Brisbane psychologist

My two core fundamentals to Mindful Living

My two core fundamentals to Mindful Living

Earlier this year, my life got rocked to the core. My beautiful mother went from being pretty independent to having two falls (she’d never had a fall and these were just one week apart), two hospital stays, then subsequently died in late February.

I now understand from a very visceral sense how grief can hit hard.

It was super hard.

Apart from having to organize a covid-restriction-imposed funeral to channel my energy-zapped focus, two things above all else helped ground me during that haze:

1. My mindfulness practice

…and

2. My daily exercise

I was back on my meditation stool and back at the gym the morning after my mother died. From my work and all I’ve learned, I knew just how important it was to stick to a routine in tough times. Two quotes stood out for me… Phil Stutz: “the worse you feel, the more you need to commit to your protocol” (aka morning routine) and notable child Psychologist, Haim Ginott, “When a person is drowning, it is not a good time to teach him to swim”.

I knew I was “drowning”. The first two weeks after my mother died, it was like being in a time-warp, and going through quick-sand. I knew I had to draw on my life-raft. My life-raft was my morning routine of mindfulness meditation and exercise. I’m super glad that I had that routine firmly in place long before I really needed it. And it has come in handy in the past on a number of occasions.

BTW that morning after, I wasn’t exactly wanting to do these things. But I knew that I had to – it was going to be the only way to get through this and out the other side. I knew it was that important to just show up.

How about you? Do you know what your grounding habits are? And do you work with them regularly? Or do you think you’ll be scrambling to put a life-raft in place when you really need one? In other words, are you going to wing it? Or are you going to be prepared for the inevitable curveball that life is going to throw you?

If you want to develop a mindfulness practiceyou can contact me to get started:

Phone 0410 264 224 | patrea@positivepsychologystrategies.com.au

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What’s all natural, costs nothing, and boosts your well-being?

So would you take that pill?

This is a quote from American psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind, The Coddling of the American Mind, and The Happiness Hypothesis.

Knowing that, if meditation came in the form of a pill, would you take it? Surely the answer is obvious: if it was as easy as taking a pill, of course, you would take it! However, meditation does require just a little more effort. But the payback is huge!

The good news is that mindfulness can be both a form of meditation and a way of living. Mindfulness as a way of living is about being mindful of our thoughts, words, and actions helping us to truly live in the present. As a form of meditation, mindfulness does require training – the practices are simple though not necessarily easy.

Combining both mindfulness as a meditation practice and as a way of living, can yield a lot of the benefits that Jonathan Haidt outlines above. Making mindful decisions moment to moment day in day out.

So, what’s all-natural, cost nothing, and boost your well-being? – Mindfulness meditation

If you want to develop a mindfulness practice you can contact me to get started:

Phone 0410 264 224 | patrea@positivepsychologystrategies.com.au

My two core fundamentals to Mindful Living

My two core fundamentals to Mindful Living

Apart from having to organize a covid-restriction-imposed funeral to channel my energy-zapped focus, two things above all else helped ground me during that haze:

What’s all natural, costs nothing, and boosts your well-being?

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