Marvelous, Miraculous Mindfulness

So, let’s talk a bit more about emotions.

It is not a huge leap from understand and accepting physical development taking time to that of our emotional development and growth needing time to develop into maturity as well.

That is why as children, we cannot cope with many events in our lives in a balanced way.

This begs the question “How DO we handle feelings that we are not yet developmentally able to balance properly?”

It doesn’t seem unrealistic that we submerge them, right? I mean, we are facing emotions that have come up and as children, we don’t possess the ability to experience them in a healthy way. But we also know from our own experiences later in life, that feelings don’t disappear or evaporate. (Refer to my previous post and analogy to an extremely obese person wearing Spandex.) They have to come out sometime and somewhere – usually catching us completely off-guard and unaware.

Experts on the topic of mindfulness say we need to be able to experience our feelings, not submerge them, in order to bring ourselves into proper balance. And although our emotional system was not developed enough to do so when we were younger; we CAN learn how to as adults.

Enter (you guessed it) MINDFULNESS – the process of getting in touch with and facing our feelings in the moment, experiencing them, and getting on with life without dwelling or analyzing or over thinking them (all which in turn, cause us to relive them and get stuck in them) hindering and sometimes entirely stalling our ability to progress through our lives.

At this point, there should no longer be any doubt as to how big of a deal mindfulness really is to personal growth.

But, did you know how important of a role it plays in our relationships and interactions with other people throughout our lives.

That will be the focus of the next installment on miraculous mindfulness.