The Zen of Spacious Life – Mindfulness
Published October 27, 2011 | 
To consider it in the simplest way, mindfulness means to stop thinking and start to be aware, to live in the present (here and now) of your life experiences instead of the past and future of your experiences and thoughts. Awareness or mindfulness stretches time in exactly the same way that new experience does, and since we devote more focused attention to our experience, we take in more information from it.
In other words, each of us to some extent can actually control time, although many do it unknowingly. But, the fact remains that time doesn’t have to speed up as we get older. Some of us try to extend our lives in traditional ways like keeping fit and eating healthy food, which is completely sensible and highly recommendable. Yet, it’s also possible for each one of us to expand time from the inside. How? By changing the very way we experience moments, the moment to moment reality that is our lives. Just imagine we can live for much longer, not just in terms of chronological years, but also in terms of our perception… and our spacious life.
Understand that Mindfulness is simply, your focused awareness of the present moment. The focused awareness of mindfulness allows us to be entirely conscious of any simple sensation like the warmth of sunlight, the cold of snowflakes or with the right focused awareness, the complex relationship and interaction occurring between our inner thoughts and feelings.
By tuning into our mental processes with the same focused mindfulness, we are capable of recognizing that our thoughts are actually just thoughts, and they don’t necessarily have to represent reality. With that focused recognition, we can observe our very thoughts, rather than being subject to them.
An amazing trait of mindfulness is that the clear and focused awareness allows us to absorb the tapestry-like richness of the moment, rather than going through life with half of our attention on the past or future or consumed by our own mental thought-chatter. The self-actualized knowledge that directly results from mindfulness permits us to be more intentional in choosing priorities and actions that fit our life mission or our entrepreneurial endeavors with greater success.
Senses of Mindfulness
Body – Being mindful of your breathing, even to the level of individual breath and this is your perception of the breath. Try it with different breath durations, long breath, short breath, deep breaths and shallow.
Feeling – From pleasant to painful and feeling along the spectrum.
Thoughts – Thoughts and intentions.
Mental – This is as much about the mechanism of how the six senses function, and is the very source or origin of all thoughts, feelings and perceptions. Everything starts somewhere and this is it. It is known in many beliefs as “the all.”
Therefore mindfulness should be defined as a technique in which a person becomes intentionally and skillfully aware of his or her perceptions, feelings, and thoughts in the present moment.
Finally, studies have found the following benefits for people who have developed their personal focused awareness and mindfulness with regular practice:
- Self-trust, self-acceptance, and increased self-awareness
- Enhanced and insightful appreciation of life
- Face difficulties with genuine serenity
- Accepting of life and its challenges with greater attitude
- Effective coping strategies with fluid adaptation to change
- Lasting decrease in stress-related physical symptoms, including chronic pain
- Anxiety and depression decreased significantly
- Greater concentration and enhanced creativity
- Immune system functioning with highly-noticeable improvement
If you are doing mindfulness meditation, you are doing it with your ability to attend to the moment. – Daniel Goleman
Praying without ceasing is not ritualized, nor are there even words. It is a constant state of awareness of oneness ‘the All,’ with God. – Peace Pilgrim
The awareness of our own strength makes us modest. – Paul Cezanne
The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness. – Lao Tzu
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. – Eric Hoffer
To reach your highest level of awareness, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. – Anonymous
The Zen of Spacious Life – Slowing Time
Published October 26, 2011 | 
Believe it or not there is another way which we can use to perceptually slow down time, by making a very conscious, clear and focused effort to be completely aware or ‘mindful’ of each of our experiences.
Of course, there are some people who are ones that seem to be more affected by familiarity than others may be, and are able to view the world with something of the fresh, first-time vision of children throughout their lives. You may know people like this, as they are the kind of people that are sometimes seen and referred to as eccentric by those familiar with them, and they are known to often begin sentences using phrases like ‘Have you ever noticed…?’ or ‘Have you ever thought about…?’
This kind of child-like vision sometimes moves them to suddenly stop and gaze up at a beautiful scene of the sun breaking or setting, through clouds or a silver moon above the horizon; or they may stare intently at the beauty of a horizon across the ocean, at simple landscapes or at animals, just like they’re viewing them for the first time. 
Musicians and artists are often gifted with this kind of ‘child-like’ vision, a vision that in fact provides them with the inspiration for their work.
People that possess this kind of wonderment and sense of strangeness about things they encounter, which most of us naturally take for granted, and they feel a strong need to capture and frame some of their more intensely perceptive experiences. In general, people like this will be far less affected by the ‘first time law of psychological time’ than most others, although time may very well take on the characteristic of speeding up for them, but possibly not to the same degree. So in a sense, we can simply cultivate this same attitude by developing a conscious effort to increase strong awareness and be ‘mindful.’
Developing the ability to clearly focus our awareness rather than focusing our attention on the ‘thought-chatter’ swimming in our minds or on routine tasks or environmental distractions like TV or computer games, can take some practice. 
We should try to focus on the time at hand, and live in the present moments, to devote our personal attention to the experiences we’re having, and to our immediate surroundings.
Start simple, like when you’re starting the morning with a shower, consider rather than letting your mind’s thoughts chatter on and on about all the things you’ve got to accomplish today or looking back on the things you did the night before, attempt to bring the focus of your attention to the present moment of here and now, and have crystal-clear awareness of the subtly-unique sensation of the cleansing water splashing against and streaming down your body and the heightened-sense of warmth and cleanness you feel.
Finally, driving on your way home from work, or on the bus or train, consider instead of thinking about everything you had to deal with at work, planning tomorrows activities in your mind, or daydreaming about whatever you did last night, clearly focus all of your attention outside you, closely observing the sky, the houses and buildings you pass, and be aware of yourself in the moment, a part of everything you visualize. With practice, your awareness will increase tremendously, and your mindfulness of each moment you encounter will slow down time as you experience the world of your spacious life.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. – Henry Miller
If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret. – Jim Carrey
I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. – Jim Valvano
Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment. – William Glasser
We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment. – Chanakya
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you. – Leo Tolstoy
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. – Henry David Thoreau
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment. – Oprah Winfrey
Understanding Consumer Awareness and Attention
Published May 25, 2010 | 
Social Media has made information and tools readily available to anyone seeking enlightenment on just about any subject imaginable, and the use and assimilation of the information has been directly associated with greatly increased consumer awareness as people become more comfortable with the Web and knowledgeable about their particular individual interests.
In the past, most businesses either just bought the awareness or attention of the consumer market niche, or used public relations from different media to reach the attention of the consumer, and even bugged the consumers with direct mail, phone contact or some other forms of working the market niche one at a time, and now there is a new way of gaining, and even more importantly, keeping the awareness of the consumers that businesses and organizations have set their sights on in respective market niches.
Most organizations and corporations have developed a culture over the years based on one of these methods that have been viewed as the best tried and true methods of generating much coveted consumer awareness, for example, there are some that primarily create attention through advertising, lots of advertising, others through focusing on public relations, and many through working the market one individual consumer at a time to produce sales.
More times than not, the type of culture is determined by the point of view developed during the career of the Entrepreneur or CEO, and the type they experienced and have developed a strong point of view about, so if an Entrepreneur comes through the marketing and advertising track, then what is considered problems are most likely to end up with more suggested advertising solutions and ideas than others.
You must develop the complete understanding that in today’s world of Social Media and Web Marketing and Networking, that you can quickly earn 
valuable awareness by simply creating something interesting and valuable to the consumer, then publishing and providing it online for free, for example, a YouTube video, a Blog, a research report, photos and images, a stream on Twitter, an eBook, a Facebook page, and many others that will help you maintain important value in the eyes and minds of your consumer market niche, and since today’s market presents us with a host of connected, interconnected, and overlapping networks and social graphs, the value can be maintained and easily grown with additional valuable information and insights you provide on a regular basis, as the expert you will grow to be recognized as.