Hi %%FIRST_NAME%%,
Welcome to Week Seven!
How did you get on with the ‘time to taste your tea’ exercise last week? Could you imagine how this could help you, day-to-day, to re-centre yourself, to ground stress and tension and to feel more at peace, throughout your day?
Could I tempt you to pop by the forum and share your experiences? It Is Time To Taste Your Tea?
Today we’re moving on to a technique that helps you to make sure you’ll never lose your keys again. But, of course, it is about so much more than that. It helps you to make mindful choices at any point during your day. And it’s also about setting your intention – which we’ll come back to, after we have covered the technique.
How To Make Sure You Never Lose Your Keys Again
I remember, a few years ago, running an NLP seminar for a group of business executives and asking them what the number one thing was that they wanted to learn that day. Of course, I was half-expecting either something profound or something silly (it was the first morning and people were still settling in to the group).
One of them piped up that he was fed up with losing his keys. He spent ages, each day, hunting for his keys, especially when he was in a hurry. And the rest of the group wanted to fix that one, too.
At first, I wondered if it was just a joke, but it soon became clear that this was a big stress issue for him – and a more general symptom of living a life stuck in his head, where he had little memory of what he was doing – one of the most common symptoms of mind-less-ness (remember your Kick-Start Guide?)
It wasn’t quite what I had expected them to say, but fortunately I was able to share with them a simple mindfulness process that helps you make sure you never lose your keys again, as well as reminding you to come back to the present moment, each time you hold your keys.
It works equally well for anything you handle regularly, which you can’t find easily!
The reason we lose our keys is because we are being ‘mind-less’ or ‘mind-full’ when we put them down. And it’s rarely restricted just to our keys.
We are usually having conversations with ourselves about everything else that needs to be done – or reviewing, analysing and critiquing our day.
So it’s no wonder that the ‘key-thing’ is running on auto pilot and we don’t consciously remember where we put them.
Here’s how to make sure you never lose your keys again:
[audio:http://]- Before you even start with this one, could you choose a special place to put your keys, whenever you come home?
A hook? A shelf? A drawer? Creating a routine around your keys saves you having to remember where you put them. - When you get your keys to open your front door, allow yourself to take 3 mindful breaths – Week 1 (don’t worry – you won’t need to do this every time – it’s just while you’re anchoring yourself into this new mindful key behaviour!)
- Open your door and then say to yourself: “I mindfully put my keys ___________” – wherever your special place is.
- Put your keys there and actually experience it with your senses:
what do you see as you do it?
What do you hear?
What are the tactile sensations? - When your keys are there, take a moment to see them and know they are there.
Know that you’ll remember it now. - Do this each day for a week and you’ll have created the new habit.
How do you remind yourself to do this in the first place?
You could tie a big and colourful luggage label on your key ring, to tell you to be mindful about them!
You could stick a Post-It by the lock on your front door?
I’m wondering: is there anything else you misplace regularly, where a little bit of mindfulness could help?
How was your experience of this exercise? Any questions? Any insights? Here’s where to share:
How To Make Sure You Never Lose Your Keys Again!
To take this mindfulness technique to the next level, how about choosing to consciously set an intention as you enter your home and put away your keys?
The Power Of Setting An Intention
Setting our intention is like tuning the Monkey Mind’s radar to notice certain things. So instead of randomly ‘consuming’ life, we can choose to pay more attention to the things that lift our hearts, gently letting go of those that drag us down.
You could choose something like:
- I choose to let go of my day and enter my home fully present to this moment.
- As I put down my keys, I let go of tiredness and choose to feel happy and energised.
- I choose to be present for my family, connecting with them from my heart.
- I let go of worry and move into my power, in this moment.
- It’s all ok. I’m back, here, now.
I’m curious: which intention would you choose to set, as you put down your keys?
How might this create conscious, mindful shifts for you, in your experience of life?
Want to share? Want to find out what others are choosing? Which intention could you choose to set?
I hope you have fun with these techniques this week. See you next week, when we’re moving on to food!
I hope you have a great week.
Namaste,
P.S. Any techy questions? Please email hello@clarejosa.com to get help from a member of my team. Thanks!