You would think I’d be the last person to consider meditating. I’m not known for sitting still: I’m an action girl – get up-go-give is my motto – but I was persuaded to stop and think after seeing, first-hand, how a group of sports coaches use a form of daily meditation, to great effect, to enhance their own performance and that of their athletes. They introduced me to mindfulness via www.headspace.co.uk and now I am hooked. It has become an essential tool for building my resilience and, if I don’t get my daily fix of 10 minutes mindfulness, I feel robbed. Now, following the lead of those coaches, I too like to throw a stone into the pond and watch what happens when the ripple reaches others. During my coaching and workshop sessions I am frequently asked – why do you meditate? To see the ripples is my answer.
- Meditation helps by calming me and clarifying my thought process. I slow down – sometimes come to a halt – during meditation and, when I resume action, I find that I have more focused energy to get more done.
- It’s also contagious: my happiness and optimism infects others. Mindfulness makes me generally a ‘nicer’ person and this can rub off on others, changing their mood and enhancing their positive outlooks.
- Experiencing this encourages them, in turn, to help others, and so the ripple spreads to the edge of my pond. From there, I hope, stones are picked up and thrown into other people’s ponds.
If you want to try out a bit of mindfulness – as recommended by me and many others – go to the website or app www.headspace.co.uk and a couple of other apps stopbreathethink & smilingmind. And I’ve had fun and success with teenagers recently using mindful colouring sheets.
I have also enjoyed and learnt a lot from a couple of books - Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are (Mindfulness Meditation for Everyday Life) and Martyn Newman’s The Mindfulness Book (Practical Ways to Lead a More Mindful Life).
I love it when things take a life of their own, go viral – in a good way, of course. Let’s go and start some more ripples.