Five in Five Update: Date #3

Here's what my Saturday looked like:

5am - Get up, quick morning routine then hit the highway
7:30am - Yoga on the beach near Caloundra
9:30am - Mindfulness Meditation Coaching Course
1pm - fish and chips on the beach then hit the highway home
3pm - return missed call from Date #4 (drinks and tapas penciled in diary for this Friday)
3:30pm - enter 'fish and chips' induced coma
6pm - Get ready for Date #3
7pm - Arrive at "The Three Monkeys" West End for Dessert with Date #3

One of my biggest aims as a Yoga teacher (and human being) is to make the principles of Yoga and Mindfulness relevant and accessible to all. Yoga and Mindfulness, in my experience, provide us with universal tools that we can use in our daily lives to feel more content, calm and connected. And yes, these tools can be applied to 'dating' too.

According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, there are 8 Pillars of Mindfulness, which if embraced in our daily life, are a prescription for living a more full life. If at any time, we find ourselves in a place of dis-ease, we can reflect on these 8 pillars to see what we need an extra dose of to bring us back to wholeness and out of suffering.

The 8 pillars are:

1. Non-Judging
2. Patience
3. A Beginners Mind
4. Trust
5. Non-striving
6. Acceptance
7. Letting Go
8. A Sense of Humor

You might be wondering how on earth this translates to dating but by gosh it does!

Let's look at 'Beginner's Mind'. The Japanese Zen Master, Suzuki Roshi, is famous for having said,

"In the Beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few"

Beginners come to new experiences not knowing so much and therefore open. Having a beginner's mind, means taking the chance to see something as if for the first time, without allowing our illusion of knowing, prevent us from being present to the experience unfolding in front of us.

Okay, back to Date #3... I had already had a very successful Date #1. I had been to our venue many times (some might say I was a 'regular') AND I already knew Date #3 pretty well through mutual friends. As I walked the million miles to the venue (NB: Parking in West End on a Saturday night is horrific), I realised I needed to flick the switch and put on my beginner's mind. As a result, I learnt a lot about Date #3 that I didn't already know. And my experience at the venue was different to any time before it... and it was a lot of fun!

So, how was Date #3? First, let's look at this excerpt from "The Complete Book of Rules - time tested secrets for capturing Mr Right"...

So to answer that question..."Date #3 was nice! We had a lot of fun" :)

And here is the mandatory photo to prove it happened...

"The Complete Book of Rules" also suggests complimenting your date on 'his choice of restaurant, shirt or good sense to ask you out'. Who am I to break the rules?! I kindly complimented Date #3 on his choice of venue as we entered, to which he replied, "I'm pretty sure you chose this place in the end". Oooops! Good time to embrace Mindfulness Pillar #8 - A sense of humour. :)

And by the way, Date #3... I really like your shirt! ;)

If you like Date #3's choice of shirt too, let him know by clicking here:
http://my.artezpacific.com/personalPage.aspx?registrationID=532976&langPref=en-CA&Referrer=direct%2fnone