Posted by Becca Borawski : Wednesday, Jan 04, 2012

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It’s amazing how fast your mindfulness of what's important can go. One week I’m doing so well with my “semi-retired” mentality on life, taking everything as a vacation, and having a blast. Next thing I know I’m stressed, tired, and annoyed. Nothing in my life changed – my perspective about it changed. My mindfulness...disappeared.

It turns out mindfulness is a thing to be practiced like anything else. It's a muscle. It gets stronger with use and atrophies without attention.

Our default setting, as human beings, is our lizard or animal brain. Our default is to "survive" our day. In our animal sense that means dodging danger, finding food, defending ourselves, and getting home safely. It doesn't mean feeling fulfilled and self-expressed. It doesn't have anything to do with kinship or love. It means expecting the worst and looking out for ourselves. It most likely has little intersection with happiness.

It turns out enjoying the day in a relaxed state of mind actually takes effort and a bit of consciousness. It takes a mindfulness of where one's head is at - checking in with ourselves to see if it's the lizard brain acting or the real-you-brain acting. It takes knowing you even have these two brains and sensing the difference in their reactions to the world.

I can survive the day on instinct, no doubt. But, I can enjoy every moment of my life with a little mindfulness.

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Today's Workout
Advanced / Rx+
3 rounds, for time:
6 muscle ups
12 burpee-pullups
18 pullups
800m run

Beginner/Intermediate
3 rounds, for time:
25 pullups
25 dips
800m run