Stay in Touch: 9 Simple Actions to Achieve Mindfulness

By Bob Cipriano

Stay in Touch: 9 Simple Actions to Achieve Mindfulness

Distracted? You're not alone. It's hard to focus on the moment. But paying attention to Right Now benefits your mental and physical health, eliminates careless behavior, frees your mind of nonsense, and inspires engagement and acceptance. That's why people turn to Mindfulness.

But turning to Mindfulness isn't enough. You have to get there. Meditating can help, but when you leave your yoga mat or favorite candle, the moment usually leaves too. You and your complicated mind begin to replay the past (what happened yesterday) or rehearse various futures (what you'll do tomorrow). The moment disappears. And stress often takes its place, because being in two places at once—the past or future, plus Now—is stressful.

Stay in Touch gives you 9 powerful, deliberate actions, some internal, some external, to bring you into the moment and help keep you there.

The actions aren't steps. They're simple triggers. Choose the one you need now. (If your first choice doesn't open you to the moment, another one will.)

There are 9 chapters in Stay in Touch, one for each of the 9 actions, to explain how you can make the best use of each of them. Discover and understand how they work to put you right here, right now. They are all you need to achieve and preserve mindfulness. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Cipriano
• Release date: Mar 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215124666

Bob Cipriano

Bob Cipriano spent years as a professional teacher/trainer, conducting academic and corporate workshops in America and other parts of the world. His work focused primarily on an array of communication skills. Over time, his personal interest in Consciousness Theory, Meditation, the Tao and Zen led to his embrace of Mindfulness. It emerged for him as a key not only to attention and its resulting inner peace, but also to communication among people. He began to incorporate Mindfulness into his various trainings, adding new depth to writing, time management, customer service, project management and presentation seminars. He began conducting Mindfulness workshops as a result, and wrote Stay in Touch following their success. He holds an MA from the University of Rhode Island and a BA from the University of Connecticut. His background, in addition to teaching, includes corporate management and marketing. He lives in Exeter, Rhode Island with his family.

Book preview

9 Actions to Achieve and Sustain a Mindful Life

Bring one of your 5 senses deeply into the moment— watch color & movement; listen to sounds behind the chatter; smell food, grass, air; touch surfaces; taste what is possible to taste.

Breathe to the moment— keep time to its steady flow, but also breathe deeply to re-enter it when your ego abandons it (use a cleansing breath to stop your past, your future, or your fantasy from overcoming the moment).

Embrace each thing that comes—aches, pains, discomfort, misfortune, along with good fortune and joy—recognize them as temporary, transitional feelings, small parts of the boundless life you’re participating in.

Contemplate the transformed—tree into post, rock into concrete and brick, animal and vegetable into food, bud into flower.

Recognize negative reactions—stress, anxiety, anger, despair—as elements of self-importance (the ego abandoning the moment), and re-enter the moment with a deep breath.

Record internally what is random in a given moment—that specific mailbox, the weeping willow, 9 birds on a wire, the shimmer of leaves in the wind, a line of 3 cars parked on the street (one of them is yellow), or those flowers, somehow thriving on that craggy hillside.

Realize you don’t know what’s behind that door, or that tree, or what’s under that surface (everything you see is a surface; everything beyond is a mystery): take time to look behind, under... explore the mystery.

Accept your vulnerability (the little turn you take because of its vague appeal, the small thing you say ‘Yes’ to)—as part of your self-preservation instinct, which requires that turn, that yes, for nourishment, shelter, peace-of-mind, and inspiration.

Consider the moment’s flexibility—this moment is different because of your space, energy, consciousness: create an effect on your immediate environment to change it, make it better.

Even a quick perusal should reveal to you that these 9 simple, deliberate actions can take you out of your undisciplined head and into what’s real, right now. But, in our current, crazy world, how long can you stay in the moment? 30 seconds, maybe, at first. And then you’re back in that head of yours again... and somewhere that isn’t real.

The nine actions take more than a quick perusal. You have to work them.

There are 304 words in the 9 Actions. There must be 304 million distractions that can get in the way of them.

Where do our distractions come from?

Why do they surround our senses like low-hanging, overripe fruit that tempts but ultimately doesn’t provide any satisfying flavor?

Who cares? There are all kinds of reasons for falling prey to distraction. The reasons for them matter far less than the simple fact that distractions are all around, and they’re not going away.

The world at large and its distractions aren’t the point.

What you can do about the world at large and its distractions: that’s the point. Knowing there are 9 actions to turn to is fine. Committing to something as simple at the 9 Actions is fine. It’s not unlike committing to that new diet. But knowing and doing—like sustaining that new diet in the face of tasty temptations—often run along separate and distinct neural pathways—they just don’t hook up.

Learn how to use the 9 actions to sustain mindful moments. The first three expand the moment to help you live in it. The next six explore the moment to look beyond its simplicity, when some complexity is called for to keep you here and now. See if a Right Here, Right Now life is right for you. If it is, commit to it, and then act on your commitment.

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Here are 9 chapters,