living intentionally

The 10 areas we will cover are:

1. Attention - The practice of attention gives rise to awareness. Attention and awareness conduct a dance around our thoughts, like protons and neutrons circling the nucleus of an atom. However, thoughts are not real and in fact behave like objects of consciousness as they bring meaning to our reality. Mastery in the ability to control thoughts will increase well-being and truly sets you free. Free from living in a state of mindlessness and partial attention. The practice of paying attention is at the core of mindfulness.

2. Ego - The ego represents a sense of who we think and believe we are. Bringing mindful attention to this conceptual construction allows to recognise certain limitations the ego can impose upon our lives, impacting our relationships, work, relationship with ourself and everyday experience. Learning to simply notice the ego is the first step towards liberating ourselves from unfavourable emotional reactions.

3. React vs Respond - Building on an increased awareness of ego and a heightened level of attention, we are more able to employ a mindful pause when faced with emotion. This allows us to regain a sense of choice over how we proceed, a response, instead of allowing an automatic emotional-fuelled reaction which we may later regret. 

4. Gratitude - Developing a sense of gratitude invites us to shift our perspective at any given moment towards one of deep appreciation for all aspects of our lives. An essential resource to maintain and cultivate resilience and one that has widely been applied through both interventions in positive psychology and mindfulness teachings.

5. Judgement - When aware of the ego, we can become aware of judgement towards ourselves and others. When we realise these judgements are based on illusions, stories and long-held conditioned beliefs which hold no truth, we can release them and, instead, enjoy a more open mind, increased positive emotions and a better relationship with self and others.

6. Compassion - Regular mindfulness practice naturally increases levels of compassion by changing the neurological composition of the brain, though we can still learn how to develop an increased conscious awareness of the need to be compassionate towards ourselves, others and all beings on a global scale. The interrelationship between ourself and others is parallel; the more compassion we have for yourself, the more we have for others and vice versa, therefore compassion directed in either direction will grow the other. 

7. Intention - This form of goal setting leads to a better understanding or in some ways reveals the purpose behind what we do. Why do we do the things we do? It appears that sometimes we are willing to cut off our nose to spite our face. Developing an awareness of your intentions is like having a road map to wisdom and your intention also initiates this journey of discovery. You will find that living intentionally means making the right decisions based on the information available at the time.

8. Doing/Being - Positive meditation cultivates and improves relationships through constructive feedback. The relationships you experience with everything and everyone is what makes the difference. Knowing the essence of who we are affords us the inner strength to adopt a more positive outlook. We start to live a life which is not based on chance but through the positive interactions we have with our environment.

9. Body/Mind - The body is as much the mind as the mind is the body.  Between them they convert pressure into touch, molecules into smells, wavelengths into sight, vibrations into sound and chemical reactions into taste. It could be claimed that a sixth sense is awareness. Positive Meditation treats all this as one, even when everything around you says they are separate. It is through connectivity you will grow to know yourself and adopt a wholesome attitude.

10. Application of Meditation - The selection of your most suitable meditation could make the difference between a poor or good experience. The field of meditation has in recent times experienced rapid growth fed by the need to address different issues. Although we offer mindfulness, other forms of meditation exist for your investigation. There is no right or wrong way of meditating, it comes down to individual preferences.