I had a really interesting conversation with a client today. This is probably going to be a little stream of consciousness. So bear with me. But you’re probably used to that if you read me regularly. Also, this is thinking of mindfulness in a different way from what I’ve written about before. You could almost replace the term mindfulness with presence in the moment.
so let’s start thinking about mindfulness. When we talk about mindfulness these days, I think most of us think about it in terms of a “practice” of mindfulness. As in meditation, or a gratitude journal, or some other structured thing that we take time out of our day to do to get ourselves in a mindful place and thinking mindful thoughts. I’m a big fan. And I’m going to assume that this type of mindfulness contributes and builds towards the type of mindfulness I want to talk about today.
as I’ve said many times, this is probably a human being thing. But I’ve only been in ADHD person. So I know it applies to ADHD people. And all my knowledge tells me that it applies more so to us than the average human. I think the goal is to be mindful throughout our day. I think we need to work towards being present in the moment and actively engaged in our life all the time.
insane, right? That’s pretty much the antithesis of how we are wired. We spend a lot of time in our head. Thinking could be a good spin on that. Perseverating could be a less Rosy way to look at it. We often spend a lot of time rushing ahead because life is too slow and the current moment might not be super stimulating. I also think we can get in the habit of ruminating on things that have happened in the past. And if I thought about it I could probably come up with another five ways that we can not be present in the moment.
so what does it mean to be present in the moment? Let’s define that before we go further. Honestly, I’m making this up a little bit as I go. It’s one of those things that I know what it is, but it can be hard to define. And it may be different from person to person. But as a person with ADHD who is prone to the things I just mentioned, being present in the moment for me is about actively deciding… I was going to put more at the end of that sentence. But I think actively deciding is a pretty good umbrella to cover everything that I want to express here.
well, not everything. I think it’s actively deciding and actively assessing. I think we need to choose what to be doing. We also need to choose how we feel about it. We need to choose how we feel about our day. We need to choose how we feel about ourselves. And we need to choose how we feel about our capabilities, both overall, and in a specific moment.
let’s talk about some of the parts of the conversation I had with my client today. The session started with him wanting tips on how to be a productivity machine now that he has “free time” between jobs. But all of the stuff that he wanted to get done sounded really boring and didn’t have clear and intrinsically valuable outcomes. So he wasn’t getting any of it done. We definitely talked about some of the nitty-gritty about planning, but we’ve covered that in the past. The question was, why wasn’t he getting this stuff that he thought he wanted to get done right now done.
I put forward that not if it was actually that important and most of it didn’t have concrete outcomes. It’s hard to get psyched to pick up the dog dog poop and mow the lawn on any one given day, as opposed to another. It’s especially difficult if your whole to-do list is things that are like that. I don’t want to spend my whole day picking up dog poop and mowing the lawn.
of course, if we give ourself a huge list of stuff we need to do that isn’t exciting doesn’t have concrete reward, we will avoid. And when we avoid we tend to engage in stimulation seeking activities that are neither productive nor restorative. I suggested to this client that if he was really going all out figuring out what’s next job wise, he could afford to read a book in the hammock. Perhaps after that he’d feel good and restored and want to knock a few things off the list. But at the same time it would probably behoove him to look at the list and see what things he could decide just weren’t important enough to do or weren’t important enough to do yet and delete them.
so where does mindfulness come into this? I think I’m going to leave you hanging till next week on that one. 🤬