How about making a real change this New Year. Learn to do nothing on purpose. Yes, learning to sit on your butt for a few minutes each day just watching the sensations of breath in your body could be all that you need to do to change your life for the better, in ways that you could never have expected.
You don't need to sit in the lotus position or shave your head. All you need to do is sit upright and bring your attention to the sensations of breathing in your body. Sooner or later, and it's likely to be sooner rather than later your mind will wander. This is where it gets interesting! How do you react? Do you want to be a perfect meditator or do you just notice where the mind has gone without any sense that you've failed? Do you get frustrated? Do you get bored?
Why's this so interesting? Whatever happens you can't get it wrong so long as you do it. It's so interesting because by sitting watching our breath for a few minutes we get a chance to get to know ourselves. As we get to know ourselves better, we get to befriend all those parts of us that might have been reasons for self-criticism or dissatisfaction in life. As we get to befriend ourselves we actually begin to change these limiting patterns of thinking without doing anything at all. This releases our natural human potential in all kinds of ways.
This is a brain training technique that has a wide range of benefits now beginning to be understood scientifically. Most of the scientific study has been done on the benefits of doing mindfulness exercises for stress, anxiety and depression but it's understanding how mindfulness helps with these problems that begins to explain how mindfulness can help us to flourish in all kinds of areas in life.
In fact there's a whole collection of reasons why learning to do nothing on purpose is really useful. By doing this we begin to see our patterns and we become less reactive and respond more wisely in all kinds of situations. So often it's best to "leave be" and things seem to just sort themselves out. You'll be amazed how effective doing nothing on purpose can be!
Mark Leonard has played a key role in the development of the University of Oxford's 'Oxford Mindfulness Centre' and has set up a spin-off, The Mindfulness Exchange Ltd, to provide mindfulness training to corporate clients. Mark studied Zoology and then Fisheries Biology, but his primary life interest has been study and practice of meditation. He has developed his understanding of Buddhist philosophy with a friend who is a senior academic monk from the Dalai Lama's school and trained to teach Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Mark is able to combine a thorough knowledge and practice of traditional and scientifically based approaches to meditation.