Hello my lovelies, I hope everyone is well and had a lovely Valentine's Day however you spent it.
As you can see from the title, I am finally coming back to you with another Coffee Chats segment for the blog after two whole months of not doing one. What?! In this one I have quite a lot to make reference to so just bare with me. Apologies for not having a photo of the coffee I had, but I had the classic Katie J coffee, an Iced Latte.
Monday, 5:40pm, Costa was the current day, time, and place that I began to write and develop this post in my notebook. Whereas now it is Thursday, 11:18pm, my bedroom is the current day, time, and place while typing this up for you guys all to read. Now all that's been established, how has this come about you ask?
Well, I felt like checking in with you guys about some more life based and oneself thoughts and feelings etc. Over the past few days I've been feeling a bunch of different emotions ranging from happy, frustrated, and inspired. 'Inspired' being the main one on this occasion. I think it has something to do with my Live Art planning for my assessment in March. I'm creating a one on one meditation based piece which is going to focus on the mindfulness of oneself. Exhaling the stresses and worries of life in order to really connect deeply to the inner you.
Speaking of inspired, the reason I felt the urge to do a Coffee Chats was because earlier that Monday afternoon I purchased a book, How To Be Mindful by Anna Barnes. This will come in handy for my Live Art performance as that way I can fully practice what I want to preach to others.
mindful: to be conscious or aware of something
The book follows the structure of demonstrating different techniques on how to be mindful everyday of your life. For example writing a gratitude journal, doing a digital detox, and meditation techniques.
The main concepts the book suggests is in order to be mindful you must see things that happen with fresh eyes. Which I find really interesting when you think of applying that to everyday elements of reality. Or, situations that do not occur every day.
Being mindful is the main element I want to incorporate into my Live Art performance I decided to start straight away and practice what I preach. In the book there's a header called Getting From A to B which says to take your time to stop and appreciate your surroundings, where you are, what you're doing, what you see, hear, smell, touch etc.
So once I'd finished my coffee I decided to take a long walk home. What would normally take roughly 20 minutes took me 70 minutes (i.e. 1 hour and 10 minutes). I walked on the outskirts of town and eventually led myself back to a familiar route to home. I also decided to walk my favourite way, through this park area. I love to walk through it, especially in the evening because it is extremely peaceful, no cars around, it's a family housing area; makes me feel super calm and relaxed.
During my walk I took my time, I'm normally a brisk walker so for me to just stop and slow down meant I could really watch life going on around me. Which is weirdly quite a nice sensation. I really noticed how quickly people were rushing around me and how no one really takes a moment to breathe and be grateful of where they are right now, in this present moment. This moment in particular I really felt the need to appreciate the world. I'm more than lucky to be living the life I love everyday and getting to do those things that make me happy. No matter how big or small that moment is. Whether it's getting the opportunity to explore your favourite city because it's been your dream to visit. Or being able to have a cup of coffee every morning as you can't imagine your day without one.
Every moment we experience defines us in ways we don't always understand. Nor do we actually appreciate. We focus way too much of our time and energy on the negatives in our lives and in the world when we should be focusing on the positives.
Spending time with our family and friends, experiences done, memories made, photos taken, music played, the fact that we can smile, that we can eat our favourite food and drink our favourite drinks, cuddle our pets, express our opinions, thoughts, feelings, and ideas, sleep in a warm bed every night, have roofs over our heads, getting to read, having our imaginations run wild, colouring in pictures, having a passion and a drive towards a goal, bettering ourselves, writing in journals, smelling the roses, getting a good nights sleep, blogging, painting, dancing, writing, staying up all night with your friends just because you can, going out and getting drunk and dancing the night away as these will be the nights you'll remember when you're in your 70s, watching our favourite TV shows, travelling the world, going to concerts, falling in love and not being afraid to fall, taking chances, and just being able to BE YOU.
I personally feel like the majority of the time we forget why these things happen to us. I don't always let myself fully appreciate all those moments mentioned above and there are probably hundreds more I could mention but we'll be here forever. I need to let myself get lost in the moment and love every second of it as it might never happen again. I've never stopped to fully appreciate what I have at this present moment right now.
In relation back to Live Art as well as the book; it's reminded me that you should always live in this present moment now. Whatever it is you're doing, for example me right now typing this blog post. As even if you do it again it's never going to be 100% the same as it is right now at this very moment. You only ever really experience each moment of each day once and then that goes down in your history of living, whether you remember that moment or not.
As a module, Live Art has done wonders for opening my eyes. Not just about performance, but about concepts to challenge, opinions to change, moments to seize, and most importantly about me. Who I am, who I want to be, where I want to strive to go in my life. It's been a vital learning experience from the very start in relation to me as a person - what I wanna discuss, challenge, and how I can relate to my inner self. And how I am able to do that in my own way. I feel an immense enlightenment when I look back at how far I've really come over the past few years. No one will ever truly know what that means, but I've never been more happy than to be the person I am right this present moment in time. Which I believe is something we should all aim to be.
Which is why after writing this post I'm making a new edition to my blog...
'MINDFUL MONDAYS'
Usually, every Monday I will go out and have a day for me. I forget about the stresses of the day and all these things I need to get done and just take a few hours out of my day for me. I go to town or on a walk or something of that nature and due to those days this is why posts like this one come to be.
The posts under this category will not be every Monday but it means you guys can have some mindfulness advice and how I am being mindful in my everyday life etc. If you didn't already know, I'm a very balanced person in all areas of my life which basically means I need things in moderation but in equal balance. For example I need an equal balance of spending time with people and spending time on my own in order for me to not go insane. I am a people person but I've learned over the past few months that time on my own is personally key for my well being to live a happy life.
This new idea of Mindful Mondays will definitely help me with a big project I want to work on at some point in the future for this blog and share with all of you guys. So when I figure out how I want to present it to all of you guys and how I want to experience it I will obviously let you all in on what it is.
As we come to the end of this post I just want everyone to know something and to just remember to stop the clock.
We only have now, only this single eternal moment opening and unfolding before us, day and night.
Jack Kornfield.
This quote is from the book itself and it's one of the ones that really struck a chord with me. We really do only have now. It's so important to remind us all to just live in every unfolding moment as it may never come back to us again. It's so relevant to remind each and every one of us how important it is for us to live for now. Forget the past, forget the future, and be present in the present. This is a subject area I've always been passionate about but over the past few weeks it’s been all I can think about which is why I'm so happy I've finally done a post on it.
Before I
love and leave you, going back to being appreciative I just wanna say thank you.
Thank you
to each and every one of you guys who takes a moment to just sit and read these
posts. You will never know how much it means to me and how much I love doing
this. Thank you always for your endless support, lovely comments, for bearing
with me when I don't post for months on end. But mostly, thank you for making
me want to keep going with this blog.
Thank you
for reading and I will talk to you all again very soon.
Love,
Katie
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