Living in the Now

I ran a red light tonight. 

Thankfully, there were no cops around and I did not hit another car. 

Living in the now definitely needs some work. 

I ran the light because I was listening to a podcast and started to drift off into the imagery of the story. This is my first week listening to podcasts, due to the new iOS upgrade. I never thought it would affect my driving! In the past I would listen to audio books during long drives, and this situation never occurred. Yes, at the time I did not have a one year old, but this was only a podcast! It's only 44 minutes of mindfulness. Haha. I once again seemed to turn it into mindlessness. 

 

 It's not the easiest thing to find a good podcast. Especially when you want interesting podcasts on mindfulness, yoga, buddhism, or positive parenting. I've been through a few already. The one that I was listening to is called: Yoga Stories. It's the best podcast I've found so far.

Well, after I ran the light, I did not turn off the podcast. I just made sure to remember that I am not in a lecture hall, I'm driving! 

I feel as if though I am running my own personal red lights, now more than ever. 

It's so easy to become a media and electronic junky even though you have more important things at hand. Goals keep getting pushed back. Hulu and Facebook seem more appealing then small moments of self improvement. Yes, sometimes I'd rather watch Modern Family rather than wash my face. It's sad (and disgusting), but true.

 

These new habits are affecting the minimal time I have to spend on correcting and improving old habits. I have even avoided the mindfulness goals I set previously.

So, I'm going to blog the different mindfulness habits until they are perfected.

Living in the now is a tough one.

It's tough, and I will have to work on this for the rest of my life. Ay.

This is my Living in the Now (LITN) plan:

Be AWARE

-Emerse myself in the activity at hand. 

- Forget about tomorrow and yesterday.

-Pay attention to feelings, sensations, thoughts and actions. 

-dont drift off into oblivion

How is this going to happen exactly? Practice. I have this lovely application on my iPad called inkflow. It allows you to take pictures and write or type on them. It's so helpful when note taking. Inkflow will be my documenting tool. There are many activities and events in a day making it impossible to log every single situation.  I will set my goal to two LITN a day and increase it after I notice I'm improving.

This sounds easy. I'll keep you posted on the results.