, cell phone, watch or timer from the kitchen) stop and note whether or not the thought that you are having when the buzzer rang is a positive thought, a neutral thought or a negative thought. Positive thoughts give you energy. Neutral thoughts are flat. Negative thoughts deflate your energy.

The other technology you’ll need for the week is a small notebook and pen or pencil that you can carry around with you in your pocket or somewhere on your body.  Every time the buzzer goes off – every 54 minutes – all you have to do is stop and acknowledge what it was that you happened to be thinking at that particular moment.  Do not bother recording the specifics of the thought. That will take too much time and is totally unnecessary.

All you want to do here is to acknowledge the thought you were having when the buzzer went off and then place a single mark on your notebook;a  plus sign for a positive thought, a dash for a neutral thought and a minus sign for a negative thought. By the end of the day (if you have succeeded in recording your thought every 54 minutes) you are going to have anywhere from 8 to 12 counts of your thoughts and whether they were positive, neutral or negative. And of course, you will have a report for each day of the week!

Today, set it for 54 minutes.  Feel free to alter the time lapse between when the buzzer goes off from one day to the next. Tomorrow set the timer to an hour and ten minutes or set it to 34 minutes. Set the timer to whatever time sequence seems appropriate. It depends in part on how often you are willing to be interrupted during the day. Or, you can just keep it set at 54 minutes each day this week.

Just remember to code each thought as positive, neutral or negative each and every time the buzzer goes off.   One note of caution: Be sure to turn the timer off when you go to sleep because you don’t want to be waking up and coding your dreams.

This will take a bit of effort to prepare.  It does take a little time in terms of actually doing the report.  I promise however that it will give you incredible insights on the proportion of thoughts that are enriching your life force.

Have a fun time this week as you monitor the quality of your thoughts.

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery