Mindfulness on the inside

I am really practicing being mindful everyday. I am so good about being outside and noticing everything that is happening around me. Each time I have to travel in my car on my long journey to work I try to take in the sky and note if it is a clear blue day or there are fluffy clouds or just anticipate a cloudy grey day that makes it ok to be in a funky mood! It just seems easy outside to take in the smells and the noises happening around me.

Then I passed a friend in the hallway at work and she was just staring at this object on the wall. It was a television screen advertising names of donors with a special symbol to denote the name of the project. She stood there for a few minutes and I watched her wondering what was so enticing? It just looked like a boring screen to me with a list of names. I stopped to ask her what she was looking at. She said I always loved that symbol tied to the campaign and I just think the way they have the back lighting on the names of the donors makes it so pretty. She went on to say she recently moved her office and now she was stopping to notice all of the new things in her environment. It struck me as so odd that we might not be taking time to be mindful of our surroundings inside. We get caught up in our daily rituals or the TV is on or the radio or we have to get dinner ready. We are easily distracted by our routines but are we missing out on something?

I challenge you to take the time to be mindful in every place you find yourself. This is what I came up with today. The absolute and lovely quiet in my home. I understand it now when they say that the silence is deafening. The rain that made me feel at ease as it pelted my roof. The gusts blowing against my windows. The sounds the house makes when the heater kicks on and I anticipate the warmth I am about to feel. That gets me to feeling grateful I have a heated home out of the elements. But enough for today. I will save grateful for another post!