In fact, mindfulness can be practised at anytime and anywhere during our normal daily life. All we have to do is to actively remind our self to be aware and mindful of the things that we are doing and what goes on around us. For example, it is a good practice to always think mindfully before you act whether it is a physical action or speech. When you do this mindfully often, you will begin to realise that you can hold yourself back and avoid any acts of wrongdoing or saying the wrong things that may hurt others or yourself. And when you are mindful about your surroundings, you will also be able to understand more about others, to see more than what is done, and to hear more than what is said.
Wisdom
Sometimes wisdom is confused with intelligence. Wisdom and intelligence are different but they are related to each other. This is very obvious when we observe that there are many smart people in this world but there is only a handful that we would consider as wise.
A wise man is intelligent, but an intelligent man is not necessarily wise
Some people believe that wisdom is something that is inborn like intelligence and while there are others who believe that it comes from life experience. For me, both views are correct and I believe that it is a combination of both. I would define intelligence as the ability to think and understand and an intelligent person is one with a high degree of ability in doing so.
As many researches have shown, there are many aspects of intelligence and everyone is gifted with a different degree and type of intelligence. But intelligence will just define how well a person can think of possible ways to do something or react to a situation but with little or without the restrictions of morality or conscience. For example, many of the famous criminals are in fact very smart people because of their ability to plan and carry out their crime but we would never consider them as wise because they have misused their intelligence to conduct wrongdoings.
As for wisdom, I would define it is as the ability to make the best use of intelligence and coupled with knowledge to do the right thing in any given situation. When I refer to “doing the right thing”, it means that it also takes into consideration the basic human moral values and conscience.
Cultivating Wisdom
As defined above, wisdom will need the combination of intelligence, knowledge, and morality. Therefore to cultivate wisdom is also to apply mindfulness in contemplating our knowledge and past experience in order to gain a deeper understanding of that knowledge and think of how to apply it to our current moment or future endeavours.
Since wisdom also makes use of our experience and knowledge, it is important for us to continuously expand our knowledge and experience of the world.
Conclusion
The reason why I use the phrase “Good Life” instead of “Great Life” in the title of this article is because I believe that not all of us will or wants to achieve greatness in life but I am sure that every one of us can and will be able to achieve a “Good Life”. And as described above, a great life may not necessarily be a good one and you don’t need to be great to have a good life.
Please do not get me wrong as I am not saying that we should not aim for a great life, but I believe that we must first aim to cultivate a good life in our journey towards achieving greatness. And I am very sure that greatness will not be far and it is nearer than we would expect once we start to cultivate a good life.
The three aspects discussed in this article are all interconnected to each other. Morality is cultivated with the practice of Mindfulness in our daily acts and Wisdom is used to define what is right from what is wrong which forms our Morality. Likewise, Wisdom is cultivated through Mindfulness in the contemplation of knowledge, past experience and intelligence to act in a way which is aligned with our Morality.
The application of the contents of this article as discussed above will be strongly relevant to Spiritual Coaching and Life Coaching in guiding the client throughout their coaching journey.