Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Mindfulness


I was reading last year about Jonny Wilkinson and his interest in Buddhism. I could see similar characteristics between me and Jonny, not obviously in a sporting context but in his obsessive perfectionism. He has attracted some ridicule but I understand where he's coming from. The constant self analysis he thinks is affecting his performance and more importantly his life.

He has read up on self awareness techniques that stem from Buddhism. The mantra being the past and the future doesn't matter, just deal with today and whatever it throws at you. To this end we can assume that Jonny has indulged in meditation to reduce his stresses. Would you have had him down as a depressive? I think the boy is on the ball and can see positives in adopting Zen principles to cope with the daily grind.

So it's time to face up to where I've been going wrong for so many years. Perhaps when I attended the birth of the "Clever One" who arrived at 4am I should have taken the day off and not made the early turn shift. It was the same the night before my first marriage, fighting on the streets into the early hours during a late late shift, when the ceremony was at 8am. I was obviously obsessed with the job and not wanting to miss out.

I've been juggling too many balls for too long and when they come crashing down can't cope with the failure. I'm an achiever and not a believer in religions per se - but I've just met me.

Mindfulness based Cognitive Therapy was devised by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn. The below is a session he did at Goggle, which is interesting if you're into it. (It's over an hour) Of course Macho police people don't do for this meditation weirdo stuff - I'm intrigued.

Thanks to those of you who sent messages of support. I'm better now and raring to go at it full steam ahead, well maybe after Christmas.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

great, hippy cops :)