You can check out the first episode here and take a break from all the hectic.

February is the shortest month. Don’t you think it’s suffered enough. Always getting picked on for being so little. The last one chosen to make the team. No. Heap an overblown holiday like Valentine’s Day onto it’s tiny little frame.

Meanies!

Check out more great comics from http://www.nataliedee.com

I’ve been trying to keep up with the daily calls to participate on The Mindfulist but have been doing a meh job of it all. I had the dimly powered idea to go back and try to pack some mindfulness all in one post but that is really sucking all of the participation, sharing and community engagement out of the project.

So I’m not going to dwell on the past and will set a reminder to post daily and if I miss posting that day, well, the moment is gone. No biggie.

In other news, I’m still working on figuring out where I’m headed. There’s been a lot of buzz around the book “Escape from Cubicle Nation” by Pamela Slim and a new “Open Letter to my Cubicle” on McSweeney’s so one might take that as some kind of sign. Or maybe not…

January 14th – Breath Quality – How are you breathing right now? If the quality of your life depends on the quality of your breath, how’s yours?

I’m a breath-holder and am not as attentive to my breathing as I’d like to be. I just inhaled a big breath and gave thought as to where in my body it emanated from. Feeling a swelling of my bagpipe-like lungs, I have the sensation of air making it’s way from deep in my belly, upwards to exit my small, Devil’s Food Cake flavoured Jelly Belly nostrils.

January 15th -“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” – Charles Dickens

Taking time to feel gratitude is something that I need to engage in more. Add onto this, the desire to share that gratitude with people in my life that constantly inspire me and take me out of my comfort zone into a space where I’m discovering more about myself than I’ve taken the time to do in some time. As a Buddhist, I’ve spend so much time engaging in self-inquiry but not applied a similar mindset to my professional life. It’s invigorating to now cast an analytical eye towards my career path. I am unemployed but I am blessed.

January 16th – “Yawn. It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain.” – Andrew Newburg for Penn Gazette (read full article here)

“Yawning is one of the best kept secrets in neuroscience” -Hmm…I must admit that this article intrigued me quite a bit as I’ve always been one to regard yawning as a sign of boredom or exhaustion but never as the gateway to heightened empathy or cognitive awareness. My pug yawns non-stop. Big, yowly, tongue-curling yawns in which his normally pug-buggy eyes disappear deep into his routund skull and he lets out a whimpered “Yaureech” sound. O.K. I’ll add more yawning to my daily repetoire and report back on the effects.

January 18th – Notice Someone- Take the time today to notice something new/different about your coworker (or a person you work with). If you work alone, notice something about yourself.

Working from home presents many challenges but the main thing I noticed from this exercise is that I drink less water at home than I do when I’m in and office setting. Not sure if it’s the lack of a water cooler that makes trips to the Brita less inspiring or if I’m simply not mindful of my space. I just scrambled from the couch to fill up my water bottle and have committed to making this a daily ritual.

It’s remarkable how much of my life has been spent cultivating mindfulness and awareness on the meditation cushion but this knowledge and practice flies out the window when it comes to being out of the meditation hall. It’s kind of like forgetting you’re on a diet and somehow finding yourself at Ben & Jerry’s with a bellyful of Chubby Hubby.

Niklas' lovely kitty Lotta

Discipline is hard to cultivate no matter what format it needs to come in – Single scoop, half-pint or 1 litre.

Now onto my the reflections on one of the latest prompts found on The Mindfulist.

Mindfulist Meditation- “Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” -Chinese proverb

You know that moment when you’re out on the town and you’re wearing the good ass pants. You’re feeling like you could take on the world but there is that screeching sensation from your mid-section as it yelps out to be released from the death grip of the scratchy waistband holding it in against its will. Many folks experience these when they get caught up in wanting to be more than they think they are. I’ve gone through this before – big time. Some of those stories and labels that I built up about who I was didn’t really reflect my true self. Maybe age helps to whitter away at this need to be larger than life.

Now with a greater digital interconnectedness, sometimes though, the pressure to conform or keep up with the ‘digital Jones-es’ can creep up and cause mental tension. Goodness knows there’s times when I feel it. When this hits me, I head to a quiet spot to do some self-reflection. I sit in the ickiness and pick and pull away at it like a cheap sweater. Why I’m caught up in the negative self-talk? Where is it rooted? What am I feeling left out of? What am I craving? If I had what I was grasping at, how would it change me? Would I really be that much better off?

Relaxation for me takes the form of some deep breathing and slowing down my thoughts. How about you? What does relaxation look like for you? When’s the last time you relaxed? What was the trigger for needing to call a ‘time out’?

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.

Feel free to get involved with the Mindful list. Visit the site, add your comment or write a post on your blog sharing your experience.