This week on our blog: a daily preview from an article in our newest Mindfulness Workbook. In part 6: Why are we always busy ‘doing’ can’t we just ‘be’ ? you can read more about routines and how to break through them. Journalist Joycelyn de Kwant thinks that we spend far too much time automatically switching gears into ‘doing’ mode, and it’s difficult to sometimes simply be. She asks herself if we could do things differently.
Caroline van Eelen, psychotherapist and one of the first mindfulness trainers in the Netherlands, agrees with Kabat-Zinn. “If you are always only doing-doing-doing, you lose yourself at some point. You are talking, but barely hear what the other person says. Or drinking tea without really tasting it.” However, if you are paying attention when you make your tea or do the laundry or whatever, there is an added quality to it, she says. “It is a truly lived moment. When you realize: my life is happening now. Not later, not yesterday, but right now.” In these moments of not doing, your body also takes a rest, explains Van Eelen. “It can be a very short break. For just a moment, you are not busy making an impression, keeping up appearances, achieving things. In those moments when you can simply be, you coincide with who you really are. There are no obligations. It’s a very rich feeling. And from that point on, it’s easier for you to think about what you really want to be doing at that moment. So that you don’t need to wonder at the end of the day, ‘Where have I been?’”
The article ‘Do nothing for a moment’ can be read in the Flow Mindfulness Workbook.
Text: Jocelyn de Kwant Photography: Stocksy/Marcel
