The Secret of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to be simply mindful. It means to grasp the present moments as it is.

Whether that’s in the sounds, our movements, breath or even slight adjustments, all of it is considered being mindful since we are truly in the present moment focusing on an aspect of it.

Generally, mindfulness is associated with meditation but it comes in different forms as well.

It can also be achieved through journaling or even walking. Meditation might be the easiest link to connect for mindfulness for most but that doesn’t mean there are no other ways to enable it.

Staring at the board for an hour is being mindful as well. Simply being self-aware is mindfulness.

That being said, mindfulness is simply observing things as they are without any judgement nor thought. It’s simply reality.

The most useful aspect however, is to ensure that we increase the duration in which we are mindful throughout the day.

These moments help us to snap back to the present moment and observe for what it is.

Engulfing in our thoughts about the past or future meaninglessly without being grateful about the present we have is unfortunate but also common.

Using mindfulness, we let go of such thoughts.

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A Few Notes on Overthinking

Thinking is about ruminating over thoughts. It’s simply ruminating about various aspects of a thought whether that thought is real or a created scenario.

While thinking is something we cannot possibly remove from ourselves since it is a fundamental biological aspect of us as humans, we have seen the term “overthinking” being tossed all around.

The term however, is always seen in a negative light.

With the variety of commentary on overthinking, it has ironically been overthought.

A simple definition of overthinking: thinking over a thought more than it is necessary to do so.

This means to analyze every aspect of the thought, even ones that are meaningless or rather, the various possibilities that scenario could contain.

This often means thinking about the worst case possibility in our day-to-day scenarios.

Imagine a scenario of a job interview and ruminating over and stressing about your seating posture or the questions that are going to be asked on the previous night.

Both are generally considered overthinking.

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Generalist v.s Specialist

The two so-called polar opposites. Generalists and specialists. One is called as the jack of all trades while another is considered as master of an art.

This is shown throughout mediums we consume that show off an inherent trade-off.

They say that specialists become so at the cost of ignoring everything else including different careers in parallel worlds or their family, friends and such.

While the generalist is the average person who is mediocre at everything and isn’t noticeable since the narrow focused people are rewarded far more disproportionately.

Specialists and generalists only make sense in a cartoon-ish world where only white and black characters exist.

There is no specialist and generalist exclusively. A Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry is, of course, well-versed in chemistry far more than the majority of people.

Saying 1 in 100,000 would still be an understatement but also, this person might also have a hobby of cooking or a sport of their own liking which they are not specialists in.

And in other aspects of simply living life which they learn along the way such as changing the tire of their car and such.

Just because they are a specialist doesn’t mean they are grossly incompetent.

My glib wording of this is: “A generalist when starting out becomes a specialist by the end of it.”

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Superpower of Giving Up

We are often told that we shouldn’t give up no matter the circumstances. This sounds good on paper and what society regularly preaches.

The problem however is when you don’t know when to give up. The advice to not give up is indeed a good one. After all, how can you make progress if you constantly give up along the way?

But there’s a hidden condition we usually don’t mention in this discussion and thus, everyone assumes it doesn’t exist and gives the wrong version of the advice.

Not giving up only makes sense if the process of your goal is the one that’s giving results or if the goal itself is a valuable goal.

To still not give up when results don’t appear or when you find out that the goal is not relevant to your life is considered poor decision making.

It’s simply not beneficial to you nor others.

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