There are three components to enjoying mindfulness.
And these are clarity,
Creativity,
And connection.
And so clarity is about actually really understanding,
You know,
What are you doing and why are you doing it and how do you do it?
And particularly with mindfulness,
Having a sense of all of those together seems to be really helpful.
It's also worth reflecting that so often the way that mindfulness is presented is actually not that clear.
It might be rather vague and mysterious.
Often there's lots of poetic language.
Or there might be lots of science and technical,
Psychological descriptions of things.
And nothing wrong with poetry or science at all,
But actually having a really simple sense of what you're doing and why you're doing it and how you do it really helps you,
Really to have confidence in what you're doing so that you can actually do it.
And one way to check if you're clear on something that I find helpful is to try explaining it to someone else,
And particularly someone who doesn't know about mindfulness.
You could even think of this as either explaining this to an 8-year-old or an 80-year-old,
So that you have to use common sense language.
You can't use jargon or technical language.
And seeing if you can put it in terms that are simple,
Easy to understand,
And just make sense in a really straightforward way.
So that's clarity.
And as I said,
What that does is it gives you the confidence to really be able to make this your own.
And actually supports the next part,
Which is creativity.
Creativity,
Your capacity to play around with things,
To do them in a way that really serves you and suits you.
And so often with mindfulness,
And actually with much of learning,
Things are presented in a very set way.
And there are good reasons for that.
It's one way of helping people to move through a process.
But what that can do is shut down your creative tendencies and your capacity to play around with things.
And oftentimes that's not even allowed or invited.
And so having a sense of creativity and playfulness with this can really bring the whole process alive.
And then the third part of enjoying the process of learning mindfulness is connection.
Much of mindfulness is about turning inwardly.
And that's not because what's going on inside us is more important than what's going on outside us,
But it's just one area that we tend to ignore.
And so really helpful to start to get more of a sense of what's going on inside your mind and your body and your heart.
But what that can do is give you a sense,
Well,
This is what mindfulness is,
It's almost sitting there with your eyes closed.
And that can then engender a lack of connection in the learning process.
And connection is really important actually for learning.
It energizes the whole process when we're with other people,
Even just a little bit or occasionally.
That really helps to bring a sense of energy to the whole process.
It also helps us to bounce things off other people,
To check our understanding,
To be gently challenged as well.
People can help us to see our blind spots.
And so there are different ways that you can support connection with mindfulness,
And I've written and spoken about that elsewhere.
But this is also a really important part of how to enjoy the process.
