Tanya McGinnity

Identify three bells of awareness/mindfulness at work. For example you might, minimize Facebook when your boss walks by. Or swivel in your chair when the phone rings. What are your three?|

1. I’m a chair swiveler alright. It’s an action that I’m not fully cognizant of when the phone does ring, but upon examining my behaviours a bit more carefully today, I noted that this is something I display. I do take the swiveling a bit too seriously when it is a particularly fun chair and have found myself treating it as one would treat a ride at the amusement park but I think this is due to being of small stature and feeling like most chairs are an invitation to engage in some kind of tilt-a-whirlesque fun.

2. My low battery signal is a bell of awareness as it usually means that I need to move my gear from one location to that of one near an outlet. Sometimes this simple act can shift my attention from what I’m considering a priority as if I don’t have a lot of paper, pens, sketches, water, tea, snacks and so on, then chances are what I’ve put my attention to might not be all that much of a priority. Might be a strange way to evaluate worth on the old tasklist, but most of my major projects come with plenty of paper baggage by way of file folders, scraps and stapled henscratched documents.

3. My adorable little pug hopping from his blankie on the couch is another cue for me to take a break, enjoy some air and get some fresh thoughts in my head. Now that I’m working from home, he’s a welcome coworker who helps me to take time for myself and not get too caught up that I forget to breathe. He also reminds me to eat some raw carrots and to make sure to share a few of them with him. Much healthier than my previous vending machine shenanigans from the past.

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The latest prompt on The Mindfulist is to watch a video as part of a test in awareness and notice what’s going on in the clip.

Makes me consider all that goes on around me that I’m not paying attention to. Like the time I had my wallet stolen. For a few minutes, I had a bothersome little feeling that something wasn’t quite right as the thief rifled through my bag right next to my arm. Talk about lack of awareness on my part and hyper-awareness by the pickpocket!

There are so many cues going on in our environment that we fail to notice on a daily basis. Much of this could be attributed to rushing throughout out lives and I’m wholeheartedly guilty of this one. Failing to see all that is going on around us can position us for surprises, disappointments and failure. Cultivating an awareness in surroundings can be difficult but can provide us with cues that could potentially help us survive a lethal bump from an elderly greenthumb.

Me. Oh I only noticed the swap of the bear and the knight in shining amour. By then it was too late for me to get on board with realizing that there was more activity going on in the video. Yup. I have quite a bit of work to do!

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