- Mindlessness
- Mindfulness in everyday life
- Mindful aging
- Mindful corporate management
- Do not tempt your guardian angel
- To be there where you are
Mindlessness
You all know this from daily experience: A tea glass ends up broken in the dishwasher because the machine was too full or the dishes and cups were placed a bit carelessly. “That was close” when driving your car while talking on the phone and narrowly avoiding a fender bender or worse. Impolite or incorrect answer to an important mail because you were busy checking your Facebook account. A fleeting good-bye kiss in the morning which may give rise to a serious dispute in the evening (you don’t love me anymore …). A wrong investment decision in the company because you did not take your time to read the entire report. Blaming yourself for having made the wrong decisions in life while your retirement is approaching fast, because profession and calling never matched, because for 40 years you have failed to pursue your real goals in life, even if you could not define them precisely… When any of the above events occurs and we take a minute and look back and ask us why this or that has happened we always arrive at the same conclusion: I was distracted! I was on the phone with a business partner or friend while answering important mails or eating or looking pensively at the picture of a loved one on my desk, or communicating through eye-contact with my secretary about a new business date, or holding back again on visiting the restroom…
Mindfulness in everyday life
Be mindful whatever you are currently doing: peeling potatoes, hoovering, cooking, writing an email, driving a car. Keep in mind that mindfulness requires you to do just one task at a time. Do not peel potatoes while listening to music or talking on the phone to your children. Our brain is no “multitasker”, that is a phantasy. Multitasking is an invitation to mindless muddle in our head and our environment. It is a recipe for mistakes and accidents.
Mindful aging
Our physical and mental agility decreases with age. We will all experience it, at first while observing our parents, later in ourselves. We become more insecure, fearful of new things and fearful of falling. Climbing the steps carefully and mindfully becomes an important habit. Mindfulness training before aging sets in helps us to better cope with it. It can be learned through mindful movements, simple yoga exercises and simple highly mindful walking. Be there where your foot is lifted from or put on the ground. Embracing age opens the path to a more mindful and richer life. Listening or looking attentively for an extended period of time opens up new and rich layers of experience unknown to younger persons.
Mindful corporate management
The world of technology, business administration and political economics is subject to permanent internal and external challenges with an impact on individuals, society and the entire state. Internal challenges originate with people inside the corporate process itself, be they employees, managers or owners. Examples of external challenges are global epidemics (pandemics) – like the one we are currently living through – and the coming climate change. Climate change in particular is putting humanity on the brink. The challenges are multiple: scarcity of arable land, water scarcity, population growth, raw materials scarcity and an ever-warmer planet. Industry needs mindful managers and mindful owners not only today but mainly and increasingly for tomorrow. A mindful manager is fully aware of the consequences of their decisions. A mindful manager will select products to be manufactured and the manufacturing technology based on the criteria of harmless to the environment, fully recyclable and meaningful as well as useful in application and production quantities. Before deciding about an international presence, a mindful manager will at first examine the ethics of the planned action. Countries and systems where human rights are violated are not suitable investment alternatives. A mindful businessperson has spine and takes responsibility in their internal and external actions, and leads and develops the company by carefully balancing the aspects of corporate goals as well as environmental and health parameters, and integrating them into a holistic and well-balanced management system. A mindful manager has an inner compass for their corporate actions, for what is feasible and what makes sense.
Do not tempt your guardian angel
They are here, the little helpers, very close. At night they sleep under fir trees, hidden deep inside the forest. Don’t let anyone talk you out of such ideas and your dreams. Guardian angel – all nonsense? No, it is not that simple!
Someone who, like me, has tested the limits of what is bearable in life or even passed this limit, who has experienced how in extreme professional or familial situations (illness of a child, separation from a partner) the hair on his arms stood on ends, his stomach ached and a cold sweat broke out, will also have experienced this: some power finally guides you out of this chaos!
There are, of course plenty of counter experiences of the people around us, where no-one came to the rescue: Why did my child, partner, mother or father have to die so early? Why am I in such great pain? Maybe our guardian angels can only do so much? Maybe they cannot or need not solve everything?
I have become a friend of my guardian angel. He (or she) talks to me; the final decision, however, always rests with me.
That makes it so difficult. In the end, I am responsible for my actions and inactions. When our guardian angel symbolically signals “no”, we can still do “yes”. That is the huge challenge we face as human beings: to recognise and cherish the paradise we have been born into, and yet to destroy it and grow and mature with this destruction. We need the pain, to value the painless state. That is where our guardian angels come into play. However, if we demand too much from them in their coaching work, they fly off never to return. At night, deep in the woods under fir trees they share their experiences: yet another know-it-all, self-assured head-in-the-sky, stressed-out person, world destroyer… Then they cry themselves to sleep, saddened about all the pain in the world.
And the next morning, before sunrise they fly off to help other people. Soon a shy deer will appear at their sleeping place under the fir trees and lick up the angles’ tears. They are like due but salty with a tinge of pain. Then a shot is fired! The deer is killed at the dawn of day by a hunter to end as roast venison with fresh girolles on the plate of jovial people in a restaurant. This is God’s creation.
To be there where you are
To be there, not a minute too early or a minute too late, can be trained, but it too is difficult to learn. We are used to distractions. Pure mindfulness is without distraction. To be there, where you are right now, what you do right now, what you think right now, without judgement of good or bad. Taken as it is, you are who you are. Look at yourself in the mirror: that is you – period. Living mindfully means to live in the current moment in such a way as to see the things as they are, not as they should be. How can that be trained? Through periods of undistracted solitude – I with myself, or through playing an instrument, or fasting, or meditative seclusion (Dr. O. Buchinger jun.). During meditative fasting I shed all artificiality an unrealisable lifelong dream. I am there, with my body, with my mind and see myself how I have always been. Living and working mindfully means I do what I can, what is feasible, what makes sense. Working mindfully means not to harm anyone, not myself, not others not the environment. A mindful life is thus a healthy and happy life and without fear of expectations that cannot be fulfilled. Mindful people are quiet people. Mindful are beautiful people. They attract guardian angels. And such people no longer challenge their guardian angels. In absolute and quiet mindfulness they accept the thought of the guardian angels with gratitude.
I wish you and your family to stay healthy in the coming weeks and months, to be happy and content. Less is more. I am grateful for your interest in my work. Contact me I you if you feel like it.
Cordial regards from Ballıca/Pendik-Istanbul
Otto Bauer, in February 2021
(Corporate consultant and fasting coach dfa)
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