Being mindful to be thrifty

How many of you have dealt with a situation where you have forgotten something and were wasteful:

• Forgot your water bottle and had to buy a packaged drink.
• Forgot what you really needed and shopped for something completely different.
• Forgot to water your plants and they died.
• Forgot to carry essentials such as a pen to an exam and had to buy a new one.
• Forgot to assess your grocery needs, shopped extravagantly and ended up wasting all the food.

I’m trying to develop a system or systems to be less forgetful which in turn will help me in several situations, but also help me be thrifty. I’ve relied too many times on things like calendars, to-do lists, alarms, etc. My husband suggests that I try relying also on my brain.

My counter-argument to him was that I was so overloaded with things and hence needed to rely on something other than my brain. However, my guts tell me that I should try and see what happens if I train my brain. It is not like something I’ve never done. I guess the argument was coming out as a self-defense. Me training my brain shouldn’t appear as a threat to it. Don’t judge your brain.

“To not judge yourself for those thoughts and emotions, and to then bring your attention back to where you are in the present.” – Dr. Sarah King, Flourish Vol. 2, No. 1, November/December 2017

It is also possible that I’m using mindfulness the wrong way by being totally distracted into an oblivion than being focused.

“In July the Oxford academic Theodore Zeldin said too many people were avoiding using their brains through mindfulness and instead escaping into a state of blank mental oblivion.” – The Telegraph

So, I sought out to find a definition of mindfulness that suits best to my context here. Thanks to a Redditor, I found something that I think might help me in a way that brings me back to reality than pushing me into a state of blank. Maybe it’ll help some of you too. :)

Mindfulness is the opposite of forgetfulness. – Thich Nhat Hanh from Meditation