Mindful vs Bingeful Living!

*image from google

I've heard this phrase often and it has hit home especially during those moments when I'm lazing around too much or binge watching that show on Netflix, even though I know I have a looming deadline or some other important work to finish. It has made me wonder if this quote is saying that I will spend the rest of my life wrapped up in a blanket, watching re-runs of the Gilmore Girls and munching on chips (or crisps as the British call them!). That's probably not a very good way to live out the rest of my life. I'm not easily overwhelmed in life, be it at work or with personal issues. It usually takes a huge load to make me want to crawl into that blanket and wish that I could live out the rest of my life encased like a burrito and away from all those so called issues in life. But it happens sometimes and during those times, this quote has always made me feel guilty about how I spend my day.

People have different ways of dealing with stress in life and that does not necessarily mean that you will live out the rest of your days being lazy or incompetent. But you do have to take care of where you expend your energy the most and then see if its actually healthy for your body and mind. Being mindful of how you spend your time could impact the way you live your life and also the amount of stress that you carry forward. Its completely fine to take a step back and breathe when things get too hard to deal with in life, but you should also try to find a way to move forward from these setbacks and difficult times instead of deciding to not deal with it by burying your head in things that seem good in the moment, or in my case - Netflix.

So what you do to avoid falling into this dangerous routine of binge-watching/eating/gossiping your lives away? For me, when I am overwhelmed or when I feel like I'm losing my direction in life, I sit down and try to think of 3 things that I want done that day and I write them down. If you're a sticky notes type of person, you can even do it on your laptop. And when I check those 3 things off at the end of my day, I then proceed to write down the things I'd like to accomplish for the week. And at the end of the week, I take stock of what I have managed to accomplish from my list of things. Then I go for the BIG one and write down what I'd like to do for the whole month. Set realistic goals like 'I will read for 30 minutes every day' or 'I will write at least 300 words each day' and check them off at the end of the day to see how you have followed through.

Take it slow and start with small things and then move on to the ones that scare you. In my case, one of the things that scare me is sleeping at a reasonable hour. Most days, I'm awake until 4 or 5am and then I'm so tired the next day that I feel like I can't get any work done. So I decided to write down that I will go to sleep every day by midnight so I can wake up at 8am the next day and feel productive again. It's been working well so far and I've stopped feeling guilty every time I see that quote by Annie Dillard.

The most important thing to realise is that you're not superhuman and you only have 24 hours in a day to do the things that you want to do. Some days might be harder than others and some problems may seem like they will never go away and you might even feel that Murphy is on your case 24/7. But like everything in life, problems are only here for a short term and then they are replaced by something else. Being mindful of how you spend your time during the day will help you look at each problem in a new light and realise that every problem, not matter how big it is, has a solution if you look hard enough for it.

#mindfulliving #time #life