In the previous post I started this guide with four steps to survive the apocalypse. Check it out if you still haven’t. Because the next three steps are mentally demanding. So let’s get started.
5- Experience mindfulness : Remember these three words :Need, stimulus, solution.
“We tend not to deeply think about our everyday activities as we should !”
In the fourth step (Understand what a mindful life means to you by embracing YOLO) you were able to identify, as an example, that Facebook is a waste of my time except for knowing your friends birthdays and parties events (or whatever legitimate social reasons), . You truly realize what the technology is adding to you and what it is sucking out of you. You know that sharing a photo of your meal would be an awesome idea if you are a chef. Or if you are doing marketing for a restaurant. Other than that, that photo is just fulfilling your instincts to feel appreciated or recognized by others that you are eating a meal. (I know, it sucks).
So to help you experiencing mindfulness, with each activity of any significance, try to reveal the three key revelations about it :
Need : What is the need for this activity , let’s say you are driving a car and using the GPS to guide you from point A to point B. What’s the need for it ? To tell you the route. Good enough. That’s quite great revelation. Believe me, it is !
Stimulus: What are the stimulus that are there from this damn thing ? it gives you sound commands for every single turn. Sometimes too late and sometime too early. Always, it disturb your conversation with your ride partner. Uh yeah, and it is getting your attention (visually and audibly) from the road.
Solution: What is the solution you are applying for the need? And is it the only solution?
For the GPS example, the traditional solutions is: just listen to the directions and go along with it. But there might be many other solutions. One another solution could be is to browse the whole route and register the path in your head and then never look back into the navigator screen (which is doable). Another solutions would include playing around with the navigator settings and your sensory settings and figure out if you can tweak them to best serve your need. That includes your settings to listen and look into the navigator every single turn, or just do a visual skim when stopping at red lights for the next portion of the route. You would decide if you will leave the sound level of the navigator as high as it is or would you lower it down to a level that doesn’t disturb your conversation with other passengers. With this thought process you are not taking technology for granted, and you are enslaving it to serve you rather enslaving yourself to it.
When thinking about the adopted solution people usually fail in identifying different solutions or seeing the options that they can take. We tend to take the easy route even if it is too costly for what it is. This needs quite basic combination of creative and critical thinking that you really should train yourself on. Even if you are not an engineer, only creative and critical thinkers will survive zombies, so you better evolve fast !
Probably the GPS navigation-driving multitasking is not quite challenging activity to think about. But we have many other examples ! Facebook. Why we use it ? … There is a need for it, to connect for parties, birthday greetings. What else ? messaging ? cool. Now when you think about the stimulus, there are many of them, notifications and invites and a timeline or news feed that makes it a very noisy environment. Solution : get what you wanted to do and get it done and then move on, focus on the stimulus that you need to focus on. If you want to message that person then do. And that’s it, don’t worry about that notification or get distracted by that silly cat and funny baby laugh pictures. Someday you will have one of your own if you will shut down the unnecessary stimulus and focus on those that solve your need.
Do you have an activity (other than peeing or facebooking) that you want to share ? Share it with me. I’ll be back soon with the next step along with some interesting stories !
Be well,
Sami
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Want to keep reading ?
The YOLO guide to survive the apocalypse (6/7): Appreciate it when things go wrong
