Blog — Follow Me Sam P.

Want to change your behavior and the way you react to situations throughout your day? I have a simple, effective approach for you.

Simply put, mindfulness is really about cultivating awareness: awareness about yourself, your environment and what’s important in the moment. Being mindful is practicing meditation. While meditation might require you to be still and quieten your mind, mindfulness asks you to be totally immersed in the moment. It’s a practice you can begin doing right now. Mindfulness is about being fully embodied, and it’s as effortless as this:

Approach each day as if it’s divided into events that offer different portals or doorways.

Here’s how it works: There are larger events in the day, like waking up, going to work, coming home. These events mark time for us. There is a beginning, middle and end to each day. Each event within the day has its own time, space and way of being. What do I mean by this? Well, at home your way of being is different to the office. One space might offer you more freedom of movement, vulnerability and closeness than another. Your relationships in these spaces are different, and so are your goals and outcomes within these spaces. Now, within these larger events are smaller, less noticeable doorways or portals. Making your lunch, calling your friend, 10am meeting, lunchtime conference call, driving in your car are all doorways and portals to different possibilities and outcomes. Each portal offers new opportunities.

So, what I want you to do is this: before you move on to your next activity, become aware of what that activity might entail, set an intention for that activity (what is it you’d like to achieve in that portal), and then approach the portal in a way that is proactive, entering each interaction from an open, centered place of being. Sense your breath, and the soft feeling of the soles of your feet on the ground. This will bring you to a place of groundedness. This purposeful reset will change the state of your body and mind. It brings you out of the panic of impossibly overbooked days resulting in(constant) fight, flight or freeze, and chronically tight muscles. From this new place of sensing yourself in the world, you can effectively shift from one portal to another, with awareness, intention and movement (AIM). Let each portal be an opportunity to re-boot and create a more mindful, strategic approach to the many points of intersection in your day. This daily mindful practice will subtly change the way you react to everything,

I love the practice of portals. It gives me a real felt sense of where I am and where I need to go. How do you see your portals? What do you do to add awareness and mindful practices to the moments in your day?