Likening Minding your Business to Mindfulness. Likening Minding your Business to Mindfulness.
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I remembered where I was when I spotted the yellow dots. Strange how they got my attention; just some dots in motion.

Actually, I was the one in motion. The illusion got me feeling different, sorta out of touch.

I was by the window seat.

The first impression wasn’t people, then I was like, not it’s them, they dress in yellow.

I sat up.

Just then I saw the road sign for the place I was headed, but the daladala was driving past it, without throwing tantrums, I turned to the conductor to remind him that’s where I was supposed to get off.

“Oya juu kwa juu mmoja.” He told the driver.

I know the drill, it slowed down, my left foot first, I leapt once then trotted a bit. I was there.

I wasn’t minding my business the right way on the first place. Female convicts dress in yellow, the dots were people.

Day 3 of my community service, pro bono professional to be precise. A third week since I started visiting prisoners for counselling.

A week before, during group session I shared what I am going to share with you today.

But wait.

Minding your business is a behavior, and you should look into it differently from now on.

Welcome aboard.

The right way to get started is understanding who we’re at our basic level. We are biological btw, it’s kinda important you understand that makeup, not today anyways.

Just think about the brain and the nervous system; no matter what you’re dealing with, biological processes set everything else in action. The basic elements of the nervous system known as neurons are responsible for this.

Muscle movements, cognitive functioning, memory, eating, copulating, aggression, sleeping, movement control, pleasure and reward, attention, mood, pain, depression, pain suppression, appetites and hey, just anything that leads to our behaviors, stem from the functioning of neurons.

Basically, if you decide to practice any behavior, minding your business for instance, neurons associated with that behavior also become more engaged, and that’s what learning is all about; it’s also one of the reasons why our brains are neuroplastic.

Think about how kids model anything that comes to their minds with playdough. That’s how our brains are like, no matter what you rest your mind upon, be it good or bad, our brains eventually take that shape.

Well, let’s get to it then.

Since we are so into mindlessness, being told to mind your business feels like an insult.

This is about being mindful on purpose, especially in the present moment. Cool if you’re being accepting and curious as well. It ensures enjoyable experiences without worrying about your past or your future.

If you think about what you can create, the decisions you make, what you listen, how you think, smile, act or live; all that happens in no other moment than the one you experience in that moment.

How to Get Started?

It depends on you, based on a few things such as awareness, attention, and remembering.

Yes being aware of who you are, and conscious of what you’re going through. Life is meaningless if awareness isn’t part of yourself.

Attention is about focused awareness. Getting used to this, will def help you sustain your attention wherever you are no matter what’s going on in your mind. I can still be reading a book in a chaotic environment while absorbing every detail because of this.

Forgetting to be mindful is easy, that’s why remembering is for the purpose of reminding yourself that paying attention to your experiences is significant.

With these you can acquire the ability to start minding your business and letting anything else out of the question stay that unless it's your business.

Since being purposeful is part of this, it’s important to understand other aspects that can be applied in order to become mindful.

The present moment. It means you have to be aware of the way things are right now. Everything you experience now is the way it is and just right as it seems. If you’re angry because someone pissed you off, then that’s what exactly it is.

Being non-reactive. We automatically react to things due to how we reacted in the past. It’s important to respond instead of reacting to our experiences. We respond on purpose, and that comes with attention, reactions give no room for thinking about next moves.

Being non-judgmental is about seeing things the way there are without bothering yourself about them regarding your personal judgments.

Benefits?

Being wherever you are physically and somewhere else mentally isn’t uncommon. We live our lives in automatic mode that way, no matter what you’re dealing with, you might find yourself not concentrating because your mind keeps wandering.

But tell you what, being mindful is very important because of the following;

Have you ever experienced how your body tense up when you’re angry? Yeah me too, the rest feels like side effects.

That’s just how it is, our bodies react to our feelings and emotions, but if one is mindful it’s possible to have a sense of what’s going on when you get angry as a result it’s easy to think about possible ways to manage it.

I sometimes used to feel like I had somehow lost touch because I wasn’t aware of what was going on between my body and mind. The mind-body connection is important because whatever happens, most likely is the result of that connection; it’s a two-way process btw; the body sends messages to the mind, the mind sends the messages back to the body and vice versa. With mindfulness you will get to understand why you sometimes react certain ways. It will help you get in touch with yourself.

Not until I learned that our immune system is boosted if we get used to being mindful, I used to react emotionally. Most of the energy that might have been used for important functions such as digestion, is temporarily shut down when one is threatened because that’s the moment when one is turned into a flight or fight mode; you might be surprised how powerful you can be in that moment. Well if you normalize that, imagine the loss that might have been used to boost our immune system.

And how do you feel when you hear, “calm down?”

I personally equate it to “mind your business.”

Our minds deal with so much and they kinda process all kinds of thoughts, feelings, and emotions continuously. Imagine tossing and turning at night jumping from thought to thought, getting up the next day still riding the same train of thoughts on end.

That happens to most of us, but one thing about being mindful, you get a chance to consciously experience what’s going on in your mind, hence you can decide how to handle what’s in it by first calming down.

On the other hand, all our actions, words and different activities spring from thoughts and this entails how all-powerful they’re. If you look around to observe man-made things, know that you’re observing the manifestation of our thoughts.

Being mindful helps us to listen to our thoughts which in turn helps us discern the good from the bad ones. Creativity is a result of this.

Do you know that everything you do is a result of some decisions you make?

Well that means we constantly make decisions whether we’re aware or unaware of that. With the ability to mind your business properly, you’ll be able to make better decisions by taking your time going through whatever your mind’s going through.

In the process, things like improving your overall sense of well-being become the norm.

We can drag on and on with the benefits of minding your business and still come up with several others like coming to your senses, relaxation, soothing your emotions, creating an attentive mind or reducing pain (yes this one too), and so on.

That’s it.

Shilinde x+

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David Ng'honi
Written by

David Ng'honi

I am just an amateur reader, writer and a recording artist.

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