You’ve heard of mindfulness, right?

I know, silly question. You couldn’t have escaped it unless you were living in a pod in outer space — everybody and their pet seems to be talking about it these days.

But, what is mindfulness? And can you benefit from it even if you’re not quite into the whole touchy, feely, new-agey stuff?

I hear you.

I stumbled on mindfulness by chance, or fate, depending on how you look at it and what you believe. Either way it was a happy incident.

We were in Kuala Lumpur Airport waiting for our plane to arrive and decided to grab a coffee from a place across a bookstore while we waited.

I have a weakness for airport bookstores — traveling helps rid me of my inhibitions and the curse of putting too much thought into what I read. While looking through the shelves rather aimlessly, the book Search Inside Yourself: The Unexpected Path to Achieving Success, Happiness (and World Peace) by Chade-Meng Tan caught my eye. I bought it on an impulse for my husband.

At the time he was busy so I started reading it.

I was hooked.

Before becoming a stay at home mom, I was a software engineer and this book is perfect for those of us who are piqued by mindfulness but could do without the touchy, feely, new-agey vibe.

While reading the book I looked up the Google University session lead by Jon Kabbat-Zinn, a doctor who has been credited with bringing mindfulness to the attention of the west and creating a program which helps fight stress using mindfulness.

His definition of mindfulness is
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It’s infuriating isn’t it?

You read a million articles about how to be a better parent and study a million new techniques to master this discipline thingie, and still your kids are masters of misbehavior and will tear each other apart at the slightest provocation.

What gives?

I am a committed skeptic when it comes to parenting know how. But I recently discovered something that helped our family resolve sibling rivalry, discipline issues and more, and changed our family forever.

Mindfulness.

When I started, I had no idea that it had a new-agey name or that it was being hailed as some new fangled parenting mantra. I stumbled upon in by accident – and all the hype and hope aside – it really worked for us.

What it boils down to is this; mindfulness is simply taking a moment to notice what’s happening in your family and accepting it.

It’s noticing your own thoughts, noticing your child’s behavior and choosing how to react without letting your emotional baggage and your bad temper stomp all over your life.

It all started like this. [Read more…]