Losing Sight of the Shore: Mindfulness Exercises

I am totally consumed by the concept of living mindfully.  I buy everything on the subject: books, ipod meditations, local food from sustainable sources, even a sailboat!  I blog. Self-help is my favorite genre.  I try to live peacefully.  I try to be emotionally present.  I try to be an engaged listener.  I try to maintain my boundaries.  I try to do what I have been taught is good.  I try to do what is right. 

I know there is value in this way of living.  I know that these thoughts are worthy of my attention.  I cannot live otherwise, but today...I am exhausted.  I remember hearing an appropriate line from a movie:  “Too much thinking wears down your batteries.” Lois Lane to Clark Kent, in the original Superman.

At any rate, I would like to share a little of the sentence completion exercises from Taking Responsibility: Self-Reliance and the Accountable Life.  This book was phenomenal!  I highly recommend it.  The author has about 30 sets of these sentence completion prompts; here are a few.  Basically, you just finish the sentence with as many endings as come naturally to you.  Don't over-think it.  Just blurt or write out the answer.

If I pay more attention to my inner signals today—
If I am more truthful in my dealings with people today—
If I am 5% more self-accepting today—
If I am self-accepting even when I make mistakes—
If these ideas start working in my subconscious mind—

If I disown what I am thinking and feeling—
If I place other people’s thoughts above my own—
When I look at what I do to impress people—
If I face who I am to make myself “likeable”—
I am beginning to suspect—