Mindfulness.
Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines mindfulness as:
2: the practice of
maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one's
thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis; also:
such a state of awareness
When I think of mindfulness now, I think of yoga, meditation,
hot tea and incense. And calm.
Calm is a difficult concept for me. With all of the roles I play in my life and
the hecticness of my calendar, I don’t make
enough time for myself.
As an aside: Notice I
said make instead of find time. There’s enough time. As much as I joke that I could use more hours
in the day (couldn’t we all?) if it’s important to you, you’ll find the
time. We tell our kids that if the end
result were important to them, they’d get their chores done in a more timely
fashion. If that TV show is important,
we’ll make time to watch it preferably uninterrupted. If you make yourself a priority, you can find
the time.
Back to calm. <Deep
breath with the whole slow arm flapping movement>
Believe it or not, there was a time that I didn’t even know
the word mindfulness, let alone the definition.
There was a time when I ran from place to place like a chicken with my
head cut off, smoking frantically on the fringes of the activity, always music
or TV on for “background noise”. Now I
do all the same things without the smoking AND I know the word and
definition of mindfulness. Impressive,
right?
Actually, I’ve always tried to practice the non-judgmental
part of the mindfulness concept. I’m
very good at seeing other points of view and can play a mean devil’s
advocate. I am usually defending someone
telling those around me, “Be kind! You
don’t know what they’re going through!”
You don’t know if that pushy jackass on the highway is in the middle of
a medical emergency for his child or if that rude woman in line at the grocery
store just lost her mother and is having a really hard day or if that
politician got bad information from someone he trusted and was doing what he
thought was right, however misguided.”
I’m really good at making excuses for and being kind to other
people. There’s very little I can’t
forgive. Not so much for myself.
I’ve got a lot going on in my life and I’ve been a bit
stressed recently. But, like the feeling
while most people are watching that jackass on the highway, I have been having
trouble being kind to myself. I have
very high expectations for myself. I expect to
be calm, patient, pleasant, efficient, logical, active, helpful, committed,
loyal, attentive, passionate, accommodating, organized and giving to name just a
few.
I’m taking steps toward better mental health for
myself. Over the last few months I’ve
resumed my acupuncture appointments for internal physical balance, started
taking Chinese herbs for increased relaxation and mood stability and am working
on a daily meditation streak on my calm.com app. I need to make frequent blogging part of my
mental health as well.
Be kind to one another. But even more importantly, be kind to
yourself. You’re the only you you get.
What act of kindness have you done for
yourself recently?
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