I get it now, that I should and need to 'be in the moment' when I am doing something. And only by doing so, I can pay my fullest attention on the activity I am involved and make the best out of it.
I didn't quite get the meaning behind this when a good friend of mine explained to me. I mean, I have always been attentive to the tasks I'm doing or given but I didn't realise that sometimes, apart from attending to the tasks on hand, my mind was drifting between multiple other stuffs that were on my mental list - the deadline to finish the report, the chore I needed to do later, another item that I needed to clear by end of the day etc. Unknowingly I got distracted by many other things that were on my mind, so much so that I did not put in my full attention on the one thing that I was supposed to do in the first place.
I only got to realize how true this was when I went for wakeboarding over the weekends. I was sleepy, my mind was somewhere else thinking about some stuffs that happened earlier during the week. And because of all these factors, although I'm physically in the water, trying to get myself up and to keep my equilibrium, I just kept falling despite already mastering the skill of balancing and standing up on the board. On my third fall, while floating in the water, waiting for the boat to do a roundabout to pass me the rope, I realized my mind was not on wakeboarding at all. I was thinking about everything but the activity itself.
Decided to do a mental switch and kept telling myself to focus solely on the the activity and nothing else. What surprised me was the immediate effect that came along with this simple act of consciousness. I stood up, I balanced and I had hell of a good time trying out slightly more challenging stunts. It was so much more enjoyable than any other times when I did wakeboarding.
It is great to finally understand what it means and feels like to be in that state of consciousness. It is also great to realize I actually have the ability to push other thoughts away and just focus on the activity that I'm involved in. It's not easy though, having to consciously push other thoughts out of my mind, to pay attention on that single task and nothing else. I hope I can do this better eventually and get to enjoy what I do even more.
On a side note, I probably need to manage my emotions better. Am getting emotionally affected by every little thing. It's draining when I'm so reactive to things/words/responses that were thrown towards my direction. The rebound effect from me has not been good at all and it always lands on the person closest to me. My constant reminder to self has been - to be fair to the other party and not vent it on others. I try to be as positive as best as I can. Sigh...I try...I really try... Afterall, no one wants to be with another who emits negativity all the freaking time...
Sometimes I dun know how to respond any more when so many things are bomdbarding me constantly. Sometimes I just wanna shut down so that I would be less explosive/ reactive. Sometimes I feel like I need to hide somewhere and be on my own for awhile so that I can deal with the world in a better way...