Increased self and situational awareness is an incredibly powerful tool to add quality to your life. In the first course you created the vision for your life and aligned your goals to your true desire. In this course you will begin to develop self and situational awareness, as well developing discipline. The simple mindfulness exercises here will naturally lead you into higher awareness and discipline. The number one cause of failure by a wide margin is a person’s reaction to unconscious thoughts. When we “have” to do something we don’t want to do like going to gym, our unconscious mind will instantly begin to surface thoughts about all the reasons we don’t really have to go to the gym. Your mind wants to keep you comfortable, and going to the gym doesn’t provide short term comfort. These exercises will provide a practice that will help you gain awareness. Below is a summary of the primary benefit for each of the exercises. Each of these exercises should be practiced daily for the foreseeable future. They won’t take much of your time, but they will pay big dividends into the quality of your life.

1. Self Awareness – This exercise will reveal the basic way your mind works. This awareness will create consistent long term improvements to the quality of your life.
2. Mindfulness Practice – This exercise will provide increased self awareness, and help you practice deciding where you want to focus your attention. This is a critical part of any success.
3. Practical Mindfulness – This will help you apply the discipline gained above to your everyday tasks. It will also help you move your focus away from what you think of a task, and help you to just focus on the tasks.

These exercises may seem simple, and you may not be able to immediately see their relevane to your life, but I am confident that a moderate practice of these exercises will add quality to your life, and help prepare your for the final course to take the struggle out of your success journey.

Thinking and Reality

You will need to find a quiet place and a comfortable chair for the next couple exercises. The initial exercises will take about fifteen minutes to complete.

Exercise 1 – 3 Minutes – Self Awareness

We are going to begin by calming your parasympathetic nervous system, and calm your mind. This short exercise should bring your mind into a more focused state. It will also begin the process of a better understanding about the way your mind works.

As soon as you read the next sentence, stop and take six long slow deep breaths in and out your nose if possible. As you are taking these breaths, notice any thoughts that come up, but try not to add any thinking to them, just go back to focusing on the long slow deep breaths. Start now and come back in one to three minutes and continue.

You will have probably noticed while you were taking these breaths, thoughts started to surface, you didn’t willingly bring them up, they just came up. This and the following exercise were meant to show you the truth about the way our minds work. Most of our thoughts aren’t voluntary, they just come up and we respond or react to them. This part of the course is about getting control of your mind by learning to acknowledge the thoughts, but not to add any additional thought to them, or identify with them. Where do our thoughts come from? Think about the fact that you don’t have to focus on driving, walking, drinking water, and any number of other things. You practiced and learned how to do them and your unconscious mind took all the thinking and work out of it. You just walk and drive without much thought. Your thoughts sort of come from the same place. You had many experiences between your childhood and now. You learned how to react to things, and those reactions got cemented into your mind. Notice, even when you are talking to a friend, there isn’t much effort at all, the words just flow out. You don’t have to think about anything, words just flow from your unconscious. These exercises will help you to notice more closely what you are thinking and saying. You will be able to see what thoughts are holding you back, and what thoughts are helping you move forward. A mindfulness practice will train you to acknowledge the thoughts without identifying with them.

Exercise 2 – 10 Minutes – Mindfulness

This practice was meant to be done for ten minutes, once or twice a day. There are many different slants on a mindfulness practice, but I have kept this one simple. The objective here again is to train your mind to noice more of your unconscious thoughts, and help you practice not reacting or identifying with those thoughts. You can think of this as practice doing nothing.

As you are sitting comfortably, preferably with you back straight. You should be in a relaxed position, but not too relaxed. Start with three long slow deep breaths, and then close your eyes and just focus on your natural breaths in and out. Your breath is your anchor. This time you won’t stay alert for thoughts that come up, but instead just notice any thoughts that come up, and when they come up just acknowledge them, and don’t add any thoughts to them and gently go back to focusing on your natural breath in and out.

Many people will find this challenging, and find themselves caught up in thought, or having frequent thoughts. This is normal, and there is no need to get frustrated. The purpose is to practice acknowledging your thoughts without reacting to or identifying with them. Each time a thought comes up or you catch yourself getting caught up in thought just gently go back to focusing on the breath.

Continue this for up to ten minutes. If you can only do a few minutes when you are first starting, that is absolutely fine. For now ten minutes is just the target. The important thing is to sustain the practice over a period of time. Eventually you will come to really enjoy this practice.

When you are ending the practice gently open your eyes, and just sit still for a moment or two before getting back to your day. Just notice how you feel.

Exercise 3 – 1 to 5 Minutes once or twice daily – Practical Mindfulness

At least once per day choose a mundane task like doing the dishes, making the bed, sending a routine email, or any other task that you do frequently. It can be whatever activity you choose. Just like the above exercises, take three deep breaths before you get started. When you start doing the task, just focus intently on each part of the task, and perform it slow and deliberately. For example if you picked doing the dishes, just notice and feel the temperature of the water, notice the food particles falling away from the plate. Notice the sound of water hitting the bottom of the sink. Notice every part of the task like it has something to teach you. Notice all the physical sensations associated with the task as you do it. Just like the mindfulness exercises above, if you find yourself getting caught up in thought just go back to paying attention to the tasks.

Closing Thoughts and Final Exercise

Throughout doing the above exercise, take a moment at the end of your day to write your thoughts about the things that happened during the day. Reflect on these daily practices and your overall impressions. Journaling your day alone is often a great help in improving the quality of life.

Daily practice of the above exercises will bear fruit. Some of you will see immediate and pronounced benefits, and others will take a few days to start to notice the benefits. Within thirty days everyone should begin to see significant value in these practices. If you have any challenges or questions feel free to contact me.