Tag: insight

Mindful Walking on the Inside

In a previous post, I discussed various ways of mindful walking with an emphasis on walking outdoors.  Here I want to focus on a simple approach to mindful walking that can be used indoors, particularly when you are time-poor.

The basic process for mindful walking indoors is as follows:

  1. Work out where you are going to walk from and to
  2. Stand with your feet apart and be conscious of the soles of your feet on the floor
  3. Ground yourself mentally and physically
  4. Lift your right foot slowly
  5. Place the heel of your right foot slowly on the floor
  6. Gradually lower your foot so that the sole of your right foot is slowly flattening on the floor
  7. Lift your left foot slowly
  8. Place the heel of your left foot slowly on the floor
  9. Gradually lower your foot so that the sole of your left foot is slowly flattening on the floor.

Repeat steps 4-9 keeping your mind focused on your walking action.   You can start with your left foot if this is your preference.

As you become more conscious of mindful walking and begin to practise it indoors, you will notice many opportunities that arise where you can take a few minutes to practise, e.g. while waiting for the jug to boil, or waiting for your partner or children to get ready to go out.  You will also become more conscious of your walking when outdoors.

So often we “race from pillar to post” thinking about something we have to do or have failed to do or done wrongly.  We rush everywhere, even in our own home.

Mindful walking enables us to slow down, to be more conscious of the present and to appreciate what we have.  It can help us to reduce anxiety about the future and depression about the past.  It leads to peace, contentment and lowered stress.  With a clearer mind, you may also experience increased awareness and insight.

Mindful walking indoors is a simple, time-efficient way to grow mindfulness and to keep things in perspective.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pexels on Pixabay

What Am I Doing This For?

Ricardo Semler, entrepreneur and author, became well known for his ground-breaking book on the democratization of organisations.  In Maverick, he describes his approach to managing his business, Semco, which involves allowing employees unprecedented autonomy in many aspects of organization life.

What is not so well known is his personal philosophy of life.  His comments give some insight into his own approach to mindfulness and his perspective on idleness:

The opposite of work is idleness. But very few of us know what to do with idleness. When you look at the way that we distribute our lives in general, you realize that in the periods in which we have a lot of money, we have very little time. And then when we finally have time, we have neither the money nor the health.

Semler suggests that we put off so much in life because we are so busy about the future that we cannot enjoy the present.  In the process, we miss the opportunity to develop wisdom and to pursue the fundamental question of “What am I doing this for?”

And so, what we’ve done all of these years is very simple, is use the little tool, which is ask three whys in a row. Because the first why you always have a good answer for. The second why, it starts getting difficult. By the third why, you don’t really know why you’re doing what you’re doing. What I want to leave you with is the seed and the thought that maybe if you do this, you will come to the question, what for? What am I doing this for? And hopefully, as a result of that, and over time, I hope that with this, and that’s what I’m wishing you, you’ll have a much wiser future.

These comments by Ricardo Semler are extracts from a TED Talk that he gave in 2014, “How to run a company with (almost) no rules.”  The video of this talk is embed below and the transcript is available online for those who prefer to read rather than listen.

Semler asks some fundamental questions about life and work and how we spend out time.  Busyness is the greatest impediment to mindfulness – the pathway to wisdom, calm, clarity and creativity.

Postcript: I often take a short detour in the morning via the Manly Esplanade so that I can see the bay, the islands and the emergent sunrise. On the morning I watched Richardo’s video, I asked myself, “Why don’t I stop and capture the image that I see, instead of rushing back home?” And so the image in this blog post captures calmness in the spotlight of the sunrise.

Image Source: Copyright R. Passfield