In my previous blog, I had mentioned how stress can lead to various health conditions and how being mindful of your being and breath will help you rebalance your energies or restore your mental well being .

In this blog , we shall explore eight attitudes of Mindfulness:

Let’s take cooking for a moment , how would you consider trying it as a beginner ?

1. Assume a Beginners mind – You could Begin with a mindset that you wouldn’t need to know cooking and its the first time your trying it – You could sense or smell the carrots or capsicum with green veggies whatever you are planning to cook and get familiarised with the recipe and procedure

2. Being non judgemental – Being non judgemental with yourself would really help because you are not an expert or expected to be one.All you need to do is start preparing a dish or salad or whatever you have planned as an outcome and staying in this space of curiosity.

3. Patience – Trying anything for the time first makes our brains get overwhelmed by this pace of learning and skills development that we try and apply it to any context or area in life. Leaving us susceptible to frustration, worry, panic and impatience . Some of these behaviours are conditioned from the past.

4. Trust – Learning to trust that whatever you are trying in cooking today is going to be ok and fine. Trust in your intuition or gut feel or whatever that thought is and tell yourself – Whatever I am going to make is gonna be great and amazing!

5. Non – Striving – Allow yourself to experiment and not force anything out of the process. Attitude matters big time. Bring in an element of ease and joy and do no rush through the process . Your mind may take you to a higher gear while you are still at gear 1 .

6. Acceptance – Acknowledge your self-reliance that you care for self and others while cooking .

7. Letting Go -Cooking associates to learning any new skill so let go of the need or being impatient with your culinary skills with yourself and others. Let go of the need for perfecting anything in the attempt or rushing to completing the dish, knowing that you are doing it for the very first time and doing your best.

8- Generosity (For others including self) Show generosity and self compassion .Allow yourself for mistakes and several failures.

Imagine this process or check-in being mindfully written on your mind’s whiteboard – where you can imprint these attitudes and start seeing how they express themselves in reality. Also explore where else can you use this approach ?