It’s better to let yourself to be swallowed whole by your current activity (be it just doing the dishes) than to continue in the endless chatter of your mind. Doing the dishes can be fun if you pay attention to the textures, temperatures, smells and sounds. You can plan your future later, giving it full attention again. That’s the idea.
It's harder than it sounds. Your subconscious will continually try to interrupt your mindfulness of the dish washing. The main trick of meditation is to be able to gently push those idle thoughts away and refocus on the dish washing (or whatever it is you are meditating on). Even if you don't end up enjoying dish washing more, meditating like this is an excellent workout for your focus and concentration and can be a real stress reliever as well.
It can get frustrating when you really try and yet constantly fail to maintain focus. It helps to remember that the purpose of the exercise is not to succeed in maintaining a laser-like focus, but instead to practice noticing your failures. That is how you level up your self-awareness into a skill that carries over into activities beyond dishwashing.
It helps to remember that the purpose of the exercise is not to succeed in maintaining a laser-like focus, but instead to practice noticing your failures.
Right, and I would suggest that there are no failures here — just notice what is going on in your mind, without judging it, and then gently bring your attention back to the breath. As we practice this over time the mind will more easily quiet down. Be the patient observer of your mind and know that you are not your thoughts.
I highly recommend some of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s books, and/or some of his videos on YouTube. These have been very helpful to me.
Try the same when taking shower, or brushing teeth, or anything else that we do mundanely on daily basis. It is indeed easier said than done but the point is that life provides several opportunities to stay-in-present but the mind has been trained for ages to wander in past or future.
Absolutely. Try the same when reading HN. Are you conscious while you are reading these words? Were you conscious 10 seconds ago? When you're not conscious, are you really 'alive'?
Why wait for the dishes? The beauty of mindfulness can manifest itself wonderfully in office work. Shut out the distractions from your mind; then the clack of the keyboard, the feel of your desk, and the flow of code, can fill your senses as well.
There are times when you certainly need to put the dishes down and think something through and solve it, but often we should just finish what we started one by one.
