Being mindful is easy when you are in a controlled environment with like-minded people. It is quite different to practice mindfulness when you are in the hustle and bustle of every day life. Mindfulness is not so much and activity but more a way of being. To get yourself into the habit of being mindful takes practice. You need to habituate an attitude of mindfulness and the little exercise below could be useful to practice mindfulness and making it part of your nature.

Follow the S-T-O-P practice below:

Stop and stand still. Between action and response is a space. In that space is your freedom to decide what is the right action. Just stop, create a space and catch yourself before you react. Then…

Take time to breathe. take a few deep breaths to calm down the Sympathetic nervous system and activate the parasympathetic nervous system. this way you will move from fight-or-flight to feed-and-breed. Gather yourself and stabilize your internal energy. Control the body first and then…

Observe, Open up and consider your Options. Notice your thoughts, feelings and sensations. Become aware of what you are thinking of and observe the type of thoughts you have at this time. Then notice the emotions that are generated by these thoughts. Try and identify these emotions and label them objectively. List as many as you can. Lastly notice how the thoughts are making you feel – and where you are experiencing these feelings. Finally when there is awareness of sensations, perceptions and mental formations…

Proceed with a new plan. Now that you are mindful of your current situation and in charge of yourself, proceed in a way that will make you proud. now you can act according to your conscience.

Last week I had the privilege of hosting my Tibetan friend and colleague Dr. Chok Tenzin for the first time in South Africa. And what a refreshing experience it was for both of us. With his non-judgemental outlook on life he made me realise what a beautiful country we live in. The air is fresh, the roads are good and we live close to nature. He pointed out how much people live in conceptual worlds – thinking judgementally of what may happen or hanging on regretfully to what might have been.

Living predominantly in a “conceptual reality” often leads to uneasiness, anxiety, and stress. And whereas it is important to stay in touch with what’s happening in the world, one shouldn’t listen to too much bad news or watch too much negative TV. Our unhappiness is firmly rooted in the conceptual worlds we create for ourselves.

In his simple English: “don’t invite into your mind the future which is not here yet, and don’t hang on to the past which is already gone”. The trick is to balance one’s mental world with a healthy dose of direct experiences – those we can only get through our senses like mindfully seeing something beautiful, tasting something great, spending time with someone special, and thinking about the future or the past.

Our senses allow us to experience the only reality we have and has no ability to think or judge anything by themselves. We do that with our minds. And we should watch out for how we think about life. By simply contemplating the good things one has right now with a genuine sense of gratitude, without conceptualising the future or the past, it is possible to improve one’s sense of happiness. Counting one’s blessings as they say! Being mindful of the current moment and appreciating the freedom life offers us to express ourselves are the foundations of a great day.

Reinhold Messner has a passion for limits and was the first to successfully climb the 14 highest peaks in the world. All these peaks are in the Himalayas and he climbed them without supplementary oxygen. In the article below this 71 one-year-old Italian explorer give us his view on how he does things. It has a very strong message, which holds some powerful metaphors for everyday life. This is what he wrote in“Voices from the Summit”:

Danger, exposure, cold and difficulty are part of our mountain experience. These are what we fear and enjoy, and from them, we learn. And we will continue to learn in this millennium if we defend these values. Don’t sell them out. It’s so easy to sell out by building a cable car in the mountains, but by doing so; we steal the isolations and exposure from the mountains.

What’s important? At the end of our lives, it’s not important if we are rich or wealthy. At the end of our lives, it is important how many experiences we have lived through. For me, mountaineering is one of the best activities from which to become rich with experiences. We should not discuss ethics. We should save values. Mountains without danger are not mountains.

We should not make rules for others. I have only rules for myself. First, I never go where others are going. I climb on my own or with a small group. Second, I push myself only to my limits, never above them. Passion for limits is my motivation, and this could be a good slogan for mountaineering in the new millennium. The third thing is that I don’t leave any infrastructure behind: no bolts, no fixed ropes, no camps.

In my entire life, I have never placed a bolt and I never will; if I cannot do it without one, I don’t go. I have never used oxygen bottles; if I cannot climb without supplementary oxygen, I don’t go higher. It’s not a difficult decision. And I will never carry a telephone or have a handset with me in the wilderness. To do so would mean destroying the sense of isolation and exposure I seek. If I can call out, I’m no longer on the edge. These are my self-imposed rules. Now, getting older I simply dream of climbing lower mountains and skiing across smaller ice caps or deserts. I try to do so with less support. And after my political life as a nomad, I will spend half a year or more in the wilderness with only a rucksack – and nobody will know where I’m going.

We all want similar things in life really. Most of us want to be happy, to have nice things, a successful job, people to love, and people to love us. And we chase this in whatever way we think will get us there. I was chatting with a friend of mine in Nepal and he said something really interesting.

As we go through life we get more and more affected by a hangover of the past: what we haven’t done, or haven’t got haunts us into the future and we desperately try to get things to suit us so that we can finally reach that point where we can have it all and be ok. This concern for our perceived lack of not having enough yet, or not quite being there, is rooted in a restlessness called fear, and this uneasiness often manifests in aggression, irritation or impatience. By this, he was not suggesting we stop working hard or stop taking on challenges as they appear on our path. He was suggesting we change our attitudes and be driven by a courageous pursuit of growth rather than a restlessness that has its foundation in fear.

Now I’m sure we don’t all go through life driven by fear in this way, but is was interesting to note that in order to be content, we need to trust ourselves and have the courage in our own abilities to guide us through life successfully. We need to break down our self-imposed walls of imprisonment and wake up to our own consciousness as the moral compass that will courageously deliver us into the future. With a strong belief that we have what it takes to get us there, we can allow ourselves to relax and really enjoy the ride as so many of us profess.

We all want similar things in life really. Most of us want to be happy, to have nice things, a successful job, people to love, and people to love us. And we chase this in whatever way we think will get us there. I was chatting with a friend of mine in Nepal and he said something really interesting.

As we go through life we get more and more affected by a hangover of the past: what we haven’t done, or haven’t got haunts us into the future and we desperately try to get things to suit us so that we can finally reach that point where we can have it all and be ok. This concern for our perceived lack of not having enough yet, or not quite being there, is rooted in a restlessness called fear, and this uneasiness often manifests in aggression, irritation or impatience. By this, he was not suggesting we stop working hard or stop taking on challenges as they appear on our path. He was suggesting we change our attitudes and be driven by a courageous pursuit of growth rather than a restlessness that has its foundation in fear.

Now I’m sure we don’t all go through life driven by fear in this way, but is was interesting to note that in order to be content, we need to trust ourselves and have the courage in our own abilities to guide us through life successfully. We need to break down our self-imposed walls of imprisonment and wake up to our own consciousness as the moral compass that will courageously deliver us into the future. With a strong belief that we have what it takes to get us there, we can allow ourselves to relax and really enjoy the ride as so many of us profess.