Hey there, welcome to Radioheadspace, it's Dora.
So a few months ago a student came up to me after a meditation class and asked a question I hear all the time.
How do I bring mindfulness into my everyday life?
Because when I'm sitting on the cushion meditating, I feel this peace and this calm.
But the moment I open my eyes and step back into my day, it's like it all disappears.
I lose it completely.
And I get it.
I've been there.
I think we've all been there.
We think meditation is the whole practice.
We sit, we breathe, we try to calm our minds.
And then we stand up and go back into the world wondering why that sense of peace didn't come with us.
But here's the thing.
Meditation is just one small aspect of living a mindful life.
There's an idea that shows up across many different wisdom traditions, and that is how we live matters.
Not just what we believe or intend, but how our choices land in the real world.
The words we use, the actions we take, the moments when we step in and the moments when we don't.
This way of living invites us to slow down and look honestly at our impact.
To ask ourselves whether our actions create and contribute more harm in the world or help reduce it.
Now, this isn't about being morally pure.
It's really about being awake to what we're doing, not only in those 20 minutes of meditation, but really everything that comes after.
And this is where mindfulness begins to take shape off of the cushion.
It's not meant to be something we practice in the morning or at night before bed.
It's something that we live.
This reminds me of when I used to work as a nurse.
I'd often find myself in situations where I constantly had to choose between what was convenient for me Or what would take more time but be most beneficial for my patients.
We were understaffed constantly.
At times, there would be 13 patients to one nurse.
You're tired, you're burnt out, and your moral compass gets tested over and over again.
There was this one night shift in particular that I'll never forget.
It was around 2 a.m. and most of the patients were asleep.
The unit was finally quiet.
And then one of my patients, a woman who had been struggling with anxiety all day, came out to the nurse's station.
She was trembling.
Her breath was shallow and fast.
She said, I just need someone to breathe with me.
Now, I had two choices.
The easy choice.
The convenient choice was to give her medication and then send her back to her bed.
That's what I'd seen other nurses do.
That's what the nurse in charge would have told me to do.
Get her back to sleep.
Keep things moving.
But I looked at her.
I thought about my values and why I became a nurse in the first place.
Care, love, kindness, compassion.
So I made a different choice.
I took her to the common room, we sat together, and I breathed with her.
Slowly, deeply, for maybe two minutes.
That's all it took.
Her breath steadied.
Her shoulders softened, and she looked at me and said, thank you.
I just needed to not be alone for a moment.
The next morning, she thanked me again, and she was so deeply grateful.
I realized that's what right action feels like.
It wasn't convenient, it wasn't easy, but it was just aligned.
And here's what I also learned.
After years of working in a system where I was constantly forced to compromise those values, where I couldn't give patients the care that they deserved because we were so understaffed, so stretched thin,
Eventually, I realized I couldn't keep working in that environment.
And that was a hard lesson.
But it taught me something essential.
Our actions matter.
And when our actions don't align with our values, we feel it deeply.
There's a story I love, a Native American teaching about two wolves.
There's this elderly Cherokee man talking to his grandson and he says Son, there's a battle that goes on inside all of us.
It's between two wolves.
One is evil.
It's anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret. greed, arrogance.
The other is good.
It's joy, peace, love, humility, kindness.
And the grandson thinks about this for a moment and then asks, well, which wolf wins?
And the old Cherokee man simply replies the one that you choose to feed.
So maybe today, just notice which wolf are you feeding and reflect for a moment.
Where in your life are your actions aligned with your values and where do they feel in harmony?
Also, where might there be a gap?
Where are you choosing convenience When your heart is asking for something more?
Now you don't need to fix everything right away.
And you don't have to change everything.
For now just start taking inventory.
And start paying attention.
Because awareness is always the first step.
And sometimes it's the only step that you need.
So when that student asked me how to bring mindfulness into their everyday life, here's what I think now.
Meditation teaches you to pay attention.
It gives you the space to see things clearly and as they are.
But that attention and that clarity, it doesn't stay on the cushion.
It moves with you into the grocery store, into difficult conversations, into moments when someone needs you and you're tired.
It shows up in how you choose to act when no one's watching, in what you do, when it would be easier to do nothing.
Mindfulness isn't just about feeling peaceful or calm.
It's also about living in alignment.
So, I'll leave it here for now.
Thanks so much for being here with me.
I'll see you tomorrow.
