Take Back Your Life!

“Jump and you will find out how to unfold your wings on the way down.”
~ Ray Bradbury

I’m sure you’ve heard over and over that you need to be mindful, you need to be aware of this moment, you need to somehow focus on it and then the it after it and the it after that. And anything that falls short of that is that terrible mindlessness.

As a challenger of assumptions, that makes no sense to me.

Sure, you can be mindful at times and it makes sense. But to be mindful 24/7 means you are not in the flow because you are too busy trying to focus on the flow.

That is not good advice for creatives. Much of the creative time, you do want to be mindless, to be in the flow, to drop into your subconscious, to not be fixated on this moment that no one ever defines.When I’m on a creative roll, I am all out mindless and I love it! My mind is roaming all over the place grabbing and taking what it needs from everything I have ever been exposed to.

I do not want to be standing on an X focusing in on myself. I want to forget myself and birth this creation and to do that I need to be free in mind, body and spirit.

We need a blend of mindfulness and mindlessness. Some people will be more adept at mindfulness and others at mindlessness and no one is better than the other. Nor should anyone be castigated for not wanting to be all mindful or all mindless.

Everything in moderation, as they say.

If you are trained to stay in the moment and find yourself in a situation where you need to quickly scan your mind’s hard drive for previous experiences, then not being able to do that could be downright dangerous. And if we never imagined the future, society would never progress.

These all encompassing edicts that get extracted and taken out of context can cause more harm that good a times. Even the Buddhists Monks don’t like they way their mindfulness has been hijacked as a panacea for the modern world ills. Be mindful and poof your life will be perfect.

Nothing is that simple, anyway.

Sometimes the best way to focus is to let go of trying to focus and just do something that makes you feel good.

The next time you create, give this a test drive. If you are really into it are you consciously focusing on what you are doing or just diving right in, not even aware of time?

When I keep looking at my watch, I know that I am not in the flow of life. But when I realize 2 hours have gone by and I birthed a new painting, then I know I am in the flow. I am mindless and that feels good to me.

Hey, give it try and see how it works for you.

Thanks, G.