How to practice mindfulness when social distancing

How to practice mindfulness when social distancing?

When you are confined to your home, you usually get much more time to think about your life. It is easy to fall into the trap of questioning your earlier decisions.  There will always be moments that you think you should handle better.

Meditation object

How to learn from the past, but not to get involved emotionally or mentally in reliving those moments? You can not change the past. It is a futile endeavor, but you can still learn, though. It is the hardest thing. For me, it took years of training, together with my personality, to achieve that. I must say that when you can distance your self from emotions that are clouding your judgment, you can make better decisions. Of course, at the same time, you should nourish the feelings that are fulfilling and uplifting. Not that you need to look at the world with pink glasses, but to try to find the meaning and usefulness in every experience you had. This balance is a perfect object of your meditative practice.

If you are past your meditation beginnings, and able now to practice Vipassana (meditations of insight), you can reflect upon those feelings without getting emotionally profoundly involved. You can now observe your experience as a un partial observer and to draw conclusions that will help you in the future.

The answer to the question of how to achieve this is the simple one. Practice. Practice daily, even only for ten minutes, if you can manage to meditate longer, even better. But it must be every day.

The future is yet to come

The second mistake we all make is to have unrealistic expectations from the future. It is OK to plan for the future, but you must not get attached to your picture of future events.

They will unfold regardless of your best wishes and planning. A good plan will help, but you can never predict everything. You can see this now with the virus lockdown. Even the best plans fail when you are against natural phenomena. So, you should plan, but you must be ready to adapt your plans as future evolves in front of your eyes.

Risking to be boring and repetitive, I must say that the way to accept this leads to trough meditation.  During meditation practice, you will think about the future. It is OK. But try to accept that thought, look at it as an outside observer, and let it go. You will feel better. I know that daydreaming is often a cure for hard life circumstances, and sometimes we all need this. Just be aware that they are just that. Daydreams. Don’t be disappointed when they don’t come through. Just move on.

Look at the life realistically

When your idealistic picture of the future does not come through, don’t let it put you down. Adapt to the situation and do the best you can. This type of satisfaction, when you can adapt and get most of the circumstances, is fulfilling. Try it.

I am not a naturally sociable person, so for me, this situation is not that unwelcome. I accept that they are people that will find this isolation hard. Just remember that it shell past too. Good and bad things in our life are impermanent. They come, stay here with us for a while, and then go away. When meditating, if you get burdened with self-isolation measures, just think of that. If you are successful in accepting the impermanence, your mind will calm down. So, I hope you have learned how to practice mindfulness when social distancing.

I don’t know how long this isolation will last, but I know that it will finish eventually. Until then, stay safe. We will be seeing each other in some better times.

If you want to know more

If you want to learn more about things I write about, check out my books. See also what the goal of this web site is. You can check out my other post about mindfulness, and share your thoughts and comments.

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