Summary: Most people in our society spend most of our time thinking about the past or the future, rather than being here, now. There is a voice in our head saying “I can’t believe she said that”, “Man, you are so dumb, what did you do that for” and “I’ve got so much work to do, and the kids to organise, and the groceries to get, and …” and “I haven’t got enough time.” We can retrain our brain by consciously choosing to focus our attention on what we are doing here and now. As we do this the negative mental chatter quietens. The mindfulness meditations, such as watching your breathing, earlier on in this podcast and website are good tools to start retraining our brains. Ekart Tolle and Jon Kabat-Zinn are fantastic at teaching this brain retraining. They gather old wisdom and teach people to live in the present rather than in the past or the future. Any of their books or talks, such as The Power of Now or Mindfulness for Beginners, are well worth reading or listening to. During this retraining we are drawn back, without noticing it, to thinking about the past and future again and again. Old habits die hard. We can discipline ourselves to choose to repeatedly focus our attention back on the present. As we do this we find we notice much more of what is around us now. We find ourselves stopping to smell the roses, listening to our kids more, being more attentive to our partners … and to our patients. We find that we work, at work and at home, more efficiently because we think more clearly without the mental noise. With this we find we have more time. We are more peaceful without those thoughts nagging in the back of our heads all the time. We sleep better. We are happier. We are more alive. Right now what are you doing? As you read these words what else is going on in your mind. Now stop reading for a minute and just observe your thoughts. ~ Notice how much is going on in your mind. Can you see that there is a you that is separate from your thoughts? There is nothing wrong with thoughts, so long as they are not running your life. With practice as we learn to still our negative thoughts and beliefs, and quieten our thoughts about past and future. Then we start to have useful thoughts. We create a space for positive thoughts to come through. Some times positive thoughts can come flooding through and we get an insight into mania. Next we learn to still even the positive thoughts. Then in the space of still mind there is a space for intuition. We access the vast stores of mind where the inexplicable happens, things seem to just fall into place, coincidences happen. Life flows easily. As we learn these skills we are able to share them with our patients. We do this by induction – as we live in the present this rubs off on other people. We also become aware of more opportunities to share this knowledge with our patients . We learn to trust that we can share this knowledge. We find that people are more receptive to these ideas than we have believed. We find that deep down everyone is searching for the same thing: freedom from the mental chatter and reconnection with their true selves. As well as the wonderful knowledge and skills of medicine, nursing, physiotherapy or which ever craft we belong to, we can help ourselves and our patients back to being present. Read or listen to some of Tolle’s or Kabat-Zinn’s work, it may just be the best thing that ever happened to you. Download audio
