Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning.

Now I don't know what the new trends of 2021 are going to be, but looking back over

the last year, I remember especially during the pandemic and lockdown and everything

else that was going on. There were a lot of people who were engaged in new hobbies,

new activities and in particular, I had a lot of people reach out and say they were

doing things like mindful coloring and mindful puzzles and things like this and I'm always

slightly intrigued by this idea of putting mindful before an activity because it

suggests that somehow all other activities are somehow not mindful.

Not I totally understand that I sit down and do coloring and painting and things with

my kids sometimes and it's really relaxing. I enjoy it. But I can also say that there

are times when I color and paint and I'm mindful with it and there are other times

when I'm not mindful. We can be there coloring really, really beautifully and yeah, involved

in thinking about something. There's nothing mindful about that act. Just because it's

a call to mindful coloring book does make it a mindful activity. You know, and in just

the same way, just because it's a mindful puzzle doesn't make it mindful. What makes it

mindful is how we show up and how present we are in that activity. Every single moment

in our life, every activity is an opportunity to be mindful. You know, even in the monastery

it wasn't as though every single day all day. There was just meditation or other things

we had to do, whether it was sweeping up or gardening or cooking or you know, whatever

it might be. Every single thing was treated in the same way. Didn't matter whether it

was a formal meditation session. Didn't matter whether it was another activity. Every

activity, every moment was an opportunity to be mindful.

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