Mindful Archives - Page 3 of 21

September 16, 2023September 5, 2023 by Pete Wiley

Enhanced Awareness—Seeing Your World More Deeply

The world, even your little slice of it, contains significantly more than you could possibly fathom. As you move through your life, you notice things that your brain has been trained to bring to your conscious level of awareness. Your brain can process an unbelievable 11 million bits of information every second, but our conscious mind can only handle 40 to 50 bits of information a second. The big question is, what gets past the filter and why? You notice things you must so that you stay away from danger and navigate your life, but there are whole worlds that don’t make it into your awareness, and there are elements of those worlds that you would definitely be interested in exploring if you could. So, how can you decide what makes it to the front row of your mind?

August 19, 2023May 13, 2023 by Pete Wiley

A Fresh Start—Finding a Spark in the Everyday

Life can be inconsistent. Why do you sometimes feel like you’re buried in baggage and history, and sometimes you can move forward unfettered? The difference can be how interesting your work or life activities are. You may be involved in what you perceive to be cumbersome pursuits, while at other times your life can be interesting and exciting. Sometimes the difference is purely psychological. During the times you feel weighted down, you may feel there is no escape from the narrow tunnel you’re in. You may feel there are forces in play that keep your life in constant drudgery, and you aren’t able to defeat them. At other times, even when engaged in the same activities or tasks, you feel energized and invigorated. The work seems light and even fun. If you could figure out the difference between these two scenarios, would it be possible to always keep it fresh?

August 5, 2023April 27, 2023 by Pete Wiley

Pillars of Life—The Importance of Engaging Mind, Body, and Spirit

As we move through our days, we may live active, productive, and even meaningful lives. But something may still be missing. It may be hard to put our fingers on it. One possible reason for this is the failure to be intentional about fundamental aspects of our lives—mind, body, and spirit—the three pillars of life. Most of us engage with these pillars to some degree: we exercise, we challenge ourselves mentally, or we have healthy spiritual lives. But how many of us consistently engage with all three pillars intentionally and regularly? When we do, we’ll find that our lives are enhanced—in ways that we may not even realize.

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July 22, 2023April 20, 2023 by Pete Wiley

Mindful Existence—Learning How to Live in a World Full of Distractions

In the modern world, we have amazing technology that would have seemed like magic centuries ago, and like science fiction only decades ago. We’re connected with other people around the globe in an instant and think nothing of it. This past week, I was on video meetings with people from Hawai’i, New Caledonia, and Alaska and across the continental US, and it didn’t even warrant a passing mention. We also have literally every movie or TV show ever made available at any time. And if all of that doesn’t satiate our desire for distraction, we have a near infinite stream of opinions, status updates, shares, clips, and fails available from multiple social media sources, all the time. For people born in this era, it’s very easy to never have a time when our brains aren’t occupied by external stimuli, and as a result, to never learn how to live without distraction.

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July 8, 2023April 20, 2023 by Pete Wiley

Responsibility in Relationships—Developing Bonds of Trust

My son is twenty-one, and I trust him completely.

Well, almost completely. He’s tried to pull some fast ones over the years, but on the whole, they’ve been very minor. I’d almost be worried if he hadn’t. All of us go through a process in our relationships of establishing how much we trust one another and how trustworthy we are. Part of that includes exploring the boundaries and finding the balance between words and actions that we perceive as beneficial to us (e.g., a child getting away with something) and those that build trust. In terms of trust in relationship with others, there are several ways to think about it. One is the component of trust in the parts of our lives that come with significant responsibilities, such as taking care of our children, as well as other aspects of our relationships and our professional duties. Another is our trust in others based on the strength of the relationship. This kind of trust depends on our experience with other people as well as how trustworthy we are. We can also think about trust as an attachment to a certain outcome—we trust something is going to happen. While this isn’t necessarily bad, we should guard against becoming too attached to a particular behavior or condition and stay open-minded as to what we might encounter on our path.

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