A Mindful Moment: Tool 4: Watch Ideals

Image by bibigeek. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by bibigeek. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

From now until the end of the school year, each week we will be including a post called A Mindful Moment.  Mindfulness is an emerging topic in libraries as it relates to our own personal wellness, but also as it affects good customer service. If you are at all like me, if you get a list of 12 things to consider at one time, it is just too overwhelming. Therefore, in these weekly posts, we will be providing small bits of information to assist you in moving toward  a more mindful life. All credit for the content goes to Leo Babauta at Fast Company, who believes “a mindful life is worth the effort.” I really, really love the introduction Leo gave to his 12 piece tool set and his explanation of a mindful life. This week, we feature this tool …..

Tool 4: Watch Ideals

“We all have ideals, all the time. We have an ideal that our day will go perfectly, that people will be kind and respectful to us, that we will be perfect, that we’ll ace an exam or important meeting, that we’ll never fail. Of course, we know from experience that those ideals are not real, that they don’t come true, that they aren’t realistic. But we still have them, and they cause our stress and fears and grief over something/someone we’ve lost. By letting go of ideals, we can let go of our suffering.”

What is this business about a mindful life? Read Leo’s introduction, it will take like one minute and is well worth your time to frame this subject!

Interested in other posts CMLE has done on mindfulness recently?