Raindrop Meditation Techniques - Simply Woman

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By Donna Morin, M.Ed, CHHC

It’s 9 am and I’m in my car. The rain is falling and I sit, mesmerized by the drops racing down the driver’s side window. The drops upon the roof of my car beat a rhythm that reminds me of a time long ago, when there was time to sit and listen to raindrops.

A friend texted me the other day: “Today I. TOOK.A.NAP! I wasn’t sick. I just did it because I felt like it!”

We celebrated in text style. For my Type A friend, this was a big deal. She is not one for sitting or napping. There is always something that needs to be done. As often as she is running around “getting things done”, though, things rarely get accomplished and her home is often cluttered with unfinished projects.

Somewhere in the last few decades, we embarked on a cultural journey that took us to a place where busy-ness is now rewarded with accolades and admiring envy. Productivity is where it’s at and the more to-do’s we can cross off our lists, the more valued we feel. Doing more than one thing at a time is highly regarded and the ability to multi-task is a skill even measured in elementary schools.

The problem is, when our focus is so fractured it’s difficult to get anything done. Or done well.

I am a flitter. I don’t think I’ve always been a flitter, but definitely since becoming a mother and a business owner, I’ve turned to flitting. I have a hard time staying with one task. But when I flit from folding laundry to cleaning the bathroom to writing, and then throw in a few minutes on Facebook- which inevitably turns into a few 30 minutes or more- without having finished either of the jobs, I find myself defeated. Before I know it, the school bus is due to arrive in ten minutes and there is still much doing that needs to be done.

While I may have been busy all day, nothing was accomplished. Time I could have spent focusing only on my son gets divided between emptying the dishwasher and sending off an article.

So I am changing my Busy Bee ways.

Western science continues to prove what Eastern tradition has known for hundreds of years. That slowing down, spending time in nature, and meditation not only help us to be happier and have a positive outlook on life, but they also help us to focus.

A flitter has a difficult time with meditation, though meditation doesn’t have to mean candles and mats and altars. It doesn’t even need to mean clearing our heads completely of all thoughts. Simply paying attention to what’s going on right now, as you’re doing what you’re doing, is a form of meditation.

That’s the kind of meditation I’ve been using and I choose to build it into the pockets of my day.

The time in my car when I turn off the radio or listen to classical music and look at the people driving in the other cars who are living their to-do’s, too. The one meal every day I try to sit and enjoy, without doing anything else but focusing on the taste of my food. The vegetables I chop on my cutting board, feeling the texture of each as the knife dutifully slices and dices.

What a difference this has made since I’ve started. Staying in the moment for even a few minutes every day is helping me to be more focused on the task at hand. I finish one before moving to another and somehow that’s making me more productive at the end of the day.

Always a work in progress, I find there are still times I attempt to get too much done at once. When I catch myself doing that, I stop.

Breathe deeply.

And if there are raindrops… I watch them race.

Donna Morin, M.Ed, CHHC, is a certified health coach and founder of Better Off Well.  She shares tips about how to live happier, healthier, and mindfully through her monthly published wellness column, various parenting publications, and her own website at www.betteroffwell.com.