Simple definition for Mindfulness

“Mindfulness is kijken in de spiegel. Met gesloten ogen. Kijken naar jouw denken, je gedachten. Ze zien en er niet in mee gaan. Zitten en kijken binnenin. Je emoties voelen, zonder erin de verdrinken. Ze omhullen, zonder ze te verdringen. Je lichaam voelen, weten hoe het voelt. Opmerkzaam zijn voor al wat er is in jou. Met aandacht hier, nu, helemaal.”
– Mindfulness voor kinderen, Pim Catry en Jan Decuypere

Free Englisch translation :
“Mindfulness is looking in the mirror. Eyes closed. Looking at your thinking, your thoughts.
Seeing them and not going along with them. Sitting and looking within. Feeling your emotions, without drowning in them. Enwrapping them, without suppressing them. Feeling your body, knowing how it feels. Observing everything that is in you. With attention here, now, entirely”                             – Mindfulness voor kinderen, Pim Catry en Jan Decuypere

I feel full of energy again – Yeahhhhh !!!

I feel full of energy again & it feels great 🙂

What lead up to this ?

Well first of all I am convinced that my sabbatical without specific deadlines & rushing has helped a lot. But there is more. Why else did it take me almost 9 months to get fully back on track.

First of all there is my diet. After having read the book ‘Homo energeticus’ from Peter Aelbrecht I have followed his proposed diet. I have re-introduced fish and eggs (special Columbus eggs, I have a tendency for high cholestorol) since I ate animal proteins before my puberty (for more details I refer to the book itself). Each day I eat leguminous plants, nuts and seeds on top of once vegetal proteins and once animal proteins and vegetables and 5 pieces of fruit. I did not loose the kilo’s that I would loose as a side affect but this is really of less importance.

Besides the new diet I have also started 5 rythms danse (only 3 times now) but I feel it is ‘moving’ me not only fysically but also mentally as my coach had predicted.

Both feel good … it is the right direction for me for now …

On the job side no new info. A next meeting with my HR director is planned for September 17th.

In the meantime I enjoy every minute of the last month of my sabbatical preparing for a new and fresh professional start.

Cheers

Self management

My theme is all about self management !

 

The reason for taking my sabbatical in the first place is lack of self management. I loose myself in wanting to do well for others… to do the best I can. It is important to understand that this ‘throwing myself into the well doing’ comes entirely from my own motivation, my own enthusiasm. Once my sabbatical stopped I directed this well doing on my little daughter that I dedicated a lot of time and attention to till that as well became too much for me and never enough for my daughter. Today I realize that I have again a similar week behind me. Not realizing it and finding it quite OK at the time itself I spend nearly all my time with my daughter, preparing for a diner with friends, going to a  birthday party and cleaning the cellar and my daughter again … till I realize now that I have dropped my own meditation. I feel tired because of a lack of sleep but more I believe by doing nothing in particular, not being focussed on anything.

At the root of this empty feeling I also see the fact that nothing really progresses as I would like it does :

• my attempts to assemble information through friendly contacts in my former company are not really succesfull except for one that delivers information I believe is not really positive
• the dancing classes “5 rytmes” are only taking place at about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour from my home and on the same night my husband has his outside activity since ages. This requires finding a babysit for our daughter for a couple of months on that specific day and finding transport to get there (in case my job would end).
• although I have been succesful in finding succesful coaching questions on the net I am a little bit anxious about me getting all this in my fingers. Especially after having read a book on NLP (Changing your beliefs from Robert Dilts) I feel I still have quite long road ahead of me.
• the book also raises questions in myself about my own ‘limiting’ beliefs and what to do about them. I honoustly doubt now whether a ‘normal’ coaching training is capable of changing them in depth. Let’s say I doubt this till proven otherwise => this is a good question for my new coach (NLP coach going through a ‘normal’ coaching training)

 

A lot of doubts and confusion after a couple of very good and optimistic days … Where does the sudden change come from… The only thing that has changed is the stopping of my meditation…

I really need to integrate this again … to make contact with myself, to ground myself and get in contact with my intuition more constantly so I can react directly when I feel I go in the wrong direction.

 

As said in the title … it’s all about self management – spend enough time with and attention to myself.

PS1 Strangely enough this were also my pitfalls that the public discovered during a speech training I have followed

PS2 I was surprised to read that the CEO of ICA had the same challenge – giving too much and by doing so loosing herself and as a result of that the she runs out of energy – therefore her focus needs to be on self management as well, recharging her batteries on time.

Book ‘The joy within’ by authors Joan Goldstein and Manuela Soares, editor Prentice Hall Press NY

Another book that I would like to share with you is the book ‘De kracht van meditatie’ by Joan Goldstein and Manuela Soares, editor Omega boek, Amsterdam (the original English version is mentioned in the title).

It is an ideal book for people that have no anterior experience with meditation. You will find specific instructions for starting meditation including a 4-week program to start your regular meditation practise.

The meditation that I have been trained in and that I perform is
anapana meditation : concentration on or ‘feeling’ beneed the nose and above the upperlip => this helps me to ‘master my mind’
vipassana meditation : see http://www.pajjota.dhamma.org or http://www.dhamma.org for the full information
metabana meditation : focus on love, peace, harmony, compassion
I found this meditation forms highly effective for myself even given the fact that I am quite a new-comer in this area (I started beginning this year).
They bring me inner peace and they permit me to stay more equonomous in live. I see things more easily through a different perspective. I look and feel but not necessarily react directly or impulsively.