Ways to ‘approach’ your life more mindfully
"Why ‘The Yellow Car Challenge’" you ask?
There are very few yellow cars on the road, in fact when it comes to popular car colours, yellow is one of the most unpopular colours, ranking in the bottom 5% choice bracket worldwide. Knowing this, looking for yellow cars on the road should be quite difficult. Funny thing, when you turn your mind towards spotting yellow cars, they pop up all over the place. It is all about firstly having the intention to see yellow cars and then broadening your awareness to spot them.
Similarly, most people think that practicing mindfulness is just another ‘activity’ you must squeeze into an already busy schedule. While the intention to be more mindful is appealing (because we are learning more from science of the proven benefits) we are often unaware of everyday mindful opportunities because we don’t know how to recognise them.
By embracing the weekly exercises The Yellow Car Challenge offers, you will quickly realise that mindful moments can be experienced in everything you do in a day; so the barrier of finding time to be mindful is taken away.
| Research carried out at Harvard University by Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T Gilbert suggests that we spend 47% of our days thinking about something else other than what we are actually doing. We can drive for miles in our lives on what’s called “auto pilot", absorbed by our unconscious wandering mind, living a life "miles away" from where we actually are, oblivious to the richness and beauty life has to offer. We can live in an almost dreamlike state of ‘doing and thinking’ rather than ‘being’. We strive and struggle to ‘get things done’ rather than taking in experiences and being awake and aware of all that is going on inside us, and in the world we live in. Stuck in ‘autopilot’, we lose touch with our bodies and what they are telling us and become caught in mechanical, conditioned ways of thinking and living. This makes us vulnerable to anxiety, stress, depression and reactivity. | Just for a moment, imagine what might be possible if you changed your approach to the way you ‘do’ things. Imagine if you chose to consciously strap yourself into the driver’s seat of your life and feel the steering wheel in your hands. Imagine if you were truly present for every part of your trip! What would your life be like? How much happier and freer would you feel? What impact would you have on those you love and humanity as a whole? Living more mindfully is one of the single most powerful things you can do for your good, and the good of others. It wakes us up from of our ‘autopilot’ state and unlocks into our natural capacity to experience the world as it really is. |
Each challenge will last for one week and include information about ways to approach it. It will also include ideas about how to keep the challenge ‘alive’ in your life for the week, and some possible insights and discoveries to watch out for.
Although the challenge started in January you can start anytime. To see more challenges or to connect and share your experiences, visit us on Facebook.
Our hope for you is that you will experience first-hand, how choosing to embrace a mindful ‘approach’ to one small area of your life each week, will reap the many benefits attributed to mindfulness practice.
Week OneThe Challenge: Spotting Yellow CarsThis week I invite you to be on the lookout for yellow cars. Whether you're driving, on public transport, on foot, on your way to work or just out and about, look for yellow cars in traffic, on the streets, in parking lots and in driveways. | Ways to remind yourself
You can post ideas that work for you as reminders on Facebook. InsightsIf you feel like you’re stuck in 'autopilot' mode, you’re not alone. According to a study at Harvard University by Daniel Gilbert and Matthew Killingsworth we spend 47% of our days thinking about something else other than what we are actually doing. Occasionally, being on autopilot isn’t a bad thing but it's important to get the balance right. Developing autopilot 'habits' reduce the cognitive load on our brains, freeing it up for additional tasks. This can assist us in becoming more productive and getting more done. When we live long periods of our life on autopilot our brain adopts this mode as a 'habit' and forgets to focus on ‘being’ and ‘living’. Our awareness drops and our insights diminish; before we know it, we’ve missed the possibility of embracing a day, a month, a year or a lifetime of wonderful opportunities. Mindfulness involves consciously bringing awareness to our here-and-now experience with openness, curiosity and flexibility. Mindfulness is about waking-up out of autopilot mode, connecting with ourselves, others and the world around us and appreciating its fullness. It is a profound way to enhance psychological and emotional resilience and increase life satisfaction. In this challenge we use yellow cars as a visual trigger to wake us up out of autopilot. Yellow cars aren’t very common, but when we focus our attention on spotting them, they pop-up everywhere. You’ll be amazed at how many you see. When you see a yellow car, simply name it as "yellow car", and in that moment be aware of where you are and where your mind is. Did you just switch ‘autopilot’ off and ‘now’ mode on? Big doors swing on small hinges. It’s often the smallest things that have the biggest impact. Embrace spotting yellow cars as your first step to bringing mindful moments into your life. Keep in touch through Facebook and each week I invite you to post your experiences and insights. Happy spotting! |
