Groundhog Day

Have you ever felt like you are living like the movie Groundhog Day?

Yes, you know – the alarm goes off, you roll over only to find it going off a few minutes later and you then realise you are going to be late for work. You quickly jump in the shower, grab some toast or end up grabbing something on the way to work. Then when you get to work, it appears to be same thing that was going on yesterday? You are not alone! Some people even say the majority of us live on automatic pilot for the majority of our lives!

So how can we start to notice what is going on around us?

One way I have used for the past few years has been mindfulness (or maybe mindlessness). When I first came across Mindfulness I was drinking a few energy drinks a day, had a terrible diet and was not exercising as much as what I thought I needed to. Remember I was an elite athlete and thought I had to do a lot of exercising to stay fit.

One day, around August 2008, I went to the newsagency and picked up a yoga magazine. I am not sure why I picked this up, as the first and only time I had done yoga at that stage ended with me crouching over the toilet for about 30 minutes (obviously I unblocked something). When I read the magazine, in it was an article about a guy’s experience of a 10-day silent meditation retreat.

I found this fascinating and then in the next couple of weeks two other people asked me if I had done the silent mediation retreat http://www.dhamma.org/  My response was no, however as I was a three-time convincer I knew I had to go and do it, so I booked myself in for a 10-day retreat. Now to be honest with you, I didn’t even feel I had the time to stop for a minute let alone sit still and observe for 1, 5, 10 or 20 minutes – let alone 10-days! Can you relate to this?

When I registered for the retreat, my life was a bit like Groundhog Day! I was a person who was so busy trying to be the best I could be and was living on a couple of energy drinks a day. So going to sit and meditate for 10 days in silence was quite a far-fetched idea!

Well the good news is I survived and it was an amazing experience – probably the most challenging and enlightening experience of my life. From that experience and the following years of practice – I have learnt how to become more present in my body and that I was not my thoughts, emotions or what happened to me in my past – which was a total gift.

Over to You…

As I write this post a number of years later (June 2012), my life is anything but Groundhog Day and I can see greater joy within the moments and most of the time love being in my own world. I feel more alive and my intention is to make my moments matter by being in the present more, as that truly is all we have!

If you would like to know more about Mindfulness, please click here.

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