What’s in your headspace? What’s in your physical space?
You may have seen the image of the cluttered mind space indicating a mind full, and the mind only thinking of now – mindful. How do we move from the chatter in our minds to focusing on the now?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much power we have over our space, and the choices we have about the thoughts and ideas that enter our minds. I’ve also been thinking about the decisions we make about the objects we allow into our environments. I’ve wondered, how can we curate our physical and mental spaces?
What do we decide to live with? Discard? Highlight? Hide?
For me, it is all about intention. With intention, we create the boundaries and can disregard them. With intention, we can decide how long to ruminate over a story. With intention, we oversee the narratives in our mind. Changing the story can only happen if we are aware enough to recognize ourselves as thinking beings, and if we know that we are not our thoughts. Instead, we are the being having these thoughts.
As a witness to my own mind, I can step back and create space to widen the perspective. I can separate myself from clinging onto the many ideas in my mind and choose to focus on the ideas and feelings that match my intentions. I can do this so long as I have thought about what my intentions are, explored who I am, and uncovered what matters most to me.
Mindfulness can be about matching heart and intention with behavior. It can be flipping the switch from scarcity to abundance – exploring all that’s possible and all I am grateful for in this moment.
In the moment, we might notice the way the light interacts with objects around us, appreciate craftmanship, focus on our common humanity in the mundane, and in doing so we create beauty in our mind. The beauty existed the whole time. We just needed to make space to see it.
How can we make more space for mindfulness in everyday living? Since what we look for is what we see, deciding what we hope to see can be very helpful.
We can also find ways to remind ourselves of our intentions. We might display post it notes with affirmations, follow mindful leaders on social media, add an intention to our screen savers, and make space to pause so we respond instead of falling back on old communication patterns.
In a sense, we are finding ways to curate our physical space to impact our headspace. We can decide to add objects to our physical spaces that remind of us of our intentions, attach positive meaning to the things around us, or savor the positive meaning that already exists for us.
What phrases, images, objects, or surroundings bring you back to the present and remind you of your intentions?
Author: Renee Dimino
Mindful Life Connections 