Do you remember when you were a child how you had your own agenda and timescale? It’s such a contrast to the busy-busy adults we frequently become. What would it be like to pause this busyness, to take the time to look closely again at something in nature, or to suspend your belief and imagine again?

As an activity in practicing mindfulness, go have a look around your backyard or head to your nearest park and hunt for little things: find a leaf or rock or something that takes your eye, and sings…

Sit down and look at your leaf or rock or object, take the time to quietly notice using all of your senses: your sense of sight, touch, smell, the kineasthetic sense of imagining all those molecules that are tightly bound into forming the object that you hold.

Apply this ‘present’ mind awareness at any time to increase your sense of wonder. It is a grounding activity to commune in spaces and with nature. When you increase your sense of wonder, you say YES to life and you enlarge your vision of it too.

When you are present, you reduce resistance. You remind yourself that you have time, YOUR TIMESCALE to sit and reflect and BE without judgement of yourself. Pausing to listen to the noises around you, or the sights you can see, or the feeling of your body in space. Remind yourself not to let other people Hurry You and not to apply that pressure to yourself.

Anais Nin once said: “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Give yourself the gift of space and time to wonder again.