Last week we started meditation for 5 minutes in class. I’ve never been interested in it until trying it. Every class from now on we are trying a new style of meditation and I’m so excited. I haven’t been doing it outside of class but I will probably start. I have already had a better mindset from mediation. I can already tell I have a more positive outlook on things and I feel more relaxed. I have really bad anxiety and so I stress a lot over little things, but the few times I’ve meditated and practiced mindfulness have already helped put my mind at ease. There are so many different ways to practice mindfulness so I definitely will be looking into other ways. It’s so interesting and honestly it can be so easy. You are basically relaxing and clearing your mind for a couple minutes a day. There are so many benefits to meditation so why wouldn’t you practice it? Not taking care of your mental health can be so exhausting physically and mentally so taking a few minutes to relax everyday will tremendously help. I wish I had understood that in highschool when I struggled with my mental health. Going forward in life and going through college I will practice mindfulness to help my mental health. 

We also talked about paradigms and what they were. Before this class I had never heard of that word so I had no idea what it meant. Now I know that it’s basically your values and beliefs on a specific topic. Everyone has their own thoughts on everything and I find that amazing and so interesting. I love learning other people’s views even if ours differ. In this week’s reading I had the “No” text assigned to me. It talked a lot about paradigms and how we need to change our paradigm and our culture to help save the Earth and every species on it. The no side of our group managed to convince the yes side that our text was the correct way. Globalization would not and could not be the whole answer. I brought up that we needed both sides to come together to help the world. We can’t survive without globalization because we’re so accustomed to it, but we do need to change some ways of life. An example used was having more sidewalks to increase walking or biking. And also increasing bus transportation so more people want to use that instead of taking their own cars out. Saving the world it’s a team effort and everyone needs to be involved and help. 

Everything we’ve talked about these past few classes work together. To be mindful and knowledgeable about paradigms will help us in the future. Practicing mindfulness is essential to having a sustainable life on Earth. There are many different wicked problems in every part of life. There are also many other problems in the world and we have to try to understand everything about it all. Being in the class has helped so much with how I think and understand different things. I’m so excited for the rest of this class because I can already feel the change from practicing and learning about mindfulness and paradigms.