Finding Stillness in the Everyday: A Mindfulness Guide through Beauty
Seeing beauty in everything has become my daily practice of mindfulness. In a world full of noises, it’s easy to get distracted and lost. Contemplating beauty around us is indeed one of the ways to cultivate inner peace.
What does beauty mean to you?
Most of the time we attempt to be a beautiful person by the way we dress and how our body looks in others’ eyes. But if we only focus on the way we look and the outer world, it’s easy to feel depressed. If we only see beauty from the outside, there will be a high tendency in us trying to change ourselves and compare ours with others, which is the shortest way to be unhappy.
Contemplating the beauty around me has become a daily practice of mindfulness. Each day, I open my windows and gaze at my plants, marveling at their daily transformation. If yesterday they were simply trees full of leaves, today they have blossomed into breathtaking flowers.
After last night’s rain, I noticed raindrops glistening on the leaves. These little things bring me back to the present moment, and I start to wonder about them like a child. Indeed, all the teachings tell us to look at things with the fresh eyes of a baby. Every little thing in this world is amazing, cool, and new to a baby.
At the end of the day, I gaze at the sky and watch the clouds transform every second. The beauty of the clouds always evokes special emotions within me. At that moment, I feel small in this world, but also fortunate to witness such a magnificent creation of the Universe.
Every day there are tons of things for me to learn and be wonder about: The petals, the leaves, the flowers, the clouds, the soil, the colors of my pen, the rain, the smell of my cup of coffee, the patterns of my notebooks, the types of fabric that I wear etc.
Ultimately, there is a lively and beautiful aspect in everything, if you pay attention to it.
Nothing has ever been the same. It transforms daily, even with people. Who we were yesterday is the past, today we are different from yesterday, and tomorrow we change to another.
Change is inevitable.
Seeing the beauty in changes is also a beautiful thing.
[REFLECTION PROMPTS]
What does beauty signify to you? Do you consider yourself a beautiful being on Earth?
Name five things around you that you find beautiful, things you never realized held beauty before.
How can you deepen your immersion in the everyday beauty of life?
How can you carve out time to practice mindfulness through contemplating beauty?