Finding happiness is as easy as thinking back to times in our life when we felt happy. Search your memories, close your eyes and experience the happiness. This is the practice known as mindfulness. To be mindful of an experience we need to be present focused. We attend to everything about the experience. For example, think about sitting by the ocean on a summer day. Close your eyes. Picture the ocean, the colors of green and blue, the white caps of the waves. Hear the sounds of the waves coming in, the seagulls over head, far off voices, the laughter of children. Smell the clean air, the scent of suntan lotion. Feel the sun warming your skin, followed by the cool breeze from the water. Taste the salty air on your lips. This is the experience of mindfulness.
We can be mindful of pleasurable aspects of our daily life by reminding ourselves to stay present in the moment. This creates happy memories to draw on. Spend some time with babies or toddlers in play. They experience life in the moment, not plagued by regrets about the past or anxieties about the future. When we participate in a happy experience, fully participate, we are making a deposit in our emotional bank account. We can then draw on this account when extra emotional resources are needed. Practice mindfulness once a day. We can do this with even simple tasks such as eating a meal or washing our hands. Notice everything about the experience, the way it looks, feels, sounds, smells. For more information read Mindfulness for Beginners by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Let me know of your experiences with mindfulness!
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