My thoughts on mindfulness honestly depend on my mood. I always try to be mindful of what I am doing, who I am around,  how I am feeling, and how I am treating others. With that being said there are times I am not being the best version of myself. This comes with being mindful of being sustainable and even how I’m interacting with the world around me. These past few weeks I have been trying to be mindful of how much water, electricity, trash, etc that I am using. But it is hard to be mindful all of the time. I think being mindful is a very important thing to be aware of and more people should try to incorporate it into their everyday lifestyle. Mindfulness can truly change someone’s day just by changing your attitude or how you’re feeling.

The TED Talk from Marc Cohen changed my view drastically. One thing that he said that really made me rethink was that to be healthy, the world around me or my environment has to be healthy as well. I could not agree more with that idea. Your environment completely shapes who and how you are. If I am in a situation that I don’t feel comfortable in, then I feed off of that energy and I don’t feel like myself. It is the same way if I am around people who are not being positive, I slip into that trap and become negative. It is also the same way with the earth if our earth is not healthy and thriving then how can we? The TED talk hit on many valuable points on how we need to change our lifestyle and take care of the earth while taking care of ourselves.

After reading the ‘Mindfulness and Sustainability’ article, I am very interested now in meditation. I have heard a few of my friends talk about how they have added meditation into their routine every day and it has been so eye-opening for them. I have participated in meditation before, during yoga but I feel that I need to get better and practice more. I have a lot of energy and my mind usually drifts off during meditation. That is a key example that I should be more in tune with my body and be mindful of what it is telling me.

The wicked problem I am interested in is clean water. To me, I think that having clean water is common sense. Every human should have clean drinking water and that’s just not the case. I am so blessed to be able to have everything I need when I need or want it. But there are so many people who cant say the same thing. It breaks my heart hearing about people who do not have the basic necessities that they need to live. Water is given to us by the earth, and everyone should be able to have it. But we are not using our resources correctly. The amount of times I have thrown out water or left the shower on for a long time before I got in is so wasteful. We need to be more aware of how much water we are consuming and what we are using it for. I am going to be more mindful of how long I am in the shower and even how often I am doing laundry.

The meditation experience was a little hard for me. I am sick so the entire time I was trying not to cough and disrupt those sitting around me. But as I was looking around there were a lot of people who I could tell were enjoying the experience. I really wish I could have enjoyed the meditation process more because it is such a great thing to incorporate in your lifestyle. I want to practice meditation more and the next time I take a yoga class I will try to really focus on the meditation process.