Mindfulness means:

Present moment appreciation of your inner states and the world around you.

Mindfulness also means:

  • Creating new categories
  • Welcoming new information
  • Tolerating more than one view

Mindfulness also means:

  • Letting go of the demand for categories
  • Disassociating from the craving for information
  • Detaching from the need for a point of view

Mindfulness helps you gain better access to:

  • Intuition
  • Creativity
  • Community

In that context, mindfulness helps you:

  • Clarify your values
  • Strengthen and direct your will
  • Make better choices
Finger pointing mindfulness. Don't mistake the finger for the moon.
Don't mistake my finger
for the moon.
"In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, the really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline."
David Foster Wallace, author, This Is Water
David Foster Wallace
Author, This is Water

Intent, Flow, and Skillful Means

Although mindfulness sometimes occurs by chance,

we can also make it an active practice,
a kind of observing, watching, noticing,
in which we:

  • Set the intent to see the present moment.
  • Encourage deep relaxation and “flow.”
  • Cultivate skillful means to wake up.
Children work for the fun of it!
Man selling brooms.

Using Mindfulness to Find Meaningful Work

Finding and maintaining meaningful work requires regular, consistent action, but the steps are clear and the results immediate.

Finding your own meaningful work requires primarily that you get in touch with your beginner’s mind.

In beginner's mind you "hold the question."
In beginner's mind you "only don't know."

Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

Shunryu Suzuki

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Mindfulness practice is perhaps the best way to nurture beginner’s mind.

Practicing to be mindful challenges you to recognize things as they are and to change your life through actions that:

  • Increase well being
  • Reduce suffering
  • Do no harm.

In that context, beginner’s mind is:

  • Trustworthy.
  • Patient.
  • Without goals or an agenda.

Self Power
Mindful movement: relaxation, concentration, focusing, cultivation of flow.
Man Restoring Violin In Workshop
Mastery in Action

Several other behaviors and conditions are key to finding work that is meaningful. These include:

  • Honesty and Openness
  • Friendship and Compassion
  • Ethics and Morality
  • Philanthropy and Gift-giving
  • Financial security and Freedom from debt
  • Mastering an art, trade, craft or profession

The gift of here-and-now awareness, presented by mindfulness practice, magnifies your ability to practice these behaviors and create these conditions. It also helps you to see the consequences, short-term and long, of not practicing them.

With mindfulness,
you can clearly see
how to include and strengthen these
conditions and behaviors
in your every-day life
 — from moment to moment.

You can practice mindfulness

  • anywhere
  • any time
  • under any circumstances

Pai Chang gardening.
"No work, no eat."
Pai Chang (720–814 C.E.)

What's your next step?

Beginning today,
this moment,
you can follow your
path to meaningful work.

  • Begin with mindfulness.
  • Continue with mindfulness.
  • Aspire to a regular practice.

Through this practice, you will begin to recognize and appreciate . . .

. . . your inner state

  • Body
  • Emotions
  • Thoughts

. . . the influences of the outer world

  • Environmental factors
  • Other people’s attitudes
  • The forces of culture and clan

. . . not later but in the moment, while you are experiencing them.

Lao Tzu riding an ox into the wilderness.
Mounting the ox,
he slowly returns to the marketplace.

Does Mindfulness Intrigue You?

Would you like to learn more? 

Please feel free to start a conversation about what to do next.

3 Rows, Circle, Triangle, Square

Learn more about mindfulness & meaningful work & the services I offer.

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