What do you know about sitting silently for ten minutes without looking at your phone, laptop, TV screen with the news, chats, or someone else's beautifully curated life? First, I'll repeat a little about the benefits of this practice, and then I'll explain why I started this post.
Doing Nothing
In our time of AI, short videos, and the mass of information pouring onto our heads from everywhere, Doing Nothing is simply a challenge to our way of life.
We are busy with something, but often don't even notice that we stopped managing our own attention a long time ago. We are being pulled by strings: a notification, a message, a news story, anxiety, a funny video, an urgent question, one more opinion, one more picture, one more reason to buy something, prove something, explain something, or get something done in time.
And against this background, ten minutes without an external stimulus looks almost indecent.
But that's exactly where the benefit is.
When you do nothing, your psyche finally stops chewing someone else's informational feed. Attention starts coming back. Boredom stops being the enemy. The brain slowly remembers that dopamine can come not only from bright flashes, fast videos, and endless scrolling. These 10 minutes a day won't take our life away, they will make it more meaningful. If you need that, of course)
You can google (or ask Perplexity) different studies on the topic of "10 Minutes of Nothing". There are even videos with real people fighting boredom on camera for the whole time) And I suggest trying it yourself. Once a day. At least for one full week.
Non-doing
Put your smartphone on silent mode, turn off other devices that create noise or pictures.
Sit down.
Take off your watch.
Open the Mandala of the Day.
And just look at this image.
You don't need to meditate on purpose. You don't need to breathe correctly according to an instruction from the internet. You don't need to urgently search for deep meaning in every color and every rhombus.
Look. Listen to yourself. Let your thoughts go where they want — this isn't monks' meditation)
Sometimes remember that you are doing nothing by your own choice, and continue doing nothing.
10 minutes. Even 9 or 8. Just don't hurry anywhere. Look. Listen to yourself. And when nothing happens at the end — that's good) Try again tomorrow. And then again.