How To Recognize When It’s Time To Be (Shockingly!) Less — Not More — Mindful

(C) Natasha Nesic, worklife-fitness.com

1. Feel overwhelmed.

2. Calmly listen to the endless list of to-dos for the day, followed by their respective pros and cons.

3. Observe the way your thoughts fire like bullets and counter-bullets — an image brought to you by too much anime, video games, and action-adventute movies where it’s physically possible to shoot someone’s ammo out of its incoming death-path towards your head.

4. In the onslaught, acknowledge that you don’t quite have those bullet-countering superpowers.

5. Accept (grudgingly) that you’re going to have to act within the laws of physics that indicate not all of your to-do list can be accomplished in 24 meager hours.

6. Let the rainstorm of bullet-thoughts — coupled with their compulsory Devil May Cry reference — slow to a drizzle.

7. Let those thoughts trickle into the gutter of your mind. (Everyone has one. This is how you choose to use yours at the moment.)

8. Exhale in the empty space left behind.

9. After minding fully how full your mind has been all day, enjoy the sensation of being less mind-full.

10. Dodge the pun police.