2 Lessons from Wall Street
When I graduated from college I miraculously landed a job in a training program on Wall Street. I was an unlikely candidate to be there - a state school liberal arts student with no finance background - so I soaked up whatever they were willing to teach me. Two lessons from training have proved useful in life many times over: 1. There is no such thing as a free lunch, aka "TINSTAAFL"; and 2. A small number times a large number is still a large number.
While Wall Street and Mindfulness may feel galaxies apart, they really aren’t. Over and over I’ve learned that if you don’t put the work in, you won’t reap the results, otherwise known as “TINSTAAFL". It takes practice to rewire the brain so that we can live more fully, and more in the present moment. We need to keep gently but firmly redirecting the mind back to “now” from “not now”. Each time we do that, we are making an investment in our own happiness, building the skill that we need to fully inhabit our lives and see the bigger picture. We can’t reap the reward without the work.
This practice doesn’t have to take the form of long periods of meditation. Instead, rule #2 can apply. Small moments of mindfulness many times a day constitutes an effective practice. For me, those “sacred pauses” take place as I bring my full attention to brushing my teeth, walking to the mailbox and for a full round of breath before I eat each meal. You can add to that each stop at a stop light (3 rounds of breath), each time you travel up a flight of stairs, or every time a hummingbird lands at the feeder. It can be a wish for well-being to each person whose name pops up in your email inbox, or taking in the sounds on the subway. And it can definitely be that sense of gratitude for the pillow beneath your head when you tuck in at night or the first sip of coffee in the morning. Each of these many mindful moments, small though they may be, is a drop of water in our lake of awareness.
By the way, the mindfulness haiku in the image was inspired by CMP community member, Thelma, who shared some of her own mindfulness-inspired haiku. We'd love to see your mindfulness haikus! Send them to welcome@communitymind.org. And if you're looking for inspiration, check out the haiku poetry of Kobayashi Issa. His poems have served many times as fodder for my meditation practice.
Hoping that you will join us this week in person, by conference call or by Zoom, or virtually via the many recorded meditations on the website. Click here to see our full schedule.
May all beings without exception find peace in the lake of awareness,
Your CMP Family
