Archives for posts with tag: mindfulness
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Stormy Weather?

August 30, 2018 //
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We all deal with occasional emotional “stormy weather”. I wish I could really help. I’d hand you an umbrella, or some wet weather gear, if it were, you know, properly weather. Instead, all I can really do is take time to listen. Give you a hug. Hand you a tissue. Frustratedly attempt to assure you it will pass.

…You won’t be letting it go until you’re ready.

Your perspective on the situation is your own, and you may not be ready to own any piece of your circumstances, or recognize any amount of personal accountability – and right now you’re hurting. I see it. My frustration sources with your choices, and your unreadiness to look yourself in the face and understand which of your choices may have contributed (or be contributing) to the situation quite directly. It’s hard to watch. I could tell you that some of this is made up nonsense in your own head, or that some of it actually just doesn’t “matter”, in fact, at all.

…You won’t be believing or accepting anything you aren’t ready for – how could you?

Your suffering is quite real. I wish I could help in a real way. I lack the tools. I’d offer you perspective, a quite moment over a cup of tea, perhaps some words over coffee and a moment to gather your thoughts… but the verbs are all yours, in the moment you choose to bring action to your experience and really do something about… whatever is going on.

I’ve found far too often that my own assumptions, expectations, and attachments, were precisely the thing causing me so much suffering, rather than the circumstances themselves. My very human insistence on attributing a “because” to some action taken by another, or words I’ve read or heard, and making it all exceedingly personal (whether it had any legitimate potential to be so, or not), often causes me much more pain than anything anyone actually did, regardless of their intention. Seriously. We make so much shit up in our heads. Yes, you too.

Then, “the hormone thing”. Yeah. Fucking hell. I get it. It’s hard. Hardest still is seeing how much choice there still is. We get used to “can’t help it” and we get so used to making excuses, apologies, and accepting sympathy, that we entirely overlook our opportunities to behave differently in the face of our hormonal challenges – and most of us could realistically do a lot better. No, I’m not going to take a step back from that, and I’ll point out the choice to do better is available both to those with the hormone challenges, and those who love those who have them. Then, how hard is it, sometimes, to even acknowledge “the hormone thing” at all, in some moment when we feel so righteous about our pain or anger? Everyone can win when we all simply treat each other well. No kidding. It’s about behavior, not emotions. Verbs. Choices.

Do better. You can. No kidding. However stressed and freaked out you are right now, you can choose so much of your experience – including how you deal with it. I need reminders too, sometimes. I’ll finish this, and drop the link in an email to myself with some alarming subject line like “I JUST CAN’T DO THIS ANYMORE!” all in caps, and tag it and archive it without thinking twice about it, and some future day when maybe I find myself lost in the deep end of emotional bullshit, I’ll go searching for emotional wounds to pick at from my email archives… and instead, find the link to this reminder that I have choices – and that I can do better. 🙂

A lot of the shit we allow to upset us most is of little real consequence. Let it go. Take a breath. Take another one. A proper deep breath. Let it out slowly. Have a cup of tea and just stop for a minute. Maybe take 10 minutes to meditate, or have a calming shower. Go for a walk and sift through your thoughts without judgment. Give yourself quiet time to process things. Get some perspective. Deal with your emotions without taking them personally. Take care of yourself – if you haven’t eaten, have some calories. Drink some water. It will pass.

Feasting on our anger or heartache by ceaselessly venting, again and again, about the same shit, tends to grow it larger in the garden of our hearts. Seriously. We become what we practice. Practice anger, you get good at being angry. Practice tears and tantrums, you get really good at crying and raging. Practice losing your shit and becoming hysterical and wrapped up in yourself, and, no kidding, you get good at that.  Maybe practice letting go of your attachment to your own bullshit, instead? Or practice building calm and emotional resilience? How about practicing contentment? You could even practice communicating your emotions without screaming them at people… I’m just saying, behavior is something we can change through choices and practices. It’s not about emotions, at all. Go right ahead and feel all of the things you are feeling. How are you behaving? It matters. 😉

You’ll most likely be okay, you know? How about right now? Are you okay right now? Start there. Begin again. ❤

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, grief, Healthy Living, Hormone Hell, inspiration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

A Moment in the Morning

August 17, 2018 //
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Are you rushing to get to work? Rushing through waking up, showering, dressing? Rushing to be out the door “on time”? Breathless with anxiety before you even start the car? Already thinking about the day ahead in such specific detail that you’ve “borrowed trouble” to fret about before you even have any in the moment?

I used to do that. I don’t now. It was a good change to make, to slow down in the mornings. 🙂 Maybe not life-saving, but certainly life-changing. I went from a fairly tightly timed morning routine that took 17 minutes from the alarm clock to the click of the front door closing behind me, and reliably got me on the bus heading into town 3 minutes later (the stop was just across the street from my apartment). Any deviation from my routine put me at risk of being late to work, and I had huge issues with time, timeliness, and time management, at that time in my life (I wasn’t bad at it, just really tense and weird about it on this whole unnecessary level). Being late – or thinking I might be – was a fast track to temper tantrums and treating people poorly (myself included). It was a shitty way to live, and it didn’t make me more efficient, or even on time more often.

What do I do now? It’s pretty low tech, honestly; I get up earlier. Like, I get up a lot earlier. I get up “earlier than I need to” by quite a bit. Most variations in desired arrival time at work don’t require me to change when I get up in the morning, that’s how much earlier I get up. Right now, it’s easily 90 minutes after my alarm goes off before I need to leave, and I could as easily leave the house fully 3 hours after I wake up and still be “on time” from the perspective of a salaried employee, and I sometimes do. It’s lovely, really, to be genuinely awake when I leave for work, to be able to write at leisure even on work days, to have adequate time to dress, shower, do some yoga, and even meditate before work – and still have time to write. It puts me on the path to being my best self each day.

I got home last night tired and frustrated by feeling the cold I thought I was over trying to make a comeback. I really don’t need the hassle or inconvenience, and I sat quietly frustrated, tears of exhausted aggravation coursing down my face for some minutes. Just… tired. I skipped the company summer block party over it, too. Came directly home. No chores. No video entertainment. No music. Hell, I didn’t even pick up a book. Just sat, staring rather blankly, sipping chicken broth or tea, until I was “sleepy enough” to just go lay the fuck down and rest. I was asleep early. I slept hard. Deeply. Uninterrupted. I was irritated by the weird repetitive noise that woke me – my alarm. It took nearly a full minute to figure that out and shut it off. I turned the lamp on and off a couple times, puzzled why the noise was not stopping. lol Usually I am awakened by the subtle “click” sound that immediately precedes the alarm actually going off. lol

I definitely needed the restful night. I woke feeling more myself. Still cross about this cold trying to come back – and of course, immediately as the fucking weekend begins. That’s becoming a source of real frustration for me, lately; the weekend is my one real opportunity each week to get some legit downtime, and it’s so rare any more to just enjoy one. I’m sick. Or traveling. Or moving. Or I’m sick. Or I have tons of shit that just must get done, non-negotiable. Or I’m doing something for someone. Or I’m sick again. Or I’ve gotten injured. Or I’m traveling. Or… I need to slow down. Again. And maybe not just in the mornings. Mornings? I’ve got those down at this point. 🙂

It’s a journey. No single change, no one practice, solves for X in every one of life’s equations. There are more verbs. More opportunity to do more/better, while also practicing skillful self-care, and figuring out what is actually worth doing well and more often. Being and becoming are a massively challenging jigsaw puzzle, and the pieces not yet fit into the puzzle are all jumbled up together in an untidy pile; sometimes it isn’t clear which pieces are most valuable in any particular moment. I’m still such a beginner at this being human thing!

I finish my coffee. Take a deep breath, look at the clock, and exhale slowly. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Contemplating a Blank Page

August 16, 2018 //
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My coffee is tasty. The house is comfortable in the pre-dawn chill of a summer morning. The air quality is still pretty poor as smoke collects in the air from distant fires. My mind is more or less… blank. I’m not quite awake yet, at all. I take another sip of my coffee and stare at the screen. It too remains “a blank page” for some minutes before I finally just drop that into the title field, and sit quietly, drinking coffee, aware.

This is not an unsatisfying moment. I am not feeling frustrated. (I chuckle as I write those words, immediately hearing my Traveling Partner’s voice replying in my head “Well, how are you feeling?”) I am feeling content. Just that. This moment does not seem to require more.

We create our experience with our choices, and our understanding of it is a carefully crafted narrative we make up ourselves, that may or may not accurately reflect the details of our experience (or any other – we’re seriously really good at making shit up and convincing ourselves it is real). This particular experience, here, now, is built on my choice to relax and accept that I may not have anything noteworthy to write about this morning, and to fall back gently on “just putting words on a page”, “thinking out loud”, in real-time, unedited and uncensored. I smirk at myself using the word “uncensored” in the context of this particular morning; there’s nothing about the morning thus far that would require, or benefit from, censorship anyway. 🙂

I’ve caused myself so much stress, anxiety, suffering, and heartache, just by insisting that I do more, faster, so often. The arbitrary performance standards we set for ourselves (and each other) often have no basis in what works, or what matters most. Sometimes they are just numbers pulled out of thin air. Why let life become stressful over made up shit? Seriously. Same with our internal narrative; we often make up a story about our experience that is based on untested assumptions, unvoiced expectations, and wholly unrealistic fantastical details that are in no way factual – then we let it stress us out. (Note: consider not doing that!)

This morning begins another work day. One more after that, and it’s the weekend again. 😀 I’m ready for it… but first, I have to live today, in this moment, present and engaged, and doing both things and stuff. lol Have to? Get to.

…It’s already time to begin, again. 😀

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Illusions of Permanence

August 3, 2018 //
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I woke this morning both puzzled and amused. I don’t remember my dreams, and wonder for some minutes what they were about to result in waking with such a feeling. There was a phrase stuck in my head, my only clue, “illusions of permanence”. I am grateful that I woke feeling some amusement, recognizing that phrasing such as that could easily be associated with some far more negative experience.

My coffee is cold and tasty. My consciousness is still not quite entirely awake. The morning is quiet. I sit for a moment, taking it in.

A bit more than a year ago, I moved in here. A year ago, about, my Traveling Partner gave me his car to use, rather than have me continue my practice of using public transit. Longer ago than one year, my life was quite different. I had a different view, different neighbors, a different commute, a different routine, and even a different experience of life. Things change. Even when I’m not making a point to choose change, sometimes change chooses me. There doesn’t really seem to be an option not to choose change, or to choose not to experience change. Change is. Impermanence is. Those are sort of non-negotiables in life. We can, however, choose whether to become very attached, or to let go of attachment. We can choose whether or not to surf the waves of change, or be overwhelmed by them.

We do have choices. Our choices are not always what we recognize them to be.

I continue to sip my coffee and contemplate change. This is a lovely moment right here, right now. It, too, will pass. The next moment may or may not be so entirely characterized by contentment. It would be rather foolhardy to expect each moment that follows to be similarly filled with contentment. Sooner or later… there’d be a wholly different sort of moment. Change is. I try not to cling. 🙂

The morning feels pretty good. I decide on a second coffee, and to wrap this up still smiling, ready to move on with the day, from this moment, and on to the next – whatever it holds. I mean, seriously? I can begin again, any time. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

Did That Change, or Did I?

July 11, 2018 //
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My commute for the last couple days, this week, and the end of last week, have been… pleasant. I’m not sure why, exactly. Planning ahead for heavy traffic due to construction detours, just in case, seemed wise, and I’ve been leaving a bit earlier – on both ends of my work day. The adjustment to my shift did result in an apparent modest reduction in traffic… maybe. People are still people. All the other cars are still driven by those. (People, I mean.) Still, it’s been not at all unpleasant, generally, and this amounts to an improvement in my experience day-to-day – but is it what I think it is (the apparent reduction in traffic) or… is it me?

Is it a change in the facts of my experience, or a change in perspective?

See, around the same time, I also had a conversation with a friend that, although fairly one-sided (it was legitimately more just me talking at them on my way by, pausing for a joyful moment to share an anecdote – about traffic), ended with the realization that I was genuinely struggling with anger while commuting. A proper recognition, fully aware, that ended with a clear statement of acknowledgement, “…and that’s not who I most want to be”. Oh. Oh shit. There are going to be verbs involved, right? I went on with things, in the usual way, at the time…but… it sat with me, then, and still lingers in my thoughts.

The awareness changed my perspective.

My change in perspective changed my behavior.

I’ve been getting into the car since then, calmly aware that traffic is, and that I’m going to have to deal with it. The commute is not a fucking race, there is no specific time that I firmly must arrive at my destination – and when there is, the wiser thing is to plan the time it actually takes, of course, not fuss about how much less time that should be, or try to force the universe to comply with my expectations of that. I suspect it may not actually have been the traffic that changed all that much, although one bit of construction finally wrapped up that was going on along my route. (Actually, to be fair, I only suspect that; I altered my route days ago to avoid that mess, and don’t really know.) I’ve also grabbed hold of some perspective, and slowed down a bit; there’s no sense at all being aggravated by traffic if what is aggravating me is the “slow” progress – at the posted speed limit. That just seems fairly silly, given some thought. (I’ll thank my Traveling Partner for that reminder, next time I see him.)

Perspective is an amazing cognitive tool. A favorite. Why? Because it does not matter one bit whether the traffic is actually reduced, or my emotional resilience is improved through a shift in perspective – not at all. Our experience of life is not always about “objective truth” or “facts” or “reality”, and sometimes what needs a change is our experience, itself. What matters most is that, by shifting my perspective, I’m closer to being that human being I most want to be, enjoying my experience more, treating others well, and discharging less unwarranted rage or hate into the world.  Those are both emotions that poison the one feeling them, and they often seem to result from nothing more than frustration – and lost perspective. Ick. I don’t need that in my life.

Now to apply the amazing power of perspective to all of the everything else in life…

…It’s time to begin again. 😀

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Categories Allegories, anger, Brain Injury, Free Will, Frustration, Healthy Living, inspiration, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Summer, The Art of Being
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