Listen to “A Guide to Living Your Life Consciously”.
In The Art of Power, Thich Nhat Hanh explains:
“Everything is related to Everything else. Your well-being and the well-being of your family are essential elements in bringing about your business’s well-being or any organisation where you work. Finding ways to protect yourself and promote your well-being is the most basic investment you can make. This will have an impact on your family and work environment, but first of all, it will result in an improvement in the quality of your own life.”
Conscious living is about appreciating yourself and everything around you by seeing and acting with greater clarity. It goes beyond the traditional understanding of self-development, clears up the illusory and confusing separation of self-development and spirituality and introduces the concept of you, not as a separate person, but as interconnected to all other people and things.
Conscious living encompasses everything you do every single day.
Here’s how you can start living more consciously today:
Body and mind self-discipline
Our bodies and minds are connected, and a healthy mind in a healthy body is the best recipe for being conscious. If we’re tired, sick, or run down, it’s tough to maintain optimum performance.
Being active is not only good for our health, but it also makes us happier. Start by listening to your body and try to understand what it needs. Is it craving exercise, sleep, nutrients or water?
Listening to what your body has to say will help prevent you from doing harmful activities and eating unhealthy foods.
Negative Thoughts Control
You are in control of what enters your head!
Negative thoughts can become a pattern for each of us, and they can trigger all sorts of responses, including anxiety, stress and depression. However, if we control our input and feed our minds with the right thoughts, everything else will improve too.
You have the power to decide how you live just by altering the thoughts in your mind. To do this, you need to pay attention to the most common thoughts you have. Are they negative or positive? Do they make you happy? Or do they put you into a negative cycle?
Change Consumption Habits
According to a United Nations report, cutting food waste and reducing meat consumption will reduce climate change by saving millions of square miles of land from being degraded by farming. It’s not necessary to eliminate meat entirely if you want to make an impact. Going vegan for two-thirds of meals could cut food-related carbon emissions by as much as 60%.
Recycle
Before buying items made of plastic or which use plastic packaging, check to see whether it’s recyclable. Today, many kinds of plastics are.
Resist consuming products you don’t need. The main reason why so many of us want to buy new products is that the advertising industry has fooled us into thinking that shopping is all we need to be happy. However, the reality is that once we have enough to satisfy our basic human needs, products can’t improve our well-being in any way, shape or form.
In short, we urgently need to consume less. A lot less! This means less food, less energy, less stuff: fewer cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops or mobile phone upgrades.
Relations with life around us
The force of life exists inside us and around us.
There is an extraordinary connection between Earth and the life that she supports, and it is a connection that exists between all of us.
The Earth and all life within it has a pulse. How connected we feel to others, and the planet itself is a reliable indicator of our happiness. We all need to feel loved and deserve compassion, empathy, love and support.
Do no harm. Neither to yourself nor other people or nature. Change has to begin within yourself—the world can only change when we change.
