Michael Chaskalson - Mind Time: How ten mindful minutes can enhance your work, health and happiness

IT TAKES JUST TEN MINUTES a day train your mind – you will feel more awake, more alive and more creative. Using these carefully researched exercises you can increase your attention span, realise your potential and use your mind to its full capacity. Yes, just ten…short … minutes.Nearly half of our waking hours are spent thinking about something other than what we are doing. We are only aware of a tiny fraction of what we are thinking, feeling and sensing – so we’re barely conscious of how and why we behave the way we do. This book sets out to help you get your mind out of automatic more often.The human mind is an extraordinary thing. It determines the way we experience and respond to whatever life throws at us. Yet most of us live as though we have no control over our minds. This is simply not true. If we want to change our lives in any way, the most effective way to do that is to change the way our mind is shaped – the way in which we interpret and respond to everyday events as well as to our own thoughts and feelings.Mind Time contains simple, clear exercises that take only ten minutes per day and our research tells us that if you do these exercises, your life will change. The exercises build three core capacities – curiosity, self-awareness and acceptance. If you do them, and build these capacities, you will become less reactive and more responsive. This will lead to positive benefits in several key areas: your relationships, your ability to deal with unexpected events and your capacity to stay purposeful and to see your life as a matter of choices rather than seemingly impossible challenges.Just set aside ten minutes each day to engage in a few simple practices, then after a short while you will start to see a transformation for the better. That’s our promise to you. Isn’t it time we learned to shape our minds – not be shaped by them?