The Mindfulness Blog

This is my story and how I became involved in Mindfulness, don’t worry I will do my best to keep it short!

 In 2005 I suffered a back injury which led to the closing down of our business and I had to depend on Social Security payments as I didn’t have any Income Insurance. Yeah, bad I know, I just never thought I would need Income Insurance! Fool me!

 Anyhow, life was pretty ordinary and through the rehabilitation centre that I had to attend to keep my payments coming in, I asked to see a psychologist. I was depressed about the whole situation I was in and needed some help to deal with what was going on.

 The pyschologist suggested that I do the Mindfulness Course that they had going so I agreed and turned up for the first of four weekly sessions not knowing what to expect. Day one was basically full of confusion and I have to admit that I had no idea how this Mindfulness stuff was going to help me. Thankfully we had a good teacher, you’re a champ Elli!

 After the week 4 session I had a good grasp on what was ‘Mindfulness’ and I continued practicing it whenever I felt the need. Then I was told that the course had been slightly changed and they would like me to attend the following course to see what I thought.

 It wasn’t until about halfway through the second course that I truly mastered Mindfulness and was able to accept all the thoughts going around in my head and merely keep them moving on instead of dwelling on them and setting myself off into a spiral of unhelpful thoughts that kept going and going and going.

 This was when I saw the true benefits of Mindfulness and how much it has changed my life for the better. If I find myself thinking unhelpful thoughts I now almost sub-consciously go into the mindful state and deal with them appropriately.

 The benefits to me have been huge, I am a lot happier, I now see reasons to live and push forward in my life on a daily basis instead of focusing on the negatives. I find that something that I thought was insurmountable before has become a realistic goal and most of all I can take myself away for a couple of minutes and deal with my feelings of pain a lot better than I could before.

 I could go on for hours about the positive changes that mindfulness has brought into my life and the lives of the people around me but as I said I will keep it short and not bore you too much!

 Mindfulness does take time to master but once you have a good grasp of the concept it will help you in all aspects of your life and I know this from personal experience. In my opinion it is a useful tool for anyone that is feeling even the slightest bit stressed or depressed or anxious or just generally unhappy with their lives and I’m sure that it would be just as useful in extreme cases also.

Craig Wilson