KEY 8 MINDFULNESS Finding enough thinking space
It's 1854. You've just published a new book called Walden, which you feel may have a few years of shelf life in it, if that isn't too immodest. But now it's time to get back to work … in your other day jobs. As a poet. A philosopher. An abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor and historian. Then, of course, there's your new interest in Hindu and Buddhist scriptures that speak of ‘freeing your mind’.
Imagine if Henry David Thoreau were alive today. On the Duty of Civil Disobedience would never have been written, because he would have been too focused on social media campaigns, taking down trolls and lambasting the federal government. His brain would now be far too full of the minutiae and ‘busyness’ of daily struggle to devote time to original thinking.
One thing many of us yearn for is that breathing space that would give us time to think. Whether we are the CEO, manager or solo operator of a high-performance brain, we all seem to have become too busy to give our work the amount of thinking time it deserves.
The consequence of this is that we are selling ourselves short, constraining our ideas and thoughts to the B-class seats in the auditorium of our mind. Yet the one thing that will distinguish us from the also-rans and wannabes is that ability to think carefully and deeply.
One way to achieve this is by adopting a more mindful approach. While mindfulness and different meditation practices are nothing ...
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