Day 46 - Mindful consumption - the mental variety

A few weeks ago I experimented with cutting out the excess sound in my life. For the first few weeks, I was good and thought I could see its effects in the slowing of the spinning in my head and a greater sense of calm.

But then my attention wavered. I slowly began listening to more music, accepting more noise in my life, and before I knew it, I was back into my old habits. I'd like to get back to restricting the inputs into my brain. I'm feeling stressed and frazzled (largely a matter of perspective, but it's hard to change it) and want to slow down and quiet down.

I've had little success in controlling the maelstrom of thoughts whirring through my head (except, perhaps, in 5 or 10 minute intervals :), but I'm sure it will help to reduce, insofar as I can, adding to the distractions in my head. So this week I'm striving to:

• be mindful of my consumption of noise (music)
• be mindful of my consumption of media (TV and internet - the internet is going to be hard)
• be mindful of my consumption of ideas (what I read)

And I'll try (and fail more than I succeed, I warrant) to just do one thing at a time. Just think on one thing at a time.

Fingers crossed!