Fix the long suffering workaholic within

Have you a depressive /homicidal /suicidal /suffering workaholic within? Are you ideal candidates for Mindfulness?

This post shares a few thoughts on the subject.

If any of the above strikes a chord with you, is there anything you wish was different in your life? Does our working culture, our society, produce anguish, pain and anxieties for many of us? Is this necessary?

Is Mindfulness a Revolution?

Mindfulness – words change, concepts and reality may not. are you: 

1. mindful
2. present
3. relaxed
4. chilled
5. chillaxed
6. calm
7. meditative
8. centred
9. contemplative
10. prayerful

… and loads of other expressions. The concepts and practice behind  mindfulness are thousands of years old.

The Third-Eye

About 55 years ago I read Lobsang Rampa’s book The Third Eye. With it I touched the boundaries of “mindfulness” for the first time. My father, a minister in the Church of Scotland, encouraged me to read widely and discover my spirituality. I learned much from Silva Mind Control training in the mid-80s.

A life journey with an awareness of the power of meditation and relaxation (whilst not always pursued) began. Could it be that spirituality and peace are at the root of the new Mindfulness fashion?

Rediscovering the soul?

A recent Time article, The Mindful Revolution talks about “finding focus in a stressed-out multitasking culture”. Apart from the concept having strong links to Buddhism, it begs a question: Is the modern-multitasking-culture a place we humans are designed to pass our lives? Some might say that we work in an increasingly inhuman world. The exceptions may include stars, the wealthy and privileged. Why some of the beautiful people kill themselves is a mystery — or is it?

Then of course we have our political leaders who may inhabit an altogether different reality, AKA the Bubble. Does ideology soothe souls or stop laws inflicting misery on the weak and disadvantaged?

Then there’s another article, from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, talking about a stress epidemic. So, we have stress and we need mindfulness. If we are mindful do we start tuning in to another part of ourselves which support calm, peace and space to think? … happiness?

Climate of fear

If you’ve any interest in history, you’ll know how painful life was in the past. Pillaging, murder, violence — all sorts of nasty, stressful stuff. We don’t need to look back hundreds of years either, it is still happens, all over the world. In wars and in peace.

Thinking about it in a working context—and in environments we can control—why should life be unhappy and pressurized?

It’s easy to say … if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen … if you’re not in the kitchen.

Follow the money

It all boils down to the simplest of questions: what is more important, people or money?

Depending on our answer maybe many of us need Mindfulness or, at the very least, to grab a cat and start stroking.

© Mac Logan