Is It Time For A Mindful Coffee Moment?
(Other tasks are available for mindful moments too š)
There have been a few situations rumbling along over the last few weeks. Theyāve come together to turn up the pressure & got my mind chuntering away again. If Iām not careful, I get caught up in all manner of background mind-whirrings and my brain seems to delight in going over and over the same old ground again & again. Itās a recipe for stress and worry & letās face it, I ought to know better. Which I do.
My go-to solution for stressful thinking is to use mindfulness to remind my brain that it doesnāt have to get caught up in the random thoughts thatāre part of being human. Consequently, over the last couple of weeks, Iāve been getting back into a 10-minute meditation pretty much every day (except the days where I forget because my mind was too busy being distracted by itself). As I do more, the distraction days become less compelling.Ā
It takes surprisingly little effort to have a positive effect.
Iāve been using mindfulness as a tool for some time & each time I get back into it, it takes me less & less effort to upskill once more. That being said, it only took me a couple of weeks when I first taught myself how to be more mindful for there to be a noticeable difference in my stress levels.
During my last sitting quietly & meditation moment, doing all that ābeing awareā stuff that mindfulness is all about, I had a thought. And in a totally non-mindful way, I didnāt let this one go. It was too interesting.Ā
I guess in a way, thatās being mindful too. Although the point of mindfulness is to let thoughts & sensations do their thing & pass by on their own, occasionally a thought turns up that has more intrinsic value than the benefit of not getting caught up in it. This was one of those.
It was such a revelation to me, that I want to share it.
Is mindfulness just about the meditations?Ā
Well, on a superficial level, of course it isnāt. Mindfulness is about training your mind to get used letting go fo previously compelling thoughts & sensations that drag you away from the here & now. It makes for less stressful living in the ties between meditations. You can keep bringing yourself back to the moment once you recognise that youāre doing stress or anxiety and so on.
My thought was more about using mindful awareness as a tool in everyday life.
You see, what Iāve been doing is teaching my mind to recognise when itās gone off on one and to choose to come back to whatever I prefer to pay attention to. The meditations are the training sessions, like going to the gym to get fit or stay fit. As I go through my day, inevitably something happens that means Iām thinking about the future or the past & occasionally getting drawn into judgments that re highly negative & destructive, (like most of us do).
The meditation practices help me to recognise those negative times. I can then ābe mindfulā and choose to return my awareness to the present moment. Usually, I notice my breathing or use the 30-second anxiety relief technique to bring me back.
What I realised is that there are certain habitual activities that are so ingrained, they provide the perfect opportunity for my mind to wander off on its own. Now, this is fine when its daydreams of sunshine, luxury holidays, that night out with close friends & so on. But, especially in stressful times, if youāre anything like me, the wandering is into dangerous territory, self-critical voices berate me from the past or tease me with disasters that lurk just around the corner.
My thought was this.
Why not tackle these mind-wandering activities head-on?
Use routine activities as an opportunity to be mindful
This way, I head the demons off at the pass before they have a chance to start up. That way, Iām getting more mindfulness training and not having to hope that my mindful brain notices negative distractions once theyāve begun.
I tried it today & it worked brilliantly.Ā
Every day, I have a coffee. Well, two coffees. One simply isnāt enough. I prefer a Moka pot coffee so thereās a little routine I go through to make it. Pretty much every time I do this, my mind goes off somewhere & of late, that somewhereās not been a pleasant place. Itās a stress thing, I guess.
The benefits of aĀ mindful coffee
Today, I tried mindful coffee making, making a point of engaging with the different steps & noticing what theyāre like. Itās probably going to end up a little like a Japanese Tea Ceremony but without the need to do everything perfectly. More that I stay fully aware of the steps I go through so that my mind doesnāt wander. And of course, if it does wander, that wonāt matter as Iāll just re-engage when I become aware that Iām no longer focussed on the task.
These are the steps I ran through today:
Cleaning the Moka pot.
Measuring & grinding the coffee (I got a hand grinder for my birthday, so thatās a little ritual in itself)
Filling the Moka pot, measure the water & coffee. Putting it all back together again.
Putting on the gas hob & preparing the cups whilst I wait for ti to brew.
Pour the coffee.
Now amongst all these steps are the sensations that come with being engaged in the task.
Thereās the aromas & scents of coffee, the feel of the water & coffee grounds when cleaning the pot.
Thereās the look of the pot as itās getting washed & rinsed and dried. There hot & cold water.
Thereās moving around the kitchen, the feel of the coffee beans, the noise they make pouring into the grinder.
The list is almost endless if you look deeply enough.
(And this is before you get into the benefits of mindfully drinking the coffee!)
There are all manner of different sights & sounds and smells that are a part of something I do every single day that I simply hadnāt thought about at all.
By using these as an anchor for my wandering mind, I get to do a whole meditation practice whilst doing something I was going to do anyway.
Itās all about finding an anchor point. Something which is going on in the here & now and which I can return to whenever I notice my mind distracted itself & ran off into fun times or nightmares.
The benefit?
I get better at noticing when Iām doing stress or anxiety. And far more practiced at bringing myself back to now.
And thatās important.
Because 99 times out of 100, right now is safe & secure. Itās the thoughts and emotions which are scary.Ā
Iād recommend you find yourself a coffee making equivalent. Just a task that you do most days when youāre mind wanders off somewhere else.Ā
Iām going to keep doing my mindful coffee routine & if you find one too, let me know how you get on.
IMPORTANT
Iām upgrading T.B.Talks at the end of August. Hereās whatās going to change.
From 1st September:
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The free posts will be once a month & bring you an overview of the in-depth posts the subscribers received during that month.
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