Why I practice mindfulness?
I am not a naturally positive person. I used to focus on the bad, negative, and wrong. I spent so much time worrying, ruminating and loads of time over planning. I would get stuck in a story, a negative thought pattern and let it over run my mind. I was always thinking of the next event, and not where I was in the moment and ended up feeling unbalanced. I had some real low periods and would blame others for my problems.
Mindfulness had been on my radar for a while, but I wasn’t fully aware that it was just what I needed to help myself. I was in a pretty low point, I spent the day at a mindfulness training, and that is when I really started to see how much I needed the practice. From there, I started to make small daily changes, to practice mindfulness and begin to shift my thought patterns. I could see how much this benefited not only me, but my partner almost immediately. Because I was more aware of my negative thoughts and able to stop them, he wasn’t impacted by my bad moods.
Since then, I’ve really started to dive deeper into the practice, to try to imbed the breathing and awareness practices in my day to day life, and my teaching. And it’s rewards are far and wide. It’s not always perfect, I still get distracted, worried, over plan, but its more managable now, I don’t feel overwhelmed, and if I do, I’ve got a deep mindfulness tool box to draw from.