Spring Mindfulness Scavenger Hunt
You know how it is — you start the day with the best of intentions for self-care, making wise and healthy choices, and dutifully adding checkmarks to your do-do list. Then, life happens. Things get muddled quickly — especially in these days where little-to-no work-life balance exists for many sudden stay-at-homers. Before you know it, before you even leave your bed sometimes, all your plans go out the door and you find yourself plodding around in the quagmire that is our chaotic twenty-first century pandemic lives.
What’s a person to do?
Well, there are a million things — but today, I present one, namely the “Mindfulness Scavenger Hunt.”
“A mindful what?” you ask?
Great question!
First — understand what mindfulness is. It is the capacity to be fully aware in the present moment with all your senses, nonjudgmentally.
Nice mouthful that. In essence, it means being engaged and aware, allowing life to be whatever it is without becoming over-emotionally charged. The concept includes decreasing reactivity and increasing acceptance.
“Wait a minute! Acceptance? Is that code for, ‘Just lie down and take the junk that happens in life?’”
Accept that life is actually happening the way it is — yes. Just lie back and take it — no. The point is to decrease impulsivity and snap decision in favor of creating space for making decisions based on reality.
This scavenger hunt is an activity you can do to start becoming familiar with the space I mentioned. The place of “just noticing.” The concept of “just being,” but doing so actively (hello “ middle path “). Rather than living in our left-brain rationalizations, mindfulness practices, such as the scavenger hunt, can bring us fully into our bodies, grounding us and allowing for new perspectives. On the other hand, if we have experienced too many strong emotions, an activity such as this can slow us down and allow for calming of the central nervous system.
I think we can all agree that a calmer, more grounded human is in a better position to make healthy decisions than are those who are overwhelmed and judgy. Curiosity, awareness in the present moment, flexibility, creativity, and groundedness are the intended byproducts of mindfulness. The scavenger hunt is a fun way to achieve all of these. Give it a try — and, if you can, please come back and share how it went!
Have fun!
Originally published at https://potentialfinders.com on April 26, 2021.
