One of
beauties of mindfulness is that it invites you to appreciate what you have all around you. People. Nature. Creativity. The quirky part is that nonjudgmental awareness can help you see what you value most. Even if you’re fully present and observing your thoughts and world without sorting everything into “good” and “bad” piles, human nature dictates that we seek pleasure and avoid pain. When we’re really paying attention, we can see that we tend to gravitate toward situations that bring about a greater sense of connection and comfort.
Here’s where it gets tricky. You see, we often jump into activities with a long-range goal of creating comfort, but process of working (the squeeze) becomes a habitual pattern and goodies at end (the juice) are never really evaluated in terms of what it takes to get them.
Despite bumper sticker wisdom that tells us “The best things in life aren’t things,” it’s not always easy to find support for this in Real World. We get caught up in quest for stuff, and before you know it, we’re having another garage sale on our day off.
Once we recognize what matters most, we can spend more time living and less time earning a living. Mark Henricks, a prolific business writer and author of book, Not Just a Living: The Complete Guide to Creating a Business that Gives You a Life, suggests that instead of chasing growth in our companies and excess in our closets, we might consider being intentional about what we want--and what we don't want.
